NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
In days like these, when so many of our new books are but old ones newly dressed up, a work of original research, and for which the materials have been accumulated by the writer with great labour and diligence, deserves especial commendation. Of such a character is the Catholic History of England; its Rulers, Clergy, and Poor, before the Reformation, as described by the Monkish Historians, by Bernard William MacCabe, of which the third volume, extending from the reign of Edward Martyr to the Norman Conquest, has just been published. The volumes bear evidence in every page that they are, as the author describes them, "the results of the writing and research of many hours—the only hours for many years that I had to spare from other and harder toils." Himself a zealous and sincere follower of the "ancient faith," Mr. MacCabe's views of the characters and events of which he is treating, naturally assume the colouring of his own mind: many, therefore, will dissent from them. None of his readers will, however, dissent from bestowing upon his work the praise of being carefully compiled and most originally written. None will deny the charm with which Mr. MacCabe has invested his History, by his admirable mode of making the old Monkish writers tell their own story.
We some time since called the attention of our readers to a new periodical which had been commenced at Göttingen, under the title of Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, under the editorship of T. W. Wolf. We have since received the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Parts of it from Messrs. Williams and Norgate, and hope shortly to transfer from its pages to our columns a few of the many curious illustrations of our own Folk Lore, with which it abounds.
Books Received.—The Works of John Locke, vol. i., Philosophical Works, with a preliminary Essay and Notes, by J. A. St. John, is the first volume of a collected edition of the writings of this distinguished English philosopher, intended to form a portion of Bohn's Standard Library.—The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, vol. iv., 1788-89. Worth more than its cost for its pictures of Fox, Burke, Wyndham, &c., and Hastings' Impeachment.—A Poet's Children, by Patrick Scott. A shilling's worth of miscellaneous poems from the pen of this imaginative but somewhat eccentric bard.—Points of War, I. II. III. IV., by Franklin Lushington. Mr. Lushington is clearly an admirer of Tennyson, and has caught not a little of the mannerism and not a few of the graces of his great model.