tage of it to engage in a new war against the Sultan, while the latter, supported by England, thirsted for revenge. The Turks were defeated in a terrible battle at Nezib. The army was destroyed and the fleet had been delivered by treachery to Mehemet Ali, and was now cruising near Alexandria in company with the Egyptian fleet.

By the death of Mahmoud, immediately after the present Sultan, Abdoul Mejdid, ascended the throne, and it was hoped that peace would be established, as the young Sultan was less obstinate than his father. England, Austria and Prussia, fearing to leave Turkey to the protection of Russia, formed an alliance to support the former. From this alliance, France was omitted. The Pacha refused the terms offered to him by the allies. He broke out into fury, exclaiming: "Vallah-billah-billah, (by the Almighty God) I will not surrender a foot of land which I possess, and should they declare war against me, I will overturn the empire and bury myself beneath its ruins." The wooden walls of England, however, soon brought him to his senses. The British fleet assailed his fortresses on the coast, and cut off the communication between Syria and Egypt. Jean D'Acre and Beyrout, and other strongholds fell in succession, and the French, notwithstanding their superior fleet in the Mediterranean not sustaining the Pacha, owing to the determination of Louis Philippe to cement a friendship with England, Mehemet Ali was compelled to accept the terms proposed by Guizot, on the part of France, and adopted by the allies 1. That the straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles should be closed against ships of war of all nations without distinction. 2. That on condition of paying the Porte one-fourth of the revenue, the Pachalic of Egypt, in hereditary right, should be secured to Mehemet Ali and his descendants, as the vassal of the Sultan. 3. That guarantees should be given by Turkey for ameliorating the Christian inhabitants of Syria.

One of the conditions of the peace was, the restoration to the Sultan of his fleet, which consisted of nine ships of the line, eleven frigates, and four brigs. This treaty being concluded, a convention was signed by the whole allied powers and France, which was thus taken into the European confederacy of nations again. The portion of it which afterwards became of great importance was "that the straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in conformity with the ancient

usage of the Ottoman empire, shall remain permanently closed against all foreign vessels of war as long as the Ottoman Porte shall enjoy peace." This appeared to be a great victory, but it was deceptive, for it in reality made the Black Sea an inland inaccessible Russian lake. The fleets of all the western powers were shut. out, while that of Russia, numbering eighteen line of battle ships, was left in possession, manned with gunners whose skill England afterwards experienced on the ramparts of the Malakoff and the Redan. Against this fine navy and the impregnable bastions of Sebastopol, Turkey had the ill-fortified ports of the Bosphorus, with a few sail of the line badly, manned, so little foresight did the western powers evince. The war of 1854 was undertaken by the allies to undo the treaty, which was the fruit of the victories of Beyrout and Acre, in 1841-to open the Euxine to foreign vessels of war, and to terminate the fatal supremacy of Russia in its waters, but the results of it are so well known, that it would be superfluous to refer to them at any length in this hasty sketch, already grown much longer than we had intended it should be.

ART. VII.-1. The Antigone of Sophocles. With Notes, for the use of Colleges in the United States. By THEODORE D. WOOLSEY, President of Yale College. Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe & Co.

2. Eschylus ex Novissima Recensione. FREDRICI A. PALEY. Accessit verborum quæ praecipue notanda sunt et nominum index. New York: Harper & Brothers.

3. Euripides ex Recensione. FREDRICI A. PALEY. Accessit et nominum index. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We are well aware of the wide-spread prejudice existing amongst the great mass of our people against classical studies. No nation in the world sets a higher value upon education in one sense than ours; a fact that is daily attested quite as strongly by the shifts, sacrifices, and labors, which many of the poorest young men and maidens in the community will cheerfully undergo in order to acquire this education, as by the great attention which it has received from the several State legislatures. Every political system has its weak points, and we may not always be

able to rebut or deny the severe truth of the criticisms passed by foreigners upon some of our public institutions and our private manners; but we can always point with an honorable pride to our Common School system of public education, as a lofty and enduring proof of the people's capacity for self-government. It is true, that some of the despotic nations of Europe, such as Prussia and Bavaria, have admirable systems of public education also, and Scotland's Parochial Schools have, since the days of Knox, been a powerful means of elevating the humbler classes of her population; but, even allowing those educational instrumentalities to be on a par, in point of general application and practical results, with our own, it must not be forgotten that these European systems are the results either of public tyranny or of private, individual benevolence; while ours owes its origin to the wise and liberal spirit of a free people, legislating for the benefit of themselves and posterity.

