discussion in the United States. The post-office is established for the convenience of the people, and for no other purpose. It is established in order to make the transmission of letters cheap, safe, and quick; and private persons are prohibited by law from making up mail bags between places which are connected by United States mails, because the post establishment is expensive, and must, in many parts, cost far more than it can yield. The whole, therefore, must be made to work together, lest the United States should be unable to carry the mail through thinly inhabited regions, had they not the sole privilege of carrying the mail in the densely inhabited parts of our country. But, if a person can get his letters carried cheaper, quicker, or safer, by private opportunity than the mail can do it, it would be very hard indeed, to prohibit him from doing so, and to force him to pay, where he may obtain the same service gratis. Besides, how should the prohibition be carried out? Shall we have police officers looking into our trunks? In principle as well as in execution, the law would be wholly repugnant to our feelings. We are well aware that the number of letters carried by private opportunities between some places-for instance, between New York and Boston—is enormous. And what of it? Have we ever declared that the carrying of letters was a privilege, a right, a prerogative of government; or, have we said to government, we cannot singly carry our letters, therefore, be our carrier? All that government can do in this case, is fairly to enter into competition, and induce the letter-writer by reduced postage together with the less degree of trouble and greater certainty of speedy delivery, rather to send letters by public mail than by private hand. We were not a little surprised when, during the late administration, a paper universally understood to be the official organ, spoke of this conveying of letters by private opportunity, as a post defraudment. It required all the insolence of placemen, believing themselves safe, to utter such inconsistency in the United States. In all countries on the European continent, the transmission of letters by private opportunity is prohibited by a heavy fine, because there the post establishment is made use of to obtain a revenue, and is declared a prerogative of the crown. Do those gentlemen wish to imitate these governments? They may go further still. If one has travelled in Prussia with post-horses, and wish to take private horses, he must pay first a considerable fine, or wait three days, and no coachman can carry him more than a few miles without paying a certain sum to the post-office. These arrangements may do very well there, but to any one who would be daring enough to propose their introduction here, we should only say, it will never do for us.

Before, however, a post establishment complains of the enormous number of letters carried by private opportunity, it ought to see whether it fulfils the objects for which alone it has been founded. Does it carry the letters rapidly? There were several routes on which letters might be sent quicker by private opportunity. Does

it carry letters safely? We know two commercial houses that ran a daily private mail between the two cities in which they were established. The heads of these houses have repeatedly assured us, that the saving of postage was no object; and, in fact, frequently the transmission of the box, with but few letters, costs far more than the regular postage would amount to. Their only object was safety; because they have almost daily to transmit valuable papers, and they dare not entrust them to the mail. Their fear was produced by many sad occurrences, and they consider themselves justified in thus acting against the law, because, as they believe, the post does not secure safety. Whenever party violence becomes the standard of claim for office, respectability, honesty, and efficiency must, of course, be disregarded—an effect most disastrous to post establishments.

ART. III.-1. A New and Copious Lexicon of the Latin Language; compiled chiefly from the Magnum Totius Latinitatis Lexicon of Facciolati and Forcellini, and the German works of Scheller and Lünemann. Edited by F. P. LEVERETT. Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter. pp. 996.

2. An Abridgment of Leverett's Latin Lexicon; particularly adapted to the Classics usually studied preparatory to a Collegiate course. By FRANCIS GARDNER, A. M., Instructor in the Public Latin School in Boston. J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter. 1840. pp. 419.

3. An English-Latin Lexicon, prepared to accompany Leverett's Latin-English Lexicon. J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter. pp. 318.

THE very great labor involved in the preparation of any book which professes to compare two languages, the idioms of which are so essentially different as are the English and Latin, demands for it a favorable consideration. When, however, as in the volumes named above, an attempt is made to go into the minutest details of the idiom, etymology, prosody, and, to a certain degree, of the syntactical grammar of the languages; to investigate classical habits, manners and philosophy; to study the turn of thought and the peculiarities of the literature of classical antiquity; to examine the strik

ing features of its history and mythology; to discover the means of reproducing the master-pieces of the Latin language in all ages; and to present to us, in an available form, the results of such an investigation, embracing the collected labors of the most accomplished scholars who have ever devoted their attention to such subjects, it certainly deserves the careful examination, and, if successful, the warm admiration, of all who may have occasion to avail themselves of it.

We have no desire or intention to overrate the difficulties of the task. But we believe that we shall meet with no contradiction, if we assert that hardly any two languages could be selected from those of the ancient or modern nations of Europe, differing more in the arrangement of their idioms, the construction of their sentences, and the nature of the signification of their words, than do the Latin and English. The very nature of our own language is enough to induce such a difference. Its singular union of Teutonic and Celtic roots and dialects with that which it has borrowed from the Latin, gives to its distinctive features an aspect entirely different from that of any language which claims a more simple origin. We know the great difficulty which every foreigner experiences in his endeavors to acquire it; how much greater, then, must be the difficulty of collating its words, phrases, and constructions with those of any dead language!

