But such amusements and recreations you regard as unministerial. You should study carefully A Discourse uttered in Part at Ammauskeag Falls in the Fishing Season, 1739. By Joseph Seacombe. John xxi: 3.' The topic of the worthy divine, drawn from the words of St. Peter I go a-fishing' and the reply of the apostles we also go with thee' is this: Business and Diversion inoffensive to God, and necessary for the Comfort and Support of Human Society. For certain ones so devout they cannot smile nearer to the Sabbath than Wednesday, he remarks Some so muffle up Christianity, and make it look so melancholy, sickly and sour, that inconsiderate people are apt to dread its commands.' If you are shy of diversion and a good, natural, jolly time and plead the demands of business, beware of coming within reach of the sarcasm of Locke. Some men may be said never to divert themselves; they cannot turn aside from business for they never do any."" The above as a specimen of the author's racy style will give an insight into the way this effective life-story is treated. We surmise the book will be read not only by the boys and girls, but by many others with young hearts and a liking for adventure. In its vivid pictures of Rocky Mountain and other Western scenery it will do the same kind of service for our country that is done in their different yet similar sphere by Bierstadt, Hill, and our great landscape painters who are turning from the hackneyed schools of ancient art to the fresh, unexplored fields of Nature. The new Unitarian Sunday School Hymn, Tune, and Service Book is before us, a large and full work of the kind, containing two hundred pages. It is arranged in two volumes which may be bound together or separately. The first part contains the service book of eighty pages, in which are thirtythree services consisting of Scripture reading and prayer, with references to appropriate hymns. To these are added a collection of prayers for opening and closing a school. These services are well and carefully written and arranged, in sentiment inclining to the conservative side of the church for which they are prepared. The second and larger part contains an admirable collection of hymns and tunes. The music is almost wholly a selection from books already in use, and aims to include the best of those compositions to which the schools have become most attached. The quality of the work indicates the great labor and care bestowed on it. An excellent feature of this work is in the copious indexes given; in the service book of topics, and in the hymn and tune book, besides the alphabetical list of both hymn and tunes, a full classified index of subjects with a still closer subdivision into special topics. This cannot but be of great assistance to a chorister and save much time and painful waiting. On the whole we like the work, but for our own Sunday Schools should hardly recommend it as so well adapted to our need as some of those we have already in use. Books of the Month. MEMOIR OF JAMES P. WALKER, with Selections from his Writings. Edited by Rev. Thomas B. Fox. Boston: American Unitarian Association. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL Hymn, Tune and Service Book. PRIZE STORY BOOK SERIES. FATHER GABRIELLE'S FAIRY. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SALVATION. A Discussion Literary and Artistic. A new book of unusual interest is an nounced through the circulars of J. B. Ford & Co., New York. It is a "Life of Jesus, the Christ," by Henry Ward Beecher. In making this announcement, the publishers state the peculiar office and object of the work, that while it can add nothing to the facts or theories set forth in the one hundred and seventy-five different lives of Christ written within the last century, onehalf, indeed, and that by far the abler half within the last thirty years, yet since the ablest of these are the productions of English German and French minds, and are written more to the popular mind of these nations than our own, there is yet needed the work of a representative American, in his ripe years of his culture and experience, to meet the wants of religious thinkers in America. Of Mr. Beecher's fitness for this work there will probably be little question. While his impulsive and somewhat illogical mind make him hardly a safe leader in the theological world, yet his enthusiasm in the service of his Master, his vital sympathy with all good works and holy living, his fine and reverent appreciation of all that is sacred and ennobling and sublime in life, human or divine, make him peculiarly en rapport with the great theme he proposes to consider. It cannot fail to be both a popular and a permanent addition to American religious liter ature. The work is to be issued in two styles, plain and illustrated. The best artists are employed on the maps, engravings and wood cuts. It will be sold only by subscription, and the canvassing will not begin until May next. The first number of The Agitator makes its appearance with Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Walker as Editors. It is a good-sized and well-looking quarto, with excellent names among its contributors. Besides the editorials, and the first instalment of a story by Mrs. Livermore, we notice the names of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Dickinson, Judge Waite, Hon. S. Tyndale and others. The new paper will undoubtedly meet with wide and warm support. After a large auction sale of valuable paintings by eminent artists of this country and Europe, Childs & Co. have rehung their gallery with many new paintings added to the previous fine collection. Chief among the attractions, aside from Wust's Swiss Waterfall, of which we have spoken before, are two large pictures by that eminent colorist, Geo. L. Brown. New York Bay and City at sunrise, besides being very faithful to the scene represented, as those tell us who are familiar with the sail up the harbor, is especially fine as a portrayal of sunrise effect on sky and water. Bay of Naples, from Virgil's tomb, near sunset, makes a finer and more pleasing picture, while