For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

2.-ANTHON'S LATIN CLASSICS.

Sallust's Jugurthine War and Conspiracy of Catiline, with an English Commentary, and Geographical and Historical Indexes. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D., Jay-Professor of Ancient Literature in Columbia College, and Rector of the Grammar School. Sixth Edition, revised and enlarged. New-York: Harper and Brothers, 1836, pp. 332. Select Orations of Cicero: with an English Commentary, and Historical, Geographical, and Legal Indexes. By the same. Harper and Brothers, 1837, pp. 518.

THERE are few, certainly, if any, to whom the classical literature or the classical reputation of our country is more largely indebted than to Professor Anthon. His labors have been remarkably and deservedly successful, and not less so abroad than at home. Here, perhaps, he is most widely and favorably known by his fine edition of Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, with its extensive amendments, and many important fillings up where the original text afforded but a meager informa. tion. This work, so truly valuable as we now find it, has a circulation almost universal; and, in the states especially, scarcely a village school will to-day be discovered without it. Among European scholars it has a high and just character for accuracy, research, and convenient - arrangement; and has, in fine, superseded all other works of a similar

nature.

The works now before us do Professor Anthon no less credit than his Lempriere. They also have been here adopted, very generally, as text-books; and cannot fail, in a short space of time, to take prece dence of all other editions. In England they are now in use at Eton, Harrow, &c., (for which institutions, indeed, they seem to be especially intended,) an honor which can only be fully understood by those acquainted with the many high qualifications requisite for attaining it. Of the Sallust, two separate editions have appeared in London from the hands of different editors; and without any effort, on the part of the author, to procure a republication of his labors. The Cicero, we are happy to learn, has been still more positively successful.

The correct and truly beautiful Sallust of Mr. Anthon leaves nothing to be desired. The principal changes now effected consist in a more enlarged commentary on the Jugurthine war, in making the account of this war precede the narrative of Catiline's conspiracy, and in two valuable indexes which have been appended-the one geographical,

the other historical.

The enlargement of the notes on the Jugurthine war has been made, we are told, at the request of several instructers, who thought a more ample commentary, at this point, especially needed by their pupils. There can be no doubt that the notes usually appended to this portion of Sallust were insufficient for the younger, if not for all classes of pupils ; and when this deficiency is remedied, as in the present instance, by the labors of a sound scholar and acute critic, the service thus rendered to the classical public at large can hardly be appreciated too highly.

The chief object of the geographical and historical indexes was

to relieve the annotations from what might have proved too heavy a pressure of materials; preventing, rather than inviting a perusal. This difficulty is well obviated; the historical and geographical matter being now made to stand by itself, and the notes being devoted to more direct and legitimate comments on the text.

The most striking emendation, however, consists in placing the narrative of the Jugurthine war before that of the conspiracy of Catiline. This arrangement makes no pretension to novelty, except as far as regards its introduction into America. In many foreign editions of Sallust the Jugurthine war is made to precede the conspiracy; an order of whose propriety no reasonable doubt can be entertained. In the customary arrangement there is an obvious anachronism; for the rebellion of Catiline did not take place until nearly half a century after the war with Jugurtha. The student, consequently, who is required to read the account of the latter first, must necessarily read it with difficulty, and receive but a confused impression at best from the peru. sal. "In the account of Catiline's conspiracy, for example," says Mr. Anthon, "he will find frequent allusions to the calamitous consequences of Sylla's strife with Marius, and will see many of the profligate parti. sans of the former rallying around the standard of Catiline; while, in the history of the Jugurthine war, if he be made to peruse it after the other, in the ordinary routine of school reading, he will be introduced to the same Sylla just entering on a public career, and standing high in the favor and confidence of Marius. How, too, will he be able to appreciate, in their full force, the remarks of Sallust relative to the successive changes in the Roman form of government, and the alternate ascendency of the aristocratic and popular parties, if he be called upon to direct his attention to results before he is made acquainted with the causes that produced them?" Sallust, it is true, wrote the narrative of the conspiracy before the account of the Jugurthine war, and all the MSS. have followed this order; but no better reason than this (which is really no reason at all, when weighed against positive utility) can be assigned for the usual arrangement.

