This contribution to ancient history is a useful companion to Prof. Sayce’s “Ancient Empires of the East,” recently published by the same house. It is the work of one of the most noted of English scholars, and he has brought all the latest researches to bear on the study of the two great empires of Egypt and Babylonia, with whom the Jewish people had most to do. The method of Prof. Rawlinson is to make the Biblical references to these two mighty nations the text or foundation of his studies; and then to turn on the somewhat obscure and contradictory accounts of the Sacred Records the fulness of light brought out of archæological and linguistic research. The result is very happy, and the Biblical student of the Old Testament will find in this book a guide of the greatest value in clearly grasping the accounts of the Biblical writers.

The editor of this collection of pen portraits of the hundred greatest men, informs us that the project is one side of an attempt to view the history of the world as natural history. In this way he conceives biography as the physiology of history just as archæology is its anatomy. With this thought in mind Dr. William Wood has been for fifteen years a collector of engraved portraits and antiquities regarding them as historic documents. Out of this mass of material he has given us the illustrations of the book, which consist of the portraits of the great men, the primates of their race, while to illustrate the portraits we have short, and, it need hardly be said, meagre accounts of the men themselves, with a brief tabulation of their work, and a condensed estimate of their place in the world’s progress. The principal literary value of the book, we think, is to be found in the prefaces or introductions to each department, with the general introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. All of these are written in a scholarly and able style, and will be read with as much or even more interest than the biographical sketches themselves. After all, we fancy the value of the work to most readers will be accepted as pertaining to the portraits, which are reproduced in a very artistic manner from old and rare engravings. These are of great interest. In the biographical statements nothing but the barest outline, not quite as much, in fact, as may be found in our best cyclopædias, is attempted. The book is very handsomely printed and manufactured, and is one of the best specimens of book-making which we have recently seen.

The author of this book is widely known, and her words respected in a line of subjects peculiarly affecting the interests of her own sex. In the new volume under notice she talks familiarly to her sex about those matters where women need sound counsel more than elsewhere. It is in the relations of wife and mother that her advice is the most urgent and important. At a time when there is growing up among women of the better class such a cruelly perverse view of the duties and responsibility of their own sex, especially in relation to marriage and child-bearing, the words of a wise, earnest and thoughtful woman are peculiarly needed. Miss Harland speaks plainly, yet delicately, on such subjects, and if her injunctions could be widely heeded the world would be better off. It is a work to be specially and cordially recommended to young women everywhere.

The author of this book, for we suppose he can be called an author who rearranges and classifies the text of the Bible with a view to bringing out better the inner meaning and purpose of the text, we are led to judge is not a theologian by profession. But this does not commend his work any the less. The unprofessional enthusiast, believing either that he has some inner illumination, or convinced that he is working on the lines of a finer and higher logic than is given to other men, is well justified in encroaching on a field which by ordinary consent is given up to professional scholars. Mr. Latch is evidently profoundly sure that he has found esoteric meanings in the great Biblical cryptogram, which reveal themselves clearly once the clew is given. The clew in this case is a study of the Bible, taking the interpretations of St. Paul as a starting-point and assuming a number of bases, according to which these interpretations are classed. The whole attempt is curious and interesting, and is likely to prove edifying to students of the Sacred Scriptures. Mr. Latch works out a curious historic psychology in the sacred records, and his comments and glosses are highly ingenious if not convincing. Of one thing we are sure. The author is convinced that his mission is to make the purpose of the Bible clearer, more consecutive and conclusive for the theology worked out of it by that great codifier and lawgiver of Christian theology, St. Paul. This modern coadjutor of the great apostle is saturated with the Pauline theology, and yet some of his views are fresh and original, though never at variance with those of his master, from whom he drinks at the fountainhead. The quaint and ingenious interpretations which we find scattered through these pages will repay reading, even when we think his glosses forced and eccentric. To find a man in this age of the world, after the raging of eighteen hundred years of exhaustive religious and dogmatic controversy, who fancies that he has something new and startling to say on the problems propounded in the Bible, is a refreshing fact which should not go without brief comment.

The remarkable President of Yale College, whose name is treasured up in the hearts of thousands of the alumni of Yale as one of the wisest, most genial, and lovable of the many distinguished instructors associated with the history of the college, gives us in this study of ethics the ripe and mellowed fruit of his thought and work. For many years President Porter was the professor of mental and moral philosophy before he assumed the headship of the college. The substance of the book before us was originally given in the shape of lectures before the senior classes. We are told that the book is not designed for a scientific treatise, but to meet the wants of those students and readers who, though somewhat mature in their philosophical thinking and disciplined in their mental habits, still require expanded definitions and abundant illustrations involving more or less of repetition. Dr. Porter has in his own line of investigation great clearness of statement, and the power, perhaps growing out of the needs of the class-room, of familiarizing and simplifying abstruse reasonings. We find this strikingly illustrated in the book before us. It is masterly in its lucidity of reasoning, and in its applications often so practical as to make us feel that the object of the author is not merely to lay bare the scientific theory of ethics, but to bring its principles home to the heart and sympathy of his readers. As a dialectical exposition the cut-and-dried philosopher who revels in the abstract formulas of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and others may find occasion to criticise Dr. Porter’s methods. But to the general reader the speculations of Dr. Porter will prove none the less interesting because he brings them down to the sympathies and interests of men.