to men so widely differing in opinion as Thomas Chalmers and Thomas Carlyle, Gaussen and Colenso, Maurice and Vinet, Monod and Dean Stanley, is evidence of his remarkable power of attracting widely differing classes of minds. His hospitality was as catholic as his correspondence, so much so, indeed, that at last he gave up the idea of "sorting" his guests, and let them "mingle as they might " in the genial Christian atmosphere of Linlathen. Carlyle, Stanley, Maurice, Kingsley, and many others were welcome guests, and some of Carlyle's own letters given in this volume show how warmly he reciprocated and appreciated Mr. Erskine's friendship.

Of the various books and pamphlets that he wrote, the best known are his "Internal Evidence of the Truth of Revealed Religion his "Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel," first published in 1828, and reprinted, with slight additions, in 1873; "The Brazen Serpent;" and "The Spiritual Order," published after his death. In this, as well as in some of his letters, he declares his belief in the Scriptural basis of the "restitution of all things." Mr. Erskine's writings were all characterised by much grace and clearness of diction, and Dr. Chalmers declared the second of the works mentioned to be one of the most charming books he had ever read. A good many of his smaller publications were written in defence of the teaching of his most intimate and likeminded friend, the Rev. J. McLeod Campbell, whose life and letters have been almost simultaneously published, and whose lamented expulsion from the Church of Scotland half a century ago has been since admitted to be one of the gravest mistakes it ever made. But Mr. Erskine's life work was not so much in the books he has left as in the spiritual influence of his living personality. The charming biographcal sketches by Principal Shairp and Dean Stanley, with which the "Letters enriched, show-what could be testified by every one who knew him personally, as the present writer was privileged to do-that he was a man of strong spiritual power. Whether as regards the winning purity and beauty of his life, itself a "living epistle," or the spiritual depth of his conversation, literally "among things heavenly," all who knew and could appreciate him will endorse the remark of one of his most honoured and like-minded friends, that ever after he knew Mr. Erskine he never thought of God but the thought of Mr. Erskine was not far away."

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BY CELIA'S ARBOUR. By Walter Besant and James Rice. Rose-Belford Publishing Co. : Toronto. 1878.

Mr. Besant and Mr. Rice enjoy a very enviable position among novel writers; their works being usually looked forward to, as the

readers of the CANADIAN MONTHLY will readily admit, with more than ordinary expectation.

But we may be permitted to doubt if this particular specimen will much increase their reputation. It is true that the tale is interesting, especially towards the close, and that the narrator of the tale, one Ladislas Pulaski, his comrade and the hero of the work, Leonard Coplestone, and Celia, who enjoys the title rôle of heroine, are all charmingly perfect characters, only to be surpassed for self-denial, courage, and charity by the aged sea-captain who acts as guardian and protector to the two boys. Besides these almost too good people, the canvass is well filled up with other leading figures-Wassielewski, the old Polish patriot, frenzied with the hope of revenge upon the Muscovite oppressors of his country; Herr Raumer, a singularly well-drawn likeness of a Russian spy, so good a likeness, in fact, as to make us regret the one or two fatal slips on the part of the authors, which mar it as a work of art; and half a dozen minor characters, all well individualized and helping on the tale.

Still, in spite of all this, the story is in several points unsatisfactory. We like the mise en scéne, and the general conduct of the tale is well managed, but on the whole it lacks originality. The comparatively aged suitor, who holds a mysterious secret hanging over the head of the heroine's papa, by means of which he expects to obtain the lovely daughter's hand in marriage; the distress of the lovely daughter herself, racked, Iphigenia-like, between regard for her father and love for another;-all this is very stale.

Certainly we must remember that skeletons of plots are few in number, and that almost all we can expect from novelists now-a-days is to dish us up our cold mutton with the most modern sauce, and to hash it and curry it in some tolerably original and unexpected manner. Perhaps Herr Raumer, the German lover, with short white hair, heavy moustache, a rasp in his voice, and a disbelief of everything good in his heart, is a fairly original conception in this rôle. But all we can say is that the reader will be disappointed at the tame way in which he meets his inevitable rebuff, and allows the mysterious secret to fizzle off as harmlessly as a damp squib.

The want of originality complained of extends to the details of the work. Whole passages are paraphrases of Dickens, that is, certain of the characters are framed entirely on the model of Dickens's work-are made to talk as he would have made them, and live in just such an atmosphere as he would have planted them in. The imitation is good. If we came across it in a volume of parodies, such as Bret Harte's "Sensation Novels," or the Rejected Addresses," we should smile and praise the faithful rendering which never degenerated into

copying. But it is out of place when it occurs in parts of a tale which does not pretend to be written in that vein throughout.

