world, to follow out his judicial dealings with man, to prove that even in this life the harvest of our deeds shall be gathered in, that "whatever a man soweth that shall he reap," that "he that soweth the wind shall reap the whirlwind,”-this, one of the most important of the truths of revelation, has our author endeavoured to establish and confirm by references made to the experience of the world, to the experience of history, that book of reference open to every thinking mind. Perhaps of all the doctrines of theology available to the regulation of our conduct as sentient beings, this, the doctrine of retribution in the present life, may be found most efficacious in restraining men's passions, since it is the one which brings to bear upon us the reprisals of time previous to the judgment of eternity, thus drawing into a certain present what men are too apt to refer to an uncertain future, uniting what they would fain hope should be disunited, and connecting an action with its result with the same mathematical certainty as a cause and its effect. To prove this most important and sin-restraining doctrine, the poet has opened the page of history, and examined into the circumstances which attended the fate of our eighth Henry. Up to the time of Henry's repudiation of Katharine, he was a prosperous monarch, honoured and beloved; but from the moment of his subjugation to his own passions, crime followed crime, and judgment judgment. Anne Boleyn also, who was a consenting party to the injury inflicted on her own amiable mistress, received herself the same bitter cup of retribution when she bared her slender throat for the executioner's axe; and, following on this chain of reasoning, our author amply justifies his theory from the historic page.

This world of ours is a vast pulpit from which many voices sound. Experience takes the solemn post, and points her finger to the records of the past. Retribution takes the same stand, and measures the future; but both, in their high officiality, confirm the poet's truth, that "whatever a man soweth that shall he reap."

Retribution then being a fitting subject for a poet's pen, it remains for us only to see whether the worthy task has been worthily executed; and here we can scarcely speak too highly of the fairness, the gentleness, the tenderness, which has withheld our author from treading too roughly over the graves of the dead. The work is distinguished by amiability of spirit, by warmth of feeling, and by a power of connective process of reasoning. There is a singular exemption from every endeavour to embellish with meretricious ornament, or by a straining after fanciful imagery, which, however judiciously they may be made to embellish fanciful subjects, would, with one of this dignity, be wholly misplaced. The earnest and simple eloquence which prevails throughout was fitted best to advance the argument which they best adorn.

Before closing our notice, we must just advert to the Loyal Lyrics, which follow in the wake of "Retribution." We know of no more efficient means of nursing loyalty in society than by tinging the gush of song with patriotic feeling. The influence of a musical verse, the melody of whose sound seems still to ring upon the ear after its breathing, and to recur with or without permission, in season or out of season, to the thoughts, thus reminding us of a loyal sentiment by May 1843.-VOL. XXXVII.—NO. CXLV.

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the force of its association with a sweet sound, whether we will or not -this, we say, is a more able teacher and fosterer of love and patriotism than all the teachings and preachings in the world; and this is what, to a certain extent, our author has done in appending these few "Loyal Lyrics" to his volume.

We regret that our limits do not allow of extract, but instead of this, we recommend our readers to make this little volume their own.

The Banished Lord. A Tragedy. In Five Acts.

The power of suggesting ideas, and the power of embodying them, are not always co-existent. One author conceives a subject, sketches its outline, fills in its parts, goes on finishing, and still finishing with even elaborate minuteness and a miniature-like touch, until he has worked up a faithful portrait of his thought; another impresses but a few lines on paper; he is himself dissatisfied with their insufficiency; he compares them with the bright ideas of which they are the faint reflection; with the powerful imagery of which he has but been able to impress a trace; and while his own mind fills in something of a whole, he feels that another, who has not in himself the parent thought, has not looked upon the mental original, will gather but a faint idea of the beauty, the power, or the vigour which has impressed his own spirit, and which he would so fain have portraitured. He knows his own performance to be far below his own conception, and dreads lest others should utterly miss what he has failed to embody. The result of the different powers of these two labourers in literature is marked they belong to classes of readers as different as themselves. The first is sure of general appreciation; the faculty of sight is all that is required, and few fail of that: the second requires a counterpart imagination in the reader; the author has suggested the ideathe reader completes-nay, in some cases it may be outstrips the original intention. In short, to recur again to our outset, the one suggests, the other embodies ideas.

