4. Lexilogus, or a Critical Examination of the meaning, and etymology of numerous Greek words and passages; intended principally for Homer and Hesiod. By PHILIP BUTTMANN, L. L. D. Translated and edited by the Rev. J. R. FISHLAKE, late Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1836. 8vo. pp. 597.

BUTTMANN's name is already well known on this side of the Atlantic by his excellent grammars of the Greek language, which the labors of two of our countrymen have rendered accessible to every American scholar. The present work, however, presents him in a far higher character, as a sound and accurate critic on the earlier and more obscure forms of the same noble tongue. We hail its appearance in our English dress with sincere pleasure, and regard it as putting an effectual end to the reign of Homeric pedantry, and dismissing that bane of true scholarship, the Clavis Homerica, to its original obscurity. Nothing can be more erroneous than the notion which so many of our students appear to entertain, that the Greek poets, especially the earlier ones, were enabled by the aid of such mysterious figures as Apocope, Apharesis, Paragoge, &c. to clip and trim their native tongue with the same facility that a Dutch gardener does his alleys of box. So again with regard to the dialects; it is still firmly believed by a large number, that Homer brought into his poems every dialect form that struck his fancy or suited his verse. would Milton or Shakspeare look, if such a principle had been adopted by either of them, and if all manner of words had been employed, from the various provincial dialects of England? Buttmann's work brings us into a purer atmosphere, and inculcates sounder doctrines.

How

The author very modestly entitled his work, in the original, a "Lexilogus, or Helps in the explanation of Greek words, intended principally for Homer and Hesiod." His English editor, fearing lest so indefinite a title might induce a belief of the treatise being merely an elementary book for younger students, very properly altered the appellation of the work to one more declaratory of its true character. It affords valuable aid, in fact, to every reader of Homer, and every student of one of the noblest of languages; and no one can after this lay claim to the character of sound and accurate scholarship without having made himself master of its contents.

If, where all is so highly entitled to praise, it might be allowed us to find any fault, it would be on account of the absence of Sanscrit etymologies. When Buttmann wrote his Lexilogus, the study of the Sanscrit Language and literature was yet in its infancy. At the present day, however, it attracts so much attention, and throws so much light on the earlier forms of the Greek and Latin tongues, that the translator of the work before us ought not to have passed it by unnoticed. A vast mine remains still to be explored in this department of Homeric philology, and the day we trust is not far distant, when the

bard of Ionia will derive new and ample illustrations from the forms of the Sanscrit tongue. A very able commencement, as regards the Sanscrit origin of several of the Greek particles, has been made by Hartung, in his "Lehre von den Partikeln der griechischen Sprache," the first volume of which appeared at Erlangen, in 1832.

6. Mogg Megone, a poem. By JOHN GREENLEAF Whittier. Boston: Light and Stearns, 1836. 32 mo. pp. 69.

We took up this little volume at a chance passage, and thought ourselves for the moment in the stir and bustle of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake. Mr. Whittier has adapted the metre, and to a certain extent, not slavishly, the style of Scott to some striking incidents of Indian life. Without, however, entering into the narrative part of Mogg Megone, which appears to us harsh and unpleasant, we prefer doing justice to the more poetic passages of description and reflection, that are profusely scattered along the work. One trait of pure human feeling outvalues the whole chronicle of Indian treachery and cruelty. Thus the true interest of the poem lies in the history related by herself of a youthful maiden. It shall be mostly given in the words of the author. Ruth Bonython, for so is the heroine called, commences her tale with the recollection of her dying mother. Slowly, day by day, had she watched the pulse of life as it beat more and more feebly to its extinction. She remembers that parent's look, and recalls the favourite tales she told in life.

Tales of the pure-the good-the wise—
The holy men and maids of old,

In the all-sacred pages told.

But the hallowed influence of the mother over her daughter, passes away with the breath that enforced the lesson. The wild excitement of Indian life soon obliterates the early taught piety—and she falls a victim to love. A sudden yielding to passion amidst the lawless wilderness procures her the scalp of her betrayer. But revenge cannot cast out quite the hold of woman's affection. With rather an unnecessary accumulation of horrors on the part of our author, she slays the Indian who had perpetrated the deed, and now she is standing in a rude forest temple before the priest of religion-a victim of remorse. The vision of her mother had seemed before her to point with a keener sharpness the sorrows of repentance.

The Jesuit shrinks from her, for she has killed in the chief a great defender of the church in that unsettled country. She is spurned from the altar.

Ever thus the spirit must,

Guilty in the sight of Heaven,
With a keener woe be riven,
For its weak and sinful trust

In the strength of human dust;
And its anguish thrill afresh,
For each vain reliance given

To the failing arm of flesh.

She wanders alone in her wretchedness, unprotected of this world, but not of heaven.

Still, though earth and man discard thee;
Doth thy heavenly Father guard thee-
He who spared the guilty Cain,
Even when a brother's blood,
Crying in the ear of God,

Gave the earth its primal stain-
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken hearth receiveth;-
Wanderer of the wilderness,

Haunted, guilty, crazed and wild,
He regardeth thy distress,

And careth for his sinful child!

The following scene closes the poem.

Blessed Mary! who is she
Leaning against that maple tree?
The sun upon her face seems hot,
But the fixed eyelid burns not;
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,
Close at her feet the river rushes;

The black-bird's wing against her brushes,
And sweetly through the hazel bushes
The robin's mellow music gushes:-
God save her! will she sleep alway?

