were they published? Cui bono? To be meditated on in the closet, or to be read in families? For the latter purpose they are plainly unsuited the former is what few sermons not addressed to a highly intellectual audience can bear. We must confess we very much dislike this publication of their parish sermons by young Clergymen-we do not see what good object can be furthered by it. The actual effect produced by the practice is the shelving' of our old and standard divines, whose deep divinity is neglected for the light and (comparatively) superficial productions of the day. We are sure Mr. Sulivan would be among the last to desire to cause such neglect. Still, why he published his sermons is a mystery to us. He has given us no preface, and dropped no word in his dedication to solve the enigma. Was he ambitious, virum volitare per ora'? Did he wish to come to the assistance of those unfortunate young Clergymen in parishes like his own, who have to provide two new sermons every week for their congregations? We have been unable to discover any other account to which his discourses can well be turned; and that is one which we can scarcely imagine him to have contemplated in his publication of them. Probably he yielded to the solicitation of friends;' as so many have done, neither to their friends' profit nor their own. We recommend him, ere he publishes again, to consider seriously what book publishing is, and whether at a time when the press teems with such countless multitudes of works, that even the reading public, notwithstanding its capacious maw, is surfeited; it is justifiable to come forward, increasing the crush and the confusion, unless one has something to tell men, some new truth to put before them, or some old forgotten truth to revive the remembrance of. If there be anything of this sort in Mr. Sulivan's twenty-nine sermons, we have certainly not discovered it.

Observations in Natural History, with an Introduction on Habits of Observing By the Rev. LEONARD JENYNS, M.A., FL.S., &c., Vicar of Swaffam Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire. London. 1846.

AN amusing volume, written on a principle which we recommend to naturalists generally, the importance of noting all phenomena, whether they seem of consequence or not. Birds and insects have especially occupied Mr. Jenyns' attention. We recommend his work to all students of Natural History, as well, worthy of their perusal.

An Elementary Treatise on Hydrostatics and Hydronamics. By ANDREW SEARLE HART, LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Dublin. 1846.

DR. HART is already well known in his own university, and not unknown to the mathematical world generally, by his Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, which has been adopted as a text-book among the Dublin students. The present work may be looked upon as a continuation of his former Treatise, and (so far as we can judge) appears to be written in a clear and perspicuous style, and to be arranged judiciously. The student will find embodied in the work all the most recent discoveries in the branch of science of which it treats.

Laurel and Flowers. Occasional Verses. By M. E. J. S. Brighton. 1846.

A select volume,-prettily bound,-fairly printed. More, even, our gallantry cannot induce us to say in its favour. The authoress informs us that her Poems' have appeared in type before, in the shape of contributions to the 'columns of a provincial journal.' It is a pity that they ever appeared in any other shape.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

The Ship of Glass. A Novel. In 3 vols. By Hargrave Jennings.

The Brain and its Physiology. By Daniel Noble.
Sparkes's Introduction to Chemistry. 2nd edition.
On the Reverence due to Holy Places. 3rd edition.

A Letter addressed to the Lord Bishop of Ripon on the Education of the People. By the Rev. Scott F. Surtees.

Euclid's Elements of Geometry, chiefly from the Text of Dr. Simson. By Robert Potts, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. Conic Sections, their principal properties proved Geometrically. By W. Whewell, D.D.

Newton's Principia, b. i. sect. 1, 2, 3. By W. Whewell, D.D.

THE ILLS OF IRELAND.

THE ills of Ireland form one of the most painfully interesting subjects of national policy to be met with in our history. Under which political party they may have arisen, may have accumulated, or may have been perpetuated, it is not, at this time of day, at all material to inquire. There they are enormous, inveterate, appalling-a scourge, alike to those who sympathize, as to those who endure. The whole realm is involved in the afflic tion. As one member suffers, so all the others suffer with it. Ireland herself sighs with a general groan; and not only does the sound pervade, but the sensation affects, the empire at large. It is the complaint of a whole state-a complaint which concentrations of wisdom and of ability have failed to cure; and in a nation, too, mirabile dictu! which calls itself the most enlightened and the most powerful under the sun! The troubles of Ireland, whatever they might seem to be, have never in reality been an isolated affair. Now their vibration is felt through the whole framework of the political and social fabric, constituting as they do a massy wheel,'

To whose huge spokes ten thousand other things
Are mortis'd and adjoined.'

