roused to perform, before all things, the elementary and original act of turning the mind towards virtue, and make a beginning of all morality, by determining to be moral from the inmost heart, with all the energy of the soul, with all love and all zeal.” — Vol. I. pp. 102, 103.

De Wette's morality is eminently Scriptural and Christian; correct, as it seems to us, and catholic, a beautiful spirit of piety breathes through the book. But we should have said as much, had we simply said that it is the work of a true, unexaggerated, undistorted German.

We close, as we began, with a warm welcome and recommendation of the volumes before us, fully sensible how coldly and feebly we have spoken of their merits. We have as yet said nothing of the Translator and his work. He has shown here, what we already well knew him to possess, a fine command of his own language, as well as knowledge of the German; and has very purely and beautifully represented his author in good, sound, manly English.

1. The Common School Grammar. A Concise and Comprehensive Manual of English Grammar. Вy JOHN Goldsbury, A. M., Teacher of the High School, Cambridge, Mass. Boston James Munroe and Co. 1842.

2. A Sequel to the Common School Grammar; eontaining, in addition to other Materials and Illustrations, Notes and Critical Remarks on the Philosophy of the English Language; and Explaining some of its most difficult Idiomatic Phrases. Designed for the Use of the First Class in Common Schools. By JOHN GOLDSBURY, A. M. Boston: James Munroe and Co. 1842.

THE first of these little books comes before the public so highly recommended by some of our most distinguished scholars, that nothing need be added on our part. The testimony of Professor Noyes is of a very decided character. He says,

"I have given your Grammar as careful an examination as my leisure will permit; and am of opinion, that, for clearness, brevity, happy arrangement, abundance of instructive illustrations, and exclusion of useless or unimportant matter in a treatise for the young, your book deserves a very high rank among the manuals which are in use. If it should displace some of them, the public will be a gainer in several respects."— p. 1.

The "Sequel" to the Common School Grammar appears to be well worthy of a place by the side of its predecessor. VOL. XXXIII. - 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. II. 33

Whether there are any better books than this of the same kind, now in use, we are too ignorant of school manuals to declare; but of this we are sure, that the Sequel is in itself a good book, and cannot be introduced into any school without the most decided advantage. A great deal of information of a very necessary kind, not often found in school compends, -or formerly was not, is conveyed in an intelligible and agreeable manner. Of his purpose in preparing this volume Mr. Goldsbury says, "It is merely what its title expresses, a sequel to that (the first) work, containing such further materials and illustrations as have been thought necessary to give a clear and full view of the subject. Consequently, it will be necessary for the learner to acquaint himself with that work, or some other like it, previously to his entering, to advantage, upon the study of this." We are glad to observe that Mr. Goldsbury's attention has been turned to prevailing vulgarisms, and that he has not thought a few pages wasted upon them. A much larger list of errors, not quite so gross as those he has collected, might be added to the present catalogue with excellent effect. The common school teacher has an immense power for good or evil, over the common speech of the country. He comes next to the mother and the fire-side school; and although he cannot be expected to undo all the mischief that has been done there in the way of vulgarisms, bad grammar, and worse pronunciation, yet if he should sufficiently feel the importance of the work, he can repair a part of the evil, and by his lectures in the school-house send home the children every day with one or two faults corrected. A lesson on the subject should be an every-day lesson, till our language is purged of its impurities, and even till the nasal twang, the needless shame of New England, shall be heard only on the stage, by some future Hill, entertaining posterity with traditionary imitations of their tuneful ancestors.

An Oration delivered before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4, 1842. By HORACE MANN.

THIS, we do not doubt for a moment, is the most valuable discourse ever delivered on a fourth of July. We do not believe that on any other day, or on any other occasion, a discourse has been delivered in this country which it was so important, that the people of the country, one and all, should hear, or read, then inwardly digest, and then set to work and apply, as this of Mr. Mann. It abounds in wise counsel, useful instruction, terrific warning. Fearless, honest truth, spoken in earnest tones, are its characteristics. He strips off all mas

querading disguises, and reveals the people to themselves, shows them as they are, with all their faults and vices hanging thick about them. Here are no soft touches of the flattering artist, skilful to conceal blemishes and heighten beauties, but the strong bold strokes, the deep, black shades of a Salvator Rosa, too much a lover of truth, and too independent, and too much absorbed by the greatness of his subject, to either cater for the smiles or deprecate the judgments of those whose portrait he was to draw and hold up to their view. This is no holiday discourse, but an earnest, solemn appeal to the people of the whole country, in behalf of their free institutions, which, unless soon placed upon a better foundation than they now rest upon, viz. upon intelligence and virtue, his prophetic eye beholds them crumbled and fallen into the irretrievable ruin, prepared for them by the suicidal neglect and abuse of us of the present generation. All that he says is true and obviously true; he plays with no paradoxes, he utters no dark sayings, toys with no metaphysical abstractions; he deals all through with the simplest and plainest, almost self-evident, propositions; he urges nothing more than the admitted doctrine, that except republics stand upon virtue and intelligence, they cannot stand at all. But the special advantage of his discourse is, that he sets forth his doctrine in such glowing colors, with such power of argument and fulness of illustration, with so evident a conviction on his own part of the truth and importance of what he says, as to compel the attention of the most dull, to take the mind of the hearer or reader by storm. The same rapid and fiery style, crowded with images, yet always significant, not always, perhaps, approving itself to the fastidious critic, but always to him who sets truth before rhetoric, which Mr. Mann has used with such success in his addresses on common school education, giving the interest of romance to that once heaviest of themes, he has now carried into the morals of our politics; and we cannot doubt that wherever this oration shall be read, the reader will rise from its perusal a new man, in the deep and living impression he will have of the absolute dependence of our governments upon intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people, of the absolute certainty of their subversion, and that at no distant day, if dishonesty, corruption, and selfish party principle is either to sit at the helm of affairs and guide the state, or to prompt the action of those, who, through their votes at the ballot box, annually say who the helmsmen shall be. We consider this oration, we repeat it, a more valuable document for the people to know, and read, and ponder, and apply, than any or all the speeches made in Congress for the last twenty years. Had we

