that the difficulty of the site is the slightest excuse for the Taylor Building. We wonder that Parker's shop has not been subjected to a domiciliary visit from Wadham, relating to a passage at p. 90, about the authorized iniquities which were here perpetrated at the time of the Reformation;' we might hope, rather than believe, that there is a misprint for Rebellion.

'The Law of the Offerings, by Andrew Jukes,' (Nisbet,) is a dull book written by a Dissenter, who was formerly a Clergyman.

'The Churchman's Companion,' (Masters,) has completed its first volume: the amount of pains and unrewarded labour in getting these little periodicals together is as great as the usefulness of the work itself, which deserves support in every way.

'The Geography of Palestine, by Mr. M'Leod, late Master of the Battersea Model School,' (Longmans,) seems accurate. We had rather attribute to ignorance than to any more serious cause the very incorrect statement: 'within the last few years there has been appointed a Bishop of Jerusalem.' But in a more responsible quarter, the formal Calendar of King's College, London, we are distressed to find the late Dr. Alexander described, without any qualification, as 'Bishop of Jerusalem.'

"The Paradise of the Christian Soul,' (Burns,) has been completed: it contains a Preface by the editor, Dr. Pusey, the importance of which, under present circumstances, it would be difficult to overstate With all this respected writer's fulness, the present document is unusually lucid and explicit.

'Christ in His Passion,' (J. H. Jackson,) a set of Holy Week Lectures, by Mr. Trevor, of York. In this little volume is a good deal of what we think suitable to the occasion-a vivid pictorial character leading to meditation. But the writer is deficient in a reverent handling of the more awful details of his subject he is more frequently picturesque than solid, and there is a haze and heat in his language which may be accounted for by noticing the fact, that the lectures were composed at Bangalore.' We are quite at issue with Mr. Trevor on his arrangement of the events of the Holy Week.

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The 'More Bishops' Question' is taking a turn somewhat more expansive than has been thought of in Downing-street. In a pamphlet, 'Preachers, Pastors, and Bishops', (Hamilton and Adams,) a Mr. Love proposes that the British Wesleyan Church' should at once launch out with an additional staff of 'thirty-two bishops, sixteen hundred pastors, and eight hundred preachers,' (p. 58.) With this formidable hierarchy in the City-road, it behoves us to be stirring.

'A Plain Address to my Household, by a Clergyman,' (Masters,) calls attention to the duty of a priest ruling over his own household. An important subject well treated.

Enchiridion Juvenile,' (Bathoniæ: Simms,) an affecting manual of devotional exercises for school boys. Though not strictly published, it may be procured of Mr. Simms.

'Confirmation considered Doctrinally and Practically,' (Masters,) is one of the best tracts which we have seen on the subject; and contrasts very favourably

with what its preface strongly criticizes, the whole collection on this ordinance, published by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, which, as a single collection, we are disposed to rate at a low estimate.

"The Law of the Anglican Church the Law of the Land,' (Masters,) enunciates a truism; to which unhappily time has appended another, that it is a sort of law which lies more on paper than in act.

'An Earnest Exhortation to Confession,' (Masters,) is an affecting tract on a subject which, of all others the most practically important, is least suitable for this form of urging it. The language, too, is exaggerated.

‘A Hymn and Chant for the Harvest Home of 1847, by Mr. M. F. Tupper,' (Hatchard,) are very striking: the former is especially beautiful. The Chant is not a chant a chant is a musical, not a metrical, expression; and these lines, written in Mr. Tupper's remarkable measured rhythm, will not fall into the church tones; still less into the modern double chants. The diction and thoughts are admirable. We could have spared the second stanza of the Hymn; 'palace' and 'valleys' are neither a rhyme nor a legitimate assonance.

We have seen a Circular addressed from authority to British chaplains abroad, prescribing a clause to be inserted in the Litany, and also a special prayer for the Sovereign of the country in which the English congregation is assembled. This is as it should be; and, if it is to be used in Rome, this direction forms a remarkable contrast to a petition which was once in the Anglican Litany.

'Ranke's History of Servia,' has been well translated by Mrs. Alexander Kerr, (Murray.) This, still the debateable land between the cross and the crescent, is perhaps the most remarkable and least known country in Europe. What its future destiny may be it is hard to conjecture; but one day it, with the other provinces south of the Danube, must form an important element in European politics. Countries on which the waves of opposed principles break, often preserve a singular and strongly defined nationality: that of Servia has a character quite peculiar. Not the least noticeable aspect of the moral condition of the Servians consists in the evident traces of heathenism which have scarcely been fused by the slow and incomplete action of the Church.

