point which deserves the attention of students, and on which M. Lenthéric gives us the most curious particulars. Studying in a kind of parallel manner the deltas of the Rhone and of the Nile, he shows their wonderful similarity: the district of the lower Rhone seems evidently to have passed through the same geological phases as that of the Nile; the transformations have been exactly identical in both cases, and it is a singular coincidence that certain writers have ascribed to the Rhone, as well as to the Nile, seven mouths or outlets: both rivers, now, have only two.

After thus introducing his book by scientific remarks of a general nature, our author describes the Gulf of Lyons, and, to begin with, asks, Whence comes the name Golfe de Lyon? Are we to suppose that a portion of the shore of Languedoc and Provence has been designated after a city more than three hundred kilometres distant from the sea? No; M. Lenthéric observes that very few Latin texts give us the corresponding Sinus Lugdunensis; in most cases we have Sinus Gallicus, or even Sinus Leonis; and if we consider that the majority of modern French maps have the appellation Golfe du Lion, we are led to adopt the view of the old chronicler, Guillaume de Nangis, who said: 'The Sea of the Lion, therefore so called, because it is always savage, restless and cruel.'

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Time will not allow of our describing in detail the cities and other points of interest which are described in the second part of the volume on The Dead Cities' we say points of interest, for M. Lenthéric does not merely stop at the centres of population, enumerated at the beginning of this review; he does not forget the rivers, the lakes, the bays, but gives us an account of their various transformations. The chapter on Aigues-Mortes is one of the most interesting in the volume, bearing, as it does, on the biography of Saint Louis, and being connected with the history of the Crusades. As soon as the French king had pledged himself to take the cross (1244), his first care was to secure on the coast of the Mediterranean a tract of land and a harbour sufficient for the concentration of the troops which were to form the expedition. The difficulty, says M. Lenthéric, was a serious one: Louis IX. had only a right of suzerainty over the southern parts of France, and he did not possess as his own any of the cities in Provence or in Languedoc.

The harbour of Narbonne was rendered useless by accumulation of sand, besides which it belonged to the Viscounts of the city. The Port-Sarrazin, at Maguelone had its Bishop as a ruler; the graus, or bays, of Montpellier, were owned by the Kings of Aragon; the Counts of Toulouse

reigned at Agde and at Saint-Gilles; and Provence was to become a French dependency only three centuries later. The only available territory was the marshy district of Aigues-Mortes, held in possession by the monks of Psalmodi, whose abbey, situated on the summit of a hillock, in the midst of the lagoons, was one of the richest establishments of the kind at that time. Saint Louis entered upon a negotiation with the religious of Psalmodi, and in exchange for certain Crown lands situated near Sommières, he obtained from them the cession of Aigues-Mortes, together with all the surrounding tract of territory as far as the coast.

We have quoted the above passage to show how M. Lenthéric illustrates important historical episodes, in the course of his journey along the Mediterranean shore. He follows throughout their vicissitudes the destinies of Aigues-Mortes, and with the assistance of some excellent maps and plans, he makes us share the deep interest he feels in a town which, after a brief space of prosperity, is now almost as much a city of the dead as Herculanum or Carthage.

The last chapter, treating of engineering questions, deserves serious notice from another point of view; our author enumerates the best ways of restoring to the districts he has been examining, not merely material prosperity, but health and the elementary conditions of existence. The planting of trees carried out on a large scale, the careful regulation of alluvial deposits and the discontinuance of embankments are amongst the principal remedies he urges: the first would, by altering atmospheric conditions, put an end to the fevers and agues which decimate the population; the second would help in the same direction, besides preserving for the coasting trade and navigation purposes harbours which might add to the commercial prosperity of Southern France. Finally, although a system of embankments is often useful, especially when large centres of population are to be protected; such as Paris, London, Rouen, etc.; yet in most cases they are a cause of ruin, for the rise of a river will frequently, by destroying the barriers constructed at a great expense, carry along with it the most frightful devastation; whereas, if the river had been allowed free action, it would have, like the Ganges and the Nile, fertilized the surrounding land.

