VALUABLE WORKS PUBLISHED BY GOULD & LINCOLN, BOSTON, No. 59 WASHINGTON STREET. YEAR BOOK OF FACTS FOR 1855. JUST PUBLISHED: The Annual of Scientific Discovery; or, Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art. Exhibiting the most important Discoveries and Improvements in Mechanics, Useful Arts, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Meteorology, Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology, Geography, Antiquities, etc.; together with a list of recent Scientific Publications, a classified list of Patents, Obituaries of eminent Scientific Men, an Index of Important Papers in Scientific Journals, Reports, etc. Edited by DAVID A WELLS, A. M. With an elegant likeness of Lieut. M. F. Maury, U. S. N. Price, $1 25 The vols, for 1850, 51, 52, 53, 54, can be supplied, uniform with this new issue. THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST: Or, Christianity Viewed in its Leading Aspects. BY REV. A. L. R. FOOTE. A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT OF GREAT INTEREST. THE LANDING AT CAPE ANNE; Or, THE CHARTER OF THE FIRST PERMANENT COLONY ON THE BY JOHN WINGATE THORNTON. This volume proves that Massachusetts begins her history, not at Salem, nor under the patronage of the organization which obtained the Charter of March, Anno 1627-8, but in the spring of the year 1624, at CAPE ANNE, where the Colony was established under the authority of This Her First Charter, the very initial of her annals-now first presented to the public. The North American Review says of the work "This monograph relates to a portion of the history of Massachusetts which has hitherto been somewhat obscure, and especially commemorates the worth and distinguished services of Roger Conant, whose name ought to lead the list of the Governors of Massachusetts. *** We rejoice that justice, though late, has been done to the venerable Iman who, as founder and savior of the infant colony, may proffer a double title to a place among the fathers of our commonwealth. The whole work does credit to Mr. Thornton's zeal as an antiquary, and credit as an historian." -:0: CONTENTS:-Christianity a Life-A Work-A Reward-A Culture-A Discipline Gould & Lincoln have in press and will shortly publish, A Fellowship. Price 50 cents. THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER. With copious Notes. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE. Notes translated for the American edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1 25. "We hardly remember any treatise which is so well calculated to be useful in general circulation among ministers, and the more educated laity, than this, which is rich in spirituality, strong and sound in theology, comprehensive in thought, vigorous and beautiful in imagination, and affluent in learning."-Congregationalist, "We have seldom read a book with greater interest."-N. Y. Evangelist. "The volume is one of rare value, and will be welcomed as an eloquent and Scriptural exposition of some of the fundamental doctrines of our faith."-New York Recorder. 0: SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTIES OF PLANETARY LIFE; Or, NEPTUNE'S LIGHT AS GREAT AS OURS. With various other hitherto unconsidered facts connected with the residence of moral agents in the worlds that surround the stars. By T. C. SIMON, author of "The Mission and Martyrdom of St. Peter," "" "The Nature and Elements of the external World," &c., &c. LITERARY PAPERS. By the late Prof. EDWARD FORBES, F. R. S. Selected from his writings in the "Literary VISITS TO EUROPEAN CELEBRITIES. THE TEACHER'S LAST LESSON. A Memoir of Martha Whiting, late of the Charlestown Female Seminary. SACRED LATIN POETRY. With Notes and Introduction by RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, M. A. Revised, with important additions, by the American editor. THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR RELA- Chiefly logical, selected and arranged for use. BY FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, A. M., Professor of Divinity in King's College, Lon- "The effort we deem masterly, and, in any event, must prove highly interesting by the comparisons which it institutes with the false and the true. His investigations into the Hindoo and Buddhist mythologies will itself repay the reader's trouble."