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There is a great deal of technical knowledge and accurate study displayed in the two handsome volumes, Hints on Glass Painting, &c. by an Amateur,' (J. H. Parker); and the volume of illustrations consists not only of singularly clear and effective wood-cuts, but of well-drawn pieces of glass. The range of illustration we thought rather narrow; and there is an unquestionable awkwardness in some of the sketches being uncoloured. To some portion of the chapter on the employment of painted glass at the present day, we express an objection:'My opinion is decidedly hostile to symbols: to some persons they are offensive, to most they are unintelligible, and in very few perhaps of those who do understand their meaning, are they capable of awakening any sentiments of piety or veneration. If any interest attaches to ancient symbols, it is an antiquarian interest . . . . . modern copies are an unreal mockery. unless we could revive the modes of thinking which rendered them interesting and impressive symbols cannot be better than frigid and idle ornaments,' &c. (Vol. i. pp 231, 232.) It would have been as well for the author to have said what

he meant by symbols; as it stands, the whole page is simply unintelligible. There is again, in our judgment, an imperfect, or rather an overstrained, estimate of the capabilities of glass painting in the observation (p. 241) that Michael Angelo's 'great picture in the National Gallery, or Raphael's Cartoons, would form, with a little modification, a good design for a glass painting.' We go a good deal with the present writer in his sensible protest against reviving the bad drawing and the grotesque artistic incapacity of medieval glass painters. We see no reason at all why figures in the glass of our own times, where figures are introduced, should not be drawn both correctly and with the proper religious expression; but to feel this is by no means to assert the identity, for pictorial purposes, of canvass and wood on the one hand, and of such a very peculiar medium as glass on the other. Unreality comes in when glass is made to do the work of any other substance, especially such a ground as canvass. Mr. Pugin fails when he transfers mere wall-painting, or the sentiment and depth of a fresco, with its solid masses of colour unchecked by whites, to glass; but this blunder, as we deem it, is as nothing to that of copying a great Italian oil picture in a window, even with the convenient proviso of 'with some modifications.' Not only does the difference of medium, glass and canvass, compel a different treatment of shadows in the two styles, but all the other accessories, such as the light under which to view the picture, the mechanical difference of vehicle, oil in the one case, the furnace in the other, and, above all, the stiff artificial outline of leading, point to the necessity of recognising a different ideal for each. And this distinction is to be made not in modifying details, but in setting out with different principles. The conventionality of art, though the deference which we pay to its appeal, however varied, flows from a common origin in the mind, is so changeful in its applications, that to confound them is to refuse to art one of its chief characteristics, a plastic yet comprehensive nature, which adapts itself to a wide range of empire, in various modifications, both over sensuous and material subjects. We admit a certain adaptation of marble to stand for the Panathenaic Procession; we yield to a coloured and varnished cloth its claims to represent the same subject. But under what different conditions-with what a different feeling-how widely distinct are the conventional admissions which we are called upon to make in the two cases! The artists address two separate modifications of our faculties. Form, in the case of sculpture; light and shadow, distance and aerial effect, in the case of painting; breadth of colour in the instance of stained glass, may be settled as the characteristics of the three arts. And though all three constituents may have their place in each one of these arts, yet the prime characteristic of each must not be sacrificed to a subordinate, as must be the case where glass, which ought chiefly to deal in a broad surface of tincture, simply as tincture, aims at great and impracticable effects of light and shade, as in reproducing the Raising of Lazarus.' The large glass picture of Rubens' 'Descent from the Cross,' at S. Bride's, will serve as an illustration. Glass has an ample and successful, however defined, domain if its friends will be content to keep it there. In all this part of his work the present author seems scarcely to understand the main requirements of art, as when he praises (p. 254) the same glass both for 'atmospheric effect' and for 'statuesque character;' and it only betrays a confusion of mind if passages which seem to recognise the peculiar and restricted sphere and purpose of glass can be produced. However, the book is well worth reading;

and we wish it success at the same time expressing a desire that its tone had been more ecclesiastical. The writer misunderstands (p. 300) one objection to the Italian revival of art: it would run, that this or that artist were blameable, not for making his naked figures anatomically correct, but antecedently for making them, in religious subjects, naked at all. We are not adopting or defending Montalembert's objection; but it may as well be fairly stated. And perhaps glass painting is even more than its sister art of canvass painting, calculated, from certain mechanical imperfections inseparable from its constitution, to produce that really religious impression which should be the sole object of art strictly and specifically christian; namely, in that it rather seeks to call out thoughts of the dignified, the beautiful, and the unearthly, than it aims to reproduce or to copy the actual forms of nature. In other words, glass painting is, or ought to be, rather suggestive than physically mimetic. Hence, too, from this its suggestive character, glass painting is bound more strictly to adhere to that law of the religious picture, which, to the entire sacrifice of originality and novelty in design, is content to follow implicitly the recognised and received types of Christian art.

It is enough to announce a new volume of 'Sermons by Archdeacon Manning,' (Burns,) simply observing, that in depth and beauty, and especially in consolidation of style, it exceeds its justly valued predecessors.

Two valuable Charges have appeared during the quarter: one by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, (Rivingtons); and one by Archdeacon Wilberforce, (Murray). Of Sermons, that of the Bishop of Oxford, preached before the University, at the meeting of the British Association, (Rivingtons,) claims precedence on all accounts. We have also seen a Visitation Sermon, The Education of the Heart, by Mr. Ellison, of Edensor,' (Hatchard.)

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