The Taxidermist's Manual, by Capt. THOMAS BROWN, F.S. L., &c. &c. &c.-ARCHIBALD FULLARTON & Co., Glasgow, 1833.

The author of this work has given us an excellent and useful volume as a companion to his most attractive "Book of Butterflies and Moths," published in Constable's Miscellany some months since. There are few scientific subjects gaining such deserved popularity as natural history; and few so well worthy the attention of the lovers of the most wondrous part of nature's works, as such a study can only be pursued under circumstances in themselves highly calculated to excite our noblest feelings amidst the fairest of nature's works, amidst the profusion of her charms, where she has spread her rich and verdant mantle. It is a study which requires for its successful attainment, neither the mental powers nor wasting assiduity required for the acquisition of other branches of natural knowledge; which cannot be accomplished in the secluded chamber, nor amidst the tumult of a city life, but requires the walk over the mountain heather, and wandering "through wooded dell," or by meandering rivulet; and which, in all its circumstances, must be accompanied by health and mental repose. Such is the science we are treating of, for the successful prosecution of which we must possess the means of preserving our specimens, and keeping them from decay; as much of the pleasure in collecting specimens of natural history consists in being able to refer to the preserved animal, and thereby recall the recollection of all its peculiarities of habits and locality,and such is the aid afforded by this excellent work of Captain Brown. It con

tains the most detailed account of the method of preserving the various objects of natural history, (we limit the term to the animal kingdom,) and in the compilation of which he was assisted by that able naturalist M. de Dufresne, chief of the preserving department in the Jardine de Plantes, from whom part of the Museum of Edinburgh was purchased. In this country where there is an anxiety for the study of natural history, beginning to be developed, we trust this most useful volume may find many readers.

Field Naturalist's Magazine. Edited by Professor Rennie.-W. S. ORR, London, 1833. Zoologist's Text Book, by Capt. JOHN BROWN. -FULLARTON & Co., Glasgow.

These are two publications of great merit, deserving our warmest commendation, as they are most admirably adapted to supply the want so universally felt among the less scientific students of natural history. Mr. Rennie, with much judgment, has avoided the jargon of technicality so thickly studded over works of similar design. His style of writing is easy and flowing, and likely to induce many persons to engage in a study, from which before they may have shrunk, deterred by the mere difficulty of learning the artificial nomenclature of scientific arrangements. In Captain Brown's book (though a most useful manual) we cannot discover any thing that is very new, we think we recognize the plates given with his edition of " Goldsmith's Animated Nature," they, however, are most accurate, both in design and execution, and he could not have substituted any of a higher character to illustrate his work.

No. IV.

VOL. I.

"Our Luther," "our great Luther," are the names by which the once obscure Monk of Aisleben in Saxony, is proudly and affectionately known throughout Germany. His portrait is in the study of every Pastor, and in almost every Inn. The centennary anniversary of the Reformation is observed with solemnity and state, and its commemoration in Darmstadt a few years since is thus described to us by an eye-witness.

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The preceding evening, was announced by a full chorus of solemn hymns sung from the top of the tower of the great Lutheran Church-the morning was ushered in by the same impressive ceremony. The hymns were of a simple and striking melody. The shops were closed, and all business was suspended; the Protestant Ambassadors, nobility, and townspeople attended church in their best equipages and uniforms. At ten o'clock, the whole court of the Grand Duke of Hesse and his family and suite proceeded to the great church,-the Grand Duchess and her ladies of honor, except one fair Roman Catholic, occupying the state-coach, drawn by eight cream-coloured palfreys, in blue velvet trappings. An old picture of the Reformer was transferred, for the occasion, from the Hotel de Ville, and suspended in the church, adorned with VOL I.

wreaths and flowers. The church was crowded to excess. A Te Deum and other fine music, concluding with the grand "Luther's Hymn," were admirably executed by the orchestra of the Court chapel, accompanied by the swelling and unanimous voice of a multitudinous congregation. Celebrations proportionably inferior in splendour, were universal in the villages."