The text of the Cicero now before us is based upon the work of Ernesti; but there is no particular, at least no inordinate adherence to the opinions of that distinguished commentator. In many instances there are deviations which will not fail to strike every scholar as evinc. ing high critical abilities in Professor Anthon. It is here, indeed, that he is entitled to be regarded with the highest consideration. In most of the readings wherein he has differed from men of the first celebrity, there will be found a directness and perfect obviousness which do him honor in more points of view than one. He deserves respect as the philosopher no less than as the philologist; and, in daring to "throw -aside the pedant, and look en homme du monde upon some of the most valued of the literary monuments of antiquity," he has done, perhaps, as much for his own reputation as in any other manner.

We find here only the four orations against Catiline, together with those for Archias, Marcellus, the Manilian law, and Murena. These orations have been selected with an eye to a regulation of Columbia College in New-York, which requires that the first six shall be read by candidates for admission into the Freshman class. In addition, the orations for the Manilian law and for Murena have been well chosen

by Mr. Anthon, as favorable specimens of Cicero's more elaborate style of eloquence. Most colleges throughout the union accord with the regulation just mentioned in regard to the speeches against Catiline and for Archias; and so far, at least, the selection is such as will be most generally approved. In all respects, too, we believe that no better sample of Cicero could be given, with the intention of conveying a proper idea of the higher qualities of the orator in question. We accord, however, with a southern Monthly, in thinking it would have been well to give the fourteenth vigorous philippic against Antony, (the last effort of Cicero,) and that spirited defence of Coelius, which has been commended by Middleton and Fox, and which has received much less attention, generally, than its intrinsic merits entitle it to. This oration places Cicero in a strikingly novel point of view, and should thus undoubtedly be inserted in every collection whose design is to impart a knowledge of the oratorical character of the great Roman.

The commentary in this edition is far from being a scanty one, and upon this head we cannot do better than give the words of Professor Anthon himself:

"If there be any author that stands in need of full and copious illustration, it undoubtedly is Cicero, in the orations which have come down to us. The train of thought must be continually laid open to the young scholar, to enable him to appreciate, in their full force and beauty, these brilliant memorials of other days; and the allusions in which the orator is so fond of indulging must be carefully and fully explained. Unless this be done, the speeches of Cicero become a dead letter, and time is only wasted in their perusal.

"The editor is induced to make these remarks from the conviction that the system of commenting which he has pursued throughout the present work will, as in the case of his previous efforts, be condemned by some on the ground of its affording too much aid to the learner. The truth is, however, the editor had no alternative left him. If there be any one cause which has tended more powerfully than the rest to bring classical studies into disrepute among us, it is the utter incom. petency of many of those who profess to be classical instructers. It is very natural that such preceptors should be strongly averse to bestowing too much assistance upon their pupils; and perhaps it is lucky for the latter that such a state of things should exist; but, certainly, for the credit of our common country, it is high time that some change should be effected, and that, if the learner cannot obtain from oral instruction the information which ought to be afforded him, he may procure it, at least, from the notes of his text-book. We may be very sure of one thing: that the style of classical instruction which prevails at the present day in so many of our colleges and seminaries of learning, of translating merely the language of an ancient author, without any attempts whatever at illustration or analysis, will never produce any sound fruits either of learning or of intellectual improvement."

The works of which we have been speåking are published by the Messrs. Harpers, in a style of most unusual beauty. No fault can possibly be found with the mechanical execution, which we should be delighted to find imitated, in similar publications, all over our country. In accuracy of proof-reading, in typography, in paper, and in binding, these books might be profitably adopted as models. We have only to

add, that if the Sallust and Cicero now before us, presenting every claim to public attention and preference, be not generally brought into use, there will remain a stigma upon the common sense, no less than upon the good taste of the community.

DEAR BRETHREN :

As you sometimes admit short notices of works recently issued from the press into your Magazine, you will oblige some of your readers by inserting the following, from the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for March last. R. WYMOND.

Hillsdale, June 5th, 1837.

3.-JENKYN ON THE ATONEMENT.

