The inertness of the French since their rupture with Algiers, had induced Hussein to treat their threats with contempt, and he by no means anticipated the extreme measures to which they were about to resort. The certainty of their intentions to attack him, however, effected no change in his resolve to maintain the position which he had assumed; all offers of mediation or intercession were rejected, and the approach of the storm only rendered him the more determined to brave its violence. He was left to meet it alone. The mission of Tahir Pasha was the only effort made by the Sultan in his behalf; Great Britain had in vain offered its mediation to both Parties, and did not appear disposed to interfere farther between them; the other European Powers remained neutral. The Sovereigns of Tripoli and Tunis were summoned to aid in defending the common cause of Islamism; but the appeal was in both instances vain; Yusuf dreaded the vengeance of the French, on account of the support which he had unwillingly afforded to the accusations against their Consul, and was by no means inclined to give them additional cause for enmity, or to involve himself in expenses from which he could anticipate no immediate benefit. The Bey of Tunis had long been devoted to the interests of France; far from aiding the Dey, he had agreed to furnish his enemies with provisions, and even if required to make a diversion in their favor, by invading the Algerine Province of Constantina which lay contiguous to his own dominions.

Hussein was thus reduced entirely to his own resources; an examination of the means at his disposal will show that he was unable to make any effectual resistance, and that without the interposition of some occurrence beyond the control of man, "the well defended city" must have fallen into the hands of the French.

The Algerine territory extends in length on the Mediterranean, about six hundred miles; its breadth or the distance between that Sea and the Desert no where exceeds one hundred miles, and is generally much less. Shaler gives sixty as the average breadth, which would make the superficial extent of the country about thirty-six thousand square miles. A considerable portion of this territory consists of rugged and almost inaccessible mountains, many of which are covered with eternal snow; there are however vast tracts of the finest land, which with proper attention would be rendered very productive, and even the rude and careless mode of cultivation pursued by the inhabitants enabled them frequently to export great quantities of wheat to Europe. One of these tracts in the immediate vicinity of Algiers called the plain of Metija is said to be of unparalleled fertility; it is not less than a thousand square miles in extent, and is covered with springs which by a judicious direction of their waters, might be made the sources of health and plenty, instead of producing as they now do only useless and insalubrious marshes.

The country was divided into three provinces, separated by lines drawn from points on the coast southwardly to the Desert; each of these divisions was governed by a Bey who though appointed from Algiers, was almost absolute within his own territories. The Eastern province bordering on Tunis was the largest and the most populous; it took its name from its capital Constantina, the ancient Cirta, a strong town situated about sixty miles from the Sea, and said to have more inhabitants than Algiers. The principal ports of this district are Bugia and Bona; upon its coast near Bona were the African Concessions which in part led to the difficulties with France. Tittery the middle province is the smallest, its surface not being more than sixty miles square; it however contains the capital, and is more populous in proportion to its extent, than any other part of the Regency. The Western province lying contiguous to Morocco has been called Oran, Tlemsen and Mascara, accordingly as its Bey resided in either of the principal cities which bear those names. In 1830 the seat of government was Oran or more properly Warran, a seaport town near the frontiers of Morocco which possesses a fine harbor and may be rendered very strong; the other ports of this province Arzew, Mostaganem and Shershell though nearly deserted, are well situated both for commerce and defence. Indeed the western territories of Algiers are considered the most delightful and the richest of Northern Africa; in addition to their grain, fruits and mines, they are also famous for the beauty and spirit of their horses which are sent in great numbers to the East, as well as to Spain and the South of France. The population appears likewise to be of a better character than that of other parts of the Regency; there are fewer Arabs or Kabyles, and a great portion of the inhabitants are the descendants of that noble race of Moors, who were expelled from Spain in the fifteenth and two succeeding centuries.

It is difficult to form any estimate of the number of inhabitants in the Algerine territories. Shaler in 1824 considered it less than a million; from the results of the latest inquiries made by the French it amounted in 1830 to seven hundred and eighty thousand, who were thus classed.

Moors, the industrious and most civilized class, inhabiting the cities or engaged in agriculture,	400,000
Kabyles or Berbers who probably descend from the aboriginals of the country; they are still a wild and intractable race, living in the mountains and frequently plundering or levying contributions on the industrious part of the population,	200,000
Arabs who live in tents, on the borders of the Desert from the produce of their flocks and herds, or are employed in transporting goods through the country,	120,000
Turkish Soldiers, generally from the coasts and islands of the Archipelago,	8,000
Koul-ogleis or children of Turks by native women.	32,000
	780,000

Assuming this estimate as correct, it will be found by comparison with the tables of population of other countries, that the Algerine Dominions did not probably contain more than a hundred and twenty thousand men capable of bearing arms; and when it is considered that these are spread over an extensive territory, which is mountainous and almost destitute of roads, it would be unreasonable to expect that more than half that number could be collected at any one point, even supposing the existence of universal patriotism and devotion to the Government. Such feelings may have operated on the Moors, but they could scarcely have produced much effect on the Kabyles and Arabs, who according to the estimate form more than two-fifths of the population; and although promises of high pay and the prospect of plunder might induce many from each of those classes and from among the wanderers of the Great Desert, to aid in the defence of the country, yet little dependance could be placed upon these irregular bands, when opposed to the disciplined troops of France.

Hussein's experience may probably have led him to some such conclusions, but every act of his reign served to shew that they would have been ineffectual towards inducing him to make concessions, even were it not too late. After the rejection of the overture which had been wrung from him by his friend Halil, nothing less than an immense pecuniary sacrifice on his part would have contented the French; and policy as well as pride forbade this sacrifice, for he was well aware that a peace purchased on such terms would have cost him his life. Moreover he was evidently a thorough fatalist; two expeditions against Algiers had already failed completely, although taking into consideration its defences at the several periods, the chances of its fall were in both those cases greater than under the existing circumstances. "God is great and good, and the Sea is uncertain and dangerous," was his observation to the Captain of the British frigate Rattlesnake; a storm such as occurs on that coast in every month of the year, might in a few hours have dissipated the forces of his enemies, or have thrown so large a number of them into his hands as prisoners, that their restoration would have been deemed an equivalent for peace.

On the 14th of May an incident took place which was calculated to confirm the Dey in such expectations. During a violent gale from the northeast, the Aventure and the Siléne two brigs which formed part of the blockading squadron were on that night driven ashore near Cape Bengut, about sixty miles east of Algiers. The officers and crews of these vessels in number about two hundred persons, finding escape impossible, and conceiving that any attempt at defence would only insure their destruction, determined to march along the coast towards Algiers, and to surrender themselves as prisoners of war to the first party with which they might meet. They were soon observed and surrounded by a troop of Kabyles whom they however induced to believe that they were English, and that a large sum would be paid for their safe delivery at Algiers. Under this persuasion the Barbarians were conducting them towards the city, when their course was arrested by the sudden rise of a river which it was necessary to cross; during the delay thus occasioned, it was discovered that they were French, and the greater part of them were immediately sacrificed to the fury of the Kabyles. The heads of one hundred and nine of these unfortunate persons were brought into Algiers on the 20th of May, which having been purchased by the Dey at the regular price, were exposed on the walls of the Casauba; they were however afterwards surrendered for burial. The survivors, eighty-nine in number, were confined in the dungeons of the castle; they were in other respects treated by Hussein with as much lenity as the circumstances would permit, and they received the kindest attentions from the Consuls of Foreign Powers who remained in the place.

Hussein did not however trust entirely to Providence for the safety of his capital; on the contrary he made every preparation in his power for its defence. In the city and its environs every man was enrolled, and the slightest expression indicative of fear or mistrust as to the result of the contest, was punished by death. From the Provinces, the Beys were ordered to bring to Algiers all whom they could enlist or force into the service, and immense sums from the public treasury were placed at their disposal for the purpose. By these means he speedily assembled a very large force, the exact amount of which it is impossible to ascertain; the French historians state it to have been seventy-two thousand; other accounts perhaps equally worthy of credit make it much less. The number of what may be termed regular troops appears to have been precisely twenty-two thousand, viz. five thousand Turks or Janissaries, seven thousand Koul-ogleis, and ten thousand Moors; to these the French accounts add ten thousand Kabyles, and forty thousand others, principally Arab horsemen. Major Lee the Consul of the United States, who made very particular observations and inquiries on the subject, and whose statements appear to be entirely free from prejudice, does not consider that the irregular forces exceeded thirty thousand. Whatever may have been the fact with regard to the whole number of the Algerine troops, it is certain that a large and important portion were never brought into action in the open field, having been necessarily retained to garrison the city and the fortifications in its immediate vicinity.

When the preparations of the French had removed all doubts as to their views with regard to Algiers, apprehensions were entertained by the Governments of Christian nations for the safety of their Consuls and citizens in the country, who, it was feared, might in a moment of excitement be sacrificed to the fury of the inhabitants. Ships were accordingly sent by several Powers for the purpose of bringing away their respective agents and others who might be thus endangered; but the commander of the blockading squadron having been strictly ordered to allow no communication with Algiers prevented several of these vessels from entering the harbor. An Austrian frigate and a Spanish brig were thus ordered off, and the latter afterwards shewing some disposition to enter was fired on. A Sardinian frigate was permitted to send a boat on shore, to bring off the family of the Consul who had protected the interests of France during the difficulties between the two countries, and several other vessels contrived to enter and leave the port unnoticed. Commodore Biddle who commanded the squadron of the United States in the Mediterranean, sent the sloop of war Ontario to Algiers to bring off the American Consul General and his family, in case they should be inclined to go. The Ontario appeared at the entrance of the bay on the 4th of April, accompanied by the frigate Constellation whose captain it is said was ordered to engage any French ship which should attempt to oppose their entrance. As no such attempt was made, it is needless to inquire whether these instructions were really given, or to examine whether they would have been in concordance with the received usages of national intercourse. Major Henry Lee the American Consul General, with his family and the Vice Consul, determined to remain; the ladies of the Neapolitan and Spanish Consuls were however at his request received on board the Ontario and carried to Mahon.

Before the departure of the American ships the British frigate Rattlesnake arrived, bringing despatches to the Consul Mr. St. John, who had been ordered by his Government to remain; on leaving the harbor she was spoken by one of the blockading ships and her captain was informed that he would not be permitted again to enter. This fact having been communicated to the Consul, the Rattlesnake sailed for Malta whence she soon returned bearing a letter from Admiral Malcolm to the French Commander, in consequence of which she was allowed to enter Algiers on condition however that her stay should be limited to a week.

The Consuls who remained in Algiers found it necessary to adopt measures for their own safety. The representative of Great Britain having a large country house at a short distance from the city, out of the probable line of operations, determined merely to retire to it on the approach of the conflict: those of the United States, Denmark, Spain and Naples agreed to establish themselves together at a villa situated on a height overlooking the place, and capable of being rendered sufficiently strong, to resist such attacks as might have been expected. The Dey afforded them every facility in his power, for the fortification and defence of their residence; they were allowed to enlist some Janissaries, and the other Christians with some Jews of the town having joined them, they mustered nearly two hundred men who were tolerably well supplied with arms and ammunition. They accordingly removed on the 26th of May to the Castle as it was termed, on which the flag of the United States was immediately hoisted, Major Lee having by unanimous vote, been elected Commander-in-Chief.

On the 3d of June a part of the fleet which conveyed the French army of invasion was seen off the coast near Algiers. An immediate attack was anticipated, and the Dey prepared to resist it, although not more than half the troops which he expected had then arrived. The fortifications on the bay were well provided and manned, so that the place might be considered secure on that side; the batteries of the Mole were directed by the younger Ibrahim the Minister of the Marine, and the charge of the Emperor's Castle had been committed to the Hasnagee or Treasurer in whom Hussein placed the utmost confidence. The Dey remained secluded within the walls of the Casauba, from which his messengers were seen constantly flying in every direction. As it was anticipated that the landing would be attempted on the shore west of Algiers, the Aga Ibrahim marched out with a part of his forces and encamped on a plain near the sea, distant about ten miles in that direction. A violent gale from the eastward however dispersed the French ships, and nothing more was seen of them for some days; at length information was brought from a certain source that the whole fleet had retired to Palma.

On the 9th, Achmet Bey of Constantina who had been anxiously expected, made his appearance with his troops principally Arabs and Kabyles; the contingents of Oran and Tittery did not however arrive until some days afterwards, and the whole force at that time under Ibrahim's immediate command probably amounted to twenty thousand, of whom at least one half were Arab horsemen.

On the morning of the 13th the sea near Algiers was again covered with ships under the white flag of France. The sky was cloudless, a fresh breeze from the northeast permitted the vessels to move at pleasure along the coast, and as they passed majestically almost within gun shot of the batteries, the Algerines felt that the day of trial was come.

In order to understand the operations of the French against Algiers, some knowledge of the surrounding country and of the relative bearings and distances of important points, is necessary. It is however difficult to convey such information without the aid of maps; our geographical language is limited, and wants precision, and even where it may be sufficient for the purpose, few readers are disposed to study the details with the care requisite to comprehend them fully.

In the account of Lord Exmouth's attack upon Algiers in 1816, the city was described as standing on the western shore, and near the entrance of a bay about fifteen miles in diameter; it must now be considered as situated on the north-eastern side, and near the extremity of a tongue of land, which projects from the African continent northwardly into the Mediterranean. This tongue is about twelve miles in its greatest breadth, where it joins the continent, and ten in length from north to south; the surface of its northern portion is irregular, and in some places rugged, traversed by ridges and ravines, and rising in the centre into a lofty peak, called Jibbel Boujereah; southward from this mountain the inequalities gradually disappear, and the extensive plain of the Metijah succeeds.

The northernmost point or termination of the tongue is a bold promontory called Ras Acconnatter, or Cape Caxine, which is four miles west by north of Algiers; following the shore nine miles south-west from this cape, we find a small peninsula, rather more than a mile in length, and less than a mile in breadth, extending westwardly into the sea. This peninsula is high and rocky at its extremity, but low and sandy at the neck which unites it to the main land; the sea around it affords safe anchorage for vessels, and its shores as well as those in its vicinity, present a clear beach, free from rocks or other impediments to approach. On its highest point stood a small fort, called by the Spanish traders Torreta Chica, or the little tower, on which were mounted or rather placed, four light pieces of cannon more curious from their antiquity than useful. Against the tower was built a Marabout or chapel, containing the tomb of Sidi Ferruch, a saint held in great veneration by the Algerines, and from whom the peninsula takes its name. A battery of stone with twelve embrasures had been also erected on the shore near the end of the peninsula, in order to prevent hostile vessels from anchoring, but on the approach of the expedition it was dismantled and abandoned.

Eastwardly from Sidi Ferruch the land rises almost imperceptibly for three miles, presenting a sandy plain partially covered with aloes, cactus, and evergreen shrubs, at the termination of which is an irregular plateau called Staweli, where the shepherds of the country were in the habit of encamping. Farther on a valley called Backshé-dere separated this plateau from the south-western side of Jibbel Boujereah, along which a road originally formed by the Romans conducted to the walls of the Emperor's castle, within a mile of Algiers. The whole distance by this way from Sidi Ferruch to the city is twelve miles, over a country "gently undulating and perfectly practicable for artillery or any species of carriage," which is also abundantly supplied with fresh water from numerous springs.

These and other circumstances had induced Shaler¹ in 1825 to recommend Sidi Ferruch as the most advantageous point for the disembarkation of a force destined to act against Algiers; and although the intentions of the Commander in Chief of the French expedition were kept profoundly secret, yet it was generally supposed, even before his departure from Toulon, that he would attempt a landing there.

¹ Sketches of Algiers, political, historical, and civil, &c. by William Shaler, American Consul General at Algiers. Boston: 1826.

Our country has produced few works displaying greater originality and soundness of views than this; its subject has caused it to be overlooked in the United States, but in France when circumstances gave value to all information relative to Algiers, its merits were soon recognized, and it was translated by order of the Government for the benefit of the officers engaged in the expedition. His remarks on the power, resources, and policy of the Algerine Government, or rather upon its weakness, its want of means, and the absurdity of its system, were calculated to dispel many of the illusions with regard to it which the mutual jealousy of the great European nations had so long contributed to maintain; and it is impossible to examine his observations as to the proper disposition of a force destined to act against the city, in conjunction with the statement of the plans pursued by the French, without conceiving that in all probability those plans were the result of his suggestions. At page 51 he says:

"The several expeditions against Algiers, in which land forces have been employed, have landed in the bay eastward of the city; this is evidently an error, and discovers unpardonable ignorance of the coast and topography of the country, for all the means of defence are concentrated there. But it is obvious that any force whatever might be landed in the fine bay of Sidi Ferruch without opposition; thence by a single march they might arrive upon the heights commanding the Emperor's castle, the walls of which, as nothing could prevent an approach to them, might be scaled or breached by a mine in a short time. This position being mastered, batteries might be established on a height commanding the Casauba, which is indicated by the ruins of two wind-mills, and of a fort called the Star, which the jealous fears of this Government caused to be destroyed for the reason here alleged, that it commanded the citadel and consequently the city. The fleet which had landed the troops would by this time appear in the bay, to distract the attention of the besieged, when Algiers must either surrender at discretion or be taken by storm."

Many other passages might be quoted in illustration of Mr. Shaler's sagacity; so many of his speculations respecting the future destinies of Barbary have been already confirmed, that we are warranted in entertaining hopes of the fulfilment of his prediction, that it will again be inhabited by a civilized and industrious race.

The French ships after their dispersion by the storms of the first days of June retreated to Palma where they remained until the 10th. On that day the first and second divisions of the fleet again sailed for the African coast; the third division composed almost entirely of merchant vessels, containing the battering artillery, provisions and materials which would not be needed until the disembarkation had been effected, was to have sailed on the 12th, but it was detained until the 18th by adverse winds.

As the distance between Palma and Algiers is only two hundred miles, and the wind was favorable at an early hour on the 13th of June, the first divisions of the armament, with all the troops on board, were collected in front of the city, and every eye was fixed on the Admiral's ship, in anxious expectation of the signal which was to indicate the scene of the first operations. The Algerines, although they expected that their enemies would land at some point westward from the city, yet did not choose to subject themselves to the hazard of a surprise, by leaving the place undefended; the batteries which lined the bay were therefore all manned, and the greater part of the moveable forces were disposed in their vicinity, so as to resist any sudden attack. At eight o'clock, the signal was given by the French Admiral, and his ships were soon under full sail towards the west; they rounded Cape Caxine, and then changing their course to the southward, no doubt was left respecting the intention of the commander to attempt a landing at Sidi Ferruch.

As the fleet drew near the spot which had been selected for the disembarkation of the troops, preparations were made for immediate action in case it should be necessary. The heavy armed ships advanced in front, slowly and in order of battle, ready to pour a destructive fire upon any forces or works of their opponents as soon as discovered within its reach. At ten o'clock, they were opposite the extremity of the peninsula, and it became evident that no precautions had been taken by the Algerines, which were likely to prove effectual in preventing the descent. No fortifications had been erected on Sidi Ferruch, in addition to the shore battery near the point, and the turret on the hill, both of which were deserted; indeed nothing less than the strongest works and the most scientific defence could have rendered it tenable, when surrounded by such a fleet. On the main land, a division of the Algerine army, supposed to consist of twelve thousand men, were encamped near a spring of water about two miles from the neck of the peninsula; between them and the sea were erected two batteries,² armed with nine pieces of cannon and two howitzers, which had been removed from the fort on Sidi Ferruch. Arab horsemen enveloped in their white cloaks were seen collected in groups on the beach, or galloping among the bushes on the plain between it and the encampment. Nothing however betokened any disposition on the part of the Africans, to meet the invaders at the water's edge.

² Any fortification defended by artillery, and even the spot occupied by artillery, is called a battery. These temporary defences are formed by throwing up earth to the height of three or four feet, so as to form a wall or parapet for the protection of the cannon and men; where this cannot be done, logs, barrels or sacks filled with earth, &c. are employed. At New Orleans the American lines of batteries were principally formed of bales of cotton.

In order to protect an army from sudden attacks, entrenchments are made on the side on which they are apprehended; they consist of ditches, the earth from which is thrown up within.

In besieging a fortress, the object is to erect batteries on particular points as near as possible to the place, and to render the communications to and between them safe. For these purposes, a ditch is commenced at a distance from the fortress, and is carried on in a slanting direction towards it, the laborers being protected by the earth thrown up on the side next the place. When these approaches have been carried as near as requisite, another ditch called a parallel is dug in front or even around the fortress, batteries being constructed on its line where necessary. Sometimes another parallel is made within the outer one. Along these ditches the cannon, ammunition, troops, &c. are conveyed in comparative safety to the different batteries.

Nevertheless Bourmont displayed here his determination to leave nothing to chance, the success of which could be assured by caution in the previous arrangements. The largest ships with the first and second divisions of troops on board, passed around the extremity of the peninsula, and anchored opposite its southwestern side on which it had been resolved that the first descent should be made; a steamer and some brigs entered the bay east of Sidi Ferruch, and took positions so as to command the shore and the neck of the peninsula, over which they could pour a raking fire, in case an attack should be made by the Algerine forces at the moment of disembarkation. Some rounds of grape shot from the steamer dispersed the Arabs who were collected on the shore of the bay; the fire was returned from the batteries; but it had no other effect than to wound a sailor on board the Breslau, and it ceased after a few broadsides from the brigs.

