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lovers of the arts, volunteered a third journey into Asia Minor, solely for the purpose of superintending their removal."

Roman Antiquities. The Progressif Cauchois announces, that the Abbé Cochet has just had some excavations made in the Loges wood, near Chateau Gaillard, a place celebrated in the ancient legends and traditions of the country, and has discovered a Roman dwelling, apparently belonging to a family in the middle ranks of life. This circumstance adds to the value of the discovery, as hitherto only villas of the wealthy have been known to the learned. This habitation is composed of four compartments, three of which are sitting-rooms. The first the hypocaust or stove-room, is in an excellent state of preservation, and shows clearly the manner of heating employed by the Romans in their northern provinces. About a score of brick pillars are still standing, generally about four fifths of a yard in height. On these pillars the flooring was placed, composed of flat freestone flags, and a considerable portion of it still remains. The walls, which are formed of roughly cut stones, are in some places nine feet high. They are covered over with a thick layer of cement, perforated in a number of places, to allow the hot air to pass into the room from channels, which run round in various directions from the stove. The ceiling is ornamented with fruits and flowers roughly painted on rough mortar. The second room is also flagged with freestone, and has in one corner a pipe to let off the water. This pipe was found stopped with a large cork, when the discovery was made. The third room was unpaved, and in it M. Cochet found fifteen bronze medals of the time of Trajan, Faustinus, and Antoninus. The Memoriel des Pyrenees also gives an account of some excavations lately made at Bielle. Ă fine piece of Mosaic having been discovered by a peasant, while digging his land, further researches were made, and an entire house was laid bare, the walls still standing to a height of three feet. This residence also consists of four chambers, but with the addition of a circular piece, which was at first thought to be a bath room, from the fact of two large pipes of water being made to communicate with it. On removing the floor, however, a tomb of white polished marble was discovered below, containing a skeleton in good preservation. The floors of the chambers were paved with handsome mosaics. Some pieces of pottery, burnt earth, and two columns about nine feet high, one of white, the other of colored marble, have been found, as well as a finely sculptured capital. Excavations and discoveries have also been lately made near Salle, on the road to Limoges, among which may be mentioned a stone mill, for grinding

corn, a small figure in copper of an armed warrior, and some medals, one of which represents a chained crocodile ; and a gold medal has been found at Bruneval, of the size of an English half-crown, and the weight of a sovereign, which refers to an interesting epoch in English history, having been struck to commemorate the descent of Edward of York into Great Britain, at the time of the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. - Athenæum.

Scandinavian Antiquities. A letter from Copenhagen.states that a peasant of Boesland in the island of Zealand, whilst ploughing, discovered two gold urns filled with ashes, chased with foliage and fruit, and bearing on the top of the cover, a figure of Odin, the Jupiter of the Scandinavians. This figure is represented as standing, bearing on one shoulder the two crows, Hunin (thought) and Munin (memory), and at its feet two wolves, symbols of its power. The urns are exactly alike in preservation, and admirably wrought. The gold is exceedingly thin, except at the edges. They are about six inches in diameter, including the cover, but not the figure, and their weight is a little more than two pounds. They have been deposited in the Museum of Copenhagen. They are supposed to belong to the fifth century. -Athenæum.

The Spanish Character. "To the honor of Spain be it spoken, it is one of the few countries in Europe, where poverty is never insulted nor looked upon with contempt. Even at an inn, the poor man is never spurned from the door; and if not harbored, is at least dismissed with fair words, and consigned to the mercies of God and his Mother. This is as it should be. I laugh at the bigotry and prejudices of Spain; I abhor the cruelty and ferocity which have cast a stain of eternal infamy on her history; but I will say for the Spaniards, that in their social intercourse no people in the world exhibit a juster feeling of what is due to the dignity of human nature; or better understand the behavior which it behoves a man to adopt towards his fellow beings. I have said that it is one of the few countries of Europe, where poverty is not treated with contempt, and, I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly idolized. In Spain the very beggar does not feel himself a degraded being, for he kisses no one's feet, and knows not what it is to be cuffed and spitten upon; and in Spain the Duke or Marquis can scarcely entertain a very overbearing opinion of his own importance, as he finds no one, with perhaps the exception of his French Valet, to fawn upon, or flatter him." Borrow's Bible in Spain.

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

MAY, 1843.

THE PHILANTHROPIC ELEMENT IN LITERATURE.

