as he took his pen in hand to write for the public, his style became systematically vicious. All his books are written in a learned language; in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse; in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love; in a language in which nobody ever thinks.

It is clear that Johnson hi nself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work, of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions. "When we were taken up stairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black as a cyclops from the forge."

Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet ;" then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point them out.

It is well known that he made much less use than any other eminent writer of those strong, plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman French, of which the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully naturalized, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with the king's English.

His constant practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite; his antithetical forms of expression.

constantly employed even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed; his big words wasted on little things; his harsh inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old writers; all these peculiarities have been imitated by his admirers, and parodied by his assailants, till the public has become sick of the subject.

Goldsmith said to him very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man, surely, ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style.

THE END.

BOYD'S ECLECTIC MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

THIS work, prepared for schools by the author of the "Rhetoric," professes to teach the Science of Human Duty in a lucid and thorough manner; and also to unfold the moral structure, capacities, and active principles of man To youth nothing is of greater importance than a knowledge of their moral and active powers, and an acquaintance with the proper method of employing them in the performance of the various duties of life. Should not some text-book on this subject be constantly employed in every academy and district school? Must not the education of our youth be extremely imperfect without it? Whether the "Eclectic Moral Philosophy," when the character of its contents, its moderate price, and handsome style of publication are considered, is entitled to a preference over other works on the same subject, is submitted to the judgment of instructors, upon an examination and trial of the work. The science of Moral Philosophy, in this day of educational improvement, should not be undervalued and neglected as it has ever been. It should take rank, as a matter of course, with Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and Mathematics.

The work has an advantage which no other of the kind can possess, of suggesting to the pupil the works and authors where the various topics are more extensively treated. It is, in fact, an excellent guide-book for an exploration of the wide and tangled field of moral science.-Bib. Repository. We commend this comprehensive volume, as one of great utility, to all teachers and students especially, also the private reader, as an admirable epitomized system of moral philosophy.-American Review.

This is an excellent book. Mr. Boyd has, in our judgment, succeeded in presenting "the science of human actions" with such steady reference to the only true sources of that science as will commend the book warmly to all the best friends of popular education. The work is strictly a compilation, and the merit of the compiler, which is great, consists in the taste and judgment which he has every where shown in the effort to make it not merely a profound, but a really practical treatise.-Teacher's Advocate It is better adapted to the wants of learners than any manual of the kind we have seen.-Princeton Biblical Repertory.