By sunset the vessels were all anchored at their appointed positions, and preparations were instantly commenced for the disembarkation. The broad flat bottomed boats destined to carry the troops to the shore were hoisted out; each was numbered, and to each was assigned a particular part of the force, so arranged that the men might on landing, instantly assume their relative positions in the order of battle.

All things being ready, at three o'clock on the morning of the 14th of June, the first brigade of the first division under General Berthezéne, consisting of six thousand men, with eight pieces of artillery were on their way to the shore, in boats towed by three steamers. They were soon perceived by the Algerines, who commenced a fire on them from their batteries; it however produced little or no effect, and was soon silenced by the heavier shot from the steamers and brigs in the eastern bay. At four the whole brigade was safely landed, and drawn up on the south side of the peninsula near the shore battery, which was instantly seized. In a few minutes more, the white flag of France floated over the Torreta Chica; a guard was however placed at the door of the Marabout, in order to show from the commencement, that the religion of the inhabitants would be respected by the invaders.

By six o'clock the whole of the first and second divisions were landed together with all the field artillery, and the Commander-in-chief of the expedition was established in his head quarters near the Marabout, from which he could overlook the scene of operations. General Valazé had already traced a line of works across the neck of the peninsula, and the men were laboring at the entrenchments; they were however occasionally annoyed by shots from the batteries, and it was determined immediately to commence the offensive. General Poret de Morvan accordingly advanced from the peninsula at the head of the first brigade, and having without difficulty turned the left of the batteries, their defenders were driven from them at the point of the bayonet; they were then pursued towards the encampment, which was also after a short struggle abandoned, the whole African force retreating in disorder towards the city.

This success cost the French about sixty men in killed and wounded; two or three of their soldiers had been taken prisoners, but they were found headless and horribly mutilated near the field of battle. The loss of the Algerines is unknown, as those who fell were according to the custom of the Arab warfare carried off. Nine pieces of artillery and two small howitzers by which the batteries were defended, being merely fixed on frames without wheels, remained in the hands of the invaders.

While the first brigade was thus employed, the disembarkation of the troops was prosecuted with increased activity, and as no farther interruption was offered, the whole army and a considerable portion of the artillery, ammunition and provisions were conveyed on shore before night. It was not however the intention of the commanding general immediately to advance upon Algiers; his object was to take the city, and he was not disposed to lose the advantage of the extraordinary preparations, which had been made in order to insure its accomplishment. The third division of the fleet containing the horses and heavy artillery had not arrived; unprotected by cavalry his men would have been on their march exposed at each moment to the sudden and impetuous attacks of the Arabs, and it would have been needless to present himself before the fortresses which surround the city, while unprovided with the means of reducing them. He therefore determined to await the arrival of the vessels from Palma, and in the mean time to devote all his efforts to the fortification of the peninsula, so that it might serve as the depository of his materiel during the advance of the army, and as a place of retreat in case of unforeseen disaster. The first and second divisions under Berthezéne and Loverdo were accordingly stationed on the heights in front of the neck of the peninsula, from which the Algerines had been expelled in the morning; in this position they were secured by temporary batteries and by chevaux de frise of a peculiar construction, capable of being easily transported and speedily arranged for use. The third division under the Duke D'Escars remained as a corps of reserve at Sidi Ferruch, where the engineers, the general staff and the greater part of the non-combatants of the expedition were also established. Some difficulties were at first experienced from the limited supply of water, but they were soon removed as it was found in abundance at the depth of a few feet below the surface.

On the 15th, it was perceived that the Algerines had established their camp about three miles in front of the advanced positions of the French, at a place designated by the guides of the expedition as Sidi Khalef; between the two armies lay an uninhabited tract, crossed by small ravines, and overgrown with bushes, under cover of which the Africans were enabled to approach the outposts of the invaders, and thus to annoy them by desultory attacks. Each Arab horseman brought behind him a foot soldier, armed with a long gun, in the use of which those troops had been rendered very dexterous by constant exercise; when they came near to the French lines, the sharp shooter jumped from the horse and stationed himself behind some bush, where he quietly awaited the opportunity of exercising his skill upon the first unfortunate sentinel or straggler who should appear within reach of his shot. In this manner a number of the French were wounded, often mortally by their unseen foes; those who left the lines in search of water or from other motives were frequently found by their companions, without their heads and shockingly mangled. As the Arabs were well acquainted with the paths, pursuit would have been vain as well as dangerous, and the only effectual means of checking their audacity was by a liberal employment of the artillery.

The labors of the French were interrupted on the morning of the 16th, by a most violent gale of wind from the northwest, accompanied by heavy rain. The waves soon rose to an alarming height, threatening at every moment to overwhelm the vessels, which lay wedged together in the bays; several of them were also struck by lightning, and had one been set on fire nothing could have prevented the destruction of the whole fleet. Fortunately at about eleven o'clock, the wind shifted to the east and became more moderate; the waves rapidly subsided, and it was found that only trifling injuries had been sustained by the shipping. Admiral Duperré however did not neglect the warning, and he immediately issued orders that each transport vessel should sail for France as soon as she had delivered her cargo; the greater part of the ships of war, were at the same time commanded to put to sea, and to cruise at a safe distance from the coast, leaving only such as were required to protect the peninsula.

On the 17th and 18th, some of the vessels arrived from Palma bringing a few horses and pieces of heavy artillery, but not enough to warrant an advance of the army. On the 18th, four Arab Scheicks appeared at the outposts, and having been conducted to the commander of the expedition, they informed him that the Algerines had received large reinforcements, and were about to attack him on the succeeding day. Bourmont however paid no attention to their declarations, and gave no orders in consequence of them, although it was evident from the increase in the number of their tents that a considerable addition had been made to the force of his enemies.

On the day after the French had effected their landing, all the Algerine troops except those which were necessary to guard the city and the fortifications in its vicinity, were collected under the Aga's immediate command, at his camp of Sidi Khalef; on the morning of the 18th, the contingent of Oran also arrived, accompanied by a number of Arabs who had joined them on the way. Thus strengthened, and encouraged by the inactivity of the French, which he attributed probably to want of resolution, Ibrahim determined to make a desperate attack upon their lines, calculating that if he could succeed in throwing them into confusion, it would afterwards be easy to destroy them in detail. For this purpose he divided his army into two columns, which are supposed to have consisted of about twenty thousand men each; the right column under Achmet Bey of Constantina was destined to attack Loverdo's division, which occupied the left or northern side of the French position; the other column was to be led by Ibrahim in person, with Abderrahman Bey of Tittery as his lieutenant, against the right division of the invaders, under Berthezéne.

At day break on the morning of the 19th, the Algerines appeared before the lines of the French, who were however found drawn up, and ready to receive them; the attack was commenced by the Arab cavalry and Moorish regular troops intermingled, who rushed forward rending the air with their cries, and endeavored to throw down the chevaux de frise. The French reserved their fire, until the assailants were near, and then opening their batteries poured forth a shower of grape shot, which made great havoc in the ranks of the Algerines. Nothing daunted however, the Moors and Arabs continued to pull up, and break down the chevaux de frise, until they had gained entrances within the lines; the action was then continued hand to hand, the keen sabre of the African opposed to the rigid bayonet of the European. In this situation there was less inequality between the parties engaged, and the issue of the combat became doubtful. Berthezéne's division however repulsed its assailants, and kept them at bay; that of Loverdo was wavering when Bourmont appeared on the ground, followed by a part of the reserved corps. He soon restored order in the ranks, and having formed Loverdo's division together with the reserve into a close column, he ordered them to advance against their opponents. Achmet's forces were immediately driven into a ravine where the artillery of the French having been brought to bear upon them, they were after a few ineffectual attempts to regain the height, thrown into disorder. Ibrahim's men seeing this also lost their courage, and the route of the Africans became general. The French had on the field only seventeen horses which were attached to the artillery; as the Algerines could not therefore be pursued very closely they were enabled to form again in front of their camp at Sidi Khalef; but they were likewise driven from this position, and followed for some distance beyond it, where the ground being less favorable for cavalry, great numbers of their men fell into the power of the invaders. Bourmont had issued orders to spare the prisoners, but his troops irritated at the barbarities which had been so frequently committed on their companions, disregarded the injunction and put to death nearly every Algerine whom they could reach. A few Arabs who were made prisoners, on being asked respecting the forces and intentions of their General, haughtily bade the French to kill and not to question them. The number of French slain in this engagement according to the official reports, amounted to fifty-seven, and of wounded to four hundred and sixty-three; but little reliance can be placed on the exactness of Bourmont's published accounts, and there is good reason for supposing that his loss was much more serious. The destruction of life among the Algerines was very great; they also left their camp of four hundred tents, together with a large supply of ammunition, sheep and camels, in the hands of their enemies.

The results of this action were highly important to the French, and indeed it rendered their success certain. The Arabs began to disappear, and the Turkish and Moorish soldiers retreated to the city, from which it was not easy to bring them again to the field; symptoms of insurrection among the populace also manifested themselves. In this situation, it has been considered possible that had Bourmont advanced immediately upon Algiers, the Dey would have found it necessary to capitulate; there was however no reason to believe that the disaffection would extend to the garrisons of the fortresses, and the city could not have been reduced while they held out.

On the 23d the vessels from Palma began to come in; the horses were immediately landed, and two small corps of cavalry were added to the troops encamped at Sidi Khalef. The fortifications of the peninsula were also by this time completed, a line of works fifteen hundred yards in length, having been drawn across the neck, and armed with twenty-four pieces of cannon; by this means the whole of the land forces were rendered disposable, as two thousand men principally taken from the equipage de ligne³ of the fleet, were considered sufficient for the security of the place. The provisions, &c. were all landed, and placed within the lines, in temporary buildings which had been brought in detached pieces from France; comfortable hospitals were likewise established there, together with bakeries, butcheries, and even a printing office, from which the Estafette d' Alger, a semi-official newspaper, was regularly issued. The communications between Sidi Ferruch and the camp, were facilitated by the construction of a military road, defended by redoubts and blockhouses placed at short intervals on the way.

³ A certain number of young men are annually chosen by lot in France, for the supply of the army and navy, in which they are required to serve eight years. Those intended for the navy, are sent to the dockyards, where they are drilled as soldiers, and instructed in marine exercises for some time before they are sent to sea. The crew of each public vessel must contain a certain proportion of those soldier sailors, who are termed the equipage de ligne.

The Algerines encouraged by the delay of the French, rallied and made another attack upon them at Sidi Khalef early on the morning of the 24th. On this occasion but few Arabs and Kabyles appeared, and the action was sustained on the side of the Algerines, almost entirely by the Turks, the Moorish regulars, and the militia of the city, who had been at length induced to leave its walls. The assailants were spread out on a very extended line, which was immediately broken by the advance of the first division of the French army, with a part of the second in close column. A few discharges of artillery increased the confusion; the Algerines soon began to fly, and were pursued to the foot of the last range of hills which separated them from the city. On the summit of one of these heights, were the ruins of the Star Fort, which had been some years before destroyed, "because it commanded the Casauba, and consequently the city;" it was however used as a powder magazine, and the Africans on their retreat, fearing lest it should fall into the hands of the French, blew it up. The loss of men in this affair was trifling on each side. The only French officer dangerously wounded was Captain Amédée de Bourmont, the second of four sons of the General who accompanied him on the expedition; he received a ball in the head, while leading his company of Grenadiers to drive a body of Turks from a garden in which they had established themselves, and died on the 7th of July.

While this combat was going on, the remainder of the vessels from Palma, nearly three hundred in number, entered the bay of Sidi Ferruch. Their arrival determined Bourmont not to retire to his camp at Sidi Khalef, but to establish his first and second divisions five miles in advance of that spot, in the valley of Backshé-dere, so that the road might be completed, and the heavy artillery be brought as soon as landed to the immediate vicinity of the position on which it was to be employed. The third division was distributed between the main body and Sidi Ferruch, in order to protect the communications. This advantage was however dearly purchased; for during the four days passed in this situation, the French suffered greatly from the Algerine sharp-shooters, posted above them on the heights, and from two batteries which had been established on a point commanding the camp. In this way Bourmont acknowledges that seven hundred of his men were rendered unfit for duty within that period; he does not say how many were killed.

The necessary arrangements having been completed, and several battering pieces brought up to the rear of the French camp, Bourmont put his forces in motion before day on the 29th of June. Two brigades of d'Escar's division which had hitherto been little employed, were ordered to advance to the left and turn the positions of the Algerines on that side; on the right the same duty was to be performed by a part of Berthezéne's division, while Loverdo was to attack the enemy in the centre. They proceeded in silence, and having gained the summits of the first eminences unperceived, directed a terrible fire of artillery upon the Algerines, who having only small arms to oppose to it were soon thrown into confusion and put to flight. The Moors and Turks took refuge in the city and the surrounding fortifications, while the Arabs and Kabyles escaped along the seashore on the southeast, towards the interior of the country.

The French had now only to choose their positions from investing Algiers, which with all its defences lay before them. Besides the Casauba and batteries of the city, they had to encounter four fortresses. On the southeastern side near the sea, half a mile from the walls was Fort Babazon, westward of which, and one mile southward from the Casauba, was the Emperor's castle, presenting the most formidable impediment to the approach of the invaders. This castle was a mass of irregular brick buildings, disposed nearly in a square, the circumference of which was about five hundred yards. From the unevenness of the ground on which it was built, its walls were in some places sixty feet high, in others not more than twenty; they were six feet in thickness, and flanked by towers at the angles, but unprotected by a ditch or any outworks, except a few batteries which had been hastily thrown up on the side next the enemy. In the centre rose a large round tower of great height and strength, forming the keep or citadel, under which were the vaults containing the powder. On its ramparts were mounted one hundred and twenty large cannon, besides mortars and howitzers, and it was defended by fifteen hundred Turks well acquainted with the use of artillery, under the command of the Hasnagee or Treasurer who had promised to die rather than surrender. As it overlooked the Casauba and the whole city, it was clear that an enemy in possession of this spot and provided with artillery, could soon reduce the place to dust; but it was itself commanded in a like manner, by several heights within the distance of a thousand yards, which were in the hands of the French. The next fortress was the Sittit Akoleit or Fort of twenty-four hours, half a mile north of the city; and lastly a work called the English fort was erected on the seashore near Point Pescada, a headland about one-third of the way between Algiers and Cape Caxine. The object of the French was to reduce the Emperor's castle as soon as possible, and in the mean time to confine the Algerines within their walls as well as to prevent them from receiving succors. For the latter purposes, it was necessary to extend their lines much more than would have been compatible with safety, in presence of a foe well acquainted with military science; trusting however to the ignorance and fears of his enemies, Bourmont did not hesitate to spread out his forces, even at the risk of having one of his wings cut off by a sudden sortie. Loverdo in consequence established his division on a height within five hundred yards of the Emperor's castle; Berthezéne changed his position from the right to the centre, occupying the sides of mount Boujereah the heights immediately west of the city; while d'Escars on the extreme left, overlooked the Sittit Akoleit, and the English fort. These positions were all taken before two o'clock in the day.

On the right of Berthezéne's corps, was the country house in which the foreign consuls were assembled under the flag of the United States. As its situation gave it importance, General Achard who commanded the second brigade determined to occupy it, and even to erect a battery in front of it. Major Lee the Commander in Chief of the consular garrison, formally protested against his doing either, maintaining that the flag which waved over the spot rendered it neutral ground. The French General did not seem much inclined to yield to this reasoning; but when it was also alleged that the erection of the battery would draw the fire of the Algerine forts upon the house, in which a number of females were collected, as well as the representatives of several nations friendly to France, he agreed to dispense with the execution of that part of his order, but his soldiers were quartered on the premises, and his officers received at the table of the consuls. The latter were, as might have been expected, polished and gallant men; the soldiers were very unruly, and by no means merited the praises which have been bestowed on their moderation and good conduct, in the despatches of their commander and the accounts of the historians.

The night of the 29th passed without any attack on the lines of the French. Before morning the engineers under Valazé had opened a trench within five hundred yards of the Emperor's castle, and various country houses situated in the vicinity of that fortress, were armed with heavy pieces and converted into batteries. As soon as this was perceived from the castle, a fire was opened upon the laborers; but they were already too well protected by the works which had been thrown up, and few of the balls took effect. A sortie was next made by the garrison, and for a moment they succeeded in occupying the house of the Swedish Consul, in which a French corps had been stationed; they were however immediately driven out, and forced to retire to their own walls.

In order to divert the attention of the Algerines during the progress of the works, false attacks were made on their marine defences by the ships of the French squadron. On the 1st of July Admiral Rosamel, with a portion of the naval force, passed across the entrance of the bay, and opened a fire on the batteries, which after some time was returned. Not the slightest damage appears to have been received by either party, the French keeping, as the Admiral says, "à grande portée de canon," that is to say, nearly out of the reach of the fire of the batteries; one bomb is stated to have fallen in the vicinity of Rosamel's ship. The effect of this movement not answering the expectations of the French, as it did not induce the Algerines to suspend their fires on the investing force, it was determined that a more formidable display should be made. Accordingly on the 3d, Admiral Duperré made his appearance before the place, with seven sail of the line, fifteen frigates, six bomb vessels, and two steamers. The frigate Belloné which led the way, approached the batteries and fired on them, as she passed with much gallantry; the other ships kept farther off, and as they came opposite the Mole, retired beyond the reach of the guns, where they continued for some hours, during which each party poured tons of shot harmless into the sea. As the Admiral states in his despatch, "none of his ships suffered any apparent damage, or notable less of men," except from the usual "bursting of a gun on board the Provence, by which ten were killed and fifteen wounded."

The high character for courage and skill which Admiral Duperré has acquired by his long and distinguished services, precludes the possibility of imagining that there could have been any want of either of those qualities on his part in this affair. Indeed he would have been most blameable had he exposed his ships and men to the fire of the fortresses which extend in front of Algiers, at a period when the success of the expedition was certain. The "moral effect" of which the Admiral speaks in his despatch, might have been produced to an equal or greater extent, by the mere display of the forces in the bay; the only physical result of the cannonade, was the abandonment of some batteries, on Point Pescada, which were in consequence occupied by d'Escar's forces. The whole attack if it may be so termed, was probably only intended to repress any feelings of jealousy which may have arisen in the minds of the naval officers and men, by thus affording them at least an ostensible right to share with the army the glory of reducing Algiers.

BAI.

Bai was the Egyptian term for the branch of the Palm-tree. Homer says that one of Diomede's horses, Phœnix, was of a palm-color, which is a bright red. It is therefore not improbable that our word bay as applied to the color of horses, may boast as remote an origin as the Egyptian Bai.

THE CLASSICS.

