bered twenty-one. Let Nepheg and Zichri, Ex. vi. 21, have seven sons each, and their sons the same number, and the whole number of Izharites would be one hundred and nineteen. - Uzziel had three sons, Ex. vi. 22, born by supposition, about 1570. There is room here, as in the family of Izhar, for two generations of twenty-five years each. Let each son have seven sons on an average three less than Benjamin at a younger age -and the Uzzielites would number one hundred and forty-seven. Of Hebron we only know that he had four sons. Suppose those sons were born to him by the time he was twenty-four years old. Let the generations of their descent be of the same. length, and let each son on an average have five sons, and the sixth generation from Kohath would be of sufficient age, and more than enough in number, to make up the total of the Kohathites to the recorded number, two thousand seven hundred and fifty, of thirty years old and upward. This will be evident from the following table: Kohath born about 1711. Amram born about 1641. Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel about 1640. Korah, Nepheg and Zichri, Mishael, Elzaphan and Zithri about 1570. The Bishop assumes the increase of the sons of Gershon and Merari to be the same with that of the sons of Kohath, after ruling out from the latter the four sons of Hebron, because they are not expressly mentioned in the sixth chapter of Exodus. He assumes also that there were no more generations in their families than in his. But because Kohath and Amram had sons born to them when seventy years old, does it therefore follow that Gershon and Merari could not, or probably did not, have children before they were seventy? Or, because one of a family has but two or three sons, does it therefore follow that the family generally, when married, will have no more? A large share of the Bishop's boasted mathematical demonstrations are founded on just such assumptions as these. Is it not probable, on the other hand, that the generations in the families of Gershon and Merari were about the average length of thirty years, making six generations of their descendants before the exodus? We need only take the rate of increase as great as that of Jacob's sons, as given by Colenso, p. 163, to exceed the number assigned to them. We may suppose that Gershon and Merari were born about the year 1710, making them four years old when they went down to Egypt. The following table will then answer equally well for the descendants of each. Each had 2 sons (Ex. vi, 17-19) born perhaps by 1680. These would be thirty years old and upward at the exodus, and in the same generation which the Bishop allows, in the case of Joshua, would harmonize with our other data. In regard to the number of the priests at the exodus, compared with their duties and the provision made for them, chap. xx., it seems sufficient to reply that some of those duties may have been held in abeyance, while the number of priests was so small. It is not uncommon, we believe, for wise legislators to anticipate the increase of population, and make regulations in advance. We have omitted, in our review, some minor points, as well as the Bishop's would-be pious, but hardly Christian remarks, at the beginning and close of the book. That his main reliance in proving the Pentateuch unauthentic is in computing the numbers of the children of Israel, and in confuting those numbers as recorded, is evident from page 208, where he says, Thus this number"-the six hundred thousand warriors "is woven, as a kind of thread, into the whole story of the exodus, and cannot be taken out, without tearing the whole fabric to pieces." If then, we have succeeded in taking out this thread without tearing, and so forth, or rather have shown that it does not need to be taken out at all, the Bishop's main point failing him, it may be that those on which he relies still less, may be equally untenable. The result of the investigation is to increase our own confidence in the authenticity and historical accuracy of the Pentateuch, and of the Word of God as a whole. ARTICLE V. PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE. Philip Van Artevelde. A Dramatic Romance in Two Parts. By HENRY TAYLOR. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1863. LIKE Charles Lamb, the paragon of literary accountants, and our own Fitz Greene Halleck, Mr. Taylor has found the successful pursuit of poetry not incompatible with an active devotion to secular business. For more than a quarter of a century he has held a clerkship in the British Colonial Office. His reputation as an author mainly rests on the first two of his published dramas, Philip Van Artevelde and Edwin the Fair, though several other volumes have come from his pen, in poetry and prose; and quite recently, another elaborate drama - St. Clement's Eve. Since 1834, when the first of these works was given to the world, Mr. Taylor has found time, amidst his clerkly duties, to issue not less than eight carefully finished publications. It is a little remarkable that none of these productions should have enhanced this writer's fame beyond the