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Captain Brown is preparing Biographical Sketches and Authentic Anecdotes of Horses; to be illustrated with engravings by Lizars. Mr Swan announces for publication, a Demonstration of the Nerves of the Human Body, founded on the subject of the Prizes adjudged to him by the Royal College of Surgeons. The first part will be ready in January next.

The first number of the London University Magazine, a new monthly publication, will appear on the 1st of October.

M. Barthelemy, author of "Le Fils de l'Homme," has appealed against the decision which condemned him to a fine and imprisonment, on account of that poem.

Poems, by the King of Bavaria, and his son Prince Maximilian, are advertised by a Parisian bookseller.

FRENCH ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS.-At the last annual public meeting of this body, the body did not feel itself entitled to adjudge any of the ordinary prizes. The following subjects for prize essays, were announced on the occasion. 1. An enquiry into the political condition of the Grecian cities in Europe, the Grecian islands, and Asia Minor, from the beginning of the second century A. C., to the transference of the seat of empire to Constantinople. This question is now proposed for the third time; no competitor having yet succeeded in discussing it to the satisfaction of the Academy. 2. A view of the changes which took place in the geography of Gaul after the fall of the Roman empire, explanatory of the names of cities, provinces, counties, and dukedoms, and all divisions, territorial, civil and military, of the French monarchy on this side the Rhine, under the first two races of our kings. This subject is announced for the second time, and the prize is to be adjudged in 1830. 3. An enquiry into the changes superinduced during the middle ages on the ancient geography of those countries which constituted, in the tenth century, the European part of the empire of Constantinople: explanatory of their civil, military, and ecclesiastical divisions, from the accession of Justinian, to the times of Constantine Porphyrogenitus; and of the various independent states which arose during that interval on the ruins of the empire, and flourished for a longer or shorter period. The comparative merits of the essays on this subject are to be determined in 1831. 4. An original critical discussion of all the passages relating either to the person or doctrines of Pythagoras, which have been handed down to us by the ancients, with a view to establish as satisfactorily as possible the real amount of historical information we possess respecting the fortunes and opinions of this philosopher. The prize to be adjudged in 1831.

AN AMERICAN JUMPER.-We meet with the following curious letter in the New York papers, which have just arrived :-" Messrs Editors-Please to notice in your valuable paper, that I propose celebrating the anniversary of our glorious Independence, by leaping over the Little Falls, Essex County, New Jersey; which, not being sufficiently deep, I have erected a stage, so that the clear leap will be about 80 feet. I perceive, by a notice in Alderman Binns' paper, that some base person proposes that I should leap with a frog for a

hundred sovereigns. I will leap with the worthy Alderman over as many coffin handbills as he shall be able to collect, and will leap with him into Tartarus, if he bets me two to one, and goes first. I regret to perceive that exploits of a most daring character make but an indifferent impression upon a gallant people. Look at Leander, who swam across the I forget the name of the sea, to get a peep at his sweetheart-history has not forgotten him. Look at Hannibal, who crossed the Catskill Mountains in winter, before Mr Webb had built the Mountain House. Look at our late worthy President, Mr Adams, who swam across the Tiber at Rome, and the same river at Washington City; and look at me, who have jumped over the Passaic Falls several times, without being killed-will history forget these exploits? Will not Noah Webster, in his next Dictionary, notice them? Every skimble-skamble thing in the country is patronisedan Italian singer-a pair of fat babies - a dancing corps-an Egyptian mummy, or the dog Apollo, can make fortunes, and can visit Saratoga Springs in Summer,-while I, who have done what Jove never did, can scarcely make up a paltry fifty dollars.-Some day or other, I shall take such a leap, that you will hear no more of me, and thus leave the country to mourn over their loss. SAMUEL VATCH."

