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Attic comedy, which, as adapted to the Roman stage by Plautus, Terence, and others, forms the staple of the Roman comic drama:

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"The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its last creation, its indestructible plastic vigor; but the delineation of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from inward experience, and the more so, the more the task approaches the really poetical. Yet the blame of this want of depth in the portraying of character, and generally of the whole poetical and moral hollowness of this new comedy, lay less with the comic writers than with the nation as a whole. Every thing distinctively Greek was expiring; fatherland, national faith, domestic life, all nobleness of action and sentiment were gone; poetry, history, and philosophy were inwardly exhausted; and nothing remained to the Athenian save the school, the fish-market, and the brothel. It is no matter of wonder, and hardly a matter of blame, that poetry, whose office it is to shed a glory over human existence, could make nothing more out of such a life than the Menandrian comedy presents to us. * * It is not a reproach to the poet that he occupies the level of his epoch. Comedy was not the cause, but the effect of the corruption that prevailed in the national life. But it is necessary, more especially with a view to estimate correctly the influence of these comedies on the life of the Roman people, to point out the abyss that yawned be neath all that polish and elegance. The coarseness and obscenities, which Menander, indeed, in some measure avoided, but of which there is no lack in the other poets, are the least part of the evil. Features far worse are, the dreadful aspect of life as a desert in which the only oases are love-making and intoxication; the fearful'y prosaic monotony, in which any thing resembling enthusiasm is to be found only among sharpers whose heads have been turned by their own swindling, and who prosecute the trade of cheating with some sort of zeal; and above all, that immoral morality with which the pieces of Menander in particular are garnished Vice is chastised, virtue is rewarded, and any peecadilloes are covered by conversion at or after marriage. There are pieces, such as the Trinummus of Plautus and several of Terence, in which all the characters down to the slaves possess some admixture of virtue; all swarm with honest men who allow deception on their behalf, with maidenly virtue whenever possible, with lovers equally favored and making love in company; moral cominonplaces and well-turned ethical maxims abound. A finale of reconciliation, such as that of the Bacchides, where the swindling sons and the swindled fathers, by way of a good conclusion, all go to carouse together in the brothel, presents a corruption of morals thoroughly worthy of Kotzebue."

THE LIFE OF MISS MITFORD,* as told by herself in these volumes of letters to her friends, was a very sad life, darkened by constant shadows, which were as constantly lighted up by the perpetual sunshine of a buoyant and kindly nature. On the Thursday before her death, which was in distinct and near prospect, she thus wrote to a friend. "It has pleased Providence to preserve to

*The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, told by herself in letters to her friends. Edited by the Rev. A. G. K. L'ESTRANGE. In two volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1870.

me my calmness of mind, clearness of intellect, and also my power of reading by day and by night; and, which is still more, my love of poetry and literature, my cheerfulness, and my enjoyment of little things. This very day, not only my common pensioners, the dear robins, but a saucy troop of sparrows, and a little shining bird of passage whose name I forget, have all been pecking at once at their tray of bread-crumbs outside the window. Poor pretty things! how much delight there is in those common objects, if people but learn to enjoy them and I really think that the feeling for these simple pleasures is increasing with the increase of education."

This letter, written at the age of sixty-seven, gives expression to certain prominent traits of character, such as were conspicuous in many of her writings. But they do scant justice to the more serious and noble traits of filial devotion and self-sacrifice, of constant and painful labor and sorrow-of sustained patience and sweetness under constant mortification, and of an honest religious peace and faith, long-delayed, but given at last when it was most needed. Few of the many who will read this life will fail to be the wiser for the reading, though all may well be the sadder. The multitudes who were delighted at the first and cheerful pictures which this merry writer gave them of nature and society in rural England, did not dream that these sketches were written under a constant pressure of sorrow, but those who learn the painful secret, will not admire the writer or her works any the less for this discovery, though they will wonder at both the more. The moral value of this collection of letters is of the highest, and it is still more highly to be praised in our country than in England, inasmuch as not a few of our gifted writers are somewhat morbidly disposed to cherish discontent and envy, under what they call their ill-requited services. In other respects than as they give us so ample a revelation of a very noble character and so beautiful and truthful a picture of a truly noble life, they will be variously estimated by different persons, according to the point of view from which they study them. Some will regard them as overloaded with petty personal and domestic details, as super-abounding in the small gossip concerning men and events that are now deservedly forgotten-a representation of a state of society which was in many respects more frivolous and petty than that which has happily taken its place in similar circles. Others will not agree with many of the personal preferences of the writer, as her de

voted admiration for Napoleon, O'Connel, and Cobbett, and her equally unreasonable dislike of all descriptions of Conservatives and Tories. Her critical estimates of authors and their works, both living and dead, will be positively and sorely offensive to not a few. Their occasional capriciousness and superficiality will be more scandalous in the eyes of many men. She says hard things and pungent things of the works of Thackeray, Dickens, of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and is not always complimentary to Walter Scott or Wordsworth, to both of whom she became more than reconciled at a subsequent period. But none of her caprices and prejudices and dislikes are malicious or inveterate, and all bear the marks of an honest, if it be a hasty mind, of an impulsive but true-hearted temper. One of the most interesting of her loves was that which she cherished for Miss Barrett, aferwards Mrs. Browning The letters which she addressed to her, and the terms in which she spoke of her in her letters to others, are altogether delightful. To one class of readers these volumes may be of special service, as they will be likely to be of special interest to them--to the not few female writers of every grade in which this country abounds, and the very much more numerous class of female littérateurs, with which perhaps we super-abound. The lessons of wisdom, of patience, and hope which they inculcate for all such, will suggest themselves to every reader. Many blessings must follow the memory of so bright an example of brilliant and varied talents, consecrated to filial duty.