If we were asked to name the two principal French cities on the Mediterranean shore, no one would be astonished at our pointing out Arles and Marseilles: Arles, the city of the past, the Rome of Gaul, now completely shorn of its greatness, forsaken by those who have the greatest interest in

its prosperity, a deserted harbour, an aggregate of empty mansions, a barren country left as a prey to fever and malaria; Marseilles, the centre of commerce, of political activity, and of intellectual vigour : the point of contact where the East and the West, Europe and Asia, meet for the discussion of trading problems and the carrying on of venturesome speculations. Marseilles and Arles form the subject of M. Lenthéric's second volume, a volume fully as interesting as the first, and addressing itself equally to the antiquarian and the engineer, the scholar and the geologist. Our author begins by endeavouring to ascertain the various ethnic influences which have successively contributed to the civilization of the Mediterranean region: Iberi and Ligures, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans appear as the colonists of Southern France, and the foundation of the city of Arles can be safely ascribed to the Celtic tribes, who selected that locality both as a eastellum where they could successfully resist an attack from without, and as an emporium from whence the small craft used in those days for commercial purposes could sail up the Rhone and penetrate into the interior of the country: the Celtic name Ar-laith ('a damp place') bears witness to the antiquity of Arles, and is much more probable than the Greek and Latin ones suggested by certain critics. In connection with this part of the subject, M. Lenthéric has given us a number of curious details on the oppida of Gaul, the tradesunions, or guilds, as they existed in antiquity, etc., etc.

Arles, under the Romans, was a town where all the refinements of civilization occupied an important place: baths, theatres, amphitheatres, public gardens, libraries, museums. Our author, in stating and explaining that fact, takes the opportunity of denouncing the madness for pleasures of every kind, the decay of patriotism, the absence of domestic life which was the prominent feature of heathen society during the last period of the empire. 'Men forget everything so long as they are amused,' said Cassiodorus ; 'and it is easier to lead them by pleasures than by the force or reason.' Arles reproduced, on a limited scale, the habits and usages of the metropolis of the world; it had its arenæ, and its thermal establishments. There is not one of its streets which does not preserve some trace of Roman influence, and M. Lenthéric is not guilty of exaggeration when he describes Arles as an open-air museum. The forum still exists after fifteen centuries of revolution. Occupying the centre of the city, it has retained to a certain extent its original destination; for there, says our author, the modern

Arlesians spend hours and days exercising the taste for flâneric and gossip, which was so characteristic of their ancestors. It is impossible within the limits of a short notice to describe in detail all the monuments of Greek and Roman architecture still extant at Arles: the reader will find, however, a sufficient account of the principal ones; and an excellent map engraved on purpose for this work gives, from the most trustworthy authorities, the topography of the classical Arelate.

If the restitution of the locality such as it was at the time of Constantine is a relatively easy matter in the case of Arles, the same process applied to Marseilles is, on the contrary, beset with the most serious difficulties. To quote M. Lenthéric: 'Cities where development has been gradual and of an average kind, those especially which have decayed and perished by slow stages, present almost at the surface of the ground a rich harvest of valuable remains. The soil on which Marseilles stands cannot be regarded even as a heap of ruins; the ruins have been carried away or used for building purposes; and it is absolutely necessary to excavate at a considerable depth if we wish to find here and there a doubtful vestige of classical civilization.' The history of Marseilles is really that of its harbour; but where shall we find the elements of a trustworthy and really authentic account of the Phocæan colony? The narratives of the earliest writers are so lamentably made up of fact and fiction blended, that it is impossible to determine what is strictly historical as compared with the merely legendary past; and the annalists, living many centuries subsequently to the events which they describe, seem to have delighted in casting around them a kind of poetical and mysterious garb.

