y who go out to meet death in behalf of Christ and the
religion of meekness and purity and universal love. Such was John Huss.
He ought never to have suffered himself to be driven from the Church,
and when he did so, he committed the unceasing mistake of reformers,
among whom Wesley and Zinzendorf stand as the two marked exceptions; but
for rectitude, zeal, and a thorough consecration to the great interests
of Christ, he merits an even more sumptuous memorial than this excellent
book.

_Sordello, Strafford, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day._ By ROBERT BROWNING.
Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

In his dedication to the new edition of "Sordello," Mr. Browning
says,--"I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the many
might--instead of what the few must--like; but, after all, I imagined
another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it."

This, on the whole, he has done; for, though a prose heading runs before
every page, with a knowing wink to the reader, the mystery is not
cleared up. As the view dissolves with every turn of a leaf, the showman
says, confidentially,--"Now you shall see how a poet's soul comes into
play,--how he succeeds a little, but fails more,--tries again, is no
better satisfied,--

"Because perceptions whole, like that he sought
To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language: thought may take perception's place,
But hardly coexist in any case,
Being its mere presentment,--of the whole
By parts, the simultaneous and the sole
By the successive and the many. Lacks
The crowd perception?"

We fear so; at any rate, the exhibition fails, because the showman
cannot furnish brains to his commentary. The man who can read "Sordello"
is little helped by these headings, and the man who cannot is soon
distracted by continual disappointment. We think he will end by reading
only the headings. And they doubtless are the best for him. Otherwise,
under the cerebral struggle to perceive how the prose interprets the
poetry, he might become the idiot that Douglas Jerrold exclaimed that
_he_ was at his first trial of "Sordello."

There has been a careful overhauling of the punctuation, with benefit to
the text. Many lines have been altered, sometimes to the comfort of the
reader; and about a hundred fresh lines have been interpolated here and
there, to the weakening, we think, of the dramatic vigor of nearly every
place that is thus handled. Many readers will, h