cially made up, will exhibit a still farther decline. Thus the last six months of 1842, with the first quarter of 1843, give a decline in imports, as compared with the same periods of the year, equal to $51,000,000. This decline took place during that period of the preceding year when the large crops, cotton, tobacco and rice go forward to market. Those crops form 70 per cent. of the whole exports in usual years. Thus in 1841, the exports were made up as follows:

After the cotton rice and tobacco were paid for, there were over $50,000,000 of imports which were sold here, and the proceeds remitted to Europe in agricultural and manufactured goods. This business was rapidly growing until the twenty-seventh Congress ruthlessly blocked up all those channels of trade, causing the imports to fall off, as above, $50,000,000 in three months, during which time $25,000,000 in specie came here, as the proceeds of cotton and tobacco, which England must have on any terms. There was, however, no necessity to send specie for agricultural produce, and when their goods were prevented from coming in, the demand for that produce, as a means of remitting the returns, ceased, and the result is the great fall in money values, which the above table evinces. This great depression in prices is the more remarkable, when we consider that the decline has mostly taken place since July, 1842, during which time money has been becoming hourly more plenty, and has fallen from seven per cent. last year, to loans, in some cases, as low as twoand-a-half per cent. This proves incontrovertibly that it was not the want of means to purchase, but the unwarrantable interference of the Government with the course of trade, that paralyzed business all over the country. The usual winter demand for produce on the seaboard for export, had not taken place, and the opening spring found stocks still good and prices so low as to afford but little inducement to send forward further supplies from the interior.

The small amount of money obtained for most descriptions of produce would scarcely pay the transport to market, leaving no surplus in the hands of the producers to make his purchases. Hence the great source of internal trade was dried up, and the rebound upon the manufacturer was so great that he could not maintain his markets even at a reduction of 25 per cent. in prices, which was the decline on the the same species of goods between July 1842, and May, 1843. The disastrous tariff here sunk goods even below the starvation prices of Manchester, and many cases of New England cottons Thus were sent there to realize upon. every circle of business has felt the weight of the mischief engendered by the twenty-seventh Congress. The shipping interest has thus far been pretty well sustained by the enormous crop of cotton, which has employed near 50 per cent. more tonnage in its transport to Europe than in the previous year. That has nearly all gone forward, and for the remainder of the fiscal year the marine interests will feel the want of the homeward freights.

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The great abundance of money which at once produced a great stock speculation here, has failed to produce its wonted effects upon general business, because of the unwise restrictions imposed upon our foreign relations. The pretence for the present tariff has been protection," but its projectors seem to have been well aware, that unaccompanied by a paper bank, its effects would be "destructive." With a National Bank and paper machinery in full play, the first effects of the unnatural and sudden repletion of coin would be to stimulate a corresponding enormous inflation and rise in prices, during which manufacturers and others would dispose of their stocks on hand at high rates, and large fortunes would be made by the juggle. This was the case in 1832, and the bubble then created rolled on until it burst in 1836-7. Now, however, there is no National Bank, and several large States are comparatively without banks. Hence the scheme is in danger of complete failure.

The large sums of money in the Atlantic banks are wanted in the interior of the country for circulation, but it can reach there only through the activity of the produce markets. In the stock market activity is immediately produced, because the banks, loaning to

dealers money on pledge of them, create a great and effective demand. The stocks are taken out of the hands of needy owners and deposited in the banks. The money thus drawn out of the banks finds its way very slowly into other branches of business. When there is no adequate foreign vent for agricultural produce, a similar effect can be brought about only very slowly. As soon as a rise is effected on the seaboard, the impulse runs through the whole country, carrying with it large sums of money, which becomes distributed in all the channels of circulation. This natural result has been re

tarded in an eminent degree by the uncertainty attending legislative action. The indomitable energies of the American people may be checked, but cannot be controlled for any length of time. The internal navigation presents already a degree of activity scarcely ever before equalled, and the tolls on all the great public works present a great excess over those for the same period last year. With a permanent return to the republican principle of a purely revenue tariff, without restrictions or special privileges, the swelling volume of American wealth would soon overshadow that of assembled Europe.

