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to tell whether a sermon with great talipot-leaf words, each big enough to cover ten men, has any thought in it or not. At any rate, hearers get weary of the quest after it, and fall asleep, or pursue their own thoughts. But a good discourse is scarcely more valuable for the thoughts it conveys, than for the thought it excites. It is not merely declarative, it is suggestive. The mind receives at once its clear, terse words, and they expand within it. The hearer is a co-worker with the speaker. The preacher opens the vein of ore, and leaves the hearer to work it out. What he gains is his own. The suggestive preacher cannot seem tedious to worthy minds. On the other hand, he who works out every vein of thought to its last particle, must have great skill or he will grow tiresome. He does not keep his hearers at work, but permits them to outrun him. We may safely appeal to all who have heard sermons, if any fault is more tiresome than this. It should be one great object of the preacher, to attain to that density of style, which shall at least keep his hearers occupied with the thought it carries. Beware, however, that no part of this exercise consists in the endeavor to get the sense of what is said. It is bad enough in a printed discourse, such as Maurice's Essays, to be obliged to turn back, and read again a whole sentence, to ascertain the precise meaning of some "this" or "that," "these" or "those;" in a preached sermon it is almost fatal. Before the hearer has found the sense, he has lost the preacher. All who are desirous of a good style will carefully remove all such stumbling blocks from their discourses.

It is in the power of but few to attain that eloquence which has such entrancing potency as "the applause of listening senates to command:"-but almost any man who has any call to the ministry, may become master of a clear and compact expression, simple and cogent, which with sincerity, and "meek unaffected grace," may give him a powerful hold not only on the hearts, but on the intellects of his hearers. They might not worship him; no good man would wish any thing approaching it; but he would have all the essentials of a lasting and healthy usefulness, and power to be indeed a worthy minister of Him "who went about doing good." E. F.

ART. XIV.

Literary Notices.

1. History of the Israelitish Nation, from Abraham to the Present Time. Derived from the Original Sources. By Isaac M. Wise, &c. Vol. i. Albany: J. Munsell, &c. 1854. 8vo. pp. xxiv. 560.

Two things, respecting this history, are quite remarkable: 1. It is the work of a Jew, who may be supposed, on this account, to have some peculiar advantages for describing the antiquities, character, and fortunes, of his own nation. 2. It is written on Rationalistic, or rather on Naturalistic, grounds. The author, M. Wise, a respectable Jewish Rabbi, now of Albany, lays it down for his principle, at the outset, that, as miracles can be wrought by God only, and as history records only what men have done, the historian has no right to incorporate miracles in his work, though he may believe them. And in stating the rule he had adhered to, he says, "miracles, for which we could not find common and natural reasons (causes?), were not recorded by us; still, we have sought to find such reasons, wherever we could. We did not contradict, or deny, the rest; neither did we deem ourselves entitled to consider them a part of history." It may be a question, however, whether he has followed out this rule in any consistent manner,-whether, by assigning as he does, natural causes, of his own imagining, to the events recorded as miraculous, he does not virtually deny the miracle. For it is plain, that, if the events took place in the way he imagines, then there was no miracle such as the inspired writers represented in the case. For instance, the destroying angel who, Moses says, passed by the Israelitish dwellings that were marked with the blood of the paschal sacrifice, but who slew all the firstborn of the Egyptians, was, according to M. Wise, a band of assassins. He says, "It would appear to us, as Aben Ezra already remarked, that parties of the army of Moses, at Avaris or Raamses, were sent to the country to kill the first-born, or the defenders, of all those who opposed the departure of the Hebrews." Thus, too, the miracles that were wrought in the journey through the wilderness, are reduced to natural events; and the giving of the law from Sinai, though it is acknowledged to have been under the divine superintendence, is divested of the circumstances which Moses describes as the immediate sanctions of God.

Notwithstanding this theological fault, however, the history is valuable in other respects. It presents a Jewish view of the subject, and this affords us peculiar advantage, especially when that view

is fair and candid, as it appears to be in M. Wise's work. Writing the annals of his own nation, with all the interest which he naturally feels in every thing that concerns his ancient country and his race, and familiar with the works of former Jewish litterateurs, he is in a position to see the bearings of many things which an alien, though of greater general learning, would not so readily appreciate. For various reasons, it is always desirable to have the history of a people from one of themselves. Among the different topics which the author discusses, at proper stages in his work, are the geographical features and divisions of Palestine, its natural products, and the domestic economy of the people at the several periods, together with their civil and judicial institutions, laws, religion, and literature. "The main body of the book," he says, " contains the political history, and the appendix of every period contains the doctrines, principles, customs, and the literary activity of that particular age. We have drawn proper lines of demarcation between history, theology and exegesis, although we could not avoid critical investigations in the main body of the book, in order to establish certain facts, or to make others intelligible." His general learning on these topics appears to be respectable, even when he is compared with other German scholars, to which class we suppose that he belongs. Perhaps, however, it is, in some respects, too much influenced by Rabbinical tastes. His original sources for the ancient part of his history, are, of course, the books of the Old Testament. But besides these, he professes to have consulted, Philo, Josephus, and the Rabbins; and, among the moderns, Wilkinson, Bunsen, Sharpe, Champollion, Kenrick, Botta, Layard, Schwarz, Robinson and Smith, Niebuhr, Ritter, and many others.

