The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-25 00:00:00

_High. Church,. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.
This is in many respects a work of power and
ability. There is some degree of originality in the
plot, vigour in the style, and interest in the charac-
ters ; and there is, moreover, what is rarely found
in controversial novels, a tone of candour, modera-
tion, and fairness to opponents seldom met with
either in life or literature. The story is founded,
as may be supposed from its title, on those un-
happy revivals of extinct forms and obsolete cere-
monies which have of late years occasioned so much
dissension in the national church. The author's
convictions are evidently strongly opposed to the

system, but he has not attempted to discuss or
dilate upon the theological or ecclesiastical sub-
tleties of the question. He has abandoned the
usual battle-field of accusation and retort,
and contents himself with drawing a forcible
picture of a parish town embittered by eccle-
siastical broils, and disgraced by riots and con-
tentions in the sacred precincts. He shows us
the misery brought into one or two families
divided by the rival factions, and thus practically
puts the question to the common sense and right
feeling of all conscientious persons, whether it can
be the duty of a Christian minister to bring about
these great evils in his parish, for the sake of resus-
citating outward observances, which, in their own
day, were devised for the purpose of encouraging
reverence and devotion, and were assuredly
never intended to produce those scenes
of strife and riot which have lately disgraced our
metropolis. The author's strong point is the libe-
rality with which he treats his opponents. The
offending curate himself, Mr. Geoffrey Stone, is
possessed of many admirable qualities, and secures
a large share both of the interest and re-
spect of the reader, notwithstanding the in-
flexibility of his temper. He is a high-minded
and conscientious man, sincerely devoted to his pro-
fession, and, as he needed to be, physically as well as
morally brave. His error is that of many other
good men, namely, an obstinate conviction that no
way is right but his own. " The Rev. Geoffrey Stone
was one who sought to do good, strengthen the
weak, and lead sinners to repentance—but then he
would do good, strengthen, and support, only
in his own way. In his heart, though he
might not have acknowledged it, there was no
other method to extend the power of the Church,
and inci ease the number of its servants, save that
of Geoffrey Stone's. He had fathomed the great
secret, and he and his father intending to set to
work earnestly in the course of Christianity, had
raised their banner—a little too bright for these
practical times, perhaps—from the crumbling
steeple of St. Jude's." The wretched result of all
his plans and projects wounded him deeply. When
events had thickened, and were harrying on to the
final catastrophe, he looked back with regret. In
the solitude of his chamber, looking out on the
stately old church so soon to crumble beneath the
torch of incendiarism, " there was held before him,
as by some mysterious hand, all that he, with his
talents,his religious earnestness, his desire to do good,
might have effected, and then rose to appall him the
hideous reverse of the picture, and all the evil
passions and irreverence that had grown with his
persistence, and been the result of his preaching."
The writer does not fall into the common error of
painting one side entirely unprejudiced and blame-
less, and the other bigoted and intolerant. With a
skill truer to life and nature, he shows us the evil
extremes ,into which both parties were carried by
the angry passions roused by the spirit of anta-
gonism. ".Pamphlets on all sides, and by all
writers, proved everything but the virtue of conces-
sion—taught everything but peace on earth and
goodwill amongst men. Shake the Church to its
centre, and turn it from a house of prayer to a
house wherein the devil riots and takes stock
of souls, but do not budge an inch for
conscience sake !" The story is full of inte-
rest, and though the troubles of Martin Chester
and his wife date from the High and Low Church
disssensions, yet the moral of the tale is of far
wider application. Here, again, the author enlists
our sympathies on both sides ; for the quick feeling,
impulsive wife, whose impressionable nature and
deep religious convictions render her so warm and
constant a supporter of the Tractarian innovations,
and for the high-minded conscientious husband,who
is justly incensed by his wife's opposition to his
wishes and deference to a man he dislikes. Both
are greatly to blame in the final quarrel—Martin
for his unjust suspicions and severity, and Ads
for her indiscretion and wilfulness. There
is much painful truth in the picture of
two persons of excellent intentions and high
principles, possessing a warm affection for each
other, gradually, through a series of misunderstand-
ings and mistaken actions, arriving at open rup-
ture. We leave the reader to learn the sequel from
the work itself, in which the interest is sustained
with great ability. The story of the murder is
very cleverly managed, the deception about Samuel
Buries being kept up to the last. We could have
wished for a brighter ending, but it serves to point
the moral the more forcibly. It shows us not
only the dangers of Tractarianism, and the evils of
parochial discensions, but the sorrows awaiting
stern and unforgiving natures, the bitter regret
and remorse that shall attend those who suffer
pride and self-will to render them deaf to the voice
of affection. Many of the characters are vigorously
drawn, and the work is altogether one of remark-
able promise.

