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REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

The Inheritance of Evil: or the Consequence of Marrying a Wife's Sister. London: Masters. 12mo., pp. 186.

THIS tale aptly follows, and will not, we think, be less effective than some of the heavy artillery whose discharges we have already noticed. It is, in truth, a striking story, and very well told; and appeals in the most practical way to the feelings and judgment of that sober-minded, prudent class of persons who constitute what is called public opinion in England. The scene is laid previous to the passing of Lord Lyndhurst's Act, and the facts are shortly these. A widow dying leaves two daughters, the younger of whom, being of tender age, she commends, under a most solemn vow, to the care of her elder sister. The orphan girls fall under the control of a harsh unsympathising guardian, who causes them to be separated from each other. This leads to an early marriage of the elder, who, according to previous agreement, immediately offers a home to her younger sister. This sister returns from school a beautiful and accomplished girl. The husband is struck by the very first sight of her; and as his wife's health languishes more and more, so does he take increased pleasure in her society. Brother and sister had they called each other from the first, and such they seemed really to be. What a pledge of future protection for her child to the youthful mother as she feels or rather fancies death to be approaching! An incident in the village leads her husband, who had always been a stranger to anything like strict religious principles, to speak rather warmly in favour of the marriage with a wife's sister. Suspicion is immediately, though unjustly, kindled in her mind. The thought of the unhallowed union between brother" and "sister" drives her to distraction, induces premature confinement and death. The two continue to live innocently together, till a malicious scandal-monger propagates an unfounded report concerning them, and they find they must either separate or marry. The latter alternative is chosen; marriage is secretly solemnized in London; and then follow a series of harrowing and distressing consequences which space will not permit us to enumerate, but which are worked up with very great skill and power in the narrative. We sincincerely hope that this tale will obtain a wide circulation; the moment we feel is critical: Englishmen want more time and opportunity for reflection before they are competent to make up their minds with regard to the question now proposed to them.

Sertum Ecclesia, the Church's Flowers. A. Grant and Son, Edinburgh; F. and J. Rivington, London.

THE idea of the present volume is a pretty one, viz., to furnish a number of drawings of the various flowers wherewith the Church decorates her altars, at the different festal seasons and days of the Christian year, and to illustrate these drawings with selections from the poets, and texts from Holy Scripture, treating of the object of commemoration or the flowers thus used. The execution of the design is also

highly praiseworthy, so that we know few books we should prefer to present, especially to our lady friends on the usual occasions for such gifts, than "Sertum Ecclesiæ." The pictures are lithographed by the Anastatic process, by Mr. Delamotte of Oxford, with more than his usual skill, and the illustrative scraps of poetry are generally well chosen. Instead of passages from Bernard Barton, however, and Mary Howitt, we think we could have gathered more from the seventeenth century poets; and especially might larger use have been made of that touchingly simple class of religious ballads, which under the name of carols, &c., is so rife throughout the rural districts, and the humbler quarters of England's great towns. Many of these are only orally preserved, but with a little trouble a large number might be recovered. We have before us at this time a collection of carols printed in the cheapest form, at Birmingham, uniting for the most part extreme simplicity, with distinct doctrinal teaching, a combination which constitutes the excellence of a popular religious literature. From this little volume we

will extract one which might well take the place of the passage from Milton for Christmas Day. It is called the "Holly and the Ivy."

The editor confesses in his preface that the work is imperfect, all the days and seasons not being included, and some whose flowers were not ascertained, being supplied with such as scemed appropriate; but with

these imperfections, the book is yet a very pleasing one, and we hope it will from its own merits obtain popularity. But besides the claim of intrinsic merit, it has that of being published for a charitable purpose, which should recommend it to ladies especially. We will mention this in the editor's own modest words. The profits of this volume, (if any,)" he says, "will go to assist in the education, as governess, of a young person from the Isle of Skye, whose parents have been reduced, by accumulated misfortunes, from a higher condition to one of exceeding privation; their support, and the education of their younger children, must now depend chiefly on her exertions." With these words we must commend Sertum Ecclesiæ" to the good will of our readers.

Godfrey Davenant at College. By the REV. W. E. HEYGATE. London: Masters. 1849.

THIS is the conclusion of a good and a great design. Mr. Heygate has imaged forth the progress of a weak, vacillating, clever, warm-hearted youth through the two initiative stages of life,-School and College. The former volume has been noticed favourably, both in this and other Reviews; and on the whole, we think the present a worthy and improved successor to it. Mr. Heygate has great power in putting forth single and distinct ideas. His view of the " Collegiate system" is admirable. " So also is the chapter on the Religious Character of the system." The hindrances to the carrying out of either, as he has put them, are vast, nay, insurmountable, at the present moment. But it is a great thing to know that it is attempted in some colleges even now; and we are persuaded that in the end it will, to a great extent, prevail in all.

In the meanwhile such works as those before us are of great value, as written by sound and thoughtful minds; and we commend the one in question to men of a higher order of mind, than those to whom it is ostensibly addressed.

