to his own home, where she spends a life of drudgery and misery, in doing all the hardest of the necessary work, such as fetching wood and water, for which services she is usually rewarded with the part of any food which the husband cannot gormandise ; and should she attempt to escape and be discovered, the probability is that she would be speared or beaten to death for her pains.” This instructive work is illustrated by some very characteristic lithographs, and only wants a map to make it complete. EARLY MAGNETISM, IN ITS HIGHER RELATIONS TO HUMANITY, as veiled in the Poets and the Prophets. 8vo. London: H. Bailliere. The author of this book, whoever he may be, is one of the purifying spirits of the age : asserting the grandeur and immortality of the intellectual, and by the strength and energy of his own spirit lifting the thoughts to contemplations which always place the passions and the appetites in that subordinate position necessary for the purification of the mortal and the preparation of the immortal being. We are not prepared to analyse the work as a philosophical production ; to grant its theory; to test its logic; but it has an elevation of argument, a readiness of illustration, and is so informed with a lofty, scholar-like sentiment, that we will pronounce it worthy of the study it requires. It has the fascination which ever belongs to the eternal; and to the investigation of the unknown vast that on all sides surrounds the earth and life. We take too little heed of these things; though in all ages and societies some spirits will be found to cultivate this white magic. It is strange, in these times, when so little (for there is still some) opposition is offered to the boldest investigations, that the many should disregard them; and that formerly, when the fulminations of the Church were hurled against the simplest operations of science, they should have been popular. But science has her superstitions as well as religion. The spiritual nature of man will ever be to those not totally buried in the flesh, a wondrous, a dark, deeply interesting speculation. And in these pages the study is conducted in accordance with the received notions of religion, and with a deep natural piety which, let us hope, is inseparable from true philosophy. There is a sense of poetry in its sublimest flights, and verses that are touched with its ethereal sounds, that make us at times think the author of that noble and wonderful poem,“ Festus,” may have written or contributed to it. Whoever is its author, he has the copiousness, comprehension, and vigour of utterance that so eminently distinguish the writers of the olden time, who wrote from the fulness of their souls and the irrepressible energy of their spirits. His tastes, too, have been moulded by these models, and the wood-cuts remind us of the illustrations to Quevedo's Visions, and perhaps he partakes also that author's mystic and seraphic vein. But the world to him is not a mere “pestilent congregation of foul vapours, but a part and portion of a universe, and man a part of Deity. The following must induce the reader to look further into the work, frag mentary as it here appears, and unjust as it is to rend away a small portion of the building as a type of the whole. “At the present time when all are more or less eagerly engaged in the pursuance of external advantages, and, under penalty of being cast into the fiery furnace of the world's scorn, do fall down and worship that earth-born goddess of temporal utility which opinion has set up, it would be vain enthu-, siasm to attempt to divert attention, but for a moment, from so favoured an idol, were it not that in the minds of all, even its most degraded votaries, there already exists a most real and bitter sense of its insufficiency and latent deformity ;-and until Wisdom shall have effected that internal renovation which above all things we now need, it is vainly that we seek in externals a harmony and happiness which has not been imaged there. Yet still we linger on in expectation ; and with that abiding patience, which is the test of faith in a good cause, may we continue to seek on, not vaguely as-heretofore, for passing excitements, but with steadfast perseverance looking within, until Wisdom reveal to us those higher objects of pursuit and truer attractions which will not suffer the mind aspiring to them to fall into dishonour ; but purifying and corroborating as they draw, will, when at length they are worthily won, unite with and transmute their worshipper into that Harmony and Beauty which, in the dim beholding, he venerated and loved. Begin to-day, nor end till evil sink Shall not wax faint until the work is done." “ The Idea of the Good, the Pure, and the True is the alluring object which we all innerly worship—the progeny of Divine Intellect immortal and strong-even Moral Beauty which, though obscurely now, through the mists of sense and selfishness, ever shines attractively our Polar Star : When from the lips of Truth one mighty breath |