that example should be imitated, as far as it is wisely imitable, which in many places it must be in many points, and in most places, if not every where, in some! Would the propagandist of what is termed useful knowledge learn a portion of his religious zeal; would they who have that zeal learn something of his enthusiasm for bettering the temporal condition of the lower classes, taking into consideration that the poor have bodies to be cherished and minds to be nurtured, as well as souls to be saved-both would find those exertions successful, which are now too often vainly, or worse than vainly, directed, because they are not thus conjoined; for, (in the words of our incomparable South,) it is the same spirit and principle that purifies the heart and clarifies the understanding.' Let it not be supposed that the heart can be enlightened if the understanding is left in darkness, nor that the intellectual part of man can be healthy while his moral nature is unsound. But it is more especially to the clergy that these memoirs hold forth a beautiful example. They see in them what Oberlin effected, under greater difficulties than any which they can meet with in Great Britain, as great perhaps as could be found any where in Ireland; and notwithstanding some eccentricities of character, and some errors of even a dangerous kind, he overcame all obstacles by Christian benevolence-by that charity which seeketh not her own, beareth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things;' for that charity never faileth. Even the heathen philosopher can tell us, that the wildest animals are to be tamed by kindness; how much more then, as he argued, may this be affirmed of man! Ingratus est adversus unum beneficium? adversus alterum non erit: duorum oblitus est? tertium etiam eorum quæ exciderunt memoriam reducet. Is perdit, qui cito se perdidisse credit. At qui instat, et onerat priora sequentibus, etiam ex duro et immemori pectore gratiam extundit. Non audebit adversus multa oculos attollere; quocunque se convertit, memoriam suam fugiens, ibi te videat; beneficiis tuis illum cinge. This was the course which Oberlin pursued, from a higher motive than philosophy can supply, a motive which no failure can abate or disappoint the love of God. Philanthropy may be chilled, may be soured, may be perverted, may change its nature, even as it may vaunt itself, and be puffed up, and be easily provoked; men may deceive themselves with it, as easily as they deceive others, and more perilously but he who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength, is safe; of necessity he will then love his neighbour as himself; thus we are commanded to do, and on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' ART, ART. III.-1. Popular Specimens of the Greek Dramatic Poets. Vol. I. 12mo. London. 1830. 2. The Frogs of Aristophanes. Oxford. 1828. 3. Aristophanis Rana; ex Recensione Gulielmi Dindorfii. Lip siæ. 1824. WHEN we, who now address the reader, belonged to what is usually termed the rising generation, the rage for sentiment and the German drama was at its highest noon of phrenzy; every eye was dropping its tear at the tomb of Werter, and the most moral and tender bosoms were repining at the harsh laws which forbade the putting of a poniard to a neighbour's throat, or even appropriating his purse after the most approved manner of Schiller's bandits. Had intensity of feeling ever indicated duration of purpose, the league between the Public and the then leaders of its opinions must have been eternal: fortunately, like the friendships of the fair Matilda Pottingen, it proved to be little more than a sudden thought which had struck the party most concerned; the very children gradually sickened of these absurdities, and men whose beards had two years growth in them, became suddenly impatient to make a transfer of their affections and adhesions. A glorious band of English poets sprung up, and divided among them at once the rational admiration and the genuine enthusiasm of their countrymen. The spirit of Wordsworth, strong in gentleness, would alone have been sufficient to mark a new era in the classical literature of Europe; Coleridge, 'most musical, most melancholy,' grafted all that was wildly noble in the German school on the sterling stock of original genius and English taste; Southey poured out his rich mind in strains of solemn and majestic gracefulness; High in the breathless hall The Minstrel sate ;'and a not less daring hand arose to sweep the strings of a still deeper, though a far narrower, shell. Sun succeeded sun, and year rolled on upon year, and still the public mind was found imprisoned in Elysium.' But the daintiest cates will at last cloy, and the most powerful stimulants cease to operate; and those who observed the times shrewdly, became aware that the reign of genius and imagination had reached its height-and fall. The general stomach longed for homelier food. Let me have FACTS,' said the Public, and facts were furnished forthwith. Did a minister (Home or Foreign) rise in his place in the House of Commons? it was with the averages of the last ten years in his hands, and the inferences to be derived from such valuable data. The inferences may be right, or they may be wrong,' said the Public; but, at all events events, here are facts.' Instead of the brilliant sarcasm, the classical allusion, the wit, the logic, and the tart reply,' to which we had once been accustomed, the leader of opposition rose, in his turn, with the labours of six hard-working clerks in his pocket, and after a little monitory prologue, proceeded to submit to the House his dull, but necessary, details. The House laughed, and the Public saw that arithmetic has its blunders as well as the more abstruse and uncertain subjects of opinion; but still,here were facts. Nay,' said a band of cunning adventurers, if facts be what you want, we will lead you a distant dance in search of them: follow your leaders.' And the leaders were followed. Away went the Public to east and to west, and to north and to south; to Chili, to Panama, to Potosi; to the bowels of the earth, to the depths of the sea, to the confines of the air, and all in search of facts. The wilder the scheme, the more implicitly was it embraced; or, if a doubt existed, the cunning projector had but to utter the magic word, the fact is,'--and all opposition ceased. At home, or abroad, it was equally the rule; the man of facts was everywhere predominant. Hence, Encyclopædias abounded, Mechanics' Institutes became rife, Societies for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge sprung up in every street; names that were never meant to be seen beyond the parish registers, or as endorsements to a one-pound note, thrust themselves upon the public eye, and all, of course, were communicators