believe a providential process, was being prepared for the acceptance of the same hebdomadal cycle, and thus for opening a new approach to Christianity. By the end of the second century the septenary division of time was forcing its way into general adoption throughout the Roman Empire; and this through the agency of influences for the most part neither Christian nor even Jewish. We wish that Dr. Hessey had dwelt more particularly on this strange episode of history. Dion Cassius, in the well-known passage which he quotes, (Hist. Rom. xxxvii. 18.) is our principal authority for the fact, and its explanation; and he expressly classes the seven-days week amongst Egyptian institutions, and ascribes its establishment among the Romans to Egyptian influences. For the main fact, at any rate, his testimony seems conclusive; nor can he well have been mistaken in tracing the new mode of reckoning to Egypt in the first place, though we are convinced by Archdeacon Hare (in the Philological Museum,' vol. i.) that the Egyptians themselves had probably received the seven-days week from the Chaldæans together with the science of astrology. We know from numberless sources what enormous progress Egyptian religious ideas and customs had been making among the Romans for some time previously; and the fact is easily explained. Amidst the general concourse of races and creeds under the Roman Empire, held together as it was by nothing but the iron despotism which extinguished at the same time all true patriotic feeling, special and traditionary customs (more particularly those which were connected with political institutions) lost their power over men's minds, as did also the ancient forms of their discredited national mythologies. Men yearned for something more universal and more natural. To those who were incapable of philosophy, astrology and the mysteries seemed to promise what they wanted. The massive and mystic ideas of the Eastern religions (which had partially survived even through the old mythology in such mysteries as those of Eleusis) possessed a strong fascination for them, and above all the venerable and awful forms of Egyptian worship. The rites of Isis and Serapis, the licentiousness of which was, we believe, but a secondary recommendation, exercised that attraction upon the coarser and more superstitious minds which purer spirits felt in the Eastern Monotheistic systems, and above all in Christianity. Hence, too, the general exchange of local calendars which had become discordant and inconvenient, (especially since Julius Cæsar's year of confusion,' and Hadrian's subsequent patronage of the Greek mode,) and which no longer had patriotic feeling or political associations to recommend them, for

the simpler system of recurrent weeks and week days, with its quasi-natural basis and its astrological associations. Hence also that growing reverence for the Dies Solis, the Day of the Sun, or Sunday, which Constantine, as we shall see, employed some time later for the furtherance of his purposes. By the end of the third century, the adoption of the astrological week, with its seven planetary days, had become, it would seem, almost universal. It would be an interesting task, and one not fully executed even by Selden, to trace the growth of this usage by a searching examination of the writers, heathen and Christian, of the second and third centuries. That it had taken deep root, before the christianisation of the Empire, not only among all the subject nations, but even among the neighbouring tribes, we have a proof, beyond all incidental notices on the part of contemporary writers, in the names of the days of the week permanently impressed alike on the Romance and on the Teutonic languages of Europe.

It was, however, not till the famous decree of Constantine (A.D.321) that Sunday, by becoming an authorised and constituted holiday, grew to be associated in the minds of Christians with rest as well as worship. Dr. Hessey follows the best authorities in believing that this decree neither involved nor implied a profession of the Christian faith on the Emperor's part; but, while eminently favourable to Christianity, gave him the opportunity of establishing an institution which would be no less acceptable to his heathen subjects, and a bond of union between all. From this time forward the complex elements which go to make up the popular idea of Sunday among Christians were left to blend together, varying indeed in the degree of their combination among different nations and in different centuries, yet exhibiting in the main the same features as at present, although sometimes one feature was brought into greater prominence, and sometimes another.

We have thus traced the history of the institution to that point from which we started at first; though many episodes remain, some of which are agreeably touched upon in Dr. Hessey's book. We again recommend the book very strongly to the notice of the public, and more especially of the clergy. If the observations we have ventured to make, and the arguments of the Bampton lecturer, appear to some to savour of dangerous novelty, we answer that they are in great measure simply a recurrence to the principles of the Reformers and the Fathers, not to say of the Bible also. It is with great satisfaction, therefore, that we point in conclusion to the words of an ancient Christian writer, now usually classed among the

Apostolical Fathers, which, though not cited or alluded to by Dr. Hessey or his predecessors, deserve to be noticed in connexion with this subject; and which, if they betray some forgetfulness of the divine origin of Jewish observances, show, we think, a largeness of view in estimating Christianity rare since the days of St. Paul, and certainly highly applicable to this subject.