the power, as the will, not a family in the country should be without its copy,the teacher of the common school should read and expound it to his pupils; the minister of religion should intermit his usual service, and proclaim it to his people from the pulpit; towns should print or purchase it for free distribution within their boundaries, every newspaper carry an edition of it to its hundreds or thousands of subscriber's, and committees of public safety scatter it over the length and breadth of the land. It is simply, and in a single word, a demonstrative argument for the immediate universal education of the people if we would see our country survive. This is the great cause the cause of causes it is greater than temperance, greater than peace, greater than abolitionism separately or all together. It comprises them all; carry this, and they are all carried. But carry all the others, and as many more, but leave this out, and while you are working at them, your eyes looking at a single little point, and blind to all else, the country itself, with its institutions, perishes through its corruptions, falls, and buries you in its ruins. The immediate universal education of the people, not twenty years hence, but their education now, while our population is so sparse, and there are so many natural safety-valves open, that there is time and opportunity for the work to be done this is the cause that should unite all hearts and hands, towns, counties, and states, and above all, or certainly equally with all, the Central Government itself.

Strange indeed that a great empire like this should, as an empire, never stir a finger to strengthen the foundation on which it rests. Despotic powers are in their generation wiser than the children of light. What they know they depend upon for their existence, that they take care, first of all, to secure, armies and navies are their prime concern. In some instances such governments have not only secured the establishment of their huge standing armies, but have even begun, so highly have they prized the good, to educate the people, even at the hazard of their own existence, for with intelligence will ever spring up a nicer appreciation of, and craving for freedom. But we, to whom this intelligence is the very breath of our life, not only our honor and our beauty, but our political salvation, we, as a nation, as a government, spend upon it not a dollar, nor hardly a thought. This seems strange even to madness. It might not be easy to say, in what manner the nation should exert itself and use its boundless means in such a cause, but it is impossible not to think that it should, at least, make such a subject a topic of concern and of discussion to know what its duty is, and how it may best be done.

We have, in few words, expressed our admiration of this discourse of Mr. Mann, and our sense of its value to the people. It has already passed through many editions; we think it is destined to pass through many more. We are late in expressing our opinion concerning it; but we yield to none in our sense of its excellence and fitness to make an impression upon the moral feelings of the people. If such appeals will not be listened to or noted, there can be no hope in any word of man. The present signs are that it will be read at least; whether heeded or not time must show.

We have space but for a single extract the peroration.

"Are there any here, who would counsel us to save the people from themselves, by wresting from their hands this formidable right of ballot? Better for the man who would propose this remedy to an infuriate multitude, that he should stand in the lightning's path as it descends from heaven to earth. And, answer me this question; you! who would reconquer for the few the power which has been won by the many ; — you! who would disfranchise the common mass of mankind, and recondemn them to become Helots, and bond-men, and feudal serfs! tell me, were they again in the power of your castes, would you not again neglect them, again oppress them, again make them the slaves to your voluptuousness, and the panders or the victims of your vices? Tell me, you royalists and hierarchs, or advocates of royalty and hierarchy! were the poor and the ignorant again in your power, to be tasked and tithed at your pleasure, would you not turn another Ireland into paupers, and colonize another Botany Bay with criminals? Would you not brutify the men of other provinces into the 'Dogs of Vendee,' and debase the noble and refined nature of woman, in other cities, into the Poissardes of Paris?' O! better, far better, that the atheist and the blasphemer, and he who, since the last setting sun, has dyed his hands in parricide, or his soul in sacrilege, should challenge equal political power with the wisest and best; - better, that these blind Samsons, in the wantoness of their gigantic strength, should tear down the pillars of the Republic, than that the great lesson which Heaven, for six thousand years, has been teaching to the world, should be lost upon it;

the lesson that the intellectual and moral nature of man is the one thing precious in the sight of God; and therefore, until this nature is cultivated, and enlightened, and purified, neither opulence, nor power, nor learning, nor genius, nor domestic sanctity, nor the holiness of God's altars, can ever be safe. Until the immortal and godlike capacities of every being that comes into the world are deemed more worthy, are watched more tenderly, than any other thing, no dynasty of men, or form of government, can stand, or shall stand, upon the face of the earth; and the force or the fraud, which would seek to uphold them, shall be but as fetters of flax to bind the flame.'

"In all that company of felons and caitiffs, who prowl over the land, is there one man, who did not bring with him into life, the divine g germ of conscience, a sensibility to right, and capacities which might have been nurtured and trained into the fear of God, and the love of man? In all this company of ignorance, which, in its insane surgery, dissects eye and brain and heart, and maims every limb of the body politic,