and brings about his destruction, a form of the myth, we would suggest, that seems to have grown up within the Arctic circle, as the only quarter of the world where the twilight sometimes gets the better of night altogether. This extreme extension of the ground of mythologic research and comparison is one of the specialties of Mr. Cox's system, although here, as elsewhere, he is only pushing boldly forward where Müller had led the way. To him, the Odyssey has but the same story to tell as the Iliad; it is the sun, wandering and suffering through his ten hours of toil, while the powers of darkness, the suitors, worry and distress the bride the dawn whom he left at evening, and whom he will find again, as young and fair as ever, when he returns in early morning. The German Nibelungen Lied is palpably the same tale, under another aspect. Arthur and Roland came out of no other crucible. And yet, further, the tales and stories with which we made acquaintance in childhood are solar and dawny in their essential texture; wherever there is an irresistible hero doing wonderful deeds, it is the sun; where there is a lovely damsel waiting for a deliverer, it is the dawn, expectant of the return of the great luminary after his day's toil or his night's eclipse. But the heroes of a humbler class are of the same lineage: Boots, and the Shifty Lad, and Jack the Giant-killer, and doubtless Tom Thumb, although we do not remember his name in the list. Mr. Cox has drawn up (in various places; most briefly and comprehensively, perhaps, at I. 43, 44) a scheme of the elements which may enter into a solar myth, or of the "mythical phrases," in which the Indo-Europeans of the earliest age must have incorporated their impressions of "the daily or yearly course of the lord of day," and which afterwards, when the proper sense of the terms used had been forgotten, grew up into a wild luxuriance of myth and story. Wherever, now, he detects the presence of any of these, there he is ready to assume that a solar myth lies hidden. And we have seen, by the examples cited, how keen is his sense for such prey, and with what slight indications he is satisfied. We should call it easy credulity, if it did not merit a better name. He is, in fact, wholly possessed by his theory; he has established in his own mind so immense an antecedent probability in favor of this mode of interpretation of heroic incident, that he is prepared to find occasion for it everywhere. The general community of scholars, however, we believe, will long continue sceptical, and will only yield its assent, if yield it must, to a cooler and more logical advocate. They will not readily believe that the ancient Indo-European people treated this one theme with such an exuberant fertility of imagination as nearly to exhaust themselves upon it, and to sing and tell of nothing else. They will not believe that elements originally mythical had such an exceptional power of self-preservation and propagation, that even those who, for thousands of years had entirely lost the underlying mythical sense, could not but reproduce them with faithful iteration. The correspondences, in parts, of the nursery and narrative literature of many nations of Europe and Asia are, indeed, very remarkable; and it remains to be determined, by comprehensive and wary inquiry, how much of them is accidental or due to the like working out of tendencies common to all human nature, how much is the result of transmission from one people to another, and how much, if any, is to be traced to a common tradition from the remote ages of unity. We cannot consent to have the whole question settled for us in advance so summarily. Mr. Cox's method palpably invites to burlesque and caricature. We might almost say that he himself sets us the example of caricaturing it, so exaggerated is, in many cases, his valuation of the coincidences which he thinks to find, so great his ingenuity in discovering them where no one else would have suspected their existence. An instance is his exposition (I. 151, ff.) of the story of Ahmed, as told by Irving in the "Alhambra "; it is much too long to repeat here; but we could hardly ask a better model to follow, if we would learn the art of interpreting stories into solar myths. And caricatures have begun to appear; hardly any critic of the work has been able to refrain from them; the most elaborate and artful one we have seen, worked out with immense ingenuity and learning, and with a surprising command of countenance, is found in No. 5 of " Kottabos" (an organ of the erudition and wit of Trinity College, Dublin), where Max Müller himself is proved to be a solar myth, and one as compared with which "few are so detailed and various; and, perhaps, there is none which brings together, in so concentrated a focus, the special characteristics of Sanskrit, Hellenic, and Norse fable." We, on our part, see capabilities in General Grant, from which we refrain our hands only unwillingly. His famous resolution, "to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer," has the true solar ring, announcing a myth of the northern variety, where the yearly instead of the daily career of the orb of day is the theme; and if we add the long winter of inaction and fruitless effort before Richmond, and the final resistless outbreak and conquest, as soon as the vernal equinox was past, we have a more than usually abundant capital of evident solar elements with which to begin our interpretation. But though we may permit ourselves a laugh at Mr. Cox's exaggerations, we ought to laugh good-humoredly, and without refusing him our full respect as an earnest scholar and a powerful and ingenious writer. His work deserves, as we have said, to be widely studied; and it will do valuable service, doubtless, in advancing the cause he has at heart, if only by exciting public attention and stimulating research and discussion, which shall tend toward the final establishment of truth. Under and along with the exaggerations, we, for our part, are confident that there is a great deal which is solid and valuable. Only a part of the preparatory work needful to be done in order to make the Veda yield its full harvest of results for Indo-European antiquity has been yet accomplished. When the internal content of that venerable document shall have been as thoroughly laid open as its speech has been analyzed, and shall have engaged the labors of as many careful students, we may hope, not, perhaps, for so abundant and certain results as some are even now promising themselves, and hastening forward to gather, but, at least, much more than is now within our reach, and enough to more than repay all that it shall cost. Just at present, tilling should be more the occupation of the day than reaping; and we cannot help regarding such works as the great St. Petersburg Sanskrit lexicon (now nearly completed) and Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts (especially the last published volume, "Contributions to a Knowledge of the Cosmogony, Mythology, Religious Ideas, Life, and Manners of the Indians of the Vedic Age "), as more likely than any others to do permanent service to the study of the mythology of the Aryan nations. 