Promiscuous death around they send",
Foe falls by foe, and friend by friend,

Heaped in that narrow plain.
But, with the dawn, the victors view
Ten gallant French the valley strew
For every Briton slain."

After some intermediate stanzas, we find the foe again advancing to the attack, "full fifty thousand muskets bright," and General Wellesley issuing his orders:

"Away, away! the adverse power

Marshals, and moves his host.
Tis come, 'tis come, the trial hour,

Each to his destined post.

And when you charge, be this your cry,
Britons strike home, and win or die,→→
The grave or victory!""

The pomp of the approaching fight" is well pourtrayed:

"Waving ensigns, pennons light,
And glearing blades and bayonets bright,
And eagles winged with gold;
"While cymbal clang and trumpet strain,
The knell of battle toll'd;
And trampling squadrons beat the plain,
Till the clouds echoed back again,
As if the thunder rolled."

Several stanzas. follow, which I should have been glad to transcribe, did I not fear to exceed your limits. They are employed in reflecting on the change which a few hours would produce in the appearance of the same army; on the domestic misery which would spread from Talavera to many a distant land; and on the conduct and character of Bonaparte, the grand author of all this misery. But I must hasten to the battle itself. The French generals are represented as directing their whole force to the point, where "Britain's red-cross shines."

"Full then on her the torrent course
Of battle drive, and all your force,
Your universal train

Expend on her, and her alone,
Be the whole gathered storm her own,
Her peril and her pain!

Press her with growing thousands round,
Dash that red banner to the ground,
And seal the fate of Spain!

In the confusion of the night much loss was caused by men taking friends for foes. CHRIST. QESERV. No. 99.

"Now from the dark artillery broke
Lightning flash and thunder stroke;
And volumed clouds of fiery smoke
Roll in the darkened air:

Wrapped in its shade, unheard, unseen,
Artful surprise, and onset keen,

The nimble French prepare.
On the whole allied line they throw
Their wide extended host,
Center and left and right, nor show

What point they threaten most.
But Wellesley undeceived, the brunt
Of war, expects on Britain's front,
But strengthens most the vaward ranks
That hang along the mountain banks,
For well, he judges, Gallia still

Is bent to seize that bloodstained hill, Strain all her force, exhaust her skill,

To plant her eagles there; That soon, from that commanding height May speed their devastating flight, And, sweeping o'er the scattered plain, The hopes of England and of Spain With iron talon tear.

Three columns of the flower of France,. With rapid step and firm, advance,

At first thro' tangled ground,
O'er fence and dell and deep ravine→→
At length they reach the level green,
The midnight battle's murderous scene,

The valley's castern bound.
There in a rapid line they form,
Thence are just rushing to the storm

By bold Belluno led,

When sudden thunders shake the vale,
Day seems, as in eclipse, to fail,

The light of heaven is fled;
A dusty whirlwind rides the sky,
A living tempest rushes by

With deafening clang and tread--
A charge, a charge,' the British cry,
And Seymour at its head.'

"Belluno sees the coming storm, And feels the instant need.

Break up the line, the column form,

And break and form with speed,
Or under Britain's thundering arm
In rout and ruin bleed.'

Quick, as the haste of his commands,
The lengthened lines are gone,
And broken into nimble bands

Across the plain they run;
Spur, Britain, spor thy foaming horse
O'ertake them in their scattered course
And sweep them from the fand!'
She spurs, she flies; in vain, in vain-
Already have they passed the plain,
And now the broken grouad they gʊin,
And now
a colum, stand!

Rein up thy courser, Britain, rein!'-But who the tempest can restrain?

The mountain flood command?
Down the ravine, with hideous crash,
Headlong the foremost squadrons dash,
And many a soldier, many a steed
Crushed in the dire confusion bleed.
The rest, as ruin fills the trench,

Pass clear, and on the columned French,
A broken and tumultuous throng
With glorious rashness dash along,

Too prodigal of life;

And they had died, aye every one,
But Wellesley cries, On, Anson, on,
Langworth, and Albuquerque and Payne,
Lead Britain, Hanover and Spain,

And turn th' unequal strife."

"Now from the plain and every steep

A thousand thunders peal;
Again the vollied tempests sweep,
And sulphury vapours dark and deep
The meeting armies veil ;
The kindling fight at every post
Blazes, but towards the centre most,
Whence, hoping on a happier stage,
The renovated war to wage,

France now assails the hill,
And pours with aggregated rage
The storm of fire and steel;
And when the fresh'ning breezes broke
A chasm in the volumed smoke,
Busy and black was seen to wave

The iron harvest of the field,—
That harvest, which in slaughter tilled,
Is gathered in the grave:-
And now before their mutual fires

They yield, and now advance;
And now 'tis Britain that retires,
And now the line of France :
They struggle loug with changeful fate,
And all the battle's various crics
Now 'depressed, and now elate,

In mingled clamours rise;

Till France at length before the weight.