Amid the signs of the times in the present age—fruitful in change if not of improvement,—we have observed with pain not only a growing neglect of classical literature, but continued attempts on the part of many who hold the public ear to cast contempt on those studies which were once considered essential to the scholar and the gentleman, which formed such minds as Bacon's and Milton's, and which afforded the most delightful of occupations to the leisure of a Newton and a Leibnitz. In every age there has been a class of men who from a depravity of taste, or else a passion for singularity, have maligned all that is ancient or venerable. And sometimes with a strange perversity of purpose, we see men wasting their opportunities in a mischievous ridicule of useful pursuits which they might have advanced and illustrated to the benefit of themselves and mankind. Thus the seventeenth century, deeply imbued as it was with the spirit of classical inquiry and the love of ancient literature, gave birth to a Scarron and a Cotton, of whom the latter particularly was fitted for higher pursuits, and the former perhaps worthy of a better fate. But if in a spirit of indulgence for misguided genius we pardon the offence of their jest for its wit, and feel that in so doing we are involuntarily paying that tribute which is due to talent even when misapplied, let us beware of extending the same indulgence to those who from ignorance undervalue pursuits which they cannot appreciate, or to those who contemn like the fox in the fable, objects which they have vainly sought to obtain, or worse than all, to those who have no better motive for their censure than the wish to pilfer without detection, from the rich stores of those whom they have banished from the public eye, and driven from their rightful abodes in public recollection by a course of systematised slander. It would perhaps be unjust to say that the opposers of the ancient and learned universities of England, who have chiefly wrought the evil influence upon English literature to which we have been alluding, belong all of them to one of these three classes, but that many of them may be ranked with the last we cannot doubt, when we see what things they often send forth to the world as their own, and this too with an air of the greatest pretension. That some of these persons were actuated by better motives we must admit when we trace to its origin the history of this partially successful war against classical studies. The two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, those ancient abodes of learning, to a certain degree undoubtedly deserved the reproach of lagging behind the march of mind, in denying to modern literature the share of attention to which it was justly entitled. Absorbed in explorations of the past, and wedded to the love of antiquity in all their associations, they sought literature in her earliest haunts, and delighted most in their olden walks, which they loved for the very frequency with which they had trodden them. The system of study which had trained so many of their sons to eminence, seemed to them the best, and they were too slow in moulding its forms to the progress of science. It was endeared to them not only from the nature of its pursuits, but from past success, and it was no mean ambition which stimulated their sons to tread in the paths which a Bacon or a Clarendon, a Newton or a Locke, had trodden before them. And yet a little reflection should have taught them that if these glorious models of human excellence had left science where they found it, their reputations had never existed. A fierce opposition at length sprung up to a system of study so narrow and exclusive,—the growing wants of education demanded a university in London, which project was opposed by many of the friends of the old institutions. The elements of a party thus formed, were soon combined, and as the controversy waxed warmer, they attacked not only the venerable temples of learning, but the very study of the ancient languages itself, at first, perhaps, because the most celebrated abodes of this species of literature were to be found in the universities to which they had become inimical. Like every other literary controversy for some time past in England, this question connected itself with the party politics of the day, and thus many changed sides on the literary, that they might be together on the political question. Strange as it may seem, it has been for some time a reproach against the English that the Tories would not encourage the Whig literature, and vice versâ. No reader of the British periodicals for the last twenty years can have failed to remark this fact, which serves to account for the progress of the literary heresy which has already done so much to degrade English literature and to deprave the tastes of those who read only the English language. We shall not pause to inquire further into the effects produced by this illicit connexion between politics and literature in England, although it presents a highly interesting subject of inquiry, and one which must deeply occupy much of the attention of the historian who may hope hereafter to give an accurate account either of the political or literary condition of that country for many years past. Neither is it our purpose to arraign at the bar of public opinion those who have draggled the sacred "peplon" itself in the vile mire of party politics, although we sincerely believe that they will have a heavy account to settle with posterity for this unhallowed connexion. We merely allude to it by way of pointing out one of the causes of the heresy which we mean to combat, from the belief that it is mischievous, and the more especially as it diverts public attention from the particular want of American literature. Unhappily our reading in this country is chiefly confined to the English novelists and the periodicals of the day, from which we derive a contempt for the lofty and venerable learning of antiquity, and a belief that instead of too little, we bestow too much attention upon classical literature in America! That the novelists and trash manufacturers of the reviews should foster this opinion is not at all surprising, for they find their account in it. And yet it stirs the bile within us when we see a paltry novelist who cannot frame his tale without borrowing his plot, or conduct his dialogue without theft, affect to despise the study of those authors whom he robs without any other restraint than the fear of detection; or when we hear them offer to substitute their lucubrations for the writings of the great masters of antiquity—men who put forth opinions upon the most difficult questions in moral or physical science, and support them only by a dogmatism which would look down all opposition and frown upon any inquiry into the grounds of their doctrines, who, like Falstaff, will give no reasons for their moral or political opinions, and yet insinuate by their air of pretension that they are "plenty as blackberries"—sciolist novelists who doubt what is believed by all the most intelligent of their race, and believe what no other persons but themselves can be brought to believe—men who insinuate their superiority over the great models of the human race by affecting to despise whatever they have offered to the public view and modestly intimating their reliance upon their own superior resources. Problems in morals and politics which have filled with doubts and difficulties the minds of Bacon or Locke, of Montesquieu or Grotius, are now settled at a stroke of the pen by our novelist philosophers. Nothing is more common than to see the solution of some one of them by the dandy hero of some fashionable novel, who, sauntering from the dance to the coterie of philosophers in blue, solves the difficulty en passant, and fearing that this trifling occupation of so mighty a genius may attract attention, then hastens to divert public observation from his sage aphorism and impromptu philosophy by flirting with his friend's wife or playing with his poodle. The conception of a costume is the only occupation worthy of his fancy, and the composition of a dish the only subject which he would have the world to think capable of tasking his powers of attention and reflection; and yet all the learning of all the schools is shamed by the display of this literary faineant who acquired his knowledge without study, whilst inspiration only can account for the wisdom with which he is instinct. A nation has groaned through long centuries of almost hopeless bondage—the clank of a people in chains is heard from the Emerald isle—a cry of distress fills the air—a mighty orator, an O'Connell, arises before them, filling the public mind with agitation and pointing the way to revenge. In the energy of despair a portion of the captives have broken their manacles—they rush to liberate their fellows—the air is full of their cry for revenge—the conclave of Europe's wisest statesmen is at fault—a king trembles on his throne—and what, gentle reader, do you suppose is to be the result of these mighty throes and convulsions? why, just nothing, literally nothing at all. A Countess of Blessington surveys the scene from afar; reclining on an Ottoman, beneath a cloud of aromatic odors she recollects the subject of conversation at her last "soiree;" the idea flits across her brain with a gentle pang as it flies, that the energy of O'Connell is becoming exceedingly vulgar, and that the convulsions of a revolution so near her would be extremely trying to her nerves, not to mention those of Messrs. Bulwer and D'Israeli. Her resolution is taken, and at spare intervals between morning visits and soirees, she writes the "Repealers," which is at once to settle the agitations of a kingdom, and annihilate O'Connell himself. She has no sooner finished, than washing her hands "forty times in soap and forty in alkali," she despatches the production to Mr. Bulwer, who looking upon the work pronounces it good; and lo! the succeeding number of the New Monthly shall teach you the wonderful virtues of the moral medicaments which come from the Countess of Blessington's specific against Irish agitation. But who is Mr. Bulwer himself? for in this age so wonderful for accomplishing great ends by little means, it has become necessary to know him. Why a literary magician, a sprite of Endor, who by the potency of his charm conjures up the spirits of the mighty dead. Evoked by him the departed prophets arise. A Peter the Great, and a Bolingbroke, a Pope and a Swift, not to mention others of somewhat lesser note, come forth and speak at his command as once they spoke. The departed oracles of English literature are no longer mute. But the visits of the dead are of necessity short. They have no time now for such chit-chat as some may suspect they have hazarded whilst living. They come on a mission of importance which they have barely time to accomplish. The hidden secrets of policy are to be revealed, mightly oracles in philosophy and criticism are to be declared. Truths fall like hailstones, and wit descends in showers. But lo! what figure is that which stalks across the scene and comes to take his part in this play of phantasmagoria with which we have just been entertained. Does he belong to the land of shadows or the world of reality? "Under which king, Bezonian, speak or die." It is an impersonation of the mental and moral qualities of Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer himself, not a prophet—but more than a prophet. The "most wonderful wonder of wonders." Pope and Swift are overpowered by his wit. The star of Bolingbroke pales before the superior effulgence of this luminary, and Peter the Great, mute in astonishment, stands "erectis auribus" to catch the oracles of government which flow from the godlike man. The scene changes—whither doth he go? He seizes the reins of government, he retrieves the affairs of a mighty empire by way of recreating a mind exhausted with the play of its mighty passions, and then wearied with the amusement, he turns in quest of other pursuits. The rule of an empire and the affairs of this world are objects too petty for the employment of his mind; he looks for some higher subject, and finds it in himself—the only subject in creation vast enough to fill the capacity of his spirit. He communes with the stars—he talks to the "TOEN," and the "TOEN" replies to him, and finally, big with his mighty purpose he achieves the task of writing "his confessions." And as my lord Peter concocted a dish containing the essence of all things good to eat, so this book is full of something that is exquisite from every department of thought. Such are the books which have displaced the writings of the masters of antiquity and the old household books of the English tongue. You may not take up a review or periodical now-a-days, but it shall teach you the folly of bestowing your time upon the study of the ancients, now that their writings afford so much that is more worthy of attention. Alas! that such should be the priesthood who administer the rites in the temple of English literature—the money changer has indeed entered the temple, when those who write for money come in to expel all who have written for fame. How often does it happen now-a-days that the writer of a bawdy novel, derives reputation enough from that circumstance, to assume the chair of criticism, and exposing a front of hardened libertinism to the scorn of the good and the contempt of the wise, avails himself of his situation to frown down every attempt to resuscitate our decaying literature, by the introduction of better models, and to restore health to the public taste, which this very censor has contributed to deprave? There is no more common occupation with such a man than the correction of the errors of the most illustrious statesmen and philosophers in magazine articles of some six or eight pages; the French revolution is the favorite theme of his lofty speculations, and Napoleon's the only character which he will exert himself to draw. With how much of the lofty contempt of a superior spirit does he speak of the labors of a Bentley, a Porson, a Parr, or an Elmsley; of a Gessner, a Brunck, a Heyne, a Schweihauser or a Wolffe. The anxious labors, for years, of such men as those go for nothing with him—they serve only to excite his scorn, or else afford him the favorite subjects of his ridicule. With the ingratitude of a malignant spirit, or the coarseness of ignorance, he reviles the self-denying students who may be truly said to have renounced the world in their enthusiastic search after the buried lore of antiquity—men who have paled before the midnight lamp in their ceaseless efforts to penetrate the obscurity of the past—lonely eremites, who feed the lamps that cast their dim light on the votive offerings which antiquity has laid upon the altar of knowledge—men who have dwelt apart from their race and denied themselves the common pleasures of life, that they might without distraction restore the decaying temple of ancient literature, and recover for the use of their own and future generations, treasures which else had been buried and forgotten; who have lived in the past until they have imbibed its spirit, and return like travellers full of the wisdom of unknown lands, and rich with the accumulated experience of past ages to shower their treasures and their blessings upon the ungrateful many who despise them for their labors and taunt them for their gifts, that they too may learn what a thing it is to cast pearls before swine; and who, superior to the unmerited scorn of this world, and to all the temptations of its grovelling pleasures, meekly bear their ill treatment with no other emotion than the fear that the benefits thus painfully acquired and freely bestowed, may turn out to be coals of fire which they have been heaping upon unthankful heads. And are men who labor for such objects as these to be ridiculed as looking to things too small, because they sojourned so long in the gloom of past ages, that their optics have been enlarged to discern not only the mouldering monument, but the smallest eft that crawls upon it? Shall they be taunted because they have learned to live in mute companionship with their books, and like the lonely prisoner, love objects which to others may seem inconsiderable, but are endeared to them by all the force of a long association, whose chain is interwoven link by link with the memory of their past? And if, like Old Mortality, they love to restore each mouldering monument, and retrace every time-worn inscription that may serve to renew their silent communion with the hallowed and dreamy past, surely the occupation may be pardoned, if not for its uses to others, at least for the quiet affection and sweet enthusiasm of the dream which it serves to awaken in the mind which is busy in the employment. But the utilitarian spirit of the present age is ever ready to measure the value of these pursuits by that pecuniary standard which alone it uses. What are their fruits? Will they move spinning jennies or propel boats? are they known on 'Change? how do they stand in the prices current, and in what way will they put money in the purse? Strangely as this may sound in the ears of those who love knowledge for itself and its spiritual uses, and absurd as these things would have appeared to the literary world a century ago, we much fear that we must return answers to them satisfactory, in part, at least, before we can even obtain an attentive hearing to what we shall say of their higher excellences. It is true that classical attainments are in few instances the objects of pecuniary speculation, nor is it our purpose to hold out temptations to literary simony to those who, insensible of the peace which the love of knowledge sheds abroad in the human heart, would hope to sell or purchase that precious gift, for mere money. If this were the only end which the student had in view, we should regret to see him perverting to unworthy purposes the sacred means to higher ends. To such a man learning has no temptations to offer, for its best rewards he can never obtain without a change of heart. We can no more unite the love of knowledge and of Mammon than serve the two masters spoken of in Scripture. It is the rare excellency of this holy taste that it releases us from servitude to the unworthy desires which are too apt to fill the minds of those who have never known what it was to thirst after the waters of truth. It is indeed the redeeming spirit of the human mind, which casts out the evil passions by which it had been possessed and torn. But there is a class of students burning for distinction and ambitious of eminence rather than wisdom, to whom we would appeal under the hope that in the pursuit of their own lesser ends they will cultivate tastes which may serve to awaken them to the more precious uses of knowledge. If then we can show these that the study of the ancient languages affords not only an admirable, but perhaps the best exercise for training tender minds into healthful habits of thought and reflection, that in looking to an economy of the time which measures the little span of human life, it is the pursuit in which the youthful mind can do most in acquiring human knowledge, we shall at least hold out strong temptations to these studies, even to those hasty and incautious inquirers who reject every thing for which they have no present use. But if we go farther, and demonstrate that the man who would thoroughly understand modern literature, must seek its foundations in that of the ancients,—that the poet and philosopher, the orator and statesman, who would train his mind to a successful pursuit of his favorite object, must look to the great masters of antiquity for the best models of his art, surely we shall persuade him to apply the means which a knowledge of the dead languages affords him, to the study of the literature which they embody. And shall he pause here in his career? is it to be supposed that he will still look to knowledge only for the earthly honors which it will enable him to obtain when he has in view the higher rewards which the love of truth has within itself? Will he be content with the narrow horizon which first bounded his prospect when he has taken a more elevated view of creation? Feeling that every sensible addition which his knowledge makes to his wisdom is another link by which he mounts in the chain of spiritual existence, he will lose the original ends for which he was laboring in the nobler objects which unfold themselves to his mind. He learns to disregard what men may say of him, sustained by the proud consciousness of what he is. And like the mariner who has become weary of coasting adventures, he boldly puts forth to sea in quest of that unknown land which his spirit has seen in its dreams. These are the higher uses of the pursuit of knowledge, and although we are far from asserting that classical studies are the only pursuits that are thus rewarded, yet we will hazard the assertion, that there are none more eminently fitted for strengthening the human mind and elevating its character.

But to return to the first position which we have taken as to the peculiar fitness of this pursuit for the early employment of the human mind. It is something in its favor, that for centuries past, until of late, there has been nearly a common assent amongst literary men that the study of the ancient languages affords the best exercise for the youthful mind,—an opinion so old and so prevalent, must have had at least some foundation in truth. Indeed, when we come to look at the nature of the system of training necessary for the youthful mind, we cannot long doubt the fitness of these pursuits for that end. There is no period, but boyhood, of a man's life at which he would submit to the drudgery necessary for training his memory in the exercises by which it is most strengthened. It would be difficult to induce him to submit to such tasks when he had arrived at a more advanced period of life, and taken even a superficial view of the more agreeable walks of knowledge. With a boy who stands upon the threshold of science, it is far different. Taught that the end in view is worthy of all his pains, and that his commencement of the pursuit of knowledge must of necessity be difficult, he is as willing to seek science through that pass as any other, and the more especially as he perceives that the exercises are not beyond his strength. In the study of the ancient languages, (the Greek especially, because it is more regular than any other) he not only finds an improvement in the powers of simple suggestion or mere memory, but he is insensibly led to processes of generalization from the great saving of labor which he discovers in classification, thus burthening his memory with a rule only, instead of the mass of facts which the rule serves to recall and connect—an advantage which the study of none of the modern languages will afford to the same extent. In the difficulties of translation, which occasionally present themselves, he is not only forced to reason upon the rules which regulated their forms of construction, but often finds it necessary, by an examination of the context and subject matter, to ascertain the meaning of the author; and thus early learns to consider the logical arrangement of propositions and sentences. How often do we find boys thus eagerly and earnestly engaged, in inquiring into the customs and history of the people whose language they are studying, and reasoning upon the motives of action and the characters of men, without being conscious of the high nature of their speculations, or that they are doing more than translating the meaning of a difficult sentence—thus without weariness gradually storing their minds with a knowledge of allusions necessary for their future reading, and which in the mass would never be acquired by the youthful intellect from the fatiguing nature of a study directed to them exclusively. How often do we find a lad profitably engaged in metaphysical inquiries and nice calculations of human motives at a time when works exclusively devoted to these subjects would only serve to weary and disgust him. The youthful mind is thus trained to the capacity of undergoing the severest processes of thought and reasoning by a system of occasional and gentle exercise which amuses without wearying or breaking its spirit. There are certain advantages peculiar to the study of that most wonderful of all languages, the Greek, in the culture of the youthful mind. They are to be found in the regular forms of compounding their words, and in the almost invariable applicability of rules to its modes of expression. In tracing a compound word to its root, the mind is insensibly forced to trace the compound emotions of the human mind to their source through the seemingly hidden links of the chain of association which are almost pointed out one by one in the varying terminations of the radical as it branches out into its many different shades of signification. What boy of tolerable capacity could turn to a root in Scapula's Lexicon, with a view of its various compounds, without tracing (often unconsciously it is true) the simple to the compound emotions of the human mind through that chain of association which may be deemed necessary and invariable, since not only the simple, but also the compound emotions and perceptions are to be found in every human mind? How could he fail to acquire a knowledge of the cognate ideas of the mind with this ocular reference to their connexion before him? He thus learns the kindred ideas which the expression of certain given ideas will call up, he begins to know how to marshal the host under their leader, he perceives the true force of expression which belongs to words, and traces much of the progress of human thought by means of the land-marks which this regularly formed language indicates to the inquirer. He perceives the modes by which the ancient masters of style in this language learned to express with precision the most abstract of ideas, and as it were, to transfer to paper almost every shadow which flits through the human mind. Penetrating to the truth, through the metaphysical and logical construction of this language, that style consists more in the arrangement of ideas than words, he acquires rules which he may transfer to his own language, and thus increase its capacities of expression, at the same time that he may often improve the beauty of its form without impairing its strength. No man ever acquired a thorough knowledge of the Greek without having in the course of his progress penetrated often and far into the walks of philology and metaphysics. As no philologist has ever arrived at eminence without an attentive study of this language, so perhaps it will not be going too far to say that without it, none ever will. They were thus trained—the great masters of the English language who have improved its construction and added so much to its beauty and strength. The greatest and most sudden improvement which has ever been wrought at any one period in the English language, certainly took place in the reign of Elizabeth, and yet every page, nay, almost every line of the great authors of that day, betrays a constant and studied reference to the models of antiquity. Next to them, and pre-eminent as a reformer in our language, stands Milton, who was trained in the same studies, and whose marvellous power over language has never been sufficiently considered in the attention which is bestowed upon his genius. Perhaps no other man ever effected such a change in the construction of a language, or did so much to reform it. It has been well said that his construction was essentially Greek. He only possessed the wonderful power of transferring the construction of one language to another, dissimilar in its origin and forms, and of transfusing as it were an old spirit into a new body. Profoundly versed in written and spoken languages, he was yet more a master of the language of thought and feeling, and was thus able to improve the arrangement of the groupes and to touch with a more natural coloring and living expression the forms by which we had sought to embody our ideas. And what was the chosen model of that mighty genius, whose language may be said to mirror thought, if that of any other English author can be said to paint it? The Greek! the immortal Greek! which surviving the institutions and national existence of its people, stands forth like the Parthenon itself, and defies the genius of all other nations in all succeeding ages to produce a structure which shall equal its combinations of strength and elegance—a language which even yet justifies the proud boast of its creators, that in comparison with them, all other nations are barbarous. It is evident from the whole spirit of the writings of this immortal man, that he believes in no other Helicon but the Greek. If we were called upon to recommend to the reader of English literature only the writings which would afford him the best substitute for the study of the classics in the improvement of his style, we should undoubtedly recommend him to the works of Milton. There are several authors since his day, who, trained in the same studies, have labored with less effect, it is true, for the same end; and indeed it would be difficult to point out a single author who has improved the strength and beauty of the English language, without a knowledge of the structure and literature of the Greek. There have been many who, without this knowledge, have well used the language as they found it. But Temple, Tillotson, Addison, Bolingbroke, Warburton and Johnson, who have all contributed sensible additions and changes to its structure, formed their styles upon ancient models.