Classical Essays on Ancient Literature and Art, with the Biography and Correspondence of Eminent Philologists. By BAMAS SEARS, President of Newton Theological Institution; B. B. EDWARDS, Professor in Andover Theological Seminary; C. C. FELTON, Professor in Harvard University. Boston: Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, 59 Washington-street. 1843.

This work appears to have been prepared primarily with a view of quickening the taste of the American public for classical studies, and indirectly to show the tendency of the German mind, and the habits it has adopted in the culture of ancient learning during the last half century. For the first end, this work is written too much in the spirit of idolatry. There has been no proper transmutation of the classic life and strength into modern formulas, no discrimination of the beauties from the deformities of ancient speculation, but the whole pagan dispensation of the classic era is made the burden of an unconditional panegyric. The days of such advocacy are past. Who would now advance the cause of classical learning must show some practical and definite advantage to accrue from their study, some result that can be weighed and measured. Such relation ship between the past and the present should be established, that from their

combined lights we may discern more clearly our way into the future, for it is the future the Americans are always looking, not enough perhaps to the past, and certainly not enough to the present. Herodotus somewhere tells of a people of Asia, who promised the crown to him who should first behold the break of day. All looked towards the East. One, however, more sagacious than the rest, fixed his eyes in the opposite direction, and while the East was all buried in utter darkness, he discerns in the western horizon the first rays of the harbinger of day lighting up the summit of a distant tower.

We conceive that if we should turn to the past for its instruction and advice, for the same purposes that this shrewd Asiatic turned to the western tower, we may be assisted by it in anticipating the future. We should look at ancient institutions and ancient literature, not to imitate, but more frequently to avoid. To see by the fact of ancient errors, ways and means of preventing their re-appearance. Unless approached in that spirit, the popularity of ancient writers is a curse rather than a benediction.

This is, we believe, substantially the public feeling with us, and until the habit of advocating classical studies by indiscriminate praise of what the ancients said and did is abandoned, the public

feeling will not undergo any material change in their favor. So entirely practical, and we think sensible, are the opinions of Americans getting to be, that we are confident no defence of the ancients can ever again elevate them, among the American people, to the dignity of examples or of authorities upon any of the more important questions that agitate modern society. For this reason we do not believe that the work before us, which is conceived throughout in an idolatrous spirit, will materially elevate the condition of classical learning among us. Who, for instance, that has any idea of its true vocation, would think of asking the following question which is presented in the Introduction, with the view of showing the importance of reading the ancients in the original instead of a translation:-"So of law and political science. Who has laid the best foundation for statesmanship, the man that has patiently studied Demosthenes, Thucydides, and Polybius, in the original, or he whose knowledge is made up from Langhorne's Plutarch, and Mitford's jaundiced History ?"

The idea of an American of the nineteenth century studying statesmanship either in Thucydides, or Langhorne's Plutarch, is almost as grotesque, as if he were to set about studying astronomy in Ptolemy's "Great Construction," or botany in the " History of Plants," of Theophrastus.

It is not, then, its direct advocacy of classic learning which gives this book its value, but as showing the achievements of modern German scholarship in that direction, and as presenting some of its most valuable observation and criticism in a language to which we all have access, we welcome this book with our warmest acknowledgments. It is composed chiefly of dissertations and essays upon ancient literature and art, by Jacobs and Hand, and what is to us far more interesting, of a large mass of correspondence upon philological subjects, between some of the greatest philologists probably that the world has ever seen. Among which we may enumerate RHUNKEN, RITTER, ERNESTI, HEYNE, KANT, TYRWHITT, VOSS, WOLF, LARCHER, WITTENBACK, BECK, CREUZER, MATTHIAE, BEKKER, SCHUTZ, HERMANN, PASSOW, and a multitude of others equally distinguished. We are presented with over a hundred of these letters, which have been translated from various collections of their authors' correspondence, and which abound not only in valuable suggestions upon different points of literary interest, but also in all that personal incident which usually

renders the letters of great men the most fascinating portion of their works. In addition to this correspondence, which occupies about one-third of the volume, we have the Inaugural Discourse delivered by Jacobs on entering, we presume, upon his professorship at Munich. The subject is "The Study of Classical Antiquity." From the same illustrious critic we have three other very valuable essays. One upon the "Wealth of the Greeks in Works of Plastic Art." Another upon "The Superiority of the Greek Language in the Use of its Dialects," and third, and far the most interesting of them all, upon the "Education of the Moral Sentiment among the Ancient Greeks." We have also here a very profound analytical history of the Latin language by Hand, who ranks among the first Latin scholars in Germany, and succeeded Passon at Weimar, and was afterwards appointed to a professorship in Jena.

