munion, but these efforts may be the means of increased religious life. There is no way in which the pastor or his church can provide more effectually for kindly and saving impressions, than by laying hold of the sympathies of all. In no way can the young be kept back from folly and sin, so effect ually as by a cheerful air, and pleasant words, and manifest interest on the part of the religious community. If the members of our churches would lay themselves out thus to do good, many prejudices against religion would be avoided, their own piety would be kept from an austere and denunciatory spirit, and numberless avenues of good might be opened by a gentle hand. We desire not that their admonitions should be less frequent, or the steady assertion of the necessity of repentance and faith less pressing; but we do desire that the irreligious and even the erring portion of the community, should not be repelled and held off at a studied distance. This human nature of ours was given by God, that through its sympathies and affections, the soul might be saved. Would that

we all knew it better. Direct and frequent efforts may be made to excite and strengthen these bonds of interest. The pastor may see his people often in social gatherings, or meet them in circles at each other's houses, in which all classes shall freely meet and be welcome. Above all, may our private religious meetings be more truly social. A freer atmosphere may pervade them. The subjects introduced may be more various. All the services may have more freedom and freshness, less constraint and less formalism. In this, as in every good work, the pastor

must take the lead-and an enterprising pastor will accomplish much.

We deem it of great importance to the prosperity of our churches in every point of view, that the particular church be not displaced from its true foundation, and from the legitimate ground of the union among its members, by any attempt to bring its influence to bear directly and formally upon public opinion, and the decision of matters in discussion among Christians. In this way, narrow and divisive tests are introduced, the appropriate work of the ministry and the church is thrust aside, and the good sense of the community is offended, by seeing the church forget its high vocation. Let Christians do what seems to them wise and good in voluntary societies, and at the ballot box, to remove all social evils, but let them welcome to their communion, all whom Christ would receive. Let it be forever settled, that Christ receives all who are sound in the faith and prayerful in heart, and unspotted by offenses against the recognized laws of morality. Within the sacred enclosures of the church, we meet as fellow Christians. Here let every difference be forgottendifferences of opinion in respect even to what are appropriate Christian duties. Let us forbear with each other, and pray for each other, and remember, that a Christian and kindly tolerance of one whom we think greatly in the wrong, is among the last attainments of a soul that is ripening for heaven. Any other course than this, is sure to excite well-grounded prejudice in the community, and to repel from our enclosures those who have sense enough to know what the church was designed to be.

THIS book, if all its parts are taken together, may be said to give an account of the new age of classical study. In this, as in all departments of knowledge, there has not been a uniform progress. Its changes and fluctuations may perhaps be best understood by assigning to it four periods since the revival of letters. The first of these periods we may terminate with the middle of the sixteenth century. In this age the ancient classics served as guides and masters, to awaken taste and the spirit of philosophical inquiry, and through the imperfection of modern books were the principal sources of knowledge. The age, like a man to whom the stores of knowledge are just opened, was one of ardent curiosity. Manuscripts were hunted after to fill the libraries of the great; the Greek classics were turned into Latin; Plato being now first known, a school of ardent Platonists arose at Florence, and Aristotle began to be to many an abomination; antiquarian researches were pushed to a considerable extent, especially those which related to the Roman republic. The pioneers in this age were Italians and Greek exiles. The greater number of books were printed at Venice and other Italian towns. The editions, though now valuable to the editor, as giving readings from manuscripts which may have disappeared; and though eagerly sought for by bibliomanists, on account of their scarcity,† dis

* Classical Studies, by Proff. Sears, Edwards, and Felton. Boston, 1843.

A principal reason for the scarcity of many of the first editions is, that books were read to pieces, and worn out in the uses of the lecture-room. This is particularly the case with the Rhetores Græci of Aldus, in 2 vols., Venice, 1508-9, a book much used in teaching the rules of style. Prof. Walz, of Tubingen, who for the second time edited these writers and

play little critical skill, and are deformed, not only by mistakes of the press, but also in some cases by unfortunate conjectural emendations. Nor was it the practice of the edi. tors to give an account of the sources of their text. During this age, by degrees, classical learning passed from Italy to the more northern countries of Europe; and at its close, man Catholic orthodoxy was frowning upon the language of the New Testament in Italy; while the thirst for knowledge, spread by the Reformation, and the investigations consequent upon that event, had awakened a zeal for ancient letters among the Protestants. Towards the end of this age, Basel became a literary center, where learned men were congregated, and from which the more important editions were scattered abroad.

