cient, however, to know that they are all very good compendsabridgments, it is true, but ample enough for the general reader. We have not collated them with the works of authority in regard to the States; but take for granted that the writers have been sufficiently observant of their details.

The Political Backsliders of South-Carolina. This pamphlet, from the press of a publisher hitherto unknown among us- "Jonas Pica, New-York "—is avowedly from the pen of Solomon Touchem. It is a "Poem in Four Cantos," and is designed to put an end to the leaders of the co-operation party, or a portion of them. How Solomon Touchem touches them up, may be seen from the passage devoted to James Hamilton. We can't give all the passage; but four lines, where they are so pungent, ought to suffice:

"With grief we view that gifted venal son
Of Carolina-J***s H*m**ton,

With glozing eloquence and periods bland,
Sowing dissension in his native land.”

Or refusing to sow the good seed any longer. But, though seemingly a somewhat irreverent mode of speaking of great persons, we are constrained to require, for the sake of melody, that James, in the second line, be written Jemmy. The rhythm demands another syllable. When we add that, after Hamilton, Solomon proceeds to touch up, in like manner, Bishops Fuller and Capers, Judges Butler and Withers, Lawyers Petigru, Perry, Pressley, Hayne, Memminger, Moses, Chestnut, Aldrich, Torre, Owens; Honourables Hammond, Grayson, Aiken, Orr, Waddy Thompson, Santa Anna, and Dr. Somebody-we know not who is meant-it will be seen that there ought to be sore places about soft bodies, in every district of the State.

Kavanagh's Madeleine. A young female peasant, of a clear and firm spirit, simple-hearted, ingenuous and uninformed, suffers a disappointment in love, but does not complain, and, from that time, devotes herself to offices of benevolence. With patience, industry, a resolute will, and the most perfect faith in the providence and mercy of God, she achieves wonders, and finally succeeds in the great dream of her life, in the founding and erection of a hospital for the poor, in her native village. This done her work endedshe sinks from exhaustion, and dies without a struggle, leaving behind her the reputation of a saint. This is the whole story, sweet, simple, highly touching, and admirably illustrating the wonderful powers possessed by one who, with a single purpose in view, proceeds to its performance with a faith that never falters, and an in

dustry that never tires. The story is worthy of Miss Kavanagh, whose Nathalie a book of very different plan and character-is one of the most interesting of recent publications.

The Swamp Steed is the title of a novel, the scene of which is avowed to be laid in South-Carolina; but the writer soon shows himself to be quite a stranger to the ground, as well as to the people; makes the strangest blunders in his progress, and, more amusingly still, contrives to make our backwoodsmen talk in the worst dialects of the Yankee pedlar. No Southron says du for do, or tu for to, or hull for whole; Britishers, for British, was never used in the South, and, by the way, but seldom anywhere; dews for does is Connecticut all over; pesky is another Yankee vulgarism, and there are scores besides, all similarly unsectional. But these are small blunders, compared with many others. Thus, we find an inveterate scalp-hunter in a region nearly two hundred miles from the Indian frontier. Thus we find a rocky mountain on the edge of the Santee swamps, and a huge cypress bending over this same rocky mountain. But the enumeration would be endless. The mistakes in the locale, as in the dialect, and the characterization of conspicuous persons, such as Marion, are of a sort to show the almost entire ignorance of his materials, on the part of the writer-a fault which his talent and invention are by no means calculated to repair.

An Exposition of some of the Laws of the Latin Grammar. By GESSNER HARRISON, M.D., Professor of Ancient Languages in the University of Virginia. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1852. The author, as he states in his preface, does not design his work to take the place of the systematic practical grammars now in use, but rather intends to explain some of the chief laws of the inflection and syntax of the Latin language, on philosophical principles. The book is divided into six chapters, of which the first and second are of an introductory nature, the third treats of nouns and their inflections, the fourth of noun-adjectives, the fifth of the pronouns, and the last of the verbs of the Latin language.

We have, so far, not had leisure to examine the work before us, as we would wish to have done, and intend to do; however, we may, from what we have perused, safely say, that it is undoubtedly the result of faithful and long-continued research, on the part of the author, and that it contains much information, which, to our knowledge, may not be derived from other works of this class, generally in the hands of American students. Still, although we consider it a production calculated to do much credit to the author's learning, we fear that its usefulness has been greatly impaired by the form which Mr. Harrison has given to it. There seems to

be a general want of order in it-it lacks altogether that lucid arrangement which, in a work on the construction of a language, is perhaps more indispensably necessary to make it readable, than in any other. Besides, it has occasionally been crammed with information, which, although not exactly foreign to the subject, was yet perhaps unnecessary; as, for instance, the long account of the manner in which the various sounds represented by the letters of the alphabet are produced by the organs of speech, as we read on page 9, seq.

