for choral fame wishes to supply a metrical version better than the OLD one of Sternhold and Hopkins, or the NEW one by Nathaniel Brady and Nahum Tate, which may avoid the faults and deficiencies of those versions respectively, and emulate the good points of each. As Mr. Montague has published the seven penitential Psalms by way of specimen of his proposed version of the entire Psalter-for Mr. Montague " honestly and confidently asserts that they are patterns to which the whole piece, such as it is, will not in any way be found unequal"—we will, in a smaller way of business, to adopt the author's style of phraseology, quote a verse or two from his new version, and ask our readers whether it surpasses those which we admit have been too long in use:—

"Hence from me, ye! all who rejoice

In vanity and ill;

The Lord hath heard my weeping's voice-
He will my prayer fulfil.

My foes shall all confounded be,

Sore vex'd and mark'd of blame;

They shall be made turn back and flee,
And sudden put to shame.

"The Lord the sinner frees-
He will deliver him:
And from all their iniquities
He Israel will redeem."

A Guide to Life Assurance; containing an Account of the Origin and Progress, an Explanation of the System, and pointing out the Benefits of Life Assurance. With Directions for effecting a Policy. By ALEXANDER YOUNG. London : Groombridge. 1844.

THIS is a useful little work, and one which will prove serviceable to those who are anxious to make a provision for their families after their decease. It contains all the necessary information, besides pointing out the various advantages which life

assurance secures.

A Course of Lectures, suitable to the Times, on the Contents of the Book of Common Prayer. By the Rev. FREDERIC DUSATOY, A.M. London: Nisbet. Part II.

WITHOUT pledging ourselves to all the opinions contained in these sermons, we can recommend them for general use, feeling assured that they abound in much practical illustration of our

services.

A Pictorial Tour in the Mediterranean, including Malta, Dalmatia, Turkey, Asia-Minor, Grecian Archipelago, Egypt, Nubia, Greece, Ionian Islands, Sicily, Italy, and Spain. By J. H. ALLAN, Member of the Athenian Archæological Society, and of the Egyptian Society of Cairo. London: Longman. 1843. One vol. folio.

Or all the numerous contributions which have of late years been added to literature and the fine arts this is incontestably the most splendid, and, what is not always the attendant quality, the most gratifying. It is splendid, not merely in the outward getting up, in the paper, and in the type, but the illustrations are so profuse and so magnificent, that while we are lost in present admiration and past reminiscences as we gaze on them, we cannot but wonder at the liberality that has given, at comparatively small cost, such an intellectual banquet to the public, and at the same time hope that the public will reciprocate the generosity and reward the talent which accompanies it, by extending effective popularity and patronage to a work such as it has not often the advantage of being called upon to foster and pro

tect.

It is a book over which the artist may revel—a volume attractive to the fair, from the graces with which it everywhere sparkles; the scholar will find it continually awakening pleasant memories and ceaselessly giving birth to new suggestions; the loiterer will be cheated into instructive information, if he look upon it never so listlessly; and even the foreigner, to whom the letter-press might be unintelligible, will find the plates more elegant than words, and detailing in the present the story of the past in a way impressive to every ear and every heart. He who has the good fortune to possess this book may enjoy all the advantages of travel, without any of its evils. He may take a pleasant pictorial run, in a well-appointed steamer, from the Mersey to Malta; and having in his mental vision beheld all that is worthy in the old home of the Phoenicians and the later refuge of warrior monks, he may pass agreeably over to Dalmatia, and dream through a long summer's day of the ancient plunderers who gave the sturdy Roman government of their day more trouble than more powerful nations; thence, as he is speculating upon the uses to which the once picturesque Dalmatic robe has fallen, Mr. Allan, by mechanical powers far more safe and infinitely more comfortable than those which, ad Græca Kalendas, are to raise Mr. Henson's æriel machine from terra firma, conveys him, like a hero in Eastern romance, to that Asiatic encampment in Europe which occupies the ground fertilized by the blood of rude savages, of elegant Greeks, of

VOL. XVI.-Q

crafty Romans, haughty Tartars, ignorant Christians, cheating Venetians; and which, amid all the storms with which it has been swept, is yet fair in its decay, and sometimes terrible in its decrepitude. And from this corner of Europe the reader is conveyed to the land which for thousands of years was tributary to foreign masters-which groaned beneath the Scythian, and was alternately lashed by the Lydian and the Mede; from this land of mixed recollections we are wafted to those sunny Greek isles from which much of it was peopled, and no portion of which, even in the days of its bloom, could, we think, have looked half so fair as by Mr. Allan's magic pencil some of them are here pourtrayed, like fading flowers indeed, but with life enough in them to give them beauty, and beauty enough to win our sympathy and love. And then succeed scenes fairer still; for we find ourselves in the country that has been the mother of all arts and all sciences, and we gaze around us with silent awe and admiration at the stupendous magnificence and the gorgeous mysteries which are here unveiled. Egypt was never so revealed to the eye of an absentee as Mr. Allan here presents it; and no description of ours could do justice to drawings which not only place us in positions which few can ever reach, and they not without a vast outlay of physical and pecuniary means, but which compel those who look to read histories of bygone people at a glance, and to understand by the eye what others have striven in vain to render intelligible to the ear.

