victory of Christian ideas and sentiments over old wrongs incorporated into law, may be long delayed; for ages the adverse influence of law may be in conflict with the better influences that are slowly molding the popular mind, and developing a perception of rights and duties above the cognizance of law; sometimes Christianity itself, by some misapprehension or perversion of its teaching, may seem to sanction laws against which its vital spirit is continually offering an unheeded protest; but sooner or later the victory must come, and law must be the exponent, not of authority, nor of old tradition only, but of right.

Let us not be discouraged. In all things right shall yet give law to power. Think what was the recognized law of nations, the law of war and peace-what were the mutual rights of the conqueror and the captive-when Christianity began its march from the lake of Galilee and the Mount of Olives. Think of a Roman triumph, and of the doom of Roman captives. Over the military renown of the greatest and least scrupulous of modern conquerors, there hangs one terrible shadow-the record of one deed more blasting to his fame than almost any other deed in a career that made the world turn pale-a deed for which defenses and excuses are offered in vain. In the Syrian campaign, which brings his story into so strange a connection with the localities of sacred history, he had taken by storm one of those ancient Phenician cities whose names are among the eldest of time. He there found himself in possession of a few hundred prisoners, whom it was inconvenient to guard or to feed, whom he could not send away by sea, and whom it was perilous to release. It seemed necessary to the successful prosecution of his plan, that they should be put out of the way; and at his order they were put to death, not in the fury of the battle with their weapons in their hands, and with the cry, No quarter, but with cool deliberation, and for reasons of expediency, two days after their capture. So long as his name shall have a place in history, so long it will be associated with the horror of that crime. The moral sense of the world will accept no apology. Vain is the attempted apotheosis. Vain the labor of admiring eulogists. The imperial figure of the conqueror, as it passes before the imagination, is ever attended by the spectral throng of those slain captives. Look now with me upon another of the old Phenician cities. Here, along this ancient way between the mountains and the sea, the tide of commerce and of conquest has flowed and ebbed for almost forty centuries;-the march of invasion or retreat, Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Sara

cen, Crusader, Turkish, has wound along these indentations of the shore and climbed these promontories. The palms, the groves of pine, the winding hedges of blossoming cactus, embosoming the city in verdure, fill our souls with a sweet sense of beauty as we look across the narrow plain. These broken columns of blue granite, half buried in the sand, and washed by the tideless waters, tell of the Grecian art and Roman magnificence that adorned this ancient site, in the first century of the Christian era. Here was Berytus; and at that time it was not only a seat of commerce, but a seat of learning-a university city, more beautiful even than yours. To that city there came, at the period to which I have referred, a Roman prince, who bears an honored name in history-honored for his many imperial virtues, but, not least, for his humanity. It was the Flavian Titus, who had just completed the conquest of Palestine and the destruction of Jerusalem. He brought in his train a host of captives-survivors of the fights, the siege, the final massacre, that had accompanied the destruction of their beloved and holy city. Captives then, were not, like prisoners of war in these days, soldiers only, but persons of all employments, of all ranks, of every age, and of either sex; nobles, peasants, merchants, artists, scholars, magistrates, ministers of religion, matrons, maidens, children-all alike were the lawful prey of the conqueror. Of the wretched multitude that survived the fall of their city, and whose crime was that they abhorred an insupportable foreign domination, thousands had already been sent in chains to labor on the public works; others, in the imperial munificence of the conqueror, had been distributed to various provincial capitals, there to die; others, distinguished for military command or prowess, or remarkable for stature or personal beauty, had been reserved to swell the grandeur of his triumphal procession at Rome. And what was the doom of those who were brought in his train to Berytus? Two thousand and five hundred of them were slaughtered, not under the pretense of some military necessity, but for amusement. The merchants and tradesmen, the artists, the professors and teachers, the students in the schools of rhetoric and philosophy, the ladies, as well as the coarse rabble of the gay and polished city, crowded the places of amusement to see the sumptuous games and shows with which Titus was to celebrate the birth-day of his imperial father. In that celebration, the captives from the Judean war were the chief attraction and excitement of the spectacle. Some were torn in pieces by the fangs of enraged wild beasts. Some were burned alive. Some were compelled to slay each other. The clear waves, then as now, came mur

muring to the sandy beach. The fair plain, then as now, was beautiful with verdure, with flowers, with towering palms. Then, as now, the snowy peaks of Lebanon, piercing the pure azure with their whiteness, looked down on cultivated terraces, on villages nestling among the rocks, on vineyards and the wealth of olives beautifying the declivities, on the ports of the Phenician sea, on the blue waters rolling in the golden light. Nature remains unchanged, but not the law by which conquerors and nations are judged at the bar of history. Then those horrors seemed no more than justice; they were in full conformity with the accepted law of nations. By the laws of war, all captives were divested of all rights, and were liable to slavery, to death, to any torture, at the will of the conqueror. The slaughter of two thousand and five hundred prisoners at Berytus, of as many more at Cesarea-Philippi, and of as many more at the maritime Cesarea, left no shade upon the memory of the benignant Titus. Is there no progress? Has not Christianity achieved victories which give assurance of its ultimate dominion in the sphere of law and government?

