Few religious discourses are to be found which contain so many imperfections. There is no want in them, indeed, of subtleties and playful wit. Extremely deficient, however, are they in respect to thoroughness of investigation, appropriateness of illustration, a useful treatment of subjects, a correct interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and an easy and agreeable style and manner of address."

In treating on dogmatical topics, the author runs out into all their learned distinctions and definitions, without giving them any practical application; while, at the same time, the proofs he employs, are very artificial; and the illustrations which he introduces are exceedingly inappropriate. He, on all occasions, stands forth as a violent opposer of the heretics, especially of the Arians, the Manichæans, the Pelagians, and the Donatists. Of course these discourses were nothing more nor less than very dry and barren treatises.

His moral discourses are of a much better character. They are not free, indeed, from the faults and the corrupt taste of the age; nor are they carried out in a manner sufficiently regular, substantial and convincing. At the same time they exhibit much prolixity; and abound in playful wit. In the recommendation of single virtues, however, they are by no means destitute of good moral argumentation and a proper array of

motives.

His biblical discourses are the most imperfect. They are full of subtle, allegorical and typical representations; they abound in play upon words; and contain abstruse questions, with learned answers. In his discourses on the Psalms, he makes an allegorical application of every thing to the New Testament. In his discourses on John, on the other hand, he everywhere presents us with allusions to the affairs of the Old Testament. The art of huddling together a multitude of quotations from Scripture, by way of proof, without any appropriate selection whatever, is peculiarly his own.

In his discourses on the Saints, we meet with many fabulous and superstitious narrations; and in the 71st, quite a long and full discussion of the doctrine of a purgatory.

The style is very dry,-destitute, indeed, of all charms, being made up solely of short and broken sallies, or of long, intricate and very obscure periods; or else of short questions and answers, arranged in the manner of a dialogue. In particular, the author is very prolix, spending much time in turning a thought over and over by the aid of quibbles, so that he never descends

to the bottom of any thing he says. Sometimes he tries to catch the attention of his hearers by a few pertinent remarks; but in general he seems altogether indifferent in this respect.

He is, take one discourse with another, without an introduction; and often without a formal conclusion. Sometimes, however, he closes with a doxology, and sometimes with a prayer, which begins: "Conversi ad Dominum." They are, for the most part, very short. Some few of them, on the other hand, are remarkably long.

To the above critique, drawn chiefly from Schmid, it may be added that his style, in many respects, resembles that of the facetious Thomas Fuller, of the 17th century; or nearer still, that of our own Cotton Mather. Sometimes it exhibits fullness of thought. In general, however, it is rendered full by alliteration or verbal play; and if we find any thought in him that is splendid,-which is often the case, for he was unquestionably a thinker and a man of genius,-it must be hewn out of a mass of rocks, or cleared of a vast amount of useless rubbish, and abundantly trimmed and pruned, before it can be employed. His piety seems every where unquestionable. His talents were probably such as would have conformed him to the age in which he might live, and thus have always rendered him, in many respects, an interesting and attractive preacher.+

In concluding this article, I will only add, that Augustine died in troublesome times; but his death was that of a Christian. Hippo, which was the strongest fortress in Africa, had become a refuge for various persons, and was undergoing a siege of the Vandals, in the year 430; when, in about the third month of the siege, Augustine was seized with a fever, which he doubted not, from the very first, would prove fatal. He had often looked forward to death in his meditations; and he found himself peaceful and happy as it drew nearer. Indeed, "he was not able to contain within his breast the desires of his soul, in which he sighed after the glorious day of eternity. He calmly resigned his spirit into the hands of God, from whom he had received it, on the 28th of Aug. 430, after having lived 76 years, and spent almost 40 of them in the labors of the ministry.'

p.

149 sq.

* Anleitung, u. s. w. Th. III. † Compare what Erasmus says of him, as quoted in the Biblical Repos. 1st series, Vol. III. p. 570.

ARTICLE VI.

ELEMENTS OF LITERARY TASTE:-THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROSE AND POETRY.*

By Rev. Charles B. Hadduck, Professor of Intellectual Philosophy and English Literature, Dartmouth College, N. H.

ONE of the first inquiries to be made, in relation to a book, is, To what class does it belong? Is it Prose, or Poetry? Is it Philosophy, or History, or Fiction? On the answer given to these questions depend, in important points, the standard by which the work is to be judged, and the feelings with which it should be read. The different kinds of composition have each its appropropriate objects, and are executed each on its peculiar principles. Each has much that is common to the rest, and that lays the foundation for the common name of Literature. But, under this common name, works of extremely dissimilar structure and spirit are included; human thought and feeling are embodied in a common language, and yet in forms as unlike as those of material nature, and with aspects as varying as the colors of the sky.

