added the elegant edition of Washington Irving's charming tale of "RipVaa Winkle," which, though published in London, derives its artistic as well as its literary excellence from the New World. Should the happy, careless hero of the story, that undoubted progenitor of the "Go-easy" family, wherever they may be located, ever take the trouble of looking down from one of those Elysian hunting grounds over the Catskill mountains, where his spirit congenially dwells, upon the world he must have long since abandoned, he will scarcely recognise his own identity* in the spotless exterior, and amid the internal elegance which surround his remains in this well-merited structure to his memory.

We have left ourselves but little space to "do justice to the few remaining volumes of "dainty device" which lie before us as yet untasted; not, indeed, that we have used our critical knife and fork so energetically as to become surfeited by the good things provided for our entertainment, and, consequently, indifferent to the remaining delicacies, be they ever so attractive. Not so, with us

"Increase of appetite has grown by what it fed on ;"

and as far as that is concerned, we are just as ready to pay our respects to what is now before us, as we were at the beginning of the banquet. But, alas! as a quart bottle will only hold a quart (or would have done so if Sir Boyle's motion had been carried) a magazine article will only hold its fill. Our readers who are not under the same duress, and in whose ears the call of the printer's devil is not ringing, like the disturbing horn of the guard in the good old days of coach travelling, just as you were beginning to enjoy "mine host's" fare; our readers, we say, will do themselves great injustice if they do not make a closer acquaintance with these still untasted sweets, which fortunately do not require any pressing recommendation from us. Mrs. Hall's book, "Pilgrimages to English Shrines,"† is one of those graceful contributions to cotemporary literature which are as pleasingly written as they are elegantly

printed, and charmingly illustrated. With no pleasanter guide-book, and with no companion more alive to all that is beautiful in external nature, in architecture, or in the manifestations of the human heart or intellect, can any one of our readers "book themselves" for a railway excursion, which is the modern English of assuming the staff and sandal shoon of the pilgrim. With this volume they may wander along the banks of the "lazy Ouse," to the birth-place of that "pilgrim of eternity," John Bunyan-to the burialplace of Hampden, the tomb of Grey, the birth-place of Chatterton, that "marvellous boy who perished in his pride," and to many other places rendered interesting or famous from their connexion with

"Hands that penned And tongues that uttered wisdom."

There are two "

'pilgrimages" that have attracted us particularly, and moved us not a little, but each in a very different way. One has been cheering-full of brightness and of hope; the other saddening, full of melancholy, but not without instruction. The first, a glimpse into the "studio of Gainsborough;" the other, a visit to the "dwelling of James Barry." This is not the place, at the end of an article, to do more than allude to this great but unfortunate genius, the friend of Burke, the townsman, the predecessor, and the rival of Maclise. We turn from this depressing picture, which, though lit by those flashes that ever emanate from true genius, and warmed by many a manifestation of generosity, self-denial, and enthusiastic devotion to his art, is of too sombre a cast for a "May-day feast," and gladly join our fair conductress in the happier studio of Gainsborough, or rather in that happiest of happy studios, even that of NATURE, in which the great master of English landscape-painting learned to win at once fame, independence, and a wife!

This charming passage in his life we must extract for its intrinsic value as well as for the manner in which it is narrated:

"The first sight of his bride is described as a meeting belonging rather to Arcadia than to England; it was rich and purely poetical. In one of the young artist's pictorial wanderings amid the woods of Suffolk, he sat down to make a sketch of some fine trees, growing just where they ought, with all their accessories; a clear rivulet cooling the meadows, sheep dotting the scene; there was the bleat of lamb and coo of dove; and suddenly a nymph, the kind and gentle Margaret Burr, who had just numbered sixteen summers: she came like a sunbeam to his heart, and secured a lover who soon became a husband. Prudence sanctioned affection, and the course of true love, for once, ran smooth; for Margaret added to the charms of good sense and good looks a clear annuity of two hundred pounds a year. The ease which a certainty, however small, gives at once to its possessor, is an astonishing sustainer; and though a young couple would find it very difficult to live, as it is called, even at Ipswich, which is rather a cheap town, on two hundred pounds per annum, yet, it was an independence; and the aspiring artist felt he must work to gain the comforts and luxuries which his refined taste prompted him to desire. His wife seems to have been one of those loving and loveable beings who bring far more happiness to the domestic hearth than women endowed only with high-sounding beauty and talent. She had also implicit faith in her husband's love and her husband's genius, and an abundance of prudence. Before his marriage he had journeyed from Sudbury, his native place, to London, where he studied for four years, and then returned, just eighteen, to be the beloved of his home, the idol of society.

