Of Hase, whose history has been translated in this country by Wing and Blumenbach, we quote the following remarks:

'Has the reader ever perused Dean Milman's work, the History of AnteNicene and Latin Christianity? If not, the nine volumes, except to those who, with Dr. Chalmers, shrink from a big book,' are well worth reading. The nonGerman scholar who has made himself acquainted with the Dean's history, has a good idea, not indeed of the style, but of the spirit of Hase. What Milman is on a large scale for a part of Church History, that the Jena Professor is, in a condensed form, for the whole of it. The same all-sided cultivation, the same literary power, the same pictorial treatment, and the same lowness and vagueness of theological view.

"Yet, of all Church Histories, this is the one most suited to the general reader. No one will ever weary over Hase's pages. In the least interesting periods, the felicity of his style, and the vigor of his painting, carry him triumphantly over the ground. No German writer is more difficult to translate, from the very excellences of a literary character which he uniformly displays. Though his book is only a single octavo volume of about eight hundred pages, it contains full, though condensed, information on many points which historians of much greater amplitude of narrative have passed over or treated but by the way. The work of Guericke, for example, is more than twice as large as that of Hase, but the latter will inform on not a few points, for which the former will be appealed to in vain. The Jena professor, however, is sadly deficient in the devout spirit of Guericke. The Godward aspect is ever seen in Guericke, but the manward has never been more brilliantly presented than in Hase."

Of Dr. Kurtz, Professor of Theology at Dorpat, he says:

"The compendium before us is that book on Church History which the student of German should first read. Were it translated, it ought every way to supersede Mosheim in our divinity halls. It is admirably adapted to the student's purposes, giving, in a portable form, and with great clearness of expression and vigor of touch, all that one commencing the study cares about knowing, or need, at that period of his studies, know. A comparatively slight expansion and correction of the British and American portions would thoroughly fit it for use to the candidate for the ministry in this country and the United States.

The article on the Decay of Modern Satire depreciates Mr. Bailey's late poem, "The Age," and places our J. R. Lowell at the head of satirists of the day.

66

For many years past, satire seems to have died out altogether; and it is only within the last season or two that it has shown any tendency to revive. All at once we have a batch of small satirists-Mr. Bailey at their head-in England, and one really powerful satirist in America, namely, Mr. J. R. Lowell, whose 'Biglow Papers' we most gladly welcome, as being not only the best volume of satires since the anti-Jacobin, but as also the first work of real and efficient poetical genius which has reached us from the United States. We have been under the necessity of telling some unpleasant truths about American literature, from time to time; and it is with hearty pleasure that we are now able to own that the Britishers have been, for the present, utterly, and apparently hopelessly, beaten by a Yankee, in one important department of poetry. In the United States social and political evils have a breadth and tangibility which are not at present to be found in the condition of any other civilized country. The peculiar domestic institution,' the filibustering tendencies of the nation, the tyranny of a vulgar public opinion,' and the charlatanism which is the price of political power, are butts for the shafts of the satirist, which European poets may well envy Mr. Lowell. We do not pretend to affirm that the evils of European society may not be as great, in their own way, as those which afflict the credit of the United States-with the exception, of course, of slavery, which makes American freedom' deservedly the laughing-stock of the world-but what we do say is, that the evils in point have a boldness and simplicity about them, which our more

sophisticated follies have not; and, that a hundred years hence Mr. Lowell's Yankee satires will be perfectly intelligible to every one, whereas most of the subjects offered by European politics, are such as would require an explanatory commentary twenty years hence, just as is the case at present with the satires of Byron and Moore. The only subject in the social state of England at all rivaling in satiric capabilities any one of half a dozen subjects seized by the author of the Biglow Papers,' is the strange and portentous despotism which threatens, as usual, to arise from the very heart of freedom-a despotism, against which songs and assasins would be equally powerless, namely, that of the newspaperpress, which combines the two most fatal elements of tyranny, popularity and an enmity to all individual excellence. A newspaper is a trading speculation, which must rely for its success, in a very large measure, upon the skill with which it follows the prejudices of the many, while it appears to teach them.

"We cannot give a better example of the difference between true and false satire, than by appending to the diffuse and flabby verse of 'The Age,' the following four lines, which are the conclusion of Mr. Lowell's Pious Editor's Creed.'

"In short, I firmly du believe

In humbug generally;
For it's a thing that I perceive
To have a solid vally.'

"Satire at once so genial and good-humored, and yet so fatal as that of 'Ezekiel Biglow,' is, indeed, a relief after the weary platitudes which have recently appeared, under the name of satire, in England. Out of a volume, as full as it can hold, of good stuff, we shall take, almost at random, a few specimens, for the edification of that large proportion of our readers to whom this very remarkable work is probably unknown.

