The Credibility of Venerable Bede and of his Followers. Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool by JOSEPH BOULT, 29th October, 1877.

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That the history of England during the fifth and up to the seventh century requires revision, and to be read by the light of modern research, may be fully admitted. It may also be granted that the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, which is so much an authority for that period, may not altogether possess the critical faculty would be an anachronism if it did-and it may not be wholly free from a certain bias; but the writer of this essay (p. 25) considers "Bede and those whom he followed, and those who followed him, amenable to the charge of being slavish copyists, or of making imagination and invention supply the place of research. . . . He accepted as equally authentic all the information presented to him, from whatever source. . . The whole is crude, ill-digested, inconsistent with itself." Mr. Green, however, has arrived at a very different estimate, and in his well-known "History of the English People" speaks thus of what he calls "the work which immortalises the name of Beda:" "In his Ecclesiastical History he was at once the founder of medieval history, the first English historian. First among English scholars, first among English theologians, first among English historians, it is in him that English literature strikes its roots." Mr. Boult makes it his chief objection

that "Bede's History abounds in miracles of the ordinary monkish character, which he records as authentic," and he instances this: "Germanus achieved without bloodshed the Hallelujah Victory, with other miracles." The Alleluiatic Victory, though spoken of indeed as a favour from Heaven, is really simply the account of a sudden panic which seized on the Saxons and Picts arriving at the entrance of the valley unconscious of an ambuscade, when the arrived Britons rushed upon them with the loud shout of "Alleluia," driving them in part into the river, and thus completing their consternation. The received account of the Teutonic conquest of England is also impugned, and Mr. Boult combats at once "Dr. Freeman's delicate handling of the evidence" and" Professor Stubbs' boldness of assertion and pictorial description," pp. 17, 19. There are doubtless many reasons against the general assumption that the Keltic population of England was exterminated in

the Teutonic immigration, especially when that has been reduced to its due proportions; and the last page of this paper quotes in corroboration Dr. Mackay's very recent "Gaelic Etymology of the English Language,' as showing the linguistic survival, which would contradict the theory of extermination. One element in an investigation of this kind has, however, been overlooked by Mr. Boult himself. In the fourth and fifth centuries Britain was part of Gaul. Gaul,

as a generic term, included Britain; the same language was spoken in Gaul proper and in Britain. An occupation of four hundred years had given to Britain the full influence of Roman civilisation. It had all the privileges of a Roman province, and was a favoured country. The charge of barbarism against the Britons of this period is refuted by its inapplicability to Gaul and by the remains of temples, baths, and porticoes in Britain, as well as by the working of mines and the like. That there should be a large amount of survival from this Roman occupation is proof then that the immigration of the people from the Angulus was not an extermination or an extirpation of everything Roman, nor, any more than Roman, was everything Keltic also then exterminated or extirpated. The paper is altogether of a character that speaks much for the breadth of investigation and inquiry at the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society.

The Higher Criticism: Some Account of its Labours on the Primitive History, the Pentateuch, and the Book of Joshua. By Rev. Cyprian Rust, Rector of Westenfield. Hurst and Co., London. 1878.

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The writer very properly defines his use of terms and words. By the Higher Criticism he understands the attempt to explain Holy Scriptures on the supposition that there is nothing supernatural in their composition or in their contents;" in other words, that the Bible is to be treated as any other book. The view maintained is that, above all other things, the. Bible is a book of prophecy: "it begins and ends with foretelling future events; its history is so constructed as to call the reader's attention to the fulfilment of the events foretold." Of course this is

almost conclusive as a reply to the arguments of the Higher Criticism. There is no common ground on which to begin; it is, in fact, treated as an hypothesis, and met by a denial. But the pamphlet contains much in the examination of Ewald in particular, also of De Wette and Dr. Davidson, well worth attention, as well as the remarks on the canons of the Higher Criticism, and again on the Jehovistic and Elohistic theory.

Ancient Monuments and Holy Writ. By W. Pakenham Walsh, Dean of Cashel. Herbert, Dublin. 1878.

