JS27.J 



Domestic and Foreign. 



307 



survived, for few, we believe, ever returned. 

 The miseries incurred by them are scarcely to 

 be paralleled. We had intended to compress 

 the particulars, but have already exceeded 

 our limits, and must refer our readers for 

 them to the book itself. 



A Popular Introduction to the Study of 

 I fa Holy Scriptures, by JV Carpenter; 

 184G. ''The design of this work," says the 

 author a man evidently of cultivated ta- 

 lents " is to furnish a digest of the most 

 valuable information on the subject of scrip- 

 ture interpretation and antiquities, adapted 

 to the use of that class of persons, whose 

 knowledge of language is confined to" the 

 English and to very many o(her., we 

 shall add, who would by no means be 

 thought to come under the description of 

 such as know none but their mother-tongue. 

 The expression is somewhat equivocal ; but 

 the writer alludes to ignorance of Greek 

 and Latin : and how many, or rather how 

 few, out of every thousand, who are ,set 

 to learn these languages in their youth, even 

 know, or ever retain enough of them to 

 make any serviceable use of them? 



The book is intended to be a more acces- 

 sible, that is a more generally useful work 

 than Mr. Home's Introduction to the Critical 

 Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scrip- 

 tures ; and it will prove in truth to be really 

 more useful ; not that the writer speaks 

 or is at all disposed to speak depreciatingly 

 of Mr. Home quite the contrary as indeed 

 that gentleman's indefatigable industry can- 

 not deserve. We would accordingly, warmly 

 recommend Mr. Carpenter's work to nine- 

 tenths of those who are enjoined to study Mr. 

 Home's, but to whom his learning is rather 

 an incumbrance than an assistance. There 

 is none of the parade of learning in it, but 

 U the essence of it. The author is himself 

 manifestly a man of learning ; and he gives 

 us quietly, and unaffectedly the fruits of it 

 the kernel without the shell. Learning 

 indeed was not required forthe undertaking ; 

 what was wanted, and what the writer pos- 

 sessed, is sound judgment to select the 

 useful, and stern resolution to reject the 

 superfluous, and still more, the ostentatious. 

 To the orthodox, the volume will seem to 

 come from a suspicious quarter, but we 

 assure them notwithstanding the panic of 

 the " Christian Remembrancer'' and who 

 more orthodox than we ? there is no of- 

 fence in it. 



The work is divided into two parts. The 

 first, occupying about forty pages, enume- 

 rates the moral qualities for the profitable 

 reading of the Scriptures, and furnishes 

 some useful rules for collecting the sense of 

 them ; and the other part, embracing all of 

 what may be termed the literary helps for 

 a right understanding of the Scriptures, fill 

 up the remaining pages full six hundred, 

 closely printed. This part is sub-divided 

 very judiciously, and distinctly, into chapters 

 and sections. Of the larger divisions, there 



are eleven. The 1st contains prefatory 

 observations on every one of the books of 

 the Old and New Testament, indicating all 

 that is known of the several writers, with 

 the specific object of each piece, and ana- 

 lizing the contents; 2, a sketch of what is 

 known by the term "sacred geography;" 

 3, political antiquities of the Jews ; 4, laws 

 of the Jews ; 5, festivals ; 6, sacrt'd places, 

 of worship, that is ; 7, sacred things ; 8, 

 members and officers of the Jewish Church ; 

 9, corruption of religion among the Jews, 

 including the sects; 10, national and do- 

 mestic customs, including divisions of time, 

 weights, measures, coins ; their literature, 

 houses, costumes, marriages, &c. <fec. ; and, 

 11. an enumeration of allusions to foreign 

 customs and opinions. 



The execution of the whole work is not 

 only creditable, but unexceptionable. In 

 po j nt of composition, too, Mr. Home's work 

 will bear no comparison with plain William 

 Carpenter's. 



Confessions of an Old Bachelor ; 1827. 

 The " Old Bachelor's Confessions" are 

 mixed up, clumsily enough, with the inci- 

 dents of a narrative. The Confessor him- 

 self is a nervous and vapoured old man as 

 a man without a wife must of course be 

 indulging his own whims retaining tena- 

 ciously his opinions professedly at least 

 his habits and his dress, of forty years ago, 

 even to his pig-tail, and railing against the 

 changes of the times, which annoy and exas- 

 perate him, and prompt floods of spleen and 

 bile. He is a valetudinarian, too, of nearly 

 seventy; and under the care and surveillance 

 of his housekeeper, he undertakes the painful 

 operation of a visit to the country, and the 

 visit is extended to Bath, and a return by 

 Cheltenham and Oxford. The Confessions 

 are written on the several stages of his tour, 

 and fill up the dearth of incident. They, 

 however, amount to little or nothing a 

 few school-boy tricks his college adven- 

 tures are reserved for a separate volume 

 his tour in search of a wife the opporUi- 

 tunities he found, or made, and missed, or 

 lost, or disregarded none of them of any 

 interest or novelty whatever. 



The volume, however, has a great deal of 

 sensible and well-founded remark in it com- 

 mon enough still, but always judicious in itself, 

 though rarely appropriate to the assumed and 

 described character. The spirit of the re- 

 mark, in short, is manifestly of too modern 

 a cast for the antiquated character of the 

 bachelor, and too liberal and vigorous for 

 the enfeebled and querulous invalid. The 

 sentiments spring from a yonnger and more 

 active mind, than of one who has done 

 nothing for thirty years, but pass from his 

 lodgings to his club now and then visiting 

 a bookstall, or a picture shop monosyllab- 

 ising with the members of the club, or at 

 home with his nurse, whining over his aches 

 and his plagues, or grumbling at his disap- 

 pointments. The " Old Maid," whenever 



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