* The reader should be apprised that this article constitutes a chapter in a work prepared by Professor Hadduck, and soon to be published, entitled Esthetics, or the Elements of Literary Taste. It is therefore, though complete in itself, but part of a more general discussion. This will account for the occasional references which it contains to associated topics elsewhere considered. The scope and design of the work will be more fully stated under our head of "Literary Intelligence," where we shall announce its proposed publication. In the mean time we have obtained the author's permission to enrich our pages with this interesting chapter. It may be regarded as at once a specimen and an earnest of the character of the entire work. As such we commend it to the attention of our readers, and especially to the officers of colleges and to other teachers, who have felt the want of a Text-book, on this subject, of an elevated character and adapted to the demands of taste and criticism in our educated circles.-ED.

The mathematician, who assured Mr. Addison, that the greatest pleasure he took in reading Virgil was in examining Eneas's voyage by the map, and the scientific gentleman, who, being asked his opinion of an epic poem which he had just read, gravely replied, "What does it prove?" appear ridiculous, not because the one was delighted with geography, and the other with demonstration; but because they could find delight in nothing else, and sought geography and demonstration in works which did not profess to teach them. They overlooked the distinctions of literary composition. The mistake of the one was that of the child, who gazes with admiration on the shining case and mysterious motions of a watch, without the least. idea of the beautiful mechanism which distinguishes and chronicles the fugitive moments; that of the other, the error of the blind man, who complained of spectacles, that they did not enable him to

see.

The reader who takes the novels of Scott, or the dramas of Shakspeare, or Pilgrim's Progress, for matters of fact, must have strange notions of this world. If the same course of thought, the same severity of method, the same forms of argument, and the same style of illustration and expression were demanded of the poet or the historian, which we exact of the mathematician and the philosopher, what would become of their charming eloquence? Why, the forms of life, and health, and beauty, which now engage our hearts and win our admiration in these works of genius, would be all withered to skeletons. If, on the other hand, the freedom, the variety, the grace, the imagination, which are characteristic of fine writing, were required of the authors of exact science, how impossible it would be for them to maintain that precision of thought, that logical order, and that uniform, unambiguous expression, which are so essential in the conduct of arguments on abstract and difficult subjects-subjects that demand minute and undistracted attention, and, in order to be justly apprehended, must be separated, as much as possible, from every thing foreign or accidental to them.

No; it must not be, that every thing in literature shall be measured by the same standard, and looked upon with one common feeling. Some things are to be weighed in a balance; some to be meted out in a bushel; some to be calculated by lines and angles; and, peradventure, some will be found of such airy consistence, such gossamer texture, as to refuse to be estimated by any of these gross measures, and to submit only to the ordeal of fancy.

It is a narrow criticism which would restrict literature to one walk, one form, one costume. She is as boundless in her range, as various in her aspect, as free in her attire, as human thought itself, of which, in its ever-multiplying varieties, she is the record, the embodied image. Like the life she represents, she has her infancy, her youth, her manhood and her age. Like nature, with which she cherishes communion, and whose changeful features she embalms, she has revolving seasons of her own -a budding spring, a fervid summer, a "sear and yellow" autumn, and a drowsy winter. She has hours of earnest labor, and of calm repose-pastimes, day-dreams, phantasies. She is not always toiling at the oar, nor delving in the mine, nor nerved for solemn debate, nor clad in armor; but, sometimes, "sporting with the Naiads in the shade, or playing with the tangles of Neæra's hair." In these various occupations how impossible it is to regard her with the same feeling and to try her by a single rule. It would be like looking at the councils of the senate chamber and the debates of a public school, at the grave enterprises of life and the sports of the village playground, at the realities of the battle-field and the manœuvres of a militia muster, with the same eye and the same allowance.

The sense of the beautiful is as really part of our nature as the sense of the true, or of the right; and the forms and shades and groups of thought, that are fitted to produce the emotion of beauty in us, are as diversified as the sights or sounds which supply the ever-changing pleasures of the eye and the ear. It is the office of true criticism to enable us to appreciate these varieties of literary production, and to heighten the enjoyment which we derive from them. To attain the enviable sensibility which apprehends the more delicate lines and tints of the beautiful in composition, something more, it is true, is necessary than the best criticism can confer-more than any skill can teach. The wisest discipline would fail of this end, unless assisted and rendered efficacious by the insensible influence of habitual familiarity with the models of taste. It would seem that the sense of beauty, of which we are made capable by nature, is developed in the mind by exercise, and though, like other powers, it may be conferred on men in different degrees, is always nourished and matured by its appropriate aliment-THE BEAUTIFUL. It is strengthened by being indulged. It is called out by being appealed to. And the aid which theory and criticism afford in its cultivation, is merely to point out and supply appropriate objects the natural occasions for its exercise.