A very characteristic compliment has just been paid to Rossini in Paris, on the occasion of his leaving that capital. The performers, vocal and instrumental, of the Grand Opera, assembled at midnight before his residence, and performed several of the principal pieces in his new and popular opera of " William Tell." Rossini has received the Cross of the Legion of Honour from Charles X.

It seems that the book trade of France is in any thing but a flourishing condition. Many considerable towns have no bookseller at all, and the market diminishes daily. This state of things appears, to a Commission d'Enquete of the Paris booksellers, to be occasioned mainly by, first, The system of the Douanes; second, The Brevets, or The state of legislation respecting literary property. licenses required for exercising the profession of a bookseller; third,

The History of the Prussian Monarchy from the death of Frederick I., by Manso, was lately translated into French from the German, and published anonymously. A German bookseller, ignorant of the existence of Manso's work, and mistaking the French for an original, has actually had it re-translated into German !

A collection of Portraits of the most Illustrious Living Characters of Italy, that is, of such as have distinguished themselves in the Arts, Sciences, and Literature,—has been recently commenced at Florence.

Theatrical Gossip.-J. H. Bayly, author of several popular songs, has produced a new piece at the English Opera House, last week, with considerable success. It is said to be founded on "The Ayl mers," one of the tales in "Holland Tide;" or, according to the Examiner, on Godwin's novel of Caleb Williams. It is rather curious that, with one exception, the daily papers have been unanimous in its condemnation; while, on the other hand, the weekly press are as nearly unanimous in its praise.-Kean is again said to have suffered little in his late illness, and to be again performing with the energy and success of former years. We pray that it may be so.-The Dublin Theatre did not sell at 19,000 guineas last week, as stated in the Court Journal-it was bought in for 17,000 guineas.-The Caledouian Theatre continues to enjoy its hitherto unwonted popularity. Its admirable Corps de Ballet increases in attraction nightly. We notice that Madame Vedy, principal female dancer, takes her benefit on Monday evening, with a most attractive variety of entertainments.

LIST OF NEW WORKS.

Napier's Peninsular War, Vol. II. 8vo, 20s. bds.
The Ho se in all his Varieties, by J. Laurence, 12mo, 8s. bds.
Whittingham's Novelist, Vol. XXXV. 32mo, 2s. 6d. bds.
Morton's Journey in Italy, 2 vols. 8vo, £1, 4s. bds.
Stevens' Comments, Vol. XV. 8vo, 10s. bds.
Ballance's Memoir, 12mo, 5s. bds.

Hoogeven's Greek Particles, by Seager, 8vo, 7s. 6d. bds.
Bedford on the Catholic Question, 8vo, 10s. bds.
The Bee Preserver, 12mo, 3s. bds.

Burton's Bampton Lectures, 8vo, 15s. bds.

Carpenter's Scripture Difficulties, 8vo, 128. bds.

Williams's Abstract, 10 Geo. IV. 8vo, 7s. bds.
Bloxham's Gothic Architecture, 12mo, 4s. bds.
Graves on Predestination, 8vo, 7s. bds.

TO OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

OUR Correspondents must excuse us till next week. We are happy to announce, that next Saturday's JOURNAL will contain a Poem from the Pen of Mrs Hemans.

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LITERARY CRITICISM.

COOPER'S AMERICAN NOVELS.-The Spy; a Tale of Neutral Ground. 3 vols.-Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston. 3 vols.-The Red Rover; a Tale. 3 vols. The Pilot; a Tale of the Sea. 3 vols.-The Last of the Mohicans, a Narrative of 1757. 3 vols.-The Pioneers; or the Sources of the Susquehanna. 3 vols. -The Prairie. 3 vols.

