for the free exercise of our faculties in the performance of duty and in the pursuit of good under the law of benevolence." Now liberty must be freedom to be something or do something which is a personal right. But opportunity does not come within the scope of this right, or at least may not; nor does the pursuit of every kind of good included in this right even under the law of benevolence, constitute liberty. If our author had simply affirmed that "Liberty is the free exercise of one's faculties in the pursuit of his highest happiness," he would have given all the ideas and the necessary limitations. Every moral being has a personal right to happiness and a right to the free exercise of his own faculties in securing it. His highest happiness is the chief end of his being-to secure which he has a right to the use of his faculties-no government, human nor divine, can rightfully restrain him from this legiti mate pursuit. The pursuit of his highest happiness can never conflict with the welfare of others, nor with the legitimate interests of government. This pursuit of happiness was the right which our fathers, in the declaration of independence, intended to assert.

There is also, we think, a defect in the author's presentation of the subject of penalty. What he has said on this subject is in the main well said. The object of the penalty, its effects, its tendencies, and its distinction from natural consequences, are mainly correct and very important exhibitions. But penalty, as a necessary revelation of the moral governor's character and its tendency as such to sustain his authority, and thus to influence to obedience, is left out. Its relations in these respects are scarcely hinted at. It is stated indeed, to be evil inflected as an expression of the guilt of the transgressor, and its effects as evil to awaken fear, lead to reflection, and in this roundabout way to secure true obedience, are presented. But this is very far from being the full nature and the subduing power of a penalty.

The first and chief necessity for a penalty is laid deep in the character of the moral governor. To possess uprightness he must not only have a decided preference for right over wrong conduct, but he must have a proper feeling toward these opposing moral actions, whether in himself or in his creatures. He

must feel a strong approbation of the one and disapprobation of the other; feelings directly opposite the one to the other; feelings in kind and degree appropriate to the differing natures and tendencies of these things. To be without them would deprive him of moral integrity, even if there were no created beings to whom the. revelation might be made. But when created beings come into existence a new necessity arises. It is just as necessary to the preservation of the integrity of his character that these feelings should now be appropriately manifested, as that he should have them. The moral subjects must know who and what their ruler is. These feelings can be manifested only by proclaimed good from his hand to the obedient and evil to the disobedient. These are the only two things that can stand as monuments on which his heart toward right or wrong in action can be read by intelligent beings. As a manifestation then of his character for integrity, the proclaimed penalty, evil inflicted or to be inflicted is as powerful to move the moral being to love the excellence embodied in this pledged evil, as is the good promised at his hands. When rightly viewed this is the appropriate tendency of a penalty. It is direct and immediate in its subduing power. It does not necessarily reach the soul in the roundabout way of fear and reflection as stated by the author; but in its direct bearing on the soul which apprehends the manifestation. And to fail to present the penalty as flowing directly and necessarily from the very excellence of the Divine Being is to fail to give it its proper subduing power. The first and chief effect of penalty, either pledged or inflicted, is to sustain the moral governor's authority, by preserving his integrity and thus by its influence, to secure obedience, protect rights, and promote the general good.

Authority is right to command, imposing obligation to obey. But if the moral governor has no distinctive and appropriate feelings toward right and wrong, he is utterly destitute of any right to command. He has not the requisite qualifications. He fails in the required integrity of character. Equally destitute of such a right will he be if he fails to manifest these distinctive feelings. Hence not to pledge a penalty or to remit it after it is pledged, and deserved, is to deprive him

self of the requisite qualifications to command. The penalty is a monument of feeling that must stand the same uncontradicted to all eternity. It can never be remitted when once incurred, except by some substitute that shall make the same manifestations of the moral governor's heart which the penalty would have done. Hence a penalty is a necessary part of law, as is also reward. The mere will of the moral governor, without a penalty expressed or implied, never can have the force of authority. It is no command. It contains no expression of his heart, as it must in order to constitute a law. The author is manifestly in error when he separates penalty from law, as he does on page 137.

In taking leave of this work, we are free to say that it would give us much satisfaction to dwell upon its excellences, which are many; but these will commend themselves, and afford much profit to any who may give the work a thorough perusal.

ARTICLE II.-THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

ANCIENT Writers have left us a curious account of the conquest of Great Britain, which the Roman Emperor, Caligula, projected, but can hardly be said to have achieved. A large number of men were marched to the coast of the narrow seas which sunder the island from the continent. The troops were drawn up in battle array, the charge was sounded; then, after these imposing preparations were ended, the soldiers were commanded to fall at once to work and gather the shells lying on the shore. With these spoils of the vanquished ocean, as he complacently termed them, the Emperor returned to Rome, and no doubt found there admirers eager and able to celebrate his courage in disregarding established methods of carrying on war, and the unexampled success which had attended his exploits. Some such course of action, followed by some such result, has not unfrequently formed part of the history of many modern reformers in their work of overthrowing old and estabishing new systems of education. We are informed beforehand confidently, though vaguely it is true, of the glorious achievements that are to be accomplished. Old things, they tell us, are passing away; the golden age of instruction is about to be ushered in; and the adage that there is no royal road to learning will be quoted no more. We have only to wait until the new macadamized highway to wisdom, constructed with all the modern improvements, is laid open for travel, in order to find our soldiers marching easily from victory to victory. So, with drums beating and banners flying, army after army sets out to demolish ancient strongholds of erroneous education, and to rear over their ruins the standard of the pure and perfect system. We read in the newspapers that the assault has been begun; we hear details of the battle that is raging; we await with anxiety the result, and are at last assured that a glorious victory has been gained. But when we come to inquire what has actually been accomplished, to ask

for the trophies of the conquest, we usually find that it is only a collection of shells that has been gathered.

And yet so numerous are the imperfections in existing systems of instruction, that it is melancholy to think that so much honest effort to remedy these defects should, through misunderstanding and misdirection, come to nothing. Above all, it is painful that men, who talk so long and learnedly of the evil of studying other languages, should not have as yet thought it worth while to suggest some satisfactory plan of studying their own. For in no department of education is there a louder call for reform than in the one which has been taken as the subject of this Article. To assert that to the members of an Englishspeaking race no language can be so important and no literature so interesting as their own, would not be likely to subject any man to the accusation of making a statement either very original or very striking: and yet, if one considers solely the actual amount of attention paid in our schools to both our language and literature, it might not unreasonably be deemed an idea that had never occurred to any human being before. So thoroughly, indeed, has this particular branch of learning been neglected, that the very ideas in regard to the proper method of its study, which to the outside world of scholars will appear commonplace and matter of course, will to many of those engaged in the business itself of teaching, seem radical and revolutionary. For of all the cultivated languages to which, with us, the attention of students is directed, English is the one in which the least instruction has been given, and in which the little that has been given has been of so unsatisfactory a quality. In a large number of our institutions of learning, it is, strictly speaking, not taught at all; and it is in very few, indeed, if in any that the study has been carried on in a scientific spirit. Assuredly it is no wild statement to make, that in many of our colleges a man might go through a four years course, and never hear once from the lips of any of his teachers the names of Shakespeare or Milton; and there are still very few of our schools in which he would ever be reduced to the necessity of reading a single line of their works.

It is undoubtedly quite true that not everything can be studied in a four years course, though that fact has apparently es