THE BIBLE IN MANY TONGUES.
THE BIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS IN GENERAL, AND OF THE BIBLE IN PARTICULAR.
WHAT an interesting volume might be written on the lives of books-their origin, history, and influence! By whom were these pages written, and under what circumstances? who have read them, and with what results ?--are questions which any great book may prompt us to ask. The answers, could we hear them, would be found to connect the books themselves with the highest temporal, and even with the eternal interests of our race.
Here, for example, is the "tale of Troy divine." In which of the seven cities that contend for the honour of being the birthplace of the poet was it written? Did he sing these lines through the streets of his native place? How did he live, and where is he now? Is he himself a fiction, the shadow of a great name, the representative of a school of poets, whose fame is lost in his? These pages Plato has read. Hence he gathered, perhaps, the conviction that in his model republic, the deities which are here clothed with worse than human