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conclusion to which he has come, or of the steps by which he has arrived at that conclusion.

The object of the Doctor's remarks is, to prove that the words conservandi sui, in the concluding clause, refer, not to animantibus, but to natura; and this, he says, "may be evinced by considerations drawn both from logic and grammar." Let us look first at the grammatical use of the reflexive pronoun sui; for this, the Doctor seems to think, is the strongest part of his argument; whereas, in our humble opinion, it is his weakest point. He says, "C every tyro knows that the reflexive pronoun sui refers to the principal subject of the sentence, which is here not animantibus, but natura." And again, “I contend that the objection derived from the use of the reflexive pronoun is fatal to it."

Now, "every tyro" may know that this is a general rule regarding sui; but every scholar also knows that it is by no means a universal rule. To prove this, (if proof be needed,) many examples might be adduced from the best classical authors, but we think it sufficient for our present purpose to produce only one, which is perhaps of all others the most conclusive; as the whole structure of the sentence is so identical with that of the sentence under review, that the grammatical use of sui in the two sentences must undoubtedly stand or fall in both. It is this: Cæsar, Bell. Gall. III. 6,-" Quod jussi sunt, faciunt; ac, subito omnibus portis eruptione facta, neque cognoscendi quid fieret, neque sui colligendi hostibus facultatem relinquunt." Now, who can doubt that sui in this sentence refers to hostibus? And if so, why may not the sui in the sentence under review refer to animantibus?

Having thus, beyond all doubt, as we think, established the point that the reflexive pronoun may refer to animantibus, without any violation of grammatical exactness, let us now look at the logical part of the question. The Doctor says, "In all that goes before, there is nothing that has even a remote reference to self-preservation. To translate therefore the phrase in question, as if it referred to that great law of nature, would be to impute to Cicero a manifest non sequitur." Now, so far are we from seeing any thing illogical in referring sui to animantibus, that to refer it to any thing else appears to us to involve a manifest absurdity. If sui refers to natura, as the Doctor so strenuously contends for, then, instead of nature taking care of animals by implanting in them a self-preserving instinct, he makes the animals use that instinct for preserving or taking care of nature and her arrangements. For what does he make Cicero say? Manifestly this: "Nature has implanted in animals the care of preserving herself [nature] and her arrangements inviolate." This is certainly reversing the order of things. The Doctor seems to imagine that the verb conservare

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in this sentence, if referred to animantibus, implies, "keeping themselves from destruction," whereas, in our opinion, it means, serve," or "keep themselves inviolate," or, in short, "to keep themselves as nature made them ;" for, looking back to the preceding chapter, we find Cicero, after speaking of the nature of the heavenly bodies, and of plants and trees, &c., going on to say, "animantium vero, quanta varietas est? quanta ad eam rem vis, ut in suo quæque genere permaneant?" And from this point down to the end of the 48th chapter, he goes on to shew the various provisions which nature has made for the preservation and support of animals. And then, as a general inference from the whole passage, he says, "Tantam ingenuit animantibus conservandi sui natura custodiam," which, contrary to the Doctor's opinion, we would venture to translate thus:—Such is the care (or watchful instinct) that nature has implanted in animals, of PRESERVING (or TAKING CARE OF) THEMSELVES, or, of SELF-CONSERVATION.

JOHN TROTTER.

6. PARAPHRASE OF THE SONG OF THE EPOPS IN THE Birds of
ARISTOPHANES, v. 227. Ed. Dindorf.

With a hip and a whoop, and a hip-hip-whoop,

I call, I call, I call,

Come trip it, trip it, trip it, trip it,

And troop, and troop, and troop,

My merry men all,

Both great and small,

Since birds of a feather

Should flock together,

Away, hie away, at my call.

Come, ye lords of the soil

And the husbandman's toil,-
Unbidden partakers
Of well-seeded acres,

Whose ample advowson
Keeps half a score thousand
Of barley-fed broods upon commons.

And you, O ye fleetest of wing,
A song for your supper who sing,
And, like rogues, as ye are, in grain,
With heaven-filched harmonies feign
To pay for your provender,
Though there is no vendor,
Hither away at my summons.

And you too, make haste, for I want ye,
Half clodhoppers, half dilettanti,

Who strike on the new furrow's sharp edges
Unisons, full chords, and arpeggios,

Perched on your orchestra

Care not for work a straw;

And, overjoyed at the tones ye reiterate,

Tirily, tirily, twit, twit, twit, twitter it.
And all ye wardens

Of orchards and gardens,
And tenants in fee

Of the green ivy-tree,

And where, and oh, where is

The Highlander, who lives
On arbutus-berries

And roots of wild olives.

Hear, gentle and simple, hear, rustic and cit,
Your toil and your time and your tidy tit-bit,
I give you all notice to quit, quit, quit,
I give you all notice to quit.

