too long passage given from "Hadad." So in regard to Brainard, instead of saying that "his father had been a Judge of the Superior Court," it would have been better to state that his father many years afterwards, was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court, and continued on the bench till his death in 1828, or thereabouts. It is needless, and would be tedious to multiply specifications of this sort. Sufficient evidence of grievous defectiveness in these particulars has been elsewhere furnished. By the way, Captain Canot's name was not altered by Brantz Mayer. Theodore Canot is the name by which he has made himself known throughout his whole nautical career.

The style of the book is as open to censure as its statements of historical matter. Many sentences are in violation of rhetorical rules, and so entangled as to require two or three readings for the discovery of the meaning. The authors have in these instances given abundant evidence that their names are wholly unworthy of a place in any well selected catalogue of American authors, or Cyclopædia of American Literature.

It is unpleasant to us to say so much in censure of a book upon which the compilers have evidently expended much labor. The aim of the compilers to exhibit a full record of the progress of intellectual development and literary effort in the United States from the earliest date to the present time, with illustrative specimens, is commendable; and in this view their volumes will be found convenient for reference, even with all that they contain of the mere "curiosities of literature" which are not very curious, and which to most readers are no better than rubbish. The industry of the compilers is also commendable; they have ransacked old libraries, and with marvelous toil have read a multitude of books not worth the reading. More accuracy in statement and in the use of words, more selection instead of superabundant collection, and a better faculty of digestion, would have made the volumes much smaller and more manageable, and at the same time more instructive to the reader. Where there are so many redundancies, it seems a double pity that there should be occasion to notice any important omissions. Very possibly the authors and compilers of this book may have a definition of the word "literature" very different from the old-fashioned one which we hold in high respect. For instance, we should deem any history or Cyclopædia" of German Literature incomplete which omitted the name and works of Martin Luther, though his writings were wholly on religious and theological subjects. Even if he had left no work but his translation of the Bible, that alone would make his name essential to perfect the list of German literati. For similar reasons, John Wicklif is as well entitled to rank among the illustrious names of the early ages English literature as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer. So too, among the writers of the time of Henry VIII, we claim a place for Nicholas Tindal; albeit, his translation of the New Testament is only from the Latin without reference to the original. The production of the present commonly received English version of the Bible may justly be considered a literary work, and the translators can hardly be denied the title of literary men. Certainly no author who wrote in the reign

of

of James I,-not even Shakspeare or Bacon-has exercised so great an influence on the language and literature of England through all following time.

The venerable Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, made and published a careful and excellent translation of the Old Testament from the Greek of the Alexandrine version, commonly called the Septuagint. This being the only instance in which an English translation of that part of the Bible was ever produced in America, well deserves the commemoration which, with its author, it receives in this Cyclopædia of American Literature. In like manner, the recent translation of the New Testament from the Syriac Peshito, (the first version ever made of any part of the Bible into any language except the Greek,) by the learned and reverend James Murdock, D. D., ought to have been noticed as a work most honorable to the literature of the country and the age. Yet the authors of this Cyclopædia seem to be entirely ignorant of the existence of this remarkable work. As little do they seem to know of the fact that Dr. Murdock was one of the earliest professors, and for some years almost the only public teacher of Ecclesiastical History in the United States, (at Andover,) that he made and published the only accurate and fair English translation of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, with new and original annotations, and that these are not his only contributions to American and Christian literature. The Cyclopædia very properly gives an honorable place to John Pickering, whose principal production was a plain English translation of the LatinGreek Lexicon of Schrevelius, but can find no room for a biographical notice of Josiah W. Gibbs, who first reproduced in the English language the great improvements introduced into lexicography by Gesenius. His two Hebrew lexicons were the earliest English exemplifications and applications of the Gesenian system of philosophically derived and arranged significations of words; and his contributions to general philology are far more profound and important than any and all of John Pickering's. In view of these and many equally censurable omissions, it is gratifying to observe that our Cyclopædiasts did not overlook or forget Noah Webster.