A more precise title for this little book would have described it as Inscriptions from Ancient Monuments, which is its subject. The only monuments treated of are those to which inscriptions are attached, and the inscriptions are the theme; e.g., the Rosetta stone, the rock of Behistun, and what is called the Library of Assur-banipal (the Sardanapalus of the Greeks), discovered at Koyunjik, Nineveh, the Moabite stone, and the like. With drawings of these is given a popular account of the inscriptions, and a translation. The elaborate and costly works in which these descriptions are contained are very fairly epitomised as to their results. The records of Sennacherib, with the two remarkable cylinders now in the British Museum, are the subjects of another chapter, to which is added one on the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar. Of the Moabite stone Dr. Walsh says: "Scarcely is there a line of it which does not corroborate either the history, the language, or the geography of the Bible, explaining many things before inexplicable, refuting objections hitherto perplexing, and adding considerably to our knowledge on most important subjects."

We no way impugn this statement when we add that other views have been taken on some of the evidences adduced in this volume, and that at present opinions are in solution, or at least provisional; nor yet when we add the suggestion that the Bible should be taken as itself a record, and to be used in illustration of other "monuments," in corroboration, or in confutation, and according to the weight of evience. We rather regret that the Dean of Cashel, in this connection, has not spoken of the Moabite pottery-the "jars," and the Shapira "forgeries,"-if so to be accounted.

The Transfer of Erin; or, The Acquisition of Ireland by England. By Thomas C. Amory. Philadelphia and London: Lippincott and Co.

Is there any raison d'être for such a book as this? We really think there is not. The story of the conquest, or acquisition of Ireland by England-the transfer of Erin, if anyone chooses to call it so-has been told often enough already. There is nothing new in the subject; and there is nothing new in Mr. Amory's treatment of it, not even in his style, for jerkiness and shaky grammar are no new features. The title is perhaps the only novelty in the book; and it is an obvious misuse of language. It is true we do talk in a loose kind of way of the "transfer" of the soil of a country from one race to another; but in the first place this is an admitted laxity of speech; and, moreover, "transfer' in this sense cannot be applied to the English conquest of Ireland. But, to leave this word-splitting, the author of the book before us would have been much better employed if he had made some attempt to survey the condition of Ireland since the beginning of

the present century, when the "transfer" he writes about was made formally complete by the Act of Union.

There is material for a most interesting and most instructive narrative even in the thirty years that have succeeded the great potato famine. Writers in plenty have descanted on Irish grievances. What nobody tells about is Irish progress. Yet it may be reasonably contended that hardly any nation in Europe has made such steps in advance as Ireland has in the last thirty years. It is true she had a very backward starting point; but her progress has been marvellous when that is considered.

It would be impossible within our limits to go into any detailed proof of our assertions with regard to this matter. All we can do is to record our own belief, and to protest against the continuance of the use of language which, however true a quarter of a century ago, is mere cant now. We may, however, point to a few circumstances that confirm our opinion. One is the vast extension of the cattle trade, which is the staple source of Irish wealth.

Without wearying our readers with statistics, it may suffice to mention that nearly all the leading English railway companies have now depôts in Dublin for the special accommodation of this branch of their traffic. One very important company, the London and NorthWestern, has found it expedient to start an entirely new line of steamers, to build a new terminus at Dublin, and to place this terminus in connection with the three inland Irish railways, by a system of extension which must have involved the construction of about fifty miles of new railway work. These facts imply a vast increase in the traffic.

The rise in the wages of ordinary labour is notorious, and, though certain relics of a past state of poverty and degradation may still be found in country places, the observant traveller will not fail to perceive many proofs of a rise in the standard of living.

Another circumstance which goes a long way to confirm our view is the great increase in the middleclass population of the great towns. Dublin is a very conspicuous instance of this. Within the last thirty years there have been added to the city two suburbs (the Pembroke and Rathmines townships), containing a population of twenty thousand each. The average rental of the houses in these suburbs is a little under forty pounds, and if families be enumerated at five souls to a household, and the rental be taken as one-tenth of the income of the family occupying a house, this represents an addition of eight thousand families whose average income is between three and four hundred a year. This is quite independent of the increase in the population of Kingstown and the villages lying between that port and Dublin.

