course of two long lectures which Mr. Adams devotes to him and his writings, we are presented with an analysis of his seven rhetorical treatises. The abstract is too general to be of much value; except to awaken a curiosity which it does not gratify. We shall extract the passage with which the fourth lecture concludes, at once to give our readers a specimen of the enthusiasm with which our author thinks, and the eloquence with which he writes on his favourite topick.

"But to whatever occupation your future inclinations or destinies may direct you, that pursuit of ideal excellence, which constituted the plan of Cicero's orator, and the principle of Cicero's life, if profoundly meditated, and sincerely adopted, will prove a never failing source of virtue and of happiness. I say profoundly meditated, because no superficial consideration can give you a conception of the real depth and extent of this principle. I say sincerely adopted, because its efficacy consists not in resolutions, much less in pretensions; but in action. Its affectation can only disclose the ridiculous coxcomb, or conceal the detestable hypocrite; nor is it in occasional, momentary gleams of virtue and energy, preceded and followed by long periods of indulgence or inaction, that this sublime principle can be recognized. It must be the steady purpose of a life, maturely considered, deliberately undertaken, and inflexibly pursued, through all the struggles of human opposition, and all the vicissitudes of fortune. It must mark the measure of your duties in the relations of domestick, of social, and of publick life. Must guard from presumption your rapid moments of prosperity, and nerve with fortitude your lingering hours of misfortune. It must mingle with you in the busy murmurs of the city, and retire in silence with you to the shades of solitude. Like hope it must travel through, nor quit you when you die.' Your guide amid the dissipations of youth; your counsellor in the toils of manhood; your companion in the leisure of declining age. It must, it will, irradiate the darkness of dissolution; will identify the consciousness of the past with the hope of futurity; will smooth the passage from this to a better world; and link the last pangs of expiring nature with the first rapture of never ending joy.

"You are ready to tell me, that I am insensibly wandering from my subject into the mazes of general morality. In surveying the character and writings of Cicero, we cannot choose but be arrested, at almost every step of our progress, by some profound and luminous principle, which suspends our attention from the immediate cause of our research, and leads us into a train of reflections upon itself. Yet these, though indirect, are perhaps the fairest illustrations of our primary object. In Cicero, more than in any other writer, will you find a perpetual comment upon the saying of Solomon, that 'the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning. Cicero is the friend of the soul, whom we can never meet without a gleam of pleasure; from whom we can never part, but with reluctance."

But though we have admitted, that there are few subjects on which enthusiasm is more pardonable than the eulogy of the life and writings of Cicero, there are certain limits beyond which our toleration does not extend. When therefore Mr. A. tells us that the Offices of Cicero are 66 a valuable and congenial supplement to the precepts of the gospel," p. 136, and calls on us "to make his character the standard of moral and intellectual worth for all human kind," p. 138, we turn away with feelings of incredulity and regret. Mr. Adams we are confident does not intend to convey the meaning which his words imply. In every part of his work he is eager to seize every opportunity of expressing his strong and entire conviction of the truth of Christianity, and his reverence for the writings which contain it. It is impossible also that he should avoid seeing that our duties are put on an entirely new ground by it, and that there must be a palpable and essential distinction between a code of morals founded only on ideas of what is useful and decorous in this life alone; and a system, whose criterion is the will of God and whose sanctions extend to the illimitable ages of eternity. We are authorized to think the expressions we have quoted to be merely hyperbolical by the observations,*which he himself makes on the inadequacy of the philosophy of Quinctilian, the admirer and disciple of Cicero, to support him under the loss of his wife and children; observations so beautiful and impressive as almost to tempt us to pardon the extravagance of which we complain. This however is only one of many instances, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe, in which Mr. A.'s passion for brilliancy has betrayed him into absurdity. RIEN EST BEAU QUE LE VRAI, says Boileau; and the claims of Mr. Adams to the name of a man of taste and of judgment must for ever be held disputable, till he submits to govern himself by the maxim.

The survey of the character and writings of the ancient rhetoricians is concluded by a lecture on Quinctilian. This lecture is one of our author's happiest efforts. There is included in it an account of the nature and uses of the ancient declamations, and a review of the fine fragment on the causes of the decline of eloquence. He forbears to offer an analysis of the institutes of Quinctilian, as it would involve the consideration of some parts of the science for which his hearers were not prepared. Indeed the plan of the whole of these

* P. 155.

lectures is formed so scrupulously on Quinctilian, that such an analysis would be quite superfluous. The lecture closes with an examination of the truth of the favourite maxim of Quinctilian, that no one but a good man can be a finished orator. One principal reason, we conceive, why this was anciently held to be of so much importance was, that from the vagueness of the laws and the ignorance of the judges, they were compelled to rely on the statements of the advocates, and of course therefore would place the most implicit reliance on him, whose character for probity was most unimpeachable.

