as any of his pupils, (though he is more able to give instruction in drawing than they,) and gives the lectures and the information, which they are very glad to receive. In its embryo state, this arrangement is of course but a mere matter of form. It may be hoped, however, that it will not prove to be so, as years pass on. The teachers now are teachers, the pupils pupils, as they would be at any other school. But if, in one of Mr. Ruskin's drawing-classes, some new Giotto, laborer like Giotto though he be, shall one day draw an O with as true a hand as Giotto, and prove himself, under real tests, a man of genius in art and design, we can conceive that such a man shall go on with lessons in the "College" which trained him, with such zeal and sympathy as shall excite all of kindred tastes in the district around, and call in such classes of men, eager to learn to draw, as even Mr. Ruskin's reputation does not summon now.

Meanwhile, we

For the issue of such hopes we must wait. have to thank Mr. Maurice for pointing the way, in his own true and manly style. We cannot but be hopeful when we find, by merely incidental allusions, that he, and Kingsley, and Ruskin, Trench the theologian, and Wilson the candlemaker, that these — and, we may say, all the men who remember Arnold-are at work together, or sympathize with one another, while they differ in opinion. These Lectures are the theory of education, of which Kingsley's noble book, "Westward Ho," is the illustration. Such men may make mistakes, but they never fail.

The spirited Lectures on Roman Religion, though included in the same volume, have no immediate reference to the work or plan of the College, and we do not, therefore, speak of them now.

ART. XI. CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.- Lectures on English Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson. By HENRY REED. Philadelphia: Parry & McMillan. 1855.

THE little volume, the title of which is given above, is a book full of beauty, taste, and learning. Henry Reed, its lamented author, was born in Philadelphia, in 1808, a grandson of the friend, companion, and correspondent of Washington. He received the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in 1825, studied the law under Mr. Sargeant, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. Two years later, in 1831, he relinquished the legal profession, and accepted the office of Assistant Professor of English Literature in the University, and soon after was chosen Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy. In 1835 he was elected Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. For twenty years he continued in the assiduous discharge of his duties to the University, never being absent from his post, except on account of illness. In the spring of 1854, having long felt the natural desire of a scholar to visit the Old World, he asked and obtained leave of absence for that purpose. He sailed for Europe with Miss Bronson, his sister-in-law, early in May. In England he was received with the characteristic kindness of the cultivated society there. The family and friends of the late Dr. Arnold, with whom he had corresponded, the Wordsworths, Southeys, Coleridges, Lord Mahon, and other persons distinguished by rank and literary accomplishments, showed their appreciation of his scholarly acquirements and the amiable qualities of his character, by the genial kindnesses which none know better how to extend to the stranger who is entitled to them. From England he went to the Continent, travelled through France and Switzerland, through the North of Italy, visiting Milan and Venice, and returned by the Tyrol to Innspruck and Munich; thence down the Rhine to Holland, and so to England. "His last associations" (says his brother, the editor of the volume) "were with the cloisters of Canterbury (that spot, to my eye, of matchless beauty), the garden vales of Devonshire, the valley of the Wye, and the glades of Rydal. His latest memory of this earth was of beautiful England in her summer garb of verdure. The last words he ever wrote were in a letter of the 20th of September to his venerable friend, Mrs. Wordsworth, thanking her, and his English friends generally, for all she and they had done for him."

On that same day he embarked at Liverpool for New York, in the United States steam-ship Arctic. On the 27th of the same month, this ship, moving in a dense fog, at full speed, near Cape Race, along the thronged highway of the sea, on the track over which outwardbound and homeward-bound ships are constantly sailing, came into collision with another vessel, at noon, and in four hours afterwards went down. A disaster so awful filled the country with horror, and carried mourning, bereavement, and desolation into hundreds of homes. Men, women, and children, in sight of their native land, sank into the remorseless depths of the sea, and suddenly perished from among the living, victims to the unholy greed and impious rashness which have, in these latter years, strewn the bottom of the ocean with the bodies of their murdered victims. Among the victims on this most tragical occasion, there was no one whose death was a heavier public and private calamity than that of Henry Reed.

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine."

We quote with satisfaction the following words of Mr. William B. Reed, and thank him for having written and published them :

"Nor can I conclude this brief narrative without the utterance of an opinion, expressed in no asperity, and not, I hope, improperly intruded here, my opinion, as an American citizen, that, in all the history of wanton and unnecessary shipwreck, no greater scandal to the science of navigation, or to the system of marine discipline, ever occurred, than the loss of the Arctic and her three hundred passengers. There is but one thing worse, and that is the absence of all laws of the United States either to prevent the recurrence of such a catastrophe; to bring to justice those, if there are any such, who are responsible; or, at least, to secure a judicial investigation of the actual facts." P. xxii.

