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eighteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. was not discovered till some years since. Mr. Hunt and his party, more than twenty years ago, went near it, but did not find it, though in search of some favorable passage. It varies in width from five to twenty miles; and following its course, the distance through the mountains is about eighty miles, or four days' journey. Though there are some elevations and depressions in this valley, yet, comparatively speaking, it is level. There would be no difficulty in the way of constructing a rail road from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean; and, probably, the time may not be very far distant, when trips will be made across the continent," etc. This is truly a remarkable discovery. If the facts should prove to be, as they appear from Mr. Parker's description, it is one of the most extraordinary provisions for the convenience of man ever made in the Providence of God in the solid frame-work of the globe. We could have wished that Mr. Parker had gone into full details and given us an exact account of the whole of this road excavated by the finger of God.

Mr. Parker pursued his journey among the mountains, stopping at various places, holding consultation with the Indians, and collecting various information, till he reached the mouth of the Columbia river. On the 28th of June, 1836, he embarked for the Sandwich Islands, and in sixteen days anchored in the roads of Honolulu. He reached New London, Ct. on the 18th of May, 1837.

A great variety of interesting information will be found in the volume. There is an air of honesty and entire trustworthiness about all the statements. But little, comparatively, is mentioned but what fell under the author's own observation. Mr. Parker seems to have had quite a tact for working his way among Indians, hunters, trappers, half-breeds and the heterogeneous multitude with whom he came in contact. Many of the Indians seem waiting for the gospel of Christ, and are ardently desiring teachers to be sent to them. The style of the volume is simple and unadorned. There is an occasional use of language which will be called cant by some persons. A part of it, as where the author speaks of his own religious feelings, might have been well spared. In one place, Mr. Parker makes use of obliviscited; we know not in what vocabulary he found the term.

10.-Home Education. By the author of Natural History of Enthusiasm. London: Jackson & Walford, 1838. pp. 379.

So far as we have had opportunity to peruse this book, its views meet with our cordial approbation. The author does not appear as a profound reasoner, a curious speculatist, an investigator of christian antiquities, but as a practical man, explaining the principles by which he is guided in the education of his own children. Much of it is, however, in the author's peculiar and original manner. After some observations in regard to home economy in general, he introduces

the subject of a systematic culture of the mind, by suggesting some methods for eliciting, and for enriching, those faculties that are passive, and recipient chiefly, and which, as they are developed early, demand the teacher's attention before the time when any strenuous labors ought to be exacted from children. Mr. Taylor does not decide in favor of an exclusive system of Home Education. Great benefits attach to School Discipline, whether effected on a larger or smaller scale. Whatever may be said of female education, that of boys could not, in the majority of instances, be well conducted beneath the paternal roof. Still, the author thinks that home education, if the principles and methods proper to it are well understood, is both practicable and preferable in more instances than has been often supposed, and especially so for girls; and, also, that this system is susceptible of improvements, such as could not fail, if adopted to a considerable extent, very sensibly to promote the moral and intellectual advancement of the community.

The distinguishing recommendations of private intellectual education are 1. That the stress of the process may be made to rest upon sentiment and principle, and the deep reciprocal affections of the teacher and the taught, instead of its falling upon law, routine and mechanism. 2. That every thing, in method and matter, may be exactly adapted to the individual capacities and tastes of the learner, and the utmost advantage of culture secured for every special talent. 3. That it is, or may be, wholly exempt from the incumbrance and despotism of statutes, or of immemorial but irrational usages, or of prevalent notions, and may come altogether under the control of good sense, and is free to admit every good practice; and 4. That, while public education is necessarily a system of hastened development, private education is free to follow out the contrary principle of retarded development.

These and other considerations are urged in an effective and interesting manner. The whole, so far as we can judge, is a very enlightened, just and christian view of a most important subject.

12.-M. T. Ciceronis ad Quintum Fratrem Dialogi Tres De Oratore. Ex editionibus Oliveti et Ernesti. Accedunt Notae Anglicae. Cura C. K. Dillaway. A. M. Bostoniae: Perkins et Marvin, 1838. Tom. I. 226. II. 229.

We are glad to see that these unpretending and valuable labors of Mr. Dillaway are sufficiently appreciated by the public to permit him to proceed in his course. He has now in press one of the comedies of Terence. The series will probably combine a selection in three volumes from the works of Tacitus, one volume of Plautus, and the remaining works of Cicero in eight volumes. The successive volumes are printed with uncommon beauty and correctness. The notes are apposite and well adapted to the wants of the young student.

13.-Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Louisa Taylor: or an Illustration of the Work of the Holy Spirit, in awakening, renewing, and sanctifying the heart. By Lot Jones, A. M., Missionary in the city of New York, in charge of the Mission Church of the Epiphany. New York: John S. Taylor, 1838. pp. 324.

One of the reasons assigned by the author, for his having consented to compile this memoir, is "that he felt a deep interest in the subject, with a strong conviction, that, if suitably prepared, it could not fail to be useful." This conviction, we think, was well founded. It is an interesting and instructive exhibition of female character and piety; and if associations with purity and truth are suited to improve both the heart and the life, the circulation of such memoirs as this will not fail to exert a salutary though silent influence on the public mind.

ARTICLE XII.

LITERARY AND MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.

United States.

Library of the New York Theological Seminary.

