support any which has not, in their experience, a close connection with the necessities of their daily life. The training of men to be wise and virtuous needs not, so much as we commonly suppose, high intellectual culture, and depends far more on influences and lessons of another kind. To train men to discharge faithfully and well their political duties, to be truly good citizens under a government so free as ours, is a far more difficult question. Let the problem be, so to educate the citizen that, whenever he is called to vote, he shall vote rightly. Now let it be considered what complex and momentous questions are decided at the polls—the tariff, internal improvements, the sub-treasury, a national bank, (for though not formally, yet really, such questions are involved in the election of public officers,) grave questions of public police, alterations in our constitution, etc. Let it be considered, what maturity of judgment, what experience in affairs, what varied and minute knowledge of the interests and business of men, what acquaintance with the past, what far-reaching forecast, are needed to enable one to decide intelligently and rightly of matters so complex and weighty. Be it remembered, too, that in public affairs a changeful policy is the worst of all policies, and that a principle once settled, to be good for anything, must be adhered to. Here we have some of the elements which make it a difficult problem, how to give every man who shall be called on to vote, an education that shall fit him for the honest and wise discharge of that immense trust. We confess that our wisdom is utterly insufficient here; and after having examined most of the schemes which have been broached on the subject, we are as much at a loss as ever. The system of common schools tends towards this result; but alone it is inadequate, and can never reach it. It now takes only the first steps; nor can it, so far as we can see, however costly may be its provisions, however judicious its arrangements, however constant and energetic its operation, ever bring up the body of the people to that measure of intelligence and virtue, which the theory of our government requires or is supposed to require of them. Again, in relation to the persons who are to enjoy the advantages of this system. Leaving out of view the few who receive there that culture, which, carried on elsewhere to its perfection, may give them a place among those of whom the world shall boast, it was designed for the body of the people, to make them wise in their daily duties, and useful in their appointed sphere. The state owes a paternal regard to this, its numerous family, and is false to them and to itself, if it does not provide, as far as it may, for their due intelligence, virtue, and happiness. Their virtue secures its purity; their happiness is its happiness. But it needs no argument to show that not all of them are to be learned, and wise, and great. The lot of most men is one of daily toil. The original curse is yet on man and on the earth; and happy is he who may rise to labor, and lie down to repose in calm security, and, like the oak that has sheltered him, grow up and die on the spot where he was born. For the uses of such was the common school primarily designed. To their use let it be consecrated, nor perverted by an ambitious aiming at somewhat higher, that is visionary if not dangerous. We have not intended to speak slightingly of common schools, or disrespectfully of the labors of those who are earnest in that cause. The cause is worthy of the most strenuous efforts of the best men. No substitute for it has been found, or can be found. We affirm only, that in the education of the people, the common school is not all in all; that it is not designed to communicate all knowledge, or prepare men for every duty: that as its value is beyond estimation in its lowly sphere, so an undue elevation of it will render it useless and destroy it. 4. The Philosophy of History. In a Course of Lectures by FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL. With a Memoir of the Author, by JAMES BURTON ROBERTSON, Esq. New York: 1841. D. Appleton and Co. 2 vols. "HISTORY Constitutes the fourth Revelation of God." This is the lofty proposition upon which Schlegel builds his historic speculations, and to demonstrate it forms his bold attempt. To analyze this his demonstration, and exhibit in it what we deem both true and false, is a labor for which we have here neither leisure nor room. We deem it, however, a high and needful question for the American student; and at some fitter time may give it a place in our more critical columns. The main object of our present notice is but to introduce favorably to the American public, the reprint of these lectures from the press of the Appletons - a publishing house, whose liberal enterprize has of late added many solid works to our domestic stock. We notice, too, with pleasure, the improving style of execution in which their works are brought forth, as seen recently in the "Sacra Privata" of Wilson; "Bishop Patrick's Prayers," etc. We love, in truth, to see exhibited, as in the titlepage of the volumes before us, even the Aldine " Monogram," with its symbolic dolphin and mystic anchor; and only wish we could see it, among other improvements, on paper of a firmer tex"Cotton bags" play a sufficiently important part already in the commercial and political relations of our country - from the hands of the scholar and the shelves of his library we would they were in toto excluded. To make books cheap is not necessarily to make knowledge easy-for with every fall in price comes, we must ture. remember, a diminished estimate on the part of the purchaser, until at length, when "dog cheap," books are too apt to receive “dog treatment," and be kicked about accordingly. This, we say, is a natural, necessary result; and one, certainly, that favors not good learning. In proportion, too, as the American public begins to demand "good" books, it demands also "good" editions, in order that the worthy jewel may be in a worthy casket. For the purposes, too, of education, a few solid thinking books, perused and reperused, is, we all know, the only efficient means to awaken thought and educe talent in the young; and this presupposes a solid and enduring, as well as attractive form in the book itself. For ourselves, at least, we are well satisfied that success will attend the publisher who first acts upon this principle; and, in addition to establishing a reputation that will flow back in profit, that it will bring to him the further comfort of thinking that he is concurring to check the greatest intellectual disease of our age, generation, and country—that is, superficial reading. The work before us, as one of those solid thinking works, we hail with pleasure in the respectable form here given to it. Its reputation, however, is one we think established from the first rather on the celebrity of its author than with us at