The translator of Winckelmann is too well known, and too sincerely honored by all who have bestowed attention on his labors, to need any commendation from us. That translation is a work which, both in the motive and the manner, is as creditable to American authorship, as it is serviceable to American Art. Next to the practical artist, he serves the cause of Art most effectually who helps to diffuse the knowledge of its principles, and thus to promote sound judgment on the subject.

We must express our gratification with the very superior manner in which the mechanical execution of this volume has been accomplished, under the superintendence of Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co., the publishers.

Essays on Philosophical Writers, and other Men of Letters. By THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Boston Ticknor, Reed, & Fields. 1854. In Two Volumes. 16mo. pp. 292, 291. Letters to a Young Man, and other Papers. By THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields. 1854. 16mo. pp. 300.

THREE more volumes of De Quincey's writings will find a most hearty welcome from those readers who have long been familiar with the productions of his facile and elaborate scholarship, or who have made their first acquaintance with him through the beautiful edition of his collected works, for which we are indebted to Mr. Fields. The series already embraces fifteen volumes, and as each of them has appeared we have not failed to make mention of their attractive contents. Upon a most interesting page in one of these new volumes (Letters to a Young Man, &c., page 9), the author gives us some particulars concerning his own life of study, which explain the history of his mental acquisitions and training. We must confess that he has the faculty of bringing out his incidental knowledge in a way to confound many readers with amazement at its amount. The strength of his prejudices, too, is apparent on every page that he writes. It would not do to accept his judgment, either of men or of theories, as formed without a strong personal bias of his own, for it is evident that he is a terrible hater, and no man can do justice to any thing which he thoroughly hates unless the thing hated be sin perhaps even that ought not to be excepted.

Sir William Hamilton, Sir James Mackintosh, Kant, Herder, Richter, and Lessing are the subjects of Essays which fill one of the volumes before us, while Bentley and Parr are discussed and portrayed in another. The sketches of the last two characters are all the more valuable, because the more copious biographies VOL. LVI. 4TH S. VOL. XXI. NO. II.

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of them, from which chiefly De Quincey has drawn his materials, are two of the least skilful works in that rich department of literature. We have managed to deal with Dr. Monk's solid quarto upon Bentley, by skipping or skimming two pages out of three, but after trying the same process upon Dr. Johnstone's Life of Parr, we were compelled to leave our mark midway in the volume, and to lay it aside. We cannot commend De Quincey for rigid impartiality in his judgment of either of these famous men, but he has certainly presented them to us in a most vigorous and masterly style. The sketch of the Phalaris controversy in the Essay on Bentley affords a fine specimen of a judicial statement of an issue depending upon sound scholarship and curious niceties of argument. De Quincey deals too leniently with his hero's emendations of the Paradise Lost. We cannot but regard it as a substantial abatement of Bentley's praise for solid wisdom, that he should have tried his hand upon that silly task. A man who is endowed with the highest discernment, and has acquired all the safeguards of true discretion, will never be the victim of such an egregious blunder as Bentley made when he to speak plainly made such a fool of himself.

Dr. Parr meets with hard treatment from De Quincey, and were it not for a few relenting allowances, and an occasional word of encomium, we should say that party feeling and preju dice had guided the pen of the writer.

The third volume opens with a series of five "Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been neglected." They contain many delightful revelations of the pleasures and results of a scholar's life. The assertion of the practical value of a knowledge of the Latin language is emphatically substantiated, and some fine touches of critical skill gleam all over the pages. Besides these Letters, we have in the volume Essays on Conversation, on Language, on French and English Manners, on California and the Gold Mania, on Ceylon, and on Presence of Mind.

If the reader will turn to page 38th of this volume, he will find a comparative estimate of the number of books which one may be able to read in a lifetime whose duration is measured by the Psalmist's seventy years. The facts there enumerated may suggest to some person the utility and the possibility of making a digest of all our existing literature. The first apprehension of De Quincey's estimate may overwhelm many with dismay at the thought of how small a portion of what is in print can be perused by them in their span of life. But it is probably true that one tenth part of all the books in the world contain in substance what is to be found in all of them. The difficulty now is to know which tenth part to look to.

A Defence of "The Eclipse of Faith," by its Author; being a Rejoinder to Professor Newman's "Reply." London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans. 1854. 12mo. pp. 218.

