Monthly Review of Literature. 197 



will fully appreciate our meaning, inasmuch as the day is now long since 

 past when the definition of that term could be doubted. And we should 

 ourselves form a favourable impression of the learning of a man, without 

 having seen him, were we in calling by chance to mark this volume lying 

 upon his table. 



To Mr. Hallam, our thanks are especially due, for clearing the path of 

 literature in the very able style which is every where manifested through 

 these pages. We may here wander with delight over the intellectual history 

 of ages, comparing them with their contemporary eras, and with the actual 

 position of our own enlightened times, free from the toil and disappoint- 

 ment which must have accompanied the labours of the author in collecting 

 the necessary ancestorial records. 



The opening chapter of the work includes the literature of Europe from 

 the year 1400 to 1440, and the two succeeding chapters conduct the reader 

 to 1550. The fourth chapter is engaged by the ancient literature during the 

 period intervening between 1520 and 1550. The fifth, on the speculative, 

 moral, and political philosophy and jurisprudence; which is succeeded by 

 the history of literature of taste, during the same space of time. The volume 

 closes with the scientific and miscellaneous literature of the thirty years pre- 

 ceding 1550. 



We forbear doing more in so short a notice, than barely enumerate the 

 subjects of the chapters, and the arrangement the author has adopted in 

 treating them. We' however look forward with some anxiety to the com- 

 pletion of a work which promises so much valuable information to society 

 and such benefits to education. 



On a future occasion, when we are less pressed for space, we will return 

 with much pleasure to such agreeable labour as the review of the "Literature 

 of Europe" offers. 



The Reformation. By the REV. H. STEBBING. 2 Vols. post 8vo. 

 Lardner's Cyclopedia. Longman. 



THE Reformation which spread like a flood through all the countries of 

 Europe offers an extensive and interesting display, not merely of religious 

 warfare and struggle, but also of the constitution of society in those times, 

 and the powerful portraiture of human nature. This volume of this very 

 excellent series contains the history of the stirring times when Luther 

 shone forth the great planet of the Northern hemisphere. The death of 

 Zuingle illustrated by a pretty vignette is among the important occurrences of 

 the day, which is succeeded by the rapid advance of Protestantism ; the 

 alarm of the Emperor as displayed in his weak attempt to procure a recon- 

 ciliation, and the establishment of the Reformation. 



The progress of the Reformation in England in the time of Henry the 

 Eighth, when Wolsey and Cranmer divided the popular interest, and its 

 violent movement in France, attended by the horrors of the Bartholomew 

 Massacre, are also embraced in the present volume. The concluding chapters 

 detail the state of the Reformation in the Low Countries, under the guidance 

 of Calvin ; and the disturbed condition of affairs in Germany. 



Library of Anecdote. The Book of Human Character. By CHARLES 

 BUCKE, ESQ. Vol. I. C. Knight. 



THERE are some persons who go through the world and look with a jaundiced 

 eye at every thing around them. Regarding themselves as ill-used men, while 

 in fact they have only ill-used themselves by their extraordinary self-esteem, 

 they consider all men as united in conspiracy against them, and have scarcely 

 a good word for any one but themselves. We believe that it wasthis ex- 

 traordinary self-esteem that plunged Barry and Haydon into penury and 

 want ; and we know no other probable termination to the life of a literary 

 man thus mentally constituted. A single sentence in Mr. Bucke's book is 