Curiosities of .Natural _History. Second Series.
By Francis S. Buckland, M.A. Bentley.
The success of his first series, which we are
happy to say has reached its fifth thousand, has
induced Mr. Buckland to present number two to
the public, and as the present volume is in no
way inferior to its predecessor, we may con-
fidently look forward to the appearance of other
members of this interesting family. As in the
Wizard's book, the professor of the black art can
at will display on each succeeding page a grisly
skeleton or grinning clown, so is it optional for
the reader of these pages to select a series of
amusing anecdotes or scientific researches, or to
combine amusement and instruction at one time.
The author does not profess to go deep into any
subject, but as Peter Parley's tales first sow the
seeds of a desire for information in the child's mind,
so do these sketches produce in the matured inte-
lect a thirst for a more complete investigation of
the wonders of creation. The following extract
may help to solve some of the mystery connected
with strange beasts and demons supposed to exist
in olden times :
"I fancy I have discovered, as a pendant to Cheirothe-
rium,' above mentioned, a remarkable creature which ex-
ists in our own time, and its habitat is somewhere in Lon-
don. During last winter, I frequently observed in the
London streets, when the pavement was covered with
snow, or with mud that would easily take impressions,
foot-marks of a very remarkable and puzzling kink. A
creature wearing a human hob-nailed boot had evidently
passed Tong, but the creature had not left the spoor,' or
track of an ordinary man, for the iron-shod heel was sepa-
rated some two feet from the equally well armed toe, and
the interspace between them was not marked with any
pression, so that the animal could not have had a sole to his
foot. In its journeyings, strange to say, it had invariably
walked backwards ; the turning up of the mud at the heel
showed that, moreover, it had never walked in the centre
of the pavement or in the street, but always at the road-side
of the pavement. For days and days I hunted this crea-
ture by its track, up Regent-street (it never went over the
crossing), down Oxford-street, both east and west, but I
never could come up with it. Its home seemed, from the
track, to be somewhere in the densely populated neigh-
bourhood of St. Giles'. As the Cheirotherium of ancient
geological days was so christened on account of the track
he made, I did not see why this Pree-Adarnite animal,
the beast with a hand,' should not have a modern cousin,
the beast with a foot,' the true nature of both being un-
certain at their first discovery. I therefore christened my
mysterious creature Podotherium,' or 'the beast with the
foot,' a provisional name, until I could make out its real
name and nature. The snow melted and the mud was
nearly dried up, and I thought I should never solve the
mystery as to what Podotherium was. At last, one day,
after a heavy shower, I crossed the tracks very strongly
and recently marked, by Wellington-street, Stand ; I fol-
lowed them up instantly, and found that this Mysterious
creature was only a poor old cripple, who, having lost his
feet, could not walk upright after the ordinary fashion of
men ; he could only crawl along upon his knees, after the
fashion of the monks of cld, who have worn away with
their ascending knees the stone steps going to the shrine
of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Necessity,
in Podotherium's case, had been the mother of invention.
He had cut at ordinary bob-nailed boot in two, had
affixed the heel part on to his knee, and the toe part on the
place where the foot ought to have been; so that as he
crawled along upon his knees, the heel part of course had
been going foremost, giving the appearance of a man
walking backwards. 'Podotheriutn ' was gaining his
livlihood by selling to passers-by tin funnels, which he
carried on a string round his neck, and he therefore always
lie t, as his footmarks indicated, to the roadside of the
pavement to solicit custom. As Cheirotherium in time
was proved to be a gigantic sort of frog (whose restore-
" tion we may see, by my friend, Mr. Waterhouse Haw-
kins, at Sydenham Crystal Palace), and now is known
by the name of Labyrinthodom, on account of the laby-
rinth-like structure of the teeth; so Podotherium'
proved to be simply poor old - of Seven Dials, the
tin funnel-maker. This story may seem absurd to many
of my readers; but I would beg them to recollect what
consternation was caused by th newspaper accounts of
some mysterious footmarks in the snow in Devonshire,
not very long ago.

At a time when superstition swayed the minds
of most men, some convulsion of nature might
leave signs not to be accounted for by reag.,on, or
accident might lead to the same result. It is only
natural to suppose that imagination should have
been called in to explain that whiclh reason could
not grapple, and that that ever ready agent pro-
duced a monster capable of setting the investi•
gations of modern uaturalists at defiance.