is a great completeness in the Church of England theory, admitting as with Mr. Irons we are glad to do, the appeal to that great body of ecclesiastical precedent, known as the Canon Law. But then again, looking practically at the state of things around us, where are we to find, especially in matters of doctrine, the traces of even the existence of a standard? and where is the working array of harmonious decisions which shall correspond to this majestic ideal? Such questions will be put: and if there is an apparent indistinctness in the object and end of these lectures, we attribute it more to the difficulty which so acute a writer as Mr. Irons must have experienced in the struggle against discouragement arising from the admitted disproportion between his facts and his theory, than from any failure in power or ingenuity on his part.

Tracts for Divinity Students, No. 1,' (Dublin: M'Glashan,) is a new edition of Waterland on Regeneration,' by Mr. C. J. Black. This is really an edition, for Mr. Black's notes and illustrations are larger than the original work, and as we think, supply a defect in it; for Waterland with all his excellencies confined himself rather to the state of, than the gift conferred in, Baptism.

Dr. Wordsworth has condensed in a recent publication, Letters to M. Gondon,' &c. (Rivingtons), many of the controversial facts and references, which are generally cited to prove the anti-legal, and anti-constitutional tendency of the political doctrines of the Church of Rome. The subject is put with the writer's usual force.

'The Vast Army. An Allegory, by the Rev. Edward Monro, of Harrowweald,' (Burns.) This Allegory has the same beauties and the same faults with Mr Monro's former one. The pictures are often very vivid : and the scenes are ingeniously contrived for the purposes of the moral. But the main course of the allegory is not sufficiently uniform and clear. The moral, in the present instance, is the Christian duty of every one taking and filling his appointed place in the great contest with evil, visible and invisible, of which this life is the ordained field. It will leave upon the reader, as a whole, strong and serious ideas on this subject; though particular portions may not be clear at a first view.

'The Life of Mrs. Godolphin, by John Evelyn of Wootton, Esq. now first published, and edited by Samuel, Lord Bishop of Oxford,' (Pickering.) Mrs. Godolphin is an instance of a person of great intellect and strength of mind, voluntarily subjecting herself, under the most trying circumstances, to the most strict religious discipline, internal and external. There is no doubt she could not only have shone, (as she did,) but been actually supreme in Charles's court, if she had chosen to aim at such distinction. She had the beauty, the grace, the accomplishments, and, lastly, the head for it. Hers is as clear a case of deliberate renunciation of the world as we have read of; we mean of renunciation of the world by a person who had the power to win it. We do not say she is without her faults;

her concealment of her marriage from Evelyn was certainly wrong. However, the greatest saints, even the Bible saints, are not perfect. We enunciate this truism designedly, because there are so many persons in the world who will fix upon one fault in a character, and put it forward on all occasions, as the one note. The stern devotional life of this strong-minded woman, contrasts somewhat grotesquely throughout the book, with the simplicity, and occasional garrulity of her good friend and biographerEvelyn.

It is often a serious practical difficulty with us what books to notice, and had we not a full reliance upon our readers as a class, we should hesitate about calling attention to publications which are not calculated to affect palpably the public mind. Our office, however, is to display the more minute forms of evil, which do not fall within the range of ordinary reading, as signs of the times. A bad book shows at least the active existence, however uninfluential, of a certain amount of evil at work somewhere: its publication is a fact, and may have bearings. With this reluctance, yet under a sense of duty, we mention the 'Evangel of Love; interpreted by Henry Sutton,' (Bartlett.) It professes Pantheism in limine: but is a subtle and mischievous, though unintelligible, attempt to revive the mystic theosophy of Jacob Behmen, under its most pernicious aspect. Revelation, and even the being of a God, are allegorised to a perfect evanescence. The inward illumination of Quakerism, the poetry of Shelley, the political economics of Fourier, the idealism of Schelling—all are absorbed and caricatured into a monstrous whole, which anticipates a new era, and a new spiritual church and organization of mankind, in which marriage, animal food, and religion in all its forms, shall be extirpated: it is to be a spiritual communion without Bible, Church, or Law: and all this as a new phase of the most Catholic Christianity. The book bears a scientific aspect, and deals in Scripture quotation: but more hideous blasphemy it was never our lot to see. Still, in connexion with certain tendencies of the pseudo-philosophical and critical school, it is not without its value.-It may stagger some of our readers to learn, that, in an independent quarter, a prospectus has issued for republishing the works of Jacob Behmen, and other writers on Theosophic Atheism. Quorsum hæc?

Of practical Tracts we have seen :-' Catechetical Exercises upon the Saints' days, by Mr. E. H. Adamson,' (T. Russell Smith); 'The Weekly Offering, by a Parish Priest, of the Diocese of Rochester' (Batty); 'Three parts of Dr. Hook's Devotional Library,' (Leeds: Slocombe,) viz., ‘The Sick Man Visited,'—' Penitential Reflections,'-' Meditations for every day,' Part I. 'Officia Anglica,' (Burns,) combining, with a 'Form of selfexamination,' which we have already recommended, a 'Manual of private Prayers,' (this is an excellent tract;) 'The Catechism with Questions, &c. by Mr. Bagot of Newry' (Groombridge); Short Rules for Prayer for working men' (Burns); My Flock; or, the Parish Priest's Register' (Earls).