LIFE OF JAMES HAMILTON, D.D.-The author of the "Royal Preacher" was himself a man of rich and royal mind, to whom nothing was too great and nothing too small in God's works for him to love. He was like the "Preacher" of old, conversant with every tree and plant, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that runneth on the wall. While yet a young man ministering to his rural flock at Abernyte, he was in the habit of carrying the wild flowers he had gathered on the way into the pulpit, and of expatiating upon them, much to the wonderment of his stern, old fashioned Scotch hearers; and on one occasion, having obtained possession of the big branch of a fig tree he used it to illustrate a scriptural lesson. A plain woman from a neighboring parish, full of fervid zeal for spiritual things, seeing the young preacher

* Life of James Hamilton, D.D., F.L.S. By WILLIAM ARNOT, Edinburgh. Second Edition. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. 1870.

flourishing his branch of green leaves above his head, was seized with a holy horror, and, after the sermon, waiting in the aisle for him to come down from the pulpit, she thus accosted him: "Oh Maister Hamilton, hoo do ye gie them fig leaves when they're hungerin for the bread of life." But Master Hamilton had something more than fig leaves to give his hearers; as a fruitful ministry of twenty-six years at the National Scotch Church, Regent Street, London,-the most important Presbyterian church south of the Tweed-might testify. Yet, eminent preacher as he was, perhaps he did more for the world by his pen, as a writer of tracts, essays, and short biographies, such as Church in the House, Memoir of Lady Colquhoun, Our Christian Classics, and above all, The Royal Preacher, which works have been extensively read in this country. His biographer, noticing this fact, says "it would not have been amiss, all circumstances considered, if our brothers beyond the Atlantic had felt in their pockets for the author of works they so much admired."

A contemporary and personal friend of Robert McCheyne and Edward Irving, he had something of his own-a tireless energy in doing good, and a literary genius of considerable power-to make him worthy of such companionship. His fresh love of nature and his vivid poetic fancy, vitalizing what he wrote, were his chief qualities as a writer. Genial, cheerful, sagacious, ardent, energetic, devoted, he filled an important place in the religious world, without being a man of extraordinary powers. This volume is a handsome one, and is accompanied by a good portrait.

MEMOIR OF REV. WILLIAM C. BURNS.*-In much the same style as the above volume, the Carters have just brought out a reprint of the biography of the saintly Scotch missionary, William Burns. A characteristic portrait of Burns, in his Chinese dress, adorns the volume. Burns was a life-long friend of James Hamilton's, and the two were brought up in neighboring parishes. He was also a friend of Robert Murray McCheyne's, and the first part of his life belongs to that circle of remarkable revivals of re

Memoir of the Rev. Win. C. Burns, M. A., Missionary to China from the English Presbyterian Church. By the REV. ISLAY BURNS, D.D., Professor of Theology, Free Church College, Glasgow.

"Watch those in all things, endure afflictions (or hardships), do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." 2 Tim. 4-5.

New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 530 Broadway. 1870.

ligion in Dundee, Perth, and the north of Scotland, of which Dundee and McCheyne formed the center. The life of Burns may, in fact, be divided into two distinct periods-the one, that of revival preacher, and the other, that of a foreign missionary. In his first capacity he visted Ireland and Canada. His preaching was attended with many of the powerful manifestations that sig nalized the preaching of Whitefield and Wesley. He endured the rage of men and of mobs. His preaching, whose effects in some instances were like those that followed the preaching of the apostle Peter, is thus described by one who knew him intimately: "He had no pathos, no fancy, little natural enthusiasm, and not much that could be called natural eloquence; but he had a firm grasp of gospel truth, a capacity for clear and forcible statement, and a voice capable of commanding any audience, however large, in the church, in the street, in the field; and when the power of the Spirit rested upon him, there were the thunders of Sinai in all their terrors, the still small voice of the gospel in much of its tenderness, the fervent fluency of a tongue touched with a live coal from the altar, the irrepressible urgency of one standing between the living and the dead, the earnest pressing of salvation that would accept no refusal; himself standing consciously and evidently in the presence of the great God, with heaven, and hell, and the souls of men, open before him, with Jesus Christ filling his heart with his love and pouring grace into his lips, and with multitudes before him weeping for sorrow over discovered sin, or for joy in a discovered Saviour." But he was pledged to the missionary work, having formally offered himself at the age of twentyfour to go to Hindustan. Following out his early impulse, at the age of thirty-two, still a young man in years, though worn with manifold labors and journeyings for the cause of Christ, he embarked for China, to commence, as he regarded it, his real work of life. He plunged into that great empire, as if single-handed he expected to conquer it for his Master. He was all things to all men, that he might win some to Christ. He put off the European, and became, in all but his Christian heart, a Chinese. His method of operations was highly primitive and apostolic. Having learned the language, he preached, as he had opportunity, directly to the people, sometimes quite alone, or accompanied in his journeyings and boat excursions by a single native helper. But we refer the reader to the book itself, which deserves to stand by the side of Dr. Wayland's Life of Judson-the two men not

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