senters over the marriage contract and ceremony and over matters of divorce jurisdiction and legislation is clearly traced, with liberal quotations from the works of leading writers. The early practice of the Anglican Church as set forth by Harrington in his quaint Comendacions of Matrymony (1528) is brought into sharp contrast with the views of such prominent Dissenters as Brown and Robert Barrow. Particularly interesting and valuable is the chapter on the Attempted Reform of Divorce. Here the enlightened views of Bishop Hooper, Cartwright, John Rainolds, and other reformers, who upheld the doctrine of divorce for adultery, desertion, and "poisonings", are set over against the conservative attitude of the Established Church, which steadfastly clung to ancient Catholic practice.
Perhaps the most valuable portions of Dr. Powell's book are the chapters describing and analyzing the Domestic Conduct Book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Contemporary Attitudes towards Woman and the Wider Ranges of Domestic Literature. As the author rightly points out, this field "has been almost entirely neglected in connection with the present subject". And the field is both rich and interesting. Finally, four appendixes are added to the book, in the first of which a complete account is given for the first time of the divorce suit of Henry VIII., and in the second, a new conception of the married life of Milton and the cause of his famous divorce tracts is advanced.
Such a careful and detailed study as Dr. Powell's should be sincerely welcomed by every student of the family. The fresh material it assembles and the painstaking way in which it traces the evolution of new ideas concerning marriage and divorce make it a genuine contribution to the growing body of literature on this subject.
About 1593 there was printed without name of publisher or place, but probably from the press of Robert Waldegrave in Edinburgh, or by that of Richard Schilders, possibly in London, a now rare volume, long known to students of English Puritanism, entitled A Parte of a Register; contayninge sundrie memorable Matters, written by divers godly and learned in our Time, which stande for and desire the Reformation of our Church, in Discipline and Ceremonies, accordinge to the pure Worde of
