to all extremes of opinion. Free from any partisan feeling, he abstains from taking sides on controverted points,and seeks to do justice to all men and to every form which literature has assumed. We have the impression constantly, that we are reading a conscientious book, in which the writer's views have not been warped by personal prepossessions, or by obstinate adherence to unbending theories. He is just to Racine, and no more than just to Calderon. Men of extreme opinions and enthusiastic temperament will value his volumes less than those whose cast of mind is dispassionate and judicial. Perhaps it is only making the same remark in another form, to say that it is a work without pretensions. It abstains from strong statements and positive assertions. It is free from any air of offensive dogmatism. There are no portions which will awaken a spirit of resistance, or provoke opposition. This moderateness of tone, though it may lessen its immediate popularity, cannot fail in the long run to enhance the weight of its authority, and secure it a higher place in literature. own. The style of the work is not marked by any traits of decided individuality, and the reader's attention is not forcibly arrested by it as he reads. It is simple, perspicuous, and correct, a transparent medium of thought,doing entire justice to what is meant to be told, but not adding to its attractions by any peculiar felicity of its Good sense is the prevalent characteristic alike of the substance and the form of the work. Mr. Ticknor has evidently a strong aversion to fine writing. We will not quarrel with so estimable a literary trait, especially in an American writer, but in his determination to avoid those "purple patches" of rhetoric, of which we are all too fond, he sometimes comes too near the opposite extreme of dryness and coldness. We should have liked, occasionally, a more animated movement and a warmer tone of coloring, such as his excellent poetical translations show that he must have at command. The work is throughout illustrated by copious notes, which will give a more complete comprehension of the wide range of Mr. Ticknor's reading than even the text itself; and in the Appendix will be found some very elaborate and learned discussions on points of inferior interest to the general reader. 1850.] Decline of Spain. 167 This elaborate and every way excellent History of Spanish Literature will much increase the debt which Spain already owes to us, from the classical labors of Irving and Prescott. These are no more than becoming tributes on our part to the land which despatched Columbus on that memorable voyage, the results of which have so far exceeded the most enthusiastic dreams of the illustrious navigator. We close Mr. Ticknor's volumes with a feeling of sadness. Its last words sound like the dying strains of a solemn requiem. We feel that we are watching the going down of a great light. There is a beautiful passage in a letter of Sulpicius, the jurist, to Cicero, in which he speaks of the ruins of the once flourishing cities he had lately seen, and draws from such a spectacle a moral which rebukes the querulousness of human grief, and suggests an elevated strain of consolatory reflection.* How trivial do the reverses of a single life, the disasters that darken our little day, seem, when compared with the decay of such an empire, the fall of such a state, as that of Spain! And yet we recognize in such a retribution alike the goodness and the wisdom of God, and pity is not mingled in the emotions which it calls forth. The reader of English poetry will recall some vigorous lines by Cowper, suggested by that sublime picture in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, in which the prophet paints, with a pencil grander and more tragic than that of Æschylus, the powers of hell as moved to meet the coming of the king of Babylon, and the kings of the nations as rising up to give him their stern and awful greeting. "O, could their ancient Incas rise again, How would they take up Israel's taunting strain! The robber and the murderer weak as we ? Thou that hast wasted earth and dared despise * " Ex Asia rediens, cum ab Ægina Megaram versus navigarem, cœpi regiones circumcirca prospicere. Post me erat Ægina, ante Megara, dextra Piræus, sinistra Corinthus; quæ oppida quodam tempore florentissima fuerunt, nunc prostrata et diruta ante oculos jacent. Copi egomet mecum sic cogitare: Hem! nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrum interiit, aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidum cadavera projecta jaceant."" Cic. Epis. ad Diversos, Lib. IV. 5. We come with joy from our eternal rest, To see the oppressor in his turn oppressed.” History is ever justifying the ways of God to man, and never more forcibly than in the fortunes of Spain. If the power has been taken away from her, it is because it was abused; if the sceptre has been wrested from her grasp, it is because it was converted into a scourge. To no men it is permitted to do wrong with impunity; least of all to the rulers of the earth. The selfishness of tyranny is punished by the weakness to which it leads, and bigotry extinguishes in time the religious principle from which its power to do mischief is derived. In her present weakness, Spain is reaping the harvest of wrongdoing. If her ships, colonies, and commerce are gone, if agriculture and manufactures are neglected, if she has no railroads, no active press, no generally diffused edu cation, it is because her rulers have been tyrants, her ministers of religion iron-hearted and narrow-minded bigots, and her nobles indolent and profligate courtiers. In her desolate estate insulted humanity is avenged, and the retributive justice which has overtaken her speaks in a voice of warning to the oppressor and of consolation to his victim. And is there