One would think that the translator had intended to give us, as a rhetorical ornament, after the manner of the poets and the "Quadrupedum sonitu," a likeness of that descending, weakening series in the paragraph itself. For

first κατάληψις ἑαυτοῦ, “ which was hypostatized in the νοῦς or λόγος, the Divine Nature was an unfathomable abyss (Budos) too great even for consciousness. In order to impart life it must first draw itself together into a conscious state. And this was the preparation for that condescension spoken of, which was the first act of creation.

ourselves, we prefer harsh shortness to dilution and amplification. The chief excellence of the English is its conciseness. The richness and majesty of the German consist in great part in its capacity of shutting in within the embrace of a single expression or clause, (like those ivory boxes they bring us from China,) one within another, and according to the succession of dependence or natural importance, all the specifications, circumstances and modifications which are contained in the thought itself, the subject outside, the first qualification next within it, the ground of the same within that, and so on until we come to some circumstance in the centre which does not need any further laboring. We cannot well force our English idiom into a similar construction; but it is still worse when we break open the enclosing globes and string the whole succession of great and little circumstances at the end, (like the boys' "bobs" on a kite) hung together and upon the main matter by a row of rickety and indeterminate whiches and becauses and whiles, until "the spirits" become indeed “weak” and weak enough, and “the relations" not "of time," but of chaos and the void seem to be transferred to the subjectmatter. We must sacrifice, if necessary, circumstantiality to force. We must not labor upon the qualification until we lose the thing qualified. We must not take an obscure adjective which the writer laid in the dark inside of his inmost box, and spin it out into a thread at the very point of the sentence. Any one who can use well the strong pregnant English adjectives, will be able to say in so many successive strokes what the German says under so many different enclosures, and leave the main subject after all at the end. The German construction imparts to the style a fullness, particularity, precision, and completeness of connexion, which we cannot by the same means attain; but we have, in their stead, ease, simplicity and suggestive shortness.

As to the rendering of single words, few translators seem to be aware of the richness of our English tongue. Few ideas fail of finding in it an answering word, though the same may have been somewhat injured by incorrect, indeterminate or vulgar use. When the word answering to the word to be translated has not the fullness of meaning we could wish, we should yet use it, rather than a word

which stands either on one side or on the other of the thought, and also rather than describe the meaning by a periphrasis, which after all is of little help. If the German housewives have a mousetrap, which not only catches mice, but pulls out their teeth, there is no reason for calling it on that account either squirrel-cage, or rat-nest, nor for describing it in every instance in which it is mentioned as a mousetrap "which also at the same time extracts the teeth of the animal;" but simple mousetrap is the name of the thing, and its extraordinary powers may be inferred.

Now the same may be said, for instance, of the German word "Bewusstseyn." It means consciousness. And because the Germans comprehend under it, not only consciousness of the mind's own states and actions, but also a sense of anything spiritual the notion of which lies in the mind, there is no reason for rendering it either conscience (Gewissen) on the one hand, or feeling (Gefühl) on the other, or in any other way than by that word which really answers to it, which arose in our language in the same manner, and to express precisely the same idea, and which would receive the same extension of meaning by being used in the same discussions. Fifty years ago "Bewusstseyn" meant nothing more in Germany than "consciousness" in English. Chiefly by Schleiermacher has its sense been heightened. Writers speak now of a "Gottesbewusstseyn," which means not only the actual sense of God in the soul, but also the capacity of such a sense, or as we might say the sense for God; not only the action, but the faculty. But the English word will hold this sense, as well as the German.

To all that we have said it must be added, that Rose's translation is made from the first edition of the history, and that the second edition which appeared in 1841-43 is so changed that no one can consider the former as representing adequately Neander's views. No one in Germany would think of studying the old edition. And it is a great pity it has been so widely spread in England and in this country.

We have made these strictures on the work under notice, not from any fondness for petty and verbal criticisms, nor from a wish to disparage the evident respectableness, learning and fairness of the translator; but for the sake of

saving the history itself. How many years, how many centuries, have we waited and sighed for a good history of our religion and church! At last it has come. It is a work meant not for one nation, but for the world. As elements from all nations flowed together into the author's richly fraught mind to give birth to the history, so the history is meant to repay the debt by flowing back to them. It is of the greatest importance that it should not be troubled or changed. We earnestly desire a good English translation; and we cannot but express the hope that it will be prepared by some one more thoroughly conversant with the German language, and one who will labor after conciseness and clearness. The matter is of much more importance than some imagine, for if a bad translation gets possession of the market and of libraries, who will be encouraged to bestow the time and labor necessary to make a better, under the uncertainty of procuring publisher or purchasers and in the certainty of not earning his bread? A contemporary journal informs us that there is an American translation of the work now lying in manuscript ready for the press, whenever a publisher can be found. We know nothing of the translator personally, but he enjoys the reputation of being competent to the task.

S. Longfeller.

ART. IV. - POETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS.

G. F. S.

I. NO HEART ALONE.

"I have learned, says the melancholy Pestalozzi, that in this wide world no one heart is able or willing to help another."-EMERSON.

O SAY not we through life must struggle,
Must toil and mourn, alone;

That no one human heart can answer

The beatings of our own.

The stars look down from the silent heavens

Into the quiet stream,

And see themselves from its dewy depths

In fresher beauty gleam.

The sky with its pale or glowing hues
Ever painteth the wave below,

And the sea sends up its mists to form

Bright clouds and the heavenly bow.

Thus each does of the other borrow
A beauty not its own:

And tells us that no thing in nature
Is for itself alone.

Alone amid life's griefs and perils,
The stoutest soul may quail;
Left to its own unaided efforts,
The strongest arm may fail.

And though all strength still comes from Heaven,

All light from God above,

Yet we may sometimes be his angels,

The apostles of his love.

Then let us learn to help each other,

Hoping unto the end:

Who sees in every man a brother,
Shall find in each a friend.

S. L.

II.

RETRANSLATION.

Reading lately a translation by Freiligrath, the popular young poet of Germany, of a beautiful song of Burns, written as a farewell Dirge to his native land, as he was about to embark for Jamaica, and remembering but the first three words of the original, I took a curious interest in translating it back, by way of proving it, as the boys do their sums in arithmetic, and the result was as follows.

How fast the gloomy night comes down!
The tempest howls; the storm-clouds frown,
As, big and black with rain, they stand
Above this naked, hilly land.