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stands in most striking and unpleasing contrast to the carefulness of other similar parts of the volume. Of the pains which, elsewhere, Dr Hefele has taken, in order to clear up difficult or contested points, there is, in this portion of the volume, no trace. Without claiming for the Church legislation of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors more than its due share of importance, we must remark, that this hurrying over the insular in favour of the continental part of his subject, is unfair and unbecoming. It is doing, and as unreasonably, the opposite of what some writers, as Hardwick, has done, who give a disproportionate share of attention to the ecclesiastical minutiae of the Anglo-Saxon period. Dr Hefele has given considerably less attention to the Church History of Britain than has been done, we shall not say by grave historians, but by our poets, Wordsworth and Henry Taylor-the former in his "Ecclesiastical Sketches," the latter in his "Edwin the Fair." We hope that, in Dr Hefele's future volumes, the injustice of the present one will be repaired. Filling up a gap, as his work does, its circulation should extend beyond Germany; and the better filled up its whole plan, the more likely is this to be the case.

Schleiermacher. Ein Characterbild.

Basel: Dettloff.

V. Dr C. A. AUBERLEN. 1860.

IF Schleiermacher has influenced Britain and the United States less than Neander and Tholuck, he has influenced Germany far more than either. No theologian since Luther's time has filled a larger place in the public mind. The little work before us seeks to give a thoroughly fair and judicial appreciation of his character and work. Schleiermacher is described in his family life; in his patriotic wishes and exertions, especially in Prussia's seven years' agony between Jena and Leipsic; in his capacities as a preacher, a lecturer, and a writer on theology and general literature. While full justice is done to his varied and signal merits, Dr Auberlen's sense of duty to the living prevents him from delivering a mere panegyric on the great departed whom he commemorates. Schleiermacher's deficient views both of sin and of justification are clearly and faithfully pointed out.

Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes. Par L. FIGUIER.

I. and II. Paris, 1860.

DURING the recent Revivals, persons hostile or indifferent to them called attention to various manifestations of enthusiasm on the Continent in former times. Of some of these the able and carefullywritten volumes before us give an account. In a somewhat lengthy introduction, M. Figuier describes the marvellous, as it was professedly exhibited in the times of ancient heathenism, Oriental and Classical. The Demonopathy of the Middle Ages is next considered. Proceeding to his more special subject, M. Figuier narrates the terrible story of the Ursuline nuns of Loudon, who, by their accusations of sorcery, sent the unfortunate priest, Urban Grandier, to the stake.

This tragedy, the reader may remember, forms a very striking chapter of the "Celebrated Crimes" of Alexandre Dumas. The Jansenist "Convulsionnaires," in the early part of the reign of Louis XV., form the concluding portion of the first volume. The most generally interesting part of the second volume is that which treats of the "Prophets" among the persecuted Protestants of the south of France, in the first generation of the "Desert," the era of Jean Cavalier and Antoine Court. M. Figuier has prepared his readers for the circumstances in which these supernatural pretensions were made, by a carefully drawn-up account of the cruelties to which the Calvinists were exposed under Louis XIV. Their pastors exiled, their teachers silenced, their family life broken up, injury in deed only varied by insult in word, the name of Frenchman refused, that of man scarcely given, what wonder that the enthusiasm, which to a very small extent (among the Gibbites) appeared in Scotland under the Stuart persecutions, should have, on a far larger scale, pervaded the Camisards? M. Figuier recognises in these appearances "a special and epidemic malady of the nervous system, engendered by the long sufferings to which the Protestants of the south had been exposed." A considerable amount of interest in the supernatural claims of the "French Prophets" was excited in England at the time. Various persons of distinction professed belief in these claims; and eminent divines, both of the Church and the Dissenters, deemed it necessary to write, disproving their pretensions. M. de Felice, in his recent History of the French Protestants, draws a parallel between the peasant girl Isabeau Vincent and Joan of Arc. "The religious phenomenon is absolutely the same. If the English had triumphed in the fifteenth century, the shepherdess of Vancouleurs would be, in the estimate of historians, only a poor peasant girl led astray by foolish hallucinations."

