of many of the unscriptural and anti-scriptural doctrines and practices of the Romish Church; but also as exhibiting a fine specimen of our language as it was spoken and written towards the close of the fourteenth century.

From ancient historians and authentic records Mr. Forshall has ascertained that the author of this " Remonstrance," John Purvey, was ordained in 1377, and lived with Wycliffe in his later years, whom he assisted in his parochial duties at Lutterworth, and probably also in copying his writings and preparing the earliest English Version of the Scriptures. On the last day of the year 1384 Purvey removed to Bristol, where in 1387 the Bishop of Worcester prohibited him from preaching in his diocese, which at that time included Bristol. In 1388 and 1389 several writs were issued for the seizure of his writings, together with those of Wycliffe, Hereford, and Aston. In 1390 Purvey appears to have been in prison, where he wrote a commentary upon the Apocalypse, from lectures formerly delivered by Wycliffe. In 1400 he was brought before the convocation, immediately after William Sautre; on which occasion both Sautre and Purvey abjured the errors imputed to them, though Sautre soon relapsed and was burnt as a heretic in the following year. In 1401 Purvey was admitted to the vicarage of West Hithe, in Kent, which he held until the 8th of October, 1402, when he resigned his living, (Mr. Forshall thinks) from remorse for his previous submission. In 1407 we find him noticed by William Thorpe in his examination before Archbishop Arundel, and charged with dissimulation. According to Foxe he was imprisoned by Archbishop Chichele in 1421. He seems to have been alive so late as 1427, after which date no traces of him are to be met with.

The "Remonstrance" is printed from the precious Cotton Manuscript, Titus D. I., in the British Museum, (written about the year 1400) which has been partially collated with another copy in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, M.S. 540. Mr. Forshall has added references to the passages of Scripture cited, with notes where they were necessary, and a valuable glossary. The treatise consists of thirty-seven articles, the tone of which (Mr. Forshall justly remarks) "is strong and stirring, yet not more so than, considering the manners of the age and the circumstances of the writer, one may fairly excuse. It must be recollected that Purvey and his friends had been for years the objects of persecution, and at periods had been from day to day in apprehension of imprisonment, and, perhaps, of death. The great principles of the Remonstrance' are of a nature, which it would be difficult to controvert." (Pref. p. xviii.)

We would gladly have extracted one of the articles or chapters. But as it would not be very intelligible without the aid of the glossary, we recommend our readers to get the work for themselves which, Lesides its importance at the present time, possesses the two great advantages of being well edited, and procurable at a reasonable price.

Synopsis Evangelica. Ex quatuor Evangeliis ordine chronologico concinnavit, prætexto brevi Commentario illustravit, ad antiquos testes apposito apparatu critico recensuit CONSTANTINUS TISCHENDORF. Lipsia: 1850. 8vo.

A CHEAP and useful Greek Harmony of the Four Gospels, which for its own sake we could wish had been printed in larger type. In his critical introduction or commentary, Professor Tischendorf has given an account of the principal harmonies which have hitherto been published. This is followed by an inquiry into the year of Christ's birth and the commencement and duration of his public ministry. He is of opinion that Jesus Christ was born sometime before the passover A.U.C. 750; that he commenced his public ministry about the end of the year 780, in the thirty-first year of his age; and that he completed it in the fourth month of the year 783, and in the third year of his ministry. The text and various readings, which follow, are taken from his second critical Edition of the Greek Testament, printed at Leipzig in 1849.

Nineveh and Persepolis: An Historical Sketch of Ancient Assyria and Persia, with an Account of the Recent Researches in those Countries. By W. S. W. VAUX, M.A., British Museum. Third Edition. Hall and Virtue. 1851.

THIS is a careful digest of all trustworthy information, both ancient and modern, concerning these renowned regions, the earliest seat of civilization; and towards which, as a common source and centre, mankind will never cease to look with interest bordering upon reverence. The unexpected discoveries, too, which have been recently made increase that interest, and lead us to hope that we are on the verge of a new epoch of discovery; and that the darkness which has hung over the early history of the earth's colonization may be in part if not wholly dissipated by records which are being brought to light, older and more perfect than those of Egypt, because they have been buried and not exposed to injury, and brought to light, as by the wand of an enchanter, at a time when Major Rawlinson's interpretations of the inscriptions of Darius Hystaspes hold out a reasonable hope of understanding these earlier records.

Mr. Vaux has ably performed what few were so well qualified to undertake. He has brought talents not often combined -those of the scholar, the antiquarian, and the artist-to bear upon his subject; and has produced, in a small unpretending volume, all the information which the public can require, and illustrated it by very good lithographs and wood-cuts; and it is put together in so judicious a way as to serve for a book of reference in the library as well as a hand-book for examining the monuments themselves. And in this edition many new engravings are introduced of the larger sculptures, which had not arrived when the former editions appeared.

