was not merely a plain obedience to the plainest precepts of the Bible, but what in any other Christian country than our own would have been instantly recognized as a deed of the highest heroism. And if we are not careful to do justly, all the new ropes wherewith we have bound this accursed Samson of Slavery will be broken like a thread, and our last state be worse than our first. We know no work of fiction so full as this of beauty and wisdom, so free from folly, so resplendent with intellectual life, with moral purity, and Christian holiness, so apt to teach, so graceful in the teaching. We follow it with admiration and sympathy, from its gay beginning, through all the pain, the passion, and the peace, to the heartache of its closing pages,--that close, supremely sad, yet strangely beautiful. "She sang to him, and he slept; she spoke, and he did not awaken." It is the record of heavy struggle, of defeat that was triumph, and triumph that was Heaven. We offer no congratulations to the new author; nor do we deprecate for him any harsh censure;--not only because praise and censure seem alike rugged and halting by the sweet strains we seek to celebrate, but because he who in his "saintly solitude" can create a world so fair is independent of these light afflictions. For him there is always sympathy, great companionship, and godlike work. From this Earth can nothing take away; than this she has nothing more to give. _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe._ By W. E. H. LECKY, M. A. Two Vols. New York: D. Appleton & Co.