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Lives of Illustrious Greeks; for Schools and Families. London : Religious Tract Society.

THESE lives of illustrious Greeks,' says the preface, are selected from Plutarch's parallel lives in Greek, omitting some digressions which would be neither profitable nor interesting to the reader, and substituting for them such reflections as Plutarch might have made if he had been a Christian.' This does not inspire much hope of the value of the said reflections, forcibly added to Plutarch; and an examination of the book itself might supply a commentary on the words, 'No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then he teareth the new, and the patch out of the new fitteth not in upon the old.'

The English Party's Excursion to Paris in 1849: Trip to America, &c. &c. By J. B., Esq. London: Longman and Co. As no living man will ever read this book, it is a work of superogation to say anything more about it, than that it is made up of extracts from a prosy journal kept in Paris, America, and some English wateringplaces; and that it is as dull and egotistical, as trivial and commonplace, as such productions usually are.

Cholera and its Cures: a historical Sketch. By J. P. Bushnan, M.D. London: W. S. Orr & Co.

A VERY careful and full collection of the circumstances attending the last outbreak of cholera in England. The tables in the volume are of especial value, and will well repay attentive study. The author is a believer in the saline treatment; but any reader who does not agree with him may make his choice of a remedy from a table of proposed ones, occupying fifteen octavo pages.

Lights and Shades of Ireland. By Asenath Nicholson. London:

Gilpin.

THE authoress of this volume is an American lady, whose strong benevolent impulses, and somewhat peculiar ways of exercising them, have made her known to the religious circles of England. She visited Ireland during the famine, was untiring in her efforts to lighten some small portion of that terrible load, and has now recorded her proceedings and what she saw in this volume. Added to the sketch of the famine, there are a history of Ireland and some notices of the early celebrities, saints, kings, and poets of the land. Of these we have nothing to say; but the third portion of the work is painfully, terribly interesting, while the insight it gives into the character of its authoress leaves on us the highest impression of her devotedness, her energy, her purity of motive, and her success in her self-imposed exertions in the black years.

The Revolt of the Bees. Fourth Edition. Phoenix Library.

London: Gilpin.

We cannot say much for the strength of argument which this volume presents in defence of co-operative instead of competitive principles. It is a somewhat clumsy allegory touching a hive or two of bees, who adopted the principle of every one for himself, and became very discontented, miserable, contentious, criminal bees accordingly. They are converted to the good old plan by being carried in spirit under the guidance of Alan Ramsay's ghost to Loch Lomond, where they see some communities of the lords of creation living on the social-union principles, and listen to discussions on the respective advantages of competition and association between an inmate and a Persian prince. The whole winds up with a grand tableau, in which the poet's ghost ascends a chariot, drawn by his grateful disciples, and realizing the famous Yankeeism, rides home on the end of a rainbow.'

Every voice helps to swell the cry, but there will need tones of more authority and power than any in this volume before the life-and-death controversy which it deals with, is forced, as it ought to be, on a prejudiced public. But it will come.

Literary Intelligence.

Just Published.

The Wesleyan Methodist Missions in Jamaica and Honduras, delineated. Containing a Description of the principal Stations, &c. Illustrated by a Map of thirty-three lithographic Views, executed from Drawings taken on the spot. By Rev. Peter Samuel, twelve years Missionary in Jamaica.

Pleasant Pages for Young People. Part III.

The Mystery of God Finished; or, the Times of the Restitution of all Things. Three Vols.

Recollections and Anecdotes of Edward Williams, the Bard of Glamorgan; or, Iolo Morganwg, B.B.D. By Elijah Waring.

Essays on Socinianism. By Joseph Cottle.

An Exposition of our Lord's Intercessory Prayer, with a Discourse on the Relation of our Lord's Intercession to the Conversion of the World. By John Brown, D.D.

Science Simplified, and Philosophy, Natural and Experimental, made Easy. By Rev. David Williams, M.A.

The Palladium. No. IV.

The Doctrine of the Cherubim. Being an Inquiry, critical, exegetical, and practical, into the symbolical character and design of the cherubic figures of Holy Scripture. By George Smith, F.A.S.

The Journal of Sacred Literature. No. XII.

The National Cyclopædia of Useful Knowledge. Vol. XI.

New Elements of Geometry. By Seba Smith.

Lights and Shades of Ireland. In three parts. By Asenath Nicholson, of New York.

Life of James Davies, a Village Schoolmaster. By Sir Thomas Phillips. Anschar. A Story of the North.

Discourses on Colonization and Education. Viewed in their bearing on the increasing population of this kingdom. By James Cecil Wynter, M.A.

The Blank-paged Bible. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, with copious references to parallel and illustrative passages, and alternate pages ruled for MS. notes in a manner hitherto unattempted.

Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, Student. By Thomas T. Lynch.

Royalty and Republicanism in Italy; or, Notes and Documents relating to the Lombard Insurrection, and to the Royal War of 1848. By Joseph Mazzini.

