English or otherwise, if Dr. Farrar's book of Wisdom is intended as a practical illustration of it. A commentary duly enlivened by pointed illustrations and apt pithy remarks is one thing, a florilegium of quotations of all kinds without the least attempt at arrangement is quite another. It is a blind confusion of two distinct literary objects, and can only conduce to the injury both of one and the other. We, at all events, sincerely hope that English hermeneutics will never be reduced to the culling of poetical excerpts or arranging them like beads on a string around a given text.

We must now take leave of our subject, and our last words must be, as the first were-words of approval. The volumes before us mark a distinct advance in English Biblical criticism. We cannot but regret the operation of whatever causes that have made a commentary on the Apocrypha a work of greater excellence and permanent value than commentaries on the canonical books in the same series. Whatever they are, and in what mode soever they may be best met, the fact remains the same. We have every confidence that, together with its theme of the Apocryphal books, this work will have some effect indirectly in raising the general study of Hebrew literature to a higher position, regarding it, in other words, from the philosophical standpoint of continuity. We feel assured that this conception of the study will give increased interest to all our Biblical records, while it will also serve to explain, illustrate, and immeasurably enhance our knowledge of the Christian religion, whether as a history or as a doctrinal system.

ART. IV. Our Kin beyond the Sea. By J. C. FIRTH, with a Preface by J. A. FROUDE. London. 12mo. 1888. W HEN M. de Tocqueville visited the United States and wrote his celebrated book on Democracy in America, only fifty years had elapsed since the Declaration of Independence, and rather more than forty since the establishment of the Union. He approached the American continent from the east, and the key to his work lay in the institutions of New England. The civilised portion of the Federal territory did not much exceed that of the original thirteen British colonies. Tocqueville himself says: The Valley of the Mississippi is upon the whole the most magnificent dwelling-place prepared by God for man's abode; and yet it may be said that at present it is a mighty desert.'

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the west of the great Father of Waters lay an enormous and unexplored region, inhabited only by the sparse descendants of Indian tribes-a waste across which the fugitive Mormons fled to the unknown confines of the Great Salt Lake beyond the reach of man. Within the Eastern States the absolute ascendency of men of the pure Anglo-Saxon race was undivided and uncontested. It was about fifty years ago that the great western emigration of the people began. In 1830 there were but 23 miles of railway in the States; in 1884 125,379 miles of railway were in operation, having cost (we ! are told) 1,614,000,000l. sterling. The population has quadrupled. Massachusetts and the city of Boston then shone with no uncertain light as the seats of culture and literature. New York was its chief rival in trade. The Southern States differed from the North in climate, in natural productions, in some social peculiarities, and especially by the existence of slavery; but the chief subject of contention between them was limited to the question of the tariff. At that time the government of the United States was held up to the admiration and envy of Europe as the most economical in the world. Taxation was light. The revenue was small. There was no public debt. There were no overgrown fortunes; there were no able-bodied poor. The action of the democracy in its municipal and political functions was fair and regular, and seemed to realise the wise intentions of the founders of the republic. Horace Greeley said, in speaking of his early New England home, I have never known a community so generally moral, industrious, and friendly; never one where so much good was known, and so little evil said of neighbour by neighbour.' Such was the America which M. de Tocqueville saw and described, with a sincere admiration for the strong religious convictions and the high moral tone that pervaded the community-qualities without which he conceived that good democratic government would be impossible.

Another half-century has elapsed; another traveller, whose narrative we have placed at the head of these pages, visits the United States, in a direction and under circumstances precisely opposite to those which attracted the observation of his illustrious predecessor. It would be preposterous to compare the slight sketches of this gentleman from New Zealand with the reflections of the French statesman and philosopher. We have no such intention. But this little volume suffices to mark the astonishing intensity of the contrast, marked by events and by conditions of society, both

personal and political, so extraordinary that we who have witnessed these metamorphoses can scarcely believe in their

- existence.

Let us land with Mr. Firth from a magnificent steamer, which crosses the Pacific Ocean from another new world in Australia, and places him in the midst of the fierce energy, the wealth, the splendour, and the vice of San Francisco. Mr. Firth brings with him none of the prejudices of France or Europe. He boasts that he is an Englishman to the core, but a colonial Englishman. His real country is New Zealand, where he has played an honourable part in mercantile and public affairs; but his Australian patriotism does not lessen his regard for the British Empire. He views everything with the eye of a New Zealander, and his criticisms are the more valuable as his standard of comparison is purely Australian.

No two points of the globe are more dissimilar in their origin, their social characters, and their climates than Boston and San Francisco. On the east the stern discipline of the Pilgrim Fathers educated a united people by two centuries of rigid laws; on the west we see a city, rising like an exhalation, under the stimulus of gold, thronged by adventurers from every part of the earth, at first so lawless that life and property could only be protected by vigilance committees, and even then stained by innumerable crimes, with an influx of population of the Turanian race, the overflow of China, and a society inflamed to madness by the sudden acquisition of incalculable wealth.

