as prevalent in Palestine, in the age of the Apostles, as the Aramaan, we feel grateful to him for affording us the opportunity of reading Diodati's argument for ourselves, in his own language and arrangement. We also thank him for his favorable notice of our own labors in placing Winer's Idioms within the reach of English scholars: and we certainly think, as he does, that an acquaintance with Winer is "indispensable to the scholar." When shall American students be taught to study it? Till then, their knowledge of interpretation of the New Testament must be meagre.

ADDITIONAL NOTICES.

Walks in London and the Neighborhood. By Old Humphrey. New-York: Robert Carter. Pittsburg: Thomas Carter. 1843.

Mr. Carter has complied with our request, that, if Old Humphrey appeared again, he would let us see him. He appears in somewhat of a new form, but still retaining his characteristics. Piety pervades his "Walks."

The Family of Bethany: or Meditations on the Eleventh Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. By L. Bonnet. Translated from the French. With an Introductory Essay, by the Rev. Hugh White. New-York: Robert Carter. 1843. pp. 256.

The Introductory Essay is good, but disproportionately long. The Meditations are interesting; many of them striking and profitable. The family of Bethany has always been precious to the Christian, as one which Jesus loved. Mr. Bonnet has well represented it in these pages.

Lessons on the Book of Proverbs, topically arranged, forming a System of Practical Ethics, for the use of Sabbath Schools and Bible Classes. Boston: Tappan & Dennet. 1843. pp. 107.

For this small volume we are indebted, we believe, to Mrs. Louisa Payson Hopkins. The book of Proverbs cannot be too much studied, and we regard this as one of the very best helps in that study. It is a system of ethics.

ARTICLE X.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Russia.

THE University at Dorpat has recently lost two of its most valuable professors-Huek, Professor of Anatomy, and Jansche, Professor of Philosophy.-Much has lately been done for the cause of education in Siberia. At Irkutsk there is a gymnasium of a high order, besides other schools there, and in many of the villages. Von Rupert, Governor-General of East Siberia, has founded an Institute for the instruction of girls of the higher class.-Professor Koch, accompanied by a number of young artists and scientific gentlemen, has set out on a second journey of scientific research, intending to traverse Great Armenia and the Caucasus.

Prussia.

A plan is proposed for the union of the Universities of Königsberg and Greiswald, as at the latter there are more professors than students, and at the former almost a like disproportion.-The Sanscrit manuscripts, purchased in London, from the estate of Sir Robert Chambers, are now in the University Library of Berlin, under the charge of Professor Hofer of Greiswald.

Germany.

The King of Bavaria is about to erect, in his palace-park, a house like those of Pompeii, after the design made at Pompeii by Professor Zahn.--The Deutsche Iahrbücher, established first by Hegel, have now been suppressed by the Saxon government, after having been exiled from Prussia in 1841.-Dr. Fr. Von Raumer has been appointed Rector of the University of Berlin.-Dr. Scholl has been called as professor extraordinary to Halle.-At Leipsic, Dr. Fr. A. Schilling has taken the place of Dr. Winer as Rector of the University. In this institution are about one hundred professors.

France.

A manuscript of the celebrated republican, Buonarotti, has recently been discovered, which throws much light on the period from 1789 to the year V. of the Republic.

Great Britain.

A large secession has taken place from the established Kirk of Scotland, and formed a free Presbyterian Church.

United States.

Rev. Leonard Woods, D. D., of Andover Theological Seminary, will continue the discussion of the questions on Liberty and Necessity, especially in relation to Edwards's system, in the October number of the Repository.

THR

AMERICAN

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY.

OCTOBER, 1843.

SECOND SERIES, NO. XX. WHOLE NO. LII.

ARTICLE I.

REVIEW OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.

PART THE SECOND.

By Truman M. Post, Professor of Languages, Illinois College, Jacksonville.

The Social Influence of Democracy. By Alexis De Tocqueville, Member of the Institute of France, and of the Chamber of Deputies, etc., etc. Translated by Henry Reeve, Esq. With an Original Preface, by John C. Spencer, Counsellor at Law.