We have already adverted to the knowledge of the allusions to the ancient mythology acquired by the study of the Greek and Latin authors, a knowledge which can only be fully acquired in this mode, and which is of inestimable use to the student, not only in understanding the writings even of modern times, but in learning to write himself. The ardent imagination of the East has produced nothing more beautiful than the splendid mythology of the Greeks—a mythology which abounds in powerful imagery and poetic conception. Perhaps there is nothing so little various as fiction, notwithstanding the numerous and repeated efforts at such creations. Indeed it would be curious to ascertain how much of the fiction now in possession of the human race is of ancient origin, and thus to perceive how little would be left if we were to abstract the creations of the mythic ages of ancient Greece. Nothing could illustrate more strongly the fact that the history of the human heart is always the same. We find powerfully portrayed even in the fictions of that early day, the intrigues of love and ambition, the vanity of earthly hopes, and the warfare of contending passions. There is scarcely a feeling which is not pictured in some poetic personification which developes its tendencies and nature, and there is not a moral of general use in the conduct of life which is not illustrated by some well designed and beautiful allegory. It seems to have been an early practice with the eastern sages to address the reasons of their people through the medium of their ardent and susceptible fancies. The Hebrew, the Egyptian and Grecian lawgivers and sages, all resorted to it, and truth presented in this attractive form has never failed to take a lasting hold upon the public mind. Addressing itself in this form most powerfully to the young, because their fancies are most susceptible, it cannot fail to make an impression at that age when it sinks most deeply in the human mind. It is thus that principles of action are instilled into the human mind at an age when reason is scarcely yet capable of eliminating the true from the false, and the youthful imagination receives an early and wholesome excitement from the contemplations of poetic conceptions whose simplicity fits them to be received, and whose beauty commends them to be loved, by the youthful mind. The most powerful, the most beautiful and concise modes of expressing much of human feeling and passion, are to be found in the Grecian mythology. The true value of an image consists in the conciseness with which it expresses the idea that it represents. An image is misplaced and useless, no matter how beautiful in itself, if it presents your idea in a more tedious and cumbrous form than that in which a few simple words would have explained your meaning as well. It is then obviously unnecessary, and presents itself to the reader as a mere attempt at beauty, which at once recalls him from the subject to the author,—an effect which is always unfortunate for the latter. Good imagery, on the contrary, offers a glowing picture which at once makes a vivid impression upon the mind, accurately representing your meaning, and calling up ideas through the force of a necessary and natural association, which would not have been otherwise awakened except by the use of many more words. Such in an eminent degree is the imagery of the mythology of which we have been speaking. Where is the course of power without knowledge to guide it, so briefly yet so forcibly depicted as in the mad career of Phaeton misguiding the steeds of the sun? And what picture so descriptive of the writhings of disappointed ambition as that of Prometheus on his rock with the vulture at his liver? Tantalus in the stream is an ever living fiction, because it borrows the form of Truth when it points to the punishment of him who rashly essays to satisfy his thirst for happiness by the gratification of unhallowed lusts; and Sisyphus toiling at his stone, is the faithful picture of man who vainly confident in his unassisted strength seeks to roll the ball of fortune up the slippery eminence. What can be more beautiful than that picture of fraternal affection which we find in the fable of the sons of Leda—a union of spirit so pure that it was typified in the two bright stars which still maintain alternate sway in heaven as an everlasting memorial of that undying love which married the mortal to the immortal in one common destiny. In what other language could Byron have described fallen Rome, "the Niobe of nations," than that which he used, the language of truth and feeling which is now common to the whole of the civilized world, and must be as universally used as known, since it embodies the pictured thought and feeling of the human heart. The man who neglects this mythic and most beautiful of languages, must be content to see himself excelled by those who have studied it, both in strength and beauty of expression. Perhaps we do not hazard too much in asserting that a knowledge of this mythic language alone (if we may call it so,)—a knowledge only to be obtained by reading the Greek and Latin authors—would compensate the student for the labor bestowed in acquiring those languages. So far we have looked only to the advantages to be derived from a mere study of these languages, without any reference to the literature which they embody. And if we have shown so far that these studies of themselves afford a reward for our labors, how much more important will they seem when we consider the learning which we shall find in them. But it may be said that we promised to show that these studies were not only profitable, but the most profitable in which the youthful mind could be engaged; and so far we have not redeemed the pledge. To this we reply, that the study of natural philosophy by which we comprehend physics and morals, and that of languages, afford the only subjects to which the mind is directed in books. Now, in relation to the first, we assume in common with most of the best thinkers on the subject of education, that such studies would serve to weaken the youthful mind by its premature exertions under a load as yet beyond its capacity; and with regard to the study of other languages than the Greek and Latin, that all the advantages to be derived from the mere study of language, which the others afford, are also to be had by the classical student, whilst the more regular formation and peculiar structure of these two ancient languages promise benefits to the youthful mind which are peculiar to themselves, or at any rate, much greater in them than in any others.

We come now to the second proposition which we laid down, and that is, that out of his own language, there are no other two languages whose literature holds out as many inducements to the student for acquiring them, as that of the Greek and Latin languages, since independently of their own worth, these studies are absolutely essential to the proper understanding of modern literature as it now exists. Surely there could exist no opinion more unfortunate for the progress of science, than that which supposes, that a view of science as it now exists, is all that is necessary for its thorough investigation; indeed, we believe the assertion may be safely hazarded, that no one can ever qualify himself for the race of discovery who looks alone to what men now think without a reference to what they have formerly believed and written upon the subjects of his inquiry. Strange as it may seem, the man who would ascertain truth, must not confine himself to the simple inquiry of what it is. He must also see what men have thought about it. He must look to the history of human opinion and the modes of reasoning by which men have arrived at their conclusions. He must not only be able to understand the results of right reason, but he must learn also to reason for himself. It was a perception of this necessity which induced the immortal Bacon to turn his attention to the mode of investigating truth, rather than to the discovery of truth itself. He perceived that it was the most important benefit which could be conferred by any man of that day, and the Novum Organon, the most wonderful of mere human conceptions, was the result. A view of the different modes of reasoning to truth which had been employed before him, a comparison of the methods which the most successful philosophers had pursued, soon taught him that there was as much in the method used as in the genius of the investigator. He who would pursue the path of truth, would do well to prepare himself with a guide book made up from the experience of former travellers; he will thus learn the various roads which intersect his true path, and might be likely to put him out, each of which some former pilgrim has taken before him, from whose recorded experience he may take warning; or sometimes it may happen that whilst the crowd of philosophers have been wandering for centuries through a mazy error, the account given by some long gone traveller of a partially explored route may lead the happy investigator into the true way, and thus forward him on his journey. In the progress of truth, which of necessity must be slow and cautious, it is important to weigh every step, and every chart should be preserved. It was thus that Copernicus, retracing the steps of philosophers for two thousand years, discovered in the almost forgotten accounts of the writings of Nicetas, Heraclides and Ecphontus, traces of a route into which he struck off and was conducted to the most brilliant discoveries. It was thus that Galileo was conducted to some of his discoveries in hydrostatics by the hints of Archimedes. Indeed, how many of the most important discoveries of science have thus originated? Had Archimedes and Pappus never written, or had they been neglected, the method of tangential lines of Fermat and Barrow, approximating so closely as they do to the discovery of the differential calculus, had perhaps never existed, and to these we must attribute the subsequent important discovery of Newton and Leibnitz. Indeed, the whole history of scientific discovery is the history of a chain whose links have been forged by different men, and fitted at different times. If such be the most fortunate mode of scientific discovery, how much do we increase the importance of the study of the ancient literature, when we come to reflect that the termination of their scientific labors during the night of the middle ages, is the point of departure from which all modern scientific discovery has emanated. It will at once be recollected that at the revival of letters, the only sources of information were derived from the study of the ancients revived chiefly by Boccacio and the philosophers of the Medici school and from the Arabians, whose knowledge was drawn chiefly though at an early period from the same source. Notwithstanding the elegant rivalry between the Abassides and Ommoiades, which so much fostered the spirit of learned inquiry, notwithstanding the resort of the Arabian philosophers to the Indian school, and the polite and elevated spirit of the Saracen conquerers who offered peace to the modern and degenerate Greeks in exchange for their philosophy, it is still evident that with the exception of some few discoveries in the science of medicine, they were yet far behind the ancients at the period of the decay of letters. Ancient science became the text upon which modern writings were for ages the commentary, one of its languages became the medium of communication between the learned and polite of all nations, and no book of science was published for a long time except in the Latin. The writings of mathematicians as far down as Euler, those in medicine in England as far down as Hunter, the writings of Blumenback, of Grotius and Spinoza, the Novum Organon of Bacon, and indeed those of nearly all the modern philosophers, until the middle of the seventeenth century, were in Latin. In Belles Lettres, criticism and rhetoric, in history, physics and morals, the models of the moderns were all chosen from antiquity. In addition to this too, the progress of Roman arms, and afterwards the advance of Roman letters, had incorporated much of the Latin language and idiom in all of the polite modern languages except the German. The Italian and Spanish in particular have been well called "bastard Latin." How then can any student of modern literature only, hope to understand the genius of his own language, or even the spirit of that literature to which he has devoted himself? What scientific inquirer can hope, in any great degree, to forward the march of discovery no matter what may be his genius and spirit, if he be without this learning? Independently then of the intrinsic value of ancient learning, we humbly think that the reasons enumerated by us, suffice to prove not only the importance but the absolute necessity of these studies to the accomplished scholar and man of science. But we are prepared to go further, and maintain that on certain subjects of mental inquiry, it still affords the best models extant. In poetry, the best models are confessedly ancient. In rhetoric, Aristotle, Quinctilian and Horace, have left nothing for modern investigation to add upon that subject. But it is in history, oratory, the philosophy of government, law and psychology, that the pre-eminence of ancient literature is most important to be noticed. We are perfectly aware that the history of remote antiquity has for every mind a charm which does not belong to the genius or the taste of the historian. Ideas of events remote in point of time, whether past or future, always fill the mind with a certain degree of awe and uncertainty. A feeling of mystery always attends our ideas of what is remote in point of time or place. It is on the tale of the traveller from far distant lands that we hang with most delight and wonder. Had Columbus discovered America within two days voyage of Europe, the tale of his genius had been yet untold. So too the mind looks to events long past with an awe and wonder akin to those feelings which fill it in its eager gaze into futurity. It is this power of association which attaches the antiquarian so devotedly to his peculiar study, and so soon converts it into a pursuit of feeling rather than of reason. It is the same mysterious link which binds the poet to the early customs and history of his country, and which lends a charm to the simplest ballad if it be ancient, and connects his contemplations with the past. It was the same feeling so strong in the human heart which swelled in the breast of the indignant old lawgiver when in despite of his formal pursuits and fancy-killing studies, he pronounced his rebuke on those who ignorantly maligned "that code which has grown grey in the hoar of innumerable ages." It is a mighty journey which the human mind takes when it is transported from the present to the past. When the mind awakes to realize these long-gone scenes, feelings of mingled awe and pleasure insensibly possess it. A thousand associations of gloomy grandeur attend us as we seem to walk amid the mighty monuments of the dead in the silent twilight of past ages. We feel as if we were treading the lonely streets of the city of the dead, and lifting the pall of ages. We start to find that the mouldering records of man's pursuits then told as now, that still eternal tale of empty vanity and misbegotten hopes. The ashes of buried cities on which we tread, the timeworn records of fallen empires and past greatness, the monuments of events yet more remote and faintly discernible in the dim distance, seem the too visible memorials of "what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue," and like Crusoe we recoil with wonder and fear from that trace of man on the desert shore. The earlier the records to which we refer, the more deeply are we struck with the wonderful power of our minds which enables us to use the hoarded experience of ages and enter into silent communion with the dead, and the more sensibly are we impressed by the comparison of the imperishable creations of our spiritual nature, with the fading glories of our mortal state. We ascend the stream of time as the traveller of the Nile in quest of its mysterious sources, and the farther we proceed the more wonderful is the view adown that vale of ages through which it flows. Behind us, in the dim distance arise the dark and impenetrable barriers, whose cloud-capt summits seem to point to the heavens as the source of the mysterious river, whilst before us flow the dark rolling waves of that wide stream which is to bear us too to the mysteries of that land of shadows where we are taught to expect an eternal, perhaps an awful home. Fair cities and mighty empires arise in momentary show along its shores, and then pass away upon its rolling waters. In swift succession the generations of man chase each other upon its heaving billows in shadowy hosts,—the dim phantasmagoria of our mortal state! And yet like shades that wander along the Styx, some memories still live upon its silent shore to tell the tale of wrecks and ruins which stud the wave-worn banks. Lo! yonder rocky headland around which sweeps the swift stream as it stretches into the dark bay where the waters lie in momentary repose. How many were the marble palaces, how smiling were the gardens which gladdened that once lovely spot. Yon mouldering fane that yet clings to the wave-worn rock, was once the least amongst ten thousand, and where are they?—Lost in these dark waters in whose deep womb are buried the long forgotten glories of our mortal race.

From the charm of such associations we do not pretend to be exempt, nor do we envy the man who could claim such an exemption. But we are free to confess that this circumstance is too apt to disturb the judgment in a comparison of the merits of ancient and modern history. To a certain extent it may fairly be estimated amongst the advantages of the former, for if it gives a greater interest to early history it holds out a greater temptation to the ardent prosecution of that study. But we do not fear the comparison without such adventitious aid, for we maintain that as historians the ancients are still unequalled. Of all their histories which have descended to the present time, there are none which have not many of the higher excellences of historical composition; but it is for Thucydides, Tacitus and Plutarchus, the great masters in their respective styles, that we challenge modern history to produce the parallels. The definition which Diodorus has given of history, "that it is philosophy teaching by example," may truly be applied to the writings of the two first named historians. Indeed, we have never taken up the works of the first without wonder at the rare and philosophical temperament which enabled him to conduct his eager search after truth without disturbance from those feelings which personal injuries and the spirit of party would so naturally have awakened in others under the same circumstances. Himself a principal actor in the scenes which his page commemorates, his situation and temper alike fitted him for conducting his researches in a spirit of truth, a task which he accomplished in a manner as yet unrivalled. How deep is the devotion to the austere majesty of truth which he displays in his masterly preface when he offers up the favorite fictions of his nation as a sacrifice upon its altars, and stripping his subject of its stolen ornaments, presents it to the world in naked simplicity. If historical criticism has become a science in the hands of the accomplished Niehbuhr, surely its origin and chief ornament are to be found in that noble monument of antiquity. It was no small evidence of future greatness which the young Demosthenes gave, in the choice of this history as his model. For where could he find the springs of government touched with so true a knowledge of their nature, or in what book are the actions of man in masses traced to their motives and causes with an analysis so searching? If we would trace society through the first forms of republican government, and witness its agitations under the opposition of those ever living and opposing forces the democratic and aristocratic principles, we must look to Thucydides. A living witness and a profound observer of the unbalanced democracies of ancient Greece, his deep sagacity always enabled him to resolve their line of action into the two elementary and diverging forces according to their true proportions. As the modern astronomer is able to detect even in the course of the most erratic comet the resultant of the two opposing forces of the solar system, so this profound observer of the human heart was able to trace in the madness of revolution, the contests of a more pacific policy, and even in the horrors of anarchy, the direction given by the two elementary and opposing forces of the social system. Would we trace society still further as another combination of these elementary forces in different proportions gives its direction in the line of despotism, we must turn to the Roman Thucydides—to Tacitus, for a true knowledge of the internal machinery which regulates it under this form of government. Do we wish to obtain an accurate view of the motives which move masses to action? would we investigate man, not as an individual, but according to those common qualities of the human mind by which we may classify his species and genera, and by which only we must consider him if we would rightly estimate the effects of circumstances upon masses? Turn to either or to both of these historians, whose profound and searching analysis so rarely fails of detecting the motives to human action. In both we shall find the same deep philosophy, the same careful study of the human heart, and the same eagerness to utter truth when clearly conceived, without regard to the forms of expression; the great and distinctive difference is in the difference of temperament arising perhaps out of a difference of situation. The more fiery Roman gives you glowing sketches, not pictures—they flow from him with that careless haste so indicative of boundless wealth. Each sketch bears within itself the evidence of lofty conception, and shows in every line the traces of a master's hand whose rapid touch is too busy in embodying the forms with which his brain is teeming to waste its energies in those minuter cares so necessary for filling out a perfect picture. With rapid pencil he leaves perhaps a simple line, but it is the line of Apelles—the hand of the master was there. The conceptions of the rival Greek, like his, are lofty but more matured, and the same careless ease with a somewhat superior elegance, mark his execution. His coloring however is milder, and you are never struck with those startling contrasts of light and shade so peculiar to the Roman.

The inquirer who would train his mind in those pursuits most necessary for the statesman, and, for that reason, seeks an intimate knowledge of human nature, would arise from an attentive study of the works of these great historians with feelings of pleasure and self gratulation. Conscious, that he had acquired much knowledge of man as a mere instrument in the hands of the politician, he already begins to perceive the rules by which men of sagacity have reckoned with much of probability if not of certainty, upon the future actions of their fellow beings. But not being yet fully aware of the uses to which this knowledge may be applied in directing the affairs of society, he is now anxious to inquire into the results of those attempts which the great masters of the human race have made, to regulate the movements of masses and mould them to their peculiar views. He must now turn to Plutarch's superb gallery of portraits of the distinguished men of antiquity; he must open that book, which oftener than any other, has afforded the favorite subject of the early studies of the distinguished statesmen and warriors of all the countries to which modern civilization has extended. He will here perceive the modes by which his models are trained to greatness, and learn to know and estimate the distinctive qualities which have elevated their possessors so far above the common mass. His studies which heretofore were directed to his fellows will be now turned to himself, and a course of self reflection will teach him to exercise and improve his strength, and to measure the proportions in which it must be applied to the levers which move the ball of public opinion. To show that we do not place too high an estimate upon this wonderful book, we might simply refer to the internal evidences of its rare excellences. But we cannot refrain from offering further proofs, more striking at least, if not as strong. It is no small evidence of its excellence that it is a book of more general interest than any other biography or history extant; that it is amongst the first and the last books which we like; its interest taking an early hold upon the youthful mind, and continuing through our after life. And the fact is not to be forgotten, in choosing the books for such a course of study as the one just referred to, that most of the great modern statesmen and generals, have bestowed much of their early attention and study on this work; for this is some evidence that its pages serve to awaken an early love of heroic virtue, and contribute to form the habits necessary for its growth and continued existence. In our reference to the works of the three authors which we should choose in preference to all others of human origin, for the study of human nature we have not adverted to the true order in which they should be read. The book of biography should precede as well as succeed the study of the two historians. We challenge all modern history and biography for the production of three parallels to our chosen models, whose works can contribute so much to the attainment of this particular end. Davila, the favorite of Hampden,—and Guicciardini, whom St. John preferred to all modern historians,—have some of the excellences of which we have been speaking, but will any one compare them to the first? In the English language, Clarendon is the only history worthy of the attention of the student in search of an author who illustrates the science of human nature by a reference to the recorded experience of past generations. The works of Gibbon, Hume and Robertson, are admirable for their style and general interest, but they take no true views of man (epistola non erubescit) as the instrument of legislation; they do not present us with that impersonation of the common qualities and motives of our nature, which alone can be the subject of laws, and whose character only can be moulded by the general institutions of society,—in short, with that man who is the true subject of the politician's study. Indeed we doubt if the historical works of these gentlemen ever were or ever will be the favorites of any great and practical statesman,—a test which we ask shall be applied to the models which we have chosen. We are perfectly aware of what we hazard by such assertions, but safe behind our mask, we feel secure from danger.

In the view of the course of study which we have just been surveying, we paused at the point where the inquirer having learnt the strength and the temper of the various great springs which chiefly influence human action, had turned aside to ascertain the best modes of handling them by a reference to the experience of those who had successfully regulated the machinery of society and effected in its movements the particular objects which they had in view. From this point, the transition is easy from the history and biography of antiquity to its oratory. For where shall we find the springs of human action so dexterously handled? It must be remembered that the orators of antiquity approached their subjects under circumstances very different from those which attend our modern debates. They practised upon the societies in which they lived, under the same penalties which attend the eastern physician who undertakes the Sultan's cure. The gift of this splendid but fatal talisman of the heart was always attended with the most unhappy consequences to its possessor. Exile and death were the penalties, in case of failure, in the measures which they recommended, or even in case of the loss of popular affection. And so deep were the distresses of those gifted but unhappy children of genius, that one of their most sincere admirers was forced to exclaim

"Ridenda poemata malo
Quam te conspicuæ divina Philippica famæ,
Volveris a prima quæ proxima."

It is not to be supposed, that under such circumstances they would ever approach their subject without a most careful consideration of its nature and consequences, or that they would fail to study the means of recommending themselves and their plans to popular favor. Indeed it would naturally be expected that in the effort to persuade the will of those upon whom they were operating, into a concurrence with their own, they would scarcely place in competition with that object the desire to write an oration to be admired by posterity. We should look to find then a more attentive observance of the modes of influencing the human heart and reason, than amongst the modern speakers who were moved by none of their fears. A comparison of the ancient with the modern orators would fully prove the fact, but as we cannot of course enter into that comparison here, and deserve no thanks from the reader for inviting his attention to it, we would advert to the fact that these are the only real statesmen whose orations have had an interest for a remote posterity. From which the conclusion is fair, that of all speeches accessible to the reader, these are the most valuable for acquiring the means of influencing men, since no other orations of successful orators remain in an agreeable form. Who reads the speeches of any of the modern orators who have been statesmen at the same time, and who succeeded in impressing their views upon the public mind. No one reads the speeches of Walpole, Chatham, and Fox, the real orator statesmen of England, whilst Burke's orations, which invariably dispersed his audience, are familiar to almost every reader of the English language. The most distinguished orator and statesman that France has produced was Mirabeau; the most successful in America were Henry and Randolph. Yet what orations have they left behind them which are indicative of the real genius of those master minds? The modern speeches which are held up as models, are those which failed to effect the end of their delivery, and even if pleasing in point of style and composition, they must have been very feeble as orations.

But the admirers of modern oratory, the readers of Sheridan, Curran and Philips, will perhaps demand that definition of oratory which thus excludes their favorites from all competition with the orators of antiquity. We define it to be, the means of attaining, by the persuasion either of the feelings or reasons of men, an end which of ourselves, we cannot effect. This is the only point of view in which a statesman would use rhetoric as an instrument. The display of learning and the exhibition of the graces of composition and style, he leaves to the author in his closet who has time to bestow upon pursuits less exalted than his. The real orator, if he be the subject of a despot, will study the character of the man whom he sues, and mould his address in the form most persuasive to him who holds the power of which he would avail himself. If on the other hand the power which he seeks resides with the people, he will appeal to that temper and those dispositions which are common to the mass, and having selected the arguments and sentiments most persuasive to them, would never think of sacrificing one tittle of them to secure the reputation of an orator with the future generations who might read his effusions. Ridiculous as it may seem to the lovers of the gaudy imagery and polished periods of the Irish orators, we maintain that the speeches of Cromwell and of Vane, which seem so absurd to us now, in effecting their ends, accomplished the true object of rhetoric. They suited the temper of the times, they served to mould the progress of public opinion, and proved powerful instruments in directing the revolution. Profound observers of those times, they were too sagacious as statesmen to think of sacrificing the means of securing great public ends for the sake of pleasing the taste of posterity and acquiring the reputation of turning polished periods—a task in which, after all, the wretched Waller had excelled them.