We have been led into these thoughts by the suggestive power of the author of "The Banished Lord.' The old noble, whose title of misfortune supplies this tragedy with its name, is, as he ought to be, the leading personage, and is invested with an interest by the side of which all others fade and become subordinate. Pride is the one engrossing passion of his nature; the pride of high estate, of a lordly line, of ancestral honours, of kingly favour, of large-handed liberality; and from all that was alienable in these he has been degraded: as a Banished Lord, his poverty and his pride are all that remain, and these embitter his existence, poison the springs of life, and sap away the vitality both of intellect and being.

The author in his preface has justly called this a domestic tragedy. The old lord is presented to us in his house, surrounded by loving hearts, a faithful wife, a gallant son, a gentle daughter, devoted retainers. With these materials for the heart's happiness, it might well be supposed that content should still be his portion; but pride rears his dominant head, and where can peace be found when pride

hath sway? In the city of his abode there dwells a rich merchant, who, springing from the people, aspires to associate with princes. This man would fain be received into fellowship with the high-born though humiliated Lord, who rejecting reiterated offers of services and advances of kindness that might well have brought a return of gratitude, spurns the rich merchant and his dunghill gold. The enmity of this man is provoked to a degree of almost unwarrantable supposition, and he becomes the deadly enemy of the "Banished Lord.” It chances also that the daughter of the high-born and the son of the low-born have dared to love each other-another portion in the bitter cup, into which drop after drop is poured in, until it is brimmed to overflowing. Degradation, poverty, insult, injury, an infuriated creditor, an alienated child, an only son incarcerated for an attack upon the son of his enemy, and for that condemned to death-all these work up the climax of a wretchedness which ends in a ruined intellect, insanity, and death.

We have dwelt only on the leading character of this tragedy, because it has evidently engrossed the chief portion of the author's creative powers; because the study is a fine one, and because the surrounding personages are but subordinates and auxiliaries.

The Philosophical Works of John Locke; with a Preliminary Discourse and Notes. By J. A. St. John, Esq., author of "The istory of the Manners, Customs, Arts, &c. of Ancient Greece." This is a very handsome edition of a work which long has been, and long will be a standard in our literature; a work, without which, every library would be incomplete, and every book shelf unfurnished. This edition is comprised in one comprehensive volume, very neatly got up, with a type neither large enough to cause copiousness, nor small enough to be fatiguing to the vision; the paper good, and the whole appearance just what it ought to be.

Elements of Universal History, on a New and Systematic Plan; from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Vienna. To which is added, a summary of the leading events since that period. For the Use of Schools and Private Students. By R. H. WHITE, B.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.

Mr. White has here made a most useful endeavour to render his learning available for educational purposes. His volume contains a sort of summary of the principal events comprised in the history of the world. With a view of facilitating the researches of the student, he has adopted the novel plan of a division into centuries; thus enabling the reader to comprehend, at a glance, the assemblage of the principal occurrences transacted within a given portion of time. The work is ably managed, and will be found highly useful both to schools and private students. As a reading book and a reference, it will prove most valuable.

The Gardener and Practical Florist. First Volume. 1843.