THIS "Rejoinder" we think was called for, and after a careful perusal of it we must say that it is made with candor, with ability, and with a triumphant weight of argument. We have noticed in several quarters, and in some where it was not to have been expected, a depreciatory criticism of "The Eclipse of Faith," which has involved a complete misrepresentation, not to say a caricature, of its method and its principal con. tents. It was with great regret that we observed a measure of this same injustice toward the book in the pages of that admirable journal, "The Prospective Review." Mr. Newman's treatment of the author is simply disgraceful to himself, however much the fault of it may be palliated by the chagrin of a writer in having his own method of argument turned against himself. One specimen will serve to set before our readers an instance of the unworthy shifts to which Mr. Newman has had recourse. "The Eclipse of Faith" had met the difficulty presented by the Old Testament in its reference of the intended sacrifice of Isaac and the Canaanitish wars to the instigation of Jehovah, as the difficulty was urged by Professor Newman, by specify. ing some dark and painful facts concerning the government of God in nature and in human experience, which facts it is as dif ficult for the Theist to reconcile with the attributes of God, as it is for the believer in the Bible to reconcile some of its narratives with faith in the divine authority of the book. Instead of meeting this fair parallelism to his own objection by showing that it was not a parallelism, or by relieving the Almighty of certain dark dealings in his moral government, Mr. Newman turns upon our author and charges him with advocating "an unmoral [immoral] Deity." Now our author might justly bring this charge against Mr. Newman, unless the former denies that God allowed what the Old Testament refers to his allowance; because Mr. Newman must ascribe those Canaanitish wars either to the instigation of a devil, or to some method of God's providence; and as he does not believe in a devil, but does believe the wars to have been unrighteous, that unrighteousness must reflect back upon the Almighty. The author of the " Rejoinder," not without. some severity of language, exposes the sophistry which has so ineffectually been brought to bear against him in this plea of "an unmoral Deity."

Again, our author has been censured for his use of the method of the Socratic dialogue, by which it is implied that he frames the objections and arguments of his opponents which he

intends to answer, and puts them in a form which he can answer; thus having the privilege of pulling both the puppets in his sham trial of wits. But only a small portion of the contents of “The Eclipse of Faith pursues this method; and as the author honestly and candidly drew from the writers whom he controverts their own statements and arguments, he offended no one of the canons of fair disputation in his use of the Socratic dialogue.

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Another charge that has been brought against our author is that he had recourse to ridicule. He replies that a censure on this score comes with an ill grace from those who do not scruple to use that keen weapon on their own side. He ought, however, to have remembered, that those who avail themselves of sarcasm and ridicule against what the world holds sacred as every impugner of the Bible and the Christian revelation, without a single exception known to us, always has done - are most sensitive and fretful when the same instruments are turned against themselves. So long as those who argue against "book revelations" themselves write books with the aim of communicating new light and truth to the world, they can hardly complain with fairness if a Christian affirms that, since men may communicate truth to each other, God may possibly be able to communicate truth to his children.

But the most impotent and futile of all Mr. Newman's efforts are those which he has spent in the endeavor to indicate some "Moral Imperfections" in the character and teachings of Jesus Christ. Unbelievers in the Christian revelation have heretofore sheathed their hostile weapons when they have confronted the character of our Lord and Saviour. Some of the most touching and reverential tributes which he has received have come from those who have rejected his divine authority. If any such unbelievers have really felt that they have reached a standard above him from which they might venture to criticize or censure him, modesty, or something that served its purpose, has withheld their utterance. But Mr. Newman has ventured to specify faults; and what a sad exposure he makes of an ungenerous purpose, utterly defeated in its aim, and most astoundingly feeble in spite of all his ingenuity, we leave our readers to judge for themselves. The only conceivable effect which his weak and sophistical allegations can have on a candid reader will be that of exciting pity, rather than indignation, toward the writer.

Messrs. Crosby, Nichols, & Co. have in press and will speedily publish a volume containing Mr. Newman's Reply to "The Eclipse of Faith," and his chapter on the "Moral Imperfections" (!) of Jesus, as well as the contents of the volume on which we have been writing.

Archimedes and Franklin. A Lecture introductory to a Course on the Application of Science to Art, delivered before the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, Novem ber 29, 1853. By ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Boston: T. R. Marvin. 1853. 8vo. pp. 47.

OUT of the flood of pamphlets which is incessantly pouring from the press, there are a few which deserve to be gathered out and emphatically commended on the score of an intrinsic and permanent value. The pamphlet before us is one of these. For adaptation to the purpose for which it was designed, for rare felicity of subject and treatment, and for having instigated an honorable and grateful enterprise, it is worthy of a choice place among the riches of literature. The noble Association before which the Lecture was delivered bears the form of Archimedes on its seal, and this leading suggested to Mr. Winthrop a theme of rich and instructive narrative followed by a most appropriate moral. He begins by rehearsing that delightful little narrative, in which Cicero describes his successful search for the grave of Archimedes, which his fellow-citizens of Syracuse had forgotten. Then follows a brilliant sketch of the philosophical and mechani. cal labors of that old worthy, from which the speaker passes by a very natural step to a fine commemoration of our own Franklin. It is enough to say that the suggestion so eloquently enforced by Mr. Winthrop, that Boston should accord a monumental trib. ute to Franklin, has been cheerfully answered to by our community, and that the enterprise is in hands whose management of it assures its success.

History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783. By LORD MAHON. In Seven Volumes. Third Edition, revised. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1853. Vol. VI. 12mo. pp. 330, lxiii.

THIS Volume of the revised edition of Lord Mahon's History, which Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. are publishing in connec. tion with a London house, will have an especial interest on our side of the water, because it deals with the events and characters of our own Revolutionary War. The lofty eulogium which the author pronounces upon Washington has been already referred to in our pages, as has also the issue which he raised with Dr. Sparks. Documents bearing upon this issue will be found in the Appendix. Though it is probable that Lord Mahon would from the first have withheld all reflections upon the editorial fidelity of the biographer of Washington, had he really