pal system, such as it is at Rome; and lastly, the adoption of a system of education and public instruction, and of a just and moral policy."

There is no news of importance from Spain or Portugal, except that in the former the insurgents appear to have been almost entirely put down; and, in the latter, the elections have greatly preponderated in favor of the Cabral party; the ministerial candidates at Lisbon having all been withdrawn, and those at Oporto defeated.

The cholera has almost disappeared from Constantinople, and is now so slight there as to be little regarded. It still continues to spread in Russia, but has lost its force in Moscow. From the appearance of the disease up to the 22d of November, the number of persons attacked at the latter place was 2360, of whom 1097 died. It has made its appearance, but in a milder form, at Dunaburg, within forty miles of the Prussian frontier. The St. Petersburg Journal of the 18th of November, publishes an imperial ukase for contracting a loan of 14,600,000 silver roubles, for the works of the St. Petersburg and Moscow railroad. The Emperor of Russia has lately published a

ukase which involves a great question of international law, having for its object to suspend the exercise of the right of fishing along the coast of the Black Sea, from Anapa as far as Batoumi, in order to prevent assistance to the Caucasus. By this measure the Emperor appears to arrogate to himself an exclusive property in the Black Sea.

Appalling accounts of famine have been received from the Polish provinces of Austria. Out of 328,641 inhabitants no less than 60,820 have died.

Accounts from the East Indies show a state of unusual tranquillity, and in Bombay the greatest commercial confidence prevails. It is said that not a single house there has suspended payment.

In a council of state of the united kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, held on the 28th ult., the King ratified the treaty of commerce and navigation between China and those two kingdoms. The treaty was signed at Canton, the 20th of March last, by M. Lillienvalch, counsellor of commerce, on behalf of Sweden and Norway, and by the Imperial Commissioner KiYng, on the part of China.

This is a very respectable new edition of a book that can never grow old. The illustrations, however, which are either the copies or the worn-out originals of those given in a Paris edition some years since, are not much to our taste. Tony Johannot, the Leach of the French Illustrators, is hardly equal to the task of proriding scenery for Cervantes; and to those who have seen the elegant engravings of Smirke, these sketchy wood-cuts will possess little attraction.

The translation is by Jarvis, and it appears, and probably is, more exact than that of Smollet, though to those who were early accustomed to that version it cannot but seem less spirited and more artificial.

Of all the books in the world there is none except Shakspeare's plays so full of the vigor of youth as Don Quixote. De Foe had the

NOTICES.

same minute observation and much of the same vigor, but in comparison with Cervantes he writes like an old battered voyager. In Don Quixote we find all that cool self-possession and confident reliance on the reader's credulity that appears in Mrs. Veal's Ghost and the History of the Plague, joined to the most hearty humor, the most unfailing vivacity, and indeed, all qualities that make an overflowing bodily and mental health. In respect of the bodily part, out of Cervantes, Shakspeare, John Bunyan, De Foe and Sir Walter Scott, all good stomachic writers, any reader of delicate perception would surely choose the former; Shakspeare's digestion was so good that he appears never to think of dining; Bunyan must have had a powerful organ for solid viands; De Foe could relish the same dinners all the year round, with a few grapes of his own rearing; Scott would have been tremendous at a venison pasty after a long ride; but to read Cervantes is of itself a cure for dyspepsia. The bodily vigor is so apparent throughout his pages that it is impossible to read without insensibly getting an appetite.

But the mental vigor, the liveliness of fancy,

of a strong siding champion, so that Comus, who is the father of much of the light reading of the hour, and his rabble of monsters, will not dare approach.

Mr. Montgomery's preface, though not very profound, shows a true love of the poet, and points out many of his excellencies very clearly. We are glad to learn that in his opinion the poem of Comus " may claim the eulogium which a critic of the purest taste, the late Dr. Aiken, has passed upon it. He says: 'The poem possesses great beauty of versification, varying from the gayest Anacreontics to the most majestic and sonorous heroics. On the whole, if an example were required of a work made up of the very essence of poetry, perhaps none of equal length in any language could be produced, answering this character in so high a degree as the Masque of Comus." This is truly admirable and satisfactory, and completely condenses and exhausts the whole subject.

There is an equally characteristic passage in Coleridge respecting Shakspeare and Milton, which, for the instruction of youthful admirers of what is commonly understood by genius, can never be too often quoted:

"What shall we say? even this; that Shakspeare, no mere child of nature; no' automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood Einutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous pow. er, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountains, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet forever remaining himself. O, what great men hast thou not produced, England, my country! Truly

indeed

are all marked by good sense, absence of Tennysonian and Transcendental affectation, and by an easy, natural and generally correct versification. They cannot claim a high place for depth of thought, power of passion, or strength of imagination, but it is refreshing to meet with a new bard, so unexceptionable in tone and sentiment, and with so loving an eye for nature. The descriptive parts are generally the best. The rhyme,

"Drink, brothers! drink, brothers! let the goblet go round, Mankind ye have reddened with many a wound !” is not good.