Of Sermons we have to acknowledge ::-Sixty Lectures on the Psalms, by Mr. R. Brudenell Exton' (Longman); 'A Second Edition of the Sermons

preached at the opening of St. Saviour's, Leeds' (Rivingtons); 'Sermons preached in Holy Week, by Mr. C. F. Smith, Pendlebury' (Masters); ́A volume by the late Mr. Nicholson of Winchester' (Rivingtons); An important volume of 'Sermons, preached at the consecration of St. James's, Morpeth' (Rivingtons); 'Sermons on Holy Joy, by Mr. Baker,' far above the average; 'Sermons on the Miracles,' to be followed by a second volume, by Dr. Hook (Leeds: Slocombe); 'Practical Sermons by Mr. Fitzgerald of Clontarf' (Dublin: M'Glashan). And of single Sermons:-Mr. Bennett's excellent Fast-day Sermon, 'Sins of the Church and People' (Cleaver); ́A Sermon on the Death of Mr. Phipps, by Mr. Stafford Brown, of Westbury,' (Rivingtons,) the respected preacher's own funeral sermon was preached within another month; 'Dr. Molesworth's Rule of Conscience with respect to Church-rates' (Rivingtons); The Church's Confession of Sin, by Mr. Rawstorne of Galby' (Rivingtons); 'The Bishop of Oxford's Sermon at the Consecration of St. James's, Woolsthorpe' (Burns); 'A Sermon for the Church Building Society, by Mr. Brame' (Masters); and Archdeacon Hoare's Charge on Education' (Winchester: Wooldridge).

Note to Article on Organs.-The writer is glad to hear of a fact, of which he was not aware while writing the article, that a commencement of an alteration of the style of organs, in the direction he has recommended, has already been made: and that some recent organs have been built, constructed more on the continental standard. The new organ at St. Olave's, Southwark, is, he hears, of this character.

THE

CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

OCTOBER, 1847.

ART. I.-1. Tales for the Young. By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. London: Burns.

2. The good Genius that turned everything to Gold. BROTHERS MAYHEW. Bogue.

By THE 3. The Silver Swan, a Fairy Tale. By MADAME DE CHATE

LAIN.

Grant & Griffith.

4. The Good-natured Bear.

Cundall.

5. The Lady Ella. By the Authoress of Hymns and Scenes of Childhood. Burns.

6. The Wreath of Lilies. By the Same. Burns.

7. Godfrey Davenant, a Tale of School Life. By the REV. W.

HEYGATE.

Masters.

11. The Island Choir, or the Children of the Child Jesus. Masters.

12. The Wonder Seeker, or the History of Charles Douglas. By M. FRASER TYTLER. Grant & Griffith.

13. The Boy's Own Library: Summer--Autumn-Winter. By THOMAS MILLER. Chapman & Hall.

14. Exercises for the Improvement of the Senses, for Young Children. Published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

WE have placed Andersen's name at the head of our list, in gratitude for the delight and amusement his stories for children have afforded us. When Fairyland seemed lost to us, or peopled by a new race of utilitarians, who spoke its language and tried its spells in mere slavish imitation, without comprehending their use or meaning; a poet from the north has made fresh flowers bloom there, and brought it back again to our hearts and eyes in brighter colours and stronger outline than before.

In these days children, it seemed, might command everything in literature for their instruction and amusement but one. The press teems with stories clever, lively, edifying, the work evidently of superior minds; we feel them to be well written and with a good and pure aim; and, as such, we read them with pleasure and interest; but, even as we read, the wonder comes upon us, why will not this last? why, good and improving as it is, showing, too, a knowledge and experience of children's and of human nature-why will it be so soon forgotten; so that what is talked of and quoted now, will not be heard of a few months hence? it is not want of cleverness, it is not want even of nature. Why will it not live? It must, we think, be no uncommon subject of regret to many, who have been led, for their children's sake, or by their own taste, to read the voluminous writings, now issuing for the young,that, though they have influence as a whole, and with the force of a stream bear the mind in their direction, yet each drop of the stream shines but its own short hour, and leaves no trace behind.

The secret of this short-lived success is, we believe, the want of invention. One age surpasses another in intellectual quickness, in talents, in acquirements, in universality of mental culture, and consequently in the number and ability of its writers. But we are not disposed to think that any of these advantages, valued as they ought to be, can produce, or we may say create, invention. And, therefore, the mere superiority in such qualities by no means implies a larger amount of the inventive faculty in one age than in its predecessor. This inventive or imaginative power is the crown of all other intellectual gifts; it is the light, the salt, which illuminates and perpetuates all the rest, and the only necessary quality for lasting fame. That is, a work deficient in a hundred points of what is considered good writing, still takes hold of men's minds, and keeps this hold, if only what it says is at the same time new and true.

The force and power of the imagination, and the different modes in which two minds, the one gifted with this divine faculty, the other wanting it, commence and carry on their labours, have been so ably set forth by a modern writer, that we are tempted to elucidate our meaning by a quotation from his work. The art which he treats of is painting, and it may at first sight appear far-fetched to apply his views to our present subject; but composition must be ruled by the same laws and impulses, whether the thing conceived is to be expressed by the pencil or the pen,-whether the composer would reach the heart and understanding through the senses, or appeal to it without such visible medium. In this light the ramifications of a tree bear a just