A Christian Jew on the Old Testament Scriptures; or, a Critical Investigation of the Historical Events, Institutions, and Ordinances, recorded in the Pentateuch. By Benjamin Weiss.

A Glimpse of Hayti and her Negro Chief.

Salvation. A Sermon, preached in the parish church of Crathie, Balmoral, before Her Majesty the Queen, Sunday, Sept. 22, 1850. By Rev. John Cumming, D.D.

Part XLV. of the National Cyclopædia of Useful Knowledge. TalentThebes.

Thoughts for Home, in prose and verse. By Mrs. Thomas Geldart. Friendship with God. A Sermon, preached before the Bristol Association of Baptist Churches, held at Frome, May 22, 1850. By Charles Stanford, of Devizes. With a Preface, by John Sheppard, Esq. Third Edition. Notes and Observations on the First Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. By A. Corbem.

Concluding Notes and Observations on ditto. By ditto.

A Suggestive Manual (first part) of the Theory and Practice of Education. Containing a preliminary Lecture on that subject, delivered Saturday, June 22, 1850, at the College of Preceptors, 28, Bloomsbury Square, London. By S. C. Freeman, Examiner, &c.

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW.

DECEMBER, 1850.

ART. I.-1. Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady. By Theresa Pulszky. With a Historical Introduction, by Francis Pulszky. Two Vols. Colburn.

1850.

2. The War in Hungary, 1848, 1849. By Max Schlesinger. Translated by John Edward Taylor. Edited, with Notes and an Introduction, by Francis Pulszky. Two Vols. Bentley. 1850.

3. Scenes of the Civil War in Hungary, with the Personal Adventures of an Austrian Officer in the Army of the Ban of Croatia. Third Edition. Shoberl. 1850.

4. Sketches of the Hungarian Emigration into Turkey. MS.

THE public in this country may be excused for not having very accurate notions of Hungarian affairs, political or otherwise. The means of information are scanty. It is only now, indeed, that the necessary documents are beginning to be produced. Among the most interesting are the Memoirs of General Klapka,' Madame Pulszky's Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady,' and the work entitled The War in Hungary,' written by Dr. Max Schlesinger, and translated, very ably, by Mr. J. E. Taylor. There has also been issued a trashy publication entitled 'Scenes of the Civil War in Hungary,' which we only notice because it appears to have come to a third edition. It professes to be the personal narrative of an Austrian officer in the army of the Ban of Croatia, but is evidently an impudent fabrication; and we are sorry to see that a clever translator like Mr. F. Shoberl has been imposed upon. The compiler is so little certain of his ground, that he is compelled to resort to the subterfuge of pre

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tending that the names of persons and places, owing to the letters being written in pencil, could not be deciphered with any certainty! It is extremely rare to find him venturing even on a date, and then only when the information could be derived from divers sources, such as newspapers or official documents. Some of the scenes are cleverly invented, though too much in the Minerva Press style; but we trust that nobody has laid the smallest reliance on the opinions or facts given. The form adopted is the epistolary. One letter begins: I was at Agram, the capital of Croatia, for several weeks on military business,' and so on. Another ends: 'My name, it is to be hoped, will ere long appear in the list of the slain;' and we are then told that the author of these letters, a few days after the transmission of the last, was very dangerously wounded.' It is then deliberately insinuated that these pencil-written letters were forwarded one by one to the unknown correspondent. Now the next letter begins at page 138, and goes on with a continuous narrative (except when arbitrarily interrupted at p. 161 and p. 188) to the end (p. 210), when the writer is left in a nameless town, in such a condition as not to be able to take part in the war for some months,' and hoping that meanwhile it will have been brought to a successful termination.' The whole tone of the volume indicates that it was concocted with full knowledge of subsequent events, for the purpose of libelling the cause of the Magyars.

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We gladly turn to the other works which stand at the head of this article, the reverse of the preceding one in every point of view; and, as first in the date of its publication we notice the 'Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady,' by the accomplished wife of Mr. Pulszky, late accredited Envoy of the Hungarian Government to England. This, we believe, was the first authentic account of the War of Independence published in this country, and it was welcomed with an interest naturally heightened by the circumstance that the authoress had resided in Hungary during the exciting events which she describes, and writes her own adventures and observation. In a literary point of view, these volumes are remarkable, especially from the pen of a foreigner, combining a vigour and refinement of style with great command of the English language. The work, moreover, has all the charm of an earnest simplicity, and originality of thought, combined with a perfect tone of conscientiousness. Madame Pulszky is naturally inspired with patriotic enthusiasm, but at the same time this does not render her unjust toward the enemies of her country; and her work is calculated not merely to yield a' passing interest to the reader, with its heart-stirring narrative, but to answer a still nobler purpose, and serve the cause of truth. We cannot part company with this amiable authoress without expressing an

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