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Leaving, however, these now almost forgotten writers, whose wit and whose philosophy are alike tinged with a sombre hue, whose volumes have already or are destined soon to pass into oblivion; and, if we except Rabelais, interesting to none except those who are smitten with an antiquarian regard for that which is old and valueless; we find that Sterne has drawn no small supplies from a volume with which we are more familiar: 'Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.' This furnished him with his quotations, and enabled him to pass off his volumes as an evidence of laborious erudition. It is worthy of notice, on the authority of Scott, that Dr. Ferriar's essay instantly raised this book to double price in the bookmarket.'

There is perhaps no book existing more remarkable than The Anatomy of Melancholy.' The author seems too diffident to hazard an opinion on his subject unless fortified by authority; and no lawyer could more elaborately support his case by quoting from those learned in the law' than does Burton, to prove his simplest proposition. Quotation is heaped on quotation, while the author himself says nothing. All the literature of antiquity seems to lie before him like an opened volume; and he selects here and there an apposite passage, until we wonder at the magnitude of his labors who could peruse so many authors and collect their opinions into one harmonious whole. Yet he is not without ability of his own; and what he has given us in his own language, as the indication of his own reflections, makes us wish that he had trusted more to himself and paid less attention to the opinions of others.

Returning to Sterne: There is one passage in which he takes occasion to censure plagiarists; and in this, one would suppose, we might at least expect to find him giving us something original; that we should not find him condemning the crime of stealing in language which itself was stolen. Sterne says: Shall we forever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we forever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope? forever in the same track? forever at the same pace?'

Listen we now to old Burton: As apothecaries, we make new mixtures every day; we pour out of one vessel into another; and as those old Romans robbed all the cities of the world to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick choice flowers of their tilled gardens, to set out our own sterile plots.' And again : We weave the same web still; twist the same rope again and again.' Is not the gravity of the pilferer, as he assumes to be the owner of the article purloined, truly amusing? How he must have chuckled as he transcribed the passage! and how he must have counted on the unsuspecting innocence of the world, who would never draw the ancient folio of Burton from its imagined final resting-place, garnished with cob-webs and buried under dust, into which it was fast turning! Passage after passage of Burton shared the same fate; and ingeniously extracted from their former position, they are curiously inlaid into the pages of Sterne, challenging

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admiration for their appositeness, and to be deemed, if no Ferriar had arisen to detect the fraud, as his legitimate ornaments.

Though it would be entertaining to extract more largely from this book, yet we have doubtless given enough to satisfy the reader. Suffice it to say, that Bacon, Burnet, Blount, Montaigne and Bishop Hall, have in like manner given supplies. Many, very many of the passages in Sterne which are most to be admired, and which form no small part of the attractions of his works, either by their quaintness or their beauty, may be found in a form slightly different, with a word misplaced or a sentence transposed, in the pages of the authors named.

The book of Dr. Ferriar discusses the subject of Sterne's style and story with great ability and fairness, and leaves us impressed with the conviction that the Doctor was a gentleman of extensive and varied reading, and of elegant accomplishments.

The Illustrations of Sterne are the fruits of leisure hours devoted to literary pursuits; of idle hours not idly spent ;' and he has here accumulated overwhelming proof to disabuse the world of the error of attributing entire originality to Sterne. But he does not desire, while exposing this fallacy, to detract wholly from him that credit to which he is justly entitled. Our author contends not for victory, but for truth; and though ideas, words and sentences are borrowed, yet they are set anew, and shine with augmented lustre. The tender pathos which adorns Sterne's pages, ever fresh, and which will ever claim the tear of sympathy, was the outpouring of his own spirit, gushing from that slender vein of goodness which surrounding gloom concealed.'

His are Maria,'The Captive,''The Starling,' and the others, so known, so loved; his is that sentiment, so sweetly bidding us to rely upon our heavenly FATHER: God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.'

W. D.

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Taxes flowers are like the pleasures of the world.'- CYMBELINE.

WHERE a wild mountain torrent rush'd down to the vale, While the moon on its waters shone troubled and pale, And the dark stones beside it were wet with the spray, Which flash'd from the waves as they hurried away:

There bending in silence, the Tear Plant display'd
Its blossoms with emblems of sorrow array'd,
And seem'd, as the source of its being swept past,
To weep that its fountain was wasting so fast.

All clammy its leaves with the cold evening mist,
As lips in a lasting adieu which are kissed,

And its pendants that sadly and motionless hung
Were like drops which are shed when the spirit is wrung.

I gazed on the billows that danced in the light,
Then murmuring vanish'd in distance and night;
And musing on pleasures as brilliant and brief,
Thought that tear-plant at least not alone in its grief.

Niobe of streamlets! the current of life

For me has been mingled with anguish and strife;
Its gaudiest bubbles the soonest were o'er,

And a mourner I stand on its desolate shore.

Return, thou swift waters! and yield me again
The brow and the spirit unchasten'd by pain!
Restore from thy vortex one promise or joy,

Which I've cast on thy breakers, and seen thee destroy!