The second period may include the next hundred years, down to 1650. This was an age of thorough and universal scholarship-the manhood, or at least the vigorous youth, of classical studies. In it every kind of knowledge relating to this department received a new start. Now first the want of a thorough revision of the text of ancient authors began to be felt, and now first arose men whom all succeeding scholars have looked to as occupying the first rank. It is remarkable that the most eminent of these scholars were Frenchmen of the Protestant faith, who spent the best part of their lives in

others of the same kind from the manuscripts a few years since, mentions in his preface that he knew of but two entire copies of the Aldine edition in Germany, seven in the Italian libraries, and two at Paris, besides one for sale at Florence, for which the bookseller asked $50. When the mode of teaching rhetoric changed, the book ceased to be called for, and no new edition was published for three centuries.

foreign countries. Joseph Scaliger, Casaubon, and perhaps Salmasius, deserve to be put at the head of the literati of their time. Scaliger excelled by the force of his genius, and among other services to the cause of letters, first brought chronology out of its chaotic state. Casaubon, on account of his vast learn ing and sound judgment, may claim the first place among classical scholars, particularly in Greek. Salma sius, far inferior in acuteness to many who have had a less name, explored the nooks and crannies of ancient literature, as an antiquarian, and exhibited in his works rather vast reading than sound judgment.

From the middle of the seventeenth until the latter part of the eighteenth century, which forms our third period, the attention to classic al literature rather declined than advanced. Whether this was owing to the wars which in the middle of the seventeenth century absorbed the interest of England, France and Germany, and in a measure barbarized the latter country, or to the increased attention now paid to native and modern literature, or to the advancing study of the scienceswhatever may have been the cause, the fact was as we have represented it. Any one may satisfy himself of the fact, by running over the leaves of a bibliographical manual, and examining the dates of the editions. He will find the years from 1550 to 1650 fertile in reprints of the classics, while those from 1650 to 1750 were comparatively barren. In England, the singly truly eminent scholar of this period is Bentley; and his controversy with Boyle shows the low state of classical learning at Oxford, where the most eminent scholars lent their aid to Boyle, but could not stand up against a blow from the little finger of the Cambridge giant. The only other country where these studies were pursued with much ability and zeal, was Holland.

Holland indeed had produced from age to age since the Reformation, crops of plodding and accurate scholars, and had been an asylum for foreign literati, whose Protestant opinions drove them out from their native lands. Since the University of Leyden was founded, a succession of eminent men had taught, such as no other seat of learning in Europe can boast of. In no other place perhaps in the world can an exhibition be made, like that which is presented in the unpretending hall where the portraits of the professors of Leyden are collected.

In the volume before us appears an account of the Dutch school of philosophy in the last century, prepared by Prof. Edwards, of Ando

ver.

It begins with Hemsterhuys, who was contemporary with Bentley at the beginning of the century, and ends with Wyttenbach, who died in 1820. It will be read with great interest by the classical scholar, as a learned and careful account of several men who have done service to the cause of letters. The materials for the lives of the principal Dutch scholars are ample. Ruhnken has set forth the merits of his master, Hemsterhuys, in a eulogy almost unrivaled for its Latinity. Wyttenbach has written the biography of Ruhnken, and in turn has been commemorated by one of his pupils. Perhaps this careful regard for the memory of these three men, and the entertaining mode in which that memory has been preserved, have exalted them unduly above two of their friends and compeers, Wesseling and Valckenaer, who would not fall below them as useful guides to subsequent scholars. If we look at the characteristics of the Dutch school as it is called, we may be led to doubt whether it deserves the name of a school, and whether there was any decided mark by which we can distinguish the successors of Hemsterhuys from those who went before him. They all had the same

way of writing annotations, the same habit of loading their common-place books with parallel passages collected from every quarter, the same often unnecessary display of learning. It must be confessed, however, that Hemsterhuys mingled something of French genius and direct ness with Dutch scholarship; that he surpassed his immediate predecessors in the knowledge of Greek literature, and that he took a very broad view of what was required to form a finished scholar. But if compared with Bentley, he must be pronounced to fall far below him, both in acuteness and invention. We will say nothing of the highly finished scholarship of Ruhnken, the evidences of which for posterity are ample, but lie within a small compass; nor of his successor, Wytten bach, who revived the study of Greek philosophy. But of the literati of Holland during the last age, in general it may be said, that, while they made no brilliant discoveries or improvements in their branch, they deserve to be remembered for setting examples of a scholarship more complete and elegant than had before been seen. They were guilty, however, of the fault of putting too much value upon scholarship in itself considered, and did not come to the ancient writers with those serious purposes reaching beyond the text, which characterize many of the earlier scholars.

