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Hoc ita-se-explicando-dissocians filamentum, fuIlle autem, celeriter evolvendo-retexens intermedium illud quod se-explicando dissociVersorio suo torsionis-instrumento, duo reliqua celeri- volvens-turbine-contorquet, funiculum-ex-binis-filamentis inde conficiens, Tum vero quum jam secunda-vice torquendo

convolverat funiculi-bi-chordis bina filamen

ta; Quem ex-binis-filamentis torquendo-concin-naverat funiculum, raptim divellendo dirimit.

analysis that we can discover its force and truth. It is the language of every art and of every science, for there is none other in which they can be so well and so intelligibly described. Whatever has been effected by the greatest Grecian or Roman orator, can be effected by the Englishman who fully understands his mother tongue; and perhaps, above all the languages of all the babbling nations of the earth, the English is that in which the sublime science of salvation can be best explained and illustrated, and the things of God most forcibly and effectually recommended!

When I had almost finished the preceding remarks, there fell into my hand the speech delivered by that very enlightened nobleman, the earl of Moira, late governorgeneral of India, before the members of the college of Calcutta, some time in 1814, which bears so strongly on the subject of the

Tandem, quæ torquendo pridem in funiculo bi- excellency of the English language,

membri filamenta duo,

Tanquam gemellos una consociaverat-torquendo, jam detorquendo dissociat:

Et binis illis filamentum adhuc aliud intermedium interserendo consocians,

Versorium ille suum gyro-celeri fortiter-versan

do, ex funiculo-bimembri plurimembrem torquendo-conficit funem.

The English, of which this is a literal translation, amounts in the whole to 109 words, small and great, while the Latin makes 144; and whereas the English has but one radix, from which all the derivatives come, the Latin is obliged to use upward of 20 different words, varied as far as they can bear, in order to express this ONE root, and its branches! Dr. Wallis gives an analysis of the English verses, in which he considers two as the primitive or radical word, and the others all derivatives from this one radix.

Why is not such a language as this better studied? Why is it not studied analytically? It is by its VOL. VIII. May, 1825.

After

that I feel no ordinary pleasure in being able to enrich this paper with a short extract from it. apologizing for bringing before the learned members of that institution, (on the day professedly devoted to applaud and stimulate proficiency in the Asiatic languages,) any thing relative to the English tongue, he proceeds in the following strain of just and eloquent description :

"Regard it (the English language) not, I beseech you, as the mere medium of ordinary intercourse. It is a mine, whence you may extract the means of enchanting, instructing, and improving communities yet nameless, and generations yet unborn. Our English language has never had adequate tribute paid to it.

"Among the languages of modern Europe, specious, but subor

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dinate pretensions have been advanced to cadence, terseness, or dextrous ambiguity of insinuation; while the sober majesty of the English tongue stood aloof, and disdained a competition on the ground of such inferior particularities. I even think that we have erred with regard to Greek and Latin. Our sense of the inestimable benefit we have reaped from the treasures of taste and science, which they have handed down to us, has led us into an extravagance of reverence for them. They have high intrinsic merit, without doubt, but it is a bigoted gratitude, and an unweighed admiration, which induce us to prostrate the character of the English tongue before their altar. Every language can furnish to genius, casually, a forcible expression; and a thousand turns of neatness and delicacy may be found in most of them: but I will confidently assert, that, in that which should be the first object in all language, precision, the English tongue surpasses them all; while in richness of colouring, and extent of power, it is exceeded by none, if equalled by any. What subject is there within the boundless range of imagination which some British author has not clothed in British phrase, with a nicety of definition, an accuracy of portraiture, a brilliancy of tint, a delicacy of discrimination, and a force of expression, which must be sterling, because every other nation of Europe, as well as our own, admits their perfection with enthusiasm!

"Are the fibres of the heart to be made to tremble with anxiety, -to glow with animation,-to thrill with horror,-to startle with amaze, to shrink with awe,-to throb with pity, or to vibrate in sympathy with the tone of pictured love;-know ye not the mighty

magicians of our country, whose potent spell has commanded, and continues irresistibly to command, these varied impulses? Was it a puny engine, a feeble art, that achieved such wondrous workings? What was the sorcery? Justly conceived collocation of words, is the whole secret of this witchery; a charm within the reach of any of you. Possess yourselves of the necessary energies, and be assured you will find the language exuberant beyond the demand of your intensest thought. How many positions are there which form the basis of every day's reflection; the matter for the ordinary operation of our minds, which were toiled after perhaps for ages, before they were seized and rendered comprehensible! How many subjects are there which we ourselves have grasped at, as if we saw them floating in an atmosphere just above us, and found the arm of our intellect but just too short to reach them: and then comes a happier genius, who, in a fortunate moment, and from some vantage ground, arrests the meteor in its flight; and grasps the floating phantom; drags it from the skies to the earth; condenses that which was but an impalpable corruscation of spirit; fetters that which was but the lightning glance of thought; and having so mastered it, bestows it as a perpetual possession and heritage on mankind!"