The Directors of the New York Theological Seminary, through the agency of Prof. Robinson and others, have recently purchased the Library of the Rev. Dr. Leander Van Ess of Bavaria in Germany, well known as the voluntary and successful agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society among the Roman Catholics of that country. This Library contains upwards of 13,000 volumes. Among which are most of the works of the Greek and Latin Fathers, the London and Paris Polyglots, Ugolini's Thesaurus, Mauri's Concilia, etc. etc. In the department of church history it is said to be quite full, and in all the departments, there are many works which are rare and of very high value. Dr. Van Ess has been forty years collecting this Library, and has now generously consented to dispose of it to an American Seminary for about one fifth part of its original cost to himself. The purchase is already made, and the books are probably now on their way to New York, where a commodious building is in the process of erection, and will be ready for the reception of the Library and for the other purposes of the Seminary early in the autumn. Such an accession to the stores of theological learning in our country is highly auspicious and creditable to the Institution which has thus early availed itself of its advantages.

We learn that Mr. Duponceau of Philadelphia has nearly ready for the press a learned work on language.-The Life of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, by Alden Bradford, LL. D. has just been published.— Rev. Dr. Humphrey, president of Amherst College, has published his Letters, originally inserted in the New York Observer, in two handsome duodecimo volumes. These Letters have acquired a deserved celebrity for sound sense, and discriminating remark. They are written in a lively and forcible manner. They show how an author, with Dr. Humphrey's strong powers of observation and of thinking, can go over a beaten track and not find it all barren.-Rev. Pres. Fisk's Travels in Europe have reached a fourth edition. We suppose that they have been widely circulated in the author's own denomination. We have not seen them.-Professor Conant's translation of Gesenius's Hebrew Grammar is proceeding through the press

France.
Baron De Sacy.

We have received the following tribute to the memory of M. De Sacy from an American gentleman who is devoting himself to Arabic literature, and who listened to the voice of De Sacy until it was closed in death. At a future day we may give our readers a more extended biography of this great scholar, with a list of his works.

"The illustrious savant Baron Sylvestre De Sacy died in Paris on the twenty-first of February, 1838, from the effects of a stroke of apoplexy, at the age of eighty years. The object of this brief notice is not to attempt to describe the peculiar features of mind and tone of sentiment which so distinguished him among his own countrymen, and have made his name so honored throughout Europe, but merely to pay to his memory a passing tribute of respect. He was born in the year 1758, and, while yet in early life, was engaged in the study of the oriental languages, being led to these pursuits by the inclination of his own taste. In the year 1795, when the school of modern oriental languages was established at the Royal Library in Paris, he was chosen to the chair of Arabic, and it was at this time that he first devoted himself to that department of literature over which he threw so much light and which he so adorned, during nearly half a century, to the day of his death.

"He was a most diligent scholar; his works are very numerous considering the profound subjects of which they treat, though they are but very little known in our country. It was so late even as the commencement of the present year that he published a treatise, in two octavo volumes, on the Religion of the Druses. Nor was he at all superficial, or a charlatan in his researches, as alas! too many of the French savans are, he was laborious, patient and accurate. Probably no European has ever so thoroughly studied the works of the celebrated Arabic grammarians, or unravelled with such acuteness their many valuable suggestions on the principles of language

from the intricacies of their exceedingly fanciful mode of thought. He was distinguished, also, through life, for the purity of the motives which actuated his zeal. He did not strive with narrow selfishness after an imagined elevation in the eyes of his countrymen and of the world, but he labored from the love of learning and a desire to be useful in diffusing it. In the course of his long life honors accumulated upon him, yet he did not give himself up to self-complacent idleness, or to the feeling, too common in France, that as he ascended step by step higher in dignity, he was forbidden to touch foot again on his former lower fields of action. Thus, even on the day when the stroke which proved fatal fell upon him, this venerable man had been seated side by side with his pupils in Arabic, bearing as usual with all the vexatious inaccuracies which so finished a scholar could not but mark. He had also made his appearance in the cabinet of manuscripts at the Royal Library, to examine some Persian MSS, which the government was then proposing to purchase; and he had filled his seat in the Chamber of Peers, and had spoken upon the subject then in debate.

"A word or two more may be hazarded in regard to his religious character. He was a devoted Jansenist, and was strenuously opposed to the awful innovations of that godless spirit of anarchy which has swept over France. It is to be hoped that all his high attainments were crowned by that pearl of great price, surpassing all the riches of the East.

"Most of the distinguished orientalists of Europe have listened to the instructions of Baron De Sacy, yet few are to be found, at present, in France, who walk in his steps. M. Garcen De Tassy, however, one of his former pupils and most favored friend, now professor of Hindostanee in the same school where he labored so long, seems to have imbibed much of the same spirit, and it is a pleasure to think that France may yet possess a savant to fill his place."

Germany.

The following are some of the volumes which have recently been published in Germany-Ast's Lexicon Platonicum sive vocum Platonicarum Index, Vol. III. Fasciculus 2, лooуgúgo-riu. The conclusion of the last volume will be published in the beginning of the next year.-Suidae Lexicon Graece et Latine ad fidem optimorum librorum exactam post Thomas Gaisfordum recensuit et annotatione critica instruxit G. Bernhardy. Tom. I. Fasc. 4 et Tom. 11. Fasc. 3. 4.-F. Nork has published an Etymological Dictionary of the Latin language-The Prophetical Spirit of the Hebrews by Dr. A. Knobel, professor of Theology at Breslau.-Ruckert's Commentary on the second Epistle to the Corinthians. That on the first Epistle was published in 1836.-Some of our readers will be glad to learn that the third section of Vol. IV. of Prof. Freytag's great Arabic Lexicon is published. The whole work will be finished in October next. The professor will publish a smaller work entitled "Lexicon Arabico Latinum ex opere majore in

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