We entirely coincide with the opinion thus expressed by Mr. Reed. We have had some opportunity of knowing how the dangerous region where this tragedy was enacted is crossed by careful and responsible navigators; and we are entirely convinced, first, that had such a navigator been in command of the Arctic, the accident in all probability would not have happened; and secondly, even if it had happened, that the ship and her precious freight of human lives would have come to land in safety. With these remarks, we pass on to our subject.

We know not the volume in American critical literature which contains more valuable and appreciating criticism than this. It consists of a course of Lectures, delivered by Professor Reed before the University and the public. They exhibit abundant proofs of the author's varied acquirements, sound scholarship, pure feelings, and exquiVOL. LXXXI. — NO. 168.

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site literary taste. Mr. Reed was a modest and retiring man, with a love for quiet and contemplative life, of gentle manners, and the most amiable disposition. All these moral and intellectual qualities shine out beautifully on every page of his book; at the same time, they account for some opinions (very few indeed) on literary matters and literary men, which we think will not in the end meet with general acceptance. He was a lover of English poetry, and the spirit of it had entered into and taken possession of his soul. The English Muse, in her general purity, the love of nature with which she glows, the domestic affections which inspire so many of her nobler strains, is peculiarly in harmony with a mind so delicately attuned as that of Mr. Reed. But besides this general harmony between his own style of thought and feeling, and the spirit of English poetry, he had special affinities to that class of poets of which, in modern times, Wordsworth is the most illustrious representative. Accordingly, we find in his Lectures the name of Wordsworth dwelt upon with fondness, and fine passages cited from his works, with a genial and hearty love, which is after all the best kind of criticism. It is not a common thing to find these particular inclinations so strongly developed, and at the same time the mind endowed with such a catholic love of varied excellence as Mr. Reed himself preserved, and, in one of his most eloquent Lectures, inculcated on others. This is the special charm of his literary character; intense love of particular forms of beauty, united with a hearty appreciation of every form of beauty.

The style of Mr. Reed's criticism is simple, and yet it is the result of conscientious study and deep thought. It is easily intelligible, but is not, for that reason, superficial. In the clearest waters we see the shining pebbles or silvery sands on the bottom, while shallow streams are sometimes so thick and turbid, that, while we see only the surface, we are cheated into the belief that they roll over unfathomable depths. The best writers of Athens are as transparent as the sparkling waters that sweep murmuringly into the basins they have hewn and polished in the shores of Attica, where you may count the glittering pebbles that inlay the marble floor.

Mr. William B. Reed, in giving a modest estimate of his brother's book, has underrated its real merits. Unpretending as it is, and simply as it is written, it embodies profound results, thoughtfully and studiously worked out, and beautifully worded. It contains a series of admirable criticisms on the English language and the principal authors in English literature. The Introductory Lecture is a valuable and thoroughly reasoned discussion of the Principles of Literature, full of philosophical thought, and of suggestions on reading, which would be

useful to any person desirous of being guided aright in the selection of books that shall fill his leisure hours with profitable as well as entertaining study. The same general remarks may be applied to the second Lecture, on the Application of Literary Principles. The third Lecture that on the study of the powers of the English Language in prose and verse gives the results of much reflection and learned research, in a style at once perspicuous and elegant. It would not be easy to find in so narrow a compass so much interesting information, with so much of fine analysis and beautiful illustration. The richness, variety, and expressiveness of our noble tongue are eloquently set forth, and the sources whence its unsurpassed wealth of expression is drawn, historically explained. Some of its peculiarities such as that almost inexplicable mystery to foreigners, the difference between shall and will as auxiliaries in the formation of the future, are ingeniously accounted for, by quite original explanations. The Lecture on Early English Literature contains a very beautiful and characteristic description of Chaucer's genius and style, and abounds in the most delicate appreciation of the sweet and natural graces of his Canterbury Tales. In closing this topic, the author falls into a strain of eloquent discourse upon the changes and the decay of language. "The most wondrous mortality the world witnesses is the dying of language." His remarks on the subject are singularly striking and impressive, nay, even solemn. The first sentence in the following passage, for picturesque beauty, is hardly to be surpassed :

"So must it ever be as long as a cloud of divine displeasure travels onward with the earth, casting down upon it a dark shadow; and hence no language, no matter how lofty its literature may be, can boast a privilege from decay :

'Babylon,

Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,

Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh

That would lament her.'

"The Pyramids, mysterious in their unnumbered centuries, are standing almost as imperishable as the Nile, and yet not one word survives that was spoken by the tens of thousands who toiled in building them :

'Egyptian Thebes,

Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves,

Palmyra, central in the desert, fell ';·

and all their dialects are silent as the desert sands. That noble language, too, of antiquity, with which Athens sent forth her philosophy and poetry to the islands of the Ægean and the shores of Asia, and fulmined over Greece with her resistless eloquence,' - the language that Corinth, from her famous isthmus, spake over the eastern and western waves, has, for many ages, known no other existence than that which it holds on the pages of books.