M. Lenthéric devotes a considerable space to the Phoenician period of Marseilles. From the evidence of Thucydides, Pausanias and other old writers, it is quite clear that as early as the sixth century, B.C., the present capital of the department of Bouches du Rhône occupied an important position as a commercial centre. To say nothing of the coins and medals struck at Tyre and at Carthage, which have been dug up in the whole extent of Southern Gaul, and at Marseilles itself, the works of excavation carried on from time to time have brought to light on the site of the old Acropolis no fewer than forty-five small stone edifices (édicules, says M. Lenthéric) of an archaic style much anterior to the Greek epoch. These edifices are monolithic and portative chapels or shrines, offering the most striking and significant similarity to those recently discovered in Africa on the site of

Carthage, and, in the East, at Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Palmyra, Baalbec. Marseilles, in point of fact, was essentially a Phoenician city, one of the principal colonies founded by that remarkable race of men whose best counterpart in modern times was to be found in the lagoons of Venice.

A disquisition, treating of the political state of Marseilles, its laws, government and institutions, forms one of the most interesting parts of M. Lenthéric's tenth chapter. Aristotle had written on that very subject a book, now unfortunately lost; but Athenæus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Thucydides, Polybius, Suetonius,and Strabo

supply us with a mass of information which deserves to be attentively studied, and from which our author has collected the details he places before us. He concludes with some suggestive remarks on the introduction of Christianity amongst the population of Southern Gaul, and on the constitution of the early Church.

The notes, appendices of original documents, and twenty-two maps or plans which complete these two volumes, add very much to their usefulness, and help us to understand thoroughly the geographical and topographical descriptions so industriously put together by M. Lenthéric.

The Churchmanship of John Wesley, and the Relations of Wesleyan-Methodism to the Church of England. By James H. Rigg, D.D., Author of Modern Anglican Theology, etc. Published for the Author at the Wesleyan Conference Office. This volume, as the author explains,' is a new composite out of materials the greater part of which have already been published. The substance of about one-half appeared in The Contemporary Review in September, 1876, as an article on The Churchmanship of John Wesley.... Most of the remainder had appeared in a former publication on The Relations of John Wesley and Wesleyan-Methodism to the Church of England, which was called forth by special circumstances eleven years ago, and of which two editions have been sold.' The combination of these two very able, timely and mutually complimentary productions into one complete tractate was a happy idea; and it is as happily realized. The two works are so skilfully amalgamated, so artistically fused into a homogeneous monograph that, without close comparison, it is impossible to determine to which date or to whether of the two essays any particular chapter or section belonged; in fact, no one who had neither read the author's preface nor the two previous publications would suspect that the whole had not been produced, so to say, at the first intent. The suture is effected so naturally that no trace, even of the process, is left. Of the later named but earlier published treatise we need not speak particularly, having reviewed it at some length on its first appearance. Its merits are well-known to our readers. As the author intimates in his preface, it is superseded by the now completed work, in which it is embodied. We are glad to

miss a passage to which we at the time felt bound to demur.

Though the work is not written primarily for Wesleyans, but for non-Wesleyans,' yet no intelligent Wesleyan can fail to derive from it both pleasure and profit; all the more pleasure and profit from the very fact that he is placed in a position to look at the matter, not from within, but from without or rather from above. One's own house and garden gazed down upon from a neighbouring observatory, are invested with a fresh interest, whilst their outline and relative position are more clearly and accurately realized. The Methodist will find his ecclesiastical homestead look wonderfully well from the elevation to which our author conducts him, and the bounds of his habitation will not contract, but expand beneath his gaze. Wesleyans themselves, as a rule, do not too clearly understand the opinions and character of John Wesley, and the precise position and relations of Wesleyan-Methodism among the ecclesiastical organizations and communities of England.' (Preface.) This little volume will prove of great service to Wesleyans and nonWesleyans alike. The extent to which Dr. Rigg has succeeded in contemplating his Mother Church merely as a student of history, in particular, of ecclesiastical history,' is remarkable. Hence result a candour, a moderation and a judicial calmness and impartiality too rare in denominational apologetics. We have no fear that Dr. Rigg will be disappointed in his 'hope' that this small volume...will have a permanent interest, and will conduce, not to division and controversy, but to settlement and peace so far as regards the Church of England and Wesleyan-Methodism with their mutual relations.' (Pre

face.) The book is entirely free from polemical heat or harshness. We should think the questions discussed are henceforth set at rest. We are inclined to question the exact accuracy of one opinion expressed by our author: There are still, I believe, a few Wesleyan Ministers who receive the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.' There may be such, but we ourselves have not met with them. We certainly know some who hold, more strongly than definitely, a doctrine of baptismal grace; but we doubt of the existence of one Wesleyan Minister who holds, out and out, what is ordinarily meant by 'the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.'