THE Philosophy of Human Society is destined to become the great study of the age. The laws and condition of social progress, virtue, and happiness; the action and destiny of intellectual, moral, and political organisms; those thousand fixed forms of religion, law, governinent, and opinion, into which human society has crystallized; the characteristic passions and tendencies of the million: these are topics which are forcing themselves with grave and solemn interest upon the mind of our times. The investigation is one not stimulated by a liberal curiosity merely, but by convictions, every day stronger, of its practical and imperative necessity. It is becoming more and more felt, that it involves the problem which the nations must solve or die.

Men are learning from melancholy experience, that it is vain attempting to sustain political systems apart from the intellectual and moral life of a people, and that when institutions cease SECOND SERIES, VOL. X. NO. 11.

1

to be expressions of that life, they must soon be frittered away by reform, or retrenched by revolution. Society ever attempts to assimilate to itself the forms which constitute its visible embodiment, and failing of that, it labors incessantly to throw off what it feels unsuited to its nature, and a restraint upon its development and action.

But again, between the political forms and the spirit of a people, there is a mutual interaction. Outward institutions are not simply passive expressions; they become to some extent the plastic moulds of the national mind. Once created, from whatever cause, they tend to form it to their own likeness, and to stereotype with their image all after times. The products, at first, of intellectual and moral causes, they become in turn the efficient producers of such causes, and standing, as they do, permanent forces amid shifting generations, their influence, though slow, must be mighty and sure, and will perpetuate itself in the virtue or vice, ignorance or enlightenment, the magnanimity or meanness, activity or torpor, of the millions they overshadow. If they are favorable to a pure morality— the only permanent basis of human society-they of themselves furnish, for any people, an augury full of political hope; if not, they or society must die; either by slow and putrid dissolution, or in agony and convulsion; or rather, in the latter case, they and society must die; they throw themselves upon the pyre on which they lay the corpse of an empire.

The questions, then, that demand the investigation of the citizen or statesman, with regard to systems of political institutions, relate not only to the mutual relations of the different parts of those systems-their internal harmony, and aptitude for self-perpetuated, facile and secure action, and their operation on outward and material interests: but with a deeper earnestness they compel him to ask, what are the great social principles which gave them birth; and of the existence of which, as the central forces of society, they still, if possessing vitality, stand as indices? and whether they continue in harmony with their primordial principles? whether they now represent the ruling spirit of a people? and again, what is the influence of this dominant and central power, and of the institutions which are its visible organs, on national thought, feeling, and manners?

Inmediately connected with these inquiries relating to the physiology, so to speak, of society, is the study of social patho

logy and therapeutics-the laws of disease and cure in political bodies. These inquiries, it will be perceived, involve the gravest questions that can engage the human mind-the requirements, value, and destiny of all political systems, and of human society itself.

These are among the questions, which the work standing at the head of this article, attempts to discuss in relation to Democracy--particularly as it developes itself in American society. The author selects for investigation the Democratic from amid other social forms, because he believes, that into this type the universal society of the race is fast and irresistibly working itself; and he singles out American society, not as exhibiting the peculiar and only outward form of Democracy, but as revealing its essential spirit and action.

The attempt, and I will add, the execution, merit well of our age, and especially of our Republic. He has attempted to show Democracy to itself. It is too commonly the fact, that those vast and universal movements of human society that are seen from time to time in human history, pursuing, with the vehemence of passion and the steadfastness of fate, their peculiar ends, are ignorant, meanwhile, of what it most behooves. them to know themselves. Self-knowledge is as rare in nations and ages, as in individuals; and introspection, difficult and ungrateful at all times, alike to the million and the one, becomes especially so, when outward excitements are multiplied, and an intense and restless strife for immediate and physical well-being, gives overshadowing prominence and exhaustive interest to the present, the material and the partial, and leaves little taste or aptitude, for self-contemplation or general surveys. At such periods, a calm and wide-seeing Philosophy, applied to the analysis of the present or the forecast of the future, is rarely met with.

Such an age is our own. Embarked as we are on the River of Destiny, we are content, for the most part, with taking simply the course and rapidity of the eddies, on which float our individual interests, or at most, those of a party or section; while few mark the progress or direction of the mighty flood on which we are borne. The rush of waters and the crash of many shipwrecks are in our ears: fragments of old systems, mingling with the fresh glistering forms of those new-born, are driving past us; and in the distance, it may be, the breakers lift their white signal, and the cataract utters afar its warning roar; and