The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-10-25 00:00:00

REVIEWS OF BOOKS.

The Church of England Quarterly Review.

lxviii,

London: 'W. E. Painter.

The contents of the October number of this well-
conducted periodical are varied and generally of
grave importance. The first paper is devoted to
the consideration of " The Holy Eucharist," in
which the doctrines of Archdeacon Wilberforce con-
nected with that subject are examined at consider-
able length. The next matter taken up is the
stirring question, " Why has the Papacy so far
succeeded ?" This article is founded on three
small publications recently issued, one from the
pen of the notorious Dr. Newman, one by Mr. J.
W. Allies, and one by the Rev. H. Smith. The
principal object of this paper, in examining the
arguments of the three gentlemen named, is to point
out the difference in essentials between the true
Protestant Church of Christ and the Church of Rome.
In doing so, the writer shows that the chief ground
of Popish success has been the adoption of portions
of Christian truth, the virtues of which have been
sufficient, to float through the storms of time and
contention, the enormous mass of heresy and error
which has been engrafted on and hung around them.
He insists on the necessity of a clear understanding
of the differences and distinctions existing between
these as indispensable to a successful attack upon
the Romish system, in order that our missiles may
be rightly directed. The paper is well written,
and will repay an attentive perusal. A notice of
the life and opinions of Ulrich Von Hutten occupies
the third paper, which is followed by a readable
critique on Atherstone's " Fall of Nineveh," and
another on Palliser's " Life in the Prairies." In
a paper entitled " Alchemy and Gold," the probable
effect of the gold discoveries in California and Aus-
tralia is discussed with calmness and intelligence.
The paper is founded on a series of letters by P. J.
Stirling in which the probable consequences of
those discoveries are carefully examined. The
reviewer, after displaying much research into the
arcana involved in the political bearings of the
subject, concludes an ably-written and deeply
interesting paper with the following valuable obser-
vations on

THE VALUE OF OUR. AUSTRALIAN CONNEXION.
Already the effect of Australian wealth is being sensibly
felt here in the shape of import and export, besides the
continual amount of specie sent over. The great and in-
creased consumption, rendered greater by the late enormous
tide of emigration, has increased our exports to au in-
credible extent ; and we have used what of Australian gold
there was at hand in payment for the raw material, without
a fear for any deficiencies to be met. It is still in the pas-
toral and the agricultural wealth of this great country
that we must look for that stability of manners and of
comfort always the concomitant of pursuits that are local,
lasting as the years, and dependent on seasons, and not on
discovery. We might have converted our able-bodied
pauper population, at the cost of the keep here, into cus-
tomers there ; and given to broken men, ease, esteem, and
self-respect, now bending beneath the iron rod of a hope-
less cankering penury. Men could not, or would not, go
forth in sufficient numbers, till the discovery of gold
created an inspiring stimulus ; but because out of evil
good may come, so out of this craving for immediate
wealth, and because so many realised the wish, and thus
justified the eagerness of a general hope, the best may yet
he augured ; because, if ever the " diggings" cease to an-
swer expectations on a limitless and extravagant scale, the
plough and the crook, corn and cattle, sheep and wool,
will prove another and a nobler mine ; and the prolific
capabilities of Australia, uniting their resistless and
measureless treasures—animal, vegetable, and mineral
together—will distribute more equally and more equita-
bly a wealth which all shall share and labour for ; and,
while envy at the success of one can scarcely exist, con-
tentment is certain to be there, and contentment is the
basis of true happiness. Within this last month our ex-
ports have amounted to three millions and a-half more
than they were at the same time last year; and nearly
twice as much more has been imported as at the same
period in 1852. Consumption in every article of food is
on the increase. Wages are greater, and more money is
expended as a consequence. It is gratifying, as well as
significant, that the great bulk of the exports to Australia
are home manufacture—the produce of our own artizan
industry. As their numbers increase, so will the demand,
and a new and continually enlarging market opens a fresh
field for commercial enterprise and promises a reciprocal
Prosperity. We have many tangible proofs of this latter.
If the violence of the gold fever does not leave behind it
other consumptive seeds than the first passionate rush—
the eager avidity and the desire disappointed or insatiate
—let us be contented and thankfal, and hope for the best.
It would be ungrateful to create an imaginary evil, since
the remedy must be just as hypothetical. Meantime, the
progress of Australian matters requires close watching ;
and we trust that the Government at home will not stop
short in the policy that prompted it to abandon the un-
wise plan of sending felons and convicts among enter-
prising colonists and honest men.

Besides the papers enumerated in the October
number, there are several essays of varying degrees
of merit, and a series of excellent summary notices
of new books.

The Handbook of Foliage and Foreground
Drawing. By George Barnard. London :
Ingram, Cooke, and Co.