At seeing these grand, these gloomy, these graceful, and these monstrous, yet not deformed, remains of Egyptian art, we cannot help asking ourselves, could it be the senseless worshippers of a cat, a crocodile, or an onion, that had the mind to imagine and the force to execute such time-defying works as these? Yet so it was; and of the twenty thousand cities of Egypt, not one but had its wonders of mental greatness and physical power, that would have made the fortune of a wilderness of Glypthotheks. As we look upon these engraved drawings, the more we are lost in admiration at their expressive eloquence. We feel, see, read, and understand old Egypt's wondrous tale. We require not to be told that rain seldom falls there-that fact is really artistically conveyed. We perceive, without explanation, that mud and sand are the foundations in which the children of Egyptus lived for a time, and left memories for ever. These able productions of our countryman speak to the immortality with which the kings of the Nile promised to endue themselves; and in contemplating those massive, fanciful, and picturesque fragments of a once gigantic whole, we are willing to acknowledge that a people who could raise them were even older than

the some dozen thousand years to which they laid claim even in the days of Herodotus.

The flowers that yet lie upon the galvanized corse of Greece, the beauties that yet distinguish the sweet islands of Ionia, and the modern aspect of the capital of the three-cornered island, old Sicilia, whose air was so loaded with the odour of the rich blossoms that sprang from her soil that old Diodorus tells us hounds lost the scent in hunting in consequence-all these are masterly revealed to us in their counterfeit presentiments. Of Italy and Spain, too, we have brief but pleasant glances-unsatisfying only that they make us desire to see more: but it is, after all, the Egyptian and Nubian portion of this book that will snatch for it an immortal wreath from celebrity; and well will the garland be deserved, for the whole volume is an honour to the country, and we may well be proud of the author who produced it.

1. Essays and Poems. By E. F. ROBERTS. Otley. 1844.

Saunders and

2. The Hope that is in us: a Poem. Hatchard and Son. 1843. 3. Horse-shoe Nails; or, New Ideas on Old Subjects. By MINOR HUGO. Nos. 8, 9, and 10. London: Earle. 1843. THE book which stands first on the above list consists of a drama imitative, longissimo intervallo, of Goethe's "Faust," and some essays of a Germanic complexion. The second on our list is a string of didactic couplets, after the manner of Pope's "Essay on Man ;" and the third consists of some short essays, intended apparently by the author to be couched in the style of Benjamin Franklin. Over each may be aptly suspended the Horatian maxim, for a motto

"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

The Distinction between Instinct and Reason. The Introductory Discourse to a Series of Lectures on the Properties and Functions of Animal Life. Delivered before the Philosophical and Literary Society at Portsmouth. By J. STRANG, M.D., Vice-President of the Society. London: Seeleys. 1843. THIS is an essay much more to our taste than the essays we have just alluded to, in which a difficult subject is ably treated. Dr. Strang's discourse is full of anecdotes illustrative of the habits and instincts of animals, which ever please a pure taste both in childhood and old age. Books of natural history are among the first we relish and the last we relinquish. Many years ago -and as all the parties named are now in their graves we may innocently narrate it—a country gentleman mentioned to us, with

a shake of his head, an instance, as he termed it, of the decay of Lord Stowell's faculties, that on his importuning that noble and learned person to attend a turnpike-road committee, Lord Stowell declined, because he had to see that morning a boa-constrictor swallow a goat. Remembering that the locus in quo was London, we, for goat, should read rabbit; though in the East undoubtedly large serpents of this class can manage a goat. Probably Lord Stowell saw the worthy squire's disdain of his morning's employment, and chose sportively to exaggerate his pet's prowess to justify his own attendance upon his meal and amaze his rural friend. But our conclusion upon the whole matter is, that Lord Stowell's love of natural history was strong, and his mind by no means weak.

Principles of Education practically considered, with an Especial Reference to the Present State of Female Education in England. By M. A. STODART, Author of "Everyday Duties," "Hints on Reading," &c. Seeley and Co. 1844. WE are ever ready to encourage well-intended, conscientious attempts to promote the progress of education upon Christian principles, and as a well-meant effort we commend Mrs. Stodart's present work, but we cannot assign unqualified praise to its execution. We have met with one remark, however, especially useful to that section of the religious world to which we presume Mrs. Stodart belongs the self-called Evangelical school, who, in their horror of their disciples resting upon justification by works, are incessantly preaching to the young and the ardent the worthlessness of works, at a season when they need every inducement, collateral as well as direct, to their performance.

"The well-known fact (says Mrs. Stodart) may be adduced, that the children of religious parents are often far less manageable, more wilful, and more disobedient, than those of worldly persons; and the natural inference is, that religious [i.e., in our author's vocabulary, Evangelical'] parents are often deficient in the employment of means. Perhaps the first thing (continues Mrs. Stodart) that strikes the mind in glancing at the subject is, that with professedly religious persons principles are not sufficiently enforced. The religion of Jesus Christ is a religion of motives; and in every stage of progress it is necessary to press on the heart that outward conduct is of no value in the sight of an all-seeing God, except as it emanates from right motives. Worldly persons of honourable feeling give their children motives upon which to act; and, though these motives are worthless as the dust when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, still the very fact of having some fixed principles engrafted in the mind, and continually appealed to, will ensure a greater steadiness and consistency of conduct than where there are none at all."

Whatever may be Mrs. Stodart's regret or astonishment at