In this, however, as in everything else, it must be acknowledged that the practical, pecuniary value test has always been kept very carefully in view; nor was it anything but natural that such should be the case with a young people encountering the various toils and difficulties incident to a new position, new freedom, and a new land. Those kinds of knowledge, which would best and most readily qualify their recipients to supply the necessities and overcome the obstacles of the settler's daily life, naturally commanded the highest price in the educational market; and, even when the general progress and increased prosperity of the country had, to a great extent, nullified this plea of necessity, the impress remained stamped upon our educational system, being imprinted afresh and even more deeply by the desire of accumu lating wealth—an object for which, we suspect, education is much more frequently valued and sought, than for its own sake, as the great means of elevating, enlightening, and ennobling man's mental and spiritual nature.

Let us not be supposed for a moment to undervalue the practical, useful character of that system of education, which has been the chief means, under Providence, of securing our freedom and promoting our prosperity. On the contrary, we derive a peculiar and proud feeling of satisfaction from the superiority which, through the developement given by this system to natural genius, 'we have attained over other nations, in almost every department

of applied science and mechanical ingenuity. But we do desire to see the intellectual aspirants and educational views of our people liberalized and elevated, so that they may no longer look upon knowledge merely as a stepping-stone to wealth and an incentive to the worship of that foul Fetish-the base god of so much base idolatry-" success in life." Moreover, we must confess that we desire to see our country take a position in the universe of literature and learning of equal dignity with its political status among the nations of the earth. We have made some long strides in this direction, and indeed in not a few points of intellectual culture have nearly attained the goal; but in others, and more especially in the departments of high classical scholarship, philological research, and critical acquaintance with the languages and literatures of antiquity, much—very much, alas! remains still to be done.* We shall not pause at present to discuss the value of sound, classical knowledge, as we take it for granted the majority of our readers require no arguments to prove

* We had originally hoped to make some suggestions in this article for an improved system of classical education, but are obliged, by want of space, to defer them. As properly connected, however, with the subject of an Attic Poet, let us point out the manifest absurdity of putting the Homeric poems into the hands of young students, who have but just entered on the study of Greek. This practice is very general and very wrong: much more ridiculous, indeed, than if we were to commence teaching our children English from the "Faerie Queen" of Spenser, or Chaucer's "Troilus and Cresseide." This stanza is a very sweet and beautiful one, but yet the style of language would hardly form a good model for present poetry or speech :

"An as the newe-abashed nightingale

That stinteth first, when she beginneth syng,
When that she heareth any herdis tale,

Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,

And after siker doth her voice outring:

Right as Cresseide, when that her drede stent

Opened her herte and told him her entente."

And yet it is infinitely more like the language of Byron and Bryant, Wordsworth and Whittier, than the old Ionic dialect of Homer is to the pure, polished attic of Sophocles. If the Greek language is to be taught properly and perfectly, let the study of the dialectic peculiarities of ancient forms and of the mongrel corruptions of modern Romaic be postponed, till the pupil is able to read and to compose with ease in pure Attic Greek, the finest and most philosophical of all languages, dead or living, except one-The Sanskrit.

to them the great worth and practical availability of the study of the languages of Greece and Rome, even if regarded only as an instrument of education and mental training. For our present purpose it is enough to recal and record the fact, that the progress of the literary reputation of Germany and England may be measured very accurately by the advances made in classical, and more particularly in Greek scholarship. Although the names of many illustrious scholars stand out in bold relief upon the pages of European history, at a period when the language and literature of Greece at least had as yet attracted comparatively little attention, it remained for the last three quarters of a century to assign its due place of honor to the study of Greek; and surely we need not wait to prove that no previous era of the history of Germany and England had ever been so generally and strongly marked by all the characteristics of literary elevation and refinement, as that which has given birth to Brunck and Bothe, Hermann and Dindorf, Wunder and Welcker, Schæfer and Schneider, Erfurdt and Böckh, in the fatherland of scholarship and scholars, and to Porson, and Musgrave, and Gaisford, Elmsley and Monk, and Paley, Jelf, and Donaldson, and Liddell, cum multis aliis, in our own fatherland. And here let us remark that, while we have selected those names, without method or order, and simply currente calamo, at random recollection, it is by no means an insignificant circumstance, that almost every one of those illustrious scholars evinced a high appreciation of the works of Sophocles above all the other poetic writers of ancient Greece. Such a fact would in itself be sufficient to lead us to look for more than ordinary beauty, purity of style, and elevation of sentiment in his dramas. Nor will such an expectation prove deceptive to the student, who shall seek an intimate acquaintance with the prince of Greek dramatic poets: for we willingly acknowledge the justice of his country's verdict, which awarded to Sophocles the palm of superiority alike over his older and his younger rival. Æschylus, indeed, may surpass him in boldness of imagery and grandeur of style; and rightfully retain the respect and admiration of his own and after ages as the virtual creator of attic tragedy; for in the language of Schlegel, "She sprang in full panoply from his head as did Pallas from the head of Jupiter." In the singular strangeness of his imagery and expressions, Eschylus has aptly been compared to