"Thus he was circumstanced when the fair Margaret won his heart, and he her band. Nineteen and seventeenmere boy and girl-living and loving each the other until, in the sixty-first year of his age, he passed to 'fairer fields' than he had ever painted. Happy, happy days they must have passed together. He so enamoured of her and his art; she, loving whatsoever he loved, for his dear sake-watching the progress of his pencil, and feeling that his name would carry her's down the stream of time."-pp. 257, 258.

We believe it is now full time to admit the children to a share of our

banquet: here they come, the darlings clamorous and climbing, and throwing their clear, bright eyes along the table in search of the usual sweet and simple delicacies that fall to their share. What is this we have got for them? What! "Jack and the Giants, illustrated by Richard Doyle !"* By Hercules! that ancient destroyer of giants! there is no achievement of the famous Jack, recorded in this book, equal to the triumph of its illustration. What are such brute victories over Cormoran, or the giant Blunderbore, or the Magician, to the intellectual triumph of chaining the young but giant master of illustrative and satiric art to his chariot wheels, as he advances in glory to the palace of Prince Arthur, and making the most magic pencil of the age be his chronicler and slave? There is this difference, however, that while, hitherto, Jack has killed the giants, in this case, the giant will make Jack live-live not only in the fond memories of those dear little people who would relish their favourite hero's adventures, no matter how rude the form in which they were described, but also in the minds of those "children of a larger growth"-those "menchildren" (as Tennyson rather disparagingly called them, in his recent sonnet to Macready) with whom the fairy lore of art replaces the fairy lore of fiction.

We shall not be tempted to particularise any of the illustrations, lest beginning with one, we would end by describing all. It may be enough to say that, from the exquisite group on the title-page, where the children, in a sort of sweet horror and terrible delight, listen to the old crone as she tells them "stories of giants and fairies," to the air of cannibal politeness with which "the double-headed Welshman" (two single Brobdignag Chesterfields rolled into one) receives Jack at the gate of his castle, every illustration, even to the initial letters, is stamped with the freedom, grace, and strength that characterise the crea tions of Mr. Doyle's pencil.

"The Babes in the Wood"† is another delicious treat for our young friends. It is illustrated by the Mar

We wish we could accept it as a sign of true progress, that one who has just retired from a high official appointment in an important colony directs the attention of the public to the state and prospects of Christianity in that country. We believe that the people of these kingdoms, and of many of the nations long miscalled Christendom, are now beginning to perceive that the only assurance for peace, industry, and order, and for that social prosperity which is their unfailing consequence, is to be found in the felt expansion of real religion. The statesmen of Europe, relying on ephemeral expedients, have been heedless of this, but the hour is coming, and, perhaps, now is, when they will be compelled to observe it. These reflections, suggested by the occasion and the time, cannot, we hope, be regarded as out of season, or out of place.

The first observation which we have to make upon the book before us is, that the title promises too little. The name "Christianity in Ceylon" may bespeak its leading interest, but af fords no sufficient indication of the extent and variety of its contents. It is not only an account of Christianity in Ceylon, of its early settlement and recent progress, but it is also a history of the idolatries of that country; and when we consider that the Buddhist and Brahmanical superstitions rule the souls of the millions of India, Ceylon, Siam, China, and other nations of the East, we may appreciate an examination of the sources of their influence, with a popular account of their tenets, and an authentic statement of their position, in one wide region, at the present day. This work, then, is the history of superstition as well as of religion in Ceylon, and thus easily takes its three divisions,-Christianity, the Brahmanical, and Buddhist systems.

In order to render our observations intelligible we must premise that Ceylon, which is, in size, about one-sixth

less than Ireland, is inhabited by three different races-the Tamils, who dwell in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, the Kandians, who live in the mountainous interior, and the Singhalese, who people the lowlands, which gird the island in a maritime belt of about eight miles deep. The Tamils are Hindoos, the others Buddhists.

