in Posen the greatest amount of political liberty. In Austria, he has a little of both, but not very much of either." This statement, if correct, will account for the vitality of Poland, and is therefore promising for the hopes of its future regeneration. On the other hand, Mr. Edwards' narrative of the feelings prevalent amongst the peasants towards the nobles is a gloomy one for the friends of Poland. Entertaining as he does a strong prejudice in favour of the old aristocratic Polish government, he strives hard to prove that the peasants have no real cause to entertain ill-will towards their former masters. He dwells enthusiastically on the liberal provisions with regard to the serfs contained in the constitution of 1791. He declares, possibly with reason, that the Polish nobles have long been anxious to emancipate their serfs, but were continually prevented by their rulers from carrying out their wishes; and he affirms that the permanence of serfdom would have been far less long-lived, had it not been for the partition of Poland. All this may be true, but it does not affect facts. The truth seems to be, that the serfs were miserably ill-treated under the old Polish governments, and that since their country has been enslaved their condition has been marvellously improved. In consequence they regard the government as their friend, and the nobles as their enemy. The conclusion may be wrong, but it is not unnatural. Supposing the result of the American civil war should be to free the blacks, it is certain that the Negroes will always regard the Federal government as their protector, however logically you may prove to them that the planters, if left to themselves, would have liberated them with equal or greater rapidity. The condition of the Polish serf appears to have been little, if any thing, better than that of a field-hand in the cotton-states; and the Poles are reaping now the curse which sooner or later falls on all slave-owners. It is hard that the Polish nobles should be ruled by foreigners at the present day, because their grandfathers were tyrants; but it is the law of the world that children do suffer for the sins of their parents. The Polish peasantry are very likely brutal, ignorant, and selfish; but still we cannot exaggerate the importance of Mr. Edwards' admission, that practically the emancipated serfs would regard the restoration of an independent Poland as a national calamity. We do not say, for one moment, that this state of things justifies the enslavement of Poland; but it accounts for the fact that the country has been enslaved, and causes us not to be oversanguine of its ultimate liberation. BOOKS OF THE QUARTER SUITABLE FOR READING SOCIETIES. The History of England during the Reign of George III. By William Massey, M.P. Parker and Bourn. [Reviewed in the Short Notices.] The Life of Lacordaire. By the Count de Montalembert. Bentley. [Interesting in itself, and for the light it throws on French Ultramontanism.] Six Months in the Federal States. By Edward Dicey. Macmillan. [Reviewed in the Short Notices.] The Naturalist on the River Amazon. By H. W. Bates. Murray. Fish Hatching and the Artificial Culture of Fish. By F. Buckland. The Life of Sir Howard Douglas, G.C.B., &c. By S. W. Fullom. Murray. The Heroes of the Sahara, and the Manners of the Desert. Translated by J. Hutton. Allen and Co. Travels on Horseback in Mantchu Tartary. By G. Fleming. Hurst and Blackett. John Leifchild, D.D., his Public Ministry, Private Usefulness, and Personal Characteristics. By J. R. Leifchild. Jackson, Walford, and Co. [Badly written, but interesting as the life of an eminent Nonconformist.] The Court of Peter the Great. By an Austrian Secretary of Legation translated by Count Mac Donnell. Bradbury and Evans. Narrative of a Secret Mission to the Danish Islands. By the Rev. J. Robertson. Longman. Essays on the Pursuits of Women. By Frances Power Cobbe. Emily Faithfull. Heat considered as a Mode of Motion. By J. Tyndall, F.R.S: Long man. [Popularly written.] Memoirs of Miles Byrne, Chef de Bataillon, &c. Paris, Bossange. The Roman Poets of the Republic. By Professor Sellar. Edmonston and Douglas. 260 Books of the Quarter suitable for Reading-Societies. A Yachting Cruise in the Baltic. By S. R. Graves. Longman.` Pictures of German Life in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Second Series. By Gustav Freytag. Translated by Mrs. Malcolm. Chapman and Hall. Lectures on the History of England. By William Longman. Vol. I. Longmans. War Pictures from the South. By Colonel P. Estvan. Routledge and Co. A Painter's Camp in the Highlands. By P. G. Hamerton. Macmillan. A Visit to Russia. By Henry Moor, Esq. History of Christian Missions during the Chapman and Hall. Middle Ages. By G. F. Austen Elliot. By H. Kingsley. Macmillan. [Full of hearty vigorous writing and animal spirits; but not as well put together as the author's earlier works.] Lost and Saved. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Hurst and Blackett. [Pervaded by a most unpleasant tone on moral subjects.] The Water-Babies. By the Rev. C. Kingsley. Macmillan. Elder, and Co. A First Friendship. Parker and Bourn. Chesterford. By the Author of " A Bad Beginning." Smith, Elder, and Co. THE NATIONAL REVIEW. OCTOBER 1863. ART. I.