The realism of the foregoing chapter makes it properly head the second volume of a most learned, fresh, and helpful handbook. All the more that the contribution is a reluctant one. Both author and critic must assign a far higher worth, however, to the chapter on the Family in volume first.

It may be suspected that the intensity of family life had something to do with the duration of the Egyptian as of the Chinese civilization. This thought is confirmed by Dr. Erman's statement, "The relation betwixt husband and wife is in all periods seemingly a tender and affectionate one." There is polygamy even of two wives in one house only as an exception. The Egyptian Rachel and Leah, unlike the Hebrew, are not eaten up with jealousy. They name their children each for the other. Inheritance, which was for the Israelite vested more in the son than in the daughter, was in Egypt more in the daughter than in the son. Sometimes we have a portrait of the mother of the deceased while that of the father is wanting. His maternal grandfather glories in the career of a successful public officer. Side by side with a filial feeling which is profound and passionate, we see a want of ancestral pride. The Hebrew genealogies have no counterpart on the Nile. The individual rather than the family comes to the front. There are no family names. This singular circumstance makes the history confusing. Names abound expressing physical and intellectual qualities, commemorating domestic joy, breathing religion Ra is content." But they recur and interweave. Add to this the custom of subjects naming themselves from a prince, and servants from a master, and brothers after one another, with the further complication of curtailing the given into a pet name, and we need not be surprised at the frequency of mistakes of identity. The blot on the Egyptian home was marriage with a sister. This may be explained by the myth of Isis and Nepthys, who were the wives and sisters of Osiris and Set respectively.

Professor Erman gives his readers some four hundred illustrations. These are tasteful and trustworthy. Better still for the recreation of the past are his hieroglyphics and the references at the foot of every page. Best of all is the ordering of his subject, so that the ordinary reader can take up each chapter by itself and learn from one of the first of living Egyptologists about Decipherment, Land, People, History, Monarch, and Court, the State of the Old and New Empire, the Administration of Police and Trials of Criminals, Home, Costume, Diet, Sports, Science and Art among the Teachers of Greece, Agriculture, Trade and Commerce, the Wars of the Living, and the Literature of the Dead. The book does with the pen what the Egypt Exploration Fund is doing with the spade.

John Phelps Taylor.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE. A Sketch of the Diplomatic and Military History of Continental Europe from the Rise to the Fall of the Second French Empire. By HAROLD MURDOCK, with an introduction by JOHN FISKE. Pp. xxxii, 421. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1889. $2.00.

This is a noble book, and has a noble preface. The optimism of both book and preface is of that thoroughly strengthening and legitimate kind which without idealizing the present, or closing the mind from the con

templation of dangers in the future, recognizes that within the last generation Europe has secured essential and permanent good in the redintegration of genuine nationalities, and that reaction, in the civil and the spiritual sphere, has suffered essential discomfiture.

The author regrets that there is so much of the "drum and trumpet " style of narration in the book, but pleads with reason that "on nearly every battlefield great questions of dynastic and national reconstruction have hung in the balance." As to the Crimean war, he is right in thinking that for the most of us his lucid summary supersedes the necessity of wading through Kinglake.

Mr. Fiske gives good reason for our putting aside that contemptuous distrust of Austria which still lingers in Mr. Freeman's writings, and which once betrayed Mr. Gladstone into a very awkward strait. "From the moment that she was freed from the deadly burden of peoples held in unwilling subjection, Austria began to show symptoms of healthy national life." He is on more doubtful ground when he condemns (though with avowed hesitation) the patient Germany for taking back her own. She knew that France would meditate revenge anyhow; then why should she have any longer borne

"Die Bundesfahn' in fremder Hand

Der Thurm in welscher Macht"?

Mr. Murdock shows well enough that Louis Napoleon went to war with Russia simply because he wanted to make a figure, and chose his field of display with the intention of forcing the English Queen and people through their Indian jealousies to change their dislike into alliance. He succeeded far too well for the honor of England and of her sovereign.

The author gives a clear and deeply interesting description of the siege of Sebastopol, and of its noble defenders, of whom the most of us knew as good as nothing previously. Korniloff, especially, comes out to view in all his enthusiasm, tenacity, patriotism, and piety. "Tell all," he said, when struck down by the cannon-ball, "it is sweet to die when the conscience is at rest." On the other hand, the battle of Inkermann, "the soldiers' battle," demonstrated as to the English "that forty years of enervating peace had failed to eradicate from the national character those indomitable qualities that rendered Wellington's squares impreg nable on the slopes of Mont St. Jean." The author remarks, moreover, that the English exaggerated the inferiority of their own military administration. 66 In England, every weakness in the army was ruthlessly exposed by an unhampered press. In France, disagreeable facts were smothered, or so perverted by a cringing press as to suit the ends of a government whose existence depended upon success." The year 1870 crushed the rotten shell. The author sums up on page 95 the results of the Crimean war, futile to France and England, fruitful only, through Sardinia, to Italy.