critical award which his earliest achievement won him; while there also has been no falling off, in the treatment of his more serious subjects, from the standard of excellence which he so clearly discerned and firmly grasped at the outset of his literary career. Poetry has been with him not a pastime so much as an earnest study. The volume before us opens with a singularly explicit declaration of his views of the art poetical. Remembering that it was sent out as the introduction of his first drama, when Byron, Shelley, and their imitators wielded an almost unchallenged sway in the realm of light reading, it strikes us as indicating an unusually self-contained and manly intellect. Conceding the great genius and fascination of those distinguished authors, Mr. Taylor as frankly sets forth their untruthfulness to the highest laws and functions of poetry, which he finds, not in the mere beauty, however faultless and charming, of language, or sentiment, or imagery or of the expression of passion in any of its forms, but in a clear and philosophical perception of the realities of human nature and life, fused by a fervid imagination into the new creation of the poet's soul. Beauty thus becomes subordinate to truth; while, as the graceful robe and ornament of this, it still is indispensable to its representation through this medium. The poet's world is not, by this theory, a playground for the fancy, a dream-land of sentiment and sensibility, a ring for the struggles of blind passionateness ungoverned by reason, directed to no sensible ends. Mr. Taylor demands for his art something to do in instructing, shaping, elevating, consoling humanity; that, singing its myriad-voiced strains none the less sweetly, painting its various canvas none the less grandly or bewitchingly, it shall never lose sight of the loftier office of making us wiser and better. He would take this kind of literature from the ministration of a luxurious gratification alone, whether through a merely sensuous excitement or a visionary rapture, and make the thrill of its enjoyment a wholesome exhilaration to the spirit. This we take to be the meaning of his criticism, without here passing a judgment on his strictures of the poets whom he cites as chief transgressors of his canons of taste. "I would by no means wish to be understood as saying that a poet can be too imaginative, provided that his other faculties be exercised in due proportion to his imagination. I would have no man depress his imagination, but I would have him raise his reason to be its equipoise. What I would be understood to oppugn is the strange opinion which seems to prevail amongst certain of our writers and readers of poetry, that good sense stands in a species of antagonism to poetical genius, instead of being one of its most essential constituents." p. 19. Looking through these dramas thus conceived and constructed, we consequently do not find any single passages of uncommonly striking power or point. We are not startled by unnatural explosions, nor rapt into wonder or ecstacy by the bold strokes or the delicious dalliance of the plot. At the same time, we have a feeling throughout that this comes of no lack of power thus to sport with our sensibilities, but from a steady and conscientious self-restraint. The closing acts of the second part of Philip Van Artevelde, as well as the lighter and more fancy-hued interlude between the two parts, shadow forth into what regions of wild but profitless sensationalism our author might have led us, had he chosen. Hence, a sentiment of profound respect for his own spirit grows upon us, as we enjoy the fruits of his masculine genius. We thank him that he is not extravagant; we admire him as we again recall under what an overmastering reign of this very vice, he set and maintained a purer example. The best qualities of a reflective poetry mark these writings ; a rare faculty for the unities and harmonies of dramatic adjustment gives compactness and coherence to their action; a dignified but never forced or artificial stateliness imparts a classic grace and impressiveness to the movement; while a chastened and diffused beauty spreads a clear, bracing atmosphere over the shifting scene. Real life walks the stage in the persons of the drama, and real life, as it existed when and where the plot is laid, with only the exceptions necessary to bring the people of dead centuries into an intelligent sympathy with our modern experiences. Beyond these few and unavoidable liberties, the historic verisimilitude is faithfully preserved. Neither the language or the passion is strained. Each takes the natural tone of the subject and the occasion, as well when the play glides smoothly along in pleasant companionships, as when the interest culminates in fearful perils and crushing agonies. Mr. Taylor has carried the art of giving expression to his conceptions, in transparent and befitting verse, to a degree of excellence which leaves nothing for unfavorable criticism. Nor do we remember an author who, at all points, presents so intangible a surface to the reviewers. Less mighty and magnificent than some, he is |