Where now are the friendships, unsought and sincere, And the loves unrepress'd by the spectre of fear? Where the glimpses of fortune, the visions of fame, That like gleams from the arbors of revelry came?

I've turned from the altar where trembled the bride,
Of the fair and the gallant the envy and pride;
And saw on thy surges, relentlessly tossed,
The garlands we gave her, all scatter'd and lost.

I've trod the saloon where the chandelier flung
The glory of noon o'er the happy and young;
But its blaze was extinguished, the music no more,
And the tracks of the dancers were gone from the floor.

A pinnace was launched on thy bosom as gay
As ever did glow with the gilding of day;

'T was ribbed with the rain-bow, mirth gave it a gale,
And Hope her blue mantle exposed for a sail.

Is that the proud cruiser? - that wind-beaten bark
Now floundering on with her binnacle dark?
Is that the blithe voyager, who sullenly braves
By his half broken tiller, the perilous waves?

Stern rapids dash onward, and waft from our sight
These relics of all that is pleasing and bright;
Thy glittering trophies but waken regret,
Away with thy ruins, and let us forget.

New-Haven, Oct., 1847.

THOUGHTS ON MANLY EDUCATION.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

WHAT is a manly education? How may it be acquired? And for what ends? These are the points now to be discussed.

FIRST. What is a manly education? Milton said: 'I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously, all the offices both private and public, of peace and war.' This is comprehensive, and as a general definition, is as good as any that can be given.

To educate is to develope; not to make one man all Latin, another all Mathematics; it is to unfold a man indeed, himself all developed. A pupil is educated when he is made a hero in his own individuality; a soul powerful in acts, fruitful in grand results; an adult in intellect, a rational creature well trained, who will, who can, who does.

One of the renowned philosophers of antiquity beautifully said of the intellectual faculties, 'I call them not mine but me. It is these which make the man; which are the man.' Now that system of education which most effectually reaches the latent powers of mankind, and brings them out in vigorous discipline, is the most manly and the best. Men are valuable, not in proportion to what they know but to what they can do. Every youth has a can do in him. It is the office of education to reach that, and impart to it the potency of practical exercise. The versatile pen, the delicate pencil, the creative chisel, and the eloquent tongue seem wonderful to one contemplating their facility and power. But every thing about them is perfectly simple and easy to him who possesses and has cultivated his own can do.

SECONDLY. Let us inquire more minutely into the process by which a manly education is to be attained. How many young men,' said Coleridge,' are anxiously and expensively be-schoolmastered,

be-tutored, be-lectured, any thing but educated; who have received arms and ammunition, instead of skill, strength and courage; varnished rather than polished; perilously over-civilized, and most pitiably uncultivated. And all from inattention to the method dictated by nature herself, to the simple truth, that as the forms of all organized existence, so must all true and living knowledge, proceed from within; that it may be trained, supported, fed, excited, but can never be infused nor impressed.’

This is a luminous statement of what we should never forget. We are not to shape the mind by external pressure, paint it over with artificial hues, or mechanize its powers; but to start its germs by genial teaching, and prompt its natural and majestic growth from the centre outward, as the acorn expands into an oak. The main thing is to awaken the principle and method of self-development, not so much by conveying information into the mind as to invigorate in it the power of sending thought out. The human soul is not a mere dépôt, a passive receptacle for all sorts of trumpery that may therein be stowed by the arbitrary will of some mental baggagemaster; but it is a living and self-producing agent, which is to be carefully placed in such relations to appropriate aliment as to excite the latent original power that craves only such knowledge as it can appropriate to itself, and can re-produce in shapes and excellence all its own. Now to attain this end, due attention must be paid to our physical, mental and moral culture.

First of all, good heed must be given to the education of the body; a kind of cultivation as imperious as any other, since the body is as susceptible of improvement as the mind. Our person, with all its complicated and diversified faculties, physical and mental, is an unit, and does not admit of being developed in fragments. Man must grow up harmoniously, if he would rise to usefulness, with simultaneous expansion in trunk, branch and foliage, as grows a tree; the sap of immortal energy must circulate without hindrance in every fibre, maturing fruits perennial and divine.

Two laws are manifest in the constitution of our nature, a due regard to which cannot but conduce to our welfare and elevate our conceptions of the Supreme BEING. In the first place, in proportion as the physical nature of a man is healthfully developed by suitable discipline, winning the greatest vigor of limb, and the greatest acuteness of sense, he will derive important aids to the intellect and moral powers from the perfections of his outward frame. Moreover, by a delightful reaction, the mind, in proportion as it is invigorated and beautified, gives strength and elegance to the body, and enlarges the sphere of action and enjoyment. These laws have been recognized and observed by the best educators of the world. At Athens, the gymnasia became temples of the Graces. They were not merely places of exercise for the young, but drew to their halls, porticoes, baths, and groves, the most distinguished votaries of every art and science. The scenes of this kind most celebrated, were the Academy where Plato taught, the Lyceum where Aristotle lectured, and the Kynosargy. In these the refined Greek could gratify his fondness

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