restraint, is rendered by the law a state of dignity, and honor, and freedom. She parts with no rights, for which she has not an equivalent. She contributes her share to the demands of the state; she receives her share of its protection. The matron, so far from losing her civil existence by marriage, acquires new and important relations to society. She is represented by her husband, only where the social economy requires such an arrangement. The law interposes no farther than to bind each party to the performance of the contract, and to perpetuate that fidelity, and confidence, and love, which they mutually vowed at the altar.

Such, in rapid outline, are the legal rights of Woman, in this country. No other code could so well secure her happiness, she herself being the legislator and judge. Restless spirits, may raise discontents with the system; for it is always easier to point out faults, than to correct them. But a fair survey of her position, will evince the liberal policy and extreme care of the law, in guarding her rights, and promoting her welfare. And happy will it be for our land, if, instead of following modern agitators and reformers, in their visionary schemes of fancied improvement, we prefer, with better reason, to enjoy the advantages already secured by our own familiar and welltried institutions.

ARTICLE IX.

ESCHENBURG'S MANUAL OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE.

Manual of Classical Literature: from the German of J. J. ESCHENBURG, Professor in the Carolinum, at Brunswick. With additions. By N. W. FISKE, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy (formerly of the Latin and Greek Languages) in Amherst College. Third Edition. pp. 753. 8vo. Philadelphia. 1839.

THE demand for a third edition of this Manual sufficiently proves that such a work was needed. There is scarcely any branch of study where something of the kind would

VOL. V.-NO. XVIII.

37

not be useful. The young student who commences the study of the Greek and Roman classics needs some general survey of the whole field that is before him. Still more necessary is it for him to be initiated gradually into the literature of his particular course of study. At the same time, even while learning the principles of classification and arrangement so that he can readily make use of more extensive critical helps, he must have before him, within a moderate compass, the elements of all the branches of knowledge pertaining to his department. It is far better that these should be presented in a systematic form, as in the work before us, than in the chaotic form of a dictionary; for the beginner will then be trained to those habits of order, and to a familiarity with those divisions of study, which will be indispensable to him as he advances. We think it was judicious in the author, not only to adopt the chronological rather than the alphabetical order in Greek and Roman literature, but to classify the writers into the poets, orators, grammarians, philosophers, historians, &c., and to treat of these classes separately.

How quickening to the young intellect is it to have such a door of knowledge thrown open as that contained in this volume!* There is a key put into his hand for unlocking the treasures of antiquity. Enough is said under each division to aid him in his immediate studies; and yet knowledge is so imparted as to stimulate his appetite for more; and then the deeper sources of information are referred to, and the best writers on each topic are pointed

out.

All our mature classical scholars have a painful sense of the deficiency of American books on these subjects. What means have our students enjoyed for a comprehensive survey of Greek and Roman literature? How few of them, until quite recently, were able to attach any definite idea to the names of the greater portion of the celebrated writers of antiquity! If an individual wished to extend his reading, especially, of Greek authors beyond the ordinary limit, he scarcely knew what writer, or what

Lest, in bestowing any commendation on this book, we may appear to be guilty of indirect self-praise, we deem it our duty to state, that in those labors which constitute the substantial excellences of the work, we had no participation. What the courtesy of the translator has attributed to us, should be understood as applying only to unimportant details.

work to prefer to the rest. In regard to the best editions, little or nothing was known by the mass of students; or if one, more enlightened than others, had taken a recommendation from some European journal, he probably found upon, purchasing the work, that it was mainly devoted to the examination of manuscripts and to the settling of disputed readings, and was ill adapted to his wants. is a well-known fact, that the number of persons among us was very small, who could give judicious advice to an ambitious student wishing to apply fifty or a hundred dollars to the purchase of choice works on classical literature.

On the whole subject of ancient art, there was almost an entire blank in our school books, and in the general histories that were resorted to, a vagueness which was but little better; and the traditionary knowledge about Phidias, Apelles, &c., which was handed down from year to year in college exhibitions, scarcely amounted to any thing more than what was elsewhere taught about Methuselah as the oldest man, and Moses as the meekest.

Prof. Fiske would have done great service, had he accomplished nothing more than to spread out before the students in our colleges the wide field of literature pertaining to the study of antiquity.