Faultless accuracy, frankness and fairness in a writer form no effective guarantee for the attractiveness of his work. This book, however, is emphatically readable.

The style is so easy, so lucid, so quietly yet forcefully fluent, and the diction so apposite and natural, that the reader's attention is never either strained or slackened. The current of the argumentative narration is like the flow of 'bonnie Doon,' 'never drumlie': never turbid with obscurity of thought, or discoloured by asperity of temper.

Syntax of the Hebrew of the Old Testament. By Heinrich Erald. Translated from the Eighth German Edition, by James Kennedy, B.D. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1879.-Nowhere has the splendid intellect of Evald done such sound service to the cause of sacred science and the elucidation of the Holy Scriptures as in the important province of Hebrew Grammar. His was, in fact, the very genius of Grammar. In his hands Grammar is as charming' as Divine philosophy'; 'not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,' and as dull pedants never fail to make it. The subject receives from him a thoroughly philosophical and scientific treatment. He shows how the subtleties of Hebrew Syntax grow out of the yet deeper subtleties of the laws of thought. The brilliancy of his analytic faculty and the animation of his style throw a fascination over what would otherwise be the driest philological details. The very first paragraph wakes up the student's intellect and makes him feel that he is sitting at the feet of a master. Not only the peculiarities, but the strength, and in some departments the affluence of that ancient and imperfectlydeveloped tongue are strikingly brought out. The sections on the six tense forms in Hebrew: 'two plain, two modified, two resimplified,' and the 'relatively progressive imperfect, perfect' tenses, and on the 'relatively progressive voluntative mood,' for example, are really interesting. Valuable rules

of exegesis are incidentally laid down. Every Biblical student who aspires to a competent knowledge of Hebrew should master Evald's Hebrew Syntax. The translator has acted wisely in confining himself to the third part of Evald's Manual: Ausführ liches Lehrbuch der hebräischen Sprache des alten Bundes (1870), inasmuch as the purpose of the two earlier parts are sufficiently met by the well-known Grammars of Kalisch, Gesenius, Green and Davidson. Bating a few conventionalisms, the translation is beautifully executed.

The Student's Commentary of the Holy Bible. Founded on the Speaker's Commentary. Abridged and Edited by J. M. Fuller, M.A., formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Vol. I. London: John Murray. 1879.-The term Student on the title-page is, as we learn from the preface, widely inclusive, the work being intended for circulation among readers of all classes.' 'It is to be studied for its explanations rather than for practical remarks or spiritual application." This is a good idea, but, in this volumecomprising the Pentateuch-it is unequally carried out. The Introductions-first to the Pentateuch, and then to the separate books-are judicious and useful, and the commenting on Leviticus is almost throughout very helpful to the general reader; but that on the other books seems to us to fall below the requirements of any but beginners in the study of the Scriptures. We think that the same space might have contained explanatory matter more serviceable to the ordinary Bible reader. Sometimes the comment is not in harmony with the text; for instance, on Leviticus xiv. 49, we read: Cleanse the house. Strictly purge the house from sin. The same word is used in v. 52; and in v. 53 it is said, "and make an atonement for it."...The leprosy in houses, the leprosy in clothing, and the terrible disease in the human body, were representative forms of decay which taught the lesson that all created things, in their own nature, are passing away, and are only maintained for their destined uses during an appointed period, by the power of Jehovah.' It is obvious to remark: if leprosy symbolized decay and not moral and spiritual corruption, and its 'lesson' were the transitoriness and dependence on God of all created things,' and not the evil of sin and the need of atonement," how unaccountable and misleading is the omission of any such idea from the text, and the prominence given to cleansing, 'sin and atonement '! This is as great an error in physiology and pathology as in exegesis and theology. The terrible disease of leprosy in the human body is

not mere decay'; it is an animal poison fermenting in the blood. And leprosy in houses is something more than decay'; it is a fungous growth on the walls.