-Meth. Quar. 0: GUIDO AND JULIUS. THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AND THE PROPITIATOR; OR, THE TRUE CONSECRATION 60 cents. It might naturally be expected that a work by authors so distinguished in the literary and re igious world would prove one of great interest and value. This expectation will not be disappointed. It is preeminently a book for the times-full of interest and of great power. MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND AND ITS PEOPLE. By HUGH MIL- Young Men's Christian Association, in Exeter Hall, London. By HUGH MILLER. BAKER GODWIN & CO., PRINTERS, CORNER NASSAU AND SPRUCE STREETS, N. Y. NEW SERIES-VOL. II. AND Publishers' Circular. NEW YORK, MARCH 1, 1855. NUMBER V. CHARLES SCRIBNER, NEW YORK, WOULD BEG TO CALL THE SPECIAL ATTENTION OF THE TRADE To his List of Publications. Not having contributed to either of the SPRING TRADE SALES, special inducements will be offered, during the Trade Sales, to Booksellers to buy directly of me an Invoice of my Books. A full and Descriptive Catalogue will be sent by mail, to any Bookseller, on application. NEW BOOKS-NEARLY READY. HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE IN SUBURB AND COUNTRY; or, the Villa, the Mansion, and the Cottage. Adapted to American Climate and Wants. By Gervase Wheeler, Architect, author of "Rural Homes," &c. 1 vol. 12mo., with 100 engravings. This work is to supply a want that, in the opinion of the publisher has not as yet been fully met. Other books have been presented, offering models for home builders, but they have generally been the crude notions and sketches of men of literary and artistic talent rather than of practical skill. In the present volume, not only the stored hints of a long and successful practice in his profession of an architect have been offered, but the plans elucidating his remarks have had the benefit of realization and of mature thought and examination. HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE MOST EMINENT N. P. Willis' New Work. Scribner's Latest Publications. Fi Thousand.-Ik Marvel's New Work. FUDGE DOINGS: being Tony Fudge's Record of the same. Illustrations by Darley. 2 vols. $2. OUT DOORS AT IDLEWILD. By N. P. Willis. With Illustrations. 1 vol. 12mo. $1 25. Third American Edition. CONYBEARE AND HOWSON'S LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. With colored maps and many engravings. 2 vols. 8vo. $6. Second Edition, LIVES OF THE CHIEF JUSTICES OF THE UNITED STATES. By G. Van Santvoord. 1 vol. 8vo. $2 25. CAPTAINS OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. By Henry W. Herbert. 1 vol. 12mo. $1 25. Uniform with "Captains of the Old World." CRYSTALLINE; or, the Heiress of Fall-Down Castle, By F. W. Shelton, author of "Rector of Bardolph." Fourth Thousand. LIFE OF ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER, D. D. By Jas. W. Alexander, D. D. 1 vol. 8vo. $2 50. NOTICE TO BOOKSELLERS. TRADE SALES.-TRADE SALES. THE SUBSCRIBER WOULD CALL THE ATTENTION OF THE COUNTRY BOOK TRADE Autobiography of Charles Caldwell, M. D., 89 Outlines of Chemical Analysis, 89 General Notions of Chemistry, 89 New Books Published in America since Feb. 15, 1855, To the fact that he will attend the York Trade FOR THE PURPOSE OF PURCHASING TO ORDER. Sale, Boston, Buffalo, ADVERTISEMENTS. All orders must be forwarded as soon after the receipt of Catalogue as possible, and the limits given when convenient. · CHARLES B. NORTON, Agent for the Trade. OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO PUBLISHERS. The Subscriber would call your earnest attention to the benefits that you will derive from sending one copy of every 86 Book you publish to -100-10 86 Geneva, Glasgow, London, Richard Griffin & Co., Trübner & Co., A. S. Barnes & Co., Chas. Scribner, Charles B. Norton, J. Smith Homans, Lovejoy & Wheeler,. David Davidson, Philadelphia, Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 102 NORTON'S LITERARY GAZETTE, New York. By so doing, you secure a NOTICE in the pages of that Journal; also, an insertion of the Title, Size, and Price in the lists of NEW PUBLICATIONS. In all instances state retail price. Parties at a distance will please forward by mail, addressed to Norton's Literary Gazette. TO THE COUNTRY BOOK TRADE. Having made very complete arrangements with the following parties in England and on the Continent: TRUBNER & CO. London; H. BOSSANGE, Paris; F. MULLER, Amsterdam; A. ASHER & CO., Berlin-the Subscriber 85, 86, 108 is enabled to import English and Foreign Books at very low prices and with great expedition. The PUBLISHER'S CIRCULAR will be supplied to the Trade at $2 per annum. COMPRISING MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED FAC-SIMILES OF ORIGINAL PAINTINGS, Scriptural, Historical, Portrait and Landscape, for the Boudoir, Drawing-Room, Albums, Framing, etc., etc. SOUTHERN LIFE AND MANNERS. The work embraces a very wide range of subjects, and will deeply interest and excite All Classes, North and South, INGRAHAM SALE. The Subscriber will attend the sale of the OF Judge INGRAHAM, To take place in PHILADELPHIA, MARCH 20th, 1855, And will be happy to purchase for all parties who may 4-3t CHARLES B. NORTON, AGENT FOR LIBRARIES. LADIES OF THE REFORMATION. The Grotto, Ulles Water, Durham Cathedral, Ballinahinch Lake, . Ben Lomond, Fancy Subjects, RAPHAEL'S CARTOONS: The Sacrifice at Lystra, Christ's Charge to Peter, Miraculous Draught, Elymas Struck Blind, Death of Ananias, Beautiful Gate, The Image Boy, is a very perfect Specimen of the at a Cottage Door, Remember the Grotto-its Companion represents an American and Continental LITERARY AGENCY, CONTINUE TO SUPPLY ENGLISH AND FOREIGN (Old and Modern) Books, Periodicals, Newspapers, Philosophical And