We have of late directed the attention of our readers to American poetry, and American literature in general. We now submit a few remarks on the materials afforded by the present state of American society for works of fiction. A retrospective review of Mr Cooper's productions seems to offer the best text for such a discourse, at the same time that it gives us an opportunity of attempting to annex an estimate of the talents of this popular novelist. It is a difficult task we have undertaken-to speak fairly and candidly of a nation whose social fabric is erected on a principle so different from our own; whose songs of triumph are over our losses; and whose affections cling round objects which to us are repulsive. But, possessing an honest desire to do justice to all parties, we certainly do not think ourselves incapable of accomplishing our object, because our notions of America have been formed on this side of the Atlantic. Captain Hall is an eminent and recent example how even an acute mind, when brought into immediate contact with strange customs, allows the annoyance arising from slight jarrings of feeling, and sharp corners of character, to fret itself into overlooking the deeper and more enduring spirit of a nation.

At the time when the revolutionary war broke out in America, the immense tracts which nominally belonged to the British crown, were but thinly and unequally peopled. Some few wealthy and populous towns were scattered over the long line of coasts; the banks of some of the rivers were well cultivated, and inhabited by a hardy peasantry; but by far the larger proportion of the inland was an unreclaimed forest. The towns exhibited much the same aspect that we find in the wealthy provincial cities of England;-a busy trading spirit, diffused comfort with occasional affluence, a degree of polish and refinement among the wealthier classes, but an absence of that finish communicated by the presence of a court and high aristocracy. The inhabitants of the seacoast were, of course, much addicted to maritime pursuits, with a tinge of rudeness (if not something meriting a stronger appellation) from their frequent intercourse with illicit traders, the successors of the buccaneers. forest was tenanted by its native tribes, with the unfrequent admixture of an adventurous white settler who had pushed on beyond his fellows, or a hunter who had half reverted to the state of nature in which he found his copper-skinned brethren. The very imperfect knowledge we have of the Indians will sufficiently serve as an apology for our not entering into any detail with regard to them. We only remark, that the advanced although partial moral culture, which can be recognised in their

The

nesses.

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character and institutions, had suffered much in the district towards Lake Champlain, and along the shores of been brought with French and English soldiers, during the great lakes, from the collision into which they had the protracted contests of which these scenes were witunites with one less advanced. The moral truths which It is ever thus when a highly-refined nation the latter has been carefully accumulating in the lapse of years, become shaken and disjointed; it loses confidence and belief in its own principles, without being able to appropriate those of its new friend; its growth is prematurely checked; the free-bourgeoning sapling is transformed into a stake which, from its immaturity, rots in the course of a winter.

There was at this period also, a considerable diversity between the character of the civilized inhabitants of the northern and of the southern states. The former were chiefly peopled by persons who had been obliged to leave England on account of their political principles. The latter, including Virginia, contained an admixture of political emigrants; but they formed a small minority in society, which was for the most part composed of adherents of the aristocratical and royalist parties. The northern statesmen were distinguished by a sturdy independence, and a strong attachment to the outward forms of religion. The southerns were a less precise race, with more of an aristocratical polish. The climate, perhaps, and certainly the older establishment and wider spread of slavery, in the southern states, contributed to increase the distinction between these two divisions of our American dominions. Other individual differences might be found existing in each colony, according as men were gathered into towns or scattered over a wide surface-placed on the verge of the ocean, or struggling among the privations and dangers of the back woods.

Still, amid all these varieties, there was one prevailing groundwork of character common to all, and that they drew from the land of their birth. They were Englishmen transported far from the place of their sires, and set to struggle in new, strange, and often perilous circumstances; but still they were Englishmen. Nay, more; as we uniformly see provinces and colonies imitating the deportment of the metropolis, they were Englishmen of the age in which they lived, the last relics of that race of merr whose peculiarities flourished in such vigour from the time of the Revolution of 1688, till the Revolution in France gave a new impulse to the mind of man, and brought into play heaven-scaling fancies, fond dreams of human worth-daring and self-devotion-madness and folly-all that is good, terrible, and base in human nature.

