Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848», sayfa 12

MY LOVE

BY J. IVES PEASE

 
I love! and ah, 'tis bliss to feel
My breast no longer lone and cold;
To know, though Time all else should steal,
The heart can never all grow old!
I love! and now I live again!
The world looks brighter to my eyes;
There is a gladness on the plain —
A newer glory in the skies.
 
 
I love! Her smile is o'er my path
Like sunlight in sweet April hours:
Her voice steals o'er me like the breath
Of morning to half-withered flowers.
I love! Ah she may never know
How wild my love! I have no sigh —
I have no word – nor look to show
How much I'm blessed when she is nigh.
 
 
And it is well! – my hapless love
May never dare to ask return —
Enough that her glad smiles may move
My heart – I ask not hers to burn!
Ah no. 'Tis better thus to meet
With equal pulse and tranquil brow —
Drink, through her eyes, delirium sweet.
Can madness from such fountains flow?
 
 
I know not! Dearest, still, oh still,
"Look love upon me," sweet and kind! —
Let thy glad thought, in music, thrill
Bright witchcraft through my longing mind.
I clasp thee to my breast – in dreams!
Thy lips rain kisses warm and fast —
And I half hate the morning beams
That scare thee to thy home at last.
 
 
Thy "home!" – ah, would it ne'er had been —
Thy home and mine are wide apart —
The world's grim shadow glooms between —
And my life lives but where thou art.
Ah, dearest, we're not happy! Life
Yields not the bliss 'twas meant to do:
Discord might come of wrong and strife —
Should sorrow spring from duty, too?
 
 
Thou art not happy, dearest, thou! —
A shade has fallen on thy young years;
Thou art not happy: even now
Thine eyes are full of unshed tears.
And this our fate? My Life! – my "world!" —
Too late beloved – too rarely seen —
And we, as o'er Time's tide we're hurled,
Can only say "WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN!"
 

LIFE

BY A. J. REQUIER

 
In every life there is a stream
Whose waters flow,
Dark as the current of a dream,
And seem to throw
On cup and hall and summer beam
A sign of wo!
 
 
In every life there is a ray
That shineth still,
From noon to night and night to day,
Through every ill;
And serves to light our solemn way
Go where we will.
 
 
Oh, traveler! of that stream beware
Which cannot glow;
It floweth only where a snare
Is lying low,
To deal upon thee unaware
A fatal blow.
 
 
Oh, traveler! seek that gentle ray
Which constant gleams,
So beautiful that none can say
Like what it seems;
The star predestined on thy way
To throw its beams.
 
 
For in that stream of leafless shade
A fiend is hid;
And on thy fall his heart is laid,
Thy fall amid
The sinner's shriek and shroud and spade
And coffin-lid.
 
 
And in that ray so pure and bright
A buoyant form,
Will bear thee through the darkest night
Away from harm;
Swift as the rainbow's graceful flight
Out of the storm.
 
 
Let fate be stern – let fortune fly —
Their chastening rod
Strikes not the soul whose strength is high
Above its clod;
Thy heart may bleed to breaking nigh —
But trust in God!
 

GEMS FROM LATE READINGS

BY MISS ELLEN PICKERING

"An humble appreciation of your powers might save you pain; but I doubt if your humility exceeds your knowledge. Fascinated by harmony of tone and grace of manner, you perceive not a deficiency in energy – a want of moral courage. You close your eyes against every token of an over-sensitiveness to ridicule, veiled beneath the more graceful cloak of fastidious taste. You will not understand that pride and weakness fashion a character which, however seemingly amiable in many other points, is not such as to repay the devotion of a woman's love. A strong mind will make itself known; and where all is perfect harmony, no unmodulated tone, no sudden and impulsive movement, no springing into action, there is art, and that may not be trusted – or there is over-refinement, wasted powers, a trivial mind, without a noble aim – or there is weakness, which fears ridicule – a moral cowardice: or there is mediocrity, that cannot rise above the common herd – that dares not dare – that may pass unnoted in prosperity, but whose powers rise not in adversity. Such should not be throned in woman's heart! He is not worthy woman's tender, self-denying love, whom a sneer will change – a laugh will part – he will be found wanting – he will stand aloof when the faint heart turns to him for consolation. Wo to you! wo to you, especially if you trust such. You cannot always tread on flowers; choose one who can and will smooth down a rugged path. The gilded vessel, the child's plaything, rides gayly on a glassy sea – but life is not a glassy sea; the storm must come. If you would reach the peaceful port, embark not in a summer yacht; select a ship that can abide the storm – a mind that can maintain its course – that struggles – and will conquer. Look there," he continued, for she made no reply, taking up a highly finished drawing from the table, the performance showing more pains than genius, and contrasting it with a bold, free sketch which lay beside it, "there they are exactly, the one all harmony, or insipidity as I should call it; a model of weakness – highly finished – not a stroke wanting – complete as a whole – but how poor a whole! Without the possibility of amendment, too: deficient in energy – not a bold line: and were such put in it would be out of place – it would spoil the keeping. Now look on this! A bold and vigorous outline – the work of mind, seizing the attention: soul, not manner; thought, not mechanism; it may be filled up ill, but it may also be filled up well: there is the capability of greatness: there may be faults in the petty details, but the whole will compel admiration, and not weary in the survey. This other makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the powers whose force he knows not; but the capabilities of amendment are within him. What say you to my exordium?"