It is beginning to be felt abroad, and we hope it will be equally felt at home, that not lifeless collections of disconnected facts, as in our older works on antiquities, but a living, concrete image of every thing relating to antiquity and its culture, must be distinctly viewed and comprehended, before a true classical spirit can be created. We have had among the mass of educated men too much of the show of it without the solid attainment. There has often appeared to be a charm in the words, classic and Attic, a kind of romantic admiration of something excellent, according to common fame, and a laboring, awkward enough in many instances, to drag into our compositions classical allusions. The stale character of the most current allusions of the kind, and the puerility of others, show that they have not been the fresh product of a mind stored with the knowledge and imbued with the spirit of classical antiquity. But these things are passing, we wish we could say, have passed away. America is beginning to

participate with the old world in the general progress of all the studies pertaining to antiquity. Never was there a time, not even that of the Manutii, or of Scaliger and Salmasius, or of Bentley and Hemsterhuys, when ancient art, history, antiquities and literature were investigated with greater enthusiasm, or with greater success, than at the present moment. Every new steam-ship brings the tidings of new researches, new discoveries, new books from some of the host of Hermann and Böckh's disciples. What have these two coryphaci of the present generation of critics, and Niebuhr, and K.O. Müller, and Lobeck, and Creuzer, and Passow, and Welcker, and Wachsmuth and Böttiger and others effected, within a comparatively short period, in exhumating the vast Herculaneum of buried antiquity! We need to have more of this passion kindled in the bosoms of our rising scholars. We could wish the work before us might prove an entering wedge for the whole body of literature of which it gives us a mere taste. While we have been chiefly dependent on a few English antiquarians for our knowledge of ancient art, and had, until Eschenburg's work was translated, no tolerable manual on the subject for students, the German critics who have written on the archaeology of art, as it is termed by them, are so numerous, that a complete catalogue of their works would occupy several pages. We will, for the sake of illustrating our remark, give the names of the more celebrated German writers on the subject, viz., Winckelmann, Lessing, Heyne, Nitsch, Gruber, Christ, Ernesti, Sulzer, Rambach, Stieglitz, Hase, Ramdohr, Gurlitt, Siebenkees, Beck, Hirt, Meyer, Thiersch, Jacobs, Böttiger, Sillig, Müller, Gerhard, Schorn, Tölken, Brönsted and Stackelberg. Even the method of studying classical literature is made a distinct branch of instruction; and while we are without a guide on this important subject, the German student has many valuable ones from which he may select. The most important are Wolf's Encyclopedia of Philology, his Lectures on the study of Ancient Literature, Ast's Outlines of Philology, Bernhardy's Outlines of the Encyclopedia of Philology, Schuch's Encyclopedia of the Study of Antiquity, Hoffmann's Studies of Antiquity for Gymnasia, and Matthiae's Encyclopedia of Philology. Most of these are recent productions.

Some of our young readers, if we may judge from the frequent inquiries that are made on the subject, would welcome a brief list of select books to aid them in prosecuting their classical studies. In attempting to meet the wishes of such, we shall consider the wants of the ordinary theological student, and make our suggestions with reference. to that class of persons and their grade of scholarship. As all the branches of this department of literature are not equally supplied with standard works, the books to be recommended cannot be exactly proportioned to the relative importance of the subject; but the selection must be made in conformity to the actual state of things.

The best guides in the selection of a philological library are, Friedemann's List of Philological Works for Students, which is very general, including the various philological aids that are needed; Hoffmann's Bibliographical Manual for the study of the Latin and Greek Languages, noticed in our last number, p. 144; Schweiger's Classical Bibliography, which is devoted particularly to the various editions of the Latin and Greek classics, and which, while it is the most complete, is also the most minute and exact in stating the merits and defects of each; and Hoffmann's (new and as yet unfinished) Bibliographical Lexicon of the Whole Body of Greek Literature. This last, when it shall be finished, will probably be the most satisfactory work in regard to Greek literature.

The only general work of special value on the plan of Eschenburg's Manual is Schaaff's Encyclopedia of the Studies pertaining to Classical Antiquity, which does not treat of the method of study, as the Encyclopedias abovementioned, but gives an admirable outline, in five parts, of Greek and Roman literature, Greek and Roman antiquities and of ancient art. Bernhardy's Outlines of Roman Literature is, of course, fuller than those parts of Eschenburg and Schaaff which relate to the same subject. But the largest and best work for maturer scholars is Bähr's History of Roman Literature, in two octavo volumes. Bernhardy has also published a History of Greek Literature. The work which best answers the demands of ripe scholars on this subject is that of Schöll, translated into German, with numerous corrections and additions.