IN what we now term the infancy of literature, Solomon said, "Of making many books there is no end." But of the books, which he found extant, there probably remain in being only the Pentateuch, the Book of Job, and a few of the poems of his own royal father. What a vast freight of promised immortality have these three thousand years carried away as a dream! Of the lost books, which Solomon may have read, the Pentateuch preserves the name of one, with a short extract. It is the "Book of the wars of Jehovah," that is, of great, famous wars, a poetical work, probably the Iliad of its day, commemorative of heroic darings and achievements, the bard's tribute to men of might and renown, whose world-honored names, he trusted, would bear his own down to the end of time. Why has his book perished? Why is his name, why are the names of his heroes dropped from the memory of man? Probably because the book was a mere war-poem, an eulogy of deeds that had made men wretched, of deeds, the praise of which was cherished among the posterity of their heroes, or until the tribe which had achieved them was disbanded, but which had no hold upon the general heart, nothing to call forth the sympathy, or to enlist the affections. Why have the writings of Moses and of David, why has the Book of Job survived, and gone forth into all lands, and been translated into every tongue? Because there was that in them, which appealed to the universal heart, and which found an answering chord in every breast. They addressed man as man, and in tones of love and of sympathy. They revealed the common parentage, VOL. XXXIV. — -3D S. VOL. XVI. NO. II. 17

both earthly and heavenly, of all men. They breathed compassion for the poor, kindness for the exile and the stranger. They opened the bosom of eternal love for the repose of the weary, for the refuge of the oppressed. They spake of the unslumbering Shepherd. They drew around the tried and stricken children of earth the mantle of a watchful Providence. They encompassed men's dwellings and daily walks with the hosts of God and the sympathy of heaven. Therefore was it, that, long before literature was wont to pass from nation to nation, and from tongue to tongue, these books were translated and circulated among nations, whose theology differed the most widely from that of the Jews. The philanthropic aim and tendency of these writings preserved and diffused them.

In the present article, we ask the attention of our readers to the philanthropic element, considered as the life-giving and life-preserving principle of literature, as that, without which taste, genius, and eloquence can leave no extensive or enduring impress. By the philanthropic element we mean sympathy with man as man, a spirit, which surmounts natural barriers, which forgets factitious differences, which regards our common nature as essentially sacred and venerable, and which utters itself with tenderness and love, in fine, a spirit, which brings the reader, whoever he may be, into face to face communion with the author, and which makes the process of perusal a blending of heart with heart. The motto of the writer, who would give his book free course and length of days, must be, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

But our theory encounters at the outset a formidable objection in the ancient classics taken collectively. They have little or none of this philanthropic element. They recognise not the intrinsic dignity and worth of the human soul. They are contracted and exclusive in their sympathies. Hatred, contempt, or revenge often gives them their key-note. Even Socrates (in Plato's Dialogues) speaks scornfully of those, who, in humble life, practise the quiet virtues that adorn their station, denies that they can partake or approach the divine nature, and promises them no more worthy fate after death, than transmigration into the bodies of ants, wasps, and bees. Yet those old Greek and Roman writers have survived the nations and languages of their birth, they enter into all liberal culture, they nourish youth, they are the delight of age, and the wreath of their renown is as fresh and green as

when it was first woven. How is it that they still live, if philanthropy is the breath of life to literature?

We reply, that the history of the classics is not even an exception to the principle which we have laid down; but, on the other hand, strikingly illustrates and confirms it. For, in the first place, how exceedingly small a proportion, (probably much less than a thousandth part,) of ancient classical literature has come down to us! What a multitude of philosophers and of poets, renowned in their day, have transmitted only as much knowledge of themselves, as may be compressed within five lines of a classical dictionary! The Alexandrian Library contained seven hundred thousand volumes, most of them, undoubtedly, single copies of works, which had ceased to be read or known, which, even if works of genius, never had any permanent hold upon the interest or sympathy of mankind, and to which, already dead, the fanatical Christians who burned the library only added the honors of a funeral pile; for, even before the art of printing, the conflagration of a single library, or of a score of libraries, could not have destroyed a living literature.

The strongest proof, that classical literature had no intrinsic vitality, may be drawn from the history of the civilized world in the interval between the dismemberment of the Roman Empire and the revival of letters. For the citizens of the empire transmitted to their rude conquerors from the North, not the literature which was indigenous among themselves, but a provincial literature, full of foreign idioms, which they had borrowed from despised Judæa. This was not because the conquered people were religious devotees. Primitive piety then burned low in the church, and the senseless glitter of mere form had hidden the power of godliness. The Scriptures were but partially diffused, imperfectly understood, and superficially obeyed. Their direct influence upon individual character was hardly perceptible. But yet, by their catholic, humane, philanthropic spirit, they had so in wrought themselves into the body politic, and so leavened the whole mass of society, as to sustain the fiercest shock of revolution, nay, the entire disintegration of the social system, and to mingle anew with its chaotic elements, as they were fused into other forms, and a life more hardy, though less refined. Now, as it was barely the social and intellectual influence of the Scriptures, which thus survived the rush of desolating hordes, and subdued the con