in coloring it is no less successful. The purple sunset light, — which we see in New England only at the close of some balmy Italian day, but which is native to those southern skies, – laves all the bay with liquid splendor, and wraps in its pale mantle the distant, smoking Vesuvius. It clothes the sunny sides of the tower with burnished gold, and in its slanting light tree and shrub glow with tropical luxuriance. It is a warm, rich, sunny picture of one of the most beautiful scenes in the world. A Sea View during a storm, by H. Brown, of Portland, seems to us a very spirited and successful treatment of surf breaking on the rocky beach, with green, angry, foam-capped billows, above and beyond which the cliffs loom like shadowy spectres through the fog and mist. A miniature delineation of horse-cars in a rainy evening, with their dusky outlines and red and green lights, together with the accessories of the street, the lamps making visible the sidewalk beneath, the umbrellashielded pedestrians, and the dark portico of what looks like the Tremont House, is a novel and happy conception for a picture. A head in water-colors on porcelain, by Johnson, of the Studio Building, is a study, Almost every one has seen the crayon sketch, or the photograph from it, of "The Motherless," by Chas. H. Barry. Those two sad and sweet young faces have won so enviable a reputation for the artist that he has been induced to supplement them with a companion picture, which he calls "The Fairy Story." It represents a grave little maiden with her eyes bent on her book, an expres-ion of pleased interest lighting the quiet face as she reads, while the face of a child who nestles at her side, peeps out at the beholder, fairly radiant with delight at the charming story. The merit of the pic-not only for its beauty, but for the fineness ture centres in this "rare and radiant" little face. The older one seems to fail, either in the conception, or its expression of the artist's idea. We can but wish that Mr. Barry would give the subject a second trial, in which the genius and skill that could produce such a child-face should vivify the other with the same life and spirit. and delicacy of its execution. We are acquiring the English penchant for pictures in water colors. At Williams & Everett's is an ideal head in water-colors by Miss Hughes, which she calls, "Looking through Gates Ajar." It is a bright, pleasing face, with an intent expression in the fixed eyes, and we might call it "Day-Dreams,” or “ Anticipa 66 tion;" but it seems hardly spiritual enough, hardly sufficient exaltation and rapt wonder in the expression, to warrant that suggestive appellation. Several tine English chromos from landscapes in water-colors, have lately been added to the large variety of these pictures for sale by this firm. Good paintings may always be seen at this store. The principal attraction for the last week or two, however, has been the drawings in India ink of "The RatCatcher and his Dogs," and "Innocence," by John Carter, an Englishman, the former of which sold, a few days since, for four thousand dollars. These little drawings evince great genius and skill; but what chiefly excited wonder and interest is the fact that the pencil which drew their true and delicate lines was held in the mouth of the artist. John Carter was a mechanic, who, when quite a young man, so injured his spine by a fall from a tree as to cause a paralysis of his whole body below the neck. In this helpless state he lived many years; and to while away his weary time he hit upon the work in which he achieved such strange and signal success. Having in his more fortunate days been an excellent draughtsman, and having accidentally heard of some drawings made by the mouth instead of the hand, he procured pencils and paints, and commenced the novel recreation; and from a simple painted butterfly, his first effort, he went on through slow years of effort, until his genius could embody itself in such works as those on exhibition. "Innocence," a child face and bust, the hands clasping flowers to the breast, the design of which he copied from a print, is equal in its execution to the finest mezzotint engraving. "The Rat Catcher" is finished like coarse-line engraving, and is remarkable for its life and spirit. There is a world of enjoyment in the face of the old man, half concealed by the slouched hat, as he sits on a log, as intent on his terriers as they on their game; and every separate hair of every dog is alive to its tip in the exciting battle, whose spoils can already be counted, lying dead and limp around. The gifted and unfortunate artist did not live to receive the fame and fortune his recreations are now winning. Among paintings, B erstadt's "Burning Whaler" attracts much attention,— a night scene on the broad ocean, in which moonlight and firelight are portrayed in a manner characteristic of that master of light and color. The glare of the burning ship falling red and fiery across the waves, half lighting and half-shrouding in deeper blackness the boat's-load pushing off from the doomed vessel, in sharp contrast to the pale moonlight which silvers the distant water, makes a thrilling and impressive picture. It is a historical painting, representing the burning of one of our Pacific whalers by the Rebel privateer Shenandoah, that wrought such havoc on the seas in the earlier years of the war. Hill has another "Yo-Semite," — looking southwest from the valley. We can never have too many of those grand California scenes while they are painted by such artists as Bierstadt and Hill. "The Snow-Storm," by Morviller, is so full of falling snow that it is naturally difficult to see the picture. The unfortunate sleigh-riders who are caught out in it are plainly enough visible in the foreground, and the dark outlines of trees from under which they are urging their horse towards shelter; a half-obscured mansion is shadowed forth behind them, but beyond this all fades into the blur and blank of a real snow-storm. Among the attractions is a fruit piece by Dunning, who as a fruit painter is said to have