wisdom. As the quality of the infant's early nutriment imparts a corresponding tone to his corporeal stamina, so the nature of the first seeds of his education will tend to determine that of his disposition, and to influence his subsequent conduct and fortune. Sensible of this, Pestalozzi would make the commencement of human existence, and the beginning of human instruction, cotemporaneous; and while he clothes the naked model of nature with all the various colourings of tributary tuition,-of knowledge and honour,-of science and virtue, -thinks, and rightly thinks, that he is establishing a solid and lasting basis for the amelioration and the happiness of the human race. If it be a melancholy truth, that of the importance of an early attention to the minds, habits, and tempers of children, parents, in general, have hitherto been too little sensible, it is no small consolation to reflect, that a different system is now likely to be acted upon; and that the works by which that system has been suggested and recommended (of which works the present is one), are so well calculated to effect their laudable object.

Epistola Quinti Horatii Flacci ad Pisores; sine de Arte Poetica Liber ex recensione Gulielmi Baxteri, ad Fidem Editionis, et cum variis Lectionibus Matthiæ Gesneri. Verborum Ordinem, Anglicanum Versionem, Scansionem, Rhetorica Figures addidit, Annotationi, busque copiosis locupletavit T. B. Aylmer. Svo. pp. 135.

Booth.

THIS new edition of Horace's Epistle to the Pisos, (dedicated by Mr. Aylmer to his reverend friend and quondam tutor, Dr. Wooll, the head master of Rugby seminary,) will be found very useful to the rising generation of scholars. As friends to whatever aids can be furnished to the immature intellects of young classical students, and to every inducement that can be offered to their idle feelings or reluctant taste, we are always glad to see the learning and judgment of erudite and accomplished minds employed in the noble task of smoothing the path to that learning and useful knowledge, without a respectable advancement in which, thousands, who by their acquisitions, have an opportunity of becoming the future guides and ornaments of society, would be deficient in the only means of doing honour to their station, and of giving utility to their power. When we treat, as it merits, the literal translation with which this edition of Horatius de Arte Poetica is accompanied; and the Ordo, and Index Verborum, which operate as leading lights to the tyro; we expect no commendation from pedants, or those who, in matters connected with classical lore, are rigid overmuch: but liberal scholars will join us in thinking, that both masters and pupils are obliged by whoever removes a single obstacle to the improvement of the learner, or adds one facility to his progress.

While the text of which Mr. Aylmer has availed himself is that of Gesner edited by Zeuneius, the notes, (which form, perhaps, the principal recommendation of the work) are from various authors, and selected with as much judgment as industry: and though Mr. A. claims no merit on the score of originality, he is entitled to no small portion of praise on account of the strict attention he has evidently given to the useful task his zeal for juvenile improvement imposed upon his patience; and the least he is entitled to from us, as just and can

did reviewers, is our acknowledgment of his merits, and the expression of our wish, that his volume may be as favourably received as it deserves.

Practical Hints on Female Education, with explanatory Exercises. By Catherine F. Newman.-8vo. pp. 84. Hatchard and Son. THIS little work, which adds to its principal object of promoting the acquisitions of the female mind, illustrations of the method employed by Miss Newman in the amiable and useful task to which she has devoted her attention during more than twenty-five years, will be found useful by whoever shall be disposed to attend to its remarks, and consult its suggestions. The rules this lady lays down for prosecuting the tuition of young minds, are founded on experience, and, by consequence, well calculated to answer their proposed purpose. Miss N.'s preface, we have read with considerable pleasure and entire satisfaction; and, after seriously weighing the nature and tendency of the whole volume, are of opinion, that the more it is read, the more may reasonably be expected from the rising females of the country.

The Child's Monitor; or, Select Rules for Spelling the English Language: with a few simple Questions in English Grammar and Arithmetic.- Baldwin & Co.

THIS little unpretending compilation is well executed, and will, we think, be found very useful to teachers who are engaged in introducing to the temple of learning, those who are yet at the threshhold. The rules are clearly and concisely expressed, and the questions and examples selected with judgment and accuracy.

PHILOLOGY.

Grammatical Parallel of the Ancient and Modern Gresk Languages. Translated by John Mitchell; from the Modern Greek of M. Jules David. 8vo. pp. 158, Black, Young, and Young.