everything connected with They possess advantages, with respect to capital and experience, which enable them successfully to compete with any London House. CONSIGNMENTS OF AMERICAN BOOKS, From all parts of the United States, are respectfully solicited; and T. & Co. are at all times prepared to make advances of ONE HALF the invoice value. CONTINENTAL AGENTS. T. & Co. believe they are the only firm in the AMERICAN business who have established Agents in Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Leipsic, LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO., etc., and dealing directly with these Agents, are able to PHILADELPHIA, as it exhibits all the open and covert workings of the Slave Respectfully announce to the Trade that they have in press The Slave, the Master, and the Country. MILLER, ORTON & MULLIGAN, Publishers, Auburn and Buffalo, And after May first, 25 Park Row, New York. Ladies of the Reformation. Memoirs of distinguished Female Characters belonging to the period of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, by the Rev. JAMES ANDERSON, author of "Ladies of the Covenant," &c., &c. 1 vol. demy 8vo., from the last London edition, illustrated. 5-2 offer superior advantages for buying and selling on the Continent. Messrs. TRUBNER & CO. having been appointed Agents for the sale of the books published by the authority of the Hon. East India Company, have just completed a Catalogue of ORIENTAL LITERATURE, containing all the Company's Books, and a selection of the best works of Continental Oriental Scholars. The Catalogue may be had of any bookseller in the United States. Norton's Literary Gazette. apparently a large per centage to assign to the Roman Catholic of the use of the version of NEW YORK, MARCH 1, 1855. We shall issue with the number of Gazette for March 15th, a Supplement, containing a full report of the late Libel Case between E. H. Fletcher and the Publisher of this paper. As we shall issue an extra quantity of 5,000, to be sent to editors and clergymen, it will afford a good opportunity for advertisers. Terms as usual. expression, of ideas, and forming a common medium of communication with the best speakers, writers, and thinkers throughout the world. A quotation from the Dublin Review would have strengthened his argument. Saxon, but the author makes the distinction be- King James, as an important part of English 66 MR. TRENCH'S NEW LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH exploded phrase, of the Saxon, he says: The adaptation of the Protestant version of the Bible in its full employment of words, both Saxon and Latin, as a mediating language between the religions of the north and south of Europe, is eloquently urged by Mr. Trench. The Norman conquest, Mr. Trench thinks, was "the making of England," though he notices the Saxon humiliation with this curious enumeration of words, which is perhaps more ingenious than convincing, since words do not always deteriorate from oppression and inferiority: "The Anglo-Saxon is not so much, as I have just called it, one element of the English language, as the foundation of it, the basis. All its joints, its whole articulation, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, proall smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the nouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, larger into sentences, these, not to speak of the grammatical natu-structure of the language, are exclusively Saxon. The Latin "We may trace, I think, a permanent record of this demay contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of goodly and pol-pression in the fact that a vast number of Teutonic words, ished hewn stones to the spiritual building, but the mortar, which have a noble and august sense in the kindred lanwith all that holds and binds these together, and constitutes guage of Germany, and evidently had once such in the them into a house, is Saxon throughout." Anglo-Saxon, have forfeited this in whole or in part, have been contented to take a lower place, while, in most instances, a word of the Latin moiety of the language has assumed the place which they have vacated. Thus 'tapfer' is valiant, a sentence without Latin, but you cannot with-courageous, but dapper' is only spruce or smart; 'prachout Saxon. It is always a pleasure to hear from Mr. Trench in the range of those studies which he has made so peculiarly his own, and we have now the satisfaction of welcoming a new series of Lectures on English, Past and Present, from his pen. He has done more in a simple, ral, easy way, to popularize the hitherto dry and recondite study of philology, than any other author. His books, rather than Horne Tooke's, are the genuine Diversions of Purley. By connecting the study of words with morality and history, he has enlarged the bounds and interest of the lexicon, so that the old joke at the expense of the clown who found the stories in the Dictionary interesting enough, he said, but rather short, would no longer hold good. The reader who seeks