In the vast assemblage of sublime and beautiful things with which a benign Creator has endowed our world, nothing commends itself more universally and more worthily to the taste and feelings than Flowers. Floriculture, then, necessarily takes an almost paramount interest with us, being a matter of heart, and that peculiar trait of taste which is almost to us like a household god-a truth which may be traced in every little plot of ground which surrounds the houses of those who enjoy a breath of country air, and emulated by those who with some dwindling and sickly shrub in a flower-pot, place it on a window-sill in the hope of putting it in the way of a gleam of the glad sunshine. This native in-born taste deserves a fostering care; and therefore it is that we welcome warmly such a work as the one before us, designed as it is to encourage the purest and most innocent of all our pleasures, and to rear around us these beautiful children of Nature and Nature's God, making them our ever sweet companions, and learning from them a never-tiring lesson that "the hand that made them is divine." This first volume of "the Practical Florist" is admirably well-fitted to meet the wants of every one who has, and deserves to enjoy, his little garden. The editor himself is a practical man, and he has not disdained to call into his aid the assistance of numerous most capable coadjutors. Modern gardening has carried to a great extent the taste for improv ing upon nature, if we may be allowed the expression, in the cultivation of flowers, so that ultimately their primary formation seems almost lost sight of to a degree of divisibility between the scion and its progenitor that almost seems to mark a different race; many amongst us know little of the distinctions which appear to mark the noble and ignoble of the vegetable world, to the eye of a connoisseur in the floral kingdom: this work will not only cultivate their taste by offering them descriptions and pictorial illustrations of what excellence is supposed to consist in, but will also show them the best means of endeavouring to attain it. We cordially, recommend this work to every lover of his own home-garden.

Fallacies of the Faculty; with the Principles of the Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine. In a Series of Lectures, originally delivered in 1840, at the Egyptian-Hall, Piccadilly; now Enlarged and Improved. By SAMUEL DICKSON, M.D., late a Medical Officer on the Staff. People's Edition.

As the title-page announces, this is intended as an edition for the people. For our own part, we are apt to think that "the people" would be wise to leave such works alone. Medical science is better left as a sealed book to the general reader, since it is most emphatically true that with reference to it "a little learning is a dangerous thing. Perhaps, however, these "Fallacies of the Faculty" do not come strictly within the pale of our warning. They have rather been intended as popular lectures, delivered to a mixed audience, designed for general perusal, and perhaps put forth with the latent purpose of

bringing their author into a more intimate acquaintanceship with the world, than for any other purpose. We do not, however, enter into the merits of the work; we merely announce its publication in its present shape.

Klauer's Miniature German Grammar, in Ten Synoptical Tables. Klauer's German Exercises for Beginners. A new Method by which the Student may, in a short time, acquire the art of translating from English into German with Facility and Correctness.

The study of the German language is now so prevalent, that correspondent educational facilities are daily becoming more and more requisite; among these, none will be found more capable, more facile, or better fitted to meet the student's requirements than those of the author before us. His ten Synoptical Tables will prove eminently useful; their simple and condensed form being exceedingly well calculated to make them available for daily reference. The Exercises offer a new and happy method of facilitating the study of the language. As elementary works, these publications deserve the highest credit.

PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS.

History of British India. By EDWARD THORNTON, Esq.-This valuable work has now entered into its fifth volume, bringing down its history to the appointment of Lord Amherst; his entrance on his official duties, and the involvement of the government of British India in the Burmese war. The same lucidness of statement and impartiality of feeling which we have nearly always recognized in this gentleman's writings are as distinguishable as ever, and every succeeding number of his work does but the more establish his right to the title of a dignified and faithful historian.

China, in a Series of Views, by THOMAS ALLOM, Esq. With Historical and Descriptive Notices, by the Rev. G. N. Wright, M.A.— Most pleasing and characteristic illustrations of this extraordinary people, with whose name we have of late been so much associated; accompanied by an agreeable and readable portion of letter-press by a capable man. Altogether, a most attractive work.

Knight's London.-This happy thought continues to be as worthily carried out as ever - the articles as well selected and as

interesting. "The Old Bailey," "Public Refreshment," "New

St. Pauls," "The Inns of Court," "The Reading Room of the British Museum," "Doctor's Commons," "The Temple Church," "Advertisements," and "The East India House," are all subjects of wide and general interest. No plan could have been devised which could so well have represented our great metropolis as it was and as it is, as this of Mr. Knight, whose talents and industry as an editor deserve the highest appreciation.

Pictorial History of England.-The last number of this really com