Who believes that such oratory as Sheridan's or Curran's, aye, or even as Burke's, would have produced a tithe of the influence upon the sturdy old roundheads which the cant of the day exercised over them. These effusions would have been treated with scorn, or would perhaps have called down punishment upon the heads of their authors as holding out temptations to the carnal man. Any attempt, in the temper of those times, to deliver orations fitted for the taste of posterity, would have been as ridiculous and misplaced as Petit Jean's apostrophes to the sun, moon and stars, in his defence of the dog. Indeed, it is the prevailing sin of modern taste to suppose that the making of a "fine speech," can be a sufficient inducement for speaking. Plato has defined rhetoric to be "the art of ruling men's minds," and the moment it ceases to look to that end, it is vain and ridiculous. This is the besetting sin of American oratory. Adams, Everett, or even Webster, will seize any occasion, the death of Lafayette, the erection of a monument, or any thing which may serve as a text for a speech, to deliver orations which can have no possible influence except to convince the few who read them, that their authors have not only read, but learned to round a period. Polished sentences, brilliant imagery, and even the ancient forms of attestation are profusely displayed, and all the orator's most showy wares are studiously arrayed, for effect, so as to tempt the public to what?—to any useful end which they have in view? No, simply to an admiration of their authors. It was the practice of antiquity, it is true, to deliver funeral orations—but they are miserably mistaken if they expect to shelter themselves under those usages in their unmeaning and personal displays. They pursue the form, but neglect the substance. Do they suppose that when Pericles delivered his funeral oration over his countrymen who had fallen in the expedition to Samos, he had no other object than that of making a speech? Do they believe for a moment that he whose rhetoric procured him the surname of Olympius, that the master orator of antiquity, (if we may judge his oratory by its effects,) that he who never addressed an assembly without first praying the Gods "that no word might fall from him unawares which was unsuitable to the occasion," would have spoken from such a motive as that only? Could they have supposed that such was the motive of Demosthenes in his funeral oration over those who fell at Cheronea?

Higher ends were in the view of these orators upon these occasions. They were subjects connected with the public policy of the times and with measures which they themselves had directed. Upon the success of these depended their popularity, and on that hung their fortunes, their homes, nay, their lives. They afforded happy occasions for defending their policy, for pushing their claims upon public favor, and for weaving by a thousand plies the cord which bound them to popular sympathy, in those moments of deep feeling when the people were too much absorbed in their own emotions, to examine into the personal motives of their orators. No such consequences depend upon the popularity of our orators. Their popularity can scarcely be really affected, by any orations which they could deliver on the battle of Lexington, the Bunker Hill monument, or the death of La Fayette. The public measures of the present day have but a remote connection with them. What worthy motive then could have influenced them, we were going to say, in the perpetration of such folly? In such men of the closet as the younger Adams and Everett, it is not surprising; but in Webster, who is capable of real and effective oratory, it can only be viewed as a weak compliance with the morbid taste of the clique around him.

Of the importance of the study of the ancient laws, particularly the Roman or civil, we shall say but little, as in the first place, a view of that subject in all its relations with modern government and civilization, would far exceed the limits of this essay; and because, secondly, no one can be found who will deny the uses of this pursuit to the lawyer. To the general reader we would only remark, that instead of abandoning this useful study to the lawyers, as a pursuit proper only to that profession, he would do well to remember that the revival of letters has always been mainly ascribed to the discovery of the pandects at Amalphi; that since that time professorships of civil law have been attached to every learned University in Europe, and no scholar for many centuries afterwards was reckoned accomplished without some knowledge of this subject. He should remember too, that since the revival of letters, this law has formed an essential, nay, the chief ingredient of the jurisprudence of Spain, Holland, France, and all Italy, with the exception of Venice;—whilst, notwithstanding all that has been suggested by the idle casuistry of national pride, it is the most important portion of the law of Germany, Hungary, Poland and Scotland. And much as we boast of the common law in England and what was English America, yet in both countries, the civil code is the law of courts of admiralty, the basis of most of our chancery law, and even on the common law side of our judiciary it is freely used on the subject of contracts, and has furnished the groundwork, nay, almost the entire system of our legal pleadings. Should this reader be a divine, we would beg leave to remind him that the canon law itself is so intimately associated with the civil code, that no good canonist has yet existed who neglected the study of this last. Indeed, the canon law is at last but a compound of the christian system of ethics and the civil code of municipal law. Need we say more in support of the claims of this study upon the attention of the general scholar and reader? Can the statesman or scholar expect to understand the history of nations and governments without a knowledge of their laws and judicial systems, those alimentary canals, which distribute the food that supports the moral being of society? As well might the anatomist expect to derive a knowledge of his science by a view of the external structure of the human frame, whilst the internal organization and the whole circulating system were concealed from his observation. And quite as absurd are the investigations of the historical inquirer, who, content with a knowledge of the form of government, looks no farther into the internal structure of a society. We would fain pursue the interesting inquiries which this subject suggests, in connection with the history of modern governments and the progress of civil liberty, did our limits permit. But our purpose is accomplished, in having recurred to facts, which of themselves demonstrate the necessity of this highly important study.

We come now to the psychological view of ancient literature, which subject is so intimately connected with the inquiry into the tendencies of this study, towards elevating and extending the spiritual capacity of man, that we shall embrace it under that head. As no man would engage in any laborious pursuit without having some object in view, so perhaps no one would ever enter into the pursuit after knowledge if it offered no rewards. It is coveted by many, because it sometimes brings to its possessor wealth, and almost always secures him reputation, whilst a few only desire it for its spiritual uses—and yet these last constitute its highest reward. Let the practical man of the world who doubts it, and who would laugh at any arguments adapted to his reason upon this subject as a mere idle thing, look to the history of literary men. Let him behold such a man as Bayle, for example, who having secured in his taste for knowledge a consolation and a happiness of which the world could not rob him, only thought of his persecutions to laugh at them, and found but amusement in what the world deems misfortunes. Poverty, exile, disease, all in their turns assailed him, and yet no one who reads his history can doubt but that he was the happiest man of his day. Resigned to all human events, he found his pleasure in the one noble taste which absorbed his mind, and he succeeded in elevating his spirit to such a distance above the misfortunes and persecutions of this world, that they dwindled into utter insignificance in his estimation. A dismission from an office of honor and profit, under circumstances which would have excited murmurs and anger in the minds of most other men, was scarcely noticed by him, or noticed in a spirit of cheerful content. "The sweetness and repose" (said he upon this occasion) "I find in the studies in which I have engaged myself and which are my delight, will induce me to remain in this city, if I am allowed to continue in it, at least until the printing of my dictionary is finished; for my presence is absolutely necessary in the place where it is printed. I am no lover of money nor of honors, and would not accept of any invitation should it be made to me; nor am I fond of the disputes and cabals which reign in all academies: Canam mihi et musis." Car. Lit. vol. i, p. 22. These were not mere professions; his life, nay, his very death illustrated their truth and sincerity. The very hour of his death was soothed and solaced by this taste, which subdued even the sense of the last mortal agony. This, and instances similar in nature, if not in degree, which abound in the lives of literary men, afford conclusive evidence of the rewards which knowledge brings to the human mind itself. What can elevate the dignity of our nature more in our view than the contemplation of such spectacles as these? What terms expressive enough should we find, to convey our sense of gratitude to the genius who would offer us a gift that would enable us to defy the persecutions of this world and laugh at its misfortunes! a gift, which, for our enjoyments, would render us independent of every other being in existence, save ourselves and him who created us—a gift which would endow us with a taste and the means of gratifying a taste which age cannot dull, and gratification cannot satiate. And yet to a great degree, the mind which is imbued with the love of knowledge enjoys these blessings. When this becomes the absorbing taste of our minds, it not only endures—but man cannot take it from us. Whilst sensual pleasures die, and the tastes which they gratify decay with time, this is the immortal desire of our being which survives when all others fade away. It is the charmed gift which we bear within ourselves, and whose spells can call up a thousand forms of beauty and light even in the depths of the dungeon, and surround the couch of disease with bright visions and pleasant hopes. As those who ate of the fabled lotus were said to forget their country and kindred in their enjoyments, when they had tasted of its flowers, so those who have once fed upon the immortal fruit of the tree of knowledge, cease to regard those temporal cares and pleasures which bind man to this earth, and lead through a maze of uncertainty to disappointment at last. They look into nature—and each link which they discover in the great chain of truth, seems, in the enthusiasm of the vision, another step on that ladder by which man mounts from earth to heaven. Each hidden harmony which they discover in nature is another thought of the divine mind which they have conceived and understood, and serves to bind them still more closely in that communion into which the Creator permits them to enter with him. The consideration of man, the pleasures merely earthly which he controls and which belong to him, always temporal and always alloyed with pain, they can consent to relinquish, in the consciousness that they are entering into closer communion with him who is pure, perfect, and unchangeable. And their pleasures as much exceed those which they renounce, as the Creator is superior to the created. They have tasted the living stream of truth, whose waters refresh the more, the more they are drunk—they find themselves on the borders of that eternal spring whose course is infinite in extent. Whilst they follow its trace they secure immortality,—for none who drink of its waters shall ever die.

See the student who dwells alone in his hermitage, or who perhaps nightly cribs his worn frame in some almost forgotten attic;—he is surrounded by circumstances which to the eye of the common observer denote the extremity of wretchedness and misery! Those who are more elevated by the pride of place and by the possession of those things which the world calls good, often look upon him with pity and contempt; and yet how rashly do they judge. Do they know whether he regards their pleasures or whither his aspirations would lead him. He looks out upon the stars, "those isles of light," which repose in the liquid blue of the vaulted heavens, and they speak to him of wisdom and love, of beauty and peace. He walks abroad amid the works of nature, and traces in all her hidden harmonies a beauty and a unity of design which speak but of one spirit, and that the infinite and eternal spirit of the universe. He begins indeed "to mingle with the universe;" and, like the mystic Egeria, a spirit of beauty pure and undefiled arises from the silent memorials of creative design, to commune with him in his morning walks and evening meditations. He compares the soul, which guides and animates the physical universe, with the vain and contentious spirit of his fellow man; he compares the order and beauty of the physical universe, which submits all its motions to the divine will, with the moral government of man,—at once the sport and the victim of his own caprices; and learns to despise what most men value, and to prize those pleasures which they neglect. He has learnt to feel that He who rules all events, has considered him also, in his Providence; and willing to put his trust in that being, without whose knowledge "not a sparrow falleth to the ground," he stands forth the most self-humbled, and yet the most elevated of God's creatures.

If knowledge hath these spiritual uses,—and what reflecting man can doubt the fact, how mortifying is it to see many wasting their strength and throwing away the means by which they could attain these ends, for the sake of wealth and earthly honors. As the alchemist who, in his eager search after the grand magisterium, neglects many discoveries really useful which were within his reach, so these men put their frail trust in the world and waste their lives in the vain pursuit of its phantoms. But we do not expect these men to take this view of the subject unless they have trained their minds to it, either through the christian philosophy, or what is second to that system only, the school of the Platonist writers. It is for this reason chiefly, that we have ventured to recommend the study of the writings of the genius so nearly divine, of that author whose psychological system presaged the christian revelation, as the morning twilight betokens the coming sun. It was his, that beautiful conception of the spirit of the universe, at once so poetical and sublime;—an idea which Abraham Tucker only of modern English writers, seems to have fully comprehended and explained. This sublime and philosophical poet perceived that by an attentive study of nature, the human mind was capable of entering into communion with the divine mind through its works; he felt that he was capable of conceiving more and more of the ideas which existed in the creative mind, as he understood more of the system of the universe; he meditated upon the harmony which extended through the greatest and the least of nature's operations; his soul took in forms of beauty and filled with lofty conceptions until it became enamored of its contemplations, and in the spirit of true poetry he endowed the universe with a soul which governed it and with which the mind of man may commune. But to return to our original proposition; we asserted that the writings of ancient philosophers afforded the best views of psychology to which we have access. By psychology, we mean what relates to our spiritual being. To maintain this proposition it will be necessary to recur, for a moment, to the subject of inquiry which engaged their attention, and to the spirit of those times.

The most important and natural inquiry which would present itself to a being of limited powers of knowledge and enjoyment, and whose existence at most is brief, is as to the best pursuit which can engage his time and energies. The vanity of human wishes, the transitory nature of earthly enjoyments, must have been as apparent to the first man as to us. The necessity of discriminating between the various ends of our actions, and objects of our desires, in the brief space which is allotted us for action, must have impressed itself at an early period upon the human mind. And as happiness is the proposed end of all our actions, the most important inquiry which can engage the human mind, is as to the best means of attaining it. Accordingly, we find the "TO KALON" engaging the attention of all ancient philosophers; and however differently they might conduct their reasoning, all of them who were respected arrived at the same conclusion, viz: that he whose conduct was most strictly regulated by the rules of virtue, would enjoy the greatest degree of happiness. It was thus, according to Plato, that we were to restore the immaculate qualities of the pre-existent soul. The sterner Zeno maintained that nothing was pleasant but virtue, and nothing painful but vice; whilst the gentle and more persuasive Epicurus, reversing the rule, (and in a certain sense the doctrines were identical,) taught that nothing was virtuous but what was pleasant, or vicious if it were not painful—because virtue is at last but the rule which shall conduct us to happiness. At that time the light of Christian revelation had not burst upon the world; the flickering and uncertain rays of human reason afforded the only light to guide them in the search for the path of truth, and "shadows, clouds, and darkness rested on it." The bright hopes and the awful fears by which the Christian revelation would prompt man to virtue, were then either unknown or but little heeded. To tempt his disciples then to a virtuous life, and to fortify them against the seductions of vicious temptation, the ancient philosopher was forced to hold forth the rewards which virtue offers to us in this life. The persuasions of oratory, the allurements of poetry, the demonstrations of philosophy, were all used to entice the youthful mind to the pursuit of virtue; and more, the masters practised their creed in the view of their disciples. But so far as external appearances bear testimony on the subject, happiness does not always attend the practice of virtue in this world. It was necessary, then, to refer the doubtful to some other source of enjoyment. The philosopher referred the pupil to a source which was within—the pleasant consciousness of well-doing;—the enlargement of the spiritual capacity under a virtuous discipline, were the exalted and noble inducements which they presented to their view. Their theories of the universe, their social customs, their daily habits, were all made subsidiary to the end of impressing these grand truths upon their disciples. These conceptions stood forth in severe and sublime simplicity, as they were formed by the cold and cautious inductions of philosophy; but the master mind of antiquity, not content with their unspeaking beauty, seized fire from heaven, and breathing into them the warm spirit of his eloquence, sent them forth to the world radiant and impressive forms, which appealed not only to the reason, but to the sensibility of the beholder. Every argument was used which could exalt our spiritual being, and every illustration which could explain its nature, so far at least as they understood it. The pursuit of virtue became a matter of feeling—self-denial was an enthusiasm, and the world often beheld the disciples of these great masters acting upon the abstract maxims of mere human reason, and pursuing virtue with that unfaltering trust in the hopes which it excites, which would shame many disciples of a more certain faith, and those who have the guidance of a clearer light. It is not surprising, then, that the nature of our spiritual being, and the invigorating and regenerating influences of the pursuit of knowledge and virtue, should be more often the theme of ancient than of modern philosophers. And yet the moralist, the philosopher and the poet, would each derive both assistance and delight from the too much neglected works of these noble old masters. We have seen the wonderful revival of letters in Germany in modern times ascribed to the study of the Platonists,—with what truth our knowledge of German literature will not permit us to say. But we do not doubt that the ascribed cause is adequate to that end. Certain it is, that Bulwer has derived from these sources much of that which is worth any thing in his writings. His views of our spiritual being, and of the spiritual uses of knowledge, are evidently clothed in light reflected from the Platonists. Indeed, the finest portion of all his writings, that in which he describes the change wrought on Devereux's mind by a course of solitary meditation, or, to use a shorter phrase, the metempsychosis of his hero, is but a paraphrase of the finest of all moral fables, the Asinus Aureus of Apuleius, and one which at last fails to do justice to the splendid original. Should any reader think it worth the time to examine into the truth of our remarks upon the spirit of ancient philosophy, we would crave his attention to this most beautiful allegory, as affording a complete and interesting illustration of their general correctness. The fable, founded upon a Milesian story, opens with the description of a young man who has debased his soul with debauchery until he is transformed to an ass; he falls gradually from one vice to another, and under the dominion of all he suffers under the degrading and debasing penalties appropriate to each. He was at last on the eve of perpetrating a crime so monstrous that nature suddenly revolted, and horror-stricken, he broke from his keeper and flies to the seashore. With solitude comes reflection, and reflection brings remorse. Despair is the natural consequence; and feeling that without assistance he is lost, he turns to heaven for succor. The moon is in full splendor, just rising from the waves; the awful silence of the night deepens his sense of solitude;—"Video præ micantis lunæ candore nimis completum orbem, commodum marinis emergentem fluctibus, nactusque opacæ noctis silentiosa secreta, certus etiam summatem Deam præcipua majestate pollere resque prorsus humanas ipsius regi providentia," &c. p. 375. Relief is vouchsafed to him, a change passes over his spirit, and nature wears towards him a different aspect—her countenance is clothed in smiles, and all things seem to rejoice with him. "Tanta hilaritudine præter peculiarem meam, gestire mihi cuncta videbantur; ut pecua etiam cujuscamodi et totas domos et ipsam diem serena facie gaudire sentirem." The entire conception is not only highly poetical, but eminently philosophical; the progress of the human mind in its transition through the range of vices, the sentiments of remorse and despair, that yearning after better things which ever and anon returns like a guardian angel to rescue man from his most fallen estate, the change of heart, and the influence of nature, are depicted in the spirit of truth and beauty.

But we fear that we are trespassing too far upon the patience of the reader, and especially when our subject is not one of general interest. And yet we are so deeply impressed with the fact that an attention to this study is the great want of American literature, that we could not forbear suggesting briefly the various points of view from which its importance may be seen—even at the risk of being tedious. Under the sanction, then, of past experience, and under the higher authority of reason, we would crave the attention of the rising generation to these studies, that they may prepare themselves to do something worthy of their hopes and useful to their country. And of this at least we can safely assure them that the exercises which we recommend are those in which were trained all the best models in science and general literature, whom they most revere and admire.

A LOAN TO THE MESSENGER.

NO. I.

When I said I would die a bachelor,
I did not think I should live to be married.—Benedict.

The day I was married, my dear Editor, I was greeted by a valued crony of mine with the following Jew desperate, as Mrs. Malaprop might call a jeu d'esprit. The occasion which gave this trifle birth having now been some years a matter of history, I am disposed to lend it to your good readers for a month, and beg them to be very careful of it, as it is really one of the neatest things of the kind I or they have ever seen. It is by a poet of no low order of genius, I can assure you, whose fault alone it is that his name, albeit not insignificant, is not yet higher on the rolls of poetic fame. It has never been in print.

J. F. O.

LIFE.

A BRIEF HISTORY, IN THREE PARTS, WITH A SEQUEL:
Dedicated to my friend on his Wedding Day, November 1, 18—.

Part I.—LOVE.

A glance,—a thought,—a blow,—
It stings him to the core.
A question—will it lay him low?
Or will time heal it o'er?
He kindles at the name,—
He sits, and thinks apart;
Time blows and blows it to a flame,—
Burning within his heart.
He loves it though it burns,
And nurses it with care:
He feeds the blissful pain, by turns,
With hope, and with despair!

—

Part II.—COURTSHIP.

Sonnets and serenades,
Sighs, glances, tears and vows,
Gifts, tokens, souvenirs, parades,
And courtesies and bows.
A purpose, and a prayer:
The stars are in the sky,—
He wonders how e'en hope should dare
To let him aim so high!
Still hope allures and flatters,
And doubt just makes him bold:
And so, with passion all in tatters,
The trembling tale is told!
Apologies and blushes,
Soft looks, averted eyes,
Each heart into the other rushes,
Each yields, and wins, a prize.

—

Part III.—MARRIAGE.

A gathering of fond friends,—
Brief, solemn words, and prayer,—
A trembling to the fingers' ends,
As hand in hand they swear.
Sweet cake, sweet wine, sweet kisses,—
And so the deed is done:
Now for life's woes and blisses,—
The wedded two are one.
And down the shining stream
They launch their buoyant skiff,
Bless'd, if they may but trust Hope's dream,—
But ah! Truth echoes—If!

—

THE SEQUEL.—IF.

If health be firm,—if friends be true,—
If self be well controlled,—
If tastes be pure,—if wants be few,—
And not too often told,—
If reason always rule the heart,—
And passions own its sway,—
If love for aye to life impart
The zest it does to day,—
If Providence with parent care
Mete out the varying lot,—
While meek Contentment bows to share
The palace or the cot,—
And oh! if Faith, sublime and clear,
The spirit upward guide,—
Then bless'd indeed, and bless'd fore'er,
The Bridegroom, and the Bride!

WILLIAM CUTTER.

P———d.

READINGS WITH MY PENCIL.

NO. II.
Legere sine calamo est dormire.—Quintilian.

