specially noticed. It is equally full in illustrating the inflection of words, and especially of the verbs, which are presented ingeniously and perspicuously. In these two departments the principal merit of the book lies. Its explanation of syntax is feeble and not equal to the excellence of the preceding parts. As a practical work for beginners, it has this conclusive proof of its adaptedness, that it has been selected by several of the best colleges and institutions, as the one best fitted for the purpose.

7. Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes. By Rev. K. ARVINE, A. M. With an Introduction, by Rev. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D. Leavitt, Trow & Co.

THERE is great industry evinced in the collection of these anecdotes, and skill in their arrangement. The compiler professes to have extracted from the principal collections all that were deemed suitable to his scope, and to have added from other sources, such as the files of newspapers, and other repositories, a vast number besides. They are generally left to stand in the same phraseology in which he found them, and consequently have no kind of unity; but they are well classified, and accompanied with copious indexes, topical and scriptural. The work forms by far the most convenient, as it is undoubtedly the most complete, collection of interesting facts, incidents, and anecdotes, that can be found. The value of such a work as this, for the purposes of the preacher, the teacher, the parent, is too obviously great to need to be mentioned. It is finely printed, and issued in parts, eight of which will complete the work-price 25 cents each.

ERRATA.

THE article in our last number, on the Saracenic Literature, by Rev. Dr. Beecher, was injured in many places, we regret to say, by errors of the press, for which there are no other apologies than unavoidable haste in the examination of proofs, and a very obscure manuscript. So far as the correction can be made by a note, we would now repair the mischief. There are some errors which are so obviously typographino advertisement of them. Others are more adapted to

cal that the reader needs mislead.

On p. 154, line 15, for Alhakim, read Alhakem.

155, twice,

66

66

Matazalians, "Motazalians.

""156, 11th line from the bottom, for Albategui, read Albategni.

"Ebu Aluam, "Ebn Eluam.

It will be seen that most of these errors occur in the spelling of unusual proper names, which being obscurely written, were not strangely misread. A few other mistakes occur in the number, which will be readily perceived.

THE

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY

AND

CLASSICAL REVIEW.

THIRD SERIES, NO. XV.-WHOLE NUMBER, LXXI.

JULY, 1848.

ARTICLE I.

INFLUENCE OF COLLEGES, ESPECIALLY ON WESTERN EDUCATION AND CIVILIZATION.

By Rev. CHARLES WHITE, D.D., President of Wabash College, Indiana.

ALL who have become acquainted with American society, have observed that its most marked feature, is restless activity. Enterprise is more characteristic of us than a high civilization; a passion for the glitter and parade of wealth, more than a tendency to substantial, unostentatious investments and solid comforts. It has now become a universal statement and opinion, that a spirit of adventure and advancement, as also an actual forward and ascending movement, are no where in the country more apparent than in the Valley of the Mississippi. This ardor and progress, as is always the fact in new countries, respect the physical more than the intellectual; fortunes and honors more than facilities of knowledge and achievements of mind. All education is in a depressed condition. A large proportion of the population remains far below the highest and best forms of civilization. There is, however, at the present time, a very general and a very determined purpose on the part of the West to emerge, intellectually and morally, and place itself, at least on a level with the best educated and best ordered communities.

It will be the object of this discussion, to exhibit the capable influence of Western Colleges in assisting the existing auspicious movement in behalf of education and a superior civilization.

I. These Literary Institutions are peculiarly fitted and responsible for the introduction into the country, of a sound and thorough scholarship.

THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. No. 3.