The Anglo-American character was produced mainly by the operation of a recently-established practical freedom, which the nation was still wearing in its newest gloss, and which gave scope for all the humours of which Englishmen have been, since the days of Ben Jonson, the chief practisers and patrons. It was a character plain, homely, practical, without one spark of poetry in its composition; it was self-willed, opinionative, absurd; it was a heart gushing with kindness under a mask of

apathy; it was the highest spirit, and the most refined feeling, assuming the deportment of blunt rudeness. This character, with some of its features exaggerated by the effects of peculiar circumstances and situations, the war of independence found predominant in America. There was not much learning among these men, for regular seminaries of education were but thinly scattered; but there was a wide diffusion of that kind of knowledge, which a man of a reflective turn, and possessed of books, picks up in the intervals of an active life,-knowledge, which, if somewhat deficient in completeness and arrangement, is more vital-more a part of the living and breathing man, than any other.

mountains;" Shakspeare flourished when the arising of a new religion had braced men's minds to the utmost; Milton raised his deep organ-voice amidst and above the clash of civil arms; and, with perhaps one exception, all the master spirits of our age carry upon them lasting marks of the impulse given to society by the bursting of the French Revolution.

We do not mean to assert that Cooper is a kind of Fielding or Smollett. He is a denizen of his own age, as they were of theirs he speaks its language, and thinks its thoughts. His style is (like that of almost every author of the day) more ambitious, but, at the same time, more free and flowing, than that of the last age. 蹩 The sense of dependence, however, the habitual defer- He also delights, like his contemporaries, to mingle beings ence to the mother country, had imparted a degree of of ideal beauty among the commonplace forms of everylanguor to all their ways. The disputes, which termina- day life-to cast a reflex gleam of poetry over domestic ted in the assertion of independence by the colonies, first feelings, like the last golden beam of the sun shedding an lent energy to the American character. It underwent no accidental beauty over the squalid hut of the labourer. other immediate change: life had been breathed into the Cooper has all that nationality, the want of which is mass which was already there. The Americans were so often alleged as a reproach to American literature. not dissatisfied with the laws which determined their re- His reflections, it is true, are such as might be made by lations to each other, but with the superiority asserted by the native of any country of European descent; but how Great Britain. The great framework of their social can nations, sprung from one common stock, formed by fabric remained unaltered. They became republicans the influences of science and literature, possessed by them from the necessity of their situation; there were gen- in common, and owning one common religion, fail to tlemen among them, but no nobility; there was no one have a close family likeness? When we say that he is possessed at once of the talents and inclination to assume national, we mean that his characters are the growth of the sovereign power; there were, in short, no materials America; that the mountains and streams which he de out of which a court could be formed. America was scribes, the forests that rustle in his pages, all the phesituated as England might be, could we suppose its king nomena of earth and air, are American; that his prinand nobles annihilated by some supernatural visitation, ciples, feelings, and prejudices, all lead him to embrace, and the commons living on under the control of their old on every occasion, the cause of America. His lanlaws, in their present parity. America became a repub-guage is copious and easy; but we may add, that the lic; but not such a republic as the classical scholar, look- structure of his sentences is not unfrequently careless ing rather to the poets than the historians of old Greece, and incorrect. His delineations of character are alfancies to have existed there; nor such a one as the idle ways graphic, although he excels more in the strongly believers in the advent of a barely possible perfection of marked and peculiar than the beautiful. In his earliest humanity, hailed, in the empty war-cries of the French works, the plot was generally clumsy and incomplete. revolutionists. Some such dreamers there were in Ame- This defect he has now mastered; in particular, we rica, but the solid sense and quiet determination of the might point out the Last of the Mohicans as a tale leaders of the federalist party kept them under. It is which hurries the reader along with an eager and breathtrue, there is reason to dread that the Jacobins are on the less anxiety, such as is excited by the works of no mo increase in that country; but let us hope that the good dern author we can remember except by one or two of sense of the nation will effectually prevent them from the best stories of Banim. ever gaining the ascendency.

