urious _melange_ of shrewd,
original thoughts about pictures and of acceptations of critical
authority, of sectarian belief and of worldly toleration, together with
a certain immaturity of literary judgment and a characteristic tendency
to incoherence. "Turner," he says, "did a great work, if it were only to
have been the occasion of Ruskin's marvellous eloquence"; and of Dr.
Cumming he writes, as if transcribing literally from his note-book: "His
voice is rich, and mellow without being powerful. He is a tall man, with
high, white forehead and white hair. It was difficult to find a seat,
even upon the pulpit stairs. Dr. Cumming, as a graceful, yet not
effeminate preacher, has good claims to his celebrity."

It remains for us to praise the author's conscientious effort at all
times to convey information, and his success in this effort. He has
doubtless seen everything that is worth seeing in the country he has
passed over; and if we cannot accept the whole of his book as
literature, we have still the impression that we should find it one of
the best and thoroughest of hand-books for travel in Old England.

_Hymns._ By HARRIET MCEWEN KIMBALL, Boston: E. P. Dutton and Company.

Religious emotion has asked very little of literary art; and if we are
to let hymnology witness, it has received as little as it has asked in
times past. To call upon Christ's name, to bless God for goodness and
mercy, suffice it; and no form of words enabling it to do this seems to
be found too feeble, or affected, or grotesque. For anything more, the
inarticulate tones of music are as adequate to devotion as the sublimest
formula that Milton or Dante could have shaped. It is only since
religion has been so much philosophized, and has in so great degree
ceased to be a passion, that we have begun to find the hymns which our
forefathers sang with rapturous unconsciousness rather rubbishy
literature. How blank, and void of all inspiration, they seem for the
most part to be! Good men wrote them, but evidently in seasons of great
mental depression. How commonplace is the language, how strained are the
fancies, how weak the thoughts! Yet through these stops of lead and
wood, the music of charity, love, repentance, aspiration, has poured
from millions of humble hearts in sweetness that blessed and praised.

With no thought probably of affecting the standard hymnnology were the
hymns written in the little book before us. They are characterized by
poet