It

Take, for example, Augustus Brambler. is not too much to say that but for the great and gifted Wilkins Micawber, Augustus would never have been the man he is in these pages. Micawber is his spiritual or god-parent. Like Micawber, Brambler prospers in no line of life. Like him, his expectations, his belief in himself, are stupendous-his plans for the future magnificent. He oscillates between "the clerical, the legal, and the scholastic." Wherever he goes he is poor but hopeful, and Wilkins himself had no more children than Augustus has. These children, by another touch à la Dickens, he familiarly names by the dates of the years in which they were born, in order to carry out a theory of his. "Childhood catches the measles and whooping-cough and shakes them off, but a child never shakes off the influence of the year in which it was born. My son, Forty-five, is restless and discontented. That is easily explained, if you think of the events of that year. A tendency, my boy, which you will have to combat during life. Like asthma." In running over the family list to Pulaski, the latter notices a lacuna between '50 and '52.

"I was afraid to ask after '51, for fear there had been a loss, but I suppose the question showed in my face, because the family faces instantly clouded over."

"We never had a Fifty-one,' said Augustus, sorrowfully."

The old artillery-man in "Bleak House," who named his children "Malta" and "Gibraltar," after the garrison towns in which they were born, will at once recur to the reader's mind.

Certainly Augustus's fooling is very amusing. Micawber himself need not have been ashamed of this little eulogy which Augustus delivers upon Mrs. Brambler's first cousin, whose service in Her Majesty's navy was cut short, after lasting three weeks, for "inebriation while on duty. He might have done well, perhaps, in some other Walk-or shall we say, Sail ?—of life, if he had not in fact continued drunk, every bold rover comes his day. (Here Augustus rolled his head, and tried to look like a buccaneer.) Your mother's cousin, children, may be regarded as one who fell-in action."

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Thackeray, too, is laid under contribution, and in a more barefaced manner. The old sea-captain, who for some time is inclined to form himself on the model of Captain Cuttle, and to address the heroine invariably as "my pretty," finally becomes an adherent of Thackeray. When Leonard comes home after a five years' absence, the old man greets him with that allusion to the return of one who brings "his sheaves with him," which is used so touchingly in Esmond. When the good old

"Then his hand dropped, and his head fell forward. The captain was dead.”

We must also complain of the way in which the book is got up. Too clearly it has never had the authors' eyes upon it since it was reprinted from the Magazine. It teems with repetitions and contradictions, misprints and mistakes. In two chapters (ten and twelve) the expression, long, long, canker of Peace," occurs no less than three times, and is referred each time to Tennyson, with the most exasperating air, as though it were a brand-new idea.

The dates and sequences of events are hopelessly muddled. You see an occurrence looming in the immediate future; it is definitely fixed for to-morrow, but in the next chapter, perhaps, you have a full account of the events of three or four intervening days, and finally, when the occurrence does take place, you are told that the warning, which must be dated nearly a week back, was really given last night! Three people walk abreast, A at the left hand of B, and C at the right hand of A,-rather a difficult puzzle to work out!

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We are afraid the authors must also stand chargeable with the following delinquencies: "One of his only friends ;" Augustus is with them, bearing in his hands a pair of new white cotton gloves, and an air of immense dignity;"

as others take to wine or narcotics. Once let those thoughts get the upper hand, and there is no telling whither their reminiscences of the past, with their awakenings of old desires, of half-forgotten feelings, will lead such a woman. Look at her when she is drawn out of her retired life for a special occasion, and see what a change has occurred, a change accented as she is a woman, and a Frenchwoman to boot-by her dress.

The day is a fête-day, for her son George's first ship is to be launched, and his employer and future partner has invited her to dinner to meet a family gathering. Madame Gosselin has replaced her widow's cap (she is not really a widow, but her husband is a seafaring man who has been away for years), which used to make her seem, to careless eyes, fifty years old at least, with a head-dress made of a becomingly arranged fragment of lace. All the world can see now that fifty or forty-five is out of the question, as far as any suspicion of wrinkles is concerned. Her hands, too, every one notices, are pretty, and her low-necked dress, with heavy gold Breton cross hanging at her throat, shows that Madame's rule of strangling herself with high frills is not grounded on a wish to conceal a scraggy neck. These changes bring out the real woman, coquettish, agreeable, and capable of much finesse of a low class, who had previously been hidden under the dévote.

Madame Gosselin has been living some years with her son under the hospitable roof of a Captain Kernuz, an old Breton sea-lion, who by a pious fraud had persuaded her to come and live with him under pretence of a message from her husband. The absent Captain Gosselin had, in fact, sent no such message, but had greatly troubled his friend Kernuz with his sadness and enigmatical replies, when pressed to send some token by the latter to his wife and child. Captain Kernuz, returned to Lorient and having finally cast his anchor on dry ground, thought the best cure for the mystery was to take care of the deserted couple till his | comrade came home, which Gosselin seemed in no hurry to do. But all the same, Captain Kernuz, jolly old rover as he is, cannot take to the dévote at all, and her appearance on this occasion quite startles him. Warmed by the ship-builder's good wine, he pictures to himself the amiable qualities of Madame, and her virtue in hiding so much beauty and charm in hideous caps, and in church-going and knitting early and late for the sake of his old friend Gosselin. Insensibly the thought steals into his heart that if Gosselin never were to return, Madame might still continue to live in his house, but in a different capacity. And judging from Madame's conduct that evening, Captain Kernuz would not have had long to sigh in vain.

