OUR BOOK TABLE. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, devoted to Literature, Art, and Politics. Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston; Trübner & Co., London. The initial number of this new monthly is received. It is exceedingly neat in its physique, and alike creditable to the publishers in its contents. It numbers among its contributors a long list of our best writers. It professes a manly independence in its pages, especially in politics. "It will not rank itself with any sect of anties, but with that body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress and Honor, whether public or private." We heartily commend it to the favorable attention of our readers. New England ought to support, at least, one good monthly, instead of sending so many dollars to New York, to get articles from New England pens. THE HAND- BooK OF HOUSEHOLD SCIENCES A popular account of Heat, Light, Air, Aliment, and Cleansing, in their scientific principles and Domestic Applications. By Edward L. Yeomans. D. Appleton & Co., New York. Of this book, placed on our table by Snow & Greene, we are unable to speak in detail, not having examined it with sufficient care. The topics treated of are popular and practically important. The general arrangement of the work is good, and its mechanical appearance highly creditable. It contains a very large amount of valuable matter, and will well repay any one to study faithfully its contents. We are inclined to think it is too full and minute for ordinary schools, but would undoubtedly be very valuable for schools and seminaries of a higher grade. THE AMERICAN BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY, containing an account of the lives, characters and writings of the most eminent persons deceased in North America, from its first settlement. Third edition. John P. Jewett & Co., Boston. Dr. Allen's original work on American Biogra This is a work of rare value. It is a reprint of phy, which appeared forty-eight years ago,— with large and important additions. It now contains notices of the distinguished men of our country, to the number of six thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. We know of no work on American Biography at all comparable to it. Its print, paper and binding are the very best. It is a book which we should be glad to know was on the teacher's desk, in every school-room in our land. For sale by Snow & Greene. THE "WASHINGTON MEDALLION PEN CO.," of New York, have placed upon our desk, through their agent, Mr. Emuel Southwick, a box of their steel pens, which for business writing are, in our opinion, equal to any imported pens we have ever used. Their "Ladies and Ledger Pen" is an excellent article for school purposes, and for fine writing generally. We have always thought it strange that we should send to England for all our steel pens. It can no longer be said that our country furnishes no good steel pens. We regard the above mentioned as equal to any English pen, with which we are acquainted. This is an exceedingly neat and readable little monthly, adapted to children and to schools. The November number, now on our table, is full THE SONG WREATH. Shepard, Clark & Brown, of pretty stories, which are instructive and inter Boston. This is a new school song-book, prepared by an experienced teacher of music in Boston. The introductory part is designed to present the subject to the young in an attractive manner, and suited to their understandings. The appearance of the book is pleasing. The only test of the tunes is in practice. We have heard much complaint, that the collections of of pieces in our various school song-books are not well adapted to schools. If this book shall supply the defect, it will be a valuable assistance to the teacher. We do not profess to be competent to give an opinion upon the matter. Let the teacher send for a copy and try it, and then judge for himself. For sale by Snow & Greenc. esting. NOTES AND STATISTICS ON PUBLIC INSTRUCTION IN CANADA. Compiled for the Canada Directory for 1857-58. Montreal. A very valuable compilation of facts with regard to Canada schools; exhibiting them in many respects equal to any which we can show in the States. DINSMORE'S THIRTY MILES AROUND NEW YORK. Dinsmore & Co., New York. A pamphlet of 125 pages, giving much valua ble information concerning the great metropolis and its environs. The R. J. Schoolmaster. I. VOL. III. DECEMBER, 1857. For the Schoolmaster. On Quotation. In the books which we read, and in the public addresses to which we listen, quotations are frequently introduced, in support of the opinions advanced, or for the convenient expression of the thoughts presented. There are sometimes to be found critics, who are disposed to object to the exercise of this privilege of writers. Those, who are unaccustomed to writing, are not generally aware that it ordinarily requires, on the part of a scholar and habitual composer, more lahor to quote than it does to compose. The case of a habitual composer is altogether different from that of one unaccustomed to writing. The latter finds it very toilsome to compose; he is not habituated to the rules of constructing language,and has never learned, by a long and diligent experience, the thousand minute and unwritten rules by which the habitual composer is instantly guided in the preparation of his productions. For such an one it is easier to write down or copy extracts than to compose. But, in the case of one who has mastered the art-if we may so call it, the trade and handicraft-of writing, whose difficulty is never in the mere matter of composition, who can always express himself when he has ideas, much faster than he can copy from a book open before him, in the case of such the exercise of his privilege of quotation is no sinecure. The more he quotes, if it be to the point, the more he labors. NO. 10. There are some sorts of writing, in which a person, if he has a cultivated literary taste, cannot help quoting; and there are other sorts of writing, in which quotations should be very rarely employed. For instance, if one wishes to expand any abstract subject — to illustrate any