022 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



egal." Thus Russia, because her commercial relations with us are ex- 

 tensive, may snap up Turkey, without exciting a single sigh in the breast 

 of the Manchester Man ; and this for the best of all possible reasons, that 

 Turkey does not buy so much from us. A man who starts with so sordid 

 a theory, can hardly expect more than a brief notice of it from us. 



Practical Observations on the Physiology and Diseases of the Teeth. 

 By JOHN MALLAN, Surgeon- Dentist. Schloss, London. 



A very sensible book. Mr. Mallan has written certainly the best 

 family book on the subject which we have seen. It is simple and un- 

 pedantic ; and albeit we think the aid of the Dentist is too strenuously 

 insisted upon, it is a failing on the right side, both for Patient and 

 Surgeon. 



Melanie, and other Poems. By N. P. WILLIS. 

 Edited by BARRY CORNWALL. 



Mr. Cornwall speaks like a man of sense for his author, and for his 

 country America. The preface was however uncalled for, as the Poems 

 are their own best recommendation. Some of them have been already 

 before the public, and all of them exhibit considerable poetic powers. 

 We regret that we have not room this month for a suitable extract. 



Bucolics of Virgil ; interlinearly translated, with a preliminary 



Dissertation on the Latin language and versification. By P. 



AUSTIN NUTTALL, LL.D. Simpkins, London. 



We trust the time is not very remote, when this book of Dr. Nuttall's 

 will be in the hand of every learner of the Latin tongue. The mode 

 which has been for ages in vogue, for teaching this language, is in direct 

 opposition to common sense, and is absolutely unsuited for the pur- 

 poses of education at the present day. When men devoted their lives to 

 the acquisition of languages when the cloister and the college were the 

 sole abodes of learning when it was a luxury or a penalty to be used but 

 by a few the multitudinous rules composing a Latin Grammar were 

 things of small moment. It is true, that these rules were, and are, in- 

 explicable, and full of contrarieties but what then ? labour and research 

 enabled men to become Latin scholars, spite of the obstacles placed in 

 their way. 



The best proof of the absurdity of continuing the monastic plan of 

 instruction is to be found in the fact, that out of the thousands of boys 

 who receive what is called a classical education, not one in fifty retains 

 the slightest fragment of it in after-life. They have never felt the beauty 

 of the authors who have passed through their hands; they have never 

 understood them, and they look back upon their scholastic education as 

 a thing hateful in itself and to be forgotten as fast as possible. The 

 acquisition of prosodial rules, the loading the memory with words 

 having no intelligible meaning, the attempts forced upon students to write 

 Latin verses from staring at a Gradus, before they can read it, is the very 

 essence of nonsense ; and the continuance of the plan is a proof only, 

 how difficult a matter it is to do away with prejudice and long-confirmed 

 habit. 



We are not singular in this opinion. The wisest and the most learned 

 of men have uttered the same expressions : Locke and Milton have both 

 iu substance spoken the same language, and it remains for Dr. Nuttall to 