Mr. Harrison has, at least in a great measure, followed the same course which the most recent German grammarians, such as Mehlhorn, Becker, Weissenborn, Krueger, and others, have pursued, in preparing their works. The principles by which these philologists have been guided were originally laid down by Gottfried Hermann, in his work de emendanda ratione Græcæ Grammaticæ, Lips, 1801; and aim at adapting and arranging a single language, such as Latin or Greek, entirely according to a general philosophical system, a priori laid down for all languages, at least for all the so-called IndoEuropean ones. However, in this desire of tracing each and every Latin, Greek and German root to a corresponding one in their alma mater, the Sanscrit, the above-named scholars seem-however ingenious and valuable their etymological and syntactical discoveries may be, as a whole-to have often forgotten that the individual character of a nation must, also, of necessity modify, in a great measure, the laws of their language, and that, hence, the use of a universal philosophical system, for all languages, will, instead of always representing the character of the separate language in its true light, in many instances rather have the effect of destroying the characteristics by which it is distinguished. To this rage of making etymological discoveries-combined with the fact that many of the recent Latin, Greek and German grammarians never have studied the Sanscrit at the fountain head, but were compelled to draw their information from other scholars, who, in their turn, were perhaps not sufficiently good Greek and Latin scholars always to sit in judgment on the three languages together-we owe it then, that we have of late years been deluged with a flood of etymological speculations, many of which, it appears to us, deserve no better name than etymological dreams. It would lead us, however, in a short notice like this, too far, to say more on the subject; nor would we have said thus much, did we not think that an undue love of drawing parallels between Sanscrit, Latin and Greek, has led Mr. Harrison, also, occasionally into error. Thus, for instance, can we no more believe that the Latin coquo (at p. 21) comes from the Greek TETT, though Forcellini says so, than we are persuaded that the English fox and the German fuchs are derived from the Greek dawn, by

a repeated process of aphaeresis (αλωπηξ, λωπηξ, ωπηξ, πηξ,-pox, fox, fuchs,) as some etymologists have endeavoured to prove. Nor can we agree with Mr. Harrison when, (p. 229) in speaking of the verb esse, he derives the three persons singular, of the present tense, esum, es, est, directly from the Sanscrit asmi, asi, asti; on the contrary, it seems to us more probable, that es was formed from esis, est from esit, by syncope, just as feris has been syncopated into fers, ferit into fert, and not contracted, as the author says, on page 231. The imperfect subjunctive, essem, Mr. Harrison forms from e-ss-em. We rather think that the process of its formation was eserem, esrem, essem, just as that of the infinitive was esere, esre, esse.

There is one more remark which suggests itself to us, and we have done. Mr. Harrison, although he has taken by far the greater number of passages, in illustration of the syntactical laws he explains, from Cicero, Livy, Cæsar, Horace and Virgil, has yet not always done so, for we meet not unfrequently with quotations from Plautus, Terence, Plinius, (Hist. Nat.) Seneca, Juvenal and other writers, who, classical though their style may be in many respects, yet should not be admitted into grammars designed to assist the student in acquiring a true insight into the construction of the Latin language, during its most flourishing period. The strictness of Cicero's language, in regard to grammar,* the entire absence of hurry and negligence in his style, his clear, logical mode of thinking, combined with the voluminousness and variety of his works, qualify him, more than any other author, to serve as the basis, and the only basis, on which our syntactical system of the Latin language ought to be founded, and it is only for purposes, such as marking the differences between the prose and poetical style of the Augustan period, that we would wish to see even Horace and Virgil admitted. It might, of course, occasionally be difficult. or impossible to find a suitable example for the illustration of a rule in Cicero; in such cases Cæsar, (de B. Gall,) Sallust, Livy, Plinius, (Epist.) and, by way of contrast, Tacitus, should be used; but, beyond them, scarcely any other prose writer. As to poets like Plautus, they ought to be excluded entirely. Were we to note down, in a school or college grammar, all the peculiarities of the style of Plautus, there would be no end to it, and the grammar would swell to a bulk which would materially impair its utility. For such authors, separate grammars ought to be written; or, if not grammars, at least dictionaries, similar to those which we possess in Greek, for Homer, Pindar, Eschylus, Sophocles, Polybius, etc.

We have made this last suggestion, from no desire merely to find fault with Mr. Harrison. In quoting occasionally from Plautus,

*See Ferdinand Hand, Lehrbuch des latein Stils, p. 51.

Seneca, etc., he has only done what Krueger, and perhaps all other grammarians before him, have done, and to a greater extent than he; yet it is a custom which, it appears to us, ought to be abandoned in toto, and, should Mr. Harrison, in the course of time, be inclined, and find leisure to give us the results of his studies, in the shape of a complete practical grammar-a task for which we think him well qualified--we hope that he will exclude from his pages every such passage, for illustration, alluded to above.

Anthon's Manual of Grecian Antiquities. (Harpers.) A companion volume to the Manual of Roman Antiquities, from the hands of the learned and indefatigable Professor. The materials are gathered from the best sources, and the work is at once ample and comprehensive.

Queechy. By ELIZABETH WETHERELL. (Putnam.) A very pleasing moral and domestic narrative, showing a considerable advance of the author beyond her previous work, which has yet acquired for her a very enviable reputation.

Surenne's French Dictionary. (Appleton.) An abridgment of the more copious and excellent Dictionary of the compiler, suitable for schools, and convenient for hand or pocket.

Thier's Consulate and Empire. (Carey & Hart.) The eleventh part of the cheap American edition of the excellent Life of Napoleon, by the celebrated French historian. The portion before us brings us to July, 1809.

Humboldt's Cosmos. (Harper & Brothers.) The fourth volume of this noble survey of the Universe, translated, like the preceding volumes, by Messrs, Otte and Paul.

Service Afloat and Ashore. (W. H. Moore & Co.) This interesting narrative, by LIEUT. SEMMES, U. S. N., has been noticed incidentally, in several of the articles contained in our pages, upon the progress of the war in Mexico. In these we have found occasion to differ frequently with our author, in respect to army opera tions, and in the estimate of the officers engaged actively in the We have now only to add that the author writes with skill and spirit, is a shrewd and thoughtful observer, and has given us a very interesting and agreeable narrative. His work is put forth in handsome style by the publishers, and is illustrated with maps and engravings.

war.