tical, instructive writing of our day; and if the young men of England lay its lessons to heart, they will make life a joy to themselves, a delight to others, and a glory to God-and to His Son Jesus Christ. A Chronicle of the Principal Events in English History. By JAMES PEMBRIDGE. London: Longmans and Co. ON the appearance of the first edition of this brochure we said, "This is a handy book for the use of schools, and will doubtless prove very acceptable to many self-educators and instructors of the young." We see every reason to reiterate our opinion. By the former class it may be used as a memorandum-book of historical events, and by the latter as a systematic series of definite statements, to be expounded and enlarged upon by viva voce instruction; the book giving certainty, and the oral teaching interest and variety. Sketches of Life and Character. By ALEX. WALLACE, D.D. London: Houlston and Sons. THIS is a very cheap, very interesting, and excellent book, issued by the Scottish Temperance League, and dealing with great pertinence, variety, and ability, with the causes, consequences, and cure of the evils of the liquor traffic. While we commend a perusal of its pages to all, we would particularly direct the attention of those who interest themselves in the moral advancement of the people to this book, as admirably adapted for use at penny readings and social meetings. With many of the scenes, and even with some of the circumstances, the "Reviewer" is acquainted, and he can, therefore, affirm that the pen of the author is graphic, earnest, pointed, and instructive. It would be well for the country if its pages were well perused and well pondered over. The Inquirer. QUESTIONS REQUIRING ANSWERS. 877. Will some gentleman kindly inform us what is the price of W. C. Wells's Essay on Dew, and who is the publisher of it ?-S. S. your in 878. Can you or any of telligent subscribers give me a list of the best text-books on the various subjects required at the matriculation examination of the University of London in June next, and also inform me if a certain numerical number is attached to each question, and if such numbers are supposed to be proportionate to the difficulty of the questions to which they are attached? Will fifty per cent. of questions (taken collectively), answered correctly, pass a candidate, and will eighty per cent. place him in the honours division ? A work on chemistry (neither Williamson's, Roscoe's, nor Wilson's) was lately published, having for its special object the matriculation examination. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS. 855. W. has helped "Samuel" to additional confusion, by identifying two Edward Bickersteths, uncle and nephew, viz., the late Vicar of Watton, Herts, and the present Archdeacon of Buckingham. It is the former who was the father of Edward Henry Bickersteth, the sacred poet. I say this of my own knowledge. But otherwise, the archdeacon, who graduated in 1836 could not be the father of the poet, who graduated in 1847.-O. 875. In Wesley's Sermon (xcii.) on Dress we find the words "Certainly this duty is not a sin. Cleanliness is next to godliness.""-S.R.G. 876. M. F. P. cannot understand how a man can have two eldest sons, and he inquires whether the following sentence be correct:- "I have taken into partnership my two eldest sons." Doubtless a man can have two eldest sons. If he have four sons, those two who have lived the greatest number of years must be the oldest or eldest of his sons, and therefore it is correct to speak of them as his two eldest sons, and of the others as the two youngest. Besides, if the above sentence be incorrect, how many more of a similar nature, which are constantly used by English speakers and writers, are incorrect also. Thus we speak of— the two largest ships of war-the two ablest statesmen now living— the two handsomest animals in all the collection. If two ships of war are larger than all the rest, they must be the two largest, and if at the Smithfield Cattle Show two animals are more handsome than any of the others, they must be the two handsomest.-S. S. 877. "An Essay on Dew, and several Appearances connected with it." By W. C. Wells. Edited with annotations by L. P. Cassells, F.R.A.S., and an Appendix by R. Strachan, F.M.S. 8vo., 58. Messrs. Longmans & Co., London.