something which few men have ever dared to do. To assert, in substance, that morality has just as much force and influence among the Fejee islanders, or savage Hottentots, as among the most Christian nations-that it is just as much of a reality in the dens of vice, as in the churches of the Living God, is simply to insult the human understanding.

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In reading this book, we have been constantly reminded, by the association of violent contrast, of Dr. Bushnell's volume entitled "Nature and the Supernatural." It would be difficult to find two treatises on Nature and Man, where the standpoints of the writers are more immeasurably distant, the one from the other. Let us cull a few sentences to show how dif ferently they discourse. Dr. Bushnell says, "We look upon them (men) not as wheels that are turned by natural causes, yielding their natural effects, as the flour is yielded by a mill, but what we call their character is the majestic proprium of their personality, that which they yield as the fruit of their glorious self hood and immortal liberty. * We meet the spontaneous verdict of mankind, apart from all theories, and quibbles, and sophistries of argument, testifying that man is a creature out of mere nature-a free cause in himself--great, therefore, in the majesty of great virtues and heroic acts." p. 58. Dr. Draper says, "In whatever direction we look, we may therefore expect to find proofs of the dominion of law (i. e. physical law). Even in those cases where the voluntary agencies of man might seem to interfere, vestiges of that dominion are obvious enough." p. 24. Dr. Bushnell says, "The same is true, as we may safely assume, in regard to all the other orders and realms of spiritual existence; to angels good and bad, seraphim, principalities, and powers in heavenly places. They are all supernatural, and it is in them, as belonging to this higher class of existences, that God beholds the final causes, the uses, and the grand systematizing ideas of his universal plan. Nature, as comprehending the domain of cause and effect, is only the platform on which he establishes his kingdom, as a kingdom of minds or persons, every one of whom has power to act upon it, and, to some extent, greater or less, to be sovereign over it." p. 58. Dr. Draper says, "At the

commencement of the vista of organization, the forms are obscure, in structure simple, in habit low.

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* But,

by a gradual unfolding of structure, part developing from part, and function emerging from function, a higher stage is reached to automatism instinct is added. * * Still

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looking along the chain as we advance once more, we recognize a repetition of the same process, or, more correctly, the gradual addition of something higher. Instinct is unfolding itself into Intelligence. The animated being shows reasoning powers at every successive rising link, increasing in precision and perfection-the adaptation of purposed means to the accomplishment of wished-for-ends. The dog forms his plans; his master relates with admiration how he has watched him proceed in carrying them out, persuading himself that there is something approaching wisdom even in the brute. Here, again, as in the former case, the new faculty has not destroyed the old one, but intelligence is co-existing, both with instinct and automatism." p. 243.

In short, all that man is, and all that he can ever hope to be, is seen as a slow emanation out of the earth itself. He is, in all his parts, but the offspring of materialism. Dr. Bushnell takes his stand by the throne of a free and personal God, and looks out over the whole material universe, and sees in it only a magnificent habitation prepared for the abode and culture of free beings, who stand above nature, and, to a large extent, dominate over it. Dr. Draper takes his stand amid the organic forces of the merely natural world, and calls upon us to behold all human intelligences, all earthly principalities and powers, slowly ascending from this material abyss, but forever in subjection to the power that raises them. We can say of this philosophy, as Dr. Bushnell says of another sort: 66 Such kind of influence would turn the race to pismires, if only we could stay content in it, as happily we cannot; for, if we chance to find our pleasure in it for an hour, a doom as strong as eternity in us compels us finally to spurn it as a brilliant inanity."

ARTICLE III.-LORD DERBY AND PROFESSOR ARNOLD ON HOMER.

The Iliad of Homer rendered into English Blank Verse. By EDWARD EARL OF DERBY. New York: C. Scribner & Co. 1865.

Lectures "On Translating Homer," contained in "Essays in Criticism." By MATTHEW ARNOLD, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865.