How then are we to understand it, or how can the Captain fathom it, when the next

morning at breakfast he finds Madame the same colourless being who had always annoyed him with her insipidity? To explain this, one must have been present at an interview between Madame and one M. Pleumeur, the other mystery of the little town, which took place on the way home from the fête the day before. M. Pleumeur is a savant, a hard, cold, icy, retired, self-sufficing man, who smiles not, neither does he weep. He has taught George Gosselin, who, though grown up, still keeps up his acquaintance and tries fruitlessly to win some demonstration of affection from him. What can such a man have said to Madame Gosselin in the quiet starlit gloom that has caused her so suddenly to resume her rôle of piety and seclusion, and to put away again, with an effort, the enticing pleasures that were alluring her? Except those, no one knows in Lorient-no one else in the world, if it be not Captain Gosselin, who, with a dose of Sumatra poison at his lips, is about to kill himself off the coast of Ireland at that very moment, and, perhaps, on account of that same secret.

We will not tell what it is. A few days afterwards it comes to light, and when retribution strikes it strikes the innocent. Our readers will find the tale well worth taking up, and if we have excited their curiosity enough to induce them to do so, we are sure they will not blame us for it when they put the book down again.

ANGLO-HAWAIIAN POEMS. By John Machar Macdonald, of Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands. Honolulu : Pacific Commercial Advertiser Print.

We cannot but be reminded of the rapid progress of events by the arrival of this modest little publication, printed at Honolulu, and dedicated by the author to "His Majesty King Kalakaua,” in which royal person he recognises "a generous friend and liberal patron of all laudable Hawaiian enterprise." Mr. J. M. Macdonald seems to have some Canadian antecedents or associations; at least he seems to have received the name of a clergyman well known in Canada, and sends a copy of his little publication to what may have been the Canadian home of his parents, if not his own birthplace. The poems are few in number,indeed the publication is a mere brochure,--and the subjects are naturally chiefly Hawaiian. The "Tropical Sunset" is one of the best, both as to thought and versification. They are mainly interesting as giving us a little glimpse into the life of those far-away islands, which owe the very life of their civilization to missionary enterprise; but all show good and true feeling as well as considerable power of description and versification.

This corps of observation was accompanied by the Deputy-Adjutant-General, Lieut. -Colonel Harvey, and proceeded on its way, escorted by a small division of gun-boats, commanded by Captain Mulcaster, R. N. On the 7th November Colonel Macomb landed on the British side of the St. Lawrence with 1200 men, and on the 8th November the enemy were overtaken by Colonel Morrison at Point Iroquois. On the 10th November Lieut.Colonel Morrison landed at the United States post at Hamilton, where he captured a quantity of provisions and stores, and two pieces of ordnance. On the IIth of November the United States forces, then under command of General Boyd, were so closely pressed by the British, under Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison, that they were compelled to concentrate and offer battle. The United States force consisted of two brigades of infantry and one regiment of cavalry, amounting together to upwards of three thousand men. About two o'clock in the afternoon the enemy moved forward from Chrystler's Point and attacked Colonel Morrison's advance, which gradually retired until it had reached the ground previously selected, an open spot where the right rested on the river, the left on a pine wood. The right was held by the flank companies of the 49th regiment, a detachment of the Glengarry Fencibles, and one gun under Lieutenant-Colonel Pearson, supported by three companies of the 89th regiment under Captain Barnes, with one gun. Further to the rear, and extending to the woods on the left the remainder of the 49th and 89th regiments, with one gun, formed the main body and reserve. The woods on the left were occupied by the Voltigeurs under Major Herriot and the Indians under Lieutenant Anderson. The battle became general by half-past two, when the United

forty six of all ranks had assembled at the rendezvous, at Ancaster, on the 17th October) and take up a position on Burlington Heights, whilst Colonel Murray was finally allowed to establish himself at Stoney Creek, without any attempt on the part of the enemy to dislodge him. The United States Government having relinquished the idea of attacking Kingston, it was arranged between the United States Secretary of War, and General Wilkinson, that the United States force which had been assembled at Sackett's Harbour, should leave Kingston in the rear, and proceed down the St. Lawrence to Montreal, and there cooperate with General Hampton, who was to advance from Lake Champlain in an attack upon that city. General Wilkinson accordingly left Sackett's Harbour on the 21st October, and proceeded to Grenadier Island, near Kingston, which had been selected as the point from which the expedition was to start. On the 3rd November a flotilla of upwards of three hundred boats of various sizes, escorted by United States gunboats, proceeded down the St. Lawrence. On nearing Prescott, General Wilkinson landed his troops on the United States side of the river, and marched them to a bay some two miles below Prescott, so as to avoid the fire of the British batteries at that port. The flotilla ran past Prescott during the night of November 6th, without sustaining much injury from the cannonade opened upon them. So soon as Major-General de Rottenburgh had ascertained that General Wilkinson's force had commenced the descent of the St. Lawrence, he despatched Lieut.-Colonel Morrison of the 89th, with his regiment, together with the 49th under Lieut.-Colonel Plenderleath, and some Voltigeurs and Fencibles, under Lieut.-Colonel Pearson, in all about eight hundred men, to follow the enemy.