The author concedes that if there was any touch of generosity in Louis Napoleon it was a desire to benefit Italy for a consideration. But of his military claims he says: "The battle of Magenta consisted of two distinct battles, for the emperor at San Martino and MacMahon on the north did not communicate from morning until after the fighting was over. The Emperor of the French did nothing to merit approbation. He did not plunge into the smoke, sword in hand, as at one time

the world was led to believe, but with muddled brain and brooding dread watched from a distance the varying fortunes of the day."

Mr. Murdock does not let Bismarck's cynical contempt of the Schleswig Holstein treaties lose anything in the telling. As in many other cases of Bismarck's policy, the ill faith was formal more largely than substantial. The time had come for reconstituting Germany, through Prussia, and therefore Austria, the Diet, and the Augustenburgs were pitched out of the way. The enlarging logic of an enlarging necessity no doubt controlled Bismarck himself, as it had once controlled Luther before him, who at first kept giving promises which he then had to break. Supreme conjunctures will not courtesy too nicely to common times. The issue of all, the Seven Weeks' War, and the regenerating defeat of Sadowa, is told with the cheerful interest belonging to the frank contest of German with German, which brought a blessing to both. And in spite of all English dissuasives from the Triple Alliance, Bismarck knew what he was saying: "We had powerful support in the incorruptible fidelity of Italy. From this fact we may draw strong hopes that in the future the most cordial relations will unite Germany and Italy."

66

The advancing turn of fortune is described: "France was the centre in 1867 around which Europe was revolving. She held the key to the Roman question, and Italy was her suitor; she possessed an unbeaten army, and Austria was her flatterer; but she sought a slice of Rhineland and Prussia was her foe." The author describes Napoleon's dream of Prussia's defeat by Austria. It was shattered. The war, however, would not have come without the empress and the priests. Infallibility and Luther were again to try their strength together, and the 1st of September was the answer to the 18th of July. The moody usurper was borne along on the current of brag and bluster," with small hope of the issue. However, if it was any comfort to him, he might have reflected that he had gained by an association with the golden lilies, as being the third French monarch whom a battle had left a prisoner. "On the 4th of September Napoleon left Sedan for the castle of Wilhelmshöhe near Cassel, which the Prussian king had placed at his disposal. The day was dark and sad, and the falling rain converted the roads into mire. So, bidding adieu to France forever, escorted by a hostile soldiery, the Man of December, the Arbiter of Europe, the Modern Cæsar, was whirled away northward into the mist and gloom that enshrouded the Belgian hills."

Why is it, asks the author in conclusion, that after all these achievements militarism still weighs so heavy on continental Europe that everywhere "above the roar of the city street sounds the sharp drumbeat of the passing regiment; in the sweet rural country the village church-bell cannot drown the bugle peal from the fortress on the hill"? "It means that the Eastern and Alsatian questions are not settled; that Republican France broods darkly over the exactions of 1871, while it casts friendly glances upon aggressive and despotic Russia; that Austria, dreading Russian power, draws nearer to Germany, and that Germany, still united with Austria and Italy, holds fast what she has won by the sword, while with the old assurance that has never yet betrayed him, Bismarck proclaims both to the east and west, 'We Germans fear God, and nothing in the world beside.'"

ANDOVER.

Charles C. Starbuck.

The Lord is Right. Meditations on the Twenty-fifth Psalm in the Psalter of King David. By P. Waldenström, Ph. D., Professor of Theology and of Biblical Hebrew and Greek in the College of Gefle, Sweden. Translated from the Latest Swedish Edition by an American Minister of the Gospel. Translation carefully Revised, and some Notes added, together with an Introduction, by J. G. Princell. Pp. 303. Chicago: John Martenson, Publisher, 205 Oak Street. 1889. A book of meditations of somewhat diffuse style, but of that deep, evangelical religiousness which has in a manner been made native to Sweden by the Reformation. The Swedish language is of less compass and depth than the German, but has been taken hold of through and through by the spirit of Luther. The full flavor of Lutheran devotion can hardly have been conveyed into the translation, but a good deal of it seems to be there. Professor Waldenström will be remembered as the leader of a movement in the Swedish Church which it has been proposed to bring into union with American Congregationalism. It is hard to see, however, why Lutherans in Scandinavia cannot have their differentiated schools among themselves, without seeking for remote and apparently artificial affinities. The title Herren är from, Der Herr ist fromm, is hard to translate. The translator has done the best he could. Hildebrand and his Times.. By W. R. W. Stephens, M. A., Prebendary of Chichester and Rector of Woolbeding, Sussex. Author of "Life of S. John Chrysostom," etc. Pp. xiii, 230. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. The author remarks that after the first great contest of the church, that with paganism, and the second, with fundamental depravations of doctrine, came the third, with the rough races of the North. In taming these the church suffered severely, and the hierarchy came near being permanently secularized. The joint elevation of a religious empire and of a regenerated Papacy averted this. Hildebrand marks the point at which the Teutonically regenerated Papacy began to push its claims against the Teutonic empire. This contest the author recognizes as having been inevitable. Yet Hildebrand waged implacable war against clerical marriage, simony, and lay investiture. The author at once admits the greatness and beneficence of his aim and the immoderateness of his spirit.

