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for the last ten minutes, has been infected with the itch of scribblingyou cannot take your natural rest in a steamboat, without suspecting that the gentleman in the upper story may be designing to "ram you into an article" now percolating through his brain, or that the fitful changes of that melodious snore which thrills through the ear, from the fat man below, may be only the nocturnal forms assumed by the lyric cadences, and involved metres concocted in his daily laboratory— you cannot look your tailor in the face without thinking that "the melancholy of tailors" may have mellowed into song, nor speak to your butcher without an alarm lest he offer to sell his brains, when of old he trafficked only in his beef-you cannot encounter your baker, without apprehension lest he may have produced a counter-part to Elliott's Corn-Law Rhymes, or written a pamphlet on the statistics of wheat-even your blacksmith is redolent of the dews of Parnassus, and (in a Northern city) your washer-woman might be numbered among the contributors to "the Best, and Cheapest, and most Popular Magazine in America." Under these circumstances, and indeed from their very existence, the old distinction between the sermo scriptus or literarius-the language of the literary man-and the sermo colloquii or vulgaris-the dialects of conversation, has been completely broken down, and the diction of the lawyer, the doctor, the parson, the mechanic, the merchant, the artisan, the speculator, the sailor, etc., etc., rises up in a sort of heterogeneous confusion which would have sounded worse than Babel to other ears than those long used to the dissonant cry. In this way, our modern literature is crowded with technical terms, and the educated as the ignorant are frequently at fault in their efforts to determine the meaning of an unusual phrase. Where is this information to be sought? In an Encyclopædia? They are cumbrous, unmanageable, and rarely found in our libraries. In a Dictionary? Words of the class to which that belongs of which we seek an explanation, are purposely and necessarily excluded from it? Where then? The only place is in a work similar to that before us, which will hence be of inestimable service to every one whose reading is at all general.

8.-A Lecture Delivered before the Georgia Historical Society, February 29 and March 4, 1844, on the subject of Education. By SAML. K. TALMAGE, President of Oglethorpe University. Savannah: Locke & Davis.

"TO MULTIPLY the sources of human enjoyment and increase the dominion of man over nature," is the province of education; how often has our worthy president, in college days, struggled with pious zeal to impress this truth upon our mind. That education can do all this, it has been for the present age more than for any other to discover, and VOL. VI.-NO. 11.

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it is only now and then that we have the rare felicity of meeting with one of your antideluvian gentry, with knee breeches and buckles, and powdered periwig and leather spectacles, shaking his head with dogmatic skepticism and wondering what on earth all this learning is coming to at last. To be sure the days of "blissful ignorance" are not hurrying away so fast as the continual cry of the "school master abroad," would have us believe, but then something is doing, and the cry upon the wall is not altogether "a sounding brass," etc. We have yet to beat out of mens heads, or rather out of boys backs, that dogged indifference with which they are wont to regard "duodecimos,” “quartos" and "octavos," content enough to let them lie, pile upon pile, ornamented with mould and finely punctured and riddled in all the fantastic varieties of moth-work. We must make more ado on this subject of education, not in talking about it, not in writing fine essays upon this subject, but in acting-prompt, vigorous, continued acting; and the question is, how shall we act with most effect?

We took some pains a year ago, to compare the systems of common school education which prevail at the North and South by personal inspection, inquiry, and observation, and the result was, that many important facts came into our possession which we had designed publishing in some of the daily prints, in a series of articles, but various circumstances have prevented. There is one truth, however, with reference to common schools, which is self evident, viz: that they constitute the hope and safeguard of the country, and upon what they, more than upon what the Universities and Colleges are, the condition of our country a century hence, will depend. He who reads the annual volume of reports on this subject, of seven or eight hundred pages, published in Massachusetts, reads the legislative provisions that are made there, considers the elevated course of instruction adopted, examines the well built and commodious school houses every where erected, converses with the people in common life, and then turns to the South and to our own miserably defective systems of education, cannot but feel mortified with the contrast, and wonder if Southern chivalry yet prides itself upon a more than Norman contempt of letters.

It is of the common school system that we particularly complain, and although many apologies may be made for it, we must at the same time charge ourselves with an indifference and insensibility which "cries to heaven." Of Academies and Colleges, we have not so much to deplore-some of ours standing as high, at least, as any similar ones in the Union. The South-Carolina, Charleston, Franklin, and Oglethorpe Institutions rank in the same catagory with Williamsburg, Amherst, etc., etc.

But we are running away from President Talmage's lecture. President T's. position at the head of the Oglethorpe University, entitles him, of course, to be heard, when he has any thing to say upon the subject of

Education; and we took up his production expecting much gratification and instruction from its perusal, although the subject has become so trite among the essayists of our day, and affords a theme for so many pages of school-boy composition. The worthy President did well, however, in his address before the Historical Society, to press "Education" home upon the people of Georgia; and we cannot but admire that zeal in the pursuit of his peculiar avocation as an instructor, which prevented his allowing such an opportunity to pass unimproved. "The object of education," says he, "is to make man intelligent, wise, useful, happy. In its enlarged sense, it is to prepare him for action and felicity in two worlds," p. 8. What, then, is the natural order of imparting this education? "In childhood, the first object is to exercise the senses, and learn the qualities of those things on which life and health and freedom from pain depend,"-p. 10. Physical education, it would seem then, is to be the first object of attention; and it is to be regretted that this natural order is so often perverted. How often have we witnessed the sad spectacle of a puny, sickly child, condemned the greater part of the day to the gallies of a close school-room, and to the hard tasks of an unrelenting and merciless master. How have we sickened with the prospect and regretted that some more rational system of education was not introduced, which would allow respite to the little sufferer from his toil, and send him forth to breathe the pure and balmy air of heaven, and amid the active sports which belong of right to childhood, form and strengthen his constitution for future health and usefulness.

