times, occupy common ground, they differ widely in many respects.

So it is also with many other words; e. g. dé and yάo, etc. So is it, too, with many nouns, verbs, and adjectives. In some one of their meanings they become synonymous with some other words; in other meanings they are widely discrepant. If you ask, how then can they be distinguished? I answer, by the tenor of the discourse and the nature of the case where they are employed.

I can therefore imagine no serious difficulty in the way of the supposition that has been made, viz., that the Hebrew forms of tenses could be employed, as occasion required, in every sense as it regards the expression of time.

The very fact that the Hebrew had so few forms of tense, obliged him thus to do. Just as the imperfect verbs of the Greek obliged him to use the Imperfect, or the Perfect, or the Aorist, as the case might be, for all the Praeterites; and the second Future Middle for all the active Futures. Was his discourse rendered obscure by this? I trust not.

Our subject should not be dismissed, however, without some remarks on that "Proteus" Vav, which so commonly designates a Praeterite sense by a Future form, and gives to the Praeter a Future sense.

The common theory in respect to the prefixed to the Future, is detailed in all the recent Grammars. The substance of it is, that this is a relic of to be, and that the Future is in reality constituted, when is prefixed, by two forms of verbs; so that pop. i. e. it was [that] he would kill.

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In respect to the Vav before the Praeter, this origin is not pretended by Gesenius and others who follow him. Here is the proper conjunction; while still a change is wrought in the verb, both as to the place of its tone, and as to the time which it designates.

Ewald, as stated above on p. 147, derives the of the Future relative from Still neither this method, nor that of Gesenius, accounts for all the phenomena. When Gesenius refers us to the kindred languages (Lehrgeb. p. 293), viz. the Syriac and Arabic, for examples of Futures with a Praeterite sense formed by the help of the verb to be, he does not account for all the difficulty of the matter in Hebrew. How comes it, I ask, that Vav before both the Praeter and Future always bears the signification of and, or at any rate of the Hebrew con

junction? There is no difference, moreover, in this respect between the Praeterite and the Future, in regard to the Vav before them. But in the kindred languages, the verb to be does not, when employed in a composite tense, convey a copulative meaning. The analogy then fails here, in an essential point.

I am inclined therefore to the opinion, that neither Ġesenius nor Ewald has hit upon the true theory. I must, on the whole, regard as a copulative, both before the Praeter and the Future. And this I must believe, with my present views, notwithstanding the difference in punctuation or vowels. Before the Praeter, the first letter of which has a broad vowel belonging to it, there is no occasion usually to alter the Sheva under copula. Before the Future the case is different. Many Futures begin with a Sheva under the Praeformatives, e. g. in Piel and Pual. In others the vowel is only factitious, and in Kal, etc., it is short Hhireq which is not well adapted to follow Vav prefix with Sheva. Here then the Vav adapts its punctuation to the nature of the case, as prescribed by the laws of euphony. Nor is this strange. Before Gutturals with composite Sheva, copula ? takes the corresponding short vowel, as a. Before a letter which must retain a Sheva vocal, copula goes into 1. Why not then, as euphony would demand, suppose that copula before the or the of the Future, goes into 1, i. è. Vav with Pattahh and Daghesh, merely to facilitate the pronunciation of these two very feeble letters, which so often are thrown together? I do not vouch for the certainty of this; but when we consider that the meaning (and) is retained in all such uses of the Vav, both before the Praeter and the Future, I can account for this in no satisfactory way, without supposing the Vav to be a copula in all these cases.

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If any one should be disposed to urge the difficulty of the Daghesh forte which appears after Vav in the Future, I would ask him, whether he is a stranger to the frequent employment of Daghesh forte euphonic in the Hebrew language.

Be this speculation however as it may, whether well or ill grounded, the fact of an alteration of tense in the Praeter and Future by means of Vav, lies wide and broad, and plain to our view, over the whole extent of the Hebrew Scriptures. In this simple and easy way did the Hebrew increase the variety of his forms of verbs-a variety with which declension would not furnish him. In this way, viz. by choosing between four different forms for a past tense, and four for a future one, he could main

tain a greater variety in the mode of expressing the past or the future, than either we, or even the Geeeks, have ever been able to reach.

Let me not be understood to say, that all these forms are employed promiscuously or ad libitum. By no means. Delicacy and propriety of expression did not at all admit of this; nor can I doubt in the least, that there was some definite reason in the mind of the Hebrew, whenever he employed one form rather than another, arising either out of the agreeableness of variety, or out of the circumstances of the case, the mode and form of the expression, the antecedence of adverbs, subjects to verbs, qualifying clauses, particles, or something of the like nature, which always rendered it a matter of propriety and elegance to choose this and refuse that. But how far these matters went, and where they reached the metes and bounds which limited good usage, has not yet been sufficiently investigated, certainly not disclosed. Ewald has given some fine hints in respect to many particulars. I wish most sincerely that such a writer as Gesenius would pursue the subject, and give us something more definite, palpable, intelligible, and well-grounded.