The sound policy of the successive governments, by keeping the United States as much as possible aloof from European quarrels, has allowed them to hold on the even tenor of their way, from the moment that their institutions were settled. Education and the arts, useful and ornamental, have made steady progress. Their influence, and the intercourse kept up with the Old World by wealthy travellers, are daily refining the American manners, without obliterating the strongly-marked features of their national character. The immense tracts of yet unoccupied land which lie beyond their settlements, offer an outlet, a sphere of exertion, for those turbulent and unquiet spirits, who, in a densely-peopled country, would prove dangerous to a government, of such an artless and simple

structure as the American.

If we have succeeded in shadowing forth to the reader the vague notions which our situation and opportunities have enabled us to form of the structure of American society, he (we can scarcely hope for the company of our fair friends along such a rugged path) will readily acquiesce in the opinion, that the objects which there present themselves to an author's eye, the passions likely to be awakened in his breast, are as yet of a kind more likely to call forth and afford materials for minds like that of a Fielding, a Smollett, or an Akenside, than for genius of a higher order. It is only in times of commotion that great men spring into existence. Eschylus fought in person against the Persians; Virgil was nursed amid the storms of the expiring republic; the Royal Minstrel of Israel poured forth his lays when hunted" like a partridge on the

The Red Rover, the latest of Cooper's novels, is also the most powerful. The story is that of a generous, but perverted mind, the commander of a piratical vessel. The time chosen is immediately antecedent to the Revolu tionary war; the scene is, during the first volume, in the capital of the colony of Rhode Island; the rest almost exclusively on sea. We know no one who commands that dread element with such power as Cooper. It is a power only to be equalled by that with which he places before us the fierce desperadoes of the pirate ship and their energetic leader. The Red Rover is a second and more successful attempt at what the author probably intended in the Pilot. In this latter novel, the events are so crowded as to hurt each other's effect, and are managed as by the hand of a beginner. The first conception is good, but there is generally a want of fulness and finish. The principal characters, too, strike us as failures—in particular, the ladies. And we may as well take this opportu nity of remarking, that we do not think Cooper at any time especially successful as a limner of the fair sex. We must, however, qualify our blame by admitting, that even in the Pilot there are indications of that talent which is displayed in its maturity in the Red Rover. The character of the hero the redoubted Paul Jonesis powerfully, and, we think, truly given; Long Tom Coffin is a jewel inadequately represented even by T. P. Cooke; and the running fight between the American frigate and three English vessels has scarcely been surpassed by the author's happiest efforts. The Leaguer of Boston is, as its title indicates, a tale of the Revolutionary war. In point of merit, it stands

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much on a par with the Pilot. The time of the Spy is at a later period of the same struggle; and the book is more to our taste. It contains a beautiful picture of Washington.

The Last of the Mohicans, the Pioneers, and the Prairie, compose a series. As, in the works already mentioned, the author has given us glimpses of civilized American life, in these three he has carried us to the boundaries where the white man and the dusky native come in contact. In the Last of the Mohicans, we find the Indian, as he existed before the independence of America, retreating before the encroachments of the whites, but preserving all the characteristics of his tribe. In the Pioneers, we find him lingering among the settlements, old and degraded, but looking back with pride to the days of his strength, as we have seen a chained eagle, his feathers ruffled and drooping, weakness in every limb, but the eye glancing brightly still, even amid disease and decay. In the Prairie, we are carried beyond the Ohio, and introduced to the scanty remnants of the Indian tribes, who, driven from station to station, have lost the associations of their fathers, and with them, hope and self-respect,-a savage banditti, who have parted with the virtues of the savage, without acquiring one tinge of civilisation.