What a pity, that with a language, and such treasures in it, the best part of the lives of so many of our youth should be spent, if not wasted, in studies and in languages, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,serve only to pass through the forms of schools and colleges, and however they may have acquitted themselves in Greek and Latin, Mathematics, and a still inefficient

Aristotelian philosophy, enter upon life with scarcely a requisite for passing honourably and usefully through it; many of them not being able properly to read, scarcely at all to analyze, and hardly to spell their mother tongue! I have seen private letters of the most learned man of the seventeenth century, who, besides, Greek and Latin, of which he was a master, possessed such a knowledge of the seven Asiatic languages as perhaps no man then in Europe did, and wrote upon and explained them with profound accuracy, and yet was so ignorant of his own native English tongue, that he could neither construct nor spell a single sentence with propriety! How many of the rising generation are returning daily from very expensive seminaries of learning, who are sadly deficient in a proper knowledge of language, who cannot parse a single sentence correctly, so as to show the force of the words, the concord and government, and the proper or improper collocation of the terms!

"Let every foreign tongue alone,

Till you can read and spell your own,"

Is a sound piece of advice, comes from high authority, and should be treated with great respect.

I do not speak against learning, -nor even think against it, nor against proper seminaries for learning, whether they rank as schools or colleges: but I speak against useless and deficient education. I speak against the preposterous plan of teaching our English youth, any thing or every thing but their mother tongue.

Parents would do well to inquire

and qualifications of the boarding schools to which they send their daughters; and the academies and colleges to which they send their sons. Let them never sacrifice their sterling coin for the tinsel lackering and gilding of learning. Let them give all diligence that their children may be taught what will make them useful to themselves, profitable to others, and respectable in society. As to boarding schools, I may beg humbly to look into them at some future time.-I say nothing to the necessity of attending to the advice of the wise man, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This, I believe, was never better understood than in the present age, and at no time more practically applied, and hence there is at this time a greater proportion of moral and pious youths than was ever before in this country, or is now in any other country in the world. To God be praise for ever! this is a proper initiatory education, but it is not that concerning which I now write,-I plead for the necessity of a good English education, and for making Latin and Greek subservient to it when they are studied. Let our British youth be taught the language of life,-the language of those with whom they are to transact the business of life,

the language that is rich and powerful beyond all languages of the universe: in a word, let them be thoroughly taught the language of Britain.

I am, dear sir, yours truly,
ADAM CLARKE.

most pointedly into the character Eastcott, Jan. 1, 1825.

MAGAZINE AND GUARDIAN.

Extract of a letter from the Rev. ELIJAH BOARDMAN.

THE number of Magazines sent is ten, and the Guardian four. for in this and the former letter These, with one Magazine sub

scriber whom I found on the circuit, amount to fifteen in the whole. Although this is a small number, yet allowing these were all members of our society, they would amount to more than one subscriber to every six members on this circuit; reckoning the Guardian in the same proportion as the Magazine: there being but seventy-nine members on this circuit. Were the same number of subscribers obtained in the whole connexion, as fifteen to seventy-nine, the whole number for Magazines and Guardians would amount to more than sixty-two thousand. I see no reason why an equal, or

even a greater number might not be obtained in the whole connexion. I have proposed the thing, both in the class-meetings and in the public congregations, and in this way have obtained subscribers both in and out of the church. I have also disposed of a few of the Methodist Harmonist, and they have been introduced into some of the singing-schools, and are highly approved of. If you think these few remarks will subserve the cause in any measure, you are at liberty to give them publicity, for it is possible that some others seeing them may go and do likewise.

REVIEW.

The Excellence and Influence of the Female Character, a Sermon preached in the Presbyterian church in Murray-street, at the request of the New-York Female Missionary Society, by GARDiner Spring, Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian church in said city. 1825. pp. 32.