But there may be some of my readers, who will be disposed to say, that my view of the Hebrew tenses is too much like Father Simon's picture of the Hebrew language;' who in order to give the mother-church at Rome the right of making her own interpretation of the Scriptures, maintained, that because the Hebrew language every where presents words which have several different meanings, there never can be any certainty as to any one of these. The church therefore must decide which of these meanings shall be adopted. So here; if the Hebrew Future may become a Praeterite and a Present, and so mutatis mutandis of the Praeter, then he will exclaim, we have a nodus deo vindice dignus,-and to which of all the powers above or below shall we make the appeal?'

Such, I say, may be the views of some; for such views have been often presented to the public. Yet a little experience in Hebrew and some tolerable knowledge of other languages, will soon quiet any apprehensions in relation to this difficulty. I have already remarked, that in translating the Hebrew the difficulty is scarcely felt, even by a tyro; so easily does the context determine what must be the tense by which we should translate the verb. But if there be a difficulty still, it belongs also in no small degree to the other sacred language, viz. the Greek, as well as to the Hebrew.

Need any well-informed Greek scholar be told, that the interchange or enallage of tenses is a phenomenon far enough from being uncommon in the Greek? For example; the Present is used for the Praeter and for the Future. It sometimes supplies the place even of the Imperfect, with its peculiar signification. The Imperfect is sometimes employed for the Aorists, and for the Present which denotes duration; the Perfect is employed as an Aorist, and often for the Present;-the Aorist is not unfrequently used for the Pluperfect, for the Future, and even for the Present; the Future is used for the Present, and often to designate, not what will be done, but what ought to be done. It would prolong the present discussion beyond all proper bounds, for me here to exhibit a detailed proof of all this. I must refer my readers, therefore, to my N. Testament Grammar, § 125; to Matthiae's Greek Grammar, Syntax, § 500 seq.; and to Winer's New Testament Grammar in relation to the use of the tenses. If he consults all these sources where examples are presented, no doubt can any longer exist, that such usages are spread far and wide over the domain of the Greek language; I will not say, so far as in the Hebrew, but I will venture to say -much further than any inattentive observer would even suspect.

Yet no one complains of the obscurity and ambiguity of the Greek on this account; and for a good reason, because little or no obscurity arises from this source. The context forces the

true sense upon the mind of the intelligent reader.

So was it, as I fully believe, with the Hebrew. He could manage as well, with his two original forms of tense, and the two adjectitious ones made by prefixing (the leading design of which was for the most part to make the appeal to the preceding context), and also the Participle and the Infinitive Mode, to express his views intelligibly and plainly, as we can with all our apparatus of may and can and shall and will and ought and must and should and could and would. That his language was more brief and energetic than ours, follows as a matter of course. We abide then by the old theory of the Hebrew tenses, at least until we obtain a better one. If Ewald's theory is true, it will not help us any in translating or even in understanding the Hebrew. It will embarrass us, on the contrary, in multitudes of places, because we shall be unable to reconcile them with it. Yet, with all my conviction that Prof. Ewald has failed to satisfy the just demands of philology, in the exhibition of his views,

I pay him the tribute of acknowledgment in respect to ingenuity and independence of mind. But I cannot go voluntarily into the dark path whither he invites me, until he lights up at least some brighter lanterns, or else brings the sun-beams to shine upon it.

ARTICLE VIII.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

By Robert B. Patton, Professor of Greek Literature in the University of New York City.

IT cannot be doubted that the limited usefulness of our universities and colleges, and the circumscribed range of the studies and literary productions of their professors, are owing, in a great measure, to a deficiency of that invigorating intellectual aliment, which a large Library is intended to supply. The private studies of the professors cannot have that ample range which is necessary to give to their departments the interest and variety of which they are susceptible. Our public libraries, generally speaking, are not adapted to the present improved condition of the departments over which the professors preside; but present a condition of things far below the interesting point to which they have been raised by the elaborate researches of European scholars, the results of which are deposited on the shelves of transatlantic libraries. No wonder, then, that our professors shrink from an attempt so manifestly beyond their means to accomplish, and confine their literary labors to the most elementary productions. To the want of adequate libraries of reference, and not to an indifference to the great interests of literature and science, we must, in justice, attribute the much regretted fact, that our professors, who are not wanting, we believe, in talents or industry, or enterprise, are slow to venture into the arena of learned and profound authorship. We could present the names of more than one of our literary men, who have wept in secret over this desolation ;- who have travelled through the length and breadth of the land, to obtain access to some important work of reference, to enable them to put forth a work worthy of their station and the present condition of their