of facts: facts upon brewing, facts upon baking, facts upon dogfeeding, facts upon the dry-rot. The Public, spectacle on nose, stood before the mighty feast, and gradually assumed that air of whimsical perplexity which belongs to a person who sees an array of meats before him, of which he feels bound in honour to partake, but who doubts whether his digestive organs will carry him safely through the operation. We, whose office it is, under pretence of leading the public mind, very often implicitly to follow it, must be confessed to have played our part in this sober drama. Article upon article has appeared in this Journal, drier, no doubt, to light and inconsiderate minds, than the remainder biscuit after a seven years' voyage; but all, we venture to say, rich in information, and pregnant with facts. The wrinkles of geology and pathology, and archæology, and other sciences, equally delectable in their contents, and equally mellifluous in their nomenclature, have been ploughed into our pages; and heaven knows how many young poets, and wits, and scholars have been frighted from their propriety by the stern and rugged features which this once smiling journal has gradually assumed. But this cannot, must not not always last: great as is our love and reverence for the Public, we cannot consent to plant hairs of untimely grey on our head, in its service (men of our stamp must of course wish to witness personally that interesting fact of the Falls of Niagara dropping into the arms of Lake Erie, a feat which the utmost good wishes of the contracted parties will not be able to effect, as the geologists assure us, under a period of 35,000 years)—like the little Tirynthian boys, we must have our occasional laugh, or fairly break down under those severe duties which the march of intellect' has imposed on all those who presume to take a part in the direction of the public mind. Our readers have long been familiar with one little elixir which we occasionally employ for the purpose of recruiting our spirits, when spent and wasted in the public service. Our stock is far, very far from being exhausted: but, under existing circumstances,' it is evident that the contents of the Blessed Bottle, as Rabelais speaks, must not often approach our lips, and that it would be a dereliction of prudence to depart from that system of collecting facts, which, in spite of our present levity, we consider to be the most important, if not the most legitimate, of our functions. But the works before us appear to admit of a little holiday, which we have not for a long time allowed ourselves, and which we are determined not to lose; and, therefore, for one brief moment— dry facts to the winds! It is possible that our own pages may sometimes make the reader feel that the pulpit is not the only privileged place for dealing out sermons and homilies, and that a double course of religious instruction is thus surreptitiously forced upon them. The practice is at all events countenanced by high antiquity, and more particularly by that ingenious people, to whose rules, in all matters at least which concern the intellect and taste, we are so fond of appealing. What were the sermons delivered to the Greeks initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which, as Isocrates assures us, were calculated to promote an improvement of morals in this world, and to excite better hopes in the next, and were consequently the thing of which human nature stood principally in need,'* it is now impossible to say little more is known of them than the two barbarous words with which they concluded, Conx, Ompax,† and which come with as little recommendation as the well-bred whisper' which dismissed the worshippers from the house of prayer in the days of Cowper; but with the beautiful and sublime lessons of morality and religion, which proceeded from the tragic stage, that other οὗ πρῶτον ἡ φύσις ἡμῶν ἐδεήθη. Panegyr. + See Warburton's Divine Legation, book ii., sect. 4. and and more attractive pulpit of antiquity, all who lay claim to any share of decent education, feel and own themselves bound to be more or less acquainted. To supply those whose occupation, and still more those whose sex precludes them from studying those interesting remains of antiquity in the original language, and to which the higher literature of the day of course so often refers, is the professed object of the first of the publications named at the head of these pages. It consists of the tragedies of Eschylus, adapted rather than implicitly adopted from the spirited translations of Potter, and preceded by such preliminary matter, as was thought sufficient to give a general view of the Greek theatre, and its essential differences from the modern stage, while the dramas themselves are accompanied with such short notes, as, without withdrawing the reader's attention too much from the text, may enable him to catch its meaning without interruption of the feelings or the interest. To convey at once through the eye a strong impression of what was thought a strong and marked characteristic of the Greek tragedy, and without a perpetual reference to which it ought never to be read or judged, the volume has been lavishly embellished with the admirable designs of Flaxman, whose pencil has almost done for the outer form of these productions, what the profound learning and fine taste of the Schlegels have effected in seizing the true genius and spirit of the inner form of Greek tragedy. The title of the second piece sufficiently explains itself; and though at first sight it might appear to be placed somewhat arbitrarily where it stands, the course of our observations will tend to show that no two productions could more properly be classed together, or were more calculated to throw a mutual light on each other. There is, perhaps, no want of charity in suggesting that the object of the frequenters of theatres among ourselves (and the attractions of the press and the musical instrument-maker have, we believe, considerably diminished their numbers) is as much to escape from the dull monotony of domestic life, as to supply any cravings of the intellect and the taste; and hence the necessity of strong stimulants,-the stronger, the more attractive. The monotony of domestic life no more existed among the ancient Greeks, than its charms. Those judicial and legislative duties and investigations, which among us are (as yet) confined exclusively to a few and those few among the higher and more educated classes of society, and even with them occupying only a certain portion of the year, were among the Greeks the property, we might almost say the patrimony, of the great mass of the people. The displays of eloquence, and the strong appeals to the passions, which, even under the calmest forms, must necessarily enter into these exer |