Mr. Heygate will think it no disparagement to our praise, if we venture to suggest a graceful withdrawal, at once and for ever, from the pleasantries of his writings, which have by no means the effect of relieving his arguments; but essentially mar, for the time, their sound and solid sense.

We have only space just to acknowledge the receipt of another most seasonable publication from DR. MILL, Four Sermons Preached before the University of Cambridge last Autumn, on the Relation between Church and State. (Masters and Deighton.)

We are also behindhand in noticing a small volume of Sermons by MR. DODSWORTH, upon The Signs of the Times. They are characterized, we need scarcely say, by the Author's usual clearness of expression and sobriety of judgment.

A series of Tracts on First Principles, by an association of Churchmen, is promised us. They are to be practical, not speculative; showing us how far we have departed from the ancient landmarks of truth. The introductory Tract is published by, we believe, Mr. Lumley.

MRS. JAMESON'S SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART.

Sacred and Legendary Art. By MRS. JAMESON. 2 vols. With Illustrations. London: Longman. 1848.

Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters, and of the Progress of Painting in Italy. From Cimabue to Bassano. 2 vols. (Knight's Shilling Volumes.) London: Knight. 1845.

Kugler's Handbook of Painting. London: Murray.

Ancient and Modern Art, Historical and Critical. By GEORGE CLEGHORN, Esq. 2 vols. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood,

1848.

WE must begin our notice of the beautiful and fascinating work, the title of which stands first before the present article, with what will seem to be a paradox. On the one hand the interest of its subject, the charm and gracefulness of its style, its profuse and judicious illustration, and its typographical excellence, combine to make it one of the most important and successful books of the season but on the other hand it is (we cannot but think) a failure as to its plan, and that desideratum in the literature of art which these volumes were meant to satisfy is not yet adequately supplied. Why we think so, we hope to make clear to our readers in the course of the following observations.

If we wished to educate a child in some true and rational principles for the appreciation of art, we should have the greatest difficulty in finding any consistent theory to lay down for our own guidance, and to propose to him for acceptance. A manual to meet this educational want is still to be written. But few tasks, we must admit, would be more difficult than to compose such an one: for in the province of art there are scarcely any principles or canons of criticism as yet fixed. Unlike (of course) the sciences, unlike even music and architecture, the criticism of Painting and Sculpture,except to a degree in their mere mechanical character,-is still a matter of opinion. Whatever knowledge, or rather whatever set of ideas, about art, people in general possess, has been picked up it would be hard to say how. To take the case of the majority, such as are not gifted with any peculiar genius or taste in this department, we have all probably passed through much the same course of mental development as to our opinions about Painting or Sculpture. For example, when children we saw little sculpture or none at all; and what we did see neither moved nor pleased us. A London child may indeed have been awed by the Sphinxes of the British Museum, and bewildered among the marbles and the casts VOL. II.-APRIL, 1849.

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from the Parthenon and Ægina. He never had a chance of coming under the influence of Christian Sculpture, that alone to which he might feel he had some kind of sympathetic relation, that alone which would not be quite strange and foreign to his heart. In the sister art, however, by means of engravings, children soon acquire the faculty of comprehending pictorial delineation. The first thing that interests them is commonly the imitative function of art: the child delights in distinguishing a man, a cow, or a tree: we all begin by being lovers of genre. As we grow up we insensibly make acquaintance with a great many pictures, of the dramatic kind, in illustration of some scriptural scene, or of some incident in romance or history. And nothing can be more useful than this; nothing more vividly impresses the child with the reality of a transaction than to have his imagination thus assisted by the eye. Meanwhile, however, we are left without education of any kind in the comprehension of a contemplative, or directly religious, picture. There are many who seldom or never see one and what they do see are neither explained to them, nor indeed generally regarded by others, as religious pictures at all, but rather as examples of some particular mechanical skill, or as the works of some famous master. And so persons grow up to the age when they have the opportunity of visiting home collections and foreign galleries and churches, most insufficiently instructed to understand or improve themselves by what they see. Then, however, if they have any taste for the pursuit, they are compelled to form their own classification and their own opinions of schools, manners, and subjects, as best they may, by the aid of catalogues and guidebooks, of their laquais de place, and "Murrays." Hence arises that deplorable amount of ignorance on this subject so often found even among persons of average information. They know that they must, to be fashionable, admire M. Angelo, Raffaelle, and Rubens: but as for knowing why they should or should not admire, as for anything like an independent judgment, they are without a single qualification for such a discriminating process. Did they try to express their ideas on the matter they would probably come to some such impotent conclusion as this, that the most exhaustive definition of a painting was 'a thing painted;' and that painters were bad or good, despised or praised, according as their works were, or were not,-'daubs.' Their criterion between any two artists would be only a mechanical superiority; any such considerations as the moral tendencies of their works, or the spirituality of their ideals, never even entering into the question.

But the change of feeling and the increase of earnestness which of late years have arisen in the highest matter of all, religion, have naturally had their fruit in no common degree in the province of art. Architecture felt the movement comparatively early. In that art we had first a clumsy classification attempted, which was gra