8. "A drayman is probably born with as good organs as Milton, Locke, or Newton: but by culture they are as much above him, almost, as he is above his horse."—Chesterfield.

Chesterfield, it would seem, was a Phrenologist, in fact.

9. "In matters of consequence, have nothing to do with secondary people: deal always with principals."—Edgeworth.

Good advice. In matters of state, deal never with a clerk,—he has no discretion. In matters of trade deal never with an agent, if you can come near the principal, for the same cause,—he lacks the discretion that the latter has. But for a different cause than this, in matters of love, deal never with parents, but with the child: it is true, she has less discretion, but in this matter she is still the principal.

10. "Women may have their wills while they live, for they may make none when they die."—Anon.

The author of that, whoever he be, was a kind soul: he found an apology for that which husbands, lovers, and fathers are apt to think a grievous fault in the sex. But the thought that strikes me most forcibly upon reading that passage is, the injustice of the law's treatment of women in this regard. Why should a woman's property, upon her marriage, become, ipso facto, another's? I take it that is a question which neither casuists nor gownsmen can answer. I knew an old woman who could give the true reply, and it was one that she gave as a reason for every query, puzzling or plain,—and that was "'Cause!"

11. "A soul conversant with virtue resembles a fountain: for it is clear, and gentle, and sweet, and communicative, and rich, and harmless and innocent."—Epictetus.

Beautiful because true. Such a soul is clear; one can see deeply into its crystal purity: it is gentle, and no waves disturb the spectator as he gazes: it is sweet, and he who drinks of it is refreshed and renovated in mental and intellectual health. Communicative is it, and throws out its jets in affluent profusion, making the atmosphere delicious to those who come within its reach. Rich, too, abundantly, overflowingly rich, full of jewels beyond price, ready for those who will gather them up from the inexhaustible bed of that fountain: harmless, moreover, and innocent, diffusing influences of a healthful and inspiring force, which turns mere sense to soul, mere mortality to immortality!

12. "The suspicion of Dean Swift's irreligion proceeded, in a great measure, from his dread of hypocrisy: instead of wishing to seem better, he delighted in seeming worse than he was."—Dr. Johnson.

That is a queer apology for a great Moralist to make for a Dean of the Church! It makes out Swift to be the worst of rascals: for it makes him more regardful of other men's opinions than of his own. It exhibits him as contravening conscience with seeming. Now, to my mind, the mere suspicion of hypocrisy is a far less evil than the positive conviction of it. He was, according to Johnson, afraid of being thought a hypocrite, and so he actually became one!

13. "As much company as I have kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better; and would rather be employed in reading, than in the most agreeable company."—Pope.

It is but a choice of company after all. For my part I verily believe the poet loved both well enough, although the world of books he most affected. He never wrote the "Essay on Man" or the "Dunciad" from the experience of the study, however: men's hearts were the 'books' he read from when he gave those splendid poems birth. The "world of books"—reminds me of

14. "Books are a real world, both pure and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow."
Wordsworth.

15. "Oh! who shall tell the glory of the good man's course, when, as his mortal organs are closing upon the world, he is looking forward to the opening brightness of that sun which never sets, shining from out the sapphire gates of Heaven! What earthly simile can your poet or your rhapsodist furnish, to carry to the spirit so rapturous a conception?"—Chalmers.

The simplest similes for such purposes are the best. And it is a beautiful order of our nature, that it furnishes them abundantly for the improvement of the reflective mind. And thus would I assimilate an earthly scene to the rapturous conception of the eloquent divine whom I have quoted. A most beautiful autumn day, free from clouds,—when the varied colored leaves seem willing to fade, with so bright, so warm, so cheerful a sun upon them,—is to me an emblem of the beaming of the sun of righteousness, which, growing brighter as their bodies decay, makes the happiest and holiest spirits willing to die, under an influence so benign.

16. "I walked, I rode, I hunted, I played, I read, I wrote, I did every thing but think. I could not, or rather I would not think. Thinking kept me too long to one point. I could not bear that turning my face to a dead wall. In self defence, to keep me from my thoughts, I flitted from one occupation to another in which my mind could not, if it would, find the least employment or permanent satisfaction. But the world called me a very happy man!"—Bulwer, (I believe.)

Every man has those moments, I imagine, of struggling with his own mind, endeavoring, yet almost impossibly, to fix it upon a single object for any length of time: when it is like a bird in a storm, attempting to alight upon a waving, trembling spray.

17. "But Thomas Moore, albeit but an indifferent biographer, is one of the greatest masters of versification the world has ever known, while in song-writing he is perfectly unrivalled."—Quarterly Review.

Perhaps in a peculiar, refined style of song-writing he may be: but while his are the music of the fancy, Burns speaks the melodies of the soul.

18. "The Creator has so constituted the human intellect, that it can grow only by its own action, and by its own action it will most certainly and necessarily grow. Every man must, therefore, in an important sense, educate himself. His books and teachers are but aids, the work is his."—Daniel Webster.

The great statesman spoke this from the lessons of his own experience, and it is true. Yet how many moments there are in a scholar's life, when his progress seems so slow that he languishes over every task; and, because he cannot attain every thing at once, forgets, that every thing worth gaining is obtained after many struggles: and, if one foot slips back a little, yet, if he gain at all on his way, that it is better to persevere! Besides, it is not only the ends of study which are delightful—for so also are its ways: and, if we are not advancing rapidly, there is yet a pleasure in exercise, even when much of it fails.

19. "The preacher, raising his withered hands as if imparting a benediction with the words, closed his discourse with the text he had been enforcing,—'It is good that a man bear the yoke in his youth.'"—Lights and Shadows.

I do believe that text most implicitly. I myself feel that it is true: for I am one of those who are best when most afflicted. While the weight hangs heavily, I keep time and measure, like a clock; but remove it, and all the springs and wheels move irregularly, and I am but a mere useless thing.

20. "Fair and bright to day, but windy and cold."—My Old Journal.

———like a satirical beauty!

J. F. O.

HALLEY'S COMET.

And who art thou amid the starry host,
Shedding thy pale and misty light,
Like some lone pearl, unseen and lost,
Amid the diamonds of a gala night.
Thou comest from the measureless abyss,
Where God hath made his glory known;
Is it with mystic cord, to this
To bind some system yet unseen, unknown.
Art thou the ship of heaven, laden with light,
From the eternal glory sent,
To feed the glowing suns, that might
In ceaseless radiance but for thee be spent?
Or art thou rolling on thy way, a car,
Bearing from God some angel band,
Sent forth from world to world afar,
To regulate the fabric of his hand?
Oh! if thou art on some such errand sent,
Forth from the throne of Him we love,
May not thy homeward path be bent
By our poor earth, to bear our souls above?

Prince Edward.

EPIMANES.

BY E. A. POE.
Chacun a ses vertus.—Crebillon's Xerxes.

Antiochus Epiphanes is very generally looked upon as the Gog of the prophet Ezekiel. This honor is, however, more properly attributable to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. And, indeed, the character of the Syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment. His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one years before the coming of Christ—his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus—his implacable hostility to the Jews—his pollution of the Holy of Holies, and his miserable death at Taba, after a tumultuous reign of eleven years, are circumstances of a prominent kind, and therefore more generally noticed by the historians of his time than the impious, dastardly, cruel, silly, and whimsical achievements which make up the sum total of his private life and reputation.

* * * * *

Let us suppose, gentle reader, that it is now the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and thirty, and let us, for a few minutes, imagine ourselves at that most grotesque habitation of man, the remarkable city of Antioch. To be sure there were, in Syria and other countries, sixteen cities of that name besides the one to which I more particularly allude. But ours is that which went by the name of Antiochia Epidaphne, from its vicinity to the little village Daphne, where stood a temple to that divinity. It was built (although about this matter there is some dispute) by Seleucus Nicanor, the first king of the country after Alexander the Great, in memory of his father Antiochus, and became immediately the residence of the Syrian monarchy. In the flourishing times of the Roman empire, it was the ordinary station of the Prefect of the eastern provinces; and many of the emperors of the queen city, among whom may be mentioned, most especially, Verus and Valens, spent here the greater part of their time. But I perceive we have arrived at the city itself. Let us ascend this battlement, and throw our eyes around upon the town and neighboring country.

What broad and rapid river is that which forces its way with innumerable falls, through the mountainous wilderness, and finally through the wilderness of buildings?

That is the Orontes, and the only water in sight, with the exception of the Mediterranean, which stretches, like a broad mirror, about twelve miles off to the southward. Every one has beheld the Mediterranean; but, let me tell you, there are few who have had a peep at Antioch. By few, I mean few who, like you and I, have had, at the same time, the advantages of a modern education. Therefore cease to regard that sea, and give your whole attention to the mass of houses that lie beneath us. You will remember that it is now the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and thirty. Were it later—for example, were it unfortunately the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and thirty-six, we should be deprived of this extraordinary spectacle. In the nineteenth century Antioch is—that is, Antioch will be in a lamentable state of decay. It will have been, by that time, totally destroyed, at three different periods, by three successive earthquakes. Indeed, to say the truth, what little of its former self may then remain, will be found in so desolate and ruinous a state, that the patriarch will remove his residence to Damascus. This is well. I see you profit by my advice, and are making the most of your time in inspecting the premises—in

———satisfying your eyes
With the memorials and the things of fame
That most renown this city.

I beg pardon—I had forgotten that Shakspeare will not flourish for nearly seventeen hundred and fifty years to come. But does not the appearance of Epidaphne justify me in calling it grotesque?

It is well fortified—and in this respect is as much indebted to nature as to art.

Very true.

There are a prodigious number of stately palaces.

There are.

And the numerous temples, sumptuous and magnificent, may bear comparison with the most lauded of antiquity.

All this I must acknowledge. Still there is an infinity of mud huts and abominable hovels. We cannot help perceiving abundance of filth in every kennel, and, were it not for the overpowering fumes of idolatrous incense, I have no doubt we should find a most intolerable stench. Did you ever behold streets so insufferably narrow, or houses so miraculously tall? What a gloom their shadows cast upon the ground! It is well the swinging lamps in those endless collonades are kept burning throughout the day—we should otherwise have the darkness of Egypt in the time of her desolation.

It is certainly a strange place! What is the meaning of yonder singular building? See!—it towers above all the others, and lies to the eastward of what I take to be the royal palace.

That is the new Temple of the Sun, who is adored in Syria under the title of Elah Gabalah. Hereafter a very notorious Roman Emperor will institute this worship in Rome, and thence derive a cognomen Heliogabalus. I dare say you would like a peep at the divinity of the temple. You need not look up at the Heavens, his Sunship is not there—at least not the Sunship adored by the Syrians. That Deity will be found in the interior of yonder building. He is worshipped under the figure of a large stone pillar terminating at the summit in a cone or pyramid, whereby is denoted Fire.

Hark!—behold!—who can those ridiculous beings be—half naked—with their faces painted—shouting and gesticulating to the rabble?

Some few are mountebanks. Others more particularly belong to the race of philosophers. The greatest portion, however—those especially who belabor the populace with clubs, are the principal courtiers of the palace, executing, as in duty bound, some laudable comicality of the king's.

But what have we here? Heavens!—the town is swarming with wild beasts! What a terrible spectacle!—what a dangerous peculiarity!

Terrible, if you please; but not in the least degree dangerous. Each animal, if you will take the pains to observe, is following, very quietly, in the wake of its master. Some few, to be sure, are led with a rope about the neck, but these are chiefly the lesser or more timid species. The lion, the tiger, and the leopard are entirely without restraint. They have been trained without difficulty to their present profession, and attend upon their respective owners in the capacity of valets-de-chambre. It is true, there are occasions when Nature asserts her violated dominion—but then the devouring of a man-at-arms, or the throtling of a consecrated bull, are circumstances of too little moment to be more than hinted at in Epidaphne.

But what extraordinary tumult do I hear? Surely this is a loud noise even for Antioch! It argues some commotion of unusual interest.

Yes—undoubtedly. The king has ordered some novel spectacle—some gladiatorial exhibition at the Hippodrome—or perhaps the massacre of the Scythian prisoners—or the conflagration of his new palace—or the tearing down of a handsome temple—or, indeed, a bonfire of a few Jews. The uproar increases. Shouts of laughter ascend the skies. The air becomes dissonant with wind instruments, and horrible with the clamor of a million throats. Let us descend, for the love of fun, and see what is going on. This way—be careful. Here we are in the principal street, which is called the street of Timarchus. The sea of people is coming this way, and we shall find a difficulty in stemming the tide. They are pouring through the alley of Heraclides, which leads directly from the palace—therefore the king is most probably among the rioters. Yes—I hear the shouts of the herald proclaiming his approach in the pompous phraseology of the East. We shall have a glimpse of his person as he passes by the temple of Ashimah. Let us ensconce ourselves in the vestibule of the Sanctuary—he will be here anon. In the meantime let us survey this image. What is it? Oh, it is the God Ashimah in proper person. You perceive, however, that he is neither a lamb, nor a goat, nor a Satyr—neither has he much resemblance to the Pan of the Arcadians. Yet all these appearances have been given—I beg pardon—will be given by the learned of future ages to the Ashimah of the Syrians. Put on your spectacles, and tell me what it is. What is it?

Bless me, it is an ape!

True—a baboon; but by no means the less a Deity. His name is a derivation of the Greek Simia—what great fools are antiquarians! But see!—see!—yonder scampers a ragged little urchin. Where is he going? What is he bawling about? What does he say? Oh!—he says the king is coming in triumph—that he is dressed in state—and that he has just finished putting to death with his own hand a thousand chained Israelitish prisoners. For this exploit the ragamuffin is lauding him to the skies. Hark!—here come a troop of a similar description. They have made a Latin hymn upon the valor of the king, and are singing it as they go.

Mille, mille, mille,
Mille, mille, mille,
Decollavimus, unus homo!
Mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus!
Mille, mille, mille!
Vivat qui mille mille occidit!
Tantum vini habet nemo
Quantum sanguinis effudit!¹

which may be thus paraphrased.

A thousand, a thousand, a thousand,
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand,
We, with one warrior, have slain!
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand,
Sing a thousand over again!
Soho!—let us sing
Long life to our king,
Who knocked over a thousand so fine!
Soho!—let us roar,
He has given us more
Red gallons of gore
Than all Syria can furnish of wine!

¹ Flavius Vopiscus says that the Hymn which is here introduced, was sung by the rabble upon the occasion of Aurelian, in the Sarmatic war, having slain with his own hand nine hundred and fifty of the enemy.

Do you hear that flourish of trumpets?

Yes—the king is coming! See!—the people are aghast with admiration, and lift up their eyes to the heavens in reverence. He comes—he is coming—there he is!

Who?—where?—the king?—do not behold him—cannot say that I perceive him.

Then you must be blind.

Very possible. Still I see nothing but a tumultuous mob of idiots and madmen, who are busy in prostrating themselves before a gigantic cameleopard, and endeavoring to obtain a kiss of the animal's hoofs. See! the beast has very justly kicked one of the rabble over—and another—and another—and another. Indeed, I cannot help admiring the animal for the excellent use he is making of his feet.

Rabble, indeed!—why these are the noble and free citizens of Epidaphne! Beast, did you say?—take care that you are not overheard. Do you not perceive that the animal has the visage of a man? Why, my dear sir, that cameleopard is no other than Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus the Illustrious, King of Syria, and the most potent of the Autocrats of the East! It is true that he is entitled, at times, Antiochus Epimanes, Antiochus the madman—but that is because all people have not the capacity to appreciate his merits. It is also certain that he is at present ensconced in the hide of a beast, and is doing his best to play the part of a cameleopard—but this is done for the better sustaining his dignity as king. Besides, the monarch is of a gigantic stature, and the dress is therefore neither unbecoming nor over large. We may, however, presume he would not have adopted it but for some occasion of especial state. Such you will allow is the massacre of a thousand Jews. With what a superior dignity the monarch perambulates upon all fours. His tail, you perceive, is held aloft by his two principal concubines, Elline and Argelais; and his whole appearance would be infinitely prepossessing, were it not for the protuberance of his eyes, which will certainly start out of his head, and the queer color of his face, which has become nondescript from the quantity of wine he has swallowed. Let us follow to the Hippodrome, whither he is proceeding, and listen to the song of triumph which he is commencing.

Who is king but Epiphanes?
Say—do you know?
Who is king but Epiphanes?
Bravo—bravo!
There is none but Epiphanes,
No—there is none:
So tear down the temples,
And put out the sun!
Who is king but Epiphanes?
Say—do you know?
Who is king but Epiphanes?
Bravo—bravo!

Well and strenuously sung! The populace are hailing him 'Prince of Poets,' as well as 'Glory of the East,' 'Delight of the Universe,' and 'most remarkable of Cameleopards.' They have encored his effusion—and, do you hear?—he is singing it over again. When he arrives at the Hippodrome he will be crowned with the Poetic Wreath in anticipation of his victory at the approaching Olympics.

But, good Jupiter!—what is the matter in the crowd behind us?

Behind us did you say?—oh!—ah!—I perceive. My friend, it is well that you spoke in time. Let us get into a place of safety as soon as possible. Here!—let us conceal ourselves in the arch of this aqueduct, and I will inform you presently of the origin of this commotion. It has turned out as I have been anticipating. The singular appearance of the Cameleopard with the head of a man, has, it seems, given offence to the notions of propriety entertained in general by the wild animals domesticated in the city. A mutiny has been the result, and as is usual upon such occasions, all human efforts will be of no avail in quelling the mob. Several of the Syrians have already been devoured—but the general voice of the four-footed patriots seems to be for eating up the Cameleopard. 'The Prince of Poets,' therefore, is upon his hinder legs, and running for his life. His courtiers have left him in the lurch, and his concubines have let fall his tail. 'Delight of the Universe,' thou art in a sad predicament! 'Glory of the East,' thou art in danger of mastication! Therefore never regard so piteously thy tail—it will undoubtedly be draggled in the mud, and for this there is no help. Look not behind thee then at its unavoidable degradation—but take courage—ply thy legs with vigor—and scud for the Hippodrome! Remember that the beasts are at thy heels! Remember that thou art Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus, the Illustrious!—also 'Prince of Poets,' 'Glory of the East,' 'Delight of the Universe,' and 'most remarkable of Cameleopards!' Heavens! what a power of speed thou art displaying! What a capacity for leg-bail thou art developing! Run, Prince! Bravo, Epiphanes! Well done, Cameleopard! Glorious Antiochus! He runs!—he moves!—he flies! Like a shell from a catapult he approaches the Hippodrome! He leaps!—he shrieks!—he is there! This is well—for hadst thou, 'Glory of the East,' been half a second longer in reaching the gates of the Amphitheatre, there is not a bear's cub in Epidaphne who would not have had a nibble at thy carcase. Let us be off—let us take our departure!—for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole town is topsy-turvy.

Surely this is the most populous city of the East! What a wilderness of people! What a jumble of all ranks and ages! What a multiplicity of sects and nations! What a variety of costumes! What a Babel of languages! What a screaming of beasts! What a tinkling of instruments! What a parcel of philosophers!

Come let us be off!

Stay a moment! I see a vast hubbub in the Hippodrome. What is the meaning of it I beseech you?

That? Oh nothing! The noble and free citizens of Epidaphne being, as they declare, well satisfied of the faith, valor, wisdom, and divinity of their king, and having, moreover, been eye witnesses of his late superhuman agility, do think it no more than their duty to invest his brows (in addition to the Poetic Crown) with the wreath of victory in the foot race—a wreath which it is evident he must obtain at the celebration of the next Olympiad.

TO HELEN.

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea,
The weary wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome.
Lo! in that little window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The folded scroll within thy hand—
Ah! Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy land!

E. A. P.

ON THE POETRY OF BURNS¹

BY JAMES F. OTIS.

¹ This paper was written at the request of a literary society of which the author was a member, and the facts are gathered principally from Currie. Some extracts from the poet's own letters, and from an eloquent review of Lockhart's Burns, which appeared a few years since in the Edinburgh Review, are interwoven, and the whole made up as an essay to be "read not printed."

If we take the different definitions of the term "Poetry," that have been given this beautiful and magical art by the various writers upon its nature and properties, as each supported by reason and fact, we shall hardly arrive at any degree of certainty as to its real meaning. It has been called "the art of imitation," or mimickry. Aristotle and Plato characterize it as "the expression of thoughts by fictions;" and there are innumerable other definitions, none of which are more satisfactory to the student than is that of the celebrated "Blair." He says, "it is the language of Passion,—or enlivened Imagination, formed, most commonly, into regular numbers. The primary object of a poet is to please, and to move; and therefore it is to imagination and the passions that he speaks. He may, and he ought to have it in his view to instruct and reform; but it is indirectly, and by pleasing, and moving, that he accomplishes this end. His mind is supposed to be animated by some interesting object which fires his imagination or engages his passions: and which, of course, communicates to his style a peculiar elevation, suited to his ideas, very different from that mode of expression which is natural to the mind in its calm, ordinary state." And this definition will allow of being yet more particularly and minutely understood: it is susceptible of being analyzed still farther, and described as "a language, in which fiction and imagination may, with propriety, be indulged beyond the strict limits of truth and reality."

