his "Genius of Scotland," and "Orators of France and Switzerland." It is a beautiful and highly interesting sketch of Italian life, literature, and scenery. The Author is evidently quite at home in the History and Literature of that land of Art and Beauty; he has a heart to appreciate what is noble in her gifted sons and what is fine and grand in her thousand monuments of art and genius He writes under the spell of her own inspiration-in full sympathy with her genial skies and lovely landscapes and artistic spirit and poetic fire-and with her past and present struggles for freedom. It is not strictly a history, nor is it a mere sketch of travel, although it embodies the information of the one and the life and interest of the other. The Author rapidly surveys Italy, past and present, in her social, political, and religious aspects: sketches the life and labors of many of her most distinguished statesmen, patriots, and poets, quoting many striking passages from the immortal works of the latter, and showing a just and almost enthusiastic regard for their genius and power; and in conclusion, glances at the recent changes and revolutions which at this moment make Italy the centre of interest to the civilized and Christian world.

The book is written in a style of great beauty and vivacity, and cannot fail to prove highly popular. Our readers may form a pretty good judgment of its merits, from an article which Mr. Turnbull recently contributed to this Review, on Dante and his immortal Epic, the substance of which is given in this volume. We commend it to our readers as at once an entertaining and valuable work on that remarkable country.

6.-History of King Charles the Second, of England. By JACOB ABBOTT. With Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. THIS series of short and popular histories, by the Messrs. Abbott, increases in interest, we think, as it progresses. We have, in this volume, a well-drawn sketch of the life of the last of the Charleses.

It is a book of melancholy interest. The terrible fate of his father, and his own long and severe schooling in adversity, one might have supposed would have made the second Charles, when restored to the crown of his ancestorsa crown which had been forfeited and lost by extravagance and oppression-a most wise and virtuous prince. But what a character is here given him, for all that is vile and corrupt and trifling and contemptible and odious! (Macaulay has depicted it in still darker colors in his immortal history.) What a life for royalty to live when recalled from exile, poverty, and disgrace, by a generous people, to exercise sovereignty over them, and a sovereignty, for the abuse of which, his father had been sent to the scaffold, and monarchy for a season abolished. And above all, what a death was his to die! Suddenly stricken of God in the midst of a Sabbath-night's revel-stung with remorse at the recollection of his life of reckless pleasure and sin-receiving by stealth at the dead of night extreme unction at the hands of an obscure Catholic priest--and dying as "the fool dieth." The death-scene as Abbott here describes it, although it falls far short of Macaulay's vivid and minute description of it, is still intensely interesting, and reads a lesson to every man, be he king or peasant, which affectingly illustrates and confirms the teachings of the wise man of old.

7.-History of Maria Antoinette. By JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers.

With

THIS, in some respects, is the most interesting History in this highly popular series. Who has not admired the heroic virtues, and mourned the sad and terrible fate of the beautiful and high-born, but unfortunate and cruelly-treated Maria Antoinette! The daughter of the illustrious Maria Theresa, married to Louis XVI., of France, and raised to the throne of the most splendid and powerful monarchy on earth, a career of surpassing happiness and glory seemed to

flatter her ambition and dance before her ardent and naturally pleasure-loving mind. But the strange neglect of Louis, and the nation's jealousies and suspicions of the Austrian Queen, poisoned her first years and the tempest of the fiercest and most fiendish revolution that ever up-turned a throne or deluged a nation in blood, beat upon her after-life and singled her out as a marked victim of its hatred and unearthly fury.

The annals of this world of crime and misery cannot show a darker, drearier, or more soul-harrowing picture of fallen fortune, extreme adversity, utter grief and destitution, and exquisite torture of human sensibilities and endurance of suffering. Some parts of this history possess a degree of melancholy interest which no romance ever equaled, and which imposes a painful contribution on one's sensibilities in the reading of them. We specify as particularly exciting and painful-the flight of the royal family from Paris, and their capture at Varennes, just us they were about to cross the frontiers of France: their slow march back to the Capitol amidst the jeers and insults of an infuriated populace; the parting scene between Louis and his family in the prison of the Temple-the imprisonment of Antoinette in the horrible Conciergerie and her final execution--and last and the most diabolical of all, the murder by inches of the young and interesting Louis, after reducing him to idiocy and absolute brutality, as a matter of State policy. Did the sun ever look upon a darker scene of crime and woe? As there is an avenging God on high we might expect that such deeds would call down a terrible baptism of blood! 8.-Life in the Far West. By GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON, Author of Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains.” York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.

