the presence of the hostile forces, the story would be one of peculiar and almost fascinating interest.

Among the original settlers of Rhode Island was an episcopal clergyman, the Reverend William Blackstone, who was living on the peninsula now occupied as the site of Boston, Massachusetts, on the arrival of John Winthrop and his fellow colonists in 1630; but finding, as he said, the "Lords brethren" of the puritan colony no better than the "Lords bishops" of the mother country, he removed to Rhode Island about the time Roger Williams laid the foundation of that colony.

The biographical notices of Roger Williams and Bishop Berkeley are well written and important. It appears that the latter composed his celebrated work, "Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher," while residing at Newport, about the year 1730; and the precise spot is still pointed out, which was the favorite retreat of that learned and ingenious writer. The place was about half a mile southerly from Whitehall, where, "in the most elevated part of the Hanging Rocks, (so called,) he found a natural alcove, roofed, and open to the south, commanding at once a beautiful view of the ocean and the circumjacent islands." Here, too, he composed those elegant lines, of which the concluding stanza is often quoted:

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
TIME'S NOBLEST OFFSPRING IS THE LAST."

7.-Casar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, and the first book of the Greek Paraphrase; with English Notes, Critical and Explanatory, plans of Battles, Sieges, &c., and Historical, Geographical, and Archaeological Indexes. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D., Jay Professor of the Greek and Latin Languages in Columbia College, New York, and Rector of the Grammar School. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1838. 1838. 12mo. pp. 493.

To the young student, with this edition of Cæsar in his hands, the Gallic Wars are quite another story from what they were in our schoolboy days. To interpret Cæsar's battles, was then a task second only to fighting them; and it would certainly have been, for most boys, a lighter feat to swim "the arrowy Rhone," than to make their way unaided across Cæsar's famous bridge. Such then was Cæsar and most of the school classics-"sealed books;" not indeed in the literal sense, for they were well-thumbed, but books unintelligible, opened without being read, or read without being understood, or understood at length only at the expense of a thousand minutes needlessly wasted, and a thousand trials of temper, both to teacher and scholar, gratuitously inflicted, from the boy being thrown unaided upon difficulties beyond his strength.

To relieve the youthful mind from this bootless burden, we count no small praise. We hold it indeed to be among the noblest ends to which true learning can ever devote itself. We are sure it never appears more pleasing than in such condescension; and, what is still better, we know no labor more useful to the community. This meed of praise, whatever it be, belongs unquestionably to no scholar on this side of the Atlantic, and to few on the other, more truly than to Professor Anthon.

The present volume forms the fourth, we believe, in the series of school classics, which we trust he is destined to complete. Among its marked improvements on former school editions, we esteem, more highly perhaps than the editor does, its pictorial illustrations, and would urge upon him, in his future labors, a still more liberal use of this most effective of all methods of teaching. In the instruction of youth especially, whatever can be, should be "oculis subjecta fidelibus." In the place therefore of an archaeological index at the end of the volume, or rather in addition to it, we would have each page bearing its own illustration of battle, or bridge, or armor, whatever it may be, or referring back to a former, where it might be seen. We would have the thing itself brought before the eye, and thus not only impressed on the memory, but, what is more important, made clear to the boy's comprehension. It is true, this would cost money-but then the present system costs time, which is more valuable; besides failing of its end, which is the most costly thing of all. We think we risk little in saying that such will be eventually the form in which all our junior classics will be edited, and that fame (popular at least) and fortune (such we mean as intellect can give) will follow the editor that first goes ably and boldly into it. It will be found a labor-saving machine in classical education; and sooner or later, the manufacturer of that commodity will find it out. We venture to suggest this to the sagacity of one who has already adopted the principle, and thus preoccupied the market.

We cannot conclude this notice without adding to the original merits of Dr. Anthon's school classics, the conversational form into which he has thrown the life of his author. It is a form, it is true, that revolts the scholar, but then it attracts the school boy; and therein lies its merit-first to see this and then to choose it. It is, in short, the sacrifice of the form of teaching for the substance the shadow for the reality; a choice which, whether in teaching or any thing else, indicates the strong and practical mind. On these grounds we recommend, in all confidence, this school edition of Cæsar as the very best that has been put forth. It will save the father a world of trouble, and the scholar as much more of wasted time and energy-to say nothing of what necessarily follows:

gemitus, et sæva verbera

Infantumque animas flentes in limine primo."

8.-The Principles of Political Economy. By HENRY VETHAKE, LL. D. Professor in the University of Pennsylvania, &c. &c. Philadelphia: 1838. 8vo. pp. 414.

THIS is a work of high merit; and, if we except one grievous blot, and a few venial errors, a work on which we might pass a very high eulogium. As we had rather praise than blame, we will clear off the black score first: the foul stain is the author's open approbation of the administration scheme of finance, lately before Congress. Now, we put the author to the bar, to show by what right such party words, as sub-treasury system, appear in a work of scientific instruction; and even could he escape under this first 'count,' he cannot but stand condemned under the second; namely, his approval of it, as we find it unqualifiedly given in page 201. Now all this we hold to be a high offence against science and scientific men; and sitting here as judges in the republic of letters, we find him guilty of lese majesty-in plotting a death blow to political economy, by seeking to make it a pander to party politics; and we condemn him in open court, to the 'amende honorable' of effacing all such words, should his work come to a second edition; or otherwise retracting them, should it not. After this head and front of his offending, our other charges are comparatively light. His anxiety against an increase of population, as if it were proceeding at too rapid pace in our country, and his manifold warnings against early marriages, are, we think, totally misplaced. In our boundless territory, this is purely a theoretic question; and to press it as a practical one, betrays, we think, a mind formed rather upon books than observation-more European, we would say, than American. His claims, too, as set forth by himself, to the dignity of a discoverer in the science, smack somewhat (we must say it) of arrogance; take, for instance, the following: one or two writers may have had occasionally a glimpse ... yet none,so far as I know," &c.; or again, "the former of the two propositions I believe to be so entirely new, that it would be impracticable [impossible?] to point out a passage in the writing of any political economist," &c. Now, these are assertions that will pass current, we think, better in the lecture room than with the public; they are a local currency, (to borrow a figure from his own science,) country bank notes, which, when they go abroad, want a responsible endorser.

