All your unhappiness has arisen from a love and pursuit of excellence. Disappointed in the pursuit of union with real or supposed excellence of a limited sort, you sought refuge in the contemplation of the Supreme Excellence. But by the conflict of both your mind was torn in pieces; your understanding was unable to resist the force of your powerful moral feelings. The remedy is prescribed by the plainest maxims of duty. You must act! Inactive contemplation is a dangerous condition for minds of profound moral sensibility. We are not to dream away our lives in the contemplation of distant or imaginary perfection. We must only contemplate perfection enough to ennoble our natures, but not to make us dissatisfied and disgusted with (our own) faint approaches to it."

An Exposition of the Apocalypse. By DAVID N. LORD. New York: Harper & Brothers.

No part of the Scriptures has elicited more tomes of laborious writing than the "Revelations" of St. John. Most of these have been as entirely fruitless as the Arabic and black letter treatises on Astrology, except, perhaps, so far as they may have ministered to a reverence for the inscrutable things of Divinity. Some of them, we fear indeed, have but ministered to irreverence, from too bold a wrangling about sacred prophecies. If they were not, however, intended to be reasoned about, Heaven would surely never have presented them to us. The attempt to explain them is right enough; the manner of it only is to be guarded. The author of the present large volume has approached the subject, not only with evident learning, and clearness and temper of argument, but with a due respect, in tone, for what is due to the character of their Dark Reveal

ings," and with a sufficient regard for what

others have said before him. We have

never seen, indeed, a treatise on this subject so replete with the opinions of all who have written about it. Aside, therefore, from the value of the author's own opinions, the book has merit as the exponent of the conclusions of so many previous writers.

The Iliad of Homer, from the text of Wolf, with English notes. By C. C. FELTON ELIOT, Professor of Greek in Harvard University. New and revised edition. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1847.

This edition is a great advance upon its predecessors, but still leaves much to be desired. Mr. Felton plays at Greek: he does not write about it like a man who has studied it, or who expects his readers to study it.

The designs of Flaxman, beautiful in themselves, are altogether out of place in a work of this sort, and the notes are conceived in a spirit of aesthetic illustration, rather than critical scholarship. Difficult words and passages are sometimes slurred over; sometimes the opinion of one commentator (not always the best) is implicitly followed sometimes the views of several are repeated without any attempt to discriminate between them. By way of compensation there is much superfluous flourishing upon ordinary beauty of this or that passage, as if we could epithets, and continual eulogiums upon the not see Homer's sun, without Mr. Felton's lamp. To any man who has the rudiments of ordinary taste and perception, these dilettante outbreaks of admiration are displeasing; to a boy they are either tiresome or really injurious, for there is no more fruitful source of bad taste, than an early habit of admiring by rule. A youth can find out Homer's beauties for himself, as soon as he is able to construe the poet-or if he is not, it will do him no good to tell him that such and such passages are beautiful. Still we are, on the whole, pleased with this edition, as it gives evidence that the Boston editors are waking up a little to the progress of scholarship, and beginning to discard the antediluvian models of commentators, they have so long followed. That very interesting and valuable work, Grote's Greece, has been laid under contribution for the preface, and a comparison of editions has more than half convinced us, that the labors of Professor Anthon, (whom our New England friends affect to despise-and we do not ourselves admire ten pages of notes for one of text)-have not been altogether unsuggestive to Mr. Felton on the present occasion.

The Oratorical French Teacher; or, a new method of learning to read, write, and speak the French Language. By Prof. NORMAN PINNEY, A.M. Hartford, Robins & Smith; Huntington & Savage, New York, 1847.

