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Prof. Tyler seems to add the interpretation of Walther-" versus equivalent to eversus, crazed”—as being different from his own; whereas if versus animi be rendered as the editor has done, this meaning can be reached only through the interpretation of Walther, thus: changed, impaired; then undecided, wavering, changeable, as the result of insanity of some degree. Versus in the sense of changed, occurs in Ann. 1, 4, verso civitatis statu; and in Hist. 2, 54, versam partium fortunam. In Ann. 3, 36, abolitas leges et funditus versas, it has the meaning of destroyed. Of the many explanations given of this difficult passage, we know of none which better suits the context or may more fairly be defended than that which Prof. Tyler has offered. We adduce as kindred examples, Livy 22, 51, miles ira in rabiem versus, and Virgil Ecl. 8, 66 et seq., magicis sanos avertere sacris Experiar sensus.

Bk. 5, ch. 11, p. 428. "Duos colles"-of Jerusalem-"Four in all, but two principal ones." Three hills only, Zion, Moriah, and Akra are commonly mentioned, cf. Jahn, Bibl. Archaeol. § 335; but a fourth and even a fifth, Bezetha and Ophel, are described in Robinson's Researches in Palestine, Vol. I, p. 383.

We have remarked, in several instances, a want of that accuracy, which is so important in works that are professedly prepared and used as instruments of exact as well as polite culture. On p. 261 we find : "adhibito, literally being had in"; p. 296," Dirumpunt, di gives emphasis"; p. 363," Vacuo atque aperto. From a place open and clear, sc. of arbustis"; p. 319. "Statim, at hand, from sto"; p. 378. "Absurdus. Always used with a negative, like, etc." There are also some important omissions of authorities, illustrations, and explanations. On the origin of the military term manipulares, Ovid might have been quoted on p. 271; and the use of the word sinus in the sense of "plunderer," on p. 393, could have been explained by a reference to the Roman costume. A conjecture on the origin of the expression descendere in causam, is given on p. 355, and an explanation of supplicium in the sense of capital punishment, on p. 282, but no authority or illustration is added to enable the student to judge of their correctness. In regard to the English of the volume, a good degree of care seems to have been taken. But on p. 238 and elsewhere the word locate is used for place, station, etc.; on p. 246, and in several other cases, the passive form, was being written, etc. is employed instead of our active form, was writing, which, according to a fixed idiom of our language, may be used in a passive sense; on p. 380, we find quite in its colloquial connection; on p. 235, we have transpire in the sense of occur, a meaning which has arisen from carelessness, and which critics with good

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reason disallow; on pp. 333, 399, we find technic instead of technical

term.

The geography of the volume is well treated, though the editor does not intimate what authority he has followed in this department of his commentary, as he had done in his previous book, the Germania and Agricola. So far as we have examined this portion of his notes, he seems to agree with Murphy and Doederlein. The present work is much superior to its predecessor in respect both of its contents and its outward form. The commentary is fuller and more valuable. It seems, in general, to have been prepared according to the best principles, and to be well adapted to the immediate and urgent wants of the student. Most of the subsidiary works used by the editor, are recent and decisive authorities, though in this matter he appears not always to have exercised due discrimination. On questions relating to antiquities as well as on merely literary points, he has, with great propriety and consideration, referred to such books as are within common reach, and which the student may be supposed to have read. His frequent quotations from Virgil, Livy, Cicero, and Horace, are very appropriate, and will tend to sustain and increase an interest in these authors, with whom most readers will be acquainted before they proceed to Tacitus. The comparisons of the Latin with the Greek are, in almost every instance, happy, and those who are occupied at the same time with the study of both languages, will only wish that these had been instituted to a greater extent. The brief remarks which, on occasion, are made concerning the manners and spirit of the times of the Historiae, are just and often acute, and will enable the reader much better to appreciate his author. A tone of enlightened and severe morality pervades the commentary, which seems most fitting. No one, indeed, who does not cherish serious views of human conduct, and has not a profound sense of human right and obligation, could well interpret the morale of Tacitus.

The text as well as other portions of the book, is printed in an elegant and very correct manner. Except in the Greek citations, we have discovered but few typographical errors. On p. 16, l. 10, we find "Brittanicum" for Britannicum, and on p. 22, in the quotation from Horace, "Rediderit" for Reddiderit.

We hope that the editor, in answer to a demand for his labors, will give us new and revised editions of the volumes he has already published; and that, at some future day, the Annales too may be welcomed from his hands to an honorable place among kindred works; and then, adding the dialogue De Oratoribus, he will have prepared the first American edition of the complete writings, as now extant, of the greatest of the Roman historians.

ARTICLE X.

RECENT ENGLISH WORKS ON LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS.

By N. Porter, Jr., Professor in Yale College.

Lectures on Logic. By C. E. Moberly, M. A. pp. 184. Oxford and London. John H. Parker. 1848.

An Essay on Logical Method. By Charles P. Cretien, M. A. pp. 220. John H. Parker. 1848.

On the development of the Understanding. By Hensleigh Wedgewood, A. M. pp. 133. London. Taylor & Walton. 1848.

Ideas. Or, Outlines of a New System of Philosophy. By A. C. G. Jobert. pp. 141. London. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1848.

Exact Philosophy. Books First and Second. By H. F. Halle, P. LL. D. pp. 212. London. Effingham Wilson. 1848.