point of literary history or criticism, or any principle or application of science-he will, as a general fact, need to quote, for the sake of sustaining his own views and giving authority to them by the corresponding conclusions of other and perhaps greater minds. But if one wishes to produce simply an immediate effect upon an audience — to confine their attention to some single point of immediate decision or action-then he will be careful of quotation, lest, by the suggestion of another name or of another train of thought, he divert the minds of his audience from the effect at which he aims. Thus, in the preaching of the clergy, which falls under the latter of these examples, we will rarely hear quotations. If the clergyman expound doctrine, he may quote; if he seek for an immediate effect upon the will or conscience, he will be wary how he quotes. If the clergyman is arguing some high point of the faith, for the edification and information of his auditors, they will thank him for an apt quotation. But if, in the midst of an impassioned and earnest exhortation, when the minds of his hearers are fixed intently on the one fact of their duty, and are struggling under the impulsive energy of the motives which are presented, he should suddenly introduce a quotation from some other writer. there is them, and to identity, if possible, their convic- "out not one chance in twenty, that the minds of his mind and the jury's; he aims to engross the listeners would not be shocked, and fall from their enthusiasm, with a severe and painful disappointment. If the quotation should be long, it would be fatal to the impression which is desired. If the quotation should be very short and very pointed, the effect of the exhortation would, in the twentieth chance be heightened. A remarkable instance of this is beautifully told us by the lamented Wirtthe late Attorney General of the United States, whose death, in the prime of his maturity, cast so dark a shade, not yet dispelled, over the country he so much adorned. He tells us in one of his letters, in "The British Spy," of his visit to a country church in Virginia, where he listened to the moving eloquence of the far-famed "blind preacher," whose fame, too, has been further extended by the notice of his distinguished hearer. He tells us, that, at the close of a most melting and persuasive appeal, when the preacher had been portraying the wonderful condescension of the Son of God, and dwelling upon all the sorrows and trials of His most holy life, and then had recounted the deep and bleeding bitterness of the Garden of Gethsemane and the indignities of the Judgment Halls of Caiaphas and of Pilate, and had pictured the scenes of Calvary so appalling and yet so subduing, he suddenly raised his sightless eyes to heaven, while the tears were streaming down his cheeks, and exclaimed, with solemn and lofty emphasis, in the words of the wonderful confession of the infidel Rousseau: "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ died like a God." The effect was overpowering-deed, would be the writer among us, who overwhelming; and Mr. Wirt describes it as the perfection of the sublime. The whole passage is well worth reading, and whoever reads it once will read it often afterwards. However, such an effect is but the one out of the twenty. The nineteen would probably be failures. To pass from the pulpit to the bar, it will be observed, that a successful lawyer-we mean, pleader-will rarely quote, except for the sake of proof, or to illustrate the point or the rule of law, to establish a precedent, or to show a statute or a decision. When he aims to persuade and carry his jury, he will be very careful to allow no other mind to pass between To turn, now, from such addresses as are intended to affect directly and strongly the public feeling and to persuade the hearer to immediate action, to another class of addresses which are intended rather to interest the sentiments, and to instruct the intellect, and not so much to move and impel the will,like, for example, the Literary and Scientific and Critical Lecture-and a very different rule applies in regard to quotation. In this case, quotations are always proper if they illustrate the subject; and it is right and becoming in the lecturer oftentimes to use the language of another, even when it is not needed as authority, but when it expresses simply his own idea in appropriate words. Vain, in should prefer his own effusions to the clear statements and polished diction of the great masters of literature and science. Strange, too, would be the taste of an audience, which should listen, with more pleasure, in an abstract discussion or narrative, to the style of their own immediate lecturer, than to the periods of the great giants of intelligence and of erudition. The Scotch excel in the art of quotation. To name but two, out of their multitude of fine writers, Dugald Stewart, in his Philosophical works and Essays, and more recently, Watson, in his Medical Lectures, are felicitous examples in aptly applying and using the thoughts and words of others. The very method of their quotation is one of the powerful charms, which bind the reader to their pages. ing but a few pages, which never could have been produced, had not more time been allotted to the researches which they contain than some would allow to a small volume, which might But it is not our intention here to enter in- excel in genius, and yet be likely not to be long to the question of taste, as connected with remembered. All this is labor which never this subject of quotation, although we would meets the eye. It is quicker work, with spesay for ourselves, that it would be no trial to cial pleading and poignant periods, to fill us to listen, by the hour, to good readers of sheets with generalizing principles. But the the fine old literary papers of the noble and pains-taking gentry, when heaven sends them learned classics of our language, to say noth-genius enough, are the most instructive sort, ing of the numerous valuable productions, in and they are those to whom we shall appeal, all departments of knowledge, with which the while time and truth meet