This volume comprises 375 pages, large 12mo., and presents an entire system of by step, through the process of constructgrammar, while the pupil is carried, step ing sentences, till the language is supposed to be thoroughly learned. The language is kindred to that of OLLENDORF and MANESCA, but, in the author's opinion, much more perfect. "His lessons for conversation, he says, are progressive and systemelements of the language, and advance, by atic. They commence with the simplest ing equally at a knowledge of the words of an easy process, to the more difficult, aimthe language and of its principles, and to a familiarity with its use in actual conversation." So far as we have been able to examine it, he has adhered to this plan throughout. He commences with the noun, or the names of things, and proceeds to make sentences, first with these and the article-then, by adding, one by

one, the adjective, pronoun and verb, till he has gone through with all the forms of the latter, its moods and irregularities. Simple forms of the verb, singular and plural, are given in English with the corresponding French, and these verbs are incoporated into the exercises which follow, in making English into French. He gives the idioms of the language separately, with exercises on each. The work contains about one hundred and fifty lessons, and we notice, from valuable exercises, adapted specially to the wants of mercantile houses in this country, who have business with houses where the French language is used. The author supplies what he considers radical defects in OLLENDORF and MANESCA; and his book will, we doubt not, aid in the advancement of sound teaching.

The teacher's profession should be regarded as one no less entitled to the rank of a science than that of Medicine, Law, or Divinity. The intellectual resources and discipline which it demands are not less. To the first two it is superior, and nearly allied to, and scarcely below, the last, in its high moral relations. To their rank it is rapidly advancing, and we hail the day as an auspicious one for our country, when, over its entire territory, we shall have institutions as securely established, and as well endowed, for this as for those professions. A spirit of inquiry is abroad, and in all our elementary, as well as higher schools, better methods of teaching have been, and are being adopted. The object here is not merely to store the mind and systematize its knowledge, but to discipline it, to train the intellect and to develope the moral nature in harmony, the one with the other. The capacity of the young mind, with regard to the induction which is, or is not, adapted to it, is studied-and the amount of mental aliment, suited to its age, is regarded not less than the quality. If our teachers understand thoroughly the science of teaching, the laws of mind, and the best method of leading each mind into all the subjects and branches taught in our schools and seminaries, then the character of the textbook were less important. But in elevating the character of the teacher, the textbook, in the present state of our advancement, becomes an important guide-it is to the majority a vade mecum, to hint to them the true way of unfolding to their pupil the subject of which it treats. The general plan of the text-book, thereforethe details of its arrangement, and the style in which it is written-is a matter of moment. In no department has there, heretofore, been less system, or less philosophy incorporated into the method of studying than in the languages. But the plan adopted in this work, whether Manes

ca, Ollendorf, or Pinney, may claim its best characteristics, we think a sound one. It is the most natural method, and one by which the pupil can more readily acquire a perfect knowledge of the elements of the language than any which has before been given to the public.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Tears on the Diadem; or the Crown and the Cloister. By MRS. ANNE H. DORSAY. New York: Edward Dunnigan.

The Elder's House; or the Three Con verts. New York: Edward Dunnigan. Two small books, designed, under a garb of simple and attractive fiction, to inculcate the tenets of the Romish Faith. The effort is not a great one-but it is probably greater than will be its success.

The Lives of Christopher Columbus, the Discoverer of America, and Americus Vespucius the Florentine. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Beauties of English History. Edited by J. FROST, L.L.D. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This gentleman, like some others among us, appears to have been brought into the world to get up books. This, we believe, is about the twentieth speculation of the kind issued under his auspices. It is fortunate on

his account, that the nation "has boys in

it."

Young Churchman's Miscellany. New York: published for the Editor, Rev. J. A. SPENCER.

Twenty-six years of the life of an attor and manager; interspersed with sketches, anecdotes and opinions of the professional merits of the most cele brated actors and actresses of our day. By FRANCIS COURTNEY WEMYSS. New York: Burgess, Stringer & Co.

A singular medley, by a prejudiced egotist, but containing many pleasant scraps of infor mation, respecting the chief persons who have figured on the fictitious stage for the last twenty years. It falls infinitely short of such a book as might be made up on this field.

The Lives of Vasco Nunez De Balboa, the Discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, Hernando Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, and Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The True Believer; his Character, Du ty, and Privileges, elucidated in a Series of Discourses. By Rev. Asa MAHAN; President of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, Oberlin, Ohio. New York: Harper & Brothers.