seek the immortal way.  So guided and inspired, it cannot but be a charming path; for those who perpetually walk therein come to look as though they were entranced with the perfume that floats from fields of asphodel.  Characters so developed are beautiful exceedingly, and seem of a far higher strain than those who most generously and effectively labor for the amelioration and moral advancement of the race.  They, more than any others who have riches there, illumine the grand, yet gloomy arches of the Christian Church with their ineffable whiteness.  No preacher therein is so eloquent as their marble silence; for they reveal in their countenances the mystery of Redemption.  Even while among the living, men looked upon them with awe,—­feeling, that, though coeval in time, infinite space rolled between.  They teach as no other order of teachers can, that the days and duties of life may be so cast under foot as to exalt one to be only a little lower than the angels.  In fine, through them is made visible the value of the individual soul; and thus we see, as in the central idea of our author, that “that which moulds itself from within is free.”

Jenkins’s Vest-Pocket Lexicon.  Philadelphia:  J.B.  Lippincott & Co.

Compared with “Webster’s Unabridged” or “Worcester’s Quarto,” this little pinch of words would make “small show.”  It is, however, a very valuable pocket-companion; for, to use the author’s own phrase, it “omits what everybody knows, contains what everybody wants to know and cannot readily find.”  It is really a vade-mecum, small, cheap, and useful to a degree no one can fully appreciate until it has been thoroughly tried.  Mr. Jabex Jenkins may claim younger-brotherhood with the men who have done service in the important department of education he has chosen to enter.

A Practical Guide to the Study of the Diseases of the Eye; their Medical and Surgical Treatment.  By HENRY W. WILLIAMS, M.D.  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. 317.

If we readily accord our gratitude to those whose skilful hands and well-instructed judgment render us physical service in our frequent need, ought we not to offer additional thanks to such as by the high tribute of their mental efforts confirm and elucidate the more mechanical processes required in doing their beneficent work?

Do those who enjoy unimpaired vision, and who have not yet experienced the sufferings arising from any of the varied forms of ocular disease, appreciate the magnitude of the blessing vouchsafed to them?  We venture to answer in the negative.

Occasionally, the traveller by railway has a more or less severe hint as to what an inflamed and painful eye may bring him to endure:  those countless flying cinders which blacken his garments and draw unsightly lines upon his face with their slender charcoal-pencils do not always leave him thus comparatively unharmed.  Suppose one unluckily reaches the eyeball just as the redness has faded from its sharp angles,—­do we not all know how the rest of that journey is one intolerable agony, unless some fellow-traveller knows how to remove the offending substance?  And even then how the blistered, delicate surface yearns for a soothing douche of warm water,—­perhaps not to be enjoyed for hours!