-R. M.A. 880. The best and cheapest edition of the poets-as distinguished from the dramatists-known to us, is Bell's Edition of the English Poets, annotated; published by Griffin and Co., London, of which there are twenty-nine vols. published in good type in paper covers, at one shilling each (bound in cloth 6d. extra). These go back to Chaucer, and forward to Cowper, and are valuable, well-printed, and cleverly as well as usefully annotated. J. R. Smith's library of old authors is more expensive, but contains some not included in Bell's Poets. Of the old dramatists the cheapest and best edition yet published is Routledge's edition-which contains Ben Jonson, Massinger and Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, Greeve and Peele, Webster, Marlowe Congreve, Wycherley, Farquhar,and Vanburgh, in shilling parts (about ninety). Crocker's "Mermaid" series at 3s. 6d. promises well: Massinger and Marlowe are already issued. Of course there is the Globe Shakspere and Routledge's Shilling Shakspere. Of old literature generally, Murray, Arber, &c., are issuing reprints, which are moderate in price, e. g., Montaigne's Essays, 5s., Lyly's Euphues, 4s., &c. See also Larkyn's Handbook of English Literature, Routledge, 28.-B. M. A. Literary Notes. ABOUT 700 ancient Sanscrit MSS. have been collected in Surat by Mr. Logan, sub-collector of Malabar. Alex. Hertzen, Russian journalist and novelist (born 1816), died at Paris, 21st Jan. Andrew C. Dick, author of "Church Polity," "The Nature and Office of the State," one of the earliest contributors to The North British Review, is dead. Rev. J. S. Watson has just out Biographies of John Wilkes and Wm. Cobbett. A Biography of Thomas Paine, Free-thinker, is in preparation by Judge A. C. Morton, of Columbus, U.S., who was a friend of and executor to the author of "The Age of Reason." Of a cheap edition of Dr. W. E. Channing's works 14,000 copies were subscribed for in a few days. Of Prof. B. Jowett's translation of Plato's Dialogues, three vols. are expected to be out shortly. He is also preparing a Greek text of The Republic-so excellently translated by Vaughan and Davies. The correspondence of Uhland, the German poet, with Baron Joseph von Lassberg, collected and arranged by the late Prof. Pfeiffer, and edited by Prof. Wagner (with a biography of Pfeiffer by Prof. Bartsch) has just appeared in Vienna. Translations of Uhland abound; would some of his admirers and translators favour us with a biography, and these and ather letters done into English? A translation of "The Lives of Illustrious Men," by Cornelius Nepos, made by the Italian poet, Boiarido, author of "Orlando Inamorato," is in process of publication by Prof. Luciano Sarabelli. Dr. George Smith, secretary to the Congregational Union, author of several theological works, is dead. Mr. Hensleigh Wedgewood's "Dictionary of English Etymology," greatly enlarged and tho roughly revised by the author, aided by Rev. J. C. Atkinson, is to be issued in a second edition at an early date. The "Cobden Club Land Tenure Essays were speedily bought up, and are re-issued. Warton's "History of English Poetry"-a work which, if well edited and annotated, would be invaluable-has been published by A. Murray & Son, in a cheap edition. George Hogarth, author of "The History of the Opera," &c., fatherin-law of Charles Dickens, died 12th February, aged 87. "An Introduction to the Science of Religion," being lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, London, by Prof. Max Müller, is to be published. "Society and Solitude," a series of essays by R. W. Emerson-one half original and one half re-publications-is announced. "The Religious Life of London," by J. E. Ritchie,-consisting of original and re-printed matter,—is announced. To the many translations of Homer already published, William Cullen Bryant, the American poet, has added his. James Pagan, historian of Glasgow and of its cathedral, died 11th February. Epoch Men. THOMAS HOBBES, OF MALMESBURY. WHAT is the fulcrum on which authority should rest that its motive power may be steady, permanent, and effective in regard to results? That was the great question in England when the strong politic dynasty of the Tudors died with Elizabeth, and the Stuarts acquired, by bequeathment, what they had claimed by just inheritance. James and his successors sought to found their sovereign power on a divine right, a God-given indefeasible election and foreordination to bear kingly rule, and exercise dominion over the commonalty. Laud and his coadjutors in the episcopate attempted to sacerdotalize authority, and to rest supreme power on the sanction of the Church. Strafford's "thorough "policy set the foundations of the throne on force, and maintained it by strategies closely allied to fraud. Pym, Hampden, and Vane respected the legal tenure of the king, and insisted on constitutional authority having a legal basis. Milton and Cromwell endeavoured to establish authority on