hope for Spain? Will the night pass away and the morning dawn? To hazard even a conjectural answer to these questions requires far more knowledge of the country than we possess. No traveller has visited Spain without bringing away a strong sense alike of the virtues and the capacities of her people. With God all things are possible; and for mourning Iberia the hour may yet strike and the man may yet come. Who would not rejoice to see that prostrate form reared again, and the light of hope once more kindling those downcast eyes,the golden harvest of opportunity again waving over her plains, and the future once more unbarring to the enter prise of her sons its gates of sunrise? G. S. H. 1850.] Notices of Recent Publications. NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 169 The Genius of Italy. By REV. ROBERT TURNBULL. New York: G. P. Putnam. pp. 332. MR. TURNBULL has become known to the reading community as the compiler of various works of this description. One on the Genius of Scotland was quite favorably received. The volume before us will give to those who have not much acquaintance with the subject some useful information. And, in the main, it is to be relied upon, since it is chiefly drawn from trustworthy sources. The patronizing remark which is made in the Preface, about Mariotti's most excellent book on "Italy," is borne out by the whole tenor of Mr. Turnbull's sketches. They might have been written by one who had never visited Italy, but could not have been written by one who had not read Mariotti. The author states, in the beginning, that he does not intend to inflict upon his readers another tour in Italy. We think that a careful perusal of his book would prove that it is not at all the record of a tour. We have looked in vain in histories of painting for any notice of the Martyrdom of St. Jerome, and the Annunciation of the Virgin, by Domenichino, which, our author says (p. 139), are "among the most striking and beautiful paintings in Italy." The two great works of that eminent painter are the Communion of St. Jerome, and the Martyrdom of St. Agnes. The singular blunder, several times repeated, in the title of Pellico's charming book, (Le Mie Priglione, p. 52,) leads us to doubt if Mr. Turnbull has read the original, or is familiar with the language to whose authors he refers so freely. It is rather too bad for our author to stigmatize, in a slight footnote at the beginning of his chapter on Tasso, the title of Leigh Hunt's work as awkward and inappropriate, and then proceed to borrow, in the most wholesale manner, Leigh Hunt's sketch of the life of the poet, even to the blunders. The date of the poet's death, of 1575, instead of 1595, which, in Hunt's account is a mere oversight, has no such excuse in Mr. Turnbull's notice. We might present whole columns of passages to show the wonderful similarity of expression between the two writers. The criticism of the Jerusalem Delivered, by Mr. Turnbull, will give a more correct idea of that poem to those who have not, than to those who have, read the original. It is to be regretted that Mr. Turnbull is not always exact in his very numerous references to foreign writers. The "acute Villemain" would hardly recognize the title of his work on page 194. VOL. XLVIII. -4TH S. VOL. XIII. NO. I. 15 And he often fails to make these references where courtesy, not to say justice, would demand them. On page 210, for instance, three stanzas from Mr. Roscoe's fine translation of Lorenzo de' Medici's Orazione are given. Of course, Mr. Turnbull did not intend to put forth stanzas so well known as these as his own version. And yet no reference is made to Mr. Roscoe, either in this connection or in the Preface. An Historical Geography of the Bible. By REV. LYMAN COLEMAN. Illustrated by Maps, from the latest and most authentic Sources, of various Countries mentioned in the Scriptures. Philadelphia E. H. Butler & Co. 1849. THIS work brings the geography of the Bible into close association with the history of the Bible, so that, as mutual aids, the inherent interest of each is communicated to the other. Beyond a naked gazetteer, or a dry treatise upon sacred geography, it furnishes help to the study of the Bible, by giving each historical event its geographical locality, and then by illustrating each locality by the concentrated lights of ancient learning and modern travel, convenient maps, or a graphic description. Running parallel with the Bible as the text-book, it commences with Eden, the terrestrial paradise, and closes with Patmos, the scene of the revealed visions of the celestial paradise; giving an attractive prominence to the places made memorable by patriarchs and prophets, by the wanderings and the abode and dispersion of Israel, by the life and death of Christ, by the travels and preaching of the Apostles. At the close of the work is a Chronological Table, which gives to the historical facts locality in time, as the Geography does locality in space. Thus, if "geography and chronology are the two eyes of history," no one who has this book need complain that he has no eyes for the study of the historical parts of the Bible. In defence of the mode which he has adopted, the author states, that "in the universities of Europe geography is taught chiefly, if not entirely, by associating it with history. Ritter, the great geographer of the age, pursues this method. His learned and voluminous works are historical geographies of the countries of which they treat. Röhr's Historico-Geographical Account of Palestine has had a wider circulation in Germany than any kindred work." He moreover states, that diligent reference has been made to the latest and most authentic sources of information, in the works of such writers as Rosenmüller, Weiner, Von Raumer, Röhr, Arnold, Weiland, Jahn, Ritter, &c., together with the |