When we turn from these interesting ceremonies of the Protestant churches of Germany to those of the Church of Rome in Ireland, what a contrast presents itself! In the same year in which this commemoration took place, Ireland was pouring forth pilgrims, through the length and breadth of her land-not to commemorate the triumphs, under divine providence, of religious liberty, nor the name and mighty achievements of the great Leader in the march of truth, but to celebrate the threemonths' festival of Saint Patrick's purgatory at Loughderg, where the human intellect is laid prostrate before the idol of self-imposed penances, and salvation is put up to sale, for money and for price, at the shrine of the absolution-omnipotent priest.

Three hundred years have elapsed since the Reformation was first introduced into Ireland, yet in the nineteenth century, thick darkness that may be felt, still broods over the land, and

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though a melancholy, it may not be an unuseful occupation, briefly to retrace the principal obstacles, that have so long thwarted the progress of divine truth. We may discover, in such a review, the seeds of those parties that are become matured in our own times, and the springs of the movements, by which we are, even now, agitated.

Religious disquisitions and investigations found their way into Ireland, before the period of the Reformation, and so early as the tenth year of Henry the Seventh, an act was passed, to prevent the growth of the Holland heresy. Indeed, about the middle of the fourteenth century, Fitzralph, who, there is reason to believe, was an Englishman by birth, though most Irish writers make him a native of Dundalk, distinguished himself by his bold preaching against the abuses of the Friars, whom he charged with violating the express precepts of Scripture, which he frequently quotes, and to which as a paramount authority, he constantly appeals. He is said to have been the first who translated the Bible into the Irish tongue, and was advanced to the See of Armagh in 1347. He has been called the Irish Wycliffe, and is mentioned by the latter in terms of high commendation. When his death was made public, it was said of him, that the same day a mighty pillar of Christ's church was fallen.

But we pass to the period in which the Reformation was introduced into Ireland-a period, when the old system of clanship was beginning to moulder away. Its dissolution, however necessary to the final settlement of the country, and the establishment of liberty and law, was urged most unseasonably, when the nobles were earnestly uniting with the crown of England, in the renunciation of the temporal supremacy of Rome, and it contributed incalculably to strengthen and rivet the influence of the Roman Catholic Clergy.

The spirit of clanship tended powerfully to subordination; and if the feudal attachments of the multitude had remained unimpaired, there can be little doubt, that they would have followed the examples of their lords, and passed on, in course of time, from political to religious Protestantism. It was about the year 1535 that George Browne, the first Protestant Prelate

in Ireland, was appointed to the See of Dublin; he was an Englishman by birth, and no less remarkable for the sincerity of his life, charity, and benevolence, than for the candour and liberality of his sentiments; he had been a provincial of the friars of St. Augustine, and had become celebrated in England by preaching against pilgrimages, and penances, a dependence on the merits and intercession of saints, and by inculcating the alone-mediation of Christ, and the duty of addressing prayer directly to God; he was one of the commissioners appointed to confer with the clergy and nobility of Ireland, to procure a general acknowledgment of the supremacy of the crown. It was not long after, however, that a counter commission was transmitted by the Pope, enjoining the clergy to support the papal authority, and empowering them to absolve from their oaths all such persons as had acknowledged the king's supremacy. The archbishop exerted himself strenuously to have relics and images removed from the churches, and substituted the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, which proceedings not a little alarmed the papacy, and to stimulate the chieftains in the cause of Rome, a letter was written to O'Neill, by the bishop of Metz, in the name of the council of cardinals, stating that His Holiness had discovered an ancient prophecy of Saint Lazerianus, that the Church of Rome should surely fall, when the Catholic faith should be overthrown in Ireland; and that when the Roman faith should perish there, the See of Rome was fated to destruction. This letter was written a few years after the "terrible, thundering bull of Pope Paul," as it is called by a Roman Catholic writer, in which he dethroned Henry the Eighth, pronounced him infamous, denied to him and his abettors Christian burial, and doomed him "to eternal curse and damnation."

Other obstacles, and these insurmountable, presented themselves to the rapid or general reformation of the church in Ireland. The people were not connected by one and the same system of polity-they were strangers to the benefits of political union-they had been long harassed by a succession of petty wars, distracted by mutual jealousy, living in constant excitement