590 



drity appears to have been originally a sncrcrt em- 

 blem. His bow was a symbol of divine love; ar.d 

 he was represented as a child, in memory of the re- 

 novation of the world. 



ISABELLA. How wonderfully these coincidences 

 prove the tiuth of the Holy Scriptures ! 



Chrisbna, the Hindoo Apollo, has aline 

 complexion, and one of the young dialo- 

 uei>-ts thinks this a very odd colour for a 

 beautiful complexion. Oh ! says Mrs. S. 

 the Egyptians too described their most 

 powerful gods as having blue faces, particu- 

 larly when they were angry. 



ISABELLA. This is, perhaps, the origin of the 

 vulgar observation, that people look blue when 

 they are displeased. 



- Mi;s. S. It is possible ; for many vulgar sayings 

 may be traced, &c. 



But these are trifles. The book is a very 

 good one. 



A Compendious German Grammar, ly 

 A. Bcrnnns, Editor of Hie German Antho- 

 logy, Io30 This multum in paryo of Mr. 



Bernays is a very judicious and 'welcome 

 publication. Every body naW' 'learns Ger- 

 man, and all the current grammars of the 

 language have too much learning in them, or 

 none at all ; they are either too diffuse or too 

 dry, lost in their own fat, or shrivelled to 

 skeletons. Something of the intermediate 

 caste was evidently wanting, and the medium 

 has been happily hit. - The size of the neat 

 little volume will seem to class it with one 

 of the old extremes ; but the compiler's aim 

 has been rather at condensing than excising ; 

 he has compressed his language more than 

 his matter. The pages are indeed bu t sixty ; 

 but a common type and form would readily 

 have tripled the number; and no little dexter- 

 ity has been shown in packirg the page. To 

 glance at the improvements, the fifteen or 

 eighteen declensions to which we have been 

 accustomed are reduced to four, and these 

 closely dependent on each other ; a dictionary 

 of prefixes and affixes, quite a novelty, and 

 well-imagined ; striking rules for the arrange- 

 ment of words, a syntax at once concise and 

 copious, &c. The whole will be made more 

 complete by a series of exercises which the 

 author announces is preparing for publica- 

 tion. " These will be essentially practical, 

 as they are intended, not to make the stu- 

 dents poets or orators, but to enable them to 

 converse and write with fluency on the com- 

 mon occurrences of life." 



Natural Tlicology, by Rev. Alex. Crombic, 

 LL.D. $c. 2 vols. 8vo. This will be found 

 to be a very masterly discussion of the subjects 

 usually arranged under the title of natural 



n&y Review of Literature. 



[MAY, 



theology, the existence, attributes, and pro- 

 vidence oi' Deity, the soul's immateriality, and 

 a future state. These important topics Dr. 

 Crombie prefaces with an inquiry into the 

 causes of atheism, which resolve into personal 

 indifference on the subject, and an indolent 

 acquiescence in the sentiments of anti-reve- 

 lation writers. The prime merit of the book, 

 its distinguishing characteristic, is the tho- 

 rough shaking it gives to the metaphysical 

 argumentation of Dr. Clarke and others. He 

 shows the same weapons may be readily turned 

 upon those who use them. This is remark- 

 able in the inquiry relative to the existence 

 of Deity. Dr. C. however, is not always 

 equally happy in his substitutions. Dr. 

 Clarke disproves the eternity of matter by an 

 argument of this kind : what is eternal is self- 

 existent, and what is self-existent exists ne- 

 cessarily, and so necessarily that the contrary 

 supposition must be a contradiction. Now, 

 matter so existing must either have gravitation^ 

 or not. If not, there could be no motion ; if 

 it have, then there must be vacuum, and if 

 there be vacuum, matter can no longer be 

 a necessary being, and then, of course, it is 

 not eternal. This argumentation Dr. Crom- 

 bie finds no difficulty in demolishing, though 

 he perfectly agrees with Dr. Clarke in his 

 conclusion, that matter is not eternal, but 

 created. His own arguments are of a very 

 different caste ; whether much more decisive 

 is another matter; at all events they are 

 more, though not all of them, within the 

 reach of common understandings. He rests 

 his belief of the creation of matter on these 

 arguments, because he perceives no contra- 

 diction in supposing that a power is possible, 

 capable of calling matter into existence ; be- 

 cause, if such power is possible, it must 

 belong to an eternal and self- existent being, 

 to whose nature it is essential to unite in 

 himself every possible perfection ; because, 

 if one cause suffices to account for a pheno- 

 menon, it is idle and unphilosophical to resort 

 to more ; because it implies, he conceives, a 

 contradiction to suppose, that there can be 

 two beings eternal, and, in respect to exist- 

 ence, mutually independent, and yet the one 

 subject to the government and control of the 

 other; because, finally, the dogma of the 

 atheist, that action implies passion, is not a 

 metaphysical truth, the necessary correlative 

 of action being agent and not passion. Our 

 glances at books forbid our entering into 

 matters of discussion, or we should have been 

 glad to show, what we believe, Dr. Crombie's 

 injustice towards Dr. Paley. We are satis- 

 fied he has mistaken him, as much as Dr. 

 Sumncr did in his Records of Creation, and 

 much in the same way. 