amusement, no less than the scholar, will find entertainment under the guidance of Mr. Trench, in the driest vocabulary. As our readers are doubtless familiar with the author's "Study of Words" and "Lessons in Proverbs," which have gone through repeated editions in England and this country, we may say that the present work, the advance proofsheets of which are before us, is in the same manner and spirit; subtle, ingenious, clear in statement, and tinctured by a sound moral, religious tone. It is the production of a scholar, while it has not a particle of pedantry; but these high qualities of Mr. Trench, which fit him so well to be a popular instructor, are well known. English, Past and Present, which is in the press of Redfield, is divided into a series of Lectures, addressed to a class in England, which respectively treat of the composition of the language, and the leading changes which it has undergone and is undergoing, arranged under the classes of foreign words introduced; old words once in use, afterward lost or rejected; words with altered meanings and variations in orthography. His suggestions and elucidations of these points are curious, and, though not always to be accepted, are frequently profound. To pick out a few of his points as matters for curious speculation for "Notes and Queries: "— Dividing the English language into a hundred parts, he makes "a rough distribution" of sixty He points out a demonstrative test of the two constituent parts of the tongue. You can write Mr. Trench, it is well known, is a clergyman thinks the work heretical. It is a writer in the man: tig,' which means proud, magnificent, has dwindled into 'pretty' taufen,' being to baptize, only appears with us as 'to dip;' 'weinen' is honest weeping in German, it is only 'whining' with us; dach' is any roof whatever, but thatch' is only a straw roof for us; 'baum' is a living tree, while 'beam' is only a piece of dead timber; in 'horn-beam," one of our trees, 'beam' still keeps its earlier use. 'Haut' of a beast. 'Stuhl,' a seat or chair, is degraded into 'stool;' while 'graben' is no longer to dig, but only to 'grub. And is skin, but its English representative is 'hide,' skin, that is, this list might be very largely increased." Mr. Trench brings up a rather neglected writer in the old translator of the seventeenth century, Philomon Holland, whose books he pronounces 66 a mine of genuine idiomatic English." Holland translated Plutarch, Livy, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and other authors. Touching the rejected words which have been attempted to be foisted on the language, Mr. Trench thinks they have not been turned out of good society without cause; and he brings a terrible list of Latinized barbarians, ogres and "One of those who has forsaken the communion of the Bible..... It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."" Not long since, in the State of Maine, suit was brought by a Catholic in one of the courts against the school commissioners for the injury sustained by his son in the loss of education, arising out of the fact that refusing to read the version of the Bible in use, he had been obliged of them to the Saxon, thirty to the Latin-direct-to leave the school from his opposition to its ly and by way of the French, five to the Greek, regulations. The case came before the Supreme and the remaining five for the waifs and strays Court, and was argued for the free public which have reached us from the Hebrew, Ara- schools by Richard H. Dana, Jr., who, among bic, Persian, Turkish, Indian, Dutch, &c. It is other points, insisted upon the benefit to the "torve," "tetric," "immorigerous," "clancular," "moliminously," &c., out of Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, et als. His list of others which have been polished and adopted is curious: "Thus 'pantomimi' (Lord Bacon) soon became 'pantomimes;' 'atomi' (Lord Brooke), atoms;' 'epocha" (Dryden, and used as late as South) became 'epoch;' 'caricatura' (Sir T. Brown), 'caricature;' 'effigies' and 'statua' (both in Shakespeare), 'effigy' and 'statue;' not otherwise 'pyramis' and 'pyramides,' which also are forms employed by him became pyramid' and 'pyramids;' 'colone' (Burton), clown;' 'apostata' (Massinger) became 'apostate;' 'despotata' (Foxe), 'despot;' 'mummia' (Webster), 'mummy;' synonyma' (Milton, prose), 'synonyms;' 'galaxias' (Foxe), galaxy;' and 'heros' (H. More), 'hero.' Nor can that slight but widely extended change of 'innocency,' 'indolen cy,' 'temperancy,' and the large family of words with similar termination, into 'innocence,' 'indolence,' 'temperance,' and the like, be regarded otherwise than as part of the same process. The same has gone on with words from other languages, as from the Italian and the Spanish; thus 'ban ditto' (Shakespeare) becomes 'bandit;' 'princessa" (Hacket) 'princess; scaramucha' (Dryden), 'scaramouch;' 'caprichio' becomes first 'caprich' (Butler), then 'caprice;, ambuscado,' 'barricado,' 'renegado,' 'hurricano' (all in Shakespeare), 