It is great injustice to assert that delicacy of feeling is confined to the higher ranks, and is the offspring of refinement and education; these may nourish and increase, but they cannot give it. It is innate; the child of the untutored heart; the very essence of the beautiful: chained to no climate, bounded to no rank.

We have seen the wealthy, those who thought themselves the great ones of the earth, take leave of those of fallen fortunes with undimmed eye and steady voice, as though they knew not that there was cause for sorrow, guessed not that the heart was well nigh broken, and only stayed the expression of its grief that the cold gaze might not mock it. We have seen the lowly ones of earth, lowly in station, but how high in worth! part from the same; and the lip could not speak for the heart's feeling; and the tears of the mourner, repressed before lest the cold should mock, mingled with theirs. The first passed on with stately step, and a cold offer of future service; the last plucked the only rose from the favorite tree, and placed it by the traveler's cloak with a trembling hand and quivering lip. They thought that the traveler would prize it as a memorial of a once happy home. That single rose, and its kind and delicate giver, can they ever be forgotten? If all the memories of misfortune were like that who would not be unfortunate? What feeling so endearing, so ennobling as gratitude? Even love, though it may have more of beauty and brightness, is not so generous and so pure.

What a glorious day! Not a heavy cloud in all the sky, only a few fleecy forms floating across the rich blue vault, and the sun shining out in all its summer splendor, as though it had never shone before, looking down for the first time on the gladsome earth, instead of having run its course unnumbered years – undimmed in lustre – unimpaired in power.

Where are the works of man? his labors of the past? The eye looks on ruin; or time hath swept away even that poor trace; and a fable or tradition alone remains. But time hath no power over the Eternal or the works of His hands – itself His slave.

Out! out! treading the green turf – lying on some flowery bank – dreaming beneath the leafy shade. Who would be pent up within four stone walls on such a day, when he could forth with the blue above and the green below, and a thousand gleesome things around? What though the walls are gilded, and the lofty ceiling fretted; the Persian carpet soft as the woodland moss; whilst the luxuries of art, the beauties of genius, lend their splendors with a gorgeous profusion? Still it is only a magnificent prison. We see but little of the blue heaven; scarcely more of the varied tints of earth. The air we breathe is close; and the heart flutters to be free, as the imprisoned butterfly on the first day of spring. Who would not rather go forth into the fresh, free air, than be a prisoner even in a gilded cage? And Nature, is she not more beautiful than Art? Doth not that beauty make the step more buoyant, and the heart more light?

How one loves a summer day with all its gentle glories its murmured music – its delicious fragrance – its warmth, gladdening, not oppressing, its soft and soothing air – its dreamy feel, its shadows and its lights – its brilliant visions and its stirring thoughts – and more, far more, its loving memories!

SONG

 
My dwelling is no lordly hall,
I rule no wide domain;
No bending servants wait my call,
No flatterers swell my train;
But roses twine around my home,
Bright smiles my presence greet;
The woodland wild is mine to roam,
Mine Summer's odors sweet.
No costly diamonds deck my hair,
No cloth of gold have I;
But gorgeous robes and jewels rare
Stay not the sad heart's sigh.
Those gems might bind an aching brow,
There is no pain in mine;
Red gold might win a faithless vow,
And I be left to pine.
 