M. Figuier's work is an important contribution to Church History, as well as to the philosophy of the human mind in its more morbid appearances. The author has by it increased the reputation which his previous work on Alchemy had deservedly gained him.

Der Westgothische Arianismus. V. A. HELFFERICH. Berlin: Springer. 1860.

Uber das Leben d. Ulphilas. V. D. W. PRESSELL. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck. 1860.

THE bypaths of Church History have furnished occasion to many carefully-executed monographs from German pens, and the two little works before us show that the list still increases. They are both (with allowance made for the theological laxity of the former author) interesting, as casting some light upon the extent to which Arianism prevailed, and the manner in which it was partially modified, among the Gothic invaders of the Roman Empire. General Church histories are by no means satisfactory upon this topic. The writings of the heterodox party have been consigned to destruction, and much must now be mere matter of conjecture. All the more on account of the

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obscurity of the subject must the labours of the learned writers before us be welcome to the student.

Histoire de la Reformation Francaise. Par F. PUAUX. Paris: Levy. 1860.

OUR school collections now include among their poetical extracts the noble lay of Macaulay on Ivry. But, if the least poetical, undoubtedly the most Huguenot stanza is generally omitted. What more in keeping with the glad exultation of the victorious Calvinists than

"We of the religion have borne us best in fight,

And the good lord of Rosny hath ta'en the cornet white.

Up with it high, unfurl it wide, that all the host may know How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His Church such woe!"

The chequered, stirring, and bloody struggle, of which Ivry was the last great combat, was first adequately brought before the cultivated mind of Europe by Davila, in his "Guerre Civili di Francia." But the Italian historian has presented the civil rather than the religious aspect of the story to his readers; and, with all his merits of narrative, reflection, and character-painting, is too much "politique par livre," as De Retz says of Mazarin, to sympathise with the better part of the Huguenot section of Frenchmen. Since he wrote, the story of the French Reformation has been told in a variety of publications on the other side of the Channel and on this, and never more frequently than in this century. Sometimes, as in the Chronique de Charles IX., of Merimée, fiction has found a fertile theme in the vicissitudes and intrigues in which the chiefs of the party were involved. On other occasions new light has been thrown on obscure or contested portions of the Huguenot story, by the publication of letters, memoirs, and miscellaneous writings of the Reformation era. Attention has been of late specially paid to provincial Calvinist history. The materials accumulated in former times, or presented by contemporary research, have given to various German historians, as Soldan and Ebeling, opportunity to narrate, with interest and vigour, the history of the revolt of a French minority against Rome. Ranke, intermediate between his former German and his present English historical labours, has given to a public, ever and justly welcoming his compositions, an authoritative work on the France of the sixteenth century. In this country, notwithstanding the works of Browning, Smedley, Sir J. Stephen, and others, there is still room for a history really worthy of the subject. If no Englishman soon rise to fill up this gap, perhaps the United States may furnish a worthy companion narrative to the great work of Motley.

Meanwhile, the work of M. Puaux is well worthy of the careful appreciation of the historical student. In no country have historical labours been, of late, prosecuted with greater continuousness, painstaking, and success, than in France. The now venerable heads of the

French historical school-Guizot, Villemain, Amedée Thierry-have had the pleasure of welcoming an uninterrupted band of younger writers, not unworthy to carry on this part of the literary succession. Among these may be, without hesitation, classed the writer before us. What of late De Broglie has done for the Empire of the fourth century, M. Puaux has effected for the French Protestantism of the sixteenth. His work is removed alike from the bareness and unsatisfactoriness of an abridgment, and from the overdone accumulation of a too prolonged chronicle. Availing himself of the labours of predecessors, turning to account the researches of contemporaries, he has made the work completely his own by the spirit in which it has been composed. Industry is competent to collect materials; literary power only can assort and fuse them. Differing sometimes from his view of occurrences, dissenting here and there from his estimate of characters, now and then holding an opposite view as to the proportion and the colouring of parts of his historical picture, we still warmly and confidently recommend M. Puaux's volumes to our readers. The work has placed its author among the first authors of the French Protestant Church.