With regard to the timid scrupulosity of the Jews, in the ordering of their food, and their superstition about their Sabbaths I do not suppose that you want to be informed by me [writing as a Christian apologist]. For that they should make distinctions between objects created by God for man's use, receiving some of these things as good results of the Creator's power, and rejecting others as useless and superfluous, can surely be hardly deemed due reverence for God. And their close and servile watchings of the stars and moon for the exact observance of months and days; and their adaptation of God's natural laws, and of the changes of the seasons, as inclination prompts, whether to purposes of festival or of mourning,

who shall consider a proof of godliness, and not rather of folly? That the vanity then, and the errors which are common to the Jews, and to the heathen, and the meddlesomeness and pretentiousness which distinguish the Jews, are things from which Christians are and ought to be free, I think I have sufficiently shown you. But as to the mystery of their own peculiar religion, think not to be able to learn that from man. For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by country, or by language, or by customs. For they neither inhabit any cities of their own, nor use a separate dialect, nor lead a marked and peculiar life. And certainly by no device or forethought of curious men have these tenets of theirs been discovered; nor is it any human form of doctrine that they insist on, as some sects do. But dwelling both in Grecian cities and cities of the barbarians, according as the lot of every man is cast, and following the customs of the country in their dress and living, and other particulars of life, they demonstrate the wonderful and (as all men confess) the inexplicable character of their principles of conduct. They live in the countries they belong to, but it is as sojourners. They take part in all things as citizens, yet patiently endure all things as strangers. Every foreign state is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland a strange country. Their residence is on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They comply with the laws which are established, yet in their own lives gain a victory over the laws. And, to sum up all, what the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world.' (Epist. ad Diognetum, iv. v. vi. apud Patres Apostolicos, edit. Hefele.)

ART. XI. 1. Slavery and Secession in America, Historical and Economical. By THOMAS ELLISON. London: 1861. 2. The American Crisis considered. By CHARLES LEMPRIERE, D.C.L. London: 1861.

3. Causes of the Civil War in America. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. (Reprinted by permission from the Times').

London: 1861.

4. The Great Conspiracy and England's Neutrality. Mr. JAY'S Address at Mount Kisco, New York. The fourth of July,

1861.

THESE are ephemeral records of the great controversy which

convulses and divides the Western Hemisphere - an endless subject of wonder, of speculation, of instruction, and of sorrow to those who, like ourselves, survey this tremendous conflict from a state of political society even more remote from that of America than these islands are from the Atlantic coasts. When we consider the multitudes of men affected by this catastrophe, the vast extent of territory abandoned to the horrors of civil war, the momentous political principles engaged in it, the obscure destiny of four millions of slaves, and the severity of the trial applied to those democratic institutions which have been supposed by many profound thinkers to embody and to represent the future government of the most civilised nations, the mind loses itself in the attempt to find an issue from this labyrinth of anarchy. For it is unquestionably a state of anarchy, when a great nation is rent asunder, the minority appealing to arms against the will of the majority, the majority itself relying for its own defence on forces hastily summoned to the capital, the law powerless, the ordinary conditions of freedom suspended, the fundamental compact impugned, and authority maintained, where it is maintained at all, by the edge of the sword. Never did a greater change befall any people, than this revolution which has come upon the Americans in the midst of their reckless material prosperity; never did a more tremendous visitation teach a nation that they can claim no exemption from the operation of those laws which have in all ages regulated the political interests and contests of mankind.

Mr. Ellison's volume is a serviceable compendium of the events which have taken place, and especially of the state-papers, speeches, and opinions of the men who on both sides have borne

a prominent part in them. His own sympathies are avowedly with the North. He draws a fair and accurate picture of the effects of slavery on the resources of the South, and he arrives at the conclusion that, in spite of the incalculable difficulties which surround such a measure, gradual emancipation can alone extricate the Southern States from the social perils in which they stand. The Federal armies which line the banks of the Potomac are not the only, or the most formidable antagonists of the Southern chiefs. Who knows what designs pervade that mysterious, mute, but not unintelligent phalanx in the rear of the confederate forces, whose power may ere long become commensurate with their wrongs? Mr. Ellison, however, is not an abolitionist, in the extreme sense of the term. His views are moderate; his facts are carefully collected, and upon the whole his book is the most useful contribution we have seen in Europe to the history of this crisis in American affairs.

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We cannot speak in equally favourable terms of Dr. Lempriere's performance, nor is it easy to conceive what can have induced an English writer, a member of an Inn of Court and an Oxford College, to appear before the world as the champion of all that the public opinion of this country and the general conscience of the civilised world have most irrevocably condemned. His style is singularly confused and incorrect. His acquaintance with the elementary principles of the American Constitution is so imperfect that he asserts that the President would not become • Governor of the country until he was accepted by the legislature both of the separate States and the whole combined;' whence he argues that there is no such government as the Union, and that the exercise of power by President Lincoln is an act of despotic usurpation. But these absurdities are not the darkest blots on Dr. Lempriere's pages. Far worse than these is the total moral insensibility of this book to the great principles engaged in this contest. We were not prepared to meet with an English writer, at the present day, who should roundly assert that throughout the Southern States, apart from the question of slavery, the negro has a recognised and "comfortable position in society. He is provided and cared for by law, and is confessedly the happiest and merriest of mortals ' in any subordinate capacity.' (P. 49.) Nor indeed is it easy to understand what is meant by the position of the negro in the South, apart from the question of slavery. But enough of such revolting absurditya melancholy proof of the lengths to which men may be led by a love of paradox, amounting