A Tour to the River Saguenay, in Lower Canada. By CHARLES LANMAN. Philadelphia : Carey & Hart. 1848.

whether South Sea voyagers or summer tourists, It ought to be an axiom with all travellers,

that the first business of a describer of actual places and occurrences should be to give his readers perfect confidence in his accuracy and veracity. If they mix up fact and fiction, their Writings can have neither the interest of tales, nor of true narratives; the acid and alkali neutralize each other, and the result passes off in a sudden gaseous effervescence.

This little book is a very pleasant collection of sketches, and will while away thirty or forty minutes of time for one who is easily pleased very agreeably. The author is good-humored and complacent. But why did he think it necessary to catch so many trout? Why need he have killed rattlesnakes? We have been

in the hills of Catskill, have heard all Ethan Crawford's bear stories, yea, have "camped out" a week together, and put ourselves to great bodily inconvenience, in search of adventures, but with such total failure of success that we are hardened of heart, and will not believe that another can stumble upon them so readily. No one can believe what contradicts his own experience.

But boys are a perpetual wonder to the "old folks." It is many years since we visited many of the scenes Mr. Lanman describes, and it may be that trout, rattlesnakes, pike, &c., may be more plenty now than they used to be. At all events we ought to consider charitably the statements of a writer who has so much good feeling, and who, while he studies to amuse the public, certainly does not, like some of the class, deliberately set himself to make it

worse.

Teaching, a Science: the Teacher an Artist. By REV. BAYNARD R. HALL, A.M., Principal of

the Classical and Mathematical Institute, Newburgh, and Author of " Something for Everybody," &c. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1848.

We have not had leisure to examine this work longer than is necessary to discover that it is written with force, ability and good sense -qualities so obvious in it that it takes but very little time to discover them.

The observations on the study of the classics are worthy of remark. With a clear appreciation of the adaptedness of the old mode of studying them to intellectual discipline, the author is still of opinion that "if not used as a discipline, the dead languages should be wholly abandoned as a school study." Perhaps, as applied to a mode of running over them in private high schools, this may be true; indeed, if they are to be any more superficially taught than they usually are in our colleges, we should be disposed to assent to their abandonment as readily as he. Still any graduate who has been many years in active life, knows whether he would willingly be deprived of his "small Latin and less Greek," and whether they have not contributed more largely to his happiness than he was, in the ignorance of his boyhood, accustomed to expect. For there is a certain refined beauty in the style of the classic authors that is necessary to temper the dry Saxon strength; they are in writing what their cotemporaries were in sculpture-our best models-which we should study, not to imitate, but to enlarge our knowledge and educate our taste. This, we apprehend, more than their intellectual discipline, is a reason why we should endeavor to know all we can of them, and why, if we cannot have full galleries, we should endeavor to possess such as we can obtain. Our legislators, we fancy, who should be familiar with Horace and Virgil, would be less liable to resort to the argumentum baculinum; they could not, with the love of grace and propriety which such reading instils, suffer themselves to fall into coarseness: the Augustan polish would have an effect upon their manners.

On this account and many others, it is to be regretted that the study of the classics is more and more neglected in our colleges, and that of dry physical science usurping its place.

The following paragraph deserves quoting for its suggestiveness:

"The difficulty in the way of the necessary brevity arises, in part, from the wish to make a text-book for all sorts of schools at once. If primary schools, academies and colleges could be, either by compact or law, kept distinct, honest men could and would make suitable text-books. But the insane spirit of an ultra-democratical and abolition sentiment, is at war with distinctions. It demands inexorably a dead level. It would have lands, houses, education, religion, pleasure, all alike for the mass; and industry, skill, and perseverance, that would naturally place one above another, must be decried and insulted. It says nothing shall be special, pri. vate; everything shall be common, public. It allows a community but not an individual. It is as tyrannical, cruel and despotic as the most absolute and barbarous monarchy; it will bend the sacred rights, sport with his tenderest feelings, individual man to its will, or trample on all his yea! stamp with its iron heel upon a man's very heart! The people! the people! liberty! liberty is its watchword and cry; but it is the people as a mass, as an abstraction, as a soulless body conventional, and liberty to live and act as a crowd! Individuals and individual lib-! erties it abhors and destroys!"