Parkinson's and Arlis's paleontological illustrations, and among his early productions a handsome quarto narrative, with portraits, of the "Visit of William IV. and Queen Adelaide to the ancient borough of Lewes," which included some original poetry. This catalogue will be sufficient to show that Dr. Mantell did much after his kind for the advancement of Geology, and perhaps more than any living man to bring it into attractive and popu lar notice.-Abridged from the London " Athenæum.”

It is said that Mr. William D. Whitney of Northampton, Mass., now in Berlin, is engaged, in connection with Professor Roth, of the University at Tübingen, in the preparation of a new edition of one of the Sacred books of the Hindoos; the "Atharva Veda." The Vedas are four in number, and stand in the same estimation among the people of India as the Koran among Mahommedans, or the Bible with Christians and Jews. The term "Veda" means the sum of all knowledge, and the entire Vedas may be considered as a collection of the ancient rhapsodies of the Indian poets. The Atharva Veda" bears to the others a similar relation to that of the Apochrypha to the canonical Scriptures.-Literary World.

Mr. Thackeray's course of Lectures before the Mercantile Library association has been very successful. His audiences have uniformly included the most intellectual and fashionable people.

Hippolitus and his age," by the Chevalier Bunsen, Prussian Minister to London, will, no doubt excite great interest. Its object is to explain the state of Christian opinion and practice at Rome, a whole century before the Nicene theology. It was suggested by a MS. discovered at Mt. Athos, in Greece, and purporting to be a work of Hippolitus, bishop of the harbor of Rome, and dating about A. D. 225. It will go to show that, in that age, nothing was yet known of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, nothing of the celibacy of the clergy, nothing of bishops as a supreme order, and nothing of a great many other dogmas now incorporated into the general faith. He has given the Churchmen a nut to crack.-Putnam's Monthly.

We have to announce the death of Dr. Scholtz, one of the most distinguished oriental scholars of Germany. He was senior member of the faculty of theology at Bonn, and a professor in the university of that town. He studied Persian and Arabic under the celebrated Silvestre de Sacy of Paris; brought out a new critical edition of the New Testament, for which he consulted innumerable original documents; made a complete literary and scientific exploration of Alexandria, Cairo, Central Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mamarica, &c., and published accounts thereof. He has bequeathed his valuable collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman manuscripts, antiquities and coins, together with his valuable library, to the University of Bonn. -Harpers' New Monthly.

Tennyson's Ode on the death of Wellington, is unequal to the occasion.

Wesley is an historical character, and Methodism an historical fact; and both occupy a prominence on the page of history which gives them an obtrusive notoriety. If, during the lifetime of the one and the infancy of the other, they were regarded as incidental and transitory, destined to remerge into that silent abyss into which all the trivial and isolated events of an age inevitably return, the opinion which thus consigned them to oblivion has since received its contradiction in that bold, monumental relief with which they both now stand defined on the field of the past half-century; and the position to VOL. VII.-11

which they have been adjudged confers upon them the prerogative of commanding the respect and reverence due to the imposing and venerable features of a by-gone period. They now challenge the retrospective homage of the observer, the record of the chronicler, the analysis of the philosopher; and, divested of the obscuration of contemporary prejudice and suspicion, ensure, in their behalf, the ultimate triumph of fidelity and truth. Towards this issue, whatever it may be, Wesley and Methodism are fast tending in the journalism of the times; nor should we be sensitive as to the spirit, curious as to the motives, or intolerant as to the severity with which inquiries upon such legitimate subjects may be conducted. Let them be ground, winnowed, sifted, searched and weighed, whether with acrimony or partiality. All the better. Not a grain or particle will be lost to the great aggregate of truth. And if they be lost, it will be but the solemn verdict of a righteous ordeal. We have no tenacity either for Wesley or Methodism beyond the just relations which they sustain to an unadulterated Christianity. With whatever of error and incongruity they patronize, we part, without any of that regret which usually attends the loss of hereditary honors; but whereinsoever they are the undoubted representatives of a genuine gospel movement, we cling to them as the sacred symbols of a patrimonial inheritance.