Who is there that has not felt the power of Poetry? For it is not essential that it be embodied in regular and finely wrought periods, and conveyed to the ear in alternate rhyme, and made to harmonize in nicely-toned successions of sounds. Who is there that has not felt its power? It originated with the very nature of man; and is confined to no nation, age, or situation. This is proved by the well-attested fact, that Poetry ever diminishes in strength of thought, boldness of conception, and power of embodying striking images, in proportion as it becomes polished and cultivated. The uncivilized tenant of our forests is, by nature, a Poet! Whether he would lead his brethren to the field of warfare, or conclude with the white man a treaty of peace and future amity, still his style evinces the same grand characteristic,—the spirit of true Poetry. The barbarous Celt, the benighted Icelander, and the earliest and most unenlightened nations of the world, as described on the page of history, are proofs of the principle we have been considering; and it was not, indeed, until society became settled and civilized, that poetical composition ceased to embrace every impulse of which the human soul is susceptible. It was not till then, that, in the language of a distinguished writer, "Poetry became a separate art, calculated, chiefly, to please; and confined, generally, to such subjects as related to the imagination and the passions." Then was it that there arose, naturally, divisions in the classes or schools of Poetry,—as Lyric, Elegiac, Pastoral, Didactic, Descriptive, and Dramatic. A consideration of each of these classes might furnish us with materiel for an interesting examination of their individual peculiarities: but time will not permit so wide a range.

ROBERT BURNS was born on the 25th of January, 1759, in the town of Ayr, in Scotland. His pretensions by birth, were a descent from poor and humble, but honest and intelligent parents; and a title to inherit all their intelligence and virtue, as well as all their poverty. Upon the nature of these pretensions, Burns, in a letter to a friend, dated many years after, takes occasion to say: "I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character, which the pye-coatcd guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at Edinborough last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office; and looking through that granary of honors, I there found almost every name in the kingdom: but for me,—

'My ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood.'"

His father was a native of the north of Scotland, but he was driven by various misfortunes to Edinborough, and thence still farther south to Ayrshire, where he was first employed as a gardener in one of the families in that vicinity, and afterwards, being desirous of settling in life, took a lease of a little farm of seven acres, on which he reared a clay cottage with his own hands, and soon after married a wife. The first fruit of this union was our poet, whose birth took place two years thereafter. Robert, during his early days, was by no means a favorite with any body. He was remarkable, however, for a retentive memory, and a thoughtful turn of mind. His ear was dull, and his voice harsh and dissonant, and he evinced no musical talent or poetical genius until his fifteenth or sixteenth year. It is pretended by his biographers, (of whom there have been several, and who all agree in this opinion,) that the seeds of Poetry were very early implanted in his mind, and that the recitations and fireside chaunts of an old crone, who was familiar in his father's family, served to cherish their growth, and strengthen their hold upon his memory. This "auld gudewife" is said to have had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning fairies, witches, warlocks, apparitions, giants, dragons, and other agents of romantic fiction. Speaking of these tales and songs, he says, in his later years, "so strong an effect had they upon my imagination, that even to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I am fain to keep a sharp look out in suspicious places; and, though nobody can feel more sceptical than I have ever done in such matters, yet it often requires an effort of Philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."

When Robert was in his seventh year, his father quitted the birth-place of the poet, and took a lease of a small farm on the estate of Mr. Fergusson, called Mount Oliphant. He had been, for a year or two previous to this event, a pupil of Dr. Murdoch, who is represented as being a very worthy and acute man, and who took much pains with the education of the future poet. In fact, his father had previously taught him arithmetic, and whatever of lore could be gathered from the "big ha' bible," as they sat by their solitary candle; and he had been sent, alternately with his brother, a week at a time during a summer's quarter, to a writing master at the parish school at Dalrymple. But Dr. Murdoch, his faithful friend in youth and age, instructed him in English Grammar, and aided him in the acquisition of a little French. After a fortnight's instruction in the latter language, he was able to translate it into English prose, but, farther than this, his new attainment was never of much advantage to him. Indeed, his attempts to speak the language were ridiculously futile at times. On one occasion, when he called in Edinborough at the house of an accomplished friend, a lady who had been educated in France, he found her conversing with a French lady, to whom he was introduced. The French woman understood English; but Burns must need try his powers. His first sentence was intended to compliment the lady on her apparent eloquence in conversation; but by mistaking some idiom, he made the lady understand that she was too fond of hearing herself speak. The French woman, highly incensed, replied, that there were more instances of vain poets than of talkative women; and Burns was obliged to use his own language in appeasing her. He attempted the Latin, but his success did not encourage him to persevere. And, in fine, with the addition of a quarter's attendance to Geometry and Surveying, at the age of nineteen, and a few lessons at a country dancing school, I have now mentioned all his opportunities of acquiring a scholastic education. He says of himself, in allusion to his boyish days, "though it cost the schoolmaster many thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs and particles."

As soon as young Burns had strength to work, he was employed as a laborer upon his father's farm. At twelve he was a good ploughman; a year later he assisted at the threshing-floor; and was his father's main dependance at fifteen, there being no hired laborers, male or female, in the family at the time. In one of his letters, (and it is by extracting copiously from them, that I propose chiefly to narrate his history,) he remarks upon this subject—"I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labor: the only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune, were the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little, chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated—there was contamination in the very entrance!" And it was this kind of life,—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave, that brought him to his sixteenth year, at about which period he first perpetrated the sin of rhyming. Of this you shall have an account in the author's own language.

"You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labors of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,—she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, rigid prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell. You medical people—(he was addressing the celebrated Dr. Moore) you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I plucked the cruel nettle-stings and thistles from her little white hand. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favorite reel, to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin: but my girl sung a song, which was said to have been composed by a country laird's son upon a neighboring maiden with whom he was in love! and I saw; no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting that he could shear sheep and cast peats, (his father living in the moorlands,) he had no more scholar craft than myself."

Thus, with Burns, began Love and Poetry. This, his first effort, is valuable, more from the promise it gave of his future excellence as a poet, than for any intrinsic merit which it possessed as a performance of so gifted a genius. I have been the more particular in describing the circumstances attending the composition of these, his earliest verses, for the proof they afford of the truth of the general remark, that of all the poetical compositions of Burns, his love-songs, and amatory poetry are far the best. His feelings predominated over his fancy, and whenever the latter is introduced we are forced to deem it an intrusion for the strong contrast it presents with the native and characteristic simplicity of his more natural and heartfelt effusions.

Referring to the predilections which I have said gave a character to so large a portion of his poetical writings, he says,—"My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other: and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favor, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse." And in another letter he says farther, "Another circumstance in my life which made some alterations in my mind and manners, was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. Scenes of riot and roaring dissipation were, till now, new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. For all that, I went on with a high hand in my geometry till the sun entered Virgo, (a month, which is always a carnival in my bosom,) when a charming fair one, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my duties. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days more, but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel,

'Like Proserpine, gathering flowers,
Herself, a fairer flower.'

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining weeks I staid I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her. And the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless."

This brings us to a period, which the poet calls an important era in his life—his twenty-third year; and he explains this in the following näive and characteristic style. "Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in the neighboring town of Irvine to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair; as we were welcoming in the new year with a carousal, our shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left like a true poet, not worth a sixpence." About this time the clouds of misfortune thickened around his father's head, who, indeed, was already far gone in a consumption; and to crown the distresses incident to his situation, a girl, to whom he was engaged to be married, jilted him with peculiar circumstances of mortification.

During his residence at Irvine, our poet was miserably poor and dispirited. His food consisted chiefly of oat meal, and this was sent to him from his father's family; and so small was, of necessity, his allowance, that he was obliged to borrow often of a neighbor, until he should again be supplied. He was very melancholy with the idea, that the dreams of future eminence and distinction which his imagination had presented to his mind, were only dreams; and to dissipate this melancholy his resource was society with its enjoyments. The incidents to which I have alluded took place some years before the publication of his poems. About this time William Burns removed from Mount Oliphant to Lochlea, and later still, to the parish of Tarbolton, where, as we are informed by a letter from Dr. Murdoch, written in 1799, that "Robert wrote most of his poems." It was in Tarbolton that Burns established a debating club, which consisted of the poet, his brother Gilbert, and five or six other young peasants of the neighborhood—the laws and regulations for which were furnished by the former. Among these members was David Sillar, to whom the two beautiful poems, entitled "Epistles to Davie, a brother poet," were addressed. Some of the rules and regulations of this club are so peculiar, and bespeak so forcibly the character of their author, that I cannot resist the temptation to transcribe some of them. The eighth is in the following words:

"Every member shall attend at the meetings, without he can give a proper excuse for not attending. And it is desired, that every one who cannot attend will send his excuse with some other member: and he who shall be absent three meetings without sending such excuse, shall be summoned to the club night, when if he fail to appear, or send an excuse, he shall be excluded."

And the tenth and last rule is worthy of particular notice, and a part of it of incorporation into the code even of more extensive and more pretending societies: it is as follows:

"Every man proper for a member of this club, must have a frank, honest, open heart—above any thing low or mean, and must be a professed lover of the female sex. No haughty, self-conceited person, who looks upon himself as superior to the rest of the club—and especially no mean spirited, worldly mortal, whose only will is to heap up money, shall, upon any pretence whatever, be admitted. In short, the proper person for this society, is a cheerful, honest-hearted lad—who, if he has a friend that is true, a mistress that is kind, and as much wealth as genteely to make both ends meet, is just as happy as this world can make him."

But I must, however reluctantly, omit many interesting particulars in the earlier, and more private life of our poet, and hasten to his visit to Edinborough in the winter of 1786. The celebrated Dugald Stewart, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Edinborough, in a letter to Dr. Currie, alludes to several of Burns's early poems, and avers, that it was upon his showing a volume of them to Henry McKenzie, (the celebrated author of "The Man of Feeling,") that this gentleman introduced the rustic bard to the notice of the public, in the xcvii No. of The Lounger, which justly famous periodical paper was then in the course of publication, and had long been a favorite work with the young poet.

Depressed by poverty, and chagrined with the contrasts which fate seemed malignantly bent upon opposing to his ambitious aspirations, his only object, at last, had been to accumulate the petty sum of nine guineas, (which he did by the publication of a few of his poems,) and to take passage in the steerage of a ship bound to the West Indies, determined to become a negro driver, or any thing else, so that he could escape the fangs of that merciless pack, the bailiffs; for, said he,

"Hungry ruin had me in the wind."

He had taken leave of his friends—had despatched his single chest to the vessel—had written his Farewell Song, which he sang to the beautiful air of "Roslin Castle," and which closes with,

"Adieu, my friends!—Adieu, my foes!
My peace with these, my love with those:
The bursting tears my heart declare,
Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr!"

when a letter from Dr. Blacklock, elicited by a perusal of the volume to which I have just now alluded, opened for him new prospects to his poetic ambition, by inviting him to Edinborough. Thither, then, he went—and his reception by all classes, ages and ranks, was as flattering as, in his most sanguine aspirations, he could have desired. Dr. Robertson, the celebrated historian, Dr. Blair, Dr. Gregory, Professor Stewart, Mr. McKenzie, and many more men of letters were particularly interested in his reception, and in the cultivation of his genius. He became, from his first entrance into Edinborough, the object of universal attention, and it seemed as if there was no possibility of rewarding his merits too highly. Mr. Lockhart, the latest and most eloquent of the numerous biographers of Burns, has a note, containing an extract from a letter of Sir Walter Scott, and furnished by the latter for his work, which is too interesting to be passed over. It relates to a personal interview of Sir Walter with our poet, during his first visit to Edinborough.

"As for Burns," writes he, "I may truly say, 'Virgilium vidi tantum.' I was a lad of fifteen in 1786–7, when he came first to Edinborough, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him: but I had very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most frequented." ... "As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Fergusson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened. The only thing I remember, which was remarkable in Burns's manner, was the effect produced upon him by a print, with the ideas suggested to his mind upon reading the story whereof, (written under it) he was moved even to tears. He asked whose the lines were? and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half forgotten poem of Langhorne's. I passed this information to Burns by a friend, and I was rewarded with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect, with very great pleasure." ... "His person," continues Sir Walter, "was strong and robust: his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments: the eye, alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed, (I say literally glowed,) when he spoke with feeling or interest." ... "I never saw another such eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption."

After making a few more observations with relation to the poet's conversation and manner, the writer I have been quoting concludes his reminiscence as follows:

"This is all I can tell you about Burns. I never saw him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me, as I could not expect he should. I have only to add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer, dressed in his best, to dine with the laird. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I do not know that I can add any thing to these recollections of forty years since."

These are extracts, that, one day or other, will be looked upon as curiosities in literature, and will be inestimably precious: at present, I fear me, an apology should follow their introduction, at such length: but I shall only say in the language of another, in excuse for dwelling so long on this incident in the life of Burns, that it forms "the most remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern literature."

But if this, his first winter in Edinborough, produced a favorable effect upon the future fame of Robert Burns, as a poet, it was also the source of vast unhappiness to him, during his after life. Not only was he admitted to the company of men of letters and virtue, but he was pressed into the society of those, whose social habits, and love of the pleasures of life were their chief attractions. When among his superiors in rank and intelligence, his carriage was decorous and diffident: but among others, his boon companions, he, in his turn, was lord of the ascendant: and thus commenced a career, which, had its outset been a more prudent one, would probably not have closed until a later period, nor without a much greater measure of glory and honor to him, who was thus unfortunately misguided.

During the residence of Burns at Edinborough, he published a new and enlarged edition of his poems, and was thus enabled to visit other parts of his native country, and some parts of England beside. Having done this, he returned, and during most of the following winter, we find him again in the gay and literary metropolis, much less an object of novelty, and, of course, of general attention and interest, than before. Unable to find employment or occupation of a literary nature, he quitted Edinborough in the spring of 1788, and took the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries: besides advancing 200l. for the liberation of his brother Gilbert from some difficulties into which certain agricultural misfortunes had involved him. He was, soon after, united to his "bonnie Jean," the theme of so much of his delightful verse, and employed himself in stocking and cultivating his farm, and rebuilding the dwelling house upon it. There is an anecdote of him in the history furnished by Dr. Currie, the truth of which Mr. Lockhart seems disposed to question: his doubts originate from a consideration of the absurd costume in which the older biographer has seen fit to invest the poet in his narration. As this is the only exception taken to it, and as it is certainly illustrative of Burns's character and manners in other respects, and as it is related, too, upon so good authority, I shall venture to introduce it in this, its proper place, in point of time.

"In the summer of 1791, two English gentlemen, who had before met Burns at Edinborough, paid a visit to him in Ellisland. On calling at his house, they were informed that he had walked out on the banks of the river; and, dismounting from their horses, they proceeded in search of him. On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap, made of a fox's skin, on his head, a loose great coat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broadsword. It was Burns. He received them with great cordiality, and asked them to share his humble dinner; an invitation which they accepted. On the table they found boiled beef with vegetables and barley-broth, after the manner of Scotland, of which they partook heartily. After dinner, the bard told them ingenuously that he had no wine to offer them—nothing better than Highland whiskey, a bottle of which Mrs. Burns set on the board. He produced, at the same time, his punch-bowl, made of Inverary marble; and mixing the spirit with water and sugar, filled their glasses, and invited them to drink. The travellers were in haste, and besides, the flavor of the whiskey to their southron palates was scarcely tolerable: but the generous poet offered them his best, and his ardent hospitality they found it impossible to resist. Burns was in his happiest mood, and the charms of his conversation were altogether fascinating. He ranged over a great variety of topics, illuminating whatever he touched. He related the tales of his infancy and his youth; he recited some of the gayest, and some of the tenderest of his poems: in the wildest of his strains of mirth he threw in some touches of melancholy, and spread around him the electric emotions of his powerful mind. The Highland whiskey improved in its flavor; the bowl was more than once emptied, and as often replenished: the guests of our poet forgat the flight of time and the dictates of prudence; at the hour of midnight they lost their way in returning to Dumfries, and could scarcely distinguish it, when assisted by the morning's dawn."

On his farm at Ellisland, Burns continued some few years; but the novelty of his situation soon wore off, and then returned the irregularities, to which, from his warm imagination, and his love of society, and his independent turn of mind, he was so strongly predisposed. Fearing that his farm alone would be insufficient to procure for him that independence, which he had hoped one day or other to attain, he applied for and obtained the office of exciseman, or as it was vulgarly called guager, for the district in which he lived. About the year 1792, he was solicited to contribute to a collection of Scottish songs, to be published by Mr. Thompson, of Edinborough. Abandoning his farm, which, from neglect and mismanagement was by no means productive, and receiving from the Board of Excise an appointment to a new district, with a salary of 70l. per annum, he removed to a small house in Dumfries, and commenced the fulfilment of his literary engagement with Mr. Thompson. His principal songs were written during this time, and day after day was adding heighth and durability to the towering and imperishable monument, which will hand down his name and fame to many generations.

But now commences his rapid and melancholy decay, the fast withering consumption of his mental and physical faculties. His had been a short but brilliant course in literature—a short and melancholy one indeed, in other respects. Defeated in his hopes, mortified in the discovery that of the two classes of friends who offered him their society and their example in the outset of his career, he had chosen the least improving and efficient as his guides and counsellors—he fast declined into that common receptacle of dust which covers alike the remains of the gifted and the simple, the prudent and the weak. He was worn with toil and poverty, and disappointed hope.

"Can the laborer rest from his labor too soon?
He had toiled all the morning, and slumbered at noon."

* * * * *

Imprudent in the declaration of his political sentiments, Burns lost the path to preferment in the line of his political duties; easily enticed beyond the sway of his sober and virtuous resolutions, he became broken in health, and destitute of resources; too proud to beg and too proud to complain, his temper became irritable and gloomy, and at length a fever, attended with delirium and debility, terminated his life in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Leaving a widow, who is still living in the house where he died,² and four sons, of whom three are also at present living. Thus died Robert Burns, "poor, but not in debt, and bequeathing to posterity a name, the fame of which will not soon be eclipsed."

² Since deceased.

Burns, though he sometimes forgot his homage to the purer and brighter and more enduring orbs of heaven, in chasing the ignis fatuus lights of earth, must ever interest us as a poet and a man. A great many considerations may be properly urged in answer to the too common, and far from just charges upon his moral character. I am of opinion, that his own declaration, made not many months previous to his death, is capable of full and complete support and proof, by a reference to all the circumstances of his life. When accused of disloyalty to his government, he says, in a letter to a distinguished friend—

"In your hands, sir, permit me to lodge my strong disavowal, and defiance of such slanderous falsehoods. Be assured—and tell the world, that Burns was a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman from necessity; but—I will say it! the sterling of his honesty, poverty could not debase, and his independent British spirit, oppression might bend, but could not subdue!"

I have advanced the opinion that the crisis of Burns's fate was his visit, his first visit to Edinborough. From that event may be dated the complete establishment of his character during his after life; and with those who received him there, and undertook the task of doing what they, in their wisdom, thought expedient for the cultivation of his genius, and for his advancement or settlement in life, must, I think, rest the credit or the blame of much—of almost all his future excellence or failure. Burns went into the midst of that gay and literary circle, ready and liable to receive the most striking impressions, as the guides of his opinions and the regulators of his actions. It was another world! It had all the freshness of a new existence in the eyes, and to the mind of the rustic Ayrshire bard. Strong-minded and high-hearted as he was, he could not but look up to his new friends and patrons, as exemplars for his own imitation: and although he was not visibly perplexed with the flashings of these new and unaccustomed lights, yet he was, at heart, led astray by them. They were like the fabled corpse-fires, which danced merrily before the wildered eyes of the traveller, luring him onward to his doom—a grave! He had left the "bonnie banks of Ayr," a young plant, shooting luxuriantly up into a tall and rugged, but healthful tree; and it was upon the new soil, into which it had been transplanted, that this beautiful exotic received an inclination which was destined to be a final one. And yet I would not throw upon the fame of such men as Stewart, and Blair, and Robertson, and McKenzie, the imputation of design, or even of imprudence, in thus being accessory to the melancholy ruin, which followed the victim's acceptance of their kind, and really benevolent patronage. It is only to be lamented that upon his arrival at Edinburgh, he was not introduced at once, and alone, into that circle, which might reasonably have been designated as the only one, in which such a genius and character as Burns's could be duly appreciated and cultivated. But the secret is, he was regarded by them, not as a being for their sympathy, but a thing for the indulgence of their curiosity. In the language of another, "By the great he was treated in the customary fashion; entertained at their tables and dismissed: certain modica of pudding and praise are, from time to time, gladly exchanged for the fascination of his presence; which exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each party goes his several way."