BY G. P. R. JAMES

It may seem perhaps a paradox to say that expectation is enjoyment. Nevertheless it is so on this earth. Fruition is for heaven. With the accomplishment of every desire there is so much of disappointment mingled that it cannot be really called enjoyment, for fancy always exercises itself upon the future; and when we obtain the hard reality for which we wished, the charms with which imagination decorated it are gone. Did we but state the case to ourselves as it truly is, whenever we conceive any of the manifold desires which lead us on from step to step through life, the proposition would be totally different from that which man forever puts before his own mind, and we should take one step toward undeceiving ourselves. We continually say, "if I could attain such an object, I should be quite contented." But what man ought to say to himself is, "I believe this or that acquisition would give me happiness." He would soon find that it did not do so; and the never-ceasing recurrence of the lesson might, in the end, teach him to ask what was the source of his disappointment? Was it that other circumstances in his own fate were so altered, even while he pursued the path of endeavor, as to render attainment no longer satisfactory? – was it that the object sought was intrinsically different when attained, from that which he had reasonably believed it to be while pursuing it? – or was it that his fancy had gilded it with charms not its own, and that he had voluntarily and blindly persuaded himself that it was brighter and more excellent than it was? Perhaps the answer, yes, might be returned to all these questions; but yet I fear the chief burden of deceit would rest with imagination, and that man would ever find he had judged of the future without sufficient grounds, and had suffered desire to stimulate hope, and hope to cheat expectation. Yet, perhaps, if he would but turn back and look behind, when disappointment and success had been obtained together, he would find that the pleasures lasted in the pursuit, especially at the time when fruition was drawing nearer and nearer, would, in the sum, make up the amount of enjoyment which he had anticipated in possession.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER

A DREAM OF SUMMER

 
Bland as the morning breath of June
The south-west breezes play;
And through its haze the winter noon
Seems warm as summer day.
The snow-plumed angel of the north
Has dropped his icy spear;
Again the mossy earth looks forth,
Again the streams gush clear.
 
 
The fox his hill-side cell forsakes,
The muskrat leaves his nook,
The blue-bird in the meadow brakes
Is singing with the brook.
"Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry
Bird, breeze, and streamlet free,
"Our winter voices prophesy
Of summer days to thee!"
 
 
So in the winters of the soul,
By bitter blasts and drear,
O'erswept, from memory's frozen pole,
Will sunny days appear,
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
The soul its living powers,
And low beneath the winter's snow
Lie gems of summer flowers.
 
 
The night is mother of the day,
The winter of the spring,
And ever upon old decay
The greenest mosses cling;
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all his works,
Has left his Hope with all.
 

BY THE AUTHOR OF "GRANTLEY MANOR."

SILENCE

What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed – how many sublime conquests effected during that pause, when the lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! When some of those cutting, sharp, blighting words have been spoken which send the hot indignant blood to the face and head, if those to whom they are addressed keep silence, look on with awe, for a mighty work is going on within them, and the Spirit of Evil, or their Guardian Angel, is very near to them in that hour. During that pause they have made a step toward heaven or toward hell, and an item has been scored in the book which the day of judgment shall see opened. They are the strong ones of the earth, the mighty for good or for evil, those who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and a grief to them; those who give time to their own souls, to wax strong against temptation; or to the powers of wrath, to stamp upon them their withering passage.

BY CURRER BELL

TIME

 
Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly!
 
 
What though Death at times steps in,
And calls our best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway?
Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell:
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!
 

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS

Vanity Fair, a Novel without a Hero. By W. M. Thackeray. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 8vo.

This is one of the most striking novels of the season. It bears little resemblance in tone, spirit and object, to the other popular romances of the day. The author follows in the track of Fielding rather than Bulwer, and aims at representing the world as it is. Though his mind is not creative, it is eminently delineative, and he has succeeded in cramming into one volume a large variety of characters, each expressing one of the different forms of worldliness, and all belonging strictly to the world we live in. Though the novel thus relates exclusively to the world, and indicates a most remarkable knowledge of the selfish element in human nature, in the multitudinous modifications which that element receives from individual peculiarities, the general tone of the author himself is so far from being worldly, that it is distinguished by singular manliness, cheerfulness and generosity. There is nothing morbid, nothing of the hater or the sentimentalist in his representations. He trusts himself resolutely to the genuine emotions of the heart, but he guards himself against all superfine feelings and manufactured sentiment. His characters are so true that at first we are inclined to consider them commonplace. In their development, however, we soon find that the author is a master in his art, that without pretension and without exaggeration, he touches profound springs of thought and sentiment, and represents with a graceful decision, and in clear light, those evanescent and unconscious transpirations of character, in which a novelist's capacity is most truly exhibited.