'Never, perhaps, in the history of mining has so enormous an amount of mineral wealth been obtained in so short a time, from so small an area, as from the renowned Comstock silver lode at Virginia City. Silver bullion to the value of over 60,000,000l. sterling was obtained in about three years, from less than half a mile in length of the Comstock lode or reef. Of this sum, over 20,000,000l. sterling was obtained from the famous C and C mine controlled by four men, originally diggers, saloon-keepers, &c., who, if report speaks correctly, not satisfied with the enormous wealth they obtained from the mine, stimulated stock-jobbing in mining shares in San Francisco to a frightful extent. So great was the excitement in the Stock Exchange there, that, under the terrible influence of the silver frenzy, men and women of almost every class madly speculated in mining shares, utterly regardless whether the wealth they so madly sought came from the mines or from the pockets of their friends and neighbours. While these victims of the silver insanity were buying and selling shares, the four arch speculators are credited or debited with having moved them about like pawns in a game, regulating the output of

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bullion from the mine, as they themselves wished to buy for a rise or sell for a fall.'

Already in some of these argentiferous regions the mines are exhausted and the dream is over. But the social effects remain. By mining and railway speculations enormous fortunes were acquired by not a few individuals, which altered radically the status of democratic equality, and created a money power, controlling in many respects the institutions of the country, with a grasp far more strenuous, selfish, and severe than that of the aristocratical and monarchical institutions of Europe. The principal interest of these discoveries of the precious metals consists not in the fortunes they have conferred on individuals, but in their moral effect on the American problems Mr. Firth invites us to consider, and, we must add, on the monetary conditions of the world.

From San Francisco we travel for hundreds of miles along the Humboldt river, still through the brilliant atmosphere to the west of the Rocky Mountains, passing lakes and railway stations with names scarcely recorded by geography, and through valleys known fifty years ago only to the Indians, the bears, and the eagles. We cross the Rocky Mountains at a height of 8,200 feet, and descend upon the grasslands covered with thick herbage, which are now converted into ranches or cattle-stations owned by the wealthy 'cattle kings.' Thence we approach the great Valley of the Mississippi, now no longer a desert, but teeming with agricultural wealth and great cities. An inhabitant of Omaha city told us not long ago, with complacency, that there are eight banks in that community, a circumstance which he considered to be an indisputable proof of high civilisation. We shall not dwell on Mr. Firth's notes on farming in this region, but it is worth while to note the excessive variations of temperature, from 100° in the shade in summer to 20° or 30° below zero in winter. Mr. Firth remarks that such an enormous variation can hardly be conducive to health or long life in man. There are many signs that the American climate is singularly trying to white men of the North, and tends to a physical deterioration of the race.

America, for this traveller from the far east, or rather west of that continent, is to be found in the great valley stretching in one grand plain between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghany chain, watered by the great streams of the Missouri and the Mississippi and their confluents, blest with a soil of rare fertility, and with a substratum, in many

places, of coal. In that vast and fertile basin he discerns the future of the American people, for it is capable of supporting countless millions of human beings. But of the Eastern States, which are most accessible to travellers from Europe, he says not a word. Not a word of the exhausted lands of New England, of the philosophers of Boston, and the splendour of New York. He even asserts that the Americans have lost the character of a maritime people, which they retained as long as they clung to the Atlantic coast. In his eyes the great movement to the west is the leading feature in American life, which will ultimately govern the destinies of the nation. The cities he visited appear to have been Chicago, Denver, and Utah. He sees the Union from the rear, and passes in silence over all that previous travellers have noted. The point of sight of America viewed from the Pacific coast to the centre by Australian eyes, is new and original, and it is this which gives a peculiar value to Mr. Firth's observations.

We shall pass lightly over his not unfriendly, though somewhat humorous remarks, on what he saw of American usages and manners, differing probably from what he would have met with in the Fifth Avenue. It may be true that knives do not cut, that waiters do not wait, that nobody says Thank you,' that the cars are dusty and the railways tedious; no doubt to Mr. Firth these things are better done in New Zealand. But he qualifies these censorious remarks by a handsome tribute to the hospitality, courtesy, and good sense he everywhere met with in the States.

The colonies of the European nations, Dutch, French, and English, were naturally all founded on the Atlantic coast. Their settlements were determined by the harbours they found there. Quebec on the St. Lawrence, Boston, New York, Charleston, New Orleans, and Washington itself, all belong to that narrow strip of land, hardly exceeding one hundred miles in breadth, which lies between the Alleghanies and the sea. They were maritime colonies, depending for their existence on the proximity of Europe, and the vast interior of the continent remained unknown to them. This 'tongue of arid land,' said M. de Tocqueville, was the 'cradle of those English colonies which were destined to 'become the United States of America. The centre of power 'still remains there; whilst in the backwoods the true 'elements of the great people, to whom the future control of the continent belongs, are gathering almost in secrecy 'together.' It is there, and not in New England, that