of that memorable council. The primate set his hand, but refused to affix his seal, to what it was the object of his whole subsequent life to renounce, contradict, and violate. Enough will have been said of the dispute to prepare the reader for its results in the latter years of Henry's reign, when I have placed before him the substance of the declarative enactments, so solemnly assented to, and so suddenly repented of, by the hero and champion of the Church's claims.

They declared and ordered that disputes concerning church advowsons and presentations should be tried and determined in the king's courts; that in the secular courts ecclesiastics should answer for matters cognizant there, and in the spiritual courts only forcases within spiritual jurisdiction. They provided that the king's justiciary should send to the spiritual court on trial of an ecclesiastical offender, and, observing the issue of the cause, should at once have power to withdraw from the further protection of the church, a guilty or convicted clerk. They prevented a prelate or clergyman of the higher class from leaving the realm without the king's license, and gave the king a claim for security, in case of their departure, that they would not procure evil or damage to the country or the monarch. This was of course directed against the papal court. They freed every officer or tenant of the throne from liability to interdict or excommunication, unless the king or his justiciary should first have been apprised of the proceedings. They directed that appeals should proceed regularly from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop; and if the archbishop failed to do justice, the cause was to be carried before the king; that by his precept the suit might be terminated in the archbishop's court, so as not to proceed farther without the king's consent. If there were any dispute as to whether the holding of any tenement were lay or ecclesiastical, they left the question to be determined before the King's Chief Justice, by the verdict of twelve lawful men, and to be referred with that verdict to its proper court. They conceded that an inhabitant of the king's demesne, refusing to appear when cited by the ecclesiastical authorities, might be put under an interdict; but he was not to be excommunicated until the king's officer of the place should have been required to compel him by course of law to answer; and if the officer failed in this duty, he was to be at the mercy of the king, and the bishop might in that case compel the accused person by ecclesiastical censures. They enacted, finally, that the custody of every vacant archbishopric, bishopric,

abbey, and priory, of royal foundation, should be given with its revenues to the king; and that the election of a new incumbent was to be made in consequence of a writ from the king, by the chief clergy of the church, assembled in the king's chapel, with the king's assent, and with the advice of such prelates as the king might call to his assistance.

Such were the Constitutions of Clarendon the most famous product of the momentous struggle of Henry the Second and Thomas à Becket,

New Books.

THE WHITE SLAVE; or, The Russian Peasant Girl. By the Author of "Revelations of Russia." 3 vols. p. 8vo. H. Colburn,

WITH most novels, to notice them six months after publication would be rather to pen an epitaph than an introduction. The present one, however, has a constitution of a more lasting kind.

The Author tells us he aspires not only to amuse or move his reader, but to instruct by the moral which his tale conveys, and to impart such information as the public might be disinclined to receive in a form less attractive. He has well succeeded in this aim, and produced a work, apparently his first, which proves him possessed of the varied talents necessary to the production of the philosophical and political novel. He unites the opposite excellences of soundness of judgment and correctness of observation, and liveliness of imagination and playfulness of fancy, which but few of even our first-rate novelists have done in a greater degree. Whoever he is, we hail him as a new power in that class of writers which is destined to have great effect, at all events in its generation.

A regard to mere form has long been abandoned by genius to pedants ; the philosopher, the legislator, the observant man of the world, or whoever has had new truths to give to the world, or old errors to expose, have found fiction now, as in the time of Æsop, the most satisfactory and effective vehicle. Thierry found the better half of the history of England of the middle age in the novels of Scott; and in the pages of various of our living novelists, may be found the history of the present age. Truth if not fact is to be found there, and with a spiritual comment worth whole volumes of dull dissertation or mere actualities. But such works must be watched carefully; for it is the artistic power in them which moulds into a complete form what are in

themselves fragmentary. Like an expert advocate (himself a kind of artist) the principle he desires to inculcate or the impression he seeks to produce, is effected by moulding into a new creation a number of truths. Each may be individually true, but still the whole may be false: false not to itself, but in its relation to the actual existences it proposes to pourtray. It will always, therefore, be a moot point whether such productions are serviceable or not. Undoubtedly a sword may be used for or against one, and it may be better not to put important principles to the arbitrement of so insensible an implement. We are inclined to think, however, that the beneficial effects of this class of literature predominate over the evil. Truths when thus brilliantly set, produce so much more effect. They raise such a lively interest and are such a joyous stimulant to the mind and the heart, that we cannot but look upon them as a great invention, and one tending to advance the age more than any other. They are to us what the old ballad was to the illiterate middle age. They wake us as with a sound of a trumpet, and, embodying all the sentiments of the time, they find an echo universally responsive. "Oliver Twist," "The Sybil," Ernest Maltravers," and, we may now add, "The White Slave," will set more heads thinking and hearts throbbing-will rouse more attention, create more sympathy, and stimulate more wholesome energy than hours of grave debate in the Parliament, or hundreds of volumes of its blue book reports. The capacity to acquire information, to digest it, and even to sympathise, has but comparatively narrow limits, and it is as important that a man should not be presented with a mass that he cannot by any effort swallow, as that he should have a tincture that may produce a right effect.

