ing each story as only he could repeat it. To those who like Irish wit, (and who does not?) we most heartily commend this work.

"THE Sacred Plains.'' The Sacred Mountains,' by Hon. J. T. HEADLEY, our present Secretary of State, undoubtedly suggested to his brother, J. H. HEADLEY, the preparation of the handsome illustrated volume before us. The Sacred Plains,' says 'The Churchman,'' are here brought before us in their association as connected with the history of the past, and alluded to in the Holy Scriptures. Whatever tends to give clearness and precision to our conceptions of those localities on which have transpired event affecting the destinies of men or nations, is worthy of praise, and therefore it is that this work of Mr. HEADLEY'S is certain of wide acceptance. The materials were at command in many works extant, illustrative or descriptive of Asia. Mr. HEADLEY is graphic, so far as relates to personification, and exhibits great ingenuity in incorporating the expressions of the writers on whom he relies for the substance of his sketches.

DIARY OF THE LATE AMOS LAWRENCE.-Although but recently printed, this work, as we learn from the publishers, Messrs. GOULD AND LINCOLN, Boston, has had a sale unprecedented by scarcely any other biographical work; a success due entirely to the intrinsic merits of the book. The liberal benefactions of Mr. LAWRENCE to various public institutions during his life-time, drew upon him in a large degree the public attention, and made him an object of public respect. This respect seems to have been well deserved by his personal character, as we find it delineated in this volume. He was a man of business, exact and laborious, yet always careful to prevent habits of business from narrowing his sympathies or making him inattentive to matters of greater moment. He was a religious man, wholly without bigotry; a man of decided political opinions, without party prejudices, and disposed to think well of others, whether they agreed with him in their views or not.'

'REVISION OF THE LITURGY.'- The object of this volume, recently issued by DANA AND COMPANY, is stated by the author, Rev. ARCHER GIFFORD, A.M., to be, to draw from ecclesiastical literature what may interest and instruct all those who wish to acquire a knowledge of the Church's institutions, and to gather from her sacred treasury of things new and old,' that which may thoroughly furnish unto all good works. The professed aim of the work, in detail, is to exhibit the harmony of the Liturgy; its harmony in itself, as also with Holy Scripture; as shown in the Collect for each of the Sundays and Holy Days of the year, with the Epistles, the Gospel, and the Lessons for that Day, and of its accordance with a corresponding topic in the Church's Catechism, and her Articles of Religion.

THE PIAZZA TALES: HERMAN MELVILLE. This series of stories, though partaking of the marvellous, are written with the author's usual felicity of expression, and minuteness of detail. The tale entitled 'Benito Cereno,' is most painfully interesting, and in reading it we became nervously anxious for the solution of the mystery it involves. The book will well repay a perusal.

SIBERT'S WORLD: BY THE AUTHOR OF SUNBEAM STORIES, Erc., is a small volume, written by an English lady, who has already won a literary reputation in England and America, to which this little work will add new honors. It is not one of those trashy, ephemeral books with which the country is flooded, and which are read only to be forgotten; but it is one which a parent may safely put in a daughter's hands, with the assurance that she can derive nothing from it but good.

MESSRS. A. WILLIAMS & Co. succeed Messrs. FETRIDGE & Co., in Boston, and the KNICKERBOCKER can always be had at their elegant and well-filled store on Washingtonstreet. Mr. WILLIAMS was, for many years, one of the firm of REDDING & Co., has always been in the book-business, is highly esteemed by his friends in the trade, and all who know him.

Two hundred miles from the coast of the Celestial Empire rises from the bosom of the ocean a group of islands whose beauty is scarcely surpassed by the most romantic of Pacific scenery. Emerald isles are they, verdant as they are with the rich variegated green of tropical vegetation; their hills crowned with waving forests; their valleys carpeted with velvety herbage, and tufted with aromatic shrubs; even their defiles festooned with drooping vines, and their rugged cliffs mosaicwrought with mosses. Here and there bold headlands push themselves defiantly into the deep, and invite, undismayed, the charge and shock of Ocean's billowy squadrons. Between them grassy slopes descend to the shores, and restive brooks leap down the stony channels to hush their noisy babble in the sea. Around each island of the group, as if to defend its soil against the encroachment of the waves, extend long, irregular barriers of coral-reef, upon which the white foaming surges have disported themselves for ages. Happy isles! how freshly the sun-light gleamed upon their rounded summits, their leafy vales, their treesprinkled headlands, when first my eager eye surveyed the scene.

