day, but to keep their faculties alive by constant effort; and to lay in stores of knowledge and of thought, that by and by, in the fulness of all their powers, they may bring forth the ripened fruit of a generous culture, mellowed by the large experience, the slowly maturing wisdom, and the ever-deepening emotions of the revolving years. It is thus that the greatest works of genius have been prepared in times past, and so it must be in times to come.

ART. XII.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.-Junius Discovered. By FREDERIC GRIFFIN. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1854. 16mo. pp. 310.

AMERICA supplies everything. It is always impossible to tell what will be the next curiosity she will exhibit to an amazed world. All that she knew herself of the Great Industrial Exhibition was, that she had not sent forward the labor-saving machines she was most proud of. And the prizes she won there were in many instances for things as little known at home as abroad. In this book she has outdone herself in singularity. She has actually furnished a candidate for the authorship of Junius.

It is our excellent old Governor Pownall, who is now advanced as the claimant to what are left of Junius's honors. It seems that he was in London while the letters were written, and in pretty constant opposition to government. He spelt chearful with an a, as Junius did, and dated his letters with the name of the month first, instead of the numeral, as Junius also did. He was a Cambridge man, as Junius is supposed to have been, and more than fifty at the time, as Junius affected to be. He was neither a soldier nor a lawyer, nor was Junius. He was a member of Parliament, and so was Junius. Scattered through the book are other suggestions of similarity; but the above-named are some of the insignificant, and all the leading, points on which the argument is founded. Governor Pownall's handwriting is not like Junius's; but it is thought that, if he had disguised his hand, it would have been, or the reader is invited, if he prefer the alternative, to believe that Sir Philip Francis copied his letters for him. And thus the most formidable competitor is removed; unless, indeed, John Pownall copied them, as is also

suggested. It seems that Sir Philip Francis was a connection, by marriage, of Governor Pownall's.

The conjecture is not sustained at all by the testimony, faithfully and ingeniously though this be put together. Mr. Griffin has persuaded himself, has made a very agreeable book to persons interested in history; but in rescuing Governor Pownall from the semi-obscure, into which time was consigning him, not unjustly, he has not made a Junius of him, nor anything but what he was, a faithful public servant, too honest to serve any party then in the ascendant, and too dignified in manner, and too completely "respectable," to make from his independent position any very deep impression on his times. To imagine Junius becoming a member of that most worthy institution, the English Society of Antiquaries, publishing now a Memoir on Antiquities in the Provincia Romana, and now one on Drainage, is a hard play of the fancy. On the other hand, to imagine Governor Pownall, chary as he was of his well-earned reputation, and disposed to place before the public all honors that were his due, keeping Junius's secret for thirty years, and dying without revealing it, is no less unnatural. The only sign he gave in dying was a direction that "he might be laid in an oaken coffin without ornament or inscription." "What could he mean," says Mr. Griffin, "by this direction for an inscriptionless coffin, but a repetition of the motto, Stat nominis umbra'?"- the motto of Junius. Really, as he suggests, this is "a little fanciful."

It does show pretty dis

The book does not show who Junius was. tinctly that Governor Pownall was not he. In face of all the coincidences which Mr. Griffin brings together, he also brings in, of necessity, the palpable contrast between the sharp, vivid sentences of Junius's style, and the elaborate dignity of the Governor's, pompous, as became his time, and apt to be long-winded. As one reads the book, it is amusing to see how eagerly he lights on the scraps of Junius as a rest, after a passage through the Governor's stately sentences. The sharp epigrams scattered through Junius are almost all that now preserve the memory of what he wrote. We have read all that there is of Governor Pownall in this volume without hitting upon one. Mr. Griffin is conscious of this evident difference of style, and attempts to account for it by saying that we have only public speeches and set letters of Governor Pownall's, and do not know but that he would have written more sharply under a mask. We do not know it. But we do know that, if he could write as well as Junius, he would have done so in his published writings, unless he were a man of much less sense than Junius.

The book thus defeats its avowed object. It brings to light by the way, however, a good deal of curious Revolutionary history, and places

Pownall's career, and his gallant advocacy of the Colonial interests, in a light which has not been distinctly enough disclosed before, and which our historians ought not to omit to mention hereafter. Especially curious are twenty-five letters from Governor Pownall to Dr. Samuel Cooper, of Boston, and one to Samuel Adams, written in the trying times before the outbreak of the war. They show how much confidence was reposed in Pownall by the patriots of that day, and how heartily he had their interests in view, though he could not step so fast as they did, and they hardly expected him to do so. These letters fell into the hands of Dr. John Jeffries, who took them with him to Halifax when Boston was evacuated, and afterwards presented them to a Mr. Thompson, supposed to have been the king's librarian, who states these facts in a note, in which he "presumes, most humbly, to lay them at his Majesty's feet, as a literary as well as a political curiosity." The king condescended to pick them up, and to have them preserved in his library, which now forms a part of the British Museum. These facts have, we believe, been made public before, but the correspondence of Governor Pownall is now printed for the first time. Everything is of value which illustrates the progress of the feeling of alienation,—the steps in revolution; and these confidential letters, addressed by a man of his ability to one in Dr. Cooper's position, are specially interesting.

