Chronology treats of the computation of time and the dates of important events: it is of two kinds-astronomical and historical. Astronomical chronology treats of the computation of time; historical chronology, of the dates of important events. Historical chronology is divided into ancient, medieval, and modern.

Ancient chronology extends from the Creation, B. C. 4004, to the Fall of Rome, A. D. 476, a period of 4480 years. Medieval chronology extends from A. D. 476, to the Discovery of America in 1492, a period of 1016 years. Modern chronology extends from 1492 to the present time, a period of 361 years.

Ancient chronology is divided into three great portions by the Deluge and the Advent of the Saviour. They are denominated :

I. Antediluvian ages, extending from the Creation to the Deluge, A. M. 1656, a period of 1656 years.

II. Postdiluvian ages, extending from the Deluge to the coming of Christ, A. M. 4004, a period of 2348 years.

III. Post-advent ages, extending from the Advent to the Fall of Rome, A. D. 476, a period of 476 years.

The Antediluvian ages are not subdivided into periods.

The Postdiluvian ages are divisible into eight periods:

1. From the Deluge, B. C. 2348, to the Call of Abraham, B. C. 1921, a period of 427 years.

2. From 1921 to the Exodus of the Israelites, B. C. 1491, 430 years.

3. From 1491 to the Building of the Temple, B. C. 1004, 488 years.

4. From 1004 to the Founding of Rome, B. C. 752, 252 years. 5. From 752 to the Battle of Marathon, B. C. 490, 262 years. 6. From 490 to the Reign of Alexander, B. C. 336, 154 years. 7. From 336 to the Conquest of Carthage and Greece, B. C. 146, 190 years.

8. From 146 to the Birth of Christ, a period of 146 years.

The Post-advent ages are divided into two periods:

1. From the Advent to the Reign of Constantine, A. D. 306, 306 years.

2. From 306 to the Fall of Rome, A. D. 476, 170 years.
Medieval chronology is divided into five periods:

1. From A. D. 476 to the Hegira, or Flight of Mahomet, A. D. 622, 146 years.

2. From 622 to the Crowning of Charlemagne, A. D. 800, 178 years.

3. From 800 to the Landing of William the Conqueror, 1066, 266

years.

4. From 1066 to the Overthrow of the Saracens, 1258, 192 years. 5. From 1258 to the Discovery of America, 1492, 234 years. Modern chronology is divided into five periods:

1. From 1492 to the Abdication of Charles V., A. D. 1556, 64 years.

2. From 1556 to the Restoration of Charles II., 1660, 104 years. 3. From 1660 to the Declaration of Independence, 1776, 116 years. 4. From 1776 to the Fall of Bonaparte, 1815, 39 years. 5. From the Fall of Bonaparte, 1815, to the present time.

A. D. L.

LITERARY.

Literary Sketches and Criticisms.

No. II.

HAZLITT AND HIS WORKS.

This is one of those choice spirits of the English literature of the nineteenth century, with whom Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, are associated, forming a brilliant galaxy of contemporary genius. These were all first associated as youthful friends, and for a time worked together with sympathetic and emulating ardor; but circumstances soon changed their mingled currents into many.

Hazlitt commenced with passionate ardor the life of an artist. But he could realize so little of his aspirations and ideal in the art of painting, that he gave up the practical part, but always cherished that studious and discriminating taste that placed him among the first of connoisseurs and critics. He then took up the pen of an author, and found the same difficulty here; but he thought it not as insuperable. Whatever difficulties he may have had at first,-and he tells us they were great, he certainly acquired a mastery, a force, and a precision of style, not often to be met with. There is a freshness, a directness, an earnestness about his writing, that carries away your sympathy even when it fails to convince your mind.

He was in many respects a deeply disappointed man. His first effort to realize what lay within him was a failure; and in his subsequent

career he had to overcome a strong and systematic opposition, of which he felt the bitterness as well as the stimulus. We rarely meet with one who looks with such fond regret upon the days of his boyhood and youth, when, as he says, an "invisible glory ever attended him." This spirit of disappointment gives, now and then, a caustic bitterness to his criticism, of which the luckless victim is not at all deserving. But, in general, his criticism is of the most masterly and discriminating kind. Such writers as he and Macaulay and Carlyle have changed the style of criticism, from being an indiscriminate abuse or fulsome praise, into a noble and independent art, in which the writer, with free scope to original thought and deep research, exhibits the subject as well as the book, and makes the first rather than the latter the text of his remark.

His mind felt early the enthusiastic impulse of the French Revolution, and remaining ever true to that impulse, he was the most uncompromising hater of all the old abuses that hung around the fabric of English liberty. He lived to see many of those ideas which he at first defended, under contempt and bitter opposition, become at last popular and predominant; and those Reviews, that tried to lash him down, become at last the most powerful vehicles of his own ideas. It would be an unsatisfactory task to notice, with a few passing remarks, his numerous works, and I can not now notice them all. I shall therefore select two or three, and let them serve as specimens of the rich entertainment which those who can get access to the whole will find.

