more, towered up, proud and solitary, with his sad and solemn dreams, his fierce hate, and his majestic love. Milton opened the gates of death, of heaven, and of hell, and saw visions such as no man ever saw before or will see again. But Homer, Dante, and Milton do not live in our heart of hearts, do not twine round our affections, do not satisfy our souls, as Shakspere does. Here and there we may find touches of more daring sublimity, passages more steeped in learning, lines more instinct with abstract thought; but the greatest and best interpreter of human nature, the poet of the widest sympathies, of the most delicate perceptions, of the profoundest knowledge of mankind, a greater sculptor than Phidias, a truer painter than Raphael, came into the world at the pleasant town of Stratford-uponAvon, in April, 1564.

"He lived fifty-two years; he wrote thirty-seven plays and some miscellaneous poems; he was buried in the town in which he was born, and his name has ever since filled the world. His works are now one of the luxuries of life. It would be difficult to conceive of ourselves as still unacquainted with Hamlet, and Macbeth, and Lear, and Othello. The realms of fancy would appear uninhabited if Shakspere's creations were withdrawn from them. Men are prouder of the earth on which they live, and of themselves, because he is one of their fellow-men. Coleridge called him the 'myriad-minded;' and well he might, for there was no mood or phase of mind which he did not realize. The most absolute courage, the most perfect manliness, were not less inherent in him than the most winning gentleness, the most exquisite tenderness. The exuberance of his art is only equalled by the profoundness of his pathos. As a moral teacher, he takes precedence of all other uninspired writers. Vice never looks so odious, nor crime so execrable, as when placed under the burning light of his indignation. The simplest virtue, the humblest effort to do good, never shine so fair as when breathed upon by him.”

"Shakspere's fame has broadened, and his genius has been more universally felt as centuries have rolled on, but he took his place among England's foremost poets even in his own lifetime, and there never has been a period when that place was forgotten or disputed by his countrymen. Whilst Shakspere's mind thus endures, and its creations are a portion of our intellectual possessions ever present our daily thoughts, Shakspere, the individual man Shakspere, 'in his habit as he lived,' is mysteriously withdrawn from us, and is destined to remain little more than a nominis umbra. It is not yet 250 years since he died: we have full and accurate biographies of many who lived centuries before him; but all that we know definitely concerning the details of his life can be stated in a few lines. No private letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, scarcely any authentic personal reminiscence of him by contemporaries, remain. Laborious enthusiasts, who have raked up every possible scrap of information, have been delighted to 'fringe an inch of fact with acres of conjecture,' many of which are self-evidently false. Most men who have written so much have furnished some clue to themselves in their own writings, but Shakspere is the least egotistical of all great thinkers. In creating others he forgot himself. His mind appears to us in his works in isolation from his person. He suppresses individual consciousness that he may the better bring before us the broad features of universal humanity. In his sonnets alone, which were written for the most part when he was a young man, we are able to find some slight indications of personal history or feelings, but these are meagre and uncertain. We discover occasional touches of sadness, occasional intimations that his state or way of life was not what he could have wished; but we also find in them a wonderful delight in the strength of friendship, and a noble scorn of all base desires and unworthy deeds. We trace, on the whole, a modest, cheerful, and contented spirit, little affected by the outward show of things, but prone to dwell upon their inward and essential virtues."

Glimpses of Great Men.
Religion and Business.

By A. J. MORRIS.
By A. J. MORRIS.

London: Elliot Stock.