Why does the Cyclopædia exclude all notice of Theodoric Romeyn Beck of Albany, author of the best treatise on Medical Jurisprudence in the English language,-recognized as such, not only throughout the United States, but by the highest authorities in Great Britain, where it has been republished and is regarded as the standard work on the subject. His brothers, John B. Beck and Lewis C. Beck, are also entitled to favorable notice as contributors to medical science.

So is Dr. William Tully of Springfield, Mass., formerly President and Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Vermont Academy of Medicine, and Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in Yale College,-undoubtedly one of the most profoundly and extensively learned physicians of America, who has done more in the line of Pharmacological research, and in contributions to the knowledge of the indigenous Materia Medica of the country, than any other living

man. His great systematic work on Materia Medica, now for a year or two in process of publication, (serially,) gives him a high place in American medical literature; as do also his previous published investigations in medical and natural science.

These and many of corresponding eminence who have made brilliant and permanent additions to the solid literature of the country are passed over in heedlessness or ignorance, while the columns of this "Cyclopædia" are crammed with the foolish egotistical sketches of people before unknown to the American public, evidently done by themselves, if not paid for. Let any reader open the second volume at random, and glance at any such trash as the notices and specimens of Daniel P. Thompson of Vermont, Henry C. Knight, Frederick Knight, D. J. McCord, H. J. Nott, R. S. Coffin, McDonald Clarke, Isaac S. Clason, Henry Cary, and dozens of magazine scribblers and lady-poetasters with their little bundles of rhyme not worthy of a moment's remembrance. We cannot resist the temptation to quote, as the most appropriate comment hereupon, the familiar lines of Cowper,

ON OBSERVING SOME NAMES OF LITTLE NOTE

So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news,
The flame extinct, he views the roving fire--
There goes my lady, and there goes the Squire,
There goes the Parson, oh! illustrious spark,
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the Clerk!

The Book of Ecclesiastes Explained. By JAMES MACDONALD, D. D., Princeton,
New Jersey. New York: M. W. Dodd. 1856.

This is a bold title for a commentary, for it is by no means every commentary which can truly claim to be an "explanation" of its author. And yet we are not disposed to question its propriety in the present instance. On the contrary, the writer of the book before us has taken that view of his subject which has always seemed to us to be the only one on which Ecclesiastes can be read with any consistent and satisfactory interpretation, and has developed it in a lucid and scholarlike

manner.

He considers the Book of Ecclesiastes to be the genuine production of Solomon himself, instead of being the work of some later author writing under the character of Solomon. We are willing to concede the balance of probabilities to be in favor of the former view, but are not disposed to attribute to the question that degree of importance which

Dr. Macdonald claims for it, when he insists that the admission of this point is essential to the proof of the inspiration and canonicity of the Book.

The great argument of Ecclesiastes is shown to be an argumentum ex absurdo, in favor of the doctrine of a future life and a future judgment; an argument in which Solomon shows that all the events of life and of history are an absurdity,-a "vanity of vanities"-unless regarded as preliminary to a world to come. Having this scope, all the skeptical and gloomy reflections in the former part of the book give great weight and force to the "conclusion of the whole matter;" and the closing warnings of a judgment to come, instead of needing to be wrested to a mere worldly and temporal application,-as they have been by some,-or to be cast out as interpolations, as they have been by other and bolder critics, are seen to stand in perfect harmony with the whole tenor of the book, and with the "analogy of faith."

