the great advocate of the Auburn system, under whose auspices the prison reform has been made in most of the States, devotes a large portion of its annual reports to belaboring most stoutly the Philadelphia plan; and our friends from the good " city of brotherly love," not willing to be left behind in any of the works of Christian kindness, return the blows with all vigor in a periodical got up for the purpose, in pamphlets, and in penitentiary reports. "You drive the prisoners mad," cries Boston, "by the long continued horrors of solitary confinement"; "You subject the criminals to the cruel and degrading punishment of the lash," shouts Philadelphia. "Your own statistics," exclaims the former, "show a fearful amount of insanity and mortality in your prisons"; "Figures prove nothing, and there is a mistake in your calculations," retorts the latter. And so it goes; the quarrel is a very pretty quarrel, and if we had the Irishman's disposition to be

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any body's customer in a row," we might be tempted to engage in it, having an opinion of our own to support; and in this matter, certainly, we could not find a more courteous and gallant opponent with whom to break a lance than Dr. Howe. But for the present, at least, we decline the contest.

Though a member of the Boston Society, Dr. Howe is a seceder from its doctrines, and it is as the author of a Minority Report, which he is obliged to publish for himself, because most of his colleagues refuse to give it any sanction, that he now appears before us. Thus disowned and discountenanced, not allowed a hearing, and constantly voted down, he yet struggles on, contending against a host with as much gallantry as he formerly showed in fighting the Turks. Whoever desires to see an able, energetic, sweeping vindication of the Philadelphia plan may find it in this pamphlet. If further desirous to know how far one may be carried in the support of a favorite theory, when once excited by opposition, we commend to him the following thesis, which is gravely propounded and maintained in this Report: - that "the Separate System is, for all moral and intellectual purposes, more truly social in its nature than the Congregate System." This proposition, to those who are acquainted with the distinctive features of the two systems, here called the Separate and the Congregate, may serve as a measure of the strength of Dr. Howe's attachment to the Philadelphia plan. His Report is evidently ex parte in its character, and may be consulted with great advantage by those who wish to know what can be said on that side of the question. For a statement of arguments and facts of an opposite character and tendency, we may refer to the Annual Report of the Rhode Island State Prison for 1844, an extract from which may be found on page 218 of the American Almanac for 1846.

This prison was built, and managed at first, on the Philadelphia plan; but this was given up in 1843, and the general features of the Auburn, or silent, system were adopted; the change being recommended by the warden, "after a careful observation, extending through a period of more than four years, of the injurious and alarming effects of solitary imprisonment upon the mental and physical condition of those who were the subjects of it."

3.- A Greek-English Lexicon, based on the German Work of Francis Passow. By HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL, M. A., and ROBERT Sсотт, М. А. With Corrections and Additions, and the Insertion in Alphabetical Order of the Proper Names occurring in the principal Greek Authors. By HENRY DRISLER, M. A., Adjunct Professor of the Greek and Latin Languages in Columbia College, New York. Harper & Brothers. 1846. 8vo. pp. 1705.

THE editor of this volume is said to be a very laborious and accurate teacher. He is Adjunct Professor of Languages in Columbia College, where, as we judge from the Dedication, he received his education under the care of Professor Anthon. With this latter gentleman's productions we have had occasion at times to find serious fault; Mr. Drisler is a production that bids fair to do him great honor. He is evidently one of that class of men, few in any country, who "scorn delights and live laborious days," for the sake of accumulating learning and advancing the cause of knowledge among men. Dr. Anthon may well look with pride upon the promise of his young pupil and friend.

The relation existing between these two gentlemen justifies, perhaps, the somewhat exaggerated and parasitical terms in which Professor Anthon is spoken of, both in the Dedication and the Preface; but it hardly justifies the publishers in advertising a work of Mr. Drisler as forming one of Dr. Anthon's series, unless he may be considered a sort of grandfather to the volume in question.

We had intended to prepare an article upon the Lexicon of Mr. Pickering, and this American reprint of Liddell and Scott, and perhaps we may still recur to our original design. At present, however, we shall offer our readers only a brief notice of Mr. Drisler's labors. We have used his edition of Liddell and Scott for some time with pleasure and profit, and on the whole can safely commend it as a well executed work. We are not told by

If

the editor whether he obtained the approbation and consent of the gentlemen whose work he has taken such liberties with; but we understand from other quarters that such is not the case. Mr. Drisler has been guilty of such a neglect of the comity usual between gentlemen and scholars, his conduct in this respect is worthy of rebuke. He has been taught in a bad school. But we heartily commend the honest manner in which he assigns to all parties their shares in the credit of the book. We like him for the pains he has taken to state clearly and precisely what he has himself done, and for the care with which he has guarded against appropriating to himself what belongs to others. This is done elaborately in the Preface, and in the Appendix, besides generally marking the articles in the body of the work to which additions or corrections have been made. This is all fair and above board. It remains to be seen what is the real value of these alterations and corrections, and, in general, of the editorial labor which Mr. Drisler has expended upon this edition. The carefully written Preface contains his own account of the matter, which we think will be borne out by an examination of the work.