SINCE Lord Byron, in the notes to the first canto of his Childe Harold, exclaimed, "The Greeks will never be independent, and God forbid they ever should," a much more favourable appreciation of the intellectual capacity for improvement manifested by the Greek nation generally, has grown up among the literati of Europe. The sciences, the arts, the civilization of our times, and all that the human mind esteems as its most precious acquisitions, stand in a certain relation with ancient Greece; and have to acknowledge benefits obtained, directly or indirectly, from its genius. Dull indeed must be the fancy, or cold the heart, which can remain unmoved when Greece, the mother of all we know or reverence in arts or arms, sends forth her cry for succour, from the grey hills of Marathon, and the rose laurels of Eurotas; and when the cross of Constantine waves and kindles in the midst of the warning light of the crescent, from the top of the Athenian Acropolis. Long before the breaking out of the insurrection, great efforts were made by the Greeks, to diffuse the light of intellectual

improvement throughout the country. Some individuals among them were distinguished for their literary acquirements; and it is only necessary to name Capo D'Istria, Metoside, Ignatius, Rhassis, Anthemos, Gazy, and Nicolopoulo, to convince us that learning and knowledge were not entirely lost among the descendants of Plato and Aristotle. It was objected to them by the residentiary consuls and free traders of the Levant, that their morals were as debased and as corruptedly distinct from those of their ancestors, as their language. But their nation have lately shewn, that they are not so much degenerated from the men of Thermopylæ, as to be incapable of contending for liberty in the same immortal pass; and later investigations have shewn, that the Romaic tongue, in fact, bears a much greater affinity to the ancient Hellenic than the major part of recent travellers in Greece have been willing to allow. The learned, finding that the pronunciation differed from that which they had been accustomed to learn at the universities of Europe, that the meaning of the words was altered, and that the syntax differed materially from that of the ancient Greek, too hastily concluded that language to be utterly beneath notice; misled in this respect chiefly by the calumnies of the Franks resident among them, who describe their teachers as unlettered, ignorant, and utterly destitute of all taste for literature, instead of candidly referring the depreciation of public taste, to the fettered condition of the public mind during so many ages of subjection to barbarous masters. The object of the author of this parallel, is to set the matter right in respect to the language, to point out the affinity between the ancient and the modern, and to shew the student wherein they assimilate, and wherein they differ.

We agree with our author in his anticipation of one result, that of its facilitating the acquisition of the dead language, by a comparison with the modern; but it has been objected that a knowledge of the modern language would rather be detrimental, than conducive, to the attainment; that a bad pronunciation, a bad orthography, a bad syntax, and a vague value of words, would be acquired; but our opinion is, that such comparison of cognate tongues is the most certain way to imprint both on the comprehension and memory. The pupil, by this means, besides the rich veins of etymological combinations which the comparisons lay open, will possess himself of the idiomatic turn of the ancient Greek; not in the parrot-like manner in which it is now acquired, (in which, in lieu of adapting names to this, they are adapted to names) but with the irrefragable familiarity of a spoken language.

It is doubtful to us, whether, in reality, the difference of the Romaic be very great, either in pronunciation, syntax, or verbal interpretation, from the language which was used colloquially, in the lower Greek Empire; as the author has shewn that many words which appear to have changed their meaning, are used in the modern sense by several ancient writers. As the colloquial language used by the common people of Rome was doubtless the mediate step between the written Latin and the modern Italian, the same thing may be said of the Greek. As to the true pronunciation of dead tongues, it is not necessary to say a word upon it; since, for all that we know, what is called the

barbarous pronunciation of the modern Romaic may be precisely that which was used by the Athenian contemporaries of Pericles or Plato. The only remaining point of distinction is the syntax. Even in this, the alterations are comparatively slight, and are certainly much less than could reasonably have been expected, after such a lapse of ages; as great alterations have taken place in the English language in the same time. The alteration is chiefly that which the irruption of the Goths introduced into the Latin tongue; namely, the substitution of the detached auxiliary prefixes have and be to the tenses of the verb, instead of the affixes and prefixes before employed. But this alteration is much less complete than in any of the family of the tongues derived from the Latin; many of the terms preserving their ancient form, as the imperfect, aorist, and second-future of the indicative mood, &c.