2.-Classical Study: Its Value illustrated by Extracts from the Edited with an Introduction by Principal of Phillips Academy. 12mo. 1870. pp. xxxv and 381. This work is one of the good fruits of the discussion again going on in regard to the methods and instruments of education, and every one interested in this important subject, and taking wise views of it, will be grateful for this contribution towards the enlightenment of the general mind. The volume consists of essays and discourses, presented entire or in part, from the pens of accomplished scholars, some of them being professors, others politicians and lawyers, prefixed to which is an excellent Introduction by Dr. Taylor. We are much struck by the elevated and catholic character of these papers. Ranging over a period of near half a century, and written by the avowed friends of classical learning, they all wisely and generously advocate, some in express words, others by implication, the interests of every department of learning as essential to the full and harmonious development of all the powers of the mind. They advocate the study of physics, for the development of the powers of outward observation and generalization; they advocate the study of letters, — which is virtually the study of mind, for the development of the powers of internal observation and generalization; and for literary culture, the writers of these discourses believe no study is to be compared with that of Greek and Latin, languages pre-eminent for beauty, accuracy, and regularity; the languages which have brought down to us the richest treasures of thought and sentiment, which have presented the world with what it still willingly deems its masterpieces in poetry, history, and philosophy, and which have impressed their form on all the tongues of modern civilization,-languages, the study of which is our best means of attaining a knowledge of one science, grammar; and one of which, the Greek, directly furnishes us with three sciences in almost faultless form, logic, rhetoric, and geometry. But when those who devote themselves to the study of material things oppose the study of Greek and Latin, saying, as Professor Huxley does, that this is simply the study of expression, they surely do not mean that physical learning or learning of any kind can be acquired or communicated without power of expression, that is, without attainments in language. For language is the necessary form of thought, furnishes the indispensable signs of things, and so is the proper instrument of all learning. As sensible men they can only mean that those who profess to give the higher culture of the mind, occupy themselves and their pupils too exclusively with the study of letters. But this, it has been well answered, is the abuse of this kind of learning, not the wise use of it. And while in times past such abuse may have prevailed, which several of these advocates of classical learning frankly admit and directly censure, yet now there is a great change both of feeling and of practice among literary scholars. The variety and extent of the discoveries in the physical sciences during the present century-discoveries not merely gratifying man's natural desire for further knowledge, but bearing more or less directly on human welfare and improvement - have been such as greatly to widen and deepen the interest in physical studies. As a natural consequence of this, we have had the preparation of elementary works on these subjects for introduction into our common schools, the production of fuller and higher treatises for our institutions of liberal learning, and even the establishment of schools for the special study of the physical sciences. But those who regard the study of language as being now antiquated and barren of good fruits, seem to be ignorant that this study has risen to the dignity and received the name of a science, -philology. Like chemistry, philology is the offspring of the present century, but during this period of almost unexampled activity it has made as great an advance as almost any other science. It has been as sedulously cultivated and by as great minds as any other. Its apparatus for study and research has improved as much and is improving as fast as that of any other. To the grammar and lexicography of Greek and Latin, as the chief and worthiest objects of study in this science, men of the greatest genius and sagacity and industry have devoted their highest, keenest, and most laborious efforts. We thus possess facilities for mastering these tongues such as we have for no living language, and the very best grammars and dictionaries of modern tongues have been made by those who acquired method and skill for their work in the study of Greek and Latin. The aptitude of the American people for the cultivation of the higher and more difficult of these two languages is worthy of note. We have produced already three grammars of the Greek language as original and as valuable as any which have yet appeared in England; we have made an important contribution to its lexicography in our edition of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English, and of Yonge's English-Greek Lexicon; we have produced one of the very best lexicons of Hellenistic Greek, Dr. Robinson's, - which Great Britain has honored by reproducing in two or three different forms; while Professor Goodwin's treatise on the use of the Greek Moods and Tenses is the only important work on that subject in the English language, and the Lexicon of Patristic and Byzantine Greek, by Professor Sophocles, the earnest and careful labor of twelve years under circumstances most favorable to the undertaking, is as yet a unique production. Is all this the work of accident? May it not rather be due to the fact that our condition, as well as that of the ancient Greeks, is the perfect liberty of a republic, — πατρὶς ἡ ἐλευθερωτάτη ? While an attempt to dislodge philological studies from the lofty place they have naturally and fairly attained has been made mostly by those wholly ignorant of them, sometimes by those who have pursued them under great disadvantages and unsuccessfully, and only in the rarest instances by those who have made any great and solid attainments in them, Germany, the mistress of the world in this kind of learning, cultivates it as earnestly as ever and with results richer and deeper year by year; France, before the present war, certainly had not abated her interest in it, as the monthly catalogues of new books witnessed; Scotland, in the persons of Dr. Schmitz, Professor Ramsay, Professor Blackie, Dr. Campbell, and Mr. Veitch, is winning a reputation she never before had; England, at length laying aside her old prejudice against German learning or her jealousy of it, is surpassing even her ancient renown by the labors of such men as Gaisford, Donaldson, Key, Paley, |