The animating spirit of the novel is that master-piece of address and cunning, little Becky Sharp. Tact and talent never had a worthier representative than this character. She indicates the extreme point of worldly success to which these qualities will carry a person, and also the impossibility of their providing against all contingencies in life. Becky steadily rises in the world, reaches a certain height, makes one inevitable mistake, and then as steadily falls, while many of her simple companions, whom she despises as weaklings, succeed from the very simplicity with which they follow the instinctive sagacity of pure and honest feeling. Colonel Rawdon Crawley, a brainless sensualist, whom Becky marries, and in some degree reforms, but who, by having an occasional twinkle of genuine sentiment in his heart, always was her superior, is drawn both with a breadth and a nicety of touch which is rare in such delineations. The exact amount of humanity which coexists with his rascality and stupidity, is given with perfect accuracy. Sir Pitt Crawley, coarse, uneducated, sordid, quarrelsome, his small, sharp mind an epitome of vulgar shrewdness, is a personation to force laughter from the lungs of a misanthrope. Old Mr. Sedley is a most truthful representation of a broken-down merchant, conceived in the spirit of that humane humor which blends the ludicrous and the pathetic in one. Joe Sedley, the East Indian, slightly suggests Major Bagstock. He has the major's physical circumference, apoplectic turn and swell of manner, with the addition of Cockney vulgarity and cowardice. His retreat from Brussels, just before the battle of Waterloo, is described with the art of a comic Xenophan.

In the characters of George Osborne, Dobbin and Amelia, the author has succeeded admirably. They are wonderfully true to nature, and indicate even a finer power of characterization than is exhibited in the more strongly marked personages of the work.

The test of the excellence of a novel is the clearness with which its events and characters are remembered after it has been read. We think that Vanity Fair will bear this criterion. All its characters are recognized in memory as living beings, and we would refer to and quote them with as much confidence as to any of the acquaintances we hold in remembrance.

Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard Moncton Milnes. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

This book, the long promised, has at last appeared, and we must confess that, from the time expended in its preparation, we expected a more satisfactory result. The biography, though written in a style of elaborate elegance, and pleasing enough as regards cadence of period and felicity of phrase, tells little about Keats which is new, and leaves many obscure passages of his life in the same darkness in which it found them. Nothing to the purpose is told of the lady who was the object of Keats's passionate love, and who shares with consumption in being the dismal cause of his early death. Mr. Milnes points triumphantly to the new facts and private letters he has included in the volume, in proof that the common impression that Keats lacked manliness of character, is an error; but instead of proving that Keats was a strong man, he has very nearly proved that he himself is a sentimentalist. The characteristic of Keats is sensitiveness to external impressions, the characteristic of Milnes is sensitiveness to self; the page of one throngs with delicious sensations, but leaves no strong impression of character; that of the other is pervaded by a thoughtful ennui, and leaves an impression of egotistic weakness of character. Of course, Keats is the stronger man of the two, and a stronger man even than Milnes's musical sentences indicate, but still not a strong man in the strict meaning of the phrase.

The letters of Keats are exceedingly interesting, and some of them fine specimens of brilliant epistolary composition, but we think there is a general tone of languid jauntiness observable in them, which shows a certain feebleness at the heart of his being. He seems a man whom every one would desire to see placed in happy circumstances, but not one who would bear bravely up under bad circumstances. The state of his finances occupies a good portion of his letters, and it is often very pleasantly stated. As early as 1817, he speaks of receiving a note for £20, and avows his intention of destroying with it "some of the minor heads of that hydra, the dun;" to conquer which he says, the knight need have no sword or shield, but only the "Bank-note of Faith and Cash of Salvation, and set out against the monster invoking the aid of no Archimago or Urganda, but finger me the paper, light as the Sybil's leaves in Virgil, whereat the fiend skulks off with his tail between his legs.. I think," he adds, "I could make a nice little allegorical poem, called "The Dun," where we would have the Castle of Carelessness, the Drawbridge of Credit, Sir Novelty Fashion's expedition against the City of Tailors, &c., &c." There is a good deal of this coquetry with indigence in the volume.

There is one curious letter to Reynolds, referring to Wordsworth's calling the exquisite Hymn to Pan, in "Endymion," "a pretty piece of Paganism." Keats took the words in a contemptuous sense, and wrote a letter from the feelings it excited, reminding us in its style of an essay by Emerson. We extract it as almost the best thing in the book.

Hampstead, February 3, 1818.

My Dear Reynolds, – I thank you for your dish of filberts. Would I could get a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of two pence, (two sonnets on Robin Hood, sent by the two penny post.) Would we were a sort of athereal pigs, and turned loose to feed upon spiritual mast and acorns! which would be merely a squirrel and feeding upon filberts; for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, &c., should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain philosophy engendered in the whims of an egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a journey heavenward as well as any body. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive; a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! How would they lose their beauty, were they to throng into the highway, crying out "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!" Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this; each of the moderns, like an Elector of Hanover, governs his petty state, and knows how many straws are swept daily from the causeways in all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the housewives should have their coppers well scoured. The ancients were emperors of vast provinces; they had only heard of the remote ones, and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this. I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manassah, when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the pricks when we can walk on roses? Why should we be owls when we can be eagles? Why be teazed with "nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight "the cherub Contemplation?" Why, with Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when we can have Jacques "under an oak," &c.? The secret of the "bough of wilding" will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an evening walk to imagine the figure of the old man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teazed with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of "Childe Harold," and the whole of any body's life and opinions.