1

In accomplishing this object, much time, labor and patience are to be employed in removing several formidable obstacles to the creation and diffusion of a high intelligence. The first is, a deep and general prejudice against all literary training in Colleges. These seats of learning, as is supposed, produce and continue those invidious distinctions in society already too wide and too numerous. The working classes, confessedly a large part of the sinew and worth of the community, are often heard to allege, that Colleges, besides elevating a few, made by Heaven their equals, to lord it over them, encourage lazy idleness and ill habits. They regard them like packages of goods and boxes at store-doors, as great lounging-places made respectable, as popular lures to beguile away precious time, that ought to be employed in the sober duties of life. Others, looking at them in a religious light, believe them formed to nourish sectarianism, bigotry, exclusiveness; to stereotype irresistibly their own peculiarities of faith and morals upon all the unpractised, unwary youth committed to their Jesuitical mint. This prejudice, standing directly opposed to almost the only means of a liberal education existing in nascent communities, is deep-rooted and widely diffused.-Another obstacle is a settled impression, that instruction in the higher parts of an intellectual course, is unnecessary and perhaps prejudicial. Great numbers urgently insist, that Common Schools are the best and only needed Colleges for republicans. After graduating in these, energetic, independent minds, and none others are worth cultivating at all, will, as they believe, school themselves, and school themselves well and largely for any sphere which they may be called to move in. The learned professions, they freely admit, as well as the higher fields of science, require mental acquisitions and mental discipline far beyond what can be furnished by these elementary seminaries. But the men, say they, who cannot obtain both these by selfguided inquiries and self-imposed intellectual exercises, should infer that Heaven designs them for some other sphere of action. Franklin, they allege, was never drilled in a recitation-room, nor initiated into philosophy by blackboard, diagram and lecture, to teach him how to put the lightning into a bottle, to play with thunderbolts as with rush-lights. Bowditch, they add, was never driven through Euclid and Conic Sections and Čalculus, whether he would or not, at the point of College authority; nor Washington, Patrick Henry and Clay, called by a College bell from chapel to recitation, from recitation to chapel, from the Professor of Mathematics, to the Professor of Languages, from the Professor of Languages to the Professor of Rhetoric, and so successsively through a formidable line of installed dignitaries. Yet, in profound scholarship, in a pure, classical, splendid eloquence, these self-constructed men are unrivalled and unequalled. Cease, they

tell us, cease crowding the soil with plants from the green-house, and the rich teeming earth will send up healthy towering occupants; shut up the Colleges and deliver up from these, nursed, protected, formal, feeble, dependent products, and we shall have men, original, independent, powerful!-A third obstacle to an establishment and diffusion at the West of a superior intelligence and scholarship, is a prevalent haste to rush into the professions. It is with vast difficulty, that young men intended for these spheres of life, can be induced to pursue a course of thorough education. Situated in the midst of the stir and excitement incident to society in the process of rapid formation; in the midst of a general growth and progress, where the qualified and unqualified, the superior and inferior, seem to be swept on together, almost irrespective of personal exertion; in the midst of promises of immediate and brilliant reward to professional services; in the midst of a population in no wise disposed to criticise their efforts severely, or to be dissatisfied with anything possessing a dashing vivacity, fluency and boldness-in the midst of these circumstances, the tendency to enter on professional life with exceedingly slender qualifications, is general and powerful. The scene presented at the entrances of the professions, is like that at a wharf just before a ship sets sail. The passengers must be aboard, come what will! They push ahead, almost as if it were a matter of life and death. One leaves behind him his trunk, one his pocket-book, another his stock of sea-stores, another his important papers, and there is not one, who has not left much behind him; a few, in their haste and rush, fall off the plank into the sea and at much risk and vexation, covered with sea-weed and mud are hauled on board. On board! on board! at all hazards! by plank or by sea; clothed, or denuded; trunk, papers, stores, money, or no trunk, papers, stores, money! on board! whatever else is gained or lost. Such is the rush and scramble to get into professional life. This disposition is manifest through the whole course of an education. Western Literary Institutions are mortified to see themselves acting the part of an up-town omnibus, discharging its passengers at every streetcorner. Some students leave at the preparatory stage of their course, some fall out just after entering freshman, some at sophomore, some at junior, some at senior standing. The excitement, the golden profit, the clustering honors of a profession, invite and captivate, and carry them off, in spite of all opposing influences.

The removal of these powerful prejudices, impressions and tendencies, and the establishment of correct and liberal sentiments, constitute the most important and most laborious of the services of Western Colleges, in behalf of a sound education and sound scholarship. It is a part of their arduous labor to vindicate