We are sorry to find so sensible a man talking in such unmeaning terms about literary criticism being made " a vehicle for illnatured, one-sided, and undeserved attacks, which have no other object in view than to gratify private enmity or personal pique," just after he has aimed a side-thrust at an American work of high critical merit, which his language implies that he has never even seen. We refer to a note on page ninth of the Preface, where he says, - "This work," meaning Carmichael's on the Greek Verb, " has been, as the editor learns, reprinted in this country, but in a mutilated condition, and without due credit being assigned to the author." What kind of criticism is this, to charge such high literary misdemeanours upon the author of a book which the critic confessedly has never read? The truth is, the American work is from the pen of a scholar who adds to the favoring circumstance of Hellenic birth a critical knowledge of MSS. and of the labors of European philologists, and a most exact and minute acquaintance with the Greek language, through all its changes down to the present day. It is a work in every respect superior to Carmichael's, which it resembles in its general plan, but from which it differs by avoiding the errors of the European writer, by being founded on a more extensive survey of Greek authors, and by being arranged on more philosophical views. Its value has been recognized by teachers of the highest character in the United States, and it is not very creditable to Mr. Drisler not to have studied it, and used it in editing Liddell and Scott. If Mr. Drisler will read the introductions to both these works, and compare the very first article, that on daw, he will see the unfairness of his disparaging and ignorant remark, and perhaps will have the magnanimity to exclaim, with the hero in the Iliad, Μέγ ̓ ἀασάμην.

The merit of Passow's Lexicon has long been acknowledged, wherever the Greek and German languages are known. Its leading excellence consists in the scientific and historical manner in which the significations of the words are unfolded. His plan, if fully carried out, would contain a history of every word in the Greek language, during at least the classical ages. He lived to execute his plan only partially. It was very completely executed with regard to the language of Homer and Hesiod; less so with regard to the early post-Homeric poets and Herodotus. Messrs. Liddell and Scott have not simply translated Passow, but have endeavoured to add from their own studies enough to supply the deficiencies which the early death of the author prevented him from supplying himself. Their work has already passed into a second edition, in which many improvements have been made upon the first. Mr. Drisler began with the first English edition, but while he was carrying it through the press, the second came out. He has made numerous additions and corrections, for which, of course, there is always room, in a lexicon of such a language as the Greek. Some of his additions are superfluous, some are useless, but most of them, if we may venture to form an opinion upon a partial examination only, are of real and substantial value. The narrow limits of a critical notice restrain us from many specifications; but to illustrate what we mean, we will mention one or two. On the first page, the word daw is defined. Mr. Drisler adds, immediately after the contracted 1 aor. m. ἀσάμην, the reference, "3 sing. ἄσατο, ΙΙ. 19.95." Now this reference would be useless here, in any event, because the passage is distinctly cited below, to illustrate the meaning of the word, in the middle voice. On the other hand, a few pages farther on, in the article ἀγέλη, Messrs. Liddell and Scott have attempted to explain a peculiar signification of the word, growing out of the domestic institutions of Crete. Passow does not refer to it, and Pape gives it in general terms, as a classification of boys who were brought up together. Liddell and Scott, referring to Müller's Dorians for authority, define the ἀγέλαι as "the bands or classes in which the youths were trained up to the age of seventeen"; for which Mr. Drisler substitutes "the bands or classes in which the youth lived together from their eighteenth year till the time of their marriage, and consequently even after they had attained the age of manhood."

The mistake of Messrs. Liddell and Scott is very singular; for the language of Müller, in the passage to which they refer, expressly declares that "it was not until their seventeenth year that they were enrolled in the agela." For this statement, Müller's authority is Hesychius, who defines an ἀπάγελος, that is, a boy not yet admitted into an agele, as ὁ μέχρι ἐτῶν ἑπτακαίδεκα, a boy until the age of seventeen. It is true, there is some doubt in the matter. Strabo (1. X.), describing from Ephorus the Cretan institutions, says that "the boys were required to frequent the agelæ, so called, and the full grown men the syssitia, which they denominated Andreia."

Mr. Drisler is to be praised for his diligence in tracking Liddell and Scott to their authorities, and correcting them accordingly. In this particular case, we think it most probable that, as to the fact, they are right; though they are wrong in citing Müller. Müller's language is not easily reconciled with the statements of others, though it is founded on the common reading of Hesychius. Manso, in his elaborate and learned work entitled Sparta,* says, "the reception into the agela took place between the seventh and seventeenth year; for unquestionably the reading in the Lexicographer (Hesychius) should be παῖς ὁ μέχρι ἐτῶν ἔπτα καὶ δέκα, and not ἑπτακαίδεκα.” So that Liddell and Scott may be substantially right.

An important addition made by Mr. Drisler is the insertion of the proper names. In this part of the work, he acknowledges his indebtedness to the excellent lexicons of proper names, by Crusius and Pape. For the convenience of students in schools and colleges, this improvement of Mr. Drisler's is of great importance.

The praise of correctness in the printing is also due to Mr. Drisler, who revised all the proof-sheets, and whose laborious care in this respect cannot be too much commended. In other points, the typographical execution of the work is highly creditable to the press from which it comes.

4.-Memoir of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By WILLIAM SMITH. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1846. 12mo. pp. 157.

THE press of our good friends is usually better employed than in republishing a book like this. It is so sublimely abstruse, when it undertakes to present its hero's views, if that expression may be allowed us, and performs its short task with so dull a subtilty, that