We must be careful, also, to remember that a knowledge of Latin, such as to enable one to cope successfully with the difficulties of which we speak, is not an every-day affair. It is one thing to read a Latin classic easily, even critically, and quite another to understand the details of the language and the several relations which they bear to each other. The rarity of this accomplishment may be perceived in the difficulty, which approaches an impossibility, experienced by every modern author who attempts to write in one of the dead languages. We believe that we speak quite within bounds, when we say that no person who has written in Latin since it ceased to be a living language, has succeeded in so exactly imitating his classical prototypes, that the modern date of his production would not be detected by a skilful classical scholar. Nor is he thus detected merely from the over-nicety or precision of his language, as those sometimes are who use a tongue which they have learned by rule merely; but because it is impossible for any author so constantly to retain in mind the precise peculiarities of the signification and history of

every Latin word, as always to use each one precisely in its proper place, although he may be able to detect many errors similar to his own in the works of another. Sir James Mackintosh has a remark on this point, which will, in a manner, illustrate our meaning. In his diary he says:—

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Through thick and thin,'-'By hook and crook,''With might and main,'-were, in the time of Spenser, phrases admissible in poetry; if any writer, when English becomes a dead language, should mix these phrases with the style of Gray, he would make a jumble, probably resembling our best Latinity."

This is undoubtedly true; and the particular examples given will be enough to suggest to the reader's mind many others, which would go far to add to the incongruity of this jumbled English. It is evident, then, that the mere circumstance, that many men can readily read and write in both English and Latin, is far from proving that there is, by any means, a general knowledge of the niceties of the comparison of the idioms of the two languages. The first of these acquirements is comparatively superficial and easy of attainment; the other is one which is perhaps never acquired by a single individual, and its results can only be arranged in a form suitable for general reference by the united labor of many scholars.

In mentioning, as we do, niceties of meaning and of idiom, and details of style and construction, we do not wish to deal in unmeaning general terms. If this were the proper place, we could adduce examples without number, to illustrate the niceties and details to which we refer. Any one who has the slightest knowledge of any of the dead languages, will understand their nature. To say nothing of the differences of the origin of the English and Latin languages-we see at once that nations, whose habits of thought, whose manners, history, philosophy, and politics, are of a nature so entirely different from ours, as were those of the ancient republics, must have had many entirely different ideas; and, consequently, a vocabulary of a nature entirely different from ours. Nations whose languages are formed on national characteristics, climate, and associations, at entire variance with each other, must have very different idioms and constructions. The attempt to compare them is not unlike that of teaching a deaf and dumb person, unused to any communication but by general signs, the manner of reading a written language. He wants that which makes it

so easy to others- the perfect familiarity with spoken words. In comparing a dead with a living language, we want the perfect familiarity with the ideas conveyed, and with the ancient habits of thought and expression, which we can have in the study of any of the modern languages. In thus speaking of the study of Latin, we mean, of course, its accurate and precise study. It may be superficially acquired, and to much profit, also, with as little labor as most languages.

Comparatively little assistance for the faithful execution of this task, can, from the nature of the case, be derived from the older English philologists. The very existence of a dictionary, as we now understand the word, was impossible, till within the three last centuries, before which period, many of the other branches of criticism, of much less importance than this, had attained a vigorous growth. It was not, indeed, till late in the seventeenth century that our language was 30 far settled, that any studies founded on its existing state at any particular period, would be of much use to subsequent critics; and long after that time, the minds of the scholars who turned their attention to such branches as lexicography, were so completely imbued with the spirit and idiom of a dead language, that they were not able to treat of their own in its purity. Their English is, after all, rather a Latin-English, than the language which was used by their countrymen. So far, too, as mere definitions of words are concerned, no direct information, of course, could be derived from ancient authors. The Roman grammarians treated, at great length, and in detail, of the construction of their language, and the powers of its several parts; modern grammarians, therefore, have had something ancient on which to build their labors; but, excepting this, the lexicographer has no direct aid, but is obliged to obtain his results by a constant, persevering application to the whole field of classical study.

The mere creation of a vocabulary, however, in which the definitions of the words in one language shall be explained by corresponding words in another, is, as we have implied, but the smallest part of his labors. Any treatise on synonyms, or any course of classical reading, will show how nice are the shades of meaning between different words; these shades it is his duty to point out with care, that the student may not be misled so as to misunderstand the real relation between different words in the same language. Again; he will find