Of British onset flics:

'Forward,' the fiery victors shout, Forward, the enemy's in rout,

Pursue him and he dies!'

"Hot and impetuous they pursued,
And wild with carnage, drunk with blood,
Rashed on the plain below;
The wily Frenchman saw and stood-
Screened by the verges of the wood

He turned him on the foe.

The gallant bands that guard the crown
Of England led the battle down,
And in their furious mood
Thrice they essayed with onset fierce,
Thrice failed, collected France to pierce-
Still France collected, stood.

While full on each uncovered flank
Cannon and mortar swept their rank,
And many a generous Briton sank

Before the dreadful blaze;

Yet 'midst that dreadful blaze and din
Their fearless shout they raise,
And ever, as their numbers thin,
Fresh spirits, to the post, rush in

Of peril and of praise.

And still as with a blacker shade

Fortune obscures the day;
Commingled thro' the fight they wade,
And hand to hand and blade to blade,
Their blind and furious efforts braid,
As if, still dark and disarrayed,

They fought the midnight fray.
In vain.--New hopes and fresher force
Inspirit France, and urge her course,
A torrent rapid wild and hoarse,

On Briton's wavering train.
As when, before the wintery skies,
The struggling forests sink and rise,
And rise and sink again,
While the gale scatters as it flies

Their ruins o'er the plain;
Before the tempest of her foes,
So England sank, and England rose,
And, tho' still rooted in the vale,
Strewed her rent branches on the gale.
Then, Wellesley! on thy tortured thought
What honest anguish crost!
Oh how thy generous bosom burned,
To see even by a glorious fault
The flowing tide of victory turned,

And Spain and England lost! →→
Lost, but that as the peril great,
And rising on the storms of fate

His rapid genius soars,

Sees, at a glauce, his whole resource,
Drains from each stronger point its force,
And on the weaker pours:
Present where'er his soldiers bleed,
He rushes thro' the fray,

And, so the dangerous chances need,
In high emprise and desperate deed,
Squanders himself away!
"Now from the summit, at his call,
A gallant legion*, firm and slow
Advances on victorious Gaul;
Undaunted tho' their comrades fall!

Unshaken tho' their leader's low!
Fixed--as the high and buttressed mound,
That guards some leaguered city round,
They stand unnoved--behind them for
The flying fragments of the storm;
While on their sheltering front, amain
France drives, with all her thundering train,
Her full career of death.

The 48th Regiment, commanded by Col. Donellan, who was severely wounded.

But drives in vain-for unimpressed;
The arm of havoc they arrest,
And from the foe's exulting crest,
Tear down the laurel wreath ;
Nor does the gallant foe resign
A tame inglorious prize;

Long, long on Britain's rallied line

The deadly fire he plies;

Long, long where Britain's banners shine,
He raiuly toits and dies!—-~

Ne'er to a battle's fiercer groan

Did mountain echoes roar Nor ever evening blush upon

A redder field of gore.

But feebler now, and feebler still
The panting French assail the hill,
And weaker grows their cannon's roar,
And thinner falls their musket shower,

Fainter their clanging steel:

They shout, they charge, they stand no

more

And staggering in the slippery gore,
Their very leaders reel.

I dare not add to these quotations,

although I feel a strong temptation to insert the passage in which the retreat of the French, spreading con. flagration in their rear, is described: but for this, considering the extent to which I have already carried my extracts, I must refer to the poem itself; unless you, Sir, should find that there is room for it, and should therefore admit it.

If the perusal of the above lines should produce no other effect, it may at least shew us what determined valour, joined to strict discipline, are capable, under God's blessing, of effecting in a righteous cause; and it surely ought to lead us, by the view which it affords of the dreadful calamities of war, to wish and pray for peace in the spirit of peace. I am, &c.

S.