"There is no portion of Hudibras' itself which is, space for space, so abundant in fun and hard hits as the Remarks of Increase D. O'Phace, Esquire, at an extrumpery caucus in State-street,' from which these are stray sentences:

'I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong

Agin wrong in the abstract, for thet kind o' wrong
Is ollers unpop'lar an' never gits pitied,

Because it's a crime no one ever committed;

But he mus'nt be hard on partickler sins,

Coz then he'll be kickin' the people's own shins.

'Constitoounts air hendy to help a man in,

But arterwards don't weigh the heft of a pin.

Wy, the people can't all live on Uncle Sam's puss,

So they've nothin' to du with't fer better or wus;

It's the folks that air kind o' brought up to depend on't,

Thet hev any consarn in't, an' thet is the end on't.'

"The reckless fun of the following lines is more like Rabelais than any other satirist:

'We'd assumed with gret skill a commandin' position,

On this side or thet, no one couldn't tell wich one,

So, whatever side wipped, we'd a chance at the plunder,
And could sue fer infringin' our paytented thunder;

We were ready to vote for whoever wuz eligible,

Ef on all pints at issoo he'd stay unintelligible.

Wal, sposin' we hed to gulp down our perfessions,

We were ready to come out next mornin' with fresh ones;

Besides, ef we did, 'twas our business alone,

Fer couldn't we du wut we would with our own?

An' ef a man can, wen pervisions hev riz so,

Eat up his own words, it's a marcy it is so.'

"We wish that we had space to quote the whole description of the incident which led to Mr. Sawin's conversion to slavery doctrines, but we can only give a few lines here and there:

'Ez fer the niggers, I've ben South, an' thet hez changed my mind;
A lazier, more ungrateful set you couldn't nowers find.

I shou'der'd queen's-arm and stumped out, ah! when I come t' th' swamp,
Tworn't very long afore I gut upon the nest o' Pomp.

*

*

Wal, I jest gut 'em into a line, an' druv 'em on afore me,
The pis'nous brutes, I'd no idee o' the ill-will they bore me.
We walk'd till som'ers about noon, an' then it grew so hot
I thought it best to camp a while, so I chose out a spot,
Then I unstrapp'd my wooden leg, coz it begun to chafe,
An laid it down jest by my side, supposin' all wuz safe.'

"Pomp, however, 'snaked up behind,' and stole the leg, robbed him of his pistols, and took him prisoner to the swamp.

And kep' me pris'ner 'bout six months, an' work'd me, tu, like sin,

Till I hed gut his corn and his Carlino taters in;

He made me larn him readin', tu, (although the crittur saw

How much it hut my morril sense to act agin the law,)

So'st he could read a Bible he'd gut; an' axed if I could pint
The North Star out; but there I put his nose some out o' jint,
For I wheeled roun' about sou'west, an' lookin' up a bit,
Pick'd out a middlin' shiny one an' tole him thet was it.
Fin'lly, he took me to the door, an' givin' me a kick,

Sez, Ef you know wut's best fer ye, be off now, double-quick."

The following two lines from Lowell shows that he is the real author of Judge Taney's famous, or rather infamous, doctrine, that the "all men" of the Declaration of Independence does not include the African race; only Lowell meant it for an absurdity, and Taney seriously means to make it reality:

Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can,

I know thet every man' don't mean a nigger or a Mexican.”

In the following paragraph the Review does the "Nothing to Wear" of Butler a flippant injustice, differing therein from the Westminster, which republished the poem entire. Whatever may be said of “Two Millions,” Mr. Butler's first poem was by no means inferior to Lowell's effective but rather farcical humor.

"There are two little pieces lately published by an American, Mr. W. A. Butler, which deserve a few words from us. They are called 'Nothing to Wear,' and 'Two Millions;' and are very hastily executed satires upon the abuses of wealth by the ignorant and vulgar. They have had a considerable circulation among a certain not very select class of readers; and display a freedom in the management of verse, and an occasional sense of humor, which, if properly cultivated and applied, might make Mr. Butler's writings sought out by others than idlers at railway stations. Mr. Firkin, with

'His visible coach outside the visible Church,'

is the representative of an increasing class who are as fair marks for satire as ever existed; but we can only reget that in Two Millions,' as in The Age,' some good subjects are blown upon and spoiled. We would strongly recommend Mr. Butler and all persons who have faculties, and waste them, to reflect that they are only a worse development of of the Firkin type. Firkin abuses the stewardship of a material estate; they waste the far more potent wealth of mind."

The North British contains a book notice, by far the best critique we have yet seen, on "Buckle's History of Civilization." To this worthless work the superabundant attention of its opponents have given a factitious and temporary importance. With all his catalogue ostentation of reading, he has little learning, while blunders are detected in every section. When Gibbon published, those who disliked his colorings found it very unsafe to question his facts.