'brocado' (Hackluyt), drop their foreign terminations, and severally become ambuscade,' 'barricade,' 'renegade,' 'hurricane,' 'brocade.' Other slight modifications of spelling, not in the termination, but in the body of a word, will indicate in like manner its more entire incorporation into the English language. Thus 'restoration' was at first spelt 'restauration; and so long as 'vicinage' was spelt *voisinage,' as by Bishop Sanderson, or 'mirror,' 'miroir,' as by Fuller, they could scarcely be be said to be those purely English words which now they are." An instance is given of a word in process of adoption, prestige, which is no longer written in italics as a foreign word, and the pronunciation of which is fast settling on the first syllable as an English one. To this he might have added the two words "envelope " and "depot," which are in the same transition state. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LIFE OF JOHN BINNS: twenty-nine years in Europe and fifty-three in the United States. Written by himself, with Anecdotes, political, historical, and miscellaneous. Phila., Parry & McMillan. We have had a number of autobiographies lately of different characters, by ladies and gentlemen, clergymen and actors, philosophers and showmen. Indeed, autobiography has been quite the rage, not only with writers, but, if we may believe the booksellers, with the public,-the advertisers hardly thinking it worth, while to tell us of any thing with a circulation much less than fifty thousand. The first page of the Tribune, resplendent with these announcements, will be a literary curiosity hereafter. With what a sudden and furious avidity will the future antiquarian say that the people of the Ruskin, it seems, is authority for "ornamenta United States were seized about the middle of tion." Jeremy Bentham coined a word now the nineteenth century for all sorts of biographoften employed on this side of the water, "in-ical knowledge, and upon what an extraordinaternational." "Congregational is no older than ry intellectual banquet did they satisfy themthe Puritans of the days of the Commonwealth. "Educational" was considered very illiterate when it was first employed eighteen years ago as an appendage to a magazine. Nuggets, it turns out, is an old word. Of these new comers, "solidarity" is one of the latest. Kossuth helped it along here. "Thus in North's Plutarch, p. 499: 'After the fire was quenched, they found in niggots of gold and silver mingled together, about a thousand talents; and again, p. 828: 'There was brought a marvellous great mass of treasure in niggots of gold.'” Starvation is put down for America: ""Starvation' is another word of quite recent introduc tion, formed in like manner on the model of preceding formations of a similar character-its first formers, indeed, not observing that they were putting a Latin termination to a it Saxon word. The word is an Americanism. 'Strange as may appear,' observes a writer in the Notes and Queries, 'it is nevertheless quite true that this word, now unhappily so common on every tongue, is not to be found in our own English dictionaries; neither in Todd's Johnson, published in 1826, nor in Richardson's, published ten years later, nor in Smart's Walker Remodelled, published about the same time as Richardson's. It is Webster who has the credit of importing it from his country into this, and in a supplement issued a few years ago Mr. Smart adopted it as a trivial word, but in very common and at present good use."" Here is an old authority for the school-boy colloquialism "chouse." "It has a singular origin. The word is, as I have mentioned already, a Turkish one, and signifies 'interpreter.' Such an interpreter or 'chiaous' (written chaus' in Hak luyt, ‘chiaus' in Massinger), being attached to the Turkish embassy in England, committed, in the year 1609, an enormous fraud on the Turkish and Persian merchants resident in London. He succeeded in cheating them of a sum amounting to £4,000-a sum very much greater at that day than at the present. From the vast dimensions of the fraud, and the notoriety which attended ft, any one who cheated or defrauded was said 'to chiaous,' 'chause,' or 'chouse;' to do, that is, as this 'chiaous' had done." "Emotional" is called an American word. Its use as a substitute for "evangelical" might be commented upon in its reference to changes of modes of attack on established ideas. Doing so much for other people's words, Mr. Trench has the right, perhaps, to introduce one or two of his own. Thus he handsomely adopts the so-called Americanism "lengthy," and talks himself of a verb becoming "obsolescent." On the completion of this work we may refer to it again. It is full of valuable matter. selves. Collections will then be made of the autobiographies, and shown to curious persons from a select shelf.-Fanny Fern, Mrs. Mowatt, Greeley, Wikoff, Barnum, Caldwell, Bennett. It is a fashion of the day, just as the mania for suicide has prevailed at intervals.