The story is founded on an occurrence that has already been frequently employed, namely, the distresses of a noble-minded, highly cultivated man, from being the serf or slave of another. Still though both in dramas and novels this obvious and suggestive situation has been often employed, yet in the hands of the present author it is made to excite undiminished interest, and is rendered the means of developing the horrors, the degradation, and the sufferings slavery must always bring to the enslaving as well as the enslaved. His grand object as already said is not to pro duce a thrilling story or mere sentimental interest, but to develope character and the effects of laws and governments upon it. He is equally master of his art, as his subject, and on this account it is we place him amongst the highest class of novelists. The merest novel reader cannot forsake his book, and the sternest thinker will find in it valuable knowledge.

He, doubtless, has a political end in view, and we fancy a little bitterness if not malignity may be detected in some of his expositions, though possibly this may only arise from a genuine horror and disgust at the miserable results of a system of society such as exists in all slave-holding countries, and which, when actually witnessed, must leave if not an înduration a soreness of mind.

The subject is highly suggestive, and the points for criticism are numerous; and although he is a fine writer, we should in a more lengthened notice have a wrestle with him on some points of art, and some even of principle; for although he exposes many conventional errors, he is inclined to defend others equally injurious. This, however, we cannot do, and therefore must conclude by earnestly recommending the work to the perusal of all who wish to enjoy a fine fiction, pregnant with knowledge of the most valuable description: the knowledge of mankind.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF T. CAREW, Sewer in Ordinary to Charles the First. 32mo. H. G. Clarke and Co.

A REPRINT of one of the most graceful and brilliant of the poets of elegant Charles's reign. Carew well deserves to be introduced into a modern series of the poets; and, considering how charming his verses are, so light, gay, and exhilarating, treating too of love and all the elegancies of life, it is astonishing they should ever have fallen into obscurity. They are as fresh as at the first moment they were penned, and fragrant with sweet words and images. It is strange that with such models, indefinite and vague verses should have since gained popularity; and been allowed to supplant them in public taste. In comparison with the mawkish love songs of the last century, they are as superior as fresh to faded flowers. The great merit of all the older poets consists in their having a definite idea, and tender feeling round which their fancy twined apt illustration. Vagueness and mawkishness came in with French conceit and affectation, and has been too long allowed to taint our literature. Mr. Clarke is well entitled to thanks for thus reproducing our noble writers.

STELLA: a Poem of the Day. In three cantos, &c. Fep. 8vo. Longman and Co.

BAD poetry like bad wine is utterly unendurable, and it is equally wonderful how there can be readers for the one, as drinkers for the other. Still as there is a constant production of both, one must suppose there is some kind of market for the deleterious trash. Every day produces fresh specimens; and it really becomes the duty of those connected with the noticing of books, to endeavour to restrain the evil; that unwary readers may not be lured into throwing away their time, and perhaps their money, although we suspect the booksellers' accounts to these amateur authors would prove that the sale is indeed small, and that a pretty high price is paid for a six weeks' notoriety; but whatever the penalty, it is not sufficiently heavy to prevent new aspirants.

In the present volume of versification there is not a particle of poetry, nor any ideas which expressed in plain prose deserve to be registered in

a lady's album, much less to arrive at the honour of being printed. The knack of versification, without a poetic spirit, is an absolute nuisance, and the mere travestie of the forms of verse and ideas of a celebrated author, is only injurious to the original. Stella, the longest poem in the present volume, is a very weak imitation of a style and sentiment which the genius of Byron alone could render endurable. The occasional pieces are faint echoes of authors who can scarcely bear any imitation, and who at first-hand are only admirable from a certain grace of expression and delicacy of thought. There is but one evidence of good sense in the present collection, and that is the refraining from giving the name of the authoress; and, although she will think us anything but a friend, we cordially advise her never to trust to those really injudicious persons who advised her to publish; and to busy herself with the duties of a wife and mother, which she intimates are sufficient to occupy her time.

A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON HEALTHY SKIN, &c. By ERASMUS WILSON, F.R.S., &c. 1 vol. post 8vo. Churchill.

VERY few of us indeed are at all aware of the nature of the covering of our own bodies. We see a "soft, smooth, and pliant membrane, which invests the whole of the external surface of the body, following all its prominencies;" but we know not till the researches of science, which have reached only a few, inform us that the whole of the interior of the body, all its cavities and bumps, are invested with a similar, or rather the same covering. The skin passes, as at the lips or eyelids, into mucous membrane, and one becomes the other, as it is wholly excluded from or exposed to the free action of the atmosphere. By its surface in the interior and on the exterior are all the functions of nutrition and decay, of health and disease, of appetite and sensation, carried on. Its changing action, according to circumstances, in every climate and temperature, keeps the body at one nearly uniform heat. It is subject to many diseases. Life has been sustained by food imbibed at its exterior pores; the disease which kills and the medicine which cures may both enter by the same openings. It conducts electricity, that mysterious, invisible, and intangible agency, by which we are surrounded, and on the diffusion of which health is dependent, into or out of every part of the frame. It is at once the great enveloping and secretory organ of the whole body, and the immediate means, except as to colour, by which we communicate with the external world. It can become accordingly the substitute for our least glorious, but not the least useful organs, such as the kidneys, and is the means of conveying to us nearly all that we have ever learned of the glorious universe.

Its structure is not less wonderful than its uses. It is composed of two layers; one horny and insensible, the other highly sensitive; the latter being the actual and universal organ of feeling, and the other varying in thickness as it covers an exposed or hidden part, its ever