We earnestly recommend this useful little work to the notice of the scholar, the liberal, the phil-hellenist, and the traveller. It will tend to diffuse a knowledge of modern Greek at a time when such a knowledge must naturally be a subject of interest, policy, and emulation. The vestiges of Greece's antient greatness are to be traced by the traveller. The people retain an accurate echo of that language so dear to the scholar, which in old times was so harmonious, so eloquent, and so powerful; and the generation before us recalls to our recollec.. tion the heroes, the poets, the philosophers, the orators, the historians of yore, who adorned the most brilliant spot of the civilized world.

The American Mariners; or, the Atlantic Voyage. A Moral Poem. To which is prefixed, a Vindication of the American Character from the Aspersions of the Quarterly Reviewers.-8vo. WE will commence our observations, by casting a transient glance on the vindication of the character of the great and misrepresented nation to which the author belongs. That America is a great nation, every candid and ingenuous Englishman will confess; and likewise will admit that she is misrepresented: but by whom is she misrepresented? by whom but her own vain-glorious boasting sons? who, not content with the praise showered upon her by all the designing factionists and insidious agitators of England and Ireland, wish to make the whole world believe that she is the land of promise, and the birthplace of every thing great, laudable, and excellent. That she is the land of promise, and of false promise, many a deluded Briton, who has left the overflowing plenty of his quiet home, and has crossed the Atlantic in order to inhabit an ideal palace, has been convinced. "America is at present merely in her infancy," exclaim her admirers; "what," they ask, "will she be when arrived at full maturity?"? Possibly, we should answer, she will then be ripe for splitting into more monarchies than Europe contains. That it should be so, is but agreeable to the constitution of human nature; to such a conclusion does every national combination tend. If men begin wisely, how

long do they continue so to act? Sin perhaps is not more inseparable from our nature, than, too often, are ill consequences from our best and noblest endeavours. Even freedom, the most precious of human blessings, has it not frequently been bartered for gold?

We do not think that our American author will dare to accuse us of partiality, after this candid avowal. His chief quarrel with the Quarterly Reviewers is on account of their having calumniated his countrymen; therefore, to shew how much he is superior to them in Christian forbearance, he honours them with the titles of "little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though shrill and troublesome, insects of an hour."

We will now turn to the poem itself, which is preceded by so much candour and good manners. It is a rambling desultory story, written after the manner of Falconer's Shipwreck. That it contains some indifferently good poetry, we will not be so unjust as to deny. It is exceedingly long, and abounds with praises of American valour and beauty, with praises of American scenery, with praises of American trees, shrubs, and plants; of every thing American, from the jaguar that roams the forest, to the veriest vermin that riot in the peasant's garner. Every thing is seen through the distorted medium of nationality and prejudice.

But, nevertheless, nationality is a more worthy motive for an author to be influenced by, than that which actuates the generality of prose or verse writers. Truth, simplicity, and religion, are too frequently trodden under foot for the sake of writing a book, by which fools and men of genius alike seek honour and emolument, caring very little whether they confuse the heads of their fellow-creatures, hurl firebrands into the hearts of the innocent, or bring down deeper darkness upon the earth, through which doubt, like an ignis fatuus, glimmers and dances, to allure the wanderer into the fatal morass. are not professed fault-finders, but, when fault stares us in the face, it is impossible we should overlook it.

We

Abdallah; an Oriental Poem, in three Cantos: with other Poems. By Horace Gwynne.-8vo. pp. 162.

ORIENTAL history and Oriental manners are alike poetical; and a young votary of the muses can do nothing better than lay his scenes in regions which spontaneously offer him the choicest materials. In the work before us, the author has endeavoured to place the character of Mahommed in a somewhat fairer light than that in which we see it in Voltaire's tragedy. But we are compelled to state, that, what Mahommed has gained in virtue he loses in grandeur: Voltaire exhibits him in his true light; by making him a hero and a robber, who always preserves a certain greatness even in the midst of criminality. Mr. Gwynne possesses exalted talents, and to his poetical taste adds considerable historical knowledge. He has evidently drunk deep at the fount of Arabian lore, though his flattering picture of him who propagated religion with the sword shall not tempt us to say, that he is in some danger of exchanging the hat for the turban; Christ for Mahommed; and of becoming as good an Ishmaelite as ever exclaimed, "Glory to the Prophet." Among his miscellaneous poems,