The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-19 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

The Magi, Agar, and Ismael, with other Poem,
By I. M. E. B. One vol., pp. 63. Richardso
and Son.
Although there are bat nine brief poems makin,
up the sixty-three pages of this little volume—te
poems altogether if we count the rhythmical pre
face as one—there is enough evidence of poet
merit in these maiden effusions of I. M. E. B. I
justify us in commending the work for such as it i-
and in looking forward (as we are fain to do) to tl.
renewal of our acquaintance with the anonymou
writer of the book through the medium of tom
more matured compositions. Without one excep
tion, the whole of the nine poems and the Prefac
may be spoken of as of a distinctly religious charac
ter. NATURE is regarded by the author but as
medium through which to contemplate GOD. I
this the writer sedulously acts upon the advice
the Essayist on Man. If we remember rightly,
is in " Festus" that Philip Bailey, by a darir
figure of speech, talks of the cerulean:heavens abol-
us as—" the blue eye of God." To the author c
The Magi, Agar and Ismael, with other Poems—
is, if we might so express it, but as a sense throng
which the Divine Being may appear more distinct'
visible to the gaze Of the Soul. Eve
the second poem in the collection, the one relatie
to " The Winds," comes under the category
" religions poems." " The Magi" is, among all tl
pieces here submitted to us, at once the most variot
in metre and the most highly elaborated in i•
design. The opening apostrophe of the Prefac,
expresses in a few words the whole character of th
book—in the manner following :-
0 I for a seraph's eloquence of praise,
A cherub's love to swell my tepid lays
An angel's ardour my weak song t' inflame,
That I might spread abroad my Saviour's name?
But I, small thing of nothing—what am I
Who now presume to praise the Deity ;
When all his wondrous works, ab3ve, below,
Around, about, fail His great worth to show ?
The foregoing verses not only express the charactc
of the book, but the humble and reverent mind 0
the author of it. As a prelude to the songs e:
praise and adoration the book contains, the. Prefac..
thus begun at once conciliates our approval.

Legal Forms for Common Use : Being 200 Prece•
dents. By James Walter Smith, E,q., LL.D.
One Vol. Pp. 188. Effingham Wilson.

Under a dozen distinct heads, the learned com-
piler of this very useful little guide-book to Legal
Forms has cleverly and succinctly arranged hi..
two hundred precedents. He has, in so doing
not contented himself with simply ar
ranging them in something like symmetrica!
order. He has combined the more delicate and
responsible duties of collation with those fai
more easily fulfilled of
.mere compilation. He has
accompanied his array of forms and illustrative
precedents with terse introductions and the clearest
explanatory notes. The structure and tendency o
the whole book may be, perhaps, the most readily,
as beyond all doubt it may be the most lucidly in.
dicated by reference to the twelve headings put
forth upon the very title-page. Negotiable Instru
ments, first of all—a class of Forms of which the
following, taken haphazard from the volume, may
be cited as a sufficiently startling exemplar :

BILL PAYABLE ON DEMAND OR AT SIGHT.
£lOO Os. Od. London, Ist Nov., 1862.
Oa demand or at sight], pay to me, or my order [or to
G. H. or his order], One Hundred Pounds, value received.
WILLIAM SHA.ESEERE.

To Mr. Oliver Cromwell,
No. 2, Fleet-street.

Securities next. Then Receipts and Acknowledg.
ments. Afterwards Partnership. Followed b;
Master and Servant. The sixth division beinL:
allotted to Landlord and Tenant. The seventh to
Arbitration. Then County Court Forms. Then
Conveyances. Succeeded in due course by Marriage
Articles and Settlements, by Wills, and by forms
of a miscellaneous character. Added to all vvhich,
there is a Chapter on Stamps. As about tilt'
readiest handbook to Legal Forms' ever published,
we take this half-a-crown's worth of information t,.
be really and truly rather difficult to appraise at it,
just valuation.

The Hand-Book of Astrology. By Zadkiel Tao Sze,
Vol. IL, pp. 76. Cuusins, and Berger.
Our old friend of the stars seems somehow tc.
grievances. The prophetic almanac,
have had a wider circulation than
iflso
ou
or ids
ehr us
tpooond ht ios
ever since the famous trial Caine off in the Court o:
Queen's Bench before the Lord Chief Justice of
England. As many as four thousand copies beyond
the usual vast sale every year having already passtd
overthe publishers' counter to the believing, or more
probably we should say with the generality of
purchasers, the Simply curious public. And here,
.13 a more substantial expression of his reliance upon
his auditory, we have the venerable Seer (now that
he hes been himself seen by the public at large, in
actual flesh and blood, standing in a witness-box
in a court of law), we have the genuine original
Zadkiel Teo Sze (with that wonderful little
wriggling hieoroglyphic in the centre of his name
like four flies' legs making a wheel), issuing
from the press this second volume of his
" Handbook of Astrology."
In it, that 18
in this second-volume-extraordinary, Z Adkeil
,
readers will find the full, true, and particular account
of The Doctrine of Nativities. An account, as the
Saga himself announces upon his title page as "free
et" (meaning, freed from) t 11 mystery."
to which—though while we read we can According hardly
believe our eyes that he should
iso
state it
—" Every man may calculate his own Nati-
-
vity," thereby learning his
own Natural Cha-
meter and Proper Destiny. Than which, what
can a man want to know more about himself.
yvcoth. crcavrov was
never put forth surely in more
this—as a bit of philosophical
apdrovrnicies,icinugitgeufiesae hstiof:
inits way, and very readily to
However, here is the book pro-
be accomplished.
inculcateished

essin

LIBERTY OF THE PRESSIh ttbOrit to be established
n Turkey.