New

THIS book belongs to the class of the marvelous, and really lays no slight tax upon the reader's credulity. Its stories may be true, they are said to be, but few will believe them. Our opinion is, that to say the least, "Life in the Far West"--life among the "Trappers and the Indians," who inhabit the wild and immense regions known as the Rocky Mountains, and which this book attempts to describe is greatly exaggerated, in its worst features, if not really caricatured. It is not without its interest however, as giving one view of life and character in that remote and little-known region, though we confess it is not much to our taste, either as a tale of real adventures or as a book of sheer fiction. This narrative of mountaineer life was originally published in Blackwood's Magazine. The Author was an English Lieutenant who had seen much of the world, and who died at St. Louis, last October, greatly lamented. 9.-Stories about Animals, with Pictures to match. By FRANCIS C WOODWORTH. New York: D. A. Woodworth, 1849.

FEW living writers are in our judgment so well adapted to interest, and at the same time instruct, the young in useful knowledge as the Author of this pleasing volume. He combines the entertaining with the instructive, the wholesome moral with the anecdote, in a rare degree. We never see anything in his writings to offend good taste virtue, or piety, and always much that is refining, elevating, and beneficial to the social and religious feelings and sentiments of the young.

This volume urges no claim to originality, or scientific value. It is a group of anecdotes, many of them very interesting and striking, gathered from a great variety of sources, to illustrate the peculiarities of different animals. It is got up in a very neat and attractive style, and is bountifully embellished with wellexecuted engravings. We do not hesitate to commend it as of real interest and value to the young.

10.-Home Evangelization; a view of the Wants and Prospects of our Country, based on the facts and relations of Colportage. By one of the Secretaries of the American Tract Society.

11.-The Night of Toil; or a familiar acccount of the labors of the first Missionaries in the South Sea Islands. By the Author of Peep of Day."

66

By JANE TAYLOR.

By a LADY.

12.-The Young Disciple; or a Memoir of Anzonetta R. Peters. By. REV. JOHN A. CLARK. 13.-Hymns for Infant Minds. 14.-Children Invited to Christ. 15.-Narratives of Pious Children. By REV. GEORGE HENDLEY. 16.-Memoir of Mrs. Eliza Astor Rumpff, and of the Duchess de Broglie, Daughter of Madame de Stael. By REV. ROBERT BAIRD, D. D.

THE seven books whose titles are here given, are among the recent issues of the American Tract Society. They are all of them excellent in their way, and deserve the patronage of the religious community. The first is a Plea for our Country, in reference to Colportage that every patriot and Christian ought to read and ponder. The second is a most interesting and instructive narrative of the toils of the first missionaries to the South Sea Islands during a twenty years' trial of their faith and patience. The third is a memoir of a lovely youth who died at the age of eighteen; a most striking example of intelligent, elevated, consistent piety--one of the sweetest memoirs we remember to have read : abridged from the fifth edition. The fourth is a collection of pleasing and beautiful hymns, designed for infant minds, by Jane Taylor. Many of these hymns are superior in their poetry and sentiment, and are adapted wisely to impress the lessons of piety on and instil its spirit into the minds of children. The fifth contains many sweet and precious invitations to children to come to Christ; and the sixth is a remarkable record of pious children, which may well serve to stimulate parents to pray more earnestly and with greater faith for the blessings of the covenant in the early conversion of their children. The last, contains brief memoirs of two distinguished and eminetly devoted Christian women, who, amid the gay scenes and corruptions of Paris and though surrounded by all the earth-alluring attractions of wealth, station and royal display and dissipation, walked steadily with God in the lowly path of holy living and active benevolence. Lady Huntingdon is said to have thanked God for the letter m in the word many in Paul's assertion; "not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called." It is refreshing and delightful to see piety so consistently and beautifully exemplified in high life, as it was in the case of these really noble women.

18. An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, embracing the theory of Statics and Dynamics, and its application to Solids and Fluids. Prepared for the Under-Graduate Course in the Wesleyan University. By AUGUSTUS W. S. SMITH, LL.D. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1849.

An elementary work on analyctical Mechanics, adapted to a college course of study, was really needed. The above work is designed to meet that want, and is the result of no little patient labor as well as experience in teaching.