But Mr. Buckle is a young man of plentiful reading leisure, who has taken notes and made chronicle of what he has read, and shaped it into a big, careless, narrow-minded book, which will sink by its own weight into obscurity. His narrow-mindedness met us at every page; his blunders, in fact, and scanty information on topics which he treats magisterially, we much suspected, but have nowhere seen so well and so briefly exposed as by the notice of the North British. Guizot's History of Civilization" is not superseded by this proud structure of rubbish.

ART. XI-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Ir is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.-MILTON.

I-Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

(1.) "The New England Theocracy. A History of the Congregationalists in New England to the Revivals of 1740. By H. F. UHDEN. With a Preface by the late Dr. NEANDER. Translated from the second German Edition, by H. C. CONANT, author of the English Bible," etc. (12mo., pp. 303. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co. Cincinnati : George S. Blanchard. 1858.) The late Dr. Neander became interested in the subject of American Revivals, by reading a work of Dr. Sprague's; and he put the task of giving a delineation of them in the German language, into the hands of his pupil Uhden. Upon surveying the subject, Uhden fancied that, in order to a full development of their nature, there was necessity for tracing the ecclesiastical history of New England, from the peculiarities of which he imagined that American revivals sprung. This necessity was fictitious; for the ground upon which it was based, namely, the derivation of American revivals from Puritan institutes, is false; and Uhden's conception of their ground arose from his unacqaintance with the true history of revivals, and the narrow source whence Neander drew his little knowledge of the subject. American revivals no more sprung from Puritan institutes than the Atlantic Ocean sprung from the Hudson River. The "Puritan Fathers" came from Old England, an entire body of earnest Christians; and what more natural or more beautiful than the expectation that in these rough wilds they might hope to be unmolested in their purity, and here set up a millennial community, in which all should share in public rule, and all be truly and experimentally Christian? The Church was the state, and every one was to obey the laws of God and be holy. Thence Uhden is pleased to style the government a theocracy. And it is no fault of the theocracy that it does not stand until this day. The fault lay in the divergent opinions of good men who do not so accord, in our present imperfect condi

tions as to make due harmony possible; in the incoming of foreign elements, which cannot be expelled without provoking reaction and overthrow; and in the degeneracy of later generations, to whom the strait-laced institutes of their fathers are a tedium. The first of these causes appeared in the dissent and repulsion of Roger Williams and his followers. The second appeared in the inroads of the Quakers, who just then seemed instigated by some spirit with a marvelous obstinacy to infest their community. The "Puritan Fathers" only sought the removal of the Quakers, and felt themselves justified in inflicting the extremest punishment for their contumacious return. But so persistent were the intruders in their disobedience, that the government began to see no end of bloodshed. The Fathers woke up on a somber New England morning, and found themselves-persecutors! To their honor, in due time, upon this discovery, they withheld their hand; and the arrival of the royal mandate, arresting farther execution, found it already volu: tarily stayed. But the third cause, posterior degeneration, assumed a variety of forms, unnerving the tone of religion and morality, and producing indifference, skepticism, and immorality. Against these causes of decay were interposed, as obstacles, organic efforts of reform, producing public movements and theological platforms that but feebly stayed the downward progress. The other obstacle interposed was the Northampton revival, under the ministry of Edwards, which was local in its character, and perfectly powerless as an opposition to prevalent degeneracy. With a slight exception, American revivals were wholly a foreign element, superinduced upon Puritanism contrary to its genius, and opposed by its authorities and institutes, but nevertheless ultimately accepted from a foreign source by the hearts of the people.

It was the "great movement of the eighteenth century, called Methodism," that gave New England as well as America her revivals. Methodism gave them to New England, in the first place, by the ministry of Whitefield, shortly after the Northampton excitement, by which she was opportunely made possible, and partially acceptable; but so ungenial was New England to revivals that when Whitefield made his second visit he was repudiated by New England, and his ministry proved a failure. Whitefield's visitation southward warmed the hearts of the people, and prepared the way for the second great advent of Methodism, of which we may give the following account:

It is to Francis Asbury, "The Pioneer Bishop," the founder bishop of American Methodism, and to the itinerancy under his charge, more than all other human sources together, that America truly owes her revivals. With a sweep, a rapidity, and a range of which Puritanism has not even yet acquired any adequate conception, Asbury sped his course over the entire AngloAmerican continent, from New England to Mississippi, from Georgia to Indiana, and from out a blaze of revivals there sprung up in America a people that were not a people, numbering its millions. The great revivals in Virginia in the time of Jarratt, the greater revivals in Kentucky, were converting their thousands, while New England Puritanism was spiritually torpid. When Methodism with her revivals invaded New England, she found a general opposition, not merely to her theology or her forms, but to her revivals as such. The very spirit and make of the New England Churches were uncon