The Doctrine of the Greek Article, applied to the Criticism and the Illustration of the New Testament. By T. F. MIDDLETON, D. D. 8vo. pp. 700. Cadell and Davies. THAT the Greek article may be omitted or employed at pleasure, is an opinion not to be reconciled with, the character of a people, addicted above all others to refined speculation, and delighting in the most in-, genious and subtle theory. Yet many persons appear to consider it as subject to no rule, but left to the caprice of the writer; while others imagine that its use is regulated rather by the ear, than the under standing; and that it contributes more to the harmony of a period, than to its perspicuity or force. And even grammarians, who have professedly inquired into its nature, have failed in their attempts to explain this abstruse and difficult subject. Dr. Middleton, therefore, must be acknowledged to have rendered a most important service to literature, by reducing the use and application of

the article to fixed and intelligible principles.

His second chapter opens with the following definition: "The Greek prepositive article is the pronoun relative &, so employed, that its relation is supposed to be more, or less obscure; which relation, therefore, is explained in some adjunct, annexed to the article by the participle of existence expressed or understood. Hence the article may be considered as the subject, and its adjunct as the predicate, of a proposition, differing from ordinary propositions, only as assumption differs from assertion; for this is the only difference between the verb and the participle, between is and

." The remainder of the chapter is a copious illustration and vindica tion of the preceding definition. To prove that the article is a pronoun, Dr. Middleton has recourse to the authority of Homer, as being the earliest Greek writer whose works have descended to the present times. In the following passages, taken

from the Iliad, it is evident that Homer uses the article for dulos or Exavo, in A. 9. • yàp Baoshni xoAwJ85. 12. & you have. 47. s. The pronominal nature of 6, is therefore, in some instances, esta blished beyond contradiction, and we have only to ascertain whether it ever be lost. We read in B. 341. όσις ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐνέδρων ΤΗΝ αυτα φιλει και κήδεται, ως και εγω ΤΗΝ

Εκ θυμό φιλεον,

where the latter is a pronoun relating to Briseis, and the former is the article to añcov understood; but is not the one as much the re

presentative of ahoy, as the other is of Briseis? There are instances by which it may clearly be proved, that Homer himself entertained no idea of the difference between the pronoun and the article; so that it was an even chance, supposing a difference, which of the two he had used. Thus, in narrating the conflict between Hector and Patroclus, II. 793, he says,

TOY & ME xozi; KTNEHN

βαλε Φοίβος Απόλλων, Η δε κυλινδομένη καταχὴν ἔχε ποσσιν υφ' ἵππων. Supposing the sentence to end thus, which unquestionably it might have done, 'H would, according to the vulgar distinction, be a pronoun referring to xuve, exactly as r8 refers to Patroclus; but, so it happens, that the writer has added, in the next verse, Αὐλῶπις τρυφάλεια. 1η this example it is plain, that the difference between the article and the pronoun is not essential, but accidental, and consequently, when we are speaking of the nature of the article, that there is no difference at all. And what is here said, with respect to examples taken from Homer is true universally. The article and the pronoun are essentially the same thing, differing only in having or not having an adjunct; and in both these ways it is repeatedly employed in Homer. Several instances have been produced from the first book, where' is

without the adjunct; and from the same book instances may be produced where it stands connected with a noun. In ver. 11. Tov Xuptx. ver. 3 Edarey 8' yewv. Heyne, Εδδεισεν δ' ὁ γέρων. indeed, remarks on oi de Seɔ Ä. 1. Sen accipiendum est per interpretationem, as if it were thus pointed: de, Seo, &c. But is not this uniformly true of the acknowledged article in all Greek writers? Does not the noun subjoined, in all cases, answer. the purpose of interpretation? The argument, then, which Heyne has employed to shew that Homer in A. 1. has not used the article, proves demonstrably that he has used it, by shewing that he has placed the pronoun & (as Heyne would justly call it) in the very si tuation in which, though it changes not its nature, it assumes the name of an article, and exercises a func tion by which alone the article is distinguished.

The article and the pronoun &, are then essentially the same thing, differing only in having or not having an adjunct; and the pro noun in both these ways is repeatedly employed by Homer. Hence it appears that the opinion of the Stoics was not incorrect, that ỏ' is always a pronoun, though it usually retains that name only when the object of its relation is so plainly marked, that no mistake can arise, and when, consequently, no adjunct is requisite.

The author proceeds to observe, that the object of the relation is more or less obscure. It is always an idea familiar to the mind of the speaker; but to the reader it may be obscure, and therefore may require the addition of the predicate. When the article, with the word annexed, refers to something already known to the hearer, it has a retrospective reference: when the thing referred to is unknown to the hearer, the reference is to something assumed, or supposed; and this is styled a hypothetical reference. Thus, in the passage from Aristotle, wherev 'padov TON 'Aeudeptor, the meaning ραδιον ̓λευθέριον;