The comparative advantages of public and private education, next demand the attention of the Lecturer, and "the safest and best mode of college organization." In which last he decides, that it is better to have many well educated than a few profoundly instructed, and, of consequence, that many colleges, scattered through the country, are to be preferred to one or two great central ones. "Eaton and Harrow, of England, are far more efficient sources of discipline and enlightenment than Oxford and Cambridge." On the mooted point, whether the State or Church be the better guardian of Education, he does not hesitate to affirm that experience has settled down upon the latter. As to the propriety of introducing manual labour into schools, an unfavorable decision is given, which fully accords with our practical knowledge of the subject.

The remainder of the lecture is taken up, for the most part, with a beautiful and learned panegyric upon the Greeks and Romans,-exhibiting the almost miracle of perfection at which they arrived in poetry, philosophy, architecture, painting and sculpture, -and vindicating the study of what is vulgarly called the "dead languages," from that "most alarming of literary heresies," which struggles to exclude them from schools and colleges. This part of the address is worthy of all admiration.

9.-"Can Ijoin the Church of Rome, while my Rule of Faith is the Bible?” An Inquiry presented to the conscience of the Christian Reader. By the Rev. CESAR MALAN, D. D. Translated from the French, with an introduction, by the Rev. Dr. BAIRD. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1844.

WE dare not speak to the merits of the discussion which this volume necessarily involves. The nature and responsibilities of our journal, forbid any such inquiry. It will suffice that we say of the author, what we learn from the introduction of the translator. The Rev. Cæsar Malan, is "pastor of the Church of the Istomory," of Geneva. He was born of a respectable Genevan family, which traces its origin back to the vallies of the Piedmont, was ordained a minister of the gospel at a very early age,-left the church in which he took his initial steps in religion, and is now one of the strictest followers of Calvin. He has experienced persecutions which have made him popular. But, he is even better known as an author than a preacher. His various writings, in prose and verse, extend to eight or ten octavo volumes. "He is," says Dr. Baird, "a sort of universal genius. He has written and published many excellent sermons; a number of his historical sketches and tales are of surpassing beauty; he has written two or three volumes of sacred hymns and songs; has composed many pieces of very sweet music; while his controversial publications are both numerous and able. Indeed, he is a veteran, he may even be called, though far from being a very old man—the Nestor of the Evangelical Protestants of France and Switzerland." The work before us proves the author's ability as a controversialist. We forbear all opinion upon the merits of his argument.

10.-Republication of the London, Edinburgh, Foreign and Westminster Quarterly Reviews, and Blackwood's Magazine.

Messrs. Leonard Scott & Co., of New-York, have taken in hand the republishing of the above Foreign Journals, and have sent us their Circular, from which we have only space to make a short extract:

"The works will be printed on fine paper and with a clear and handsome type, at a cost more than one-third cheaper than the English copies, even at their present reduced rates. Their edition of Blackwood's Magazine is not only called a fac-simile, but actually is one, being page for page and line for line with the original. The Reviews, though varying slightly in form, are faithful copies of the English editions, each comprising nearly one hundred and sixty large octavo pages. The whole of the Reprints will be issued with such rapidity, as to be delivered to subscribers almost as early as the imported copies."

CONTENTS

OF

No. XII.

ART.

I. ROME AND THE ROMANS,

1. Histoire de la Republique Romaine. Par M. MICHELET, Membre de l'Institut; Professeur de l'Histoire au College Royal de France; Chef de la Section Historique aux Archives du Royaume. Bruxelles: Meline, Caus et Compagnie. 1840.

2. Introduction á l'Histoire Universelle. Par M. MICHELET, Membre de l'Institut, etc., etc. Bruxelles : Meline, Caus et Compagnie. 1840.

II. WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS,

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The various writings of Cornelius Mathews, embracing "The Motley Book," "Behemoth," "The Politicians, a comedy," "Poems on Man, in the Republic," "Wakondah," "Puffer Hopkins," "Miscellanies," "Selections from Arcturus," and "International Copyright." Complete in one volume. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff-street.

MD.CCC.XLIII.

III. THE HERETIC OF LAJETCHNIKOFF,

The Heretic. Translated from the Russian of Lajétchnikoff, by THOMAS B. SHAW, A. B., of Cambridge, Adjunct Professor of English Literature in the Imperial Lyceum of Tsarskoë Seló. New-York: Published by Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff-street.

IV. CICERO'S LETTERS,

1844.

269

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The Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero to several of his friends with remarks by WILLIAM MELMOTH, Esq. London. 1753.

V. LAW AND LAWYERS,

1. Law and Lawyers, or Sketches and Illustrations of Legal History and Biography. 2 vols. Carey & Hart, Philadelphia. 1841.

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