5. A Grammar of the Greek Language, for the use of Schools and Colleges. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1838. 12mo. pp. 292.

To make good school books requires the exertion of a high degree of intellect, and that, too, of a very rare and peculiar kind; while, at the same time, so small in proportion to the labor is the display, and so disproportionate the reward of reputation, that few men of eminence are willing to expend their time and talents on works, which, when complete, are looked upon by the many as mere school books. The consequence of this fact is, that the composition of this most valuable class of works has fallen, for the most part, into the hands of men utterly unfitted to the task; and hence the cart loads of miserable trash with which our country is inundated-every half taught alumnus of a second and third rate college, thinking himself, forsooth, qualified to teach and to publish his crudities, under the cover of a diploma, and finding no difficulty in obtaining testimonials of his own merits and the excellence of his books, from men whose real and merited reputation ought to deter them from lavishing, with such undue facility, their commendation on what they probably have never even qualified themselves to judge by a perusal. We have said, that the composition of school books requires the exercise of a very high and rare degree of intellect- and for this reason, that, in addition to a full and deep acquaintance with the subject in all its accidents, it undoubtedly needs a mind of a peculiar and unusual complexion, to convey this acquaintance to others, with that clearness and simplicity, which alone can render it available to feeble understandings; and it is further to be observed, that it is precisely in this point that the most erudite and profound scholars are usually wanting. The whole subject being to them as light as day, they cannot realize to themselves the fact, that it is exactly the reverse to others; and hence they are too apt, in teaching, to jump to the conclusion, neglecting the necessity of pointing out the several steps by which they have themselves attained it, and which to them appear too obvious to be overlooked by any. The author of the work before us is possessed—as all who are acquainted with his name well knowof the first requisite, a full and deep acquaintance with his subject; and we believe that we do no injustice to many able scholars, throughout the country, in assuming that no other native of this land is more thoroughly imbued with all the niceties, all the delicate and minute distinctions, of the magnificent and stately tongue, to which he now puts forth the key; - but highly as we have always reckoned of him as a teacher, we were ignorant, until the appearance of the work before us, of the pre-eminent degree in which he is endowed with the rare tact of conveying his own knowledge to

the minds of others. It is by the exercise of this tact, even more than by his unusual skill in the language itself, that Professor Anthon has rendered his Greek Grammar the best, in our opinion, which ever has been published, either in this country or abroad. Omitting nothing that is contained in the most voluminous and cumbrous works of the German school, it is so clear in its arrangements, so perfectly simple and comprehensible in its explanations, that we have no hesitation in saying, that, by the use of this little volume, almost as much might be acquired of the Greek tongue, without the aid of oral exposition, as from any other work in circulation, assisted by an able and experienced tutor. On its peculiar excellences, our limits prohibit us from enlarging to the extent we could desire; but in a few words, we can touch upon its most marked points of superiority, which we conceive to be— first, the great simplification and plainness of its rules, whether for verbal formations, or for syntactical arrangement-secondly, the full and extended manner in which the declensions and conjugations are carried out, leaving nothing to be guessed at, or misapprehended-and lastly, though not leastly, the cutting down of those redundant and embarrassing superfluities with which all previous books of this nature abound. It is emphatically an excellent school book! Indeed, we do not see how it could be improved; and anxious as we are to see a high degree of education and general literary habits diffused through the vast territories of our country, we trust that-as one of the most probable steps toward this result-this work may be universally adopted in every school and college of America.

6. A System of Greek Prosody and Metre, for the Use of Schools and Colleges: together with the Choral Scanning of the Prometheus Vinctus of Eschylus, and the Ajax and Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles; to which are appended Remarks on Indo-Germanic Analogies. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1838. 12mo.

To attempt any thing like a review, or complete analysis, of the work before us, on a scale such as should be compatible with the very limited space to which our purely literary notices are of necessity confined, would be absurd, no less than impossible; while at the same time, to pass over a subject of so much deep importance to the right comprehension of the noblest language the world has ever heard, would be unjust, alike to ourselves, to our readers, and to the able scholar whose labors call for our attention. The utility of a complete, and at the same time simple, prosody of the

Greek language, is indeed incalculable-for, apart from the consideration that no person can be considered even a tenth rate scholar, who is not versed in this too much neglected branch of learning, one of the great aims of reading Greek at all, is frustrated by the neglect of prosody, inasmuch as the exquisite poetry of the masters of the ancient lyre must be entirely shut up from all but the expert prosodian. We are not aware that there exists any Prosody of the Greek tongue, comprised within such limits, and professing even to be arranged on principles of facility and simplicity, similar to those of the volume now before us-we are certain that there exists not any comparable to it, either for the mass of erudition it contains, or the easy, unaffected, and explanatory mode in which that erudition is conveyed. The best treatises on this most interesting topic are either voluminous, or, as is most generally the case, too laconic in style, too much deficient in example, and too often couched in the epigrammatic brevity of the Latin language, to be of real use to learners; indeed, the only perfect knowledge of Greek Prosody, is to be attained by a careful perusal of all the annotations, excursions, prefaces, etc., of all the best editions, of all the standard Grecian poets. The length of time necessary for even a partial acquisition of this science was of consequence enormous; and, not only has Professor Anthon merited the thanks of every student, for the immense saving of labor he has brought about by the compression of all that we have above alluded to, into the space, and under the form, of (comparatively speaking) a few judicious rules; but still more for the excellence of the arrangement of these rules, and the great ease with which they can be comprehended and committed permanently to the "tablets of the mind."