It was one Saturday afternoon, four years ago, that I found myself approaching the Madjicosimas. We had left the coast of China a few days before, had skirted the northern shore of Formosa, and now, with every sail set, were wafting gently along before a light breeze toward our hitherto unknown haven. We had sighted the islands in the morning far off on the distant horizon, resting upon the sea like dim blue clouds. As we neared them, they seemed approaching us to meet halfway with cordial welcome their visitors from the haven of the West.

Already we could distinguish with the telescope the picturesque outlines of hill, valley, and forest, upon the different islands. Presently the scenery displayed its beauties to the naked eye, the vales mapping themselves out before us; the mountains towering above us; the trees waving their hospitable boughs as if to shake hands with us; the channels between the islands opening for us a watery path like the labyrinthine aisles of the forest. To the most prominent and beautiful of the group our ship wended her way; and, as she rounded to in a spacious harbor, half-embayed among the coral-reefs, startled the echoes of Patchungsan, the Eight Huge Hills,' with the sound of her plunging anchor and rushing chain.

What errand had brought a ship of war bristling with the implements of death, to this peaceful spot? Bloody work upon the high seas! The crowded Chinese passengers of a California emigrant-ship, alone upon the ocean, beyond the ken of aught but the all-seeing eye of GOD, had risen upon the officers and crew of the ill-fated bark. Five only were spared, and required by the murderers to navigate the vessel back to China. They reached in safety the Madjicosima group, where the ship was driven ashore on a reef, and the coolies resolved to disembark. The survivors of the crew, exhausted with watching and labor, were compelled to man the only remaining boat, and ferry the conspirators ashore. Wearily they plied their oars to and fro, until but a score of the coolies remained on board. Upon these the sailors determined to wreak a portion of the vengeance due to their crime, and summoning the energy of desperation, attacked them, unmindful of the fearful odds. The strife was brief and terrible. The assailants weré successful. The mutineers were overpowered and lashed to the ring-bolts in the deck. Having secured their captives, the sailors ran to the braces, the yards swung round, the sails backed, and started the grounded ship from her position, the swell lifted her, she thumped upon the reef, grazed, thumped, grazed again, and slowly slid from her coral resting-place afloat, afloat! One took the helm, the others manned the well-known ropes, and speedily the ship, proud of her liberty, was dancing over the blue waves, and dashing the spray from her prow. The landed coolies yelled, stormed, ran up and down on the beach with impotent rage; but neither their prayers nor imprecations were heard. By night-fall the receding ship was far at sea, and in the gathering darkness was lost on the distant horizon. Four days and nights of anxious, sleepless watching, the worn-out voyagers, with scarce strength to drag their emaciated limbs along the deck, stood by the helm, trimmed the swelling sails to the breeze, or stood sentry over their prisoners. Many times did the latter gnaw at their fastenings, and threaten a tragedy like the first, but were as often re-secured. At last, faint with exhaustion, grateful for their deliverance from the twofold dangers of the passage, they reached the city of Amoy, China, where their turbulent captives were handed over to the safer custody of the Chinese prison. An English brig-of-war, then lying in the roads, espoused the cause of justice, visited the islands, and captured a few more of the refugees. Upon her return to the coast, our gallant ship spread her wings like a bird of prey for a second swoop among the

devoted mutineers.

Our interpreter learned from the authorities of Patchungsan, that nearly three hundred of the coolies still remained on the island. For these the kind-hearted natives had erected near the shore long, capacious buildings of thatched palm, in which they had lived until the arrival of the brig, when they dispersed among the hills to avoid capture. After her departure, they again collected at their huts, whence they had again fled in terror at sight of a second warlike visitant approaching their guilty abode.

'HAIL! holy light! offspring of HEAVEN first-born!' - MILTON.