not more than one rival in the country. It is certainly the best representation of fruit we have ever seen, and the fig box and apples and oranges are a new wonder to us every time we look at them. Hinckley has made a companion picture to his deer in autumn, with the same happy treatment of rock and turf, and the same central figure of the deer on the highest knoll. This is a summer and more of a forest scene than the other. tranquil landscape, which is full of suggestion and interest to us. Two nice bits of color are a South America Humming Bird, poised on a branch, with a long two-pointed tail, and the most glossy and brilliant plumage,—a study from life; and a branch of apple-blossoms, a foretaste of the coming May. Both are by M. J. Heade. Hardy, of Bangor, has a merry little elf of a child on the steps of the house-door, working mischief with grandmother's knitting as she tosses the ball to her kitten, who springs at the trailing bait, after the manner of her species. And Guy of New York has a charming representation of a not unfamiliar scene in child-life, in two children and a dog, the older child placing on the dog's back the little one, who, half-pleased and half-afraid, shrinks and clings timorously to the other; while the great, honest dog stands patiently, the willing servant of their sport. A hunter's dog with a pheasant in his mouth by Morse is a picture which calls up the ghosts of the old bounding dogs of our acquaintance, as they used to return from the successful hunt. Thomas Gaylord, a son of one of our wellknown clergymen, is spoken of by good judges as a young artist of much promise. We have lately seen three flower-pieces of his, designed for panel decorations, drawn with a freer hand and more glowing tints than are common with flower-painters, who are apt to be timid with color. Each picture contained a large antique vase, beside which the flowers were thrown in a brilliant mass, ready to be arranged. They were struck out with a bold and careless hand, in whose freedom lies the promise above the slow and careful touch that elaborates the delicate blossoms of our picture-stores. The superb illustrations of the Doré Bible give their famous author a new reputation in America, and there may be a fresh interest for our readers in what a foreign critic has to say of two of his former great works. Grand as these sublime fictions may be, however, it is not probable that any of our readers expect the opportunity of comparing them with any original, and finding them "true to life," or rather, true to death. "But the two canvases, which once seen never leave the mind, are the two terrible chefs d'œuvre of Dante's Inferno. Each may measure twenty-five by thirty feet; the figures are life-size. In one, taken from the thirty-second canto of the Inferno, Virgil and Dante have come to the ninth circle, and advance on a lake of ice of vast magnitude. On every side, the damned, condemned to eternal cold, are visible, plunged to their waists in the lake, their faces violet with the freezing atmos phere;' their chattering teeth and ‘agonized eyes,' attesting to the intensity of their torment. The former are livid and horrible, yet so real to the eye that it seems no shadowy realm into which one gazes, but a vast desert of gloom and woe, lost in a mist that veils some undefined and greater evil. The color is gray, and scarcely relieved by the trailing crimson robe, which Dante wears without folds. There is no indication of landscape, nothing to break the solemn stretch of pain and desolation on which Virgil and Dante gaze calmly, with stern, unmoved faces. The other scene represents innumerable men and women in the convulsive movements of torture. The figures are nude, the anatomy wonderful, the design terrible, the color livid; a woman in the foreground, writhing on the earth, seems to personify all that the imagination can conceive of agony, remorse, and despair. Such pictures would revolt the beholder were they not conceived with solemn grandeur and strength, which, like the poem whence they spring, stirs the soul and impresses it with a convicton that nothing is more horrible, nothing so hurts, and stings and crushes — nothing is so deadly as sin.” THE MYRTLE. This is the original Juvenile Paper of the Denomination. Most of our Sunday Schools take it. But families of our Faith, that reside where there is no Sunday School of our Church, will find it a help, and a welcome visitor to their children. Single copies, 50 cents per year; 10 or more copies to one address, 30 cents cach per year. Payment to be made in advance. Send orders to UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, 37 Cornhill, Boston, Mass. MIGNONETTE, One of the "PRIZE SERIES," an excellent book for young people, is just published. Price, $1.50. A NEW EDITION OF THE BALANCE; OR, MORAL ARGUMENT FOR UNIVERSALISM. By Rev. A. D. MAYO. 32mo. Very neatly bo ind in bevelled boards and red edges. Lettered on the side and back. Price, 60 cents per copy. Sent by mail, postage paid. A NEW EDITION OF THE BOOK OF PROMISES. Very neatly bound in bevelled boards and red edges. Lettered on the side and back. Price, 60 cents per copy. Sent by mail, postage paid. OVER THE RIVER, By Rev. T. B. THAYER, D.D., although not exactly a new book, is selling as if it were a new one. This is probably the most popular book ever issued from the Universalist Press, and as a source of comfort to the sorrowing, and as presenting a cheering view of death and the afterlife to all, it is read and greatly enjoyed regardless of denominational limits. Price, in plain binding, $1.50; bevelled boards, red edges, $1.75 A Sabbath School Singing-Book. Prepared by the Rev. John G. Adams. This little book was not issued till late in the season, and yet over 6,000 copies have been sold. It is very popular. Price, in board covers, $3.60 per dozen. DR. A NEW VOLUME OF PAIGE'S COMMENTARY, On the First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians is now ready for delivery. In size, type, and binding, it is uniform with the other volumes of the Commentary. Price, $1.50. |