least on critical inquiry, and we are far from regarding it as his ablest work, either in theory or execution. His oriental lectures we hold to be his first in merit. His theory here we deem an over-strained one, giving an air of religious dogmatism to what may and should be stated, as Miller in his Philosophy of History has done it, in the clear light of the reflective understanding. "To vindicate the ways of God to man," is indeed a high and holy theme; but we must still remember, it is a dark drama, except so far as God himself has chosen to raise the curtain, so that the uninspired critic who pretends to see clearly into it, we may be well satisfied, sees falsely. "Celui qui voit tout en Dieu, Nor is the execution of it to be wholly commended. Schlegel's style is an involved one generally, and occasionally to that degree, above all in the present work, as to cause no small obscurity; an error which is further added to by an imaginative or rather rhetorical exaggeration of speech, equally unfavorable to simplicity and precision. Such was our feeling on reading the work when it first came out some years since, and it is an impression renewed and strengthened by a fresh perusal now. One further caution, too, we feel it our duty to add: his zeal for the church of Rome, the more ardent as being that of a proselyte from the Lutheran faith, shines forth often in the present work in a manner as little creditable to him as a philosophic thinker, as it is accordant with the views of such as count not with him the Church of Rome to be the one Cath olic and Apostolic Mother of Christendom." His praise of the Jesuits, pp. 212, 213, Vol. II.-his reference, p. 87 in the same volume, to Romish miracles—" holy hermits able to command the elements of nature and the savage beasts of the desert;" his sneers at what he terms "the truly barbarous era of the Reformation," p. 216-these, and many such phrases smack a little too much for us of the NEW CRUSADE, in which Austria is well known to take the lead, of the Church of Rome against all dissenters from her pale. But the mention of this reminds us personally of the feeling entertained towards Frederick Von Schlegel throughout Protestant Germany, after his defection to Austria. In answer to an inquiry made by us, in the course of conversation with Professor Schlosser, of Heidelberg, shortly after that event, of the whereabouts of the Schlegels, the Professor, after answering us at large touching William, added—“ Quant à Frederick, il est mort." "Dead!" was the reply; "I had not heard of it." "Oui, vraiment; il est mort," he rejoined: "il est allé en Autriche-nous y avons écrit son épitaphe." As to ourselves, we are content to hold him not dead, but blind-for such adhesion to the Papal yoke. It augurs, at least, not well for his clear-sightedness in history. In thus qualifying, as above, our praises of Schlegel, we are aware that we run counter to high authority. We stand, however, upon our rights as independent critics, as well as upon our duties as conscientious ones; and having uttered no hasty judgment in this case- -nor, as we truly think, a prejudiced one-shall stand ready at all times, by ample analysis, to justify it. 5. Religion in its relation to the Present Life; in a Series of Lectures delivered before the Young Men's Association of Utica, by A. B. Johnson, and published at their request. New York. Harpers. 1841. 12mo. pp. 180. We are sorry we cannot concur with the Young Men's Association at Utica in their flattering request to the author of these lectures. We deem them too crude to pass into that permanent form which art gives to the winged words of the speaker. As lectures, they doubtless (for we have the proof) were successful; as a critical production, they as doubtless will not be. Setting aside their flippant familiar style, they labor under a deeper want of soundness in the principles of the teaching, and the knowledge of the thing taught. It is, in short, an argument above the author's powers, or at any rate beyond his acquisitions, inasmuch as it lay beyond his professional duties. The "lay preacher" will ever be found, we think, to secularize religion, therefore we care not to 66 NO. XVI.-VOL. VIII. hear him preach it to debase it from its spiritual character-to convert it from a heavenly instrument "for the salvation of souls" into a worldly and utilitarian scheme for the promotion of man's present interests. It is sufficient to add that such (however unintended) is the actual teaching of the author before us. His very foundation must be esteemed infidel. Religion has no "bearing upon the present life," except as derived from what it teaches of the life to come; and to separate, as he thoughtlessly does, the teaching of the Bible from its inspiration, is the very signal for its overthrow. What shall we say to such religious teaching as this? -"Many people deem the whole merit of the Bible dependent on the question of its divinity, but if my estimate of its tenets be correct, the Bible, whether human or divine, (though human I think it cannot be,) is precisely such a guide as our intellect needs." p. 169. All we do say is this,- Behold the folly of men stepping out of their profession to teach that which they have never learned. 6. Transactions of the Apollo Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in the United States, for the year 1840. ALTHOUGH it requires of us to deviate somewhat from our ordinary course, to take notice of the above report, its subject, in our view, is one of such great importance as fully to justify the deviation. In nothing connected with intellectual cultivation are we so far in the rear, as in attention to the fine arts, and hence we are bound to bestow especial consideration upon every plan for advancing them. If they are ever to be generously fostered in our country, it will be done, we think, by associated efforts, and not by private patronage; there is little probability that wealth and taste for so refined a pleasure will be found united in a sufficient number of individuals, to secure to them the needed encouragement. Opulence seeks gratification in almost everything else, in preference to objects of art-splendid houses, rich furniture, fine equipages, choice wines, and the like delights of sense, are of far greater value in common estimation, than any to be derived from the cultivation of taste. The slightest observation of the condition of things in this respect, in our great capitals, will satisfy any one of the correctness of this remark. But were it otherwise, and private patronage of the arts ever so great, it would not lessen the necessity of public institutions to promote them; however numerous may be the works of art in the possession of individuals, unless there are open galleries and exhibitions, the influence on public taste is in a great measure lost, for the people at large have no access to private collections. We have thus two strong points in favor of associa |