Little was known of the existing remains of Babylon and Persepolis till the publications of Rich and Ker Porter called our attention to those regions; and even then so little was known of Nineveh that its very site was undetermined; and, beyond the few mutilated fragments of brick and stone in Rich's collection, we knew not of any tokens that such a city as Nineveh had ever existed. Now, however, we possess better monuments of the latter city than of either of the former, and so much of the same class and character that they reciprocally cast light upon each other; and all that we know of Persepolis or Babylon becomes available to a considerable extent in enabling us to understand both the inscriptions and the sculptures. of Nineveh; for all the inscriptions are in the cuneiform character, though each style has its own peculiarities both as to form and as to the language or dialect itself. The most ancient of the three characters took the form of an arrowhead for its basis-that is, the broad arrowhead forming nearly an equilateral triangle. The second form was that of Babylon, which was like the head of a spear or blade of a short sword, and this form continued nearly the same in the characters used at Persepolis. The difference in their use was this-that in the Babylon inscriptions the characters crossed each other so as to form stars, crosses, squares, and triangles, and the tapering end was thinned to a single line and lengthened if necessary; while in the Persepolitan inscriptions the characters were combined by juxtaposition and not by contact; and always, we believe, retained their original shape of a spear-head or wedge.

There was, unquestionably, something symbolical in the adoption of these forms which we expect time will throw light upon; for there is a curious sculptured boulder at Paris, and a fragment of a similar stone in Rich's collection in the British Museum, both of which refer to the annual inundations of the Tigris and Euphrates, which are figured upon the boulders, together with the Dogstar and Scorpio, Sagittarius and the

other Constellations, by which they calculated the rise and fall of these inundations. Two crowned monsters sit upon these rivers, representing the cities of Nineveh and Babylon, beside one of which is an altar surmounted by an arrow in the exact form of the Nineveh character: beside the other, a similar altar, but surmounted with the spear-head of Babylon and Persepolis. This convinces us that these forms are not accidental, but have a symbolical meaning.

The connection between the sculptures may be remarked in the colossal bulls and lions with human heads, and in the winged human figures. Of the latter class, one of the most interesting is that at Murghaub near Persepolis, of which Ker Porter spoke in the highest terms, and of which he has given a beautiful engraving. It has four wings, and a crown composed of rams' horns, supporting the serpent and globe, common on Egyptian monuments. Professor Lassen reads the inscription, "Adam Qurus Kohajathija Kakhamanisija-I am Cyrus, the King, an Achæmenian "showing that it is a portrait of Cyrus, and leading to the conclusion that the wings are intended to represent a species of beatification, similar to the halo which surrounds the head of Roman Catholic saints; and that the winged figures of Nineveh are also departed heroes, approximating to the well-known figure of Feroher.

At Persepolis, again, there are figures of men slaying a dragon, a lion, and a one-horned bull: these we regard as symbolical monsters, representing the several empires which had been successively subjugated. And, in like manner, we are disposed to regard the lion-hunt, and bull-hunt, which are represented with so much spirit on the sculptured slabs, as allegorical and historical allusions, not merely as ordinary hunting scenes; for similar emblems occur in some of the cylinders which served for seals; and, as these were royal signets, the devices were, most probably, emblematical. Moreover, a lion destroying a bull is a conspicuous symbol at Persepolis, which would seem to indicate that the empire denoted by the lion overcame that denoted by the bull. Again: we find that the Median dynasty, from its bearing the family name of Azdehac or the Dragon, took a dragon for its symbol; and thus the man overcoming the bull, the lion, and the dragon, may possibly denote the subjugation, by Persia, of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Median dynasties or empires. Time will show whether these conjectures are well-founded.

It was about B.C. 550 that Cyrus transferred the empire to the Persians; and it is said that when he passed the Araxes, to attack the Massagetæ under Queen Tomyris on his fatal expe

dition, he saw in vision the eldest of the sons of Hystaspes, having wings on his shoulders, with one pair of which he overshadowed Asia and with the other Europe. Darius Hystaspes added much to the buildings at Persepolis, and the vision of Cyrus would seem to show that wings were a recognized and familiar symbol of empire, and Darius may have been the monarch who raised the monument at Murghaub to the memory of Cyrus.

In the eighth year of Darius, Babylon revolted and was taken a second time, after which it never recovered its former splendour, and was subsequently dismantled to build Seleucia on the Tigris.

The remarkable feature in all the Assyrian remains that have hitherto been explored is the fact that they bear unquestionable tokens of having been destroyed by fire. In some cases the bricks are vitrified and the slabs calcined, and charred wood mixed with other combustibles is found abundantly among the ruins of them all. There was no stone in the country fit for building-only slabs of alabaster for lining the lower parts of the building. The walls were of brick, often only sun-dried; and the upper parts, together with all the roof, consisted chiefly of timber: hence, they were easily fired, and the destruction would be so total, by the falling in of the mud walls, that a city thus destroyed would become shapeless mounds and hillocks of clay, burying to a great depth the slabs of alabaster which formed the lining of the lower story of the buildings.

Major Rawlinson's discoveries are recorded with considerable detail in the tenth and eleventh chapters; as are also those of the enterprising Layard, to whom we owe the discovery and the transport of these precious remains to study them at our leisure in the British Museum; and we recommend all who would study them to the best advantage to take in their hands this little volume of Mr. Vaux.

The History of the Church of Rome to the End of the Episcopate of Damasus, A.D, 384. By E. J. SHEPHERD, A.M. Longmans. 1851. THE professed object of this work is to collect everything that is known and can be depended upon of the early history of the Church of Rome, in order to ascertain on what kind of basis the claim to universal supremacy rests--a claim held to be indisputable by its advocates as having been derived by divine commission from St. Peter, and by him transmitted in uninterrupted succession to the occupants of the Roman chair, and acknowledged from the beginning by the whole Catholic Church both