HAZLITT'S ESSAYS.-The vigorous and thoughtful mind of Hazlitt has here condensed itself, to throw its light upon some of the most difficult subjects in morals, politics, and social improvement. There is no affectation of pointed antithesis and graceful periods, but, in a strong and chastened style, he strikes out thoughts that need no meretricious ornaments to set them off.

He abounds in that sententious and condensed style, which best serves to convey weighty thought. A few extracts will serve to illustrate the man and his style of thinking:

"Neither a single bad action, nor a single bad habit, ought to condemn a man, for he may himself hate the one, and be trying to get rid of the other all his life."

"I would reject the thought, that if Religion is not true, there is no difference between mankind and the brutes. The very power of conceiving the ideas of religion, makes a great and a happy difference."

"A man should stand in awe of his prejudices. Prejudice is an

opinion or feeling, not for which there is no reason, but for which we can render none. The feeling or conviction of truth is one, the power of vindicating it another. Most of our opinions are a mixture of reason and prejudice."

"Men soon acquire talents for offices of trust and importance; the difficulty is to rise to a high station, not to fill it."

"The measure of a man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws, nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices to restrain him."

"There is some virtue in almost every vice except hypocrisy, and even that is a compliment to virtue."

"It is by the use of reason, in metaphysical researches, that men become excellently wise, or excellently foolish."

HAZLITT'S CRITICISMS ON ART.-A pure and elevated taste, a noble enthusiasm, and a highly cultivated mind, are here set off with the finest graces of style. Next to seeing those noble products of art themselves, it is the greatest gratification to hear such lively and masterly descriptions of them. They stand before us in the freshness of their immortal youth; we are captivated with their ideal beauties; and, carried away by the enthusiasm of the writer, we abandon ourselves to the most delightful impressions, as if of their real presence. As he stands amidst those noble products of the painter's genius, thus does he apostrophize his favorite theme: "O, art, lovely art! Balm of hurt minds, time's treasurer, the unsullied mirror of the mind of man! Thee we invoke and not in vain, for here we find thee retired in the plenitude of thy power. The walls are dark with beauty, they frown severest grace. We are abstracted to another sphere, we breathe Empyrean air. Here is the mind's true home. The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created." He visits all those splendid collections of the Italian, the Flemish and the Spanish schools, of which conquest and wealth have given England such a rich possession, and brings before our "mind's eye" the "rarest jewels in the crown of art," with all the vividness of poetic feeling and the truthfulness of high esthetic taste. Take this description of the "Diana and Acteon," by Titian: "There is a charm in this picture which no words can convey. The effect is like a divine piece of music, or rises on the senses like an exhalation of rich distilled perfumes. In the figures, in the landscape, in the water, in the sky, there are tones and colors scattered with a profuse but unerring hand, dazzling with their

force, but blended together in a woof like that of Iris-tints of flesh color, as if you saw the blood circling beneath the pearly skin, clouds empurpled with suns, hills steeped in azure skies, trees turning to a mellow brown, water translucent that you see the shadows and the feet of the naked nymphs therein. There stands the indignant, queen-like figure of Diana. Acteon stands a bold, rough hunter in the early ages, who is now struck with surprise, and abashed with beauty. A mischievous looking girl is dragging the culprit forward. The landscape canopies the scene with a sort of proud, disdainful consciousness. The trees nod to it, and the hills at a distance roll in a sea of color."

Having gone through a most splendid array of these productions of the best masters to be found in the world, in which he makes us acquainted with the peculiar characteristics and excellencies that belong to each, there follows an essay on the fine arts in general, embracing sculpture and painting. Here the severe and chastened taste and profound observation of the author, appear no less conspicuous than his enthusiasm and descriptive power before. He enters into a most profound analysis of what constitutes the true principles of art-discusses esthetical laws, and lays down with precision, and great reach of thought, the just criterion of the beautiful and the true in art. In a few terse but luminous remarks on each, he gives us the best description of the characteristics of the different schools of painting that is to be found in the same compass: Michael Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Guido, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, N. Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Murillo, Salvator Rosa, Hogarth, Reynolds, and many others, distinguished in art;-" a gorgeous train" pass in review, and each receives his meed of praise, while the reader feels he never will forget their faces.

On a review of the history of the fine arts, one cannot but be struck with this that the arts are of humble growth and station. They are the product of labor and self-denial. They have their seat in the heart of man and in his imagination; they have their triumphs there. Indeed, patronage and works deserving patronage rarely exist together; for it is only when the arts have attracted public esteem, and reflect credit on the patron, that they receive his flattering support. They seem also to have their youth, their manhood and old age, and to be removed from the law of progressive improvement, that governs the mechanical arts.

Perhaps, says the author, the only public patronage which was ever really useful to the arts, or really worthy of them, was that which they