The genius of Isaac Taylor found a subject worthy of it in the title of his volume. We do not pronounce him competent, but as much so as any man, unaffiliated with it, could, perhaps, possibly be. Well-read, cool, sagacious, contemplative, comprehensive, inductive, independent, he has applied to his task the rarest combination of mental qualities to which it has yet been subjected. And if he has done it injustice, which he certainly has done in several instances, we check the belief of an intentional wrong, and award the tribute of our admiration to the extent of his information and the vastness of his powers, and feel that there is a species of rashness in an attempt to arraign him at the bar of ordinary criticism. Fealty to God and his cause, will, we trust, mitigate the pre

sumption, and leave us nothing to give us pain but the consciousness of inequality to so valiant a champion.

Apart from his undoubted capacity for this species of investigation, it is in point to remark, that he is known to fame as one of the most accomplished and illustrious of modern religious authors; a reputation which he has justly won by the grandeur of his conceptive, and the subtlety of his analytic faculties; by his acquaintance with classical and oriental literature; by his knowledge of religious systems, ancient and modern, and by the rich luxuriance and natural animation of his style; of all of which, the "Natural History of Enthusiasm," the "Saturday Evening," "Fanaticism," and the "Physical Theory of a Future Life," furnish abundant proof. A writer of such distinction and of such acknowledged abilities, could handle no subject without conferring on it, at least, the notoriety of his name, and bringing it into contact with minds fascinated with the splendors of his own. Hence Wesley and Methodism have, more than ever, become familiar topics with religionists of all the higher classes of society, and with readers of the same grade who have no religious predilections. This fact invests our subject with an additional element of interest. It induces us to ascertain what kind of representation he has made of his subject, upon that wide intellectual surface over which he has diffused the results of his denominational inquiries.

It is important, likewise, to have in mind, the position from which he has taken his survey of Wesley and Methodism. It is peculiar. It is not that of Southey, the poet-philosopher and churchman, who, though clothed with the dignities of station and adorned with the accomplishments of letters, possessed neither that profound penetration nor that genuine evangelism necessary to his undertaking. Hence his investigations are not only, in reality, extraneous, but superficial; his great blunder being a radical misconception of the interior nature of the subject which he attempted to analyze. Nor was it that of Watson, who, though he possessed, in an eminent degree, both penetration and spirituality, viewed the same subject

from a point within itself; a point of view necessarily prepossessing him in its favor. It is a position rather intermediate. He is not obviously a churchman, yet he is, to all appearance, a Christian of fervent piety. He is not, by any means, a Methodist, yet he is a professed admirer of the principal features of Methodism. He is not a poet, yet he is both conceptive and sentimental. He is not a theologian, yet he is versed in theology. He is not sectarian, and yet leans to the Calvinistic school. He is not so remote from his theme as Southey. He is not so near to it as Watson. He would, on the contrary, appear to occupy the stand-point of an uncommitted Christian philosopher, treating one of the phases of the Christian religion, and fulfilling a plan, long conceived, of bringing under review all its principal movements from the beginning, with its aberrations from, and its approximations to its grand central truth. This position is sufficiently commanding to relieve him from all suspicion of sinister motives, and place his inquiries upon the merit of their reasoning alone; a reasoning which, from its gravity and depth, can be met neither with levity nor dispatched with flippancy.

From what has just been observed, we are not surprised at the historical prominence which he assigns Methodism in the annals of the church; a prominence which no sectary has ever yet assigned it, and which is entitled to the three-fold respect of his position as an author, his undoubted information, and his unimpeached truthfulness. He says, that it is "the starting-point of our modern religious history; the event whence the religious epoch, now current, must date its commencement." We make our acknowledgments to Mr. Taylor for so explicitly asserting a fact which more blinded, if not less scrupulous writers have totally ignored; and thus, at the very outset, rebuking that inexcusable prejudice which hesitates to give it even a dim and fading back-ground in the ecclesiastical panorama of the age.

To avoid misconception on the part of the reader, we must observe, that it is not Methodism in general of which he speaks. It is that "of the last century," beginning with the labors and