The Israelitish people have a history more remarkable than that of any other nation, even when it is regarded merely in a secular point of view. Beginning back in those dim ages of antiquity, where we find nothing but a few half-intelligible monuments and relics of the rest of the early world, and coming down from thence in an uninterrupted and tolerably broad channel through the periods of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Grecian, Babylonian, Persian, and Roman empires, it opens to us the only clear vista into those remote times. All other history in those ages, or rather, all the fragments of history we discover there, cluster around this, and receive much of their significance from this. Since the destruction of their power by the Romans, the Jews have been scattered among all the nations of the earth. But neither misery and death, nor promises and arguments, have availed to blend them with the rest of the world, or to deprive them of that native buoyancy which held them erect in the storm of ages, and went with them from land to land. "They have maintained their language, literature, religion, traditions and customs, and in a great measure, also their national pe

culiarities and moral character, during eighten centuries of dispersion, and successive miseries, but seldom interrupted by the sunshine of happiness."

The first volume reaches down only to the Babylonish captivity, under Nebuchadnezzar. We hope the author will find encouragement to proceed, and complete the narrative" to the present time." The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and the insurrections that followed for sixty or seventy years, must form a very interesting part; and the history of the subsequent dispersion, for seventeen centuries, will throw light on a subject that is but little known among common readers.

2. The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell; with an Original Biography and Notes. Edited by Epes Sargent. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company. 1854. 12mo. pp. 479.

Nearly fifty years ago, a copy of Hohenlinden, in the "Poet's Corner" of some country newspaper, found its way into our humble dwelling on the hills of the Green Mountain State. We well remember the vivid picture which the lines, as we chanted them, conjured up in our boyish imagination, and the spell with which they held us entranced as it were. Some years passed before we learned any thing more of their author; but his name has ever since been to us "a name of power." When we read him at a maturer age, we were taken by the splendid imagery and lofty-sounding rythm of his Pleasures of Hope, and by the intensified vehemence of his Lochiel's Warning, more perhaps than by any other of his longer poems. But-shall we confess it?we are now inclined to give the preference, among these, to his Gertrude of Wyoming, and his O'Connor's Child. The former is one of the sweetest and tenderest poems in our language. We know not where to look for. another, in which description, narrative and sentiment, are blended with such truthfulness to nature, and at the same time so pervaded with pathos, and with a rich but not overcharged fancy. O'Connor's Child is an embodiment of pure passion, in which the madness is sanctified from every thing repulsive, by the fathomless depth of feeling. It is a story flowing forth in lyric strains. Of his two celebrated Odes, "Ye mariners of England," and the "Battle of the Baltic," it would be impertinent to speak merely in praise, standing, as they justly do by common consent, at the head of productions of the kind..

We are glad to meet with this new edition of his Poems,—the fullest that we have seen. Mr. Sargent has done his part of the work apparently with entire faithfulness. He has aimed to give us the complete collection, including many pieces that were scattered in various publications, but never before brought together into one volume. As to these, he specifies, in notes, the authority for

attributing them to Campbell. In a well-written biography of the poet, opening to us both his domestic and his literary life, we find the original introduction to the Pleasures of Hope, and the original form of the Battle of the Baltic. It is curious to mark the almost total change which this Ode underwent from its first to its present state, and the unsparing excision with which the author cut away even some excellences, in order to bring it down to the consistency in which it now appears. We have also his portrait, as he appeared in early life, and a full-length pen-and-ink sketch, representing him in the ease and undress of his study, at an advanced age. volume is handsomely printed,-the poems on large type; the biography (100 pages,) and the notes, on type smaller but easy to eye.

the

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We see one or two slight alterations, which, though we suppose they were made by the poet himself, whom the editor was bound to follow, we still do not like. In the last stanza of Hohenlinden, we now have

instead of

"Few, few shall part where many meet!"

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Ah, few shall part where many meet!"

We submit, that the interjection is the natural utterance in this transition to the closing reflection; the other form is too hurried, advertises no break between the descriptive stanzas, and the reflective. Again, in Gertrude of Wyoming, part ii., stanza 21, we have

"Nay, wherefore weep ye, friends, on such a joyous day ?" For the sake of the sentiment, we cannot but feel that it ought to be, "weep we friends," whether Campbell left it thus, or not.

The stanzas, entitled "The Power of Russia," receive peculiar emphasis from the state of Europe at the present juncture. Though not so highly finished as many of his pieces, nor perhaps so instinct with the spirit of poetry, they seem almost prophetic,-like Napoleon's celebrated prediction at St. Helena. With what reflections will England now reperuse the indignant denunciation of her blind selfishness in suffering the Northern Despot to crush Poland, and the warning in which the future is laid before her ?

"But this is not the drama's closing act!

Its tragic curtain must uprise anew.

Nations, mute accessaries to the fact!

That Upas tree of power, whose fostering dew
Was Polish blood, has yet to cast o'er you

The lengthening shadow of its head elate.

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Then Europe's realms, when their best blood is poured,
Shall miss thee, Poland, as they bend the knee,
All, all in grief, but none in glory, likening thee."

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