-THE CRITICISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. An Introduction to the Old Testament, Critical, Historical, and Theological. By Samuel Davidson, D.D. of the University of Halle, and LL.D. 3 vols. Williams and Norgate, 1863. IN the primitive text-books on the canon of Scripture there was a respectable custom that under the heads of inspiration, genuineness, and authenticity, should be arranged all that could be plausibly made out with regard to the canonical authority of each book. The proofs were collected with care, and set forth in unadorned simplicity. The Rev. Hartwell Horne devotes a page and a half to the genuineness and authenticity of Daniel, observing that with regard to that book there is every possible evidence, both external and internal; the former embracing "the general testimony of the whole Jewish church and nation," and the latter the convincing fact that the "language, style, and manner of writing are all perfectly agreeable to that age." It is true that the proofs of other books are somewhat meagre in comparison. The Song of Solomon, for example, rests upon the argument that, as the canon of the Hebrew Scripture was settled by Ezra, who "wrote, and we may believe acted, by the inspiration of the Most High," the Song, which was placed by him in the same volume with the Law and the Prophets, must have been a sacred book. As regards Ecclesiastes, again, "there can be no doubt of its title to admission; Solomon was eminently distinguished by the illumination of the Divine Spirit, and had even twice witnessed the Divine presence." The learned author naïvely adds-we are quoting the edition of 1828-that "the tendency of the book is excellent, when rightly understood; and Solomon speaks in it with great clearness of the revealed truths of a future life and of a future judgment." Now we have no more wish to exclude the Song of Solomon from a collection of Hebrew literature than any other wellmeaning love-song. The little idyll in question is pastoral, and perhaps pretty; not rigidly decorous throughout, according to our modern ideas, but ardent, and-to speak seriously-dis tinctly virtuous in its tendency. The Established Church does not introduce it into its services, and is content with the modest remark, which, if it were only at all true, would be certainly applicable, that of this, in common with the rest, there was never any doubt in the Church. The other books, too, which we have just mentioned, we are most happy to receive, though perhaps in a different sense from the author of the celebrated "Introduction." But it is difficult to help wondering whether its writer really believed that there was nothing more to be said on the subject than the few words which he devotes to it in each of these cases. The Canticles, for example, are never quoted by our Lord or his Apostles, by Josephus or Philo. Daniel contains Greek words. There is hardly an educated man at the present time who will not feel that we have advanced somewhat beyond such criticism as that above quoted. It so happens that one of the books in question is of antiquity now almost undisputed, and that the other is, according to the opinion of nearly every critic, a production of the age of the Maccabees. But, whether by the diligence of English or Germans, orthodox or heretics, the present knowledge of the Old Testament has advanced many steps beyond that of forty years ago. The study of the Jewish records is one for which many men have no time, and still more have no taste. But the results of that study there are few who do not wish to understand, and there are even some who are willing to accept. The minds of Englishmen have been lately aroused to the fact that there is something yet to be learnt beyond the truth that all Hebrew writers were infallible. The students of the Old Testament have been so loud in their assertion of novel ideas, so persistent in their refusal of cherished beliefs, that it has become evident to an ordinary observer that, whatever the new views are, they are not the results of mere caprice. At the same time, the knowledge of Scripture in English society has been as yet deplorably small, and all but the simplest arguments are beyond the understanding of the public. It needs some matter-of-fact numerical calculation, or some broad and picturesque view of a difficulty, to enable a layman to recognise the facts which critics themselves have learnt on their first entrance upon scriptural study. The words 'Biblical criticism,' 'canon,' 'recension,' 'authenticity,' are to ordinary eyes invested in one general fog. Something, they feel, is going on in the background, which is at all events interesting, and which the bishops consider shocking. Reason is a very good thing in its way; why has rationalism such an awful and malignant sound? Religious liberty has been a watchword of Englishmen for two centuries; it cannot be stinted now. But why, it is generally felt, cannot the critics say distinctly what there is to be said, instead of imploring the laity to grant them |