Castine hath bent him over the sleeper:

"Wake, daughter-wake!"-but she stirs no limb:

The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim;

And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,

Until the angel's oath is said,

And the final blast of the trump gone forth

To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth,
Ruth Bonython is dead!

The story of the piece is loosely constructed and lacks the completeness of a perfect poem: indeed, it serves little more than a rude setting to protect several poetic thoughts and fancies. There is too little pretence in the volume to subject it to the criticism it might else have provoked: while this modest style renders its actual merits the more conspicuous. It may be taken as a slight, but not the less valuable token that the poetic spirit is not totally extinct among us; that the unworthy strife for money has not alienated us wholly from the Muses. There is evidence in it of talent, that if carefully husbanded and directed to some more important end will yet do honor to the author. Here is a well wrought passage that must leave a favorable impression of Mr. Whittier; it illustrates a fine perception of the

beauties of nature visible throughout the poem. In an old writer it

would be accounted a gem.

Quickly glancing, to and fro,
Listening to each sound they go:
Round the columns of the pine,
Indistinct, in shadow, seeming
Like some old and pillared shrine ;
With the soft and white moonshine,
Round the foliage-tracery shed
Of each column's branching head,
For its lamps of worship gleaming!
And the sounds awakened there,
In the pine-leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the singers of the air,
For the anthem's dying fall

Lingering round some temple's wall!
Is not Nature's worship thus
Ceaseless, ever going on?
Hath it not a voice for us
In the thunder, or the tone

Of the leaf-harp faint and small,
Stealing to the unsealed ear
Words of blended love and fear,
Of the mighty soul of all?

6.-Essays on Meteorology. By JAMES P. ESPY, Member of the American Philosophical Society, &c. &c. From the Journal of the Franklin Institute. Vol. xvii.

We are induced to give the following outline of these Essays, by the fact that the Legislature of Pennsylvania have recently voted a handsome appropriation, to enable Mr. Espy to continue and perfect his experiments in Meteorology. We presume we shall gratify general readers by placing the substance of these papers before them.

In these Essays Mr. Espy, proposes, and illustrates a new "Theory of Rain, Hail, and Snow, Water-spouts, Land-Spouts, Variable Winds, and Barometric fluctuations :" and we are sure of bestowing a merited encomium, when we pronounce the essays above mentioned as characterized at once by modesty, simplicity, ability and truth.

Up to this time, the only plausible account which has ever been given of the production of rain, is that proposed by Dr. Hutton, and since adopted and generalized by subsequent philosophers-the substance of which is this. The process of evaporation being constantly going on, watery vapor is continually accumulating in the atmosphere, and owing to the variable action of the causes producing evaporation, more vapor will pass into the atmosphere in some districts than in others. The subtle and ever restless agency of heat, which is unceasingly modifying the density of the atmosphere, by its unequal action, disturbs the atmospherical equilibrium, and winds are occasioned; currents of different temperatures are mingled, the mixture

at the temperature which it assumes, is not capable of retaining all the moisture of the two currents, and a portion is deposited in the form of rain. Such is the outline of Hutton's theory of rain. It is founded upon the fact which experiment has established, that the capacity of air to retain moisture, increases more rapidly than the temperature does: for instance air at 60° Fahrenheit's thermometer is capable of holding in suspension a certain quantity of vapor-air at 90°, will hold more than half as much additional vapor, and air at 120°, will hold more than twice as much. Suppose therefore two currents of air to meet, one of them being at the temperature 60°, the other at 90°, and each current to be charged with its maximum of watery vapor. After mingling, the resulting temperature must, according to established laws, be 75°; but according to what we have said, the current at 90°, holds more vapor in proportion to its temperature, than that at 60° does in proportion to its temperature-when therefore the air at 60° is raised to 75°, it can take up some of the vapor which cannot now be retained by that which is reduced from 90° to 75°; but it cannot take up all, and this excess is what is deposited in the form of rain. Such is the theory which has prevailed since Dr. Hutton proposed it. The recent one of Mr. Espy is essentially different, and in our opinion much more simple, much more general, much less liable to objections, and much more decidedly confirmed by observed phenomena.

This theory is founded, first upon the result of some highly approved experiments of M. M. Berard and De la Roche, fixing the specific heat of atmospheric air at 250, that of water being 1. Secondly, upon the celebrated discoveries of Dr. Black, concerning latent heat, and thirdly upon the admirable results developed by Dr. Wells, in his Essay on Dew. Each of these three classes of results has stood the test of the closest scrutiny, by men most competent to judge of their correctness. They are admitted by all philosophers to be mainly true, and the strictly legitimate application which Mr. Espy has made of them in his "theory of rain &c.," is both sagacious and simple.

We proceed to let Mr. Espy speak for himself in explanation of his theory.

It has been shown by the experiments of Berard and De la Roche, and also by those of Clement and Desormes, that the specific heat of atmospheric air is about 250, that of water being 1.

"Now, if these experiments be correct, and they appear to be so, it will be easy to account for the formation of rain, snow, and hail, and several other atmospheric phenomena, which have never yet been satisfactorily explained.

The theory of these meteors may be given in a few words. When a portion of transparent vapor in the air, is condensed into cloud, or water, the latent caloric given out, expands the air containing it, six times as much as it contracts by the condensation of the vapor into water."

This position is shown by Mr. Espy, by a simple calculation founded on acknowledged data-he then proceeds:

"It follows, then, from the principle here demonstrated, that the moment a portion of the transparent vapor in the air begins to condense into cloud, the air