THESE are cheap editions of the productions of a Nonconformist clergyman, whose thoughtful, animated, and excellent expository style must have made (or make) him a successful and useful minister of the gospel. The first book, which bears the sub-title of “ Biographic Thoughts on Moral Manhood," is a series of running commentaries on the career of some of the mighty men of old whose names are famous-Bunyan, Cromwell, De Foe, John Foster, George Fox, Hampden, Howard, Irving, Knox, Luther, Milton, Sir Thomas More, Oberlin, Shillitoe (the gospel messenger to kings), and Whitefield. He flashes the bright light of religious thought upon one or two of the chief phases of the lives of these distinguished personages, and gives the key to the comprehending of the secret of their power, influence, and worth. There is in the volume a fine healthy, homely, moral ripeness of expression and feeling. Few young men could lay out eighteenpence on any book with so good a chance of an overpayment of delight as in purchasing it. The second work, which expounds spiritual life in one of its secular developments," is an outspoken, manly, and yet Christian enforcement of Christianity as an every-day agent. The selfish, mercantile spirit of our age needs much to be suffused with this divine energy. The genuineness of the speaker's own heart, the strength of his own faith in the power of sacred truth, keeps his preaching entirely free from sentimentality and cant. He speaks as a living Christian to living men, sensible himself of a futurity depending on life here, and anxious to make others halt on the path of selfishness before the close of the day and the journey. If any friend of ours were to ask us to recommend a handy book, suitable for being presented as a daily companion to a young man commencing or engaged in business, we could not name any work more answerable for the purpose than that under notice. They are worthy of issue in a cheap edition. They should be profitable reading.

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The Gospel according to St. Matthew. A New Translation. By [Rev.] JOHN H. GODWIN, Hampstead. London: Bagster and

Sons.

STUDENTS of the sacred writings, especially those who employ themselves in the holy offices of sabbath school teaching, would do well to provide themselves with this small volume. It contains an introduction on the author, languages, object, and plan of the gospel. The text of the evangelist is then given in a new translation, "in the English of the present day, keeping as closely as possible to the original, both in sense and style," with notes, many of which are acute, and all useful. The text is arranged in three books, thus:-I., part 1st, Birth and Childhood of Jesus; 2nd, Preparation for the Ministry of Christ. II., Christ's Ministry in Galilee; part 1st, Means;

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2nd, Results; 3rd, Events. III., part 1st, Last Journey to Jerusalem; 2nd, Ministry in Jerusalem; 3rd, Passover. IV., part 1st, Trial and Crucifixion; 2nd, Resurrection. "The tables showing the contents of the several parts and divisions of the work" make manifest the perfect regularity which belongs to every portion," and clear up "the plan and purpose of the whole." Following the texts there are lessons from the Gospel of St. Matthew, comprised in twenty pages, and forming a very useful supplement to the canonical book. To this is subjoined a full, succinct, and excellent harmony of the four Gospels. In the introductory remarks preceding this harmony many acute observations on evidence, especially on the evidence of the authenticity of the Gospels derived from internal signs of their truth, are made. The following observations are, we think, worthy of note:-"1st. In Bible histories, and in all ancient tales, no more is frequently meant by the direct form of narrative, which gives words as spoken, than by the indirect, which only gives the meaning of the speaker. 2nd. In all narratives referring to several persons general statements are made, which are not supposed to apply in the same way to every person. It is enough that what is important is true of all, or of most. 3rd. What appears to be very probable when only a part of the evidence is known, becomes often very improbable when further evidence is given, and that when the evidence is merely of an ordinary kind. Most of the supposed contradictions of the evangelists result from wrong principles of evidence. What might be deduced from one narrative alone, as a probable inference, is represented as the testimony of the writer, and as having an antecedent improbability, only to be overcome by strong proof, and then showing the incorrectness of witnesses. But the inference is not a part of the testimony."

The Works of William Shakspere. The Globe Edition. Edited by W. G. CLARK and Wм. A. WRIGHT. Cambridge and London: Macmillan and Co.

COMPETITION is here completely out-distanced. The plays, poems, sonnets, and minor pieces of Shakspere, with a careful glossary, in one handsomely bound volume of nearly 800 pages, are presented to the public now for three shillings and sixpence. The type, though small, is clear, distinct, and legible; the tinted paper, though thin, is tough and opaque; and the printing and binding alike are neat in workmanship; while the names of the editors-the superintendents of the Cambridge Edition are a guarantee for faithful revision. The glossary, by the Rev. J. M. Jephson, of King's College, London, fills twenty-one pages, and is of great value. Had its publishers only added four pages of a biographic sketch (might they not do it yet?), it would have been the most handy and complete singlevolumed Shakspere extant. In preparing the text the same rules have been observed as guided the editors in the preparation of the Cambridge one; but these might have been explicitly stated here. The publishers merit the people's thanks.