We confess ourselves also to be none the wiser for the following explanation' of the miracle of the articulate remonstrance of Balaam's ass against Balaam's worse than assenine obstinacy: God may have brought it about that sounds uttered by the creature after its kind became to the prophet's intelligence [sic] as though it addressed him in rational speech.' What is gained by this utterly unsupported hypothesis of an hallucination brought about' by 'God'? According to the expositor, the perception of the presence of the angel of the Lord was no optical delusion, but, on the contrary, an optical illumination; and his hearing of the voice of the angel was an objective and not a subjective miracle. Why should the articulation of the ass, any more than the visibility and audibility of the angel (both admittedly the result of Divine intervention), be regarded as a mere cerebral or mental abnormity? What is the utility-moral or scientific-of this conjectural transference of the sphere of the miracle from the mouth of the ass to the brain of the prophet? The Apostolic version of the historical event seems to us as much more morally impressive as it is more Divinely authenticated: "The dumb ass, speaking with man's voice, forbade the madness of the prophet.' According to our expositor, Balaam's fancying that the commonplace kicking and braying of the ass after its kind' was only a symptom of the prophet's madness. In all exegetical comity, the apparition of the angel and the articulations of the ass must be placed in the same category: both must be objective, or both subjective. We are afraid, too, that the ass of the disobedient prophet must, on this hermeneutical principle, owe its imaginary life to some similar cerebration on the part of the lying prophet. What is there, again, more incredible in the brief opening of the mouth of one abused ass than in the shutting the mouths of many hunger-maddened lions through a long night in the den at Babylon ?

Songs of the Hebrew Poets in English Verse. By the Rev. John Brentnall, Vicar of Willen. Songs illustrating the Life of David. London: Sampson Low and Co. 1879.-The author thus explains the intention of his work: 'It has occurred to me that an attempt to arrange these and other Songs contained in the Old Testament in something like historical order may not be an unacceptable work.' The conception is good, the execution not so good. He has, in the first place, imitated

the grave blunder of too many modern critics of fancying that the conjectural date and occasion for the composition of a psalm, inferred by a nineteenth century student from the contents of the psalm, are more authentic and trustworthy than the ancient inscriptions which form an integral portion of the Canon. We cannot but wonder that the sound rule with regard to various readings in the MSS. of Holy Writ should not have occurred to our often too clever destructive critics: the reading which seems, at first sight, the least likely is the least likely to have been the result of meddlesome emendation or tampering with the text. Two things these self-confident conjecturers have made very plain first, that the superscriptions of the psalms which they assume to put right were not, what their substituted superscriptions of course are, mere literary guess-work; secondly, that this conjectural criticism is most precarious, inasmuch as the witness of the emending critics does not agree together. Mr. Brentnall himself shows that the acutest of them are utterly at variance: Murphy, Delitzsch, Perowne, to whom he might have added Ewald and many another, attributing the same psalm to authors and to times very widely apart.

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His new theory about the meaning of the word Selah does not help matters-namely, 'that the thirty-nine Selah Psalms are all composite poems, made up of short songs or fragments of songs, and that as entire psalms, they were generally applied to occasions different from those for which the several component parts were originally written.' In our judgment his attempt to prove this utterly breaks down. What psalms, for example, have more complete, organic and vital unity throughout than the first two Selah Psalms, the Third and Fourth Psalms? The supposition that the Fourth Psalm is made up of three distinct parts, composed on three separate occasions, seems to us most uncritical. You might as well start the hypothesis that Gray's Elegy or Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness was a patchwork of this kind. Besides, the historic value of the psalm is sadly impaired if it were not a spontaneous composition, but a series of quotations or recollections strung together for the occasion. Many of our author's suppositions as to Davidic Psalms, which do not traverse the superscriptions, are both probable, and illustrative of, and in turn illustrated by the sacred narrative. We cannot congratulate him on his rhymed versions. The rule, 'None but a poet should translate a poet,' applies to the Psalms as much as to any other productions. In the process of rendering the Hebrew songs into English rhymed metre,