Facts like these prove an immense advance in material wealth; and, though material wealth is not everything, it has always been and is now more than ever an indispensable antecedent to national well-being. But it would not suit writers of Mr. Amory's school to dwell upon facts of progress and prosperity: their cue is to keep men looking back to injustice and cruelties for which no one is now responsible, and which their own. pet political schemes are utterly powerless to redress.

known in England through his biblical works, or as a member of the New Testament Revision Committee, in Scotland was a successful city clergyman, professor in a Theological Hall, and a man with a delightful name for kindly humour and bonhommie. None ever in his life more discouraged men from attempting his biography after his death. His was a life singularly devoid of incident; and even of its commonplaces he made no record. He kept no journal, and rarely wrote a letter extending to a second page. Such of his epistles as are preserved are veritable curiosities of penmanship-almost illegible and very unsightly. He often spoke of learning to write with his left hand, in the hope that he might appease the printers with improved manuscripts. There must be some among Dr. Eadie's friends of the opinion that, after all, his life was not a good subject for the chroni cler. A quiet existence passed amid books, varied only by the labours of a preacher or the duties connected with a theological chair, does not easily work up into a memoir. The biography of such a man as Eadie should be contained, not in books written about him, but in the books he wrote. Dr. Brown has the credit of making the most of his materials. All that good taste, good English, and gentle humour could do for the book, has been done. The biographer has acquitted himself of his task perfectly. If he has not produced a standard biography the fault is not his. Particularly interesting is his appreciative account of young Eadie's schoolboy days at Alva. There he was "a causeway saint and a hoose deil." These were the days when dissent was indeed divided against itself; and Eadie's choice among its forms was made very simply: "My mother was an Antiburgher-the old true

blue party of Scotland. My father belonged to the Relief, and his church was two miles off, while my mother's was three. My mother carried bread and cheese with her on Sabbath, and my father carried none; and therefore I cast in my lot with my mother, and became an Antiburgher."

The best passage in this Life is well worthy preservation: "He obtained from his parents a promise that he should be sent to his classes in Tillicoultry, and thus the road along which he had been accustomed to trudge by his mother's side on Sundays, sustained by bread and cheese, now became his daily walk to and from school. In all weathers-fair and foul-in winter and in summer, he ungrudgingly made the journey, having been seized, under the influence of his able teacher, with that enthusiasm for learning which never left him, but which then, as always, he was able to conceal under a manner which, to a casual observer, betokened indifference. On winter mornings he had to start before daybreak; but he provided himself with a blazing tarred rope, which he carried in one hand, while his copy of Paradise Lost was in the other. seems to me that there is hardly a finer picture in literary history than that of the quarrier's sondestined to raise himself to a foremost place among the scholars and divines of his native country— finding his way along the foot of the Ochils in the dark of the winter mornings, made darker by the shadow of the hills and of the overhanging trees of Alva woods, reading Milton's great epic in the light of a blazing tarred rope. Nor was it a careless reading, serving only to shorten the long winter walk. The poem was so read that it fixed itself in the memory of the boy, and for many

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years he was able to repeat it line by line and book by book from beginning to end.”

I. A Vision of Sumeru and other Poems. By Shoshee Chunder Dutt Rái Báhádoor, Justice of the Peace, Calcutta. Thacker, Spink, Cal

cutta.

II. Bengaliana. By the same. Thacker, Calcutta.

The native press of India is of increasing interest and of increasing importance. The late Vernacular Press Act, it may be hoped, is an exceptional measure and the censorship it creates temporary; but, called forth as it has been by the tone of the native newspapers, it at least shows, from the restraint imposed, the strength of the power that has arisen. Hardly less important are English publications by natives; all the more that to them the stringent new Press Law does not apply. These two volumes have an interest of their own as the literary work of an educated and cultivated native; one of the class to whom, for good or ill, will be committed the office of forming the ideas which, finding their expression in outward acts, will make the future of British India, so far as that depends on the natives. The English of both volumes, it may be noticed, is very different from the English of the native newspapers, and shows a complete command of the language of England, and something of her tone of thought, coupled with Indian opinions and feelings.

No. I. is a volume of poems, and, besides the versification of the legend which gives its title, and a collection of "Indian Ballads," thirty pages are occupied with "Lays of Ancient Greece," while among the miscellaneous are translations from Jean Paul Richter, Lamartine, with many more; in other ways the references and