THE morning sun rose in a cloudless sky. The island, with all its beauties of hill and valley, mountain gorge, and sloping lawn, and orchard-like forest, lay calmly at rest, with scarce a breath of wind to disturb its repose. The surrounding ocean gave back from its unruffled surface the exquisite picture; as once the soul of man, undisturbed by the storms of passion, reflected, pure and spotless, the glorious image of its MAKER. It would have been in accordance with all the outward influences of such a Sabbath, had some New-England church, with its mellow-toned bell, and its simple, hallowed service, been transplanted to this Pacific garden, to be occupied by the humble worshippers of the only true GOD. But it was not so. Other scenes than the sacred observances of the sanctuary were enacted. Other sounds were heard than those that echo up through the listening vaults of Heaven from the church-spire. On shore, hid in the thickets, lurking in the caverns, housed in the villages, were the scattered mutineers, careless of aught but to escape the hand of justice; while the natives, ignorant alike of GOD and His Sabbath, were pursuing their ordinary avocations in the field, the shop, or mountain-path. On board ship, instead of the sacred repose, the grateful worship, the contemplation appropriate to holy time, the air resounded with the din, and bustle, and turmoil of warlike preparation. The minutiae of equipment and drill necessary to the organization of a land expedition, the complex labors of commissariat and kitchen, the planning and scheming of the appointed officers, altogether presented such a Babel of employment as might resemble the week-day exercises of the polytechnic school, or the gymnasium, rather than the Sabbath of a Christian ship. On the quarter-deck the commanders of divisions were mustering their men; sergeants and corporals were putting an awkward squad' of sailors through the manual, quarter-gunners were distributing muskets, pistols, pikes, cutlasses, according to the orders of the day. Forward by the forecastle, those who had been chosen for the service were over-hauling their clothes-bags, and selecting the various articles of their neat, simple uniform, to be worn on the coming occasion. At the arm-chests the gunner and his crew were busily at work re-burnishing their murderous implements, filling cartridge-boxes, reïnspecting gun-locks and powder-flasks. Not far off were seated the sail-maker's gang, making haversacks of canvas. Here and there between the guns was a marine re-touching his snow-white belt, or polishing his bayonet; a sailor, skilful in needle-craft, making

or mending some necessary article of apparel; a shrewd old salt, mindful of the night's fatigue, stretched at full length in the luxury of an anticipatory nap; a stripling novice now first drafted into active service, indulging delicious reveries of the romantic dangers and chivalric deeds in store for him; while rejected volunteers, glowering with sullen disappointment, stroll to and fro aloof from their jubilant comrades, gazing idly over the bulwarks, and vowing eternal indifference to the whole undertaking. Below, on the berth-deck, equally momentous operations are in progress. At the galley, hurrying cooks and Ethiopian scullions are dancing smutty attendance upon the baking, toasting, boiling, sputtering, sizzling rations; the clouds of steam and hissing flames more easily suggesting the home fireside of Apollyon than the cooking-range of an American man-of-war. Near by, the purser's steward, and his handy minion, the Jack-of-the-dust,' weigh out, from well-stowed, gunny-bags, the necessary amount of hard bread for the departing forces, whose proclivities to stomachic refreshment are scarcely inferior to their appetite for fighting. Nor has the contagion spared the steerage and ward-room. Here, too, the warlike note is heard and answered by the stir and excitement of preparation.

Thus passed the blessed hours; but beguiled of all their blessedness. A Sabbath in a man-of-war! Little dream the sturdy, old-fashioned church-goers at home, amid the propitious influences of a land where they enjoy the inherited

'Freedom to worship GoD,'

how different the day on ship-board, under the blight of that oft-repeated maxim: No Sabbath off soundings.'

At nine in the evening, under cover of the darkness, the armament commenced landing. Before mid-night the whole force was under march for the interior. The mutineers had fled over the hills, and through the woods, among the rocks, caves, and mountain-passes, up the valleys, and across the fields, in all directions, whither stern fear urged them, 'with winged footsteps,' or hope held out to them the promise of a shelter. But over the hills, and through the woods, among the rocks, caves, and mountain-passes, up the valleys, and across the fields, like the avenging spirit of restless Cain, followed justice in hot pursuit. We will not lift the veil of night to peer after the retreating fugitives, or watch the stealthy approach of their relentless pursuers. Let the darkness cover the fright of the one, and the weary toil of the other.

DAY THE

SECOND:

MONDAY.

'You are my prisoner, Sir!'-OLD PLAY.

As the morning dawn emerged from obscurity, and the shades of night dissolved in the glory of approaching day, the gathering divisions, fatigued with the march, and the unwonted duty, came forth with their captives from forest and defile, and met upon a cleared plateau, gently sloping toward the rising sun, where they bivouacked for a time to take their morning meal, and repose their weary limbs on the seductive sward.