It

"THIS is a work, in many respects, of very considerable talent. contains some powerful, though certainly no new arguments, in favor of the great doctrine of Scripture, that Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man ;' and so thoroughly repudiates the doctrine of limited atonement, that the incautious reader would suppose he was in company with a zealous assertor of the doctrine of general redemption. Before he had finished the volume, however, he would discover that Mr. Jenkyn is as thorough-paced a Calvinist as Augustus Toplady, though adopting a somewhat different nomenclature. We have the old arguments and illustrations about an election which implies no reprobation,-the destitution on the part of man, not of ability, but of will; and the justice of punishing him with eternal death in all its bitterness, because his sin is voluntary; though, as his will receives its sinful bias before any of its actings could possibly take place, and solely in virtue of the sin of another, committed many ages before he was born, he sins unavoidably, and the grace by which alone the sinfulness of the will could be corrected is purposely withheld. In all this, as our readers are aware, there is nothing novel. It is the old way of concealing the deformities of reprobation under the milder-sounding term of preterition. After all, there are but two views of the subject: the truth is to be found either in the doctrine of liberty or necessity; and the controversy between Calvinism and Arminianisın, when the dispu. tants are willing to come to the core of the question, will always come to this point. Between the doctrine of necessity and the moral feel. ings of men, as indicated by their ordinary language, there is, indeed, a direct and palpable discrepancy, and, therefore, we have always considered the French infidel philosophers as its only perfectly honest advocates; because that, asserting the necessity, they denied the moral feeling; and rightly argued that, as there was no liberty, though there might be beneficialness encouraged, and imperiousness to be repressed, there could be no virtue to be rewarded, nor vice to be punished. Now, of the parties in this great controversy, the issues of which are to decide whether the moral feelings of man are founded in delusion or truth, Calvin and Arminius are but the types. He who believes in the doctrine of liberty cannot be a Calvinist; he who believes in that of necessity cannot be an Arminian. In a crystallized mass, the primary crystal has always its proper form, however disguised by the accretions which have been added to it. Of Calvinism, under every

form in which it can be represented so as properly to retain the name, the primary crystal is absolute necessity. We do not argue the point: enough has been written on the controversy to guide the inquirer to his decision; but the simple and exclusive issue that has to be tried is, whether the doctrine of necessity be true or false."

Such is the able, though concise notice of the English reviewer. In perusing this work, one cannot but observe the studied attempt, almost from the beginning to the end, to conceal what Mr. Fletcher calls "the left leg of Calvinism." It is almost sufficient, in showing the character of this book, to say, that it has been printed, and somewhat extensively circulated, by the new-school party in this country, both Congregational and Presbyterian; and it is finding its way, by the candid and popular style in which it is written, into the hands of some members of our own church, who should be cautioned against the errors it contains.

4.-Excursions to Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Balbec, from the United States ship Delaware, during her recent cruise. By GEORGE JONES, Chaplain U. S. Navy. New-York: Van Nostrand & Dwight, 1836, pp. 388.

"We ought to have recommended to our readers this unassuming and well-written volume in our last number. We assure every person of true taste, of an American heart, and of pious feelings, that he will do well to read the book. The author is an Episcopal clergyman, a graduate of Yale College, and formerly tutor in the same, and author of Sketches of Naval Life.' In preparing the volume, he had the use of the private journal of Commodore Patterson, and of the official letters. A considerable part of the volume is taken up with an attempt to discriminate between truth and error in regard to the sacred places of the Holy City. His delineations and descriptions on this subject are, in general, exceedingly well done. He has thrown a tender and touching interest over the hallowed spots where our Lord suffered and was buried, as well as over and around the whole city. Some valuable statistical matters relating to Egypt, Damascus, &c., we should be glad to quote. But we must refer our readers to the volume itself."

From the American Biblical Repository.

5.-Text-Book of Ecclesiastical History. By J. C. I. GIESELER, Doctor of Philosophy and Theology, and Professor of Theology in Göttingen. Translated from the third German edition by Francis Cunningham. In three volumes, pp. 382, 420, 437. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, 1836.

"Prof. Gieseler was born in 1792. He commenced his academical studies in the orphan-house at Halle, whence he entered the university at the same place, and attended on the instructions of Knapp, Gese. nius, and Wegscheider. At the age of twenty-five, he was appointed to an office in the gymnasium at Minden, his native place. He was then appointed professor of theology at the new university of Bonn. Here he continued eleven years, and earned a high reputation by his industry and intellectual vigor. In 1831, he went to Göttingen as