2.-1. National Education in Europe. By HENRY BARNARD, LL.D., Superintendent of Common Schools in Connecticut. Second Edition. Hartford. 1854.

2. Reformatory Schools. By MARY CARPENTER. London. 1854.

MR. BARNARD's valuable report has been greatly enlarged, and is now published in a cheap edition, which will give it, we trust, a very wide circulation. We allude to it at present to call attention to its valuable chapter on Schools for Juvenile Delinquents, in connection with Miss Carpenter's new book named above.

Now that the attention of our own State has been turned to the necessity of providing some penal institution better fitted than a jail can be for the discipline of boys and girls, it would be a great pity if we made all the mistakes, and went through all the doubtful experiments, which were necessary in Europe, before the Schools of Discipline on the Continent attained so effective a condition as those of the Rauhe Haus of Mettrai in France, and others in Switzerland, France, and Belgium have attained. These schools must be organized with the ele

ments which make children's homes happy, and not on the principle of rendering a prison dreadful. Every step towards home-life in them is something gained. Every piece of prison machinery or apparatus is so much lost.

Miss Carpenter's book on "Reformatory Schools," published in 1851, is a very valuable collection of information. She continues the subject, very thoroughly and practically, in this volume.

3.- Elements of Character.

By MARY G. CHANDLER.

Boston:

Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1854. 16mo. pp. 234.

THIS is a book full of good sense, carefully digested, and so arranged as to be indeed available as a book of education, as very few books of education are. The difficulty with such works is, in general, that the people who need them most will not read them. That difficulty is met here as far as it well can be; for though there is no pretence at gilding a pill, and no Miss Grace Goodchild is introduced whose character is formed by the process recommended, the essays are eminently readable, and the training which the author pleads for is practically illustrated, and made so clear as to give at every corner hints for every-day life.

4.-Field-Book for Railroad Engineers. By JOHN B. HENCK, A. M., Civil Engineer. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1854. 12mo. pp. xvi., 243.

WE hardly know how, in a few words, to do justice to the merits of this little book. If Mr. Henck had given us a purely scientific treatise, we should feel that he was going over ground already well surveyed by some of his predecessors, and the only credit to be claimed would be that which is due to the introduction of new matter, or better methods of investigation. If, on the other hand, he had followed the usual routine of field-books, he would have done injustice to himself and to his profession. The rapid multiplication of railroads has of late years. drawn many engineers into the field without any previous preparation. By the aid of a field-book, such persons are enabled mechanically to perform the requisite processes, and with this they are content, without stopping to inquire into the reasons for what they are doing, or to investigate the formula which they use. As a consequence, the fieldNO. 164.

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book becomes a mere barren collection of rules, in which we search in vain for anything like reasoning or investigation of principles.

Mr. Henck, in the volume before us, has made a most judicious combination of theory and practice. The scientific treatise and the fieldbook are united without detriment to either. Every rule is accompanied by a rigid mathematical demonstration, and the resulting formula is so conspicuously placed, as at once to attract the eye in the field.

There is much original matter, of which we would particularly specify the investigation of the radius of curvature of parabolic arcs, and a new method of calculating earth-work. The great variety of useful tables embodied in the work would alone render it a valuable pocket-book for the engineer; and the form, type, and general arrangement are unexceptionable.

With an

5.- The Epistle to the Romans, in Greek and English. Analysis and Exegetical Commentary. By SAMUEL H. TURNER, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Interpretation in the Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and of Hebrew in Columbia College. New York: Stanford & Swords. 16mo. pp. xvi., 234.

1853.

MOST commentators criticize St. Paul's Epistles, not as letters addressed and adapted to the then current needs of those to whom they were inscribed, but as general treatises on dogmatic theology, designed for universal edification. That this latter purpose entered into the Divine counsels, we have no doubt; but it is the most surely evolved, when we first seek to understand each Epistle in its temporary and personal bearings, and then deduce by a process of generalization the great underlying principles which apply always and everywhere. Now in this regard Dr. Turner does not fully satisfy us. He forgets the unquestionably post-Pauline origin of some of the questions and controversies now rife, and occasionally interprets a text as if Paul had written for Anglo-Saxons of the nineteenth century, not for Romans and Romanized Jews of the first. We regret also that he did not accompany his Commentary by a new translation. But, with only these abatements, we are prepared to pronounce this work inferior in merit to no Pauline commentary with which we are conversant. It contains what the critical scholar most of all needs, a complete discussion of every mooted question as to the meaning of words and the interpretation of sentences. There is throughout an unostentatious affluence of sound first-hand learning.