Our limits do not admit of dwelling at greater length on the merits and peculiarities of these works. We recommend them to the attention of such of our readers as have not already met with them. They contain spirited views of American society at different times, in distant localities, and wide diversity of circumstances. They will be found amusing by the idler; and even the more reflective reader may perceive that they suggest thoughts on the state and prospects of America, which the paltry and insufficient histories we possess of that country have failed to awaken.

The Family Library. No. V. The History of the
Jews. In three volumes. Vol. I. London. John
Murray. 1829.

For ex

THE style of this first volume of Mr Milman's History of the Jews is the worst thing about it. The author seems so versant in the German theologians, and, so intimately acquainted with the German language, as to have forgotten, in some measure, his native idiom. ample, he says, (p. 303,) "Hezekiah replaced his father Ahaz on the throne." It is evident from the context that he means to say "succeeded." Now we are aware that in German ersetzen would be the proper word, but we are not aware of any authority for using replace in such a signification. Again, in the story of Uriah, he says of David, "he did not perpetrate this double crime without remonstrance." Had we not known Nathan was sent to David

looking over an extensive plain, where the outlines of the receding objects grow gradually less definite, and the extremity is lost in mists. But the history of the Jews places them distinctly before us from their first origin till their extinction as a nation. There is no period in which we are obliged to guess at the truth, hid beneath a dazzling but fantastic unsubstantial mythology. There is none in which we find ourselves on the limits of the two worlds of dream and reality, uncertain what is substance, what but an airy mockery. Abraham himself stands before us as real a denizen of this earth, as the last king who sate on the throne of David.

The progressive developement of the social system is most distinctly marked in the Jewish history. In the book of Genesis, we have a large and wealthy family wandering in a yet unappropriated land, and settling from time to time where inclination prompts. Their whole arrangements are strictly domestic; there are no laws, no magistrate, no relations of citizenship. Between the close of this book, and the commencement of Exodus, there is an interval, of which we have no account. When we meet with the Jews again, they have become a people. Their origin has already grown obscure ;-" Now there arose up a new king in Egypt, which knew not Joseph." They are strangers in a strange land, viewed with suspicion by the natives, enslaved, and oppressed. A deliverer is raised up, who leads them out with a strong hand into the wilderness, where God, first in his own person, and afterwards by the mouth of his prophet, promulgates a code of religious belief and civil ordinances, which they swear to observe. They are kept in the wilderness for forty years, that the stains and debasement of slavery may be effaced from their minds before they take possession of their inheritance. When the time arrives that the hearts and sinews of the nation have been braced by the free life of the desert, their teacher is taken from them, and his warrior successor leads them on to take possession of their new abode. As soon as his task is accomplished, and all the former inhabitants expelled or subdued, he too is removed, but not until the Israelites have renewed in his hands their oath to observe the ordinances of Moses.

The Israelites are now not only a numerous people, but they are in possession of a code of laws, and have obtained a fixed local habitation. As yet, however, After the they have no definite civil organization. death of Joshua, no one is appointed to succeed him in his capacity of ostensible head and ruler of the nation. They dwell together in the land, united by the ties of neighbourhood, common descent, common customs, and and belief, but without any other apparent bond of union. There is no appearance of chief or council. They seem to have decided their controversies by the judgments of the heads of families-princes, as they are called in the Mosaic books in the different tribes or neighbourhoods. From time to time, on occasions of emergency, when dangers threatened, inspired leaders appeared among them, Sophetim (judges); but their authority seems to have been, in a great measure, military, and even that is acknowledged only in one, or, at the most, a few of the tribes. Making allowance for such occasional exceptions, the closing words of the Book of Judges may be taken as descriptive of the whole of this period-a space of nearly five hundred years. ;—' "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