Ireland,' said Sir Robert Peel, when preparing to assume the office of first minister of the crown, in 1841-Ireland will be my great difficulty.' And not only a great difficulty did it prove to him, as it had proved to many first ministers before, but it was at length the immediate cause of his overthrow. But why his great difficulty-why his ultimate ruin? This is the all-important question which statesmen should ask themselves. Sir Robert Peel was a sagacious, if not a patriotic minister. It would be unjust, indeed, to say that he had not a great deal of good feeling towards Ireland, as well as an intimate knowledge of her case. And yet Ireland was all along his great difficulty,' and at last the rock on which his administration split. His very anxiety to lessen the severity of her sufferings served only to hasten his decline and precipitate his downfall. How came this! It is called, we observe, a puzzle.' And that Ireland was the

subject of perplexity, it is impossible to doubt: it was the source, we may readily believe, of constant, of fatal embarrassment. But that it should throughout have baffled, and at length have upset a strong government,' such as Sir Robert Peel's may in all other respects be said to have been, is no particular puzzle' -it was a great mistake.

It is, we repeat, an all-important query. Not lightly, or flippantly with no self assurance or conceit-but gravely, and diffidently, and impartially withal-would we endeavour to investigate it. And stale and flat' though the subject may appearrepugnant to English minds as these everlasting Irish evils are too apt to become-it is certainly not unprofitable.' That which involves a people's welfare-nay, a people's very existence -and they our fellow-subjects, if not our fellow-countrymen, can never be without interest to the feeling heart or the enlightened understanding. To the attention of Christian men its claims are irresistible.

'Homo sum: humani nihil à me alienum puto.'

This familiar sentiment of a heathen philanthropist must not be despised in the foremost nation in Christendom. If Terence, who probably did homage only to the unknown God,' and with no constraining motive, perhaps, beyond that supplied him by his own fallen nature-if he, in an age unillumined by the sun of righteousness,' could proclaim that as a man, nothing which related to man could be foreign to his bosom, how much more should we be affected by this feeling of humanity, as the followers of Him who has declared, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.'

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In this spirit would we treat the painful and portentous question of Ireland's present ills,-painful, as full of misrule, and misery, and woe; and portentous as constituting a crisis of awful concern to Britain and to the world.

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The most pressing part of the case of Ireland is shortly this: It is a country of great fertility, capable of providing subsistence for at least five times the amount of its present population; yet with nearly half its inhabitants in a state of starvation. This, we say, is briefly the condition of a country, with Christianity as part and parcel of the law of the land, that Christianity which commands every one to love God with all his heart, and soul, and strength, and to love his neighbour as himself,to love, not in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth ;' and which puts this query to every one as the great test of his sincerity- Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him :'

Now the people of Ireland, in the first place, have a right to subsistence a right by the law of nature, apart altogether from the law of love. Quæ in terris gignuntur omnia ad usum hominum creantur. In these words we have the litera scripta of a heathen law much older than the Gospel, that the productions of the earth are all destined for the use of man; while a divine injunction, older still, addressed emphatically to the poor man, declares, Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Paley says that the poor have a claim founded on the law of nature, which may be thus explained: All things were originally common. No one being able to produce a charter from Heaven, had any better title to a particular possession than his next neighbour. There were reasons for mankind's agreeing upon a separation of this common fund; and God for these reasons is presumed to have ratified it. But this expectation is made and consented to upon the expectation and condition that every one should have left a sufficiency for his subsistence, or the means of procuring it; and as no fixed laws for the regulation of property can be so contrived, as to provide for the relief of every case of distress, these cases and distresses, when their right and share in the common stock was given up or taken from them, were supposed to be left to the voluntary bounty of those who might be acquainted with the exigences of their situation, and in the way of affording subsistence. And, therefore, when the partition of property is rigidly maintained against the claims of indolence and distress, it is maintained in opposition to the intentions of those who made it, and to His who is the Supreme Proprietor of everything, and who has filled the world with plenteousness for the sustentation and comfort of all whom he sends into it.' Again, this high authority tells us, that as God has provided these things for the use of all, he has of consequence given each leave to take of them what he wants.' Doubtless, as Paley further shows, although it is the intention of God that the produce of the earth be applied to the use of man,' yet as this intention cannot be fulfilled without establishing property, it is consistent therefore with His will that property be established.' And, he adds, that by whatever circuitous train of reasoning you attempt to derive this right (of property), it must terminate at last in the view of God: the straightest, therefore, and the shortest way of coming at this will, is the best,'-the will of Him, be it never forgotten, whose goodness is over all His works, and who feedeth not only man, but the ravens that call upon him.'

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Another eminent Christian writer goes, if possible, still further. The right which all men have to maintenance and subsistence,' says Bishop Sherlock, is a superior right to that of