The author, artist, and compiler of this book is
a teacher, and, judging from the work before us,
a practical and judicious one. His directions are
plain, comprehensible, and easy of application ; his
examples and initiatory studies useful to the pupil,
pleasing to the eye, and so graduated in the ad-
vancing steps of artistical tuition, as to form in-
teresting as well as valuable exercises. Altogether
the book is tastefully got up, cleverly illustrated,
and of a generally prepossessing a character.

Memoirs of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., L.L.D.

By the Rev. W. Hanna, L.L.D. Edinburgh :
Thomas Constable and Co.

The great and deserved popularity enjoyed by
Dr. Chalmers during his life, and the many in-
teresting scenes in which he performed a con-
spicuous part, naturally confer upon his memoirs
animportance rarely accorded to the worldly move-
ments of a Scottish clergyman. To a fervid ima-
gination, Dr. Chalmers united reasoning powers of
no ordinary strength, and his course through life
was marked by such a straightforward honesty of
purpose, and single-minded simplicity of character,
as gained him the esteem of all parties. From
the prominent position he long occupied in the
Church of Scotland, and from his extensive con-
nexion with Scottish theological literature, Dr.
Chalmers was necessarily placed in personal com-
munication with most of the leading men of his
day, including politicians, theologians, and scientific
as well as literary men ; and his memoirs abound
with interesting anecdotes arising out of his inter-
course with most of the men of mark who figured
during his protracted and busy pub! 'c career. The
narrative of those circumstances and events which
constituted his public life is carefully and well
written by his son-in-law, Dr. Hanna, evincing as
it does the tenderness of private friendship mingled
with the responsible duty of the biographer, w:th-
out an undue admixture of either ingredient. This
judiciousness of management, combined with the
interest of the narrative itself, has contributed to
render the work a highly popular one ; and its
publication in the present cheap form cannot fail
to render its sale very extensive. Success as a
commercial speculation is deserved by its beauty
and cheapness ; as a literary work, by its excel-
lence ; as a home companion, by its intrinsic worth
as the life-record of a good and great man.

Titz-Alwyn, the First Lord Mayor. By Miss
E. M. Stewart. London : Ingram, Cooke & Co.
The present, which forms the sixth volume of
the City Tales, completes the series. Fitz-Alwyn
is a tale of the Drapers' Company, and is prefaced
Ly a brief historical notice of the origin and pro-
reßs of the company. The tale itself is illustra-
tive of city life at an early period of the company's
1332"ce, which is supposed to have commenced in
told 1332. The adventures and incidents are spiritedly
;
inn e volume like its predecessors, is taste-
rni) ha'
Wm form e and illustrated, and the series
presenter a handsome set for birthday or holiday

The Poultry Ireeper's Guicle. By J. M. Moffatt.
London : Dean and Son.
A convenient and intelligible hand-book for the
poultry fancier, eon • • g useful information
relative to the rearing-AA breeding of fowls.

The Physiology of Temperance and Total Absti-
nence. By W. B. Carpenter, 111. D., F.R.S., &c.
London : H. G. Bohn.
Convinced as we have always been, of the great
social benefits which must necessarily arise from
the general adoption of temperance principles
and practice, we have been at the' same time
debarred from sympathising with many of its
advocates, on the broad ground of the intem-
perance manifested in their declamations, and the
false logic involved in the violent denunciations of
all who do not assent in the fullest degree to their
overstrained conclusions. Not a few of those
gentry who are noisy declaimers at what are called
" temperance conventions," or " teetotal confer-
ences," claim our attention, and seek to engage
our sympathies, by demonstrating that, in their
unregenerated days, they led lives from which
respectable men would shrink with loathing ; and
that they were addicted to habits which it would
be a libel to impute to even the brute creation.
Such ill-prepared advocates are, at the best, dan-
gerous aids to any cause ; and it is a vain effort
in men to claim credit for a principle which neces-
sity alone has driven them to a late, and, after all,
only doubtful, acquiescence in. Apart altogether
from the lack " of that charity which speaketh no
evil," so generally characteristic of teetotal ha-
rangues, the majority of tracts and essays which
have emanated from parties countenanced by the
promoters of the movement have been so filled with
overstrained eulogia of their own doctrines, and so
loaded with invective against all who hesitate to
receive their assumptions of fact, and to concur in
the deductions sought to be established from them,
that sober-minded inquirers have been repelled
from any intercommunion with their authors, have
been taught to look with suspicion on their abet-
tors, and with repugnance on the cause they seek
to advance. In Dr. Carpenter's work we are glad
to recognize a better spirit, and with it we hail
what appears a quiet, truthful, and philosophic
advocacy of a great and good principle, which, dis-
passionately followed up, and expounded in the
same persuasive, yet modest style, cannot fail to
produce highly beneficial results. This excellent
work is, indeed, a scientific and systematic inquiry
into the physiology of temperance, and the phy-
siology and pathology of drunkenness. These im-
portant subjects of inquiry he divides into seven
heads, and discusses them under form of the fol-
lowing propositions on