together. A well press has teemed during the last fifty years. read writer, with good taste, is one who has It is our wish rather to allude to the objec- the command of the wit of other men; he tion, which those unacquainted with the mat- searches where knowledge is to be found; and ter may sometimes urge,-that a writer intro- though he may not himself excel in invention, duces his quotations chiefly for the sake of sav- his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeing trouble; and we must insist upon it, that able books, the deliciæ of literature, that will this objection is totally fallacious. outlast the fading meteors of his day. Epicurus is said to have borrowed from no writer in his three hundred inspired volumes, while Plutarch, Seneca, and the elder Pliny made such free use of their libraries; and it has happened that Epicurus with his unsubstantial nothingness, has melted into the air, while the solid treasures have buoyed themselves up amidst the wrecks of nations. One word more on this long chapter of quotation. To make a happy one is a thing not easily to be Says Bayle, the distinguished French philosopher, a most voluminous writer, and whose experience in composition was therefore very extensive: " Suppose an able man is to prove that an ancient author entertained certain par ticular opinions, which are only insinuated here and there through his works, I am sure, it would take him more days to collect the passages which he will have occasion for, than to argue at random on those passages. Having once found out his authorities and his quotations, which perhaps will not fill six pages, and may have cost him a month's labor, he may finish, in two mornings' work, twenty pages of arguments, objections, and answers to objections; and consequently what proceeds from our own genius sometimes costs much less time than that which is requisite for collecting. Corneille would have required more time to defend a tragedy by a collection of authorities, than to write it; and I am supposing the same number of pages in the tragedy as in the defence. Heinsius perhaps bestowed more time in defending his Herodes Infanticida against Balzac, than a Spanish metaphysician bestows on a large volume of controversy, where he takes all from his own stock." The industrious and talented collector of the "Curiosities of Literature," in commenting on this passage of Bayle, adds; "I am some ་་ what concerned in the truth of this principle. Here are articles of the present work occupy done. Cardinal du Perron used to say that the happy application of a verse from Virgil was worth a talent; and Bayle, perhaps too much prepossessed in their favor, has insinuated, that there is not less invention in a just and happy application of a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract. Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority. Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize. Perhaps no writers of our times have discovered more of this delicacy in quotation than the author of the "Pursuits of Literature," and Mr. Southey, in some of his beautiful period ical investigations, where we have often acknowledged the solemn and striking effect of a quotation from our elder writers." (Curiosities of Literature. pp. 236-7.) There is one other objection which we sometimes meet, which is-that we can read at home from books. True; but how many do so? And, besides, the quotations in a single lecture or essay, if they be at all appropriate and diversified in their authorship, have been procured at much expense of time and trouble. We will venture to say, that if one of such a class of critics should be required to take a particular subject, and to cull out of several and perhaps rare volumes, the opinions of only some eight or ten different authors upon the particular subject, or to illustrate that subject out of these works, he would find it a much more difficult task to perform the labor, than to criticise it after another has performed it. The light that shone in years gone by, To every faintly passing sound. And smiles with tears their vows renew. The bright but fleeting dreams of youth Their treasured beauties e'er impair. So thy sweet presence, memory. Thy thrilling lyre we wake in vain- But in thy soft and mournful strain; Mysterious, Oh, mysterious power, That to one view a lifetime brings, To estimate the labor employed in the selection of his quotations by any writer, we are to remember that he looks over many whole volumes from which he does not get a single line which exactly meets his want, or which he cares about using; and that, where he gives you five or ten quotations in the course of his production, he had selected perhaps fifty or a hundred, from various sources, and was compelled to make his selection of the few most apt or most important from them all. It is a very different thing to throw together extracts at random from several authors just as they come first at hand, and Reciprocal Influence of Christianity and loosely associated with the subject treated, from what it is to quote from a library, from all that is written or to which you can have access, appropriately to any particular subject. Any body may write down extracts. not every body that can quote. For the Schoolmaster. Memory. BY ANNIE ELIZABETH. Memory, thy magic halls are filled But it is T. H. V. With many a fleeting vision fair, And many a lovely voice, long stilled, Is heard to echo sadly there. For the Schoolmaster. Education. cation should form an alliance and ever be It is befitting that Christianity and Edufound together. Their relations are intimate. Christianity naturally awakens a demand for educated men, for educational institutions and for teachers. Education in its turn as naturally needs the quickening influences of Christianity. There is a tendency in the gospel to produce, in every community or nation where its power is felt, a class of learned men and institutions of learning. It is a religion of light, the friend of education. It is never content to leave men in barbarism and ignorance. Missions must have their schools and printing presses. Christianity comes to men |