-

Hildebrand had directed the Papacy through five or six pontificates; there is no doubt that his own election was strictly a compelled one. He was less austerely spiritual than his friend Peter Damiani; essentially a great statesman with religious ends. His liberality to Berengar shows this. The author brings out that in his hardness to Henry he overshot himself. Yet he shows him as the central man of his age; corresponding in all tones with all men, even Saracen emirs, as worshipers of the One God. "It was not the habit of men in that age to look very far ahead and speculate about the remote consequences of their acts: what they believed to be right, or good, or desirable, this they commonly pursued with simple faith and eagerness. Gregory was no doubt hurried sometimes by excess of zeal into acts of indefensible severity, and sometimes, in moments of perplexity, he stooped to unworthy subterfuges; but his aim was a noble one: he never lost sight of it; by his transcendent genius he came near to attaining it, and left the more complete attainment possible for his successors.' This is good; but the author hardly emphasizes enough Gregory's heedless disparagement of the civil order. His rude assaults upon metropolitan authority, also, have promoted the servility, but injured the local vitality, of the church.

The Epistles of St. John. Twenty-one Discourses, with Greek Text, Comparative Versions, and Notes chiefly Exegetical. By William Alexander, D. D., D. C. L., Brasenose College, Oxford, Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. Pp. xi, 309. New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son. Somewhat pompous and prolix, a little overweighted by the mitre, but good and scholarly, with many pregnant remarks scattered through it. His attempt to make the Epistle a synopsis and index of the Gospel seems a little tiresome, but we dare say there is something in it. He does well to emphasize the truth that the love of which St. John is the exponent is pervaded by a pure relentlessness towards evil and false teaching. For ȧyán he would prefer caritas, saying that if "charity" is sometimes a little metallic, “love” seems sometimes a little maundering. He sometimes drags in commendations of ritualism and sacramentalism where it is a little hard to see how they belong there. But then, he treats them only as the vehicle, not as the substance, of the regenerate life. As to the order of the Johannean writings, it seems an extraordinary tour de force, or de foi, to put the Apocalypse so late among them, regardless of its Greek, its style, its saturation with the Old Testament, and its Judæo-Christian temper. How can we allow that this and the Gospel come from the same mind and pen, unless we allow for the effects of old age, history, and years of Gentile intercourse? If the author's position is just, it will need some one less deeply immersed in ecclesiastical convention to prove it to us.

The Popes and the Hohenstaufen. By Ugo Balzani. Pp. vi, 261. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. - The long contest between the Roman Church and this most magnificent and aspiring of regal dynasties cannot be set forth except by some great poet and dramatist. But this little compendium is a faithful rendering of the facts, characters, and issues. It must be owned that Barbarossa, though a father to Germany, was a tyrant to Italy. And as Mr. Ruskin says, Italy and Alexander III., in their requirements of forgiveness for some twenty-two years of impious devastation, showed a most Christian mildness. As to Frederick II., how Milman can talk of his "lofty spirit of tolerance,” it is hard to see. The whole spirit of the man and of his reign was at variance with the essence of Christianity. But Gregory IX. showed a relentless hardheartedness towards him and the unhappy relics of his race that assuredly Gregory's great uncle, Innocent III., would not have shown, and which was condemned by Christ in him who of that age most fully embodied him, St. Louis. The author closes by saying, of the policy which brought in the unworthy brother of Louis, Charles of Anjou, to overthrow the well governing usurper Manfred, and cut off the hopes of the gallant boy Conradin, that "the French influence invoked by the Popes was destined not only to turn against the Papacy, but to humiliate it. At Palermo the vesper-bell was to sound the hour of vengeance for the blood of Manfred and Conradin; while at Anagni the men of Philip le Bel, led by Nogaret and Sciarra, in forcing themselves into the apartments of Boniface VIII., were destined to drag through the mud the church which had invoked French intervention in Italy.”

The Man of Galilee. By Atticus G. Haygood. "Lord to whom shall we go but unto thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life." Simon Peter. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. 1889. Pp. 156. $0.80.- These are lectures to the eminent author's" Emory Boys." Of course they are bright, fresh, crisp, and thoroughly apprehensible. The aim of the little book is to show that He