morality and religion, interpreted and determined by law, on the ground that "it is justly ordained by nature that he who invades the liberty of others shall, in the very outset, lose his own, and be the first to feel that servitude which he has induced. Hobbes, in harmony with the adage of Bacon, "knowledge is power," employed Reason as the examiner of the foundations of right. "He deduced the manners of men from human nature; virtues and vices from a natural law; and the goodness and wickedness of actions from the laws of States," which again "dependeth upon the knowledge of what is human nature, what is body politic, and what it is we call a law," and these are only explicable by and to the judgment and reason of mankind, by true ratiocination on the causes and effects of human conduct. The fulcrum, then, on which authority as a motive power rests, is reason. Those who have written of justice and policy in general have involved themselves in contradictions and errors, because they have not discriminated between the truth and the interest of men, the former of which is discovered by reason, while the latter is advanced and advocated by passion. To reduce the doctrine of justice and policy to the rules and infallibility of reason in an inexpugnable fashion, was the aim of Hobbes. We regard it as no unfair presumption that he proceeded as honestly as in his circumstances he could, and that he was in a considerable degree successful in his aims; that in his lifetime he was vehemently assailed by both parties; and that 1870. R even now his armory of reasons supplies weapons alike to the monarchist and the democrat-constitutionalists founding their preference for a Conservative policy on grounds supplied by Hobbes, and radical reformers advocating change and progress on principles which have been laid down by the philosopher of Malmesbury. 66 The times in which Hobbes lived were peculiarly favourable for the suggesting, however adverse to the proper discussion of, such a fundamental question. Authority during the Tudor age had been alternately reposed on election, right, force, policy, and intrigue. The Stuarts acquired the crown by a disputed settlement," many parties acquiescently receiving the facts of history and the logic of events, as, for the time being, better than any other perceptible method of fixing the principles of monarchy and defining a dynasty. But the Stuarts did not appreciate their settlement as one of convenience for the nation, in the condition of parties within it and the state of affairs without it, then. They enforced the affirmative of Divine right by arguments drawn from sacerdotal sources, by traditions of legalism, by the intrigues of a cunning policy, and by the force of an army which did not then feel its aggregate strength, and was only beginning to be knit into a unity of efficient power. But the nation itself had been rapidly developing a theory of kingcraft, founded on the negation of divine right-a theory which agreed better with the facts of history, and was more in accordance with the interests of men—a theory which promised, in its own opinion, supremacy to each party, and hence excited hope in all. The controversy was waged, at last, under the name of "The Civil War." While the state of the nation, under the "thorough" policy of Charles I., Laud, and Strafford, on the one hand, and the party of the Petition of Rights, the Covenant, and the Remonstrance on the other, was peculiarly fitted to suggest the question of sovereign prerogatives and civic rights, it was eminently unfitted to discuss the principles of social polity, for "passion ruled the hour." But Hobbes was most favourably situated for probing the secret of his age. He had seen the evils of civil and religious wars in France, and he had learned in Italy the spirit-deadening influence of sacerdotalism; he had felt the stir of the new philosophy in science, and he had been brought to consider the powerlessness of force to attain or maintain truth, and yet he had been so circumstanced as to have lived a life apart from the jars and passionate effervescences of his age and time. Not only, therefore, could events reflect themselves on the clear and level mirror of a calm mind, but he could, with less of the error of passion or interest, reflect upon them. He had been reserved in the position of a thinker, while most other men had been compelled to assume the position, either in art or part, of actors. The year 1639 brought with it the sense of the irreconcilability of the sovereign and the nation, unless some centre of concession could be discovered. This Hobbes essayed to find, |