after the crime was perpetrated, we should have inferred, from the use of the word "remonstrance," that the prophet had expostulated with him previous to its commission. The general stiffness of the style is perhaps the consequence of an affectation of the brevity of Tacitus, which undoubtedly gives an occasional weight and point to the narrative, although the author at times, from his excessive love of condensation, leaves a part of his story untold. We advert to this fault of the work first, in order to get more speedily over the disagreeable portion of our business; for, these slight blemishes apart, it is a book of great merit. The present volume contains a condensed and comprehensive history of the Jewish nation, from Abraham to the Babylonish captivity. The story is in general distinctly told, and we meet frequently with passages of real eloquence. "Thus ended the period of the Judges; a period, if careThe history of the chosen people would be deeply in-lessly surveyed, of alternate slavery and bloody struggles for teresting, if for no other reason, because it is the only independence. Hence may rashly be inferred the total failauthentic history we have of the origin of society. ure of the Mosaic polity, in securing the happiness of the people. It has already been shown, that the views of the trustworthy annals of every other nation only reach legislature were not carried completely into effect, and that back to a time when it had already attained some power the miseries of the people were the natural consequences of and consistency. In perusing them, we seem to be their deviation from their original statutes. But in fact,

The

Of this period, the author of the work says well and

truly :—

general pictures of the famine, the common misery of every rank, and age, and sex, all the desolation, the carnage, the violation, the dragging away into captivity, the remembrance of former glories, of the gorgeous ceremonies, and the glad festivals, the awful sense of the Divine wrath heightening the present calamities, are successively drawn with all the life and reality of an eye-witness. They combine the truth of history with the deepest pathos of fiction."

But

out of this period of about 460 years, not one-fourth was passed under foreign oppression; and many of the servitudes seem to have been local, extending only over certain tribes, not over the whole nation. Above 300 years of peaceful and uneventful happiness remain, to which history, only faithful in recording the crimes and sufferings of man, bears the favourable testimony of her silence. If the Hebrew nation did not enjoy a high degree of intellectual civilisation, yet, as simple husbandmen, possessing perfect freedom, equal laws, the regular administration of justicecultivating a soil which yielded bountifully, yet required have turned our attention to the Jewish annals, exact In this necessarily bare and imperfect outline, we but light labour-with a religion strict as regards the mo rals which are essential to individual, domestic, and nationally as we would to any other historical document. peace, yet indulgent in every kind of social and festive enjoyment, the descendants of Abraham had reached a higher state of virtue and happiness than any other nation of the period. An uniform simplicity of manners pervaded the whole people; they were all shepherds or husbandmen. Gideon was summoned to deliver his country from the threshing floor: Saul, even after he was elected King, was found driving his herd: David was educated in the sheepfold. But the habits of the people are nowhere described with such apparent fidelity and lively interest as in the rural tale of Ruth and her kinsman-a history which unites all the sweetness of the best pastoral poetry, with the truth and simplicity of rural life."

That

there is another and a deeper interest attaching to them,
to which we would call the reader's attention.
they contain the most complete history we possess of a
nation's rise and fall-that they present us with the most
varied energetic representations of character-that we
find in them instances of devotion, in the weakest as well
as in the strongest, to their country and its institutions, un-
rivalled elsewhere, all these sink to insignificance when
we remember that the Jewish history is peculiarly and
exclusively the history of religion.

There is a devotional feeling inherent in the human breast. While enjoying any highly pleasurable excite

At the close of this period, the people of Israel-itment, the source of which we cannot recognise, there is does not precisely appear for what reason, but a variety, a natural, and almost irresistible tendency to bow down more or less plausible, might easily be assigned-became and worship the Unknown Giver. But the mind of man, clamorous for a more firm and energetic government, which should draw closer the bonds of national union under one ostensible head. Samuel, then the most influential of the prophets, remonstrated; he urged the distrust of God's providence, indicated by this reliance on earthly means, and also the danger of encroachment on their possessions and liberties by an arbitrary king: but in vain. The first monarch was unhappy; and, as the kingdom passed away from him, so it retained no lasting traces of his sway. David, and after him Solomon, completely organized its resources, and carried it to its height in wealth, power, and splendour. After the decease of the latter, jealousy of seeing the supreme power in the hands of Judah, induced the ten tribes, under pretext of certain exactions by Rehoboam, to fall off from their allegiance. Jeroboam, the first sovereign of Israel, as contradistinguished from Judah, in order to render the separation permanent, made innovations in the national worship; and, as the Levites adhered to the house of David and the temple, instituted a new class of priests. After this apostacy, the power and happiness of Israel dwindled away under a succession of usurpers, until it was removed from its place by the Assyrian. Judah, under an alternation of good and wicked princes, retaining, even when at the worst, more of the national character, survived for nearly a century, and was then carried captive to Babylon. Here the volume now before us closes; and here we, in like manner, close our historical retrospect, in the words of the author :-