In the seventh lecture we are presented with an outline of the whole course. The primary divisions of rhetorick into invention, disposition, elocution, memory and pronunciation, are adopted from the ancients, and the technical sense in which they are understood is unfolded at length. Mr. A. with the same singular fondness, which we before remarked, for supporting his ideas of rhetorick by the sanction of scripture, finds that "the arrangement of a discourse by Aristotle corresponds precisely with the process of the Creator in making the world. God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was without form and void. Invention.

"And God said, let there be light. Elocution.

"And God divided the light from the darkness, &c. Disposition."

We shall not debate the propriety of all this with Mr. A. He unquestionably means to be serious, and we shall not indulge the levity which we fear he will excite in readers less grave than ourselves.

The first grand subdivision of invention, drawn from the different ultimate purposes of the speaker, is into discourses demonstrative, deliberative and judicial, to which Mr. A. with all the modern writers, adds religious. Before proceeding to the discussion of the rules, which apply to each of these divisions, he examines those general incidents, which are denominated by the ancients "the state of the controversy” and "general topicks." The first of these lectures is among the most useful in the book; as the rules he lays down are almost universally disregarded by our speakers, with the exception of some of our best lawyers and a few of our best preachers. The "topicks," so much insisted on by the ancients, have among the moderns shared the fate of the logick of Aristotle ; because too much was attributed to them, they have been pro

nounced altogether useless. Yet it is demonstrable, that in every effort of invention we must in effect resort to them; as in the same manner it may be shown, that every process of sound reasoning includes in it the essence of a syllogism. We have no other idea of invention, than the introduction of one idea into the mind by means of another with which it is previously associated. The bond of this association is the mutual connexions and relations of ideas with each other. When therefore a man of a comprehensive and systematick mind is employed in searching for the materials of a discourse, he revolves the general ideas which study and observation have given him, and thus obtains the particular ideas which are related to or connected with them. These general ideas cor respond with what the ancients denominated topicks. It is clear therefore, that the difference of the degrees with which men's minds are enriched with these topicks constitutes the ground of the distinction, we observe in their powers of giving to a subject its full developement and illustration. Mr. Adams has our praise for recalling attention to this neglected subject. He has contrived to make this one of the most entertaining of his lectures by the vivacity of his illustrations and examples. We should have been pleased however, if he had followed the ancients somewhat less scrupulously in his enumeration of the topicks; and borrowed some of those lights which the investigation of the great law of animated nature, the doctrine of the association of ideas, has thrown on every subject connected with the philosophy of the mind. He might have found some admirable hints on the subject in Priestley's lectures on oratory and criticism.

The next five lectures are devoted to the peculiar "characteristicks," "ends" and "arguments" of the various classes of demonstrative, deliberative, judicial and religious orations. We think we anticipate the judgment of every reader, when we say that they will be read with the greatest pleasure and advantage. We do not however participate altogether in our author's fondness for demonstrative eloquence, which, as he observes, all the nations of modern Europe, except the French, have suffered to fall into comparative neglect. There is nothing in the whole circle of literature which might be struck out of existence with so little loss of any thing intrinsically valuable, as the whole tribe of " panegyricks," "eloges," "funeral orations, sermons," &c. &c. We acknowledge indeed that

some of the most splendid talents, the world has ever seen, have not disdained this field of exertion; and even admit, that some of the brightest gems of imagination may be found scattered among its walks. But genius thus employed is like the sun pouring its beams on the Glaciers. The show is very beautiful and dazzling; but all the warmth and virtue of the rays are wasted in producing a transient and unmeaning pageant. We believe there are very few among us, who possess the native, undepraved taste of our progenitors, who will not confess that, after the first effect of novelty is over, they begin to grow weary of the perpetual tissue of frigid antitheses, unmeaning epithets, and disgusting adulation which characterizes the greater part of the French eulogies. As tributes of respect to departed greatness, the ground on which Mr. A. vindicates them, they are nothing; because partiality and exaggeration are stamped on their very front. We take no pride therefore in the increasing taste among us for this species of composition; particularly as its value seems to be so extremely overrated. It is one of the most unpleasant spots on our national character, that we have refused even the tribute of a bit of marble to our greatest hero; and have thought, that a string of eulogies, written for the most part in the most execrable taste imaginable, is a sufficient monument of gratitude for the services of such a man as Washington.

The lecture on deliberative eloquence is extremely good, though it possesses little novelty, as the ancient writers have exhausted the subject, and their precepts are still applicable almost without change. Of the two lectures on judicial eloquence Mr. Adams may be more proud. Here, from the alterations which have taken place in our laws and judicial institutions, he is compelled to desert his ancient guides and modify their rules in conformity to these changes. The distinction between the ancient and modern modes of judicial process, he points out very fully and, we believe, very ably. We observe one instance however, in which he represents this difference to be somewhat greater than it really is.

"If," says Mr. Adams, “an American barrister should undertake by an elaborate argument to prove, that the Abbe Delille was a citizen of the United States, because he was an excellent French poet, if all the muses should combine to compose his oration, not five sentences of it would he be suffered to deliver. Yet examine that inimitable, that immortal oration for Archias, and amidst that unbounded blaze of elo