Hither, each vermicelli-lover,
Each denizen of marshy cover,
Hazlehen, coot, or plover,

Whose mental and bodily tastes agree
To dabble in Entomology,

Who dine, of science most voracious,

Off spiky-snouted gnat mordacious.

And you, for whom the sun-beams brew

Your chirping cup of spiced dew

On Marathon's delicious plain,
All jewelled once with richer rain;
Thou too, bird of pencilled pinion,

Guinea-hen, guinea-hen, graceful guinea-hen.
All ye that, up-borne on the billowy motion,
With Halcyons dance it upon the green ocean,

O, hither, and welcome, my princes and peers,

New sights for your eyes, and new sounds for your ears. Time presses, the matter's of weight,-and, in short, here's

A general order gone out from head-quarters;

So, up to the muster, or every defaulter

Shall have his long neck longer stretched with a halter.

Here's an old man, whose verjuicy visage

May some seventy winters have seen;

But his wits would do honour to this age,

Original, cunning, and keen.

And the Council's to meet on a grand speculation

He has hatched in his head for the good of our nation.

Now that our Parliament meets to talk it

Over, I will that none do balk it.

Wherefore hither

Through wind and weather

O'er bog and heather,

And all together.

Swim it, skim it, strut it, stalk it,

Skip it, trip it, wing it, walk it.

Semichorus.-Cuckoo, cuckoo.

Semichorus.-Tu-whit, Tu-whoo, [To wit, to you.]

Chorus.-Tereu, Tereu, Tereu.

VII.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

1. CONSTRUCTIVE EXERCISES for Teaching the Elements of the Latin Language on a System of Analysis and Synthesis; with copious Vocabularies. By John Robson. London: Taylor & Walton, 1846.

WE should not think it advisable to direct the attention of the readers of the Classical Museum to a volume of Latin Exercises, unless such a work were distinguished either by novelty of plan or superiority of execution. Mr. Robson's book fulfils both these conditions. It is intended for the use of pupils who have no previous knowledge of the language, and its great object is to give from the very beginning an analysis of every part of the language, accompanied with a sufficient number of examples to impress the rules indelibly upon the memory. Thus the first exercise contains the rules for the formation of the nominative and accusative cases of nouns and of the third person singular of the present tense of verbs, and is followed by twenty short English sentences to be translated into Latin. Beginning in this simple manner, the author gradually proceeds through the whole of the inflections, giving, as he goes along, all the most important rules of syntax; so that by the time the pupil has finished the book, he cannot fail to have learnt, by the numerous exercises he has written, all

the principal inflections and grammatical peculiarities of the Latin language. In this way theory and practice go hand in hand, and we can imagine no better plan for obtaining a thorough knowledge of the language. At the same time, we think that the pupil ought by no means to be confined to the writing of these exercises; but after he has learnt the leading inflections from some compendious grammar, he should at once begin reading some easy Latin author; for if he be debarred from reading any writer till he has finished all the exercises, his work must of necessity become intolerably dull and tedious.

With respect to the manner in which Mr. Robson has executed his work, we are glad to be able to speak of this part of his labours with almost unqualified praise. He displays an accuracy of scholarship which does the highest credit to himself and to the institution to which he belongs, and which contrasts most favourably with the loose scholarship which is conspicuous in some of the most popular Latin Exercise Books of the present day. The only drawback to Mr. Robson's explanations is, that they are occasionally more adapted to an advanced scholar than to a youth, and are certainly quite unsuitable to a boy just beginning to learn Latin. Thus, for instance, it would be a sad puzzle to most boys to tell them, as Mr. Robson does, "that the present perfect had originally a suffix is or er," and if true, which we much doubt, would for all practical purposes be quite a useless piece of learning. But perhaps remarks of this kind are introduced, more for the use of the teacher than the learner.

To give our readers an opportunity of judging for themselves of the clear and admirable manner in which Mr. Robson explains some of the difficulties of the Latin language, we copy his account of the Gerund and the Ablative Absolute. Thus he writes of the Gerund:

"The GERUND is a neuter abstract substantive, declined in the singular only, which is derived from verbs by suffixing to the imperfect C.F. ndo when it ends in a or e, and endo when it ends in i, u, or any consonant: as, C.F. ǎra 'plough,' GERUND ara-ndo 'ploughing;' c.F. muni fortify,' GERUND muni-endo 'fortifying;' C.F. cap(i), GERUND căpi-endo 'tak-ing;' c.F. deponent cōna 'attempt,' GERUND cōna-ndo ' attempt-ing.'

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"The gerund corresponds to the class of English verbals which end in ing, and express the signification of verbs abstracted from all the notions of person, time, and mood, which are connoted by the verbs themselves in this respect, then, the gerund resembles the infinitive, but differs from it in being declinable, and in having no variety of form expressive of the incomplete or completed state of the action.

The gerund cannot be the subject (nominative or accusative) of

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