not easily contented with vague and formless feelings, strives to attain some knowledge of this mysterious being. The senses cannot apprehend him; and the intellect, allpowerful though it be over what is subjected to it, has power over nothing but what the senses reach to it. The restless and forgetive imagination strives, from every thing that it has seen, or heard, to body forth the being around whom the heart seeks to wreath the garlands of thankfulness. Of such materials, and by such a workman, have been framed all uninspired religions. Fair in form, rich in intellectual and moral wisdom, according to the character of the nation in which they had their birth, Hume would not have erred had ke applied to them what he says of religion in general,—that it is the child of imagination, and that, although we listen with pleasure and acquiescence to the gorgeous visions of the poet, the reason revolts when any one attempts to establish them by argument.

"At this period of the approaching dissolution of the Jewish state, appeared the prophet Jeremiah, a poet, from his exquisitely pathetic powers, admirably calculated to perform the funeral obsequies over the last of her kings, over the captive people, the desolate city, the ruined temple. The prophet himself, in the eventful course of his melancholy and persecuted life, learnt that personal familiarity with affliction, which added new energy to his lamentations over his country and religion. • He survived to behold the sad accomplishment of all his darkest predictions. He witnessed all the horrors of the famine, and when that had done its work, the triumph of the enemy. He saw the strongholds of the city cast down, the palace of Solomon, the temple of God, with all its courts, its roofs of cedar and of gold, levelled to the earth, or committed to the flames; the sacred vessels, the ark of the covenant itself, with the cherubim, pillaged by profane hands. What were the feelings of a patriotic and religious Jew at this tremendous crisis, he has left on record in his unrivalled elegies. Never did city suffer a more miserable fate, never was ruined city lamented in language so exquisitely pathetic. Jerusalem is, as it were, personified, and bewailed with the passionate sorrow of private and domestic attachment; while the more

This inability of unaided reason to form for itself a notion of the divinity, and the danger to which a vague devotional feeling is exposed, if borne up by no stronger prop than what the imagination, the foster-child of passion, can afford, lead us at once to enquire with anxiety for, and to fix upon, the only source whence religious knowledge can be attained. It is revelation. whose infinitude transcends our limited grasp, must deThe God clare himself to us before we can know aught of him.

The sacred books, which arrest our attention by the strong external evidence of their authenticity, and then command our assent by their internal consistency, give us the history of this revelation. It was communicated to the first fathers of our race, and transmitted by them to their children. In course of time, the vital belief in the truths which had been thus communicated faded and grew dull. It was necessary to raise up some one who should preach the old and everlasting truth on the same authoriThe Jewish nation was sety as its first disseminators. lected for this proud office. In the wanderings of this people, we find frequent proofs that the original revelation had never been quite extinguished; but that, as with the natural day in some northern latitudes, the twilight of yesterday fades into, and is blended with, that of the rising sun.

himself to Moses, was looked upon with awe by the neighThe mountain where God first manifested bouring nations, as the favourite resort of some unknown but holier divinity. Balaam, Rachab, and others acknowledged, in the Israelites, at their approach, the objects of the protection of a powerful God, who had commanded the belief and veneration of their ancestors.

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