Sir Emerson Tennent says that the earliest notice of the existence of Christianity in India, is a tract printed in the collection of Montfaucon, and republished by Thevenot, with a French translation, in his "Relations des Divers Voyages Curieuses." It is the work of an Egyptian merchant, named Cosmos Indopleustes, who published it in the reign of Justinian, with the pious purpose of vindicating the cosmogony of the Old Testament from what he regarded as the heresies of the Ptolemaic system. Cosmos was a Nestorian, and became a monk. The church which he found in Ceylon was, as he tells us, formed of the Persian residents there; and Mr. Hough, in his history of Christianity in India, conceives that it survived until the arrival of the Portuguese. Sir Emerson Tennent maintains, we rather think hastily, that the original passage in Cosmos disposes of such a conjecture, because it expressly declares that the members of the church in Ceylon were Persians and merely sojourners;" but that "the natives and chiefs were of a different religion." Now the original, as cited by Sir Emerson, has no equivalent for the word merely," and is thus not so decidedly against Mr. Hough's view as he puts it. It does not say that the Persians were "merely sojourners," staying there, as might be supposed, but for a short time, but that there was a church of Persian residents, ἐκκλησίαν τῶν επίδημοντων Περσῶν Χριστιανῶν· that is, not a congregation of comers and goers, but a church consisting of the Persian families who were fixed and living there.

Cosmos adds, what seems to support the fixity of the congregations, that this Persian church was formally established, with a bishop, and a regular liturgy. Mr. Hough infers, and we think not unreasonably, that these Persian Christians were not unmindful of their duty of making known the Gospel to the heathen around them, and that the fruit of their labours, in all probability, remained until the arrival of the Portuguese in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The interval is certainly a long one; but the impression is further countenanced by the fact, that there are in the re cesses of Ceylon, remnants of Christian congregations who are unaffected by Romish usages, and who can give no account of their conversion, either from history or tradition. The general observation of the Egyptian merchant, that the natives and their chiefs were heathens, may not be at all at variance with the fact, that the Persian Christians had made converts, or were, at the period of his visit, engaged in missionary efforts.

Sir Emerson refers to legends of still earlier efforts made to Christianize Ceylon, to the statement repeated by Jerome and Eusebius, that St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew had, in their route to India, preached the Gospel there; and to the less known tradition, that the Christian faith was introduced there by the treasurer of Queen Candace, whose conversion by Philip is recorded in the Acts. Our Church historians, however, do not favour the supposition that India was ever visited by an apostle; and the best opinion seems to be, that Christianity was first made known in India and Ceylon by members of the Alexandrian Congregation of St. Mark, whose avocations made them acquainted with these countries.*

Our author conceives that the Per

sian congregation in Ceylon had never made any impression on the natives, and that with the decline of eastern commerce, Christianity gradually disappeared.

"The Two Mahomedans,"† Ibn Vahab and Abou Zeyd, who visited this great island in the ninth century, say nothing as to the existence of any form of our faith. Marco Polo, who describes it at the close of the thirteenth century, simply states that the inhabitants were idolaters; and Ibn Batuta, the Moor, who was in Ceylon in the early part of the fourteenth century, is silent upon the subject of Christianity, although he describes the Brahmans and Buddhists, speaks of the Jews, and refers to the pilgrimage to Adam's Peak.

The rising influence of Mahomedanism in India, no doubt, contributed to the discouragement of Christianity in Ceylon; and when the Portuguese arrived there, about A. D. 1505, they found that the doctrines of Brahma and Buddha were the religions of the two great sections of the people, the Tamils and the Singhalese.

re

"Information," says our author, "is scanty as to the nature of the means adopted by the Portuguese for the introduction and establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Ceylon. There is no proof that compulsion was sorted to by them for the extinction of the national superstitions; and the probability is, that the priests and missionaries of the Portuguese were contented to pursue in Ceylon the same line of policy, and to adopt the same expedients for conversion, which had already been found successful by their fellow-labourers on the opposite continent of India."

We could hardly expect to find proofs of acts of compulsion resorted to by the Portuguese for the promotion