AMONG the numerous blessings resulting from Christianity, not the least is that of rescuing the female sex from the degradation and captivity to which they had been reduced by a savage barbarism, or an excessive refinement. While the savage strips her who was originally destined to be the partner of his joys and sorrows, of her true glory and dignity, by subjecting her to a state of servitude irksome and degrading, the more haughty despot of the east, by a curious inversion of the laws of refinement and propriety, has thought fit to doom his second self to a perpetual seclusion from the benefits of social life. Thus have these two extremes, of a savage barbarism and an excessive refinement, met in one common centre, and agreed together to proscribe woman as an improper associate of man, and to say that she is fitted only to be his drudge, to supply his occasional wants, and to administer to his indolence and luxury.

From a captivity so irksome, so humiliating to an active and intelligent being, Christianity has the high and distinguished honour of delivering one half of the human race. These thoughts have been suggested by reading the sermon before us, which, though we may dissent from some of its sentiments, is, on the whole, worthy of a serious and attentive perusal.

The text chosen as a foundation of the discourse, is "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." Prov. xxxi, 20. After a short but appropriate introduction, the preacher commences on the first division of his subject in the following manner :

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In adverting to the EXCELLENCE OF THE FEMALE CHARACTER, it will designation of woman to a different occur to every mind, that the obvious sphere of action and influence from that which is occupied by the stronger sex, suggests the contemplation of excellencies, which, though not peculiar to her character and condition. There to herself, are delightfully appropriate is a feeling of heart, a consciousness of

dependance, a natural and amiable timidity, a tenderness and kindness, which unfit a woman for the rude and tumultuous occupations, and which, while they assign to her a more retired sphere, as clearly disclose those qualifications which constitute her true dignity and glory."

This, certainly, is a very just and delicate view of the "more retired sphere" in which woman seems destined by Providence to move. Having thus stated, in general terms, the station destined for woman to occupy, and that peculiarity of character by which she is distinguished, DR. SPRING commences with those particular qualifications which concentrate in the character of an excellent and virtuous woman. We are glad to find in the front of these industry and economy, as, in our opinion, other virtues can be but feebly exerted where these are wanting; and that that female, however excellent she may otherwise be, will shed but a glimmering light around her in the circle in which she moves, who is destitute of these cardinal qualifications. If indolence be the nursery of vice in the other sex, how can that woman escape its infection who idles away her time, or spends it in useless visits, in needless dress, and vain amusements? The following remarks, therefore, will be read with interest by every pious female:

:

"Did not these," (industry and economy,) "lie at the basis of a woman's usefulness, this would be too trite and common-place a remark. The wise man, in the chapter which contains our text, gives high importance to these useful qualifications. She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She looketh well to the ways of

with the arts and duties of domestic life. She may be ignorant of other branches of human knowledge, and deficient in more refined attainments, with comparative impunity, but no embellishments can supply her deficiency in these. These constitute her peculiar and appropriate employment, and so far from being beneath her regard, distinguished of her sex. do they adorn and beautify the most

"The sentiment may not exactly accord with the notions of the present age, but it is one that ought to be inscribed on the heart of every female, that industry and economy are her true glory. There is no apology for a slothful woman. A slothful woman is more fit for a domestic drudge, or the slave of an eastern despot, than for the elevated station which freedom, civilizaher. A woman who is occupied in tion, and Christianity, have assigned little else than receiving the courtesies of the other sex, and having every want supplied by obsequious attendants, if is almost always the victim of that morshe does not become torpid by inaction, bid sensibility, which, while it can weep over the ideal scenes of a novel or a tragedy, has no interest in the affecting realities of human life, and passes through the world without communicating happiness, or acquiring respectability. Few appreciate the obligations, cares, and labours, of an industrious female; and few, I fear, are senshe is called to exercise in the performsible of the perpetual self-denial which ance of her laborious and reiterated duties. Her eye must be every where in her own proper sphere; her authority every where in her own retired dominion; her hand on every spring in all the departments of domestic labour. And a cheerful submission to this incessant watchfulness and care, constitutes one of the prominent excellencies of her character. A female that has been induced to believe she was made for nothing but to be beloved and admired, and who is never pleased but by the alternations of idleness and dissipation, has never learned to estimate her true worth and excellence, and is a stranger to the high destination of woman."

That "a well-cultivated mind"

her household, and eateth not the bread is highly desirable in every female, of idleness.' If there is a qualification in which a female ought to excel, it is is what we are not disposed to disa thorough and practical acquaintance pute; but we much question whe

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