Instead of treating with him, as a man, whose genius entitled him to a stand upon their own proud and distinguished level, all uncultivated and unpolished as that genius was—they universally spoke to him, and of him, as an object of patronage—as something that was to become valuable to the world, only through their instrumentality. This feeling, this mode of treatment, are not to be objected to, in themselves considered: their existence was natural, and, rightly conducted, might have been made productive of much good, and lasting happiness to him, who was their subject. But Burns was not the man to rest quietly under the most oppressive burthen that a proud man can ever feel—Patronage. And thus his relative situation to his literary friends could not but be viewed by a mind so sensitive as his own, in its true character. And we find (as soon as the novelty of a "ploughman-poet" had worn off—as every fashionable novelty will wear off in time,) that our poet began to remember that "a life of pleasure and praise would not support his family," and having experienced a portion of these reverses, which they, who depend on popular favor and flattery, must ever find inseparable therefrom—we see him stocking his little farm, and soon after adding the emoluments of the office of exciseman for the district of Ayr, to his scanty income. And here he might have been

"Content to breathe his native air,
On his own ground,"

but for his kind yet misjudging friends, "the patrons," as they were called, "of his genius." Unfortunately for his future peace, each new arrival at his little home of Ellisland, of those who had known him at Edinborough, furnished proof that his old habits of conviviality were only interrupted, but by no means broken: And it was only by the frequency of these opportunities of good cheer in the society of the gay companions of his city life, that he became inattentive to his agricultural concerns, and that he finally lost the composure and happiness, which were the attendants of his new situation, and with these was lost his inclination to temperate and assiduous exertion.

I would not be understood as denying, in this argument, a previous, perhaps a natural tendency in the character of Burns, to undue and intemperate excitement: but the impression upon my own mind is strong, that this bias might have been checked and regulated, and turned to good account by the noble and learned patrons of his genius. Tried by the statutes of strict morality, a man like Burns has many things to plead in his own defence, which those of less mind and dimmer intellect cannot justly claim as their own: and it is in the unwillingness to make this distinction, that the world are, too often, unfair judges in cases of character. A distinguished writer thus elegantly remarks, upon a similar subject.

"The world is habitually unjust in its judgments: It is not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, which constitutes the real aberration. With the world, this orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system: or it may be a city hippodrome, nay, the circle of a mill-course, its diameter a score of feet or paces—but the inches of deflection, only, are measured; and it is assumed that the diameter of the mill-course, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when compared with them. Here, then, lies the root of the blind, cruel condemnation of such men as Robert Burns, which one never listens to with approval. Granted—the ship comes into harbor with her shrouds and tackle damaged, and is the pilot therefore blame-worthy, because he has not been all-wise and all-powerful? For us to know how blame-worthy he is, tell us how long and how arduous his voyage has been."

But, after all, it is chiefly with Burns as a poet that we have to do—it is in this light that posterity will regard him, and it is into the hands of this tribunal that he must, finally, be resigned. I would that time had allowed me to refer more particularly to the works of this delightful bard, than I have been enabled to do on the present occasion. They began with his earliest, and were continued until his latest years. Scattered along his devious, and often gloomy path, they seem like beautiful wild flowers, which he threw there to cheer and animate the passer-by, with their undying bloom and sweet fragrance. "In the changes of language his songs may, no doubt, suffer change—but the associated strain of sentiment and of music will perhaps survive, while the clear stream sweeps down the Vale of Yarrow, or the yellow broom waves on the Cowdenknowes."

I have had occasion, in the course of this essay, to remark, that the songs of Burns are, by far, the most finished productions of his muse: and his admirers may safely rest his fame upon them alone, even if his longer and more elaborate poems should fail to secure him the immortality he deserves. The celebrated Fletcher somewhere says, "Give me the making of a people's songs, and let who will make their laws!" And Burns has, in the composition of his songs, placed himself on an equality with the legislators of the world! for where, in the cottage or the palace, are they unsung? Whose blood has not thrilled, and whose lip has not been compressed, as the noble air of "Scots! wha hae wi' Wallace bled!" has swelled upon his ear? Who cannot join in the touching and beautiful chorus of his "Auld lang syne?" Who has not laughed over his "Willie brewed a peck o' maut," nor felt the rising tear of sympathetic sadness whilst listening to his "Farewell to Ayr!" and his celebrated "Mary in Heaven?" In all these, and many more, which are familiar as very proverbs in our mouths, the poet has shown such a versatility, and yet such an entireness of talent—such tenderness and delicacy in his sorrow—yet withal, so pure and delightful a rapture in his mirth; he weeps with so true and feeling a heart, and laughs with such loud, and at the same time such unaffected mirth, that he finds sympathy wherever his harp is strung. The subjects he chose, and the free, natural style in which he treated them, have won him this praise—and it shall endure, the constant and lasting tribute of generation after generation.

But it has been beautifully said, (and who will not agree in the sentiment?) that "in the hearts of men of right feelings, there exists no consciousness of need to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration, he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than one of marble: neither will his works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves, this little Vauclusa Fountain will also arrest the eye: For this also is of nature's own and most cunning workmanship, and bursts from the depths of the earth with a full, gushing current, into the light of day. And often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines."

For Heaven, sweet bard! on thee bestowed
A boon, beyond all name:
And, bounteous, lighted up thy soul
With its own native flame.
Soft may thy gentle spirit rest,
Sweet poet of the plain!
Light lay the green turf on thy breast,
Till it's illum'd again!

CHANGE.

If by my childhood's humble home
I chance to wander now,
Or through the grove with brambles grown,
Where cedars used to bow,
In search of something that I loved—
Some little trifling thing
To mind me of my early days,
When life was in its spring,—
I find on every thing I see
A something new and strange;
Time's iron hand on them and me
Hath plainly written—Change.
My pulse beats slower than it did
When childhood's glow was on
My cheek, and colder, calmer now
Doth life's red current run.
The stars I gaz'd with rapture on,
When youthful hopes were high,
With sterner years have seem'd to change
Their places in the sky.
And moonlit nights are plenty now—
How few they used to be!
When, with my little urchin crew,
I shouted o'er the lea.
I've sought the places where we play'd
Our boyish "hide and call;"
Alas! the tyrant Change has made
A common stock of all—
And bartered for a place of graves
That lea and all its bloom:
O, how upon the walls I wept,
To think of Change and Doom!
The lovely lawn where roses grew,
Is strewn with gravestones o'er;
And half my little playmate crew
Have slept to wake no more
Till Change itself shall cease to be,
And one successive scene
Of stedfastness immutable
Remain where Change hath been.
It may sometimes make old men glad
To see the young at play;
But always doth my soul grow sad
When thoughts of their decay
Come rushing with the memories
Of what my own hopes were—
When Hudson's waters and my youth
Did mutual friendship share.

MANUAL LABOR SCHOOLS.

[Their importance as connected with Literary Institutions.¹]

¹ This Address was delivered by the Rev. E. F. Stanton, before the "Literary Institute" of Hampden Sidney College, at its annual commencement in September last, and is now published, for the first time, at the request of the Institute.

The proper connection of physical, moral, and intellectual culture, in a course of education, is a subject which, judging from the defective systems that have almost universally prevailed, has hitherto been but imperfectly understood, and whose importance has been but superficially estimated. Man is a being possessed of a compound nature, which consists of body, mind and spirit. In other words, he has animal, intellectual, and moral powers. He is destined for existence and action in two worlds—in this, and in that which is to come. He is formed for an earthly, and an immortal state. Any system of education, therefore, which restricts attention to either of these constituent portions of his nature, is necessarily and essentially defective. It is the cultivation which assigns to each its appropriate share, that constitutes the perfection of education. But few appear to admit, at least practically, the importance of improving the mind to any great extent by the aids which Literature and Science bestow. Fewer still are in favor of making religious instruction a distinct and indispensable part of their plan. Yet smaller is the number of those who would allow any suitable prominence to be given to the cultivation of the physical powers: and probably by far the most diminutive of all is the proportion of those who would contend for a just and equable combination in the improvement of the whole man, body, mind, and spirit.

The monitory experience of past ages, which, if duly heeded, might prevent a recurrence of serious disasters that have befallen other generations, is overlooked or disregarded, as the devotees of a worldly pleasure discredit the assurance of the sage, that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit," and each in its turn, and for itself, must try the experiment which wisdom had beforehand decided to be folly. Vanity seeks the preferment arising from novel discoveries; and inflated with an apprehension of superior knowledge, disdains to receive the instructions of former ages, and in spite of experience, gives an unrestrained indulgence to wild and hurtful extravagances. Enough has long since been disclosed in the history of mankind, if they were sufficiently docile and apt, to have demonstrated, to the satisfaction of all, that on the early and assiduous inculcation of religious principle, depend the temporal, to say nothing of the eternal welfare of individuals, and the peace and prosperity of nations. The world, by this time, ought to have known, even if Revelation had not proclaimed it, that righteousness, by which I mean religion, is the stability and safeguard of nations—that it cannot be dispensed with—that no substitute can be made for it—and that no government can be prosperous or lasting without it. Devoid of religious principle, the educated are but madmen; and the more extensive and brilliant their talents, whether natural or acquired, the more completely are they accoutred for the work of mischief. Within the recollection of the present generation, South America, and Greece, and France, where Romish corruptions and infidel perfidy have obtained the ascendancy, and rooted out a pure Christianity, have alternately struggled for the establishment of freedom. Our own nation, so deeply enamored of the "fair goddess," have looked on with an intensity of interest that bordered on inebriation, and have hailed them as brethren of the republican fraternity. But how soon have our hopes been disappointed, and our exultation proved to be premature. The despotism which has been thrown off, has been speedily succeeded by another which was scarcely less odious and intolerable. Their temple of freedom was not reared on the rock of religious principle, but on the sand. The tempest of ungoverned passions, which righteousness only has the power to allay, beat vehemently upon it, and it fell; and great has been the fall of it. Better that a population deficient in virtue, (the virtue which a pure religion only can impart,) be also deficient in knowledge. There is no regenerating or transforming influence in literature and science. The reverse of this, however, is the practical creed of most politicians. Religion with them, if not an odious and obsolete affair, is regarded as of secondary or inconsiderable importance; and all the attention which, in their estimation, it deserves, is to leave it for a spontaneous development. But the issue of such an experiment is sure to result in an absence of the fear of God, and an exuberant growth of noxious and destructive passions. If no plan can be devised, which in its operation shall secure an inseparable connection between literature and religion in our American academies and colleges, their demolition were devoutly to be desired, and our youth might better be reared in ignorance and barbarism.

These observations are made in passing, to anticipate an impression which might arise in the minds of some who may accompany us in the sequel of this discussion, that we are for giving to the physical an importance over every other department of education. So far from admitting that this is the position which we intend to assume, we would here be distinctly understood to allow, if you please, that it is the least important of all, and sinks as far in comparison with the cultivation of the mind and the heart, as the body is inferior to the soul, or as the interests of time are transcended by those of eternity. But the body, though comparatively insignificant, is still deserving of special regard. The corporeal is a part of the nature which the infinite Creator has bestowed on us—a piece of mechanism "curiously wrought," and "fearfully and wonderfully made." The body is the casement of the mind—the tenement in which the soul resides—the "outer" in which dwells the "inner man." With the nature of this union we are mostly unacquainted. We know, however, that it is close, and that the influences which body and mind exert on each other are reciprocal and powerful.

A gentleman of our own country, who has been at great pains to investigate this subject himself, and to collect the opinions of others on it, has embodied in a pamphlet, which has been published, a mass of information of the most valuable kind; but the production to which I refer has been only partially circulated in this region, and therefore has probably attracted less notice here than almost any where else in the Union. And since I have ample evidence to believe that his observations, and those of others which accompany them, are better suited to subserve the purpose which I have in view, than any of my own which I might hope to offer, I shall indulge myself on this occasion in the liberty of making somewhat copious extracts from his labors.

The individual to whom I allude, was appointed the General Agent of "the Society for promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions," which was formed in the city of New York in July of 1831, "under the conviction," as their committee remark, "that a reform in our seminaries of learning was greatly needed, both for the preservation of health, and for giving energy to the character by habits of useful and vigorous exercise." Shortly after entering upon the prosecution of his object, in an extensive tour of observation in the northern and western states, the journey of the agent,² as his employers relate, was interrupted by serious accidents which befel him, one of which (and we notice the narrative as an apt and striking illustration of the excellency of that system of training to which he had been accustomed, and which it was the design of his agency to recommend,) was the carrying away of the stage in Alum Creek, near Columbus, in the state of Ohio. "The creek," as they inform us, "being swollen by the great flood, in crossing, at midnight, the swiftness of the current forced the whole down the stream, till the stage-wagon came to pieces, and the Agent was thrown directly among the horses. After being repeatedly struck down by their struggles, he became entangled in the harness, and hurried with them along the current. At length, released from this peril, he reached the shore, and grasped a root in the bank; but it broke, and again the stream bore him on to the middle of the channel. At length he espied a tree which had fallen so that its top lay in the water, and by the most desperate efforts, all encumbered as he was with his travelling garments, he succeeded in reaching a branch; but his benumbed hands refused their grasp, and slipped, and then he was swept among some bushes in an eddy, where his feet rested on the ground. Here in the dead of night, in the forest, ignorant whether there was a house or a human being within many miles, bruised and chilled in the wintry stream, he seems calmly to have made up his mind to die, sustained by the hopes of the religion which he professed. But Providence had determined otherwise, and reserved him for farther usefulness. His cries were heard by a kind hearted woman on the opposite side of the stream, who wakened her husband; and, after a few days detention, he proceeded on his journey. From the accounts (the committee continue,) which are already before the public, it seems plain that nothing but a constitution invigorated by manual labor, and a soul sustained by the grace of God, could have survived the hardships of that night."

² Mr. Weld.

There are probably but few who will dissent from this decision; and we will add, that in our opinion, a preservation so extraordinary, exclusive of a Providential interposition which some will think they discern in it, affords an argument for manual labor schools, or physical education, more pointed, and perhaps conclusive, than all which this indefatigable agent has said himself, or gleaned from the testimony of others, although this composes an amount of evidence of the most convincing kind.

In the report alluded to, the Agent himself observes that "God has revealed his will to man upon the subject of education. It is written in the language of nature, and can be understood without a commentary. This revelation consists in the universal consciousness of those influences which body and mind exert upon each other—influences innumerable, incessant, and all-controlling; the body continually modifying the state of the mind, and the mind ever varying the condition of the body.

"Every man who has marked the reciprocal action of body and mind, surely need not be told that mental and physical training should go together. Even the slightest change in the condition of the body often produces an effect upon the mind so sudden and universal, as to seem almost miraculous. The body is the mind's palace; but darken its windows, and it is a prison. It is the mind's instrument; sharpened, it cuts keenly—blunted, it can only bruise and disfigure. It is the mind's reflector; if bright, it flashes day—if dull, it diffuses twilight. It is the mind's servant; if robust, it moves with swift pace upon its errands—if a cripple, it hobbles on crutches. We attach infinite value to the mind, and justly; but in this world, it is good for nothing without the body. Can a man think without the brain?—can he feel without nerves?—can he move without muscles? The ancients were right in the supposition that an unsound body is incompatible with a sound mind. [They looked only for the mens sana in corpore sano.] He who attempts mental effort during a fit of indigestion, will cease to wonder that Plato located the soul in the stomach. A few drops of water upon the face, or a feather burnt under the nostril of one in a swoon, awakens the mind from its deep sleep of unconsciousness. A slight impression made upon a nerve often breaks the chain of thought, and the mind tosses in tumult. Let a peculiar vibration quiver upon the nerve of hearing, and a tide of wild emotion rushes over the soul. The man who can think with a gnat in his eye, or reason while the nerve of a tooth is twinging, or when his stomach is nauseated, or when his lungs are oppressed and laboring; he who can give wing to his imagination when shivering with cold, or fainting with heat, or worn down with toil, can claim exemption from the common lot of humanity.

"In different periods of life, the mind waxes and wanes with the body; in youth, cheerful, full of daring, quick to see, and keen to feel; in old age, desponding, timid, perception dim, and emotion languid. When the blood circulates with unusual energy, the coward rises into a hero; when it creeps feebly, the hero sinks into a coward. The effects produced by the different states of the mind upon the body, are equally sudden and powerful. Plato used to say that all the diseases of the body proceed from the soul. [With more of propriety, we think, it may be said, that at least three-fourths of the diseases that afflict humanity, arise from an injudicious treatment of the body. But be this as it may, the fact is too obvious to be disputed, that the mind acts powerfully upon the animal frame.] The expression of the countenance is mind visible. Bad news weaken the action of the heart, oppress the lungs, destroy appetite, stop digestion, and partially suspend all the functions of the animal system. An emotion of shame flushes the face; fear blanches it; joy illuminates it; and an instant thrill electrifies a million of nerves. Powerful emotion often kills the body at a stroke. Chilo, Diagoras, and Sophocles died of joy at the Elean games. The news of a defeat killed Philip V. One of the Popes died of an emotion of the ludicrous, on seeing his pet monkey robed in pontificals, and occupying the chair of state. The door-keeper of Congress expired upon hearing of the surrender of Cornwallis. Pinckney, Emmet, and Webster are recent instances of individuals who have died either in the midst of an impassioned burst of eloquence, or when the deep emotion that had produced it had suddenly subsided. Indeed, the experience of every day demonstrates that the body and mind are endowed with such mutual susceptibilities, that each is alive to the slightest influence of the other. What is the common-sense inference from this fact? Manifestly this—that the body and the mind should be educated together.

"The states of the body are infinitely various. All these different states differently affect the mind. They are causes, and their effects have all the variety which mark the causes that produce them. If then different conditions of the body differently affect the mind, some electrifying, and others paralyzing its energies, what duty can be plainer than to preserve the body in that condition which will most favorably affect the mind? If the Maker of both was infinitely wise, then the highest permanent perfection of the mind can be found only in connection with the most healthful state of the body. Has infinite wisdom established laws by which the best condition of the mind is permanently connected with any other than the best condition of the body? When all the bodily functions are perfectly performed, the mind must be in a better state than when these functions are imperfectly performed. And now I ask, is not that system of education fundamentally defective, which makes no provision for putting the body in its best condition, and for keeping it in that condition? A system which expends its energies upon the mind alone, and surrenders the body either to the irregular promptings of perverted instinct, or to the hap-hazard impulses of chance or necessity? A system which aims solely at the development of mind, and yet overlooks those very principles which are indispensable to produce that development, and transgresses those very laws which constitute the only ground-work of rational education? Such a system sunders what God has joined together, and impeaches the wisdom which pronounced that union good. It destroys the symmetry of human proportion, and makes man a monster. It reverses the order of the constitution; commits outrage upon its principles; breaks up its reciprocities; makes war alike upon physical health and intellectual energy, dividing man against himself; arming body and mind in mutual hostility, and prolonging the conflict until each falls a prey to the other, and both surrender to ruin.

"The system of education which is generally pursued in the United States, is unphilosophical in its elementary principles; ill adapted to the condition of man; practically mocks his necessities, and is intrinsically absurd. The high excellences of the system in other respects are readily admitted and fully appreciated. Modern education has indeed achieved wonders. But what has been done meanwhile for the body? [Nothing—comparatively nothing.] The prevailing neglect of the body in the present system of education, is a defect for which no excellence can atone. Nor is this a recent discovery. Two centuries ago Milton wrote a pamphlet upon this subject, in which he eloquently urged the connection of physical with mental education in literary institutions. Locke inveighs against it in no measured terms. Since that time, Jahn, Ackerman, Salzman, and Franck, in Germany; Tissot, Rousseau, and Londe, in France; and Fellenberg, in Switzerland, have all written largely upon the subject."

In addition to what this individual has himself said, he has exhibited in the pamphlet referred to, an amount of testimony derived from a number of the most distinguished literary men in our country, to the imperfections of the existing system of education which is truly overwhelming, and enough, we should think, could it be universally disseminated, to arouse and restore to reason the whole civilized world. Indeed, we indulge the hope that it has planted the seeds of a revolution in our literary institutions; and our only surprise is, that it should advance with no greater celerity. The following important positions, however, in regard to the subject, may now be considered as established. Constant habits of exercise are indispensable to a healthful state of the body. A healthful state of body is essential to a vigorous and active state of mind. The habit of exercise should commence with the ability to take it, and should be continued with that ability through life. Of the different kinds of exercise, as a general rule, agricultural, being the most natural, and to which the human constitution is best adapted, is the most unobjectionable; mechanical is the next; and walking and riding are the employments which follow in the rear. The exercise most profitable, for the most part will be that which is most useful. The neglect of exercise, with sedentary men, has occasioned fearful havoc of health and life; and the wilful neglect of it, with those who have had an opportunity to be enlightened with respect to its necessity and value, is a species of suicide, and, therefore, an immorality. The connection of manual labor establishments with literary institutions, has been found to be greatly conducive to health and morals, as also to proficiency in the various departments of human learning; and as far as experience has gone, the promise which they give of success is all that their most sanguine projectors had anticipated.

On the subject of manual labor schools, a deep interest has within a few years been excited in various parts of the Union. Like all other enterprises which aim at the accomplishment of extensive good, it has met with opposition and discouragements; but originating in the principles of true wisdom, and supported by arguments and facts which none can gainsay or resist, its ultimate triumph may safely be predicted, and confidently anticipated.

Whether the system of physical education shall receive the countenance, or is suited to the peculiar circumstances of the southern country, may with some be made a question; but we are ready to hazard the assertion, that whatever obstacles of a peculiar nature may here lie in the way of reducing it to practice, if properly considered, they must be seen to be in truth the most powerful inducements that can be urged for its adoption.

The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 4, March, 1836

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER:

EVERY DEPARTMENT OF

LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II, NUMBER 4

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.

SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY

AND PRESENT CONDITION OF TRIPOLI, WITH SOME ACCOUNTS OF THE OTHER BARBARY STATES.