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But we have done with blame. Looking then on the golden side, we say that we know no American work on the science that stands so high, that bases itself so broadly and firmly on what may be termed the moral foundations of political economy, or that brings to the elucidation of its abstruse questions so great powers of analytic investigation. His style, too, is clear and continuous, and ex

hibits a judicious medium between the diffuseness of the lecturer, and the condensation of the scientific writer.

But, after all, his great excellence lies in bringing out strongly and justly the moral bearings of the science on the peace and virtue of nations. We conclude with a quotation justifying this praise: 'While the science of political economy is adapted to shed a kindly and peaceful influence at home, upon the mutual relations of the different classes of society; it is equally adapted to exercise a beneficial influence on the mutual relations of the different countries of the civilized world.' 'Finally, I may observe, that the whole spirit of political economy, like that of christianity itself, is a spirit of peace and good will to all mankind; and if civil contentions, or foreign warfare, shall hereafter occur less frequently than they have heretofore done, or when occurring shall be carried on with a greater degree of respect to the rights of individuals in their persons and property; all this will be owing, next to the wider diffusion of christian principles and practice, to the more general acknowledgment of the truths of our science.' p. 406.

In this light, political economy is indeed a high science; and we hail with pleasure all who thus teach it.

9.-Elements of Moral Philosophy. By the REV. JASPER ADAMS, D. D., President of the College of Charleston, South Carolina, and (ex officio) Horry Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy, &c., &c. Cambridge: 1837. 8vo. pp. 492.

We have copied the titles of the reverend author far enough to bring us to that ("Horry Professor") out of which the present work originates. An endowment of ten thousand dollars was made in the year 1828, by the late Elias Horry, of Charleston, who died September, 1834, for the maintenance of a chair of moral philosophy in the college of that city. Such has been the laborious diligence of the ex officio incumbent since that time, that he has already prepared and put forth the present ample volume as the first of a series which he has chalked out for himself, in accordance with the views of the founder. The second, “A Constitutional History of the United States," is, as he informs us in his preface, already completed, and only wants room to come forth. While of the fourth in the series, "A Treatise on the Law of Nations," he observes, some small progress too has been made; the rest are as yet" in petto." Now, we notice this diligence without praising it, for two reasons: First, that the author has already sufficiently lauded it in his own statement, and the flattering extracts he has given from his friends' letters; but secondly and chiefly, we do

not praise it, because his diligence has in truth become haste, and induced him, in the words of Johnson, to bring "more grist to his mill than he can grind." Indeed, it may be said without much figure, that the grain comes forth from Dr. Adams' boulter pretty much in the same state as it went into his hopper. One half of his book, at least, being the product of others' brains, and his own only in so far as scissors and paste make them so. One promise at least, therefore, as given in his preface, he has faithfully kept: namely, "to reproduce and incorporate into his work, whatever is most valuable in the works of preceding writers on the same science." But further, and beyond all this, we much doubt our author's fitness for the task he has undertaken-with all appliances and means to boot. His argument is one mightier than he can handle; like an over weighty club, it is ever sinking on the ground of authority, instead of resting poised on the strength of his own arm. He wants altogether, we would say, that analytic power, without which all moral reasonings are "verba, et præterea nihil”—a defect of thinking which shows itself manifestly and throughout the volume, in the vagueness and un-precision of his language. What, for instance, can be said of such a position as the following?

"The science of practical morals is not stationary, much less is it incapable of advancement. Like other sciences it depends to a certain degree on experience, and successive writers ought to aim to collect and register in their works the well matured results of experience." Preface, p. 10.

Now we have neither time nor space to enter into the exposition of the manifold and fundamental errors involved in this short passage; but we assert fearlessly, and we stake our critical reputation upon it, that it is, and cannot but be, a damning sentence to the scientific reputation of any writer who puts himself forth as a moral reasoner. He may swim well enough with corks on the surface, but he cannot dive and bring up pearls from below. But further, not content with this general assertion of (what we do not hesitate to term) the most glaring and practically dangerous of all absurdities in moral teaching-we mean the possibility of evolving in it new truths by experience, our author goes on modestly to add, "this volume seems to me to contain a considerable number of new results of this kind." Now, to such a claim, we are almost tempted to reply in the contemptuous language of D'Alembert on a similar occasion- "Decouvertes dans la metaphysique! Diable!!" But, raillery apart: such positions and such pretensions are to be met with high reprehension. It is no credit to the moral teacher, who, from haste, inadvertence, or intellectual dulness, lets fall such language, however innocently intended, even from his lips, much more from his pen, and what is worst of all, from the press!

We have already intimated that Doctor Adams' reading is wide, and his quotations numerous. We fear we cannot add deep; at least we have noted, that all his Greek references are drawn from English authorities, an acknowledgment more creditable, we think