Toiling Upward:

LESSONS IN LIFE, PROGRESS, AND IMPROVEMENT.

"The heights, by great men reached and kept,

Were not attained by sudden flight;

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night."—-Longfellow.

PREFATORY INTRODUCTION.

LIFE is toil. Health, progress, and happiness are the results of honest labour. In some mode or other all must work. Work, as duty, is the divinest influence in human life. All true greatness, however it may be based on gift, is built up by effort. In every man noble capacities are lodged; in every man there is implanted power to be developed and used, to be worked out of his life into society. The essential worth of man depends upon his ability to work. The inborn energies of human nature demand exercise, and by exercise they are increased and strengthened. A man's personality sums itself up into power-force,-moral, industrial, or intellectual. When he attains to a sense of this power self-reliance is originated, and effort becomes joy. Vitality is work-power, and is only able to be kept up by vigorous effort in getting, training, and spending.

Health is true wealth; it is the bank of labour. When the whole of the energies of man are at their best, when the sense of livingness beats most thoroughly and throngly within him, when power animates each fibre and is secreted in each nerve, action is a necessity of life, toil is welcome, and the craving for opportunity of exerting the up-pent energies is clamant as a thirst. All the finest, rarest, and highest efforts of man have been made at the instigation of this irresistible instinct of the soul for active and productive efficacy. Being is only felt to be an enviable delight when it is passing into doing. Our life is one of becoming, of effective change. We have to gather up into ourselves, from diverse sources, the materials of bodily vigour, of mental activity, of moral emotion, and of religious ecstasy; and we require to give forth by various processes the accumulated results of the combination of these materials with our life. Each life ought, therefore, to be a centre for the production of new tendencies. This constitutes its individuality, its originality; this is genius, "that power divine which through every sort of discipline renders the difference so conspicuous between one and another."

In every life there reside certain possibilities; these possibilities are various as the combinations capable of being made between the

different faculties of man and the numerous circumstances by or in which they may be called into exercise. Believing this to be the case, we are justified in addressing every one whose eye or ear we can attract, in the words of the poet,―

"Resolve! resolve! and to be men aspire;

Exert that noblest privilege, alone

Here to mankind vouchsafed; control desire;

Let God-like Reason from her sovereign throne

Speak the commanding word-I will! and it is done."

The world's greatest and noblest men, the men whose names have roused the gratitude of generations, have been less distinguished for opportunity than for the importunity with which they assayed to woo the stubbornly closed ear of Fortune. Of the mighty possibilities that lie coiled up in the human soul the records of man's race are full. Few of those whose achievements fill the glorious roll of benefactors of the human race by discoveries, inventions, doings, sufferings, songs, or fresh and fertile thoughts, have had the smiles of fate upon their birth; but they have been gifted with sympathies open to the influences of nature, with energies ready for movement, with aspirations unsubdued, even though "by difficulties and by dangers compassed round;" with souls incapable of being chilled by pain or penury, and hearts beating high with a sense of vital originality. Are we wrong, then, in believing that there is a perennial wisdom in the memories of those who have passed the days of the years of their lives in "toiling upward"? No; to teach the true lesson of life we must select our teachers from those who have climbed the toilsome steeps and have cleared the upward pathway for themselves; from those who felt,—

"I can do all that man dares do,"

and have proven their power by their efforts.

An acquaintance with the facts of a man's inner life, and with the manner in which his outward life grows out from it, is not only interesting as a study in psychology, but valuable as an example and invaluable as a stimulant. Biography, with its clear revelation of the almost unlimited diversity of human aims, and its records of manifold doings and accomplishings; with its certain narratives of tastes formed and habits fixed, of inclinations growing into cravings, and desires becoming strong as instincts; of training inducing a "second nature in a man, or of an inborn proclivity working through all obstacles to the attainment of a position where gratification for that innate tendency could be had, is a great treasure-house of exemplary and stimulant thought, to show us how many ways and forms of acting a great part in this our human life-day are open to us if we sedulously search for the signs of power inherent or acquirable on which our own opportunity depends. The very yearning of the human spirit to be itself is a power for the execution of "works of unreproved delight," of perpetual activity.