These comprehend all the translations in the present volume, but by no means all of its valuable contents. Besides the notes, which give brief but very important biographical notices of all the distinguished scholars whose works and whose letters have been extracted by the editors of this volume, we have two exceedingly useful historic dissertations, one upon the "Schools of German Philology, by President Sears, and the other upon the "Schools of Philology in Holland," by Professor Edwards. We have no doubt these dissertations will prove to most of the readers of this book, as it has to us, its most instructive and most convenient portion. They have made us for the first time personally acquainted with men whom we have hitherto found it exceeding difficult to invest with any of the ordinary attributes of humanity.

In conclusion, we must say that we have not seen any book of miscellany in a long time, the perusal of which has yielded us so much pleasure. We commend it earnestly to the attention of every man of elevated taste and liberal culture, though we know full well that no recommendation of ours should add currency to any work which comes endorsed by the elegant and accomplished scho'ars to whose taste, to whose learning, and to whose industry, the public are indebted for the preparation of this. Our only wonder is that they could have permitted such a puerile, unreasonable, trashy "Introduction," to be bound up with the rest of the work. It has no one conceivable claim for a place in such society.

intrinsic merit, which in these latter days is worthy of particular mention,-that while very cheap in price, they are well printed, in a large clear type and fair white paper; so that when a few years hence every third person to be met will be suffering from disease in the eyes, their publisher at least will feel his conscience free from the responsibility of having contributed to the national ophthalmia.

The Pomological Magazine. By CHARLES W. ELLIOTT. Cincinnati: Published by U. P. James. June, 1843.

This is the first number of a bi-monthly periodical which can scarcely fail to prove highly acceptable to all who interest themselves in the cultivation of fruits. It is to be devoted exclusively to the culture of choice fruits, each number containing five engravings of such, with descriptions, and two pages of other matter, consisting of short essays upon the history, culture, and diseases of fruit trees, drawn from the best experience. The fruits contained in the present number are the Beurre D'Aremberg Pear, the Washington Plum, the Baldwin Apple, the Elton Cherry, and the Detroit Apple. Its editor is a gentleman of fine intelligence and accomplishment, whom the more congenial attractions of country life have withdrawn from the crowd of cities, to the cultivation of those pursuits which have peculiarly qualified him for the editorship of the present publication. The agents of the work in New York are Wiley & Putnam; and we feel fully assured that it will well repay its subscription price (two dollars a year) to all who may feel interested in taking a work of this character.

Gardening for Ladies; and Companion to the Flower-Garden. By Mrs. LOUDON. First American, from the third London Edition. Edited by A. J. DoWNING, Author of A Treatise on Landscape Gardening, Cottage Residences, &c. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 1843. 12mo. pp. 347.

This is just the book that was wanted by many thousands of fair horticulturists,

anxious to indulge the beautiful taste and healthful enjoyment to which, as its title imports, it is designed to minister, yet sadly deficient in that practical combined with scientific knowledge, necessary to make its labors at once successful and agreeable. In the preface, it is planned and arranged precisely for those who know but little if anything on the subject, yet would desire both to know and to do a great deal,-the author having herself found herself in that exact situation, on

her marriage with a gentleman well known by his publications to be mainly absorbed in this and kindred pursuits. It is illustrated with a great number of instructive drawings; and its American Editor, by thus bringing it out, has added largely to the public gratitude to which his own former works had so well entitled him.

The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton; with Explanatory Notes, and a Life of the Author, by the Rev. H. Stebbing, A. M.; to which is prefixed Dr. Channing's Essay on the Poetical Genius of Milton. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 200 Broadway. Philadelphia: George S. Appleton, 148 Chestnut-st. 1843. 12mo. pp. 562.

The Appletons have here added Milton to their cheap series of the Classic Poets, in the same neat and compendious form with those already before the public, Cowper, Scott, and Burns. We can only bid them go on and "be not weary in well doing."