The Works of the Rev. John Maclaurin. Edited by W. H. GOOld, D.D., Edinburgh. In two vols. Edinburgh: John Maclaren. 1860.

AMONG the Scottish Presbyterian divines of last century, none is entitled to a higher place, or has actually obtained a greater name, than JOHN MACLAURIN. Though his writings have never been so popular or so extensively useful as those of Boston, Willison, and the Erskines, yet, in intellectual power, and in many of the attributes of true genius, Maclaurin will by most be considered superior to these distinguished men. His was an understanding of a very uncommon order, at once profound and subtle, remarkable alike for its vigour and its comprehensiveness. He was also a man of fine culture an 1 high accomplishments. His noble faculties were well trained and fitly exercised; were called into play by worthy literary labours, and directed to the elucidation of the grandest themes. As a theologian, a preacher, and a pastor, he held in his own day the highest rank; and with all competent judges he will never suffer any diminution of his fame.

The late Dr John Brown, no mean judge of theological merit or literary excellence, styled Maclaurin "the most profound and eloquent Scottish theologian of the last century;" and also declared him to be "scarcely less intellectual than Butler, while as spiritual as Leighton." This is high praise; but not too high in the estimation of those who have studied Maclaurin's character in his works. These works show a philosophic power, a depth and subtlety of thought, a literary finish, and a majestic eloquence, seldom found united in any theological performances whatever, and certainly unequalled by any Scottish divine of his age. One sermon, "Glorying in the Cross of Christ," is enough of itself to make a high reputation. Though, perhaps, somewhat too rhetorical in style for modern taste, it must ever be regarded

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as a noble composition, charged with evangelical doctrine, abounding in original thoughts, and adorned with the finest imagery. Several other sermons of this truly remarkable man, such as, "The Sins of Men not Chargeable against God," "The Law Magnified by the Redeemer," and "Prejudices against the Gospel," are of the same stamp, and exhibit that deep philosophic power characteristic of their author.

Maclaurin's miscellaneous works, especially his "Treatise on the Prophecies relative to the Messiah," and his " Essay on Christian Piety," which last was unfortunately left unfinished,—are all worthy of his powers as a philosophic theologian. They contain views which seem to anticipate some of the most important speculations of the present age, and show how much at home their author would have been in a chair of theology or of moral philosophy. The pulpit and the Church courts claimed such a man, and greatly needed him in his day; and probably it was better that he was never tempted or rewarded with the honours of an academic chair. But no position in the Church or in a Scottish university would have been too high for a man of his exalted character and extraordinary powers.

John Maclaurin was born in 1693, and was the eldest son of the minister of the parish of Glendaruel, Argyleshire. He had two brothers, the elder of whom, Daniel, died young, after giving proof of great genius, while the younger, Colin, lived to be one of the greatest mathematicians of his age. Having studied divinity at Glasgow and at Leyden, he was in 1717 ordained minister at Luss, a well-known parish situated on the shore of Lochlomond. His high theological attainments and remarkable pulpit eloquence soon made him extensively known in the west of Scotland, and procured him, in 1723, a call to Glasgow, where he became minister of what was then known as the North-west Parish. As a parish minister, on whom devolved most onerous and constantly-increasing duties, as an eloquent preacher, as a leader of the Evangelical party in the Church courts, and as a publicspirited citizen, ever forward to promote the good of the community, Mr Maclaurin took his place among the foremost, and won the affectionate admiration of a large circle of friends. Thus, while one distinguished brother filled with the highest credit the chair of mathematics in Edinburgh, the other was acknowledged to be one of the most prominent men in the rival city of Glasgow, then rapidly increasing in importance.

As might have been expected of such a man, Mr Maclaurin supported the popular or Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland, and especially endeavoured to mitigate the rigour with which a prevailing majority in the General Assembly were already beginning in his day to enforce the obnoxious law of patronage. Yet extreme counsels were foreign to his calm intellect, and he did not take such high ground on the popular side as some of his more ardent coadjutors could have wished. But all that was evangelical in principle, or spiritual in religion, found in him a firm and intelligent friend. He took a lively interest in the revivals at Kilsyth and Cam