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Mouthy- Review of Lt/erafwre, 



[OCT. 



Not unto all hath nature given, 



The aptitude to form. 

 As in Uie perfect mould of heaven, 



A work no faults deform ; 

 I'lMin which, a masterpiece of art, 

 Posterity may ne'er depart. 



Before it, see, with rapture blind, 



Long after, pupils stand ; 

 Musing upon the mastermind 



Which mov'd that mighty hand. 

 Their beating bosoms all the while, 

 Glowing as glows the artist's toil. 



As sailing on the stream of time, 



We pass from wave to wave, 



Till safe beneath a fairer clime 



What though above our grave, 



No name arrests the passer by, 



Deeds are its records in the sky. 



When to the universal tomb 



Of nature I descend, 

 My dust again in fresher bloom 



With future flowers to blend 

 And with my thoughts refined to rise 

 To greater beauty iu the skies : 



O 'twill be sweet, to all well known, 



To "win the praise of all, 

 And sweeter still but yet unknown 



From virtue ne'er to fall ; 

 Let goodness be my highest pride, 

 But modesty that goodness hide. 



Such man, the creature of his God, should deem 



His only proper fame ; 

 The substance, not the show, esteem ; 



And seek no lofty name : 

 No boastings in his boeom dwell, 

 But shrink his own renown to swell. 



Elements of Universal History, by G. 

 O. Bredow, translated from the German, 

 \vith Alterations and Additions ; 1827. 

 Treuttel and Wurtz. The want of a com- 

 prehensive work which should give a ge- 

 neral view of the political, moral, and 

 intellectual advancement of mankind has 

 long been felt. Bossuet's Essay, though 

 a masterly sketch for the purpose it was 

 designed to fulfill, could not be employed 

 as an elementary book for youth, and the 

 professor of history in the University of 

 Breslaw, by supplying one which is 

 adapted to engage the attention of the 

 learner, while it may be consulted with 

 advantage by persons of every age, has 

 performed a task of great and acknow- 

 ledged utility. The plan which the au- 

 Ihor has pursued in compressing into a 

 brief and concise narrative the most strik- 

 ing features of history, and in estimating 

 the importance of every event according 

 to the influence it has had on the happi- 

 ness or improvement of mankind, rather 

 than by the degree of celebrity which it 

 has acquired, will be found to facilitate 

 the study of history, and to give a correct 

 view of the whole subject, and of the con- 

 nexion which different events have with 

 each other. We shall be extremely glad 



if our recommendation be the means of 

 bringing this small volume under the eye 

 of persons engaged in the task of educa- 

 tion, and who have hitherto been obliged 

 to rely upon their own researches, or to 

 trust to ephemeral or wretched compila- 

 tions for the elements of universal his- 

 tory. 



Conversations on Mythologrj, 1827. 

 Elementary books are the natural offspring 

 of civilization. The more cultivated becomes 

 society, the larger is the circle of acquired 

 knowledge demanded at the hands of every 

 member of it: and ot consequence, supposing 

 men's faculties have always been exercised 

 to their full workable extent, the greater the 

 number of our pursuits, the less time must 

 we have to devote to each. Hence arises a 

 necessity for condensing knowledge into the 

 narrowest limits; and to accomplish this 

 condensing, the whole blended miscellany 

 of science and literature must first be di- 

 vided, or decomposed rather into its consti- 

 tuents, and presented to the youpg aspirant 

 in a number of concise and definite objects 

 of study. From that compound mass must 

 mythology, among other matters, he extract- 

 ed, and thus be made a distinct branch of 

 education. Our little girls but few of 

 them at least read not Virgil, or Ovid, or 

 Homer. No indelible pictures, therefore, 

 insensibly get stamped upon their minds of 

 heathen divinities, in all their native gran- 

 deur iu the woods, and by the streams, on 

 the mountains, and near the fountains, in 

 shelly cars, dolphin-drawn, upon the placid 

 waters, or aloft pillowed on the folded 

 clouds. Thoroughly to read the least ob- 

 jectionable of the classics, Homer, or Virgil, 

 for instance, requires immense time ; and 

 all, as the sapient governess would say, just 

 to learn the fate of a paltry city, and a few 

 persons, whose whole adventures might be 

 expeditiously summed up in a page or two 

 of prose ; while the entire works of these 

 poets might very well be compassed in a 

 reasonably-sized conversation a little gram- 

 mar, on English metre, giving the pupil much 

 more correct instruction than the study of 

 either Pope or Dryden, through their end- 

 less volumes ; and the chronological table, 

 moreover, containing all the names, with 

 their birth and death, learnt over and over 

 again. This analytical kind of procedure, 

 possesses besides, Jor the governess, an in- 

 calculable advantage, by affording a scale 

 to measure the amount of acquirement, and 

 mark the comparative advance of her pu- 

 pils ; and better than all, the ready means of 

 making all she infuses tell at once in the 

 estimation of her employers and their ac- 

 quaintance. In the huge volumes that fed 

 our forefathers' minds, she sees nothing but 

 superfluity ; and she knows that, if her pupils 

 must be made metaphysicians, political eco- 

 nomists, geographers, grammarians, natural- 

 ists, French, Italian, German-scholars, mu- 

 sicians, dancers, arithmeticians, geometri- 