Towards the close of the last century arose in England a school properly deserving the name, and differing in some respects, from any that had preceded it. Dr. Sears speaks of English scholarship as follows:

"England in the days of Stanley pursued the favorite method of polyhistory, as it was termed, which was introduced by the French and carried to an extreme by the Dutch. At a later period it [England or what?] separated history and geography from philology and criticism, and under Bentley, Taylor, Markland, Tyrwhitt and others, English philology rose to such an eminence as to become the admiration of the learned of all countries.

This is just, and the cause of the defect was owing, it would seem, partly to the practice in the English schools of composing Greek verses, as the scholar's most serious task, and partly to the national trait of being content to follow in the steps of a leader, without having the enterprise or independence of seeking to go beyond him. Had Porson liv. ed to old age, and been a man of good habits and high principles, there is every reason to believe that he would have opened many other paths for his successors; although in that case he would probably have gone into the church, and received preferment, unless his politics had stood in the way. He was a man of incomparable acuteness, of vast reading in Greek literature and wonderful memory, and if not gifted with a philosophical mind, was qualified in some respects to go beyond any scholar of the last century. Being such as he was, he did but little. He opened one path, new though narrow, and was of essential service in calling the Germans to the study of ancient meters, and to nicer observations of style, than had been known before. His followers in his own country did little besides correcting and extending his researches in one direction. The consequence of this limited range of study was, that when the English scholars, after the peace of Europe, became familiar with the labors of their continental brethren, their native school lost much of its respect in their eyes, and now the best of them are more nourished by the fruits of German scholarship than of their own.

A considerable portion of the work before us is taken up with a sketch of the German school, with specimens of its literary correspondence,

and with biographical accounts in the shape of notes of the more eminent German scholars. This part is executed by Dr. Sears, of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Newton; and no scholar in our coun⚫ try, exclusively devoted to teaching the classics, could have shown more familiarity with this subject, or given better proof that he understood the progress of classical study in Germany and the respective merits of the German scholars. We must acknowledge ourselves his debtors for much useful information, and can vouch for the great accuracy and judgment of those parts which

are not new to us.

Dr. Sears dates the improvement of German scholarship from Winkelmann and Heyne, the former of whom, first of the moderns, under stood and appreciated ancient art; and the latter, forsaking the dull plodding manner of earlier German lecturers, first felt the soul of ancient poetry. To Winkelmann certainly great praise is due, and yet the discovery of Pompeii and Her culaneum, and the rise of the new school of sculpture, ought not to be overlooked, as causes which turned the mind of Europe to the characteristics of ancient art, and awaken ed a general sense of the beautiful. With regard to Heyne we are disposed to be more in doubt. He may have been as a one-eyed man among the blind, and in a certain sense have been the first name on the list of the age; but he was not a very great scholar. His Latin style, it is known, is but indifferent. His critical powers are not of a very high order, and if he is alive to the beauties of poetry, we are not aware that his remarks show any profound sense of the laws of taste.

The true causes of the excellence of the German scholars must be found in the history of the times, and the rise of a new literature and a new philosophy. The times, by their changeful and wonderful events,

acted with mighty power on the minds of those who thought at all; and in Germany, where action is fettered, much of this excitement spent itself in speculation and in historical inquiry. A new literature, too, was rising in Germany; the language began to be regarded as fit for something else than to talk to horses in; the chords of the national mind were moved by lyric and dramatic poets. Lastly, philosophy appeared under a new form; a revolution in opinion took place, and aroused multitudes of minds to vigorous action, calling forth talent in every department of thinking, just as a revolution in government, involving strife and war, calls out military talent.

One of the first characteristics of the modern German scholar, which developed itself was literary skepti cism. Emancipated by the spirit of the times from the restraints of authority, he trampled it in the dust, and took delight in setting it at naught. There are not many ancient authors the integrity of whose works was not now attacked. Wolf, a man of powerful mind, led the way, and soon a person needed courage to avow his belief that Homer knew how to write, or had any thing to write with, or wrote if he knew how, or that there was any personal Homer. It is needless to go into particulars: such an epidemic fever of skepticism is not deep seated in the human mind, and can not last long. It passed away therefore like a mist, and left clear sky behind. Good was done by it. The close examinations of style and siftings of evidence to which it called, showed some passages to be interpolations and some works to be spurious, but showed likewise that tradition was right in the main, as to the genuineness of ancient works. And it is not likely that, for several generations to come, there will be another ebullition of this skeptical spirit. this skeptical spirit. The danger now lies rather in the other direction.