-"Ay, this is always the way at the theatre," says Puff in the Critic, "give these fellows a good thing, and they never know when to have done with it." There is a serious view to be taken of these matters, and we might be disposed to urge it if we were writing an essay; for the present we must be content with the remark that we protest against books like some of those which have passed rapidly into vogue, being taken as any profound indication of the public mind; and we object decidedly to the interpretation being put upon them in England or elsewhere, as evidences of national character. We are not a nation of egotists, adventurers, or knaves. There is some seriousness and earnest purpose left in the world yet. One year hence, where will most of these volumes of so many editions be? Already a man is a bore who names some of the best circulated of them in an intelligent company. The fast books like the fast men soon exhaust their constitutions. shifting incidents of our own development in America during the half century. Mr. Binns, who was a member of the London Corresponding Society, had his full share of injury and imprisonment at the hands of the English Government when he came to take refuge in America with Priestley at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania. Here he entered upon a new career, a democrat, of course, publishing in the interior of the State the Republican Argus, and, coming to Philadelphia in 1807, in the days of Duane and the Aurora, to establish the Democratic Press. In his political course, Mr. Binns was soon thrown upon the war scenes of 1812, and exerted himself with the zeal of a wronged gentleman from Ireland, against the iniquities of old England, which were then such as are not likely soon to be practiced upon our national rights and selfrespect again. In the Jackson campaign he was opposed to that leader, and made his journal well known throughout the country by the "coffin handbill" inscriptions which he printed, levelled at Old Hickory for the alleged sacrifice of the "six militia men." The taste and propriety of such partisan warfare might admit of question. We presume Mr. Binns, were he now called upon for an opinion, would admit that the contest might have been better carried on without such expedients. In one of his editorial skirmishes Mr. Binns narrowly escaped "gouging," and has given a vivid account of the affair. Valuable, however, as the book may be for its political lessons, its chief interest to us is in the occasional personal observations and anecdotes of things and persons passed away and become memorable. In his Dublin experiences Mr. Binns fell in with the current which then flowed to the pulpit of the celebrated Dean Kirwan, who has left after him a traditional reputation of the most successful charity sermon preacher of modern times. One or two new anecdotes of Kirwan are worth quoting.-He was expected to preach for his parish an annual charity sermon, which one year he declined, perhaps tired for the moment of his vocation. "Do you suppose," said he to the ladies who called upon him, "that charity sermons spring up like mushrooms? If you do, let me tell you that you are very much mistaken." The next year he made amends by a burst of eloquence which he built upon this very refusal,-pointing to the children and asking God's forgiveness if he had wronged them. One of his figures, as given from memory by Mr. Binns, is very happy, occurring in a charity sermon in times like the present with us: "Why," he concluded a discourse, "should I anticipate a collection less liberal than on former occasions? The times, melancholy and distressing as they are, have not taken one ray from the sun of pleasure, why then should they snatch a pillar from the throne of mercy?" But whatever may be the sins of others, John Binns, in his autobiography before us, has none of the fashions of the day to answer for, since, venerable octagenarian as he is, he was urged by personages no less than Dr. Priestley and Dr Cooper, more than fifty years ago, to write an account of his life. He had then, at the age of thirty, a story to relate worth the telling, as he came at the beginning of the century fresh from the trials and persecutions of English sedition laws levelled at Reformers, whose propositions have since that time either been granted or would now be regarded as the common-places of Dr. Samuel Parr was one of the friends of political agitation; and we may add that the American sequel of the writer's experiences is perhaps of greater interest. We have heard from many quarters the story of the wrongs of Ireland and of the men in England who sympathized with those redoubtable leaders, Hardy and Horne Tooke; but few have marked the rapidly Reform with whom our author became acquainted. There is nothing new presented about him but this anecdote of the way in which the Doctor once helped himself to a shoulder of mutton: Mrs. Toms, the lady at Warwick, with whom he was dining, asked him if he would take a slice of it. "If," said the Doctor, "you |