The author advances no claim to originality. The materials have been sought, and freely taken from all available sources; particularly from the works of Poisson, Francœur, Gregory, Whewell, Walker, Moseley, and Jamieson. These materials have been modified and arranged to suit "the specifie object kept constantly in view-the preparation of a manual which should be simple in its character," and easily and thoroughly induct the student into the elementary principles of the science. Its peculiar merits, if we judge aright, are its simplicity, its thoroughness as to the elementary truths, and the peculiar facility it affords for the prosecution of this branch of study. It deserves to be extensively adopted as a text-book in our college course of studies.

THE

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY

AND

CLASSICAL REVIEW.

THIRD SERIES, NO. XX.-WHOLE NUMBER, LXXVI.

OCTOBER, 1849.

ARTICLE I.

LIFE AND TIMES OF LEO THE GREAT.

By Rev. EDWard Beecher, D.D., Boston.

History is made up of two elements, facts which transpire in this world, and the relations of those facts to the universal system. That there was such a man as Leo the Great, that he lived in the fifth century, that he was a leading spirit of his age, that he was engaged in divers controversies, and aimed at certain definite ends, these and similar things, are facts easily ascertainable, and capable of a definite and precise statement. Nor with regard to the leading facts of his life is there any controversy.

But when we pass to the consideration of the relations of these facts to the universal system, we enter at once a new world. Whilst generations of men die, higher and permanent orders of spiritual beings meet our eyes. Each generation of men has its principles, ends and aims, but no common intelligible human plan runs through the history of all ages. To discover such a plan we must pass into the invisible world, and study the designs of Him, of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things, and who worketh all things after the council of his own will.

To give the relations of the facts of history from this point of vision is by no means so easy as to state the facts. It leads us at once, upon controverted ground. The moment we raise this question as it regards Leo, we meet the great controversy of the age. To the partizans of Rome, he is Leo the Great; to their opponents he is but a prominent founder of a terrific and malignant antichristian system which was matured and perfectly developed by Gregory VII. and Innocent III.

God only can write a perfect history of the world from this point of vision, and at the day of the revelation of his just judgment he will do it. Meantime there is to be even on earth, under the guidance of his Spirit a historical day of judgment. On no subject has more illusion and fraud been practiced, especially since the days of Christ, than on the history of this world. But the day cometh that shall burn as an oven. God is yet to reign, and He will reign by the truth and not by delusion and fraud. No one, therefore, is more concerned in promulgating and establishing correct views of the history of this world than he. In all our inquiries then let us entreat Him to dissipate all delusions, to open our eyes, to purify our hearts, and to touch our lips as with a coal from his own altar.

In the historical sketch which we have undertaken to present, we have chosen an individual to stand as the central figure of the picture, and yet our main design is, through him to evolve the principles and spirit of the age in which he lived.

Leo was chosen bishop of Rome A. D. 440, and died A. D. 461, after an eventful reign of twenty-one years. From 423 to 455, Valentinian III. was Emperor of the West, Maximus, Avitus, Majorianus, ruled during the remaining six years of his life. From 408 to 450, Theodosius II. was emperor of the East; Marcian from 450 to 457; Leo, also called the Great, from 457 to 474. Such were his cotemporary civil rulers.

As to his parentage and early education, little is known. He was a Roman by birth. His father's name was Quinctianus. His first appearance in history is just before his choice as bishop of Rome. He was sent by Pope Sixtus III. to effect a reconciliation between Aetius and Albinus, in Gaul, of which we shall soon speak. During his absence Sixtus died and Leo was chosen in his place.

The main characteristic of the age of Leo was the approaching destruction of those institutions of Roman civil society, which paganism had formed. Concerning these, Guizot remarks, "The civil society of the Roman world, to all outward appearances secured Christian, equally with the religious society. The great majority of the European nations and kings had embraced Christianity, but at the bottom the civil society was pagan. Its institutions, its laws, its manners, were all essentially pagan. It was entirely a society formed by paganism; not at all a society formed by Christianity. Christian civil society did not develop itself till a later period, till after the invasion of the barbarians. It belongs in point of time to modern history. In the fifth century, whatever outward appearances may say to the contrary, there existed between civil society and religious society, incoherence, contradiction, contest; for they were essentially different, both in their origin and in their nature.