“What, indeed! can mark a greater alienation of the soul from its original nature, than the infidelity which chooses for the bed of the grave spots unhallowed by religious associations.  They who deny their God, and cavil at his Word, can have no reverence for places which, like his houses of prayer and the consecrated receptacles of the dead, derive all their sanctity and influence from a belief in his mercies, and a sense of our demerits—­hence, having banished themselves from their Father’s house, they are content to ’lie down in the grave like the beasts that perish.’  Whilst, on the contrary, the simply virtuous, the sincerely religious, the soberly pious, without attaching any value as to the future destination of the soul, to the spot in which its earthly sister may crumble to its kindred dust, cherish the pleasing hope that their mortal bodies may repose in those places alone which religion hallows.  They long not for pleasure grottos or druidical coppices, in which to be gathered to their fathers, but dwelling with chastened hope on the glories of the resurrection, they desire their mortal particles may be found when the Lord cometh to complete his victory over the grave, in the spot, and contiguous to the house ’in which he has chosen to place his name there.’

“From the same fountain of ethereal purity, deduced through this genuine principle of amiability, is derived that love of country which makes his Alps and Avalanches dear to the Swiss, and suggested that beautiful image to the Mantuan muse, of the Grecian soldier remembering in the last struggles of death his pleasant Argos.  It is this which makes us revert, with ever verdant freshness, to our homes and native places, and binds us to the land of our birth with adamantine links.  From the burning desarts of sunny Africa—­from the wild tornados of the gusty West—­from the mountains of ice piled by a thousand ages, like impassable barriers round each frozen pole—­from the fertile plains and trackless forests of Australia, frequently rises, like a breeze of sweetest incense, the fond remembrance of our native land; which, even in bosoms scathed by storm and pilgrimage, causes to spring up, like a sudden fountain in a barren waste, the gushing images of the scenes of home, and all their prime deliciousness.”

There are seventy-five pieces in prose and verse, narrative and descriptive.—­The price and pretensions would not allow costly engravings; and, with the exception of a beautiful architectural frontispiece, by Mr. Britton, F.S.A. the embellishments are but meagre.  This plate is accompanied by a brief paper on Christian Architecture, at the close of which Mr. Britton says, “The frontispiece has been composed from the architectural members of the west front of York Minster; and it shows that the monastic artist who designed that magnificent facade, gave to it a decided, unequivocal Christian character.”

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