At page 12, we read :

Think heedless one, or who with wanton step
Tramples the flowers.

At page 75, within the compass of eleven lines, we have three of the grossest blunders :

Oh Thou for whom as in thyself Thou art,
And by thyself perceived, we know no name,
Nor dare not seek to express - but unto us,
Adonai! who before the heavens were built
Or Earth's foundation laid, within thyself,
Thine own most glorious habitation dwelt,
But when within the abyss,

With sudden light illuminated,
Thou, thine image to behold,

Into its quickened depths

Looked down with brooding eye!

At page 79, we read:

But ah! my heart, unduteous to my will,
Breathes only sadness: like an instrument

From whose quick strings, when hands devoid of skill
Solicit joy, they murmur and lament.

At page 86, is something even grosser than this:

1

And still and rapt as pictured Sain1; might be
Like saint-like seemed as her she did adore.

At page 129, there is a similar error:

With half-closed eyes and ruffled feathers known
As them that fly not with the changing year.

1 Saint?

At page 128, we find

And thou didst dwell therein so truly loved
As none have been nor shall be loved again,
And yet perceived not, &c.

At page 155, we have

But yet it may not, cannot be

That thou at length hath sunk to rest.

could'st, etc.

Invariably Mr. Lord writes didst did'st; couldst The fact is he is absurdly ignorant of the commonest principles of grammar and the only excuse we can make to our readers for annoying them with specifications in this respect is that, without the specifications, we should never have been believed.

But enough of this folly. We are heartily tired of the book, and thoroughly disgusted with the impudence of the parties who have been aiding and abetting in thrusting it before the public. To the poet himself we have only to say from any farther specimens of your stupidity, good Lord deliver us !

VOL. XII.-II

PLATO CONTRA ATHEOS. PLATO AGAINST THE ATHEISTS; OR THE TENTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUE ON LAWS, ACCOMPANIED WITH CRITICAL NOTES, AND FOLLOWED BY EXTENDED DISSERTATIONS On some of THE MAIN POINTS OF THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY ESPECIALLY AS COMPARED WITH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, BY TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D., Pro— FESSOR OF THE GREEK Language and Literature, IN THE UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW York. NEW YORK, HARPER & BROTHERS.

[Text: Broadway Journal, June 21, 1845.]

THE Laws of Plato were probably the work of his old age of his extreme senility and although Dr. Lewis insists upon this point, as one tending to make us think more favorably of the composition, on the ground of its embodying the philosopher's most matured and best settled opinions we cannot help regarding the question as disputable. As a dramatic work, all admit it to be inferior to the Republic. There are but three interlocutors — Clinias, a Cretan ; Megillus, a Spartan; and a stranger, who is spoken of only as the Athenian but who is the Socrates of the colloquy; the two first, being merely listeners, or speaking but for the purpose of foils. The nine first books are occupied with legislative schemes given at length, with preambles, and arguments in support of both preambles and schemes. The tenth book (now published) deals with laws enacted against violators of religion that is to say, public worship it being taken for granted that State and Church can never properly exist apart. The greater portion — indeed

nearly the whole of the book, however, is taken up with an exordium, investigating the reasons for the laws the latter in fact occupying only a few of the concluding pages.

The argument is directed first, against those who deny the Divine existence secondly, against those who deny a Providence while admitting the existence of a God-thirdly, against those who, admitting both, yet maintain that the Deity is easily propitiated by sinners.

Clinias the first branch of this argument, by opens asserting that the existence of God is readily shown by the universality of man's belief in his existence, as well as by the evidences of design in natural phenomena.

This ease of demonstration the Athenian denies ; declaring, however, that whatever difficulty there is, is not innate in the subject, but springs from the perverseness of the Ionic Atheists in imposing upon the world the ideas of chance, nature, art, etc., and in the refutation of these ideas the reasoner discusses at length the nature of soul as involving, necessarily, self-motion. Thence, he deduces the priority in time of soul to body - thence, again, of the properties of soul to the properties of body. The inference is, that Art is the mother of Nature that law, will, thought, or design, must have been before qualities, such as hardness, weight etc., etc.

The intention here is to refute the particular opinion of the Atheist, that religion had no better foundation than conventionality, since belief in the existence of God is the production of human law which, again, is a product of Art-Art itself being regarded as the offspring of Nature.

The question of motion is examined very minutely —

and all kinds of motion are divided into motion by impulse, and, that which moves something else by commencing motion in itself; the latter species being psyche, or soul.

In the next place, occurs the question whether one or more souls are at work in the Universe. It is decided that there are two the soul of good and the soul of evil.

The second grand division of the subject is the investigation of the arguments which deny a Providence. The Athenian maintains a minute, special interference with human affairs chiefly on the ground that the whole is composed of its parts, and that to neglect the smallest portion is to neglect the whole.

In entering the third division of his theme, the speaker opposes the arguments of those who maintain that the Deity is easily appeased, by adverting to the pre-supposed antagonism between good and evil. Where a conflict is generally going on, he says, the least neutrality or supineness - that is to say, the least mercy shown to sin, would be treason against the cause of the Right throughout the Universe.

The offenders against religion are divided into six classes, or rather grades. The book ends with a specification of penalties, and a law, in especial against private rites and churches.

Such is a fair, although very succinct synopsis of a work comparatively little known, although very frequently made the subject of converse.

No one can doubt the purity and nobility of the Platonian soul, or the ingenuity of the Platonian intellect. But if the question be put to-day, what is the value of the Platonian philosophy, the proper answer is, "exactly nothing at all." We do not believe that