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The faults of Dr. Macdonald's commentary are sufficiently obvious. Not to specify minor infelicities of style, the whole volume presents too much the appearance of having been preached, and, as Emerson says of Shakspeare, sometimes degenerates into pulpit eloquence." It is too big by one-third,-which is only to say that the author has not escaped the almost universal weakness of commentators. And yet much of the redundancy of the book would doubtless have been avoided but for the unfortunate plan on which it was made, of saying something after every verse. Thus in many cases where the wonderful terseness and perspicuity of the text leaves absolutely no necessity either of explanation or of illustration, a half page is occupied in repeating the same idea in weak and wordy platitudes. Of course the author cannot be blamed for saying nothing, where there was nothing to be said; but we think that he has often chosen unwisely to say non nihil, sed nihila." If the book were to be condensed to half the size, it would cost less, and be worth more.

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The Theology of New England. An attempt to exhibit the doctrines now prevalent in the Orthodox Congregational Churches of New England. By DAVID A. WALLACE, Boston. With an Introduction by Daniel Dana, D. D. Boston: Crocker & Brewster.

A refreshing pamphlet. There is a pleasing verdancy on almost every page. Mr. David A. Wallace, of whom we know nothing beyond what is implied in the announcement that he is the author of this work, seems to be a Scotchman, whose lot has somehow been cast in Boston. He is trying to ascertain for his own benefit, and for that of his readers, what is the difference between that interpretation and exposition of Calvinism to which he has been accustomed in the "land o' cakes" or wherever else he learned the catechism, and that which he finds current in New England. He is not a little puzzled; he misunderstands some things which he undertakes to represent; he is dreadfully alarmed at every deviation from the letter, or from what he supposes to be the literal meaning of the Westminster Confession; he has a most old-school antipathy to the accuracy and intelligibleness of state

ment by which a disputed doctrine may be cleared of cavils and objections; but on the whole his pamphlet is as little to be censured for calumny and misrepresentation, as any book which has ever been written for the purpose of disparaging the New England theology. He has so completely identified all theological soundness with the words to which he is accustomed, that when he finds a deviation from those words, he thinks there is no need of farther testimony or argument. It does not occur to him that it might be well to look below the surface. How far, in such cases, the real meaning of one proposition or formula differs from the real meaning of the other is a question with which he

has no concern.

Really, it is refreshing to see how little, and yet how creditable to New England, the real and intelligible difference is, between the Westminster formulas and the New England theology, as that difference is exhibited in this pamphlet. The differences, in Mr. Wallace's exhibition of them, seem to be chiefly of one sort. New England theology finds certain doctrines in the Westminster symbols, and particularly in the Shorter Catechism. Instead of accepting the mere form of words without inquiry into its meaning, it asks, in each instance for an intelligible and Scriptual meaning, and then inquires whether that meaning is fairly and unexceptionably expressed in the Westminster formula.. The result is that generally, where there is a difference between the New England theology and the traditionary theology of Mr. Wallace, the underlying doctrine on both sides is essentially the same, while the difference is chiefly in the mode of stating and explaining the doctrine. If on any point of Christian doctrine, the Westminster divines have used language which in the lapse of ages has changed its import-if their statement is, in the present usus loquendi, contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures-if their conception of the Scriptural truth was modified by a philosophy now obselete, and is thus at odds with common sense -the New England theology is quite free to use other words and other modes of statement and of illustration, and shapes itself accordingly. The Scotch theology-and that of most of the Presbyterian sects in this country-is bound hand and foot by the necessity of adhering not only to the spirit and the substance, but to the ipsissima verba of its symbolical books. The New England theology, on the other hand, owning no authority but that of Scripture, derives its life, in each successive age, fresh from the Bible. Much better it is, much safer, much more salutary, to interpret the standards by the Bible than to interpret the Bible by the standards.

The "introduction" which the venerable Dr. Daniel Dana has contributed toward the circulation and authority of Mr. Wallace's pamphlet, is an elegantly written essay of twenty pages. Its purport will be readily anticipated by those who remember the former efforts of that "weeping prophet." If it differs in any respect from what Dr. D. has often published heretofore concerning the great apostasy which he supposed to have taken place and to be still in progress, the difference is not that we find in the present essay, the marks of advancing age, but rather that while the venerable writer goes through his wonted