"THE study of classical literature is probably on the decline," says Professor Arnold in his Lectures, and Lord Derby, in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, gives his regretful testimony to the same effect. These concurrent opinions, from two men with such ability and opportunity to judge the matter, with such a bias in the opposite direction, and speaking from such different points of view, almost compel our assent, reluctant as we may be to give it. If the fact is admitted, it would be an interesting question how much this effect is due in England to faulty theories of school education, how much to an unsatisfactory and unsound type of national scholarship, how much to the virtual limitation of University privileges to the highest class of society, and how much to what are called the practical tendencies of the age. A yet more profitable investigation for us would be into the prospects of classical studies in our own country. Thus far, indeed, they have hardly made progress enough to be capable of any decline, and so the question for us ought rather to be, will they remain always as they are, or may we look for a more general and more thorough cultivation of them as the wealth, leisure, and refinement of our people increase? We have not here the traditional practices and text-books of distant centuries to hamper our methods of education in schools and colleges, but neither have we the rich endowments, the noble

libraries, the curious manuscripts, which England has inherited from those same past centuries. Our classical scholarship here, what there is of it, has as yet no settled wrong direction, and tends to form itself on the German, rather than on the English model, but it has too much of the shallowness and haste of the American in it still, and hardly enough independence or perseverance to build up a character of its own. And while the freedom of an education, to every one who can earn or borrow the money to pay for it, widens the spread of its benefits, on the other hand, among us, it is easy to gain position by wealth without education; and the impossibility of retaining property in families leaves us without a recognized class of highly educated men. Surely, too, in this country, the "practical tendencies of the age are no less strong, and no less violent in their attack upon classical education, than in England. In these respects the advantages and disadvantages of the two countries may seem about evenly balanced; but who can fail to see that classical studies cannot have in a new country, in a country, let us say, settled since the sixteenth century, that prescriptive right to form with mathematics the best instrument for mental training, which they have in the old countries; that there is, in fact, a strong and growing demand that education should be confined as much as possible to what will be of direct use in life; and that benevolence is active in encouraging the advance of the natural and practical sciences far more than that of classical studies? Who thinks of endowing a Latin or Greek professorship, or of establishing scholarships for proficients in those studies, at the present day? We do not complain of this tendency. If classical studies, fairly tried, prove themselves inferior to other means in education, let them be thrown over, or reduced to a subordinate position. But let the proposed substitute be thoroughly tried, before it dislodges that which has undergone for so many centuries, and with such results, the test of use.

We turn from these thoughts to our proper subject, which is Lord Derby's translation of the Iliad, viewed especially from the stand-point of Professor Matthew Arnold's lectures, "On Translating Homer." Of these two contributions to the work

of translating Homer into English, the lectures have decidedly the greater and more permanent value. They are liable to criticism, or even censure, for their frequent flippancy, and for their habit of supplying lack of argument sometimes by strength of assertion, sometimes by a pun or a fling at the blindness of any opponent. They take and defend certain positions, in which neither poets nor scholars will be likely to uphold them. But we prefer to speak here only of their value, which consists mainly in two points: they designate the tribunal, and declare the law, by and before which any translation of Homer must be tried. They designate the tribunal; it consists of "scholars, who possess, at the same time with knowledge of Greek, adequate poetical taste and feeling." To these men every translation should be submitted, to decide how nearly it produces upon them the same effect that the original does. This is the true test. This seems to be the fair question to ask about any translation. Not, has it poetical merit? Not, does it affect people generally as the original did in its time and place? Not, does it give us just the ideas of the original as faithfully as they can be expressed in English? But, does it affect the mind as Homer does? And this question can be justly answered only by those who can read Homer so as to receive a vivid impression from him, and, at the same time, can judge of the due effect of English poetry. Mr. Arnold also declares the law by which a translation of Homer should be tried, in these four points: 1. It must be rapid in its movement, as Homer is. 2. It must be simple and direct in expression, as he is. 3. It must be simple and direct in thought, as he is. 4. It must be noble, as he is; never low or quaint or familiar. These are excellent canons of criticism: it occurs to us, however, to remark, that they do not exhaust the subject, and that, of these four qualities, only the second and third seem entitled by their importance to be thus mentioned apart from others. Before he gets through, Mr. Arnold mentions two other characteristics of Homer which ought to be preserved in a translation, "a loose and idiomatic grammar," and an "idiomatic diction or language." Besides all these, we

think there are others which no less demand to be reproduced