Lange's Commentary on Romans. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.
This is one volume of a commentary on the Old and New Testament, prepared by several learned Protestant divines of Germany, and translated by competent scholars into English. It is esteemed among the orthodox Protestants as the ablest work of the kind which they possess. It is certainly far superior to the dull, old-fashioned commentaries which were formerly used to produce compression of the brain in their unfortunate readers. To a Catholic scholar the work may be useful in so far as it throws the light of patient German investigation on critical and historical questions. Its exposition of doctrine is chiefly interesting as showing the views at present prevailing among the sounder portion of Protestants, which we may add are a decided improvement on the original doctrines. In the volume on Genesis we were surprised to see two ridiculous statements dictated by anti-Catholic bigotry, one that a pope condemned the doctrine of the antipodes, the other that Cardinal Cullen denounced the Copernican system. This is not creditable to a professor in Bonn University.
Moral Tales. By Maria Edgeworth. With original designs by Darley. A new edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.
Popular Tales. By Maria Edgeworth. With original designs by Darley. A new edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.
The Parent's Assistant; or, Stories for Children. By Maria Edgeworth. A new illustrated edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.
These are new editions of what were in their day among the best known and most popular of books. They deserve to become well known and popular again. When Miss Edgeworth, at the beginning of the present century, commenced her series of novels, the public, says one of her later critics, "was surprised by novels which contained neither ruinous towers, terrible subterranean cells, nor mysterious veils, and in which the characters were neither peers nor foundlings." The works, too, were remarkable for their humane sympathies and their moral tendencies, as well as for their disregard of the materials out of which it was then the fashion to construct romances. The same writer mentions the fact that among the most ardent admirers of them was Sir Walter Scott, who avows that it was her humorous, tender, and admirable delineations of Irish character which prompted him to attempt similar portraitures of his own country.
We trust that the publishers will continue the series thus begun, and give us others of her numerous and excellent works.