We will not faint then. We will not be discouraged. Above all unjust law and usage-above all tyranny, all usurpation, all iniquity establishing itself in the name of right, and robing itself in the sanctities of law, there is a higher law that stands forever. Above all the forces by which wrong is sustained, are the mightier forces, invisible and Divine, by which Christianity will yet make its way to universal recognition and dominion. Then the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and law shall be identified with the will of God.

ART. VIII.-NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Cyclcopædia of American Literature, embracing Personal and Critical Notices of Authors, and Selections from their Writings. From the earliest period to the present day, with Portraits, Autographs, and other illustrations. By EVERT A. DUYCKINCK and GEORGE A. DUYCKINOK. 2 vols. large 8vo., pp. 676, 782. New York: C. Scribner.

Under the above title are offered to the public two bulky volumes, containing between two and three thousand pages in very small type, wherein are described many hundred persons who, within the last two hundred and twenty-five years, have written things which have been printed in this country. A considerable addition to the otherwise inconvenient bulk of these volumes is made by the annexation, to many of the memoirs, of copious extracts from the writings of the persons who are the subjects of biographical notice.

The first volume is occupied with the "American Literature" of past ages, the second, with the writers of the current century, and their writings. The two are as nearly alike as possible in the character of their contents, and in the total absence of any rule or principle of selection among writers and their productions. In neither volume does there appear to have been exercised any discrimination between the worthlessly obscure throng of scribblers whom the lapse of a few years naturally covers with the dust of oblivion, and those authors of acknowledged merit and fame whose works not only honor but constitute American Literature. Good, bad and indifferent are thrown in together, apparently without regard to any purpose other than that of cramming a certain amount of printed paper between the lids of these two unwieldly, clumsy volumes. The authors, compilers, and editors of the work seem to have no distinct idea of what is properly included within the actual scope of its title, and would probably find it difficult to give the exact and complete definition of the word "Literature," or to tell what is meant by a National Literature generally, or by "American Literature" particularly. If the true definition be not sufficiently comprehensive to include all the verses and most of the prose written and printed in the country, then a large majority of the contents of this book should have been omitted.

Literature, in the original and just sense of the term, implies the possession of learning by those who are entitled to claim its honors. In vulgar phrase, now-a-days, many persons are called "literary" because they have written pieces which have been published in newspapers, magazines, or reviews, either for pay or for the gratification of seeing their compositions in print. The country swarms with such self-styled "literati"and" literatæ, "-who have never learned anything worth mentioning, who never read anything deeper or more solid than the trashy tales and rhymes which they imitate,--and who have never seen or experienced enough of the world and of human life and nature to

qualify them for a description or representation of the reality. Probably there is not one respectable village in New England or New York this day, that has not at least one professedly "literary lady,"-and that one quite as fairly entitled to a place in a catalogue of American authors as one half of those who are mentioned in the second volume of this soi-disant Cyclopædia of American Literature. Hundreds of pages are clogged with biographical sketches of insignificant, commonplace people, of whom we never heard or read before, and have no wish to hear or read again. In regard to such characters, it gives information which, though new, is of no value or interest to us. As to others, the facts, though valuable, are not novel. The reading public are already generally informed as to the outlines and prominent facts of the lives of Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Halleck, Drake, Willis and most other authors of that stamp and eminence. However, it is in this class of notices that we find the most interesting and useful portions of the second volume. The sketches of Hillhouse and Percival have great merit, and, though brief, are material contributions to the history of American Literature. The wood-cut engravings of these two poets give the expression of their countenances with a fidelity quite remarkable, when the nature of the surface wrought upon by the artist is remembered. These and some others are instances of exalted genius entitled to such commemoration, not elsewhere given. And as their works have not, within the last thirty years, had a circulation equal to their merits, and indeed may be considered almost "out of print," there is manifest propriety in the accompanying extracts from their writings, as specimens of their poetical power.

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But who can pretend to give the public an excuse for reprinting in this book such familiar pieces as Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris," be the turf above thee," the song from "Fanny," and Bryant's "Thanatopsis," "To the Evening Wind," &c., &c.? These, and a large number of similar specimens have been circulated in school-books, and spouted by myriads of myriads of school-boys during the last thirty years. They are perfectly familiar to all readers not only here, but wherever their authors' names are known.

The pieces given as specimens of Percival's poetry are very unfortunately selected. He never wrote a more faulty, pointless, confused medley of figures than "Seneca Lake;" and the other extracts display with peculiar harshness that cold, artificial glitter of imagery which was his occasional blemish. There are dozens of his minor poems which do far better justice to him, and demonstrate his possession of far higher power and deeper feeling.

The errors and inaccuracies of this book are innumerable and unpardonable. Even in the brief memoir of Hillhouse, we notice two, the result of mere negligence. It was not the poet's grandfather, but his grand-uncle, who was so long distinguished in the ante-revolutionary history of Connecticut. The title of his last poem was not "Sachem's Head." An extract from "Percy's Masque" would have enabled the reader to form a higher opinion of the powers of Hillhouse than the