After a brief exposition of the meaning of the term Prosody, as used by the ancients, and an expression of his intention to confine himself in this treatise "to the consideration of quantity and metre," the author proceeds to expound the great principles, and GENERAL RULE of this science, and thence to a number of admirable rules, with copious examples and exceptions first for the qualities of the long vowels as affected by nature, or position-thence to those for the short vowels, with exceptions, for the lengthening of these in the different parts of words. He then states simply and most truly, that "the chief object of Greek Prosody is to reduce to rule the quantity of the doubtful or arbitrary vowels, a, i, v," and proceeds to reduce their quantity to rule in a manner so easy, clear, and concise, that absolutely nothing is left that could be desired. And here we must pause to express our opinion, that the great merit of this work, as of its predecessor the Greek Grammar, is the wonderful simplicity-the great tact shown in disencumbering the subject from useless and bewildering technicalities, and the completeness of the explanations; which last, by leaving nothing to be

guessed at, and by the perfection of their style, are equally full and incapable of misconstruction. Having acquitted himself in the first forty-five pages of the topic "quantity," he leads us at once into "metre" and under this head we find, first, a very lucid exposition of "Feet," particularly of those which are "isochronous or interchangeable in metre”—and then a set of rules for the scansion of every species of verse in use among the Grecian poets; than which rules we can conceive nothing more perfect-they embody all the lore of all the wisest commentators, and are yet more remarkable for that peculiarly lucid order which belongs, as we have before observed, to all the school books of this very able scholar. These rules are followed by the choral scanning of the Prometheus, every line of every choral system, whether uttered by the chorus or the dramatis personæ, being divided into its appropriate feet, and marked with the syllabic quantities, with an accompanying key giving the name of every verse. The text adopted is, so far as we have examined, that of the admirable edition of Eschylus, by Scholefield, the reigus professor of divinity in the University of Cambridge. Then follow the choral scannings, after the same method, of the Ajax Flagellifer and the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles; and with these the work-as it concerns Greek Prosody alone-may be deemed terminated; although we have a long and most learned disquisition (and not less interesting than it is long and learned) on language in general-with the roots, analogies, and affiliations of tongues and dialects. We have but a word to add, in conclusion, and that is, what we conceive the highest praise attributable to a work of this nature-Anthon's Greek Prosody contains all that has been said, and we believe all that can be said, rightly, on a most important branch of literary science—all that says, is better said than it has ever been before- and, last, but not least, the book requires no oral explanation of the teacherlet a pupil but read it diligently and attentively, and the mystery is such no longer.

it

7. An Inquiry into the Moral and Religious Character of the American Government. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 8vo. pp. 208.

"A COMMONWEALTHI ought to be but as one huge christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body." Such was Milton's notion of what a state should be. It is our author's motto and doctrine. The aim of the work is to enforce it. Under a sound interpretation we concur with him. The "common weal" is but a term of

comprehension; it is made up by the union of all individual weals; so that, if they be sound it is sound, and nothing can be good or bad for the state which is not good or bad for individuals. This is a self-evident proposition. Political economy has settled at least this truth-there is no such thing as a national interest apart from the interests of the majority of that nation-their weal, their wo— their profit, their loss-determines that of the nation. Now, if this be so, the question before us would seem to be settled. All that would be needful to the proof that the state should be christian, being to show, that individuals should be christian; and thus, we arrive at the same conclusion with the poet, and our author-“a commonwealth should be but as one huge christian personage". but this requires, as already said, a wise interpretation. In the mouth of a fifth-monarchy man, this proposition meant the personal reign of the saints; to them belonged all power, and all right, and consequently, all property; just as in the individual man all government belongs, of right, to reason and conscience. The troubles consequent on the rule so interpreted, were soon evident; inasmuch as, there being no other criterion for ascertaining who these governing saints were, besides each man's claim to it, it naturally followed, that the grace of humility would form no part of the ruling saints' character; with them, therefore, when they got power, the state was found to be in such bad hands, as to have cast suspicion ever since on all such claims. But there is a wiser interpretation of our motto, and to this our nameless author devotes himself, with what becomes such a cause-a willing mind and an eloquent pen: "The writer of the following essay has aimed to do what he thought the times imperiously called for.

It has seemed to him that for some years past there has been'a dangerous and growing misapprehension in the public mind, as to the true constitutional relation of our political interests to those of a religious nature. He has seen with anxiety that even wise and good men, some of them his personal friends, have gradually given way to the opinion, which men of another stamp have made it their business to inculcate, that these two classes of interests ought to be kept so wide apart from each other in the conduct of our public affairs, as to have no reciprocal influence between them. He had thought that christianity was admirable everywhere and in all circumstances. How is it possible that political life should form an exception.” Adv. p. iii.

The paternity in our country of this irreligious dogma, and which we would fain hope is not so rife as our author's argument implies, is fixed by him, and justly, on Mr. Jefferson:

"President Jefferson was the first American teacher of this sort of doctrine. When applied to, in 1807, to recommend to his fellow citizens a day of national humiliation and prayer, he excused himself, by alleging, that he had not the power to do it; and he affected to maintain his dogma, then a most novel and surprising one, by argument. 'I consider the government of the United States,' said he, as interdicted by the constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.' This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, but from that also, which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. 'Cer