In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a few catkins. ² I hope they'll look pretty.

"No, those days are gone away," &c.

I hope you will like them – they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines; —

"Souls of Poets dead and gone," &c.

In the hope that these scribblings will be some amusement for you this evening, I remain, copying on the hill,

Your sincere friend and co-scribbler,

John Keats.

The reader rises from the biography of Keats with the impression that it tells one of the most melancholy stories in the history of literature. The account of his last days is beyond measure painful. The poems now published for the first time, though good enough to make a reputation, will hardly add to the fame of Keats.

The Women of the Revolution. By Elizabeth F. Ellet. New York: Baker & Scribner. 2 vols. 12mo.

We are under obligations to Mrs. Ellet for the two volumes now before us. They are the first fruits of a large harvest. And we doubt not that the authoress will pursue the subject, and give "continuations," until something like justice shall be done to the women, the mothers, sisters, wives and sweethearts of the great and good men of our Revolution. We wish that some just appreciation of what all society owes woman could be had. We wish that some one would sit down and show how all great efforts have their origin in woman's devotion to her duty, and all great men owe their position to their mother's faithful service, and how society owes the advantages which it may possess to the plastic mind of women. In this spirit Mrs. Ellet has prepared the two volumes before us, and has by her labors added one other name to the long list that claims the gratitude of Americans. Of course when notices of one hundred and twenty-four women are crowded into two duodecimo volumes, no great extent can be allowed to the biography of any one. Yet by a judicious disposition of material, and selection of prominent places for really prominent persons, Mrs. Ellet has given enough to make her readers comprehend the character, services and position of all her heroines. It happens to us to have known something of the private life of several mentioned in the volumes, and while we recollect much that is not recorded, we are bound to confess that the character of each so far as we know is well brought out, and additional materials might serve only to sustain the opinion formed by what is offered. We regard Mrs. Ellet's work only as a prelude – a rich, delightful, prelude – but it must be followed by other performances. The work is enriched with the likenesses of several ladies whose biographies are given – one or two of these we know are correct. The others resemble what we recollect to have heard denominated good likenesses.

Orators of the American Revolution. By E. L. Magoon. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

Mr. Magoon is a writer of great fluency and sensibility, who "wreaks" his thoughts upon expression. He has given us a very exciting volume, glowing with revolutionary fervor, and eloquent of revolutionary heroes. The great difficulty is that each of his orators is described in terms which a cool person might hesitate in applying to Demosthenes and Cicero. Mr. Magoon writes too much on the high-pressure principle. As we move down the Mississippi stream of his rhetoric, we are pleased with the rapidity of the motion, and the chivalrous feeling of the captain of the boat, but we look occasionally at the boiler and the engine with some fear of an explosion.

Seriously, the volume will doubtless serve its purpose of impressing a great idea of our revolutionary orators on the popular mind – to reach which mind a certain extravagance of statement and description is now considered necessary. The glowing mode of writing history and biography is, doubtless, better than the dry and dead mode, but a medium between the two, combining life and movement with accuracy and discrimination, is better still. However, we know of no book on the subject so good as the present. It can be read at one sitting, and it leaves a strong impression on the mind of the power of our great orators. Every production which forcibly conveys an idea of our historical men as living souls, as well as living names, deserves to succeed.

Historical and Miscellaneous Questions. By Richard Mangnall. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This has been one of the most successful educational books ever published. The present edition is from the eighty-fourth London edition. The sale in England has reached a hundred thousand copies. A mere glance at the book will explain its popularity. It embraces the elements of Mythology, Astronomy, Architecture, Heraldry, as well as Ancient and Modern History, and gives exactly that kind of information which every body needs. The first principles and foundations of knowledge are often imperfectly understood by persons moderately learned. Few have any system in reading or study, but cram their minds with miscellaneous matter of various kinds, without regard to arrangement, and with no clear perception of the principles of any thing. Such a book as the present is needed not only by youth, but by many men and women who would be offended at the charge of ignorance. No person can read it without some addition to his knowledge. It is got up with remarkable skill, and covers a very wide extent of erudition.