THESE works are not all of equal value, but they are all interesting, as indications of the direction now taken by thinking men in England. They show that logic and metaphysics are far from dying out on English soil; that, on the other hand, they are pursued with greater thoroughness than for a long time previous, and are held in higher estimation, both in respect to their value in the training of the scholar, and in their relation to the fundamental principles of the sciences and theology. The advance in this respect since Whately published what may be called his vindication of Logic, is very perceptible and gratifying. Such works as Herschell on Natural Philosophy, Whewell on the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Mill's System of Logic, Hamilton's edition of Reid, Morell's History of Speculative Philosophy, etc., are all tokens of a more thorough and less timid philosophical spirit. In this country, the study of logic has for the last generation been almost unknown, and it is not surprising that it has been gravely proposed to dispense with it altogether and to substitute in its stead, as the regulator of the mind, intuition by the emotions! We may possibly be in the right in this judgment, but it may not be amiss for us, to be informed, of the differing judgments of our neighbors in England and on the Continent. In Germany, logic has for seventyfive years at least, held its deserved honor, and tasked the energies of all its severest thinkers. In England, it seems to be rising rather than falling in the public esteem. In both England and Germany, the relations of logic to science, or of thoughts to things, is occupying the attention of

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many earnest men; as, with us, the kindred question of the relation of logic to theology. We propose to settle it by a contemptuous discharge of logic, as an inadequate and incompetent assistant, who will rather hinder than help us. Our older, perhaps not our wiser neighbors, seek by a more thorough study of logic itself, and by the light which logic affords, to trace distinctly the line between thoughts and things, between our conceptions and the realities which they represent; between things as expressed in language and things as they exist in nature.

The "Lectures on Logic" is a small volume, which is designed as a manual of formal logic, or logic as it is concerned with the forms of reasoning, as distinguished from "the method of their application to the various departments of knowledge." In style it is direct and condensed. It enters, without apology or introduction, upon the several topics of which it treats, defines and expounds each one in its turn, with perhaps a single illustration, and then leaves the subject for the next in order. As a manual for a beginner, it is of course too brief and synthetical; but as a text book for familiar oral instruction, or for a thorough review of the definitions of formal logic, it is unsurpassed and unequalled by any work that we know of in the language. What adds greatly to its value, is the fact, that the terminology of the Latin logicians is used and explained, and thus is secured to the student the double advantage of being trained to exact precision in nomenclature, and of becoming familiar with the origin of not a few terms which have passed into common usage. One or two other peculiarities we have noticed. The relation of Terms and Propositions to things, of the form to the matter, is constantly kept in mind, so that without discussion or illustration, simply by a sharp exactness of statement, the student is continually warned of the fact. The substance of more than one long and wordy chapter in Mill's system, is expressed within the compass of a single brief page, and almost compressed into the brief utterance of a definition. Under Reasoning, induction is treated of as well as deduction, and the various "methods," as they are called, as briefly defined and explained. The application of the figures of the syllogism is explained by an exhibition of the kind of reasoning to which each is appropriate; and even "analogy" is reduced to definition, and its canons as a positive and a negative argument are given, with the uses of each,

The "Essay on Logical Method" proposes to itself another problem, and that is, to discuss "Method or the use of Logic." The object is " to view Logic at once by the light of the past and the present; to inquire, in the first place, what ideas respecting its nature were formerly entertained, and what questions originated from their adoption; how one race of thinkers profited both by the knowledge and the mistakes of those pre

ceding them, and handed down the results of their labors to their successors, not without a still abiding mixture of error; and this done to show how as Logic has always of her own free will testified to the truth of Science, Science in her turn bears unintentional but not involuntary witness to the truth and utility of Logic." After thus defining his object, the author offers some just and forcible remarks on the uses of the study of method as well as upon its dangers. The mere collection of facts, which he cannot apply, may be of little use to himself or others; but he will also do little harm to either. It is not so with him who trusts to method, "unprovided with facts and without the intention of acquiring them." "On some of the first principles which recommend themselves to his own mind, or are taken on trust from those whom he admires, he fastens his belief."-" That which he thus invents he believes, but this belief rests not on objective truth, nor on the evidence of his fellow-creatures, nor on God, but on himself. Unbelief sits at the right hand of such a faith. A self-made Damocles, he sees the sword of skepticism suspended over him by a hair." If facts do not agree with his system, "he deserts his system; and what has he left ?"

The first chapter is on the ancient view of the relation of Logic to Science. In a brief notice of the earlier schools of philosophy, the author shows the origin of the name, and the fact, that it was till the time of Aristotle applied both to the truths and facts on which the rules of reasoning were founded and to the rules of reasoning themselves. Between the two, Aristotle drew a dividing line, applying Analytic, to what we call formal Logic, and leaving Logic with its more general signification. Plato blended the two, and it was only the later Peripatetics who developed the true view of Logic, that it is only the instrument of thought. As the ancients failed to attain to a clear perception of the nature of Logic, it is not surprising that it yielded meagre results. Chapter II. is entitled, "The Mediaeval view of the relation of Logic to Science." In this, the author gives a brief, but an exceedingly clear and satisfactory exhibition of the Scholastic Philosophy, showing why its Logic, though so refined and acute, was yet altogether unproductive, and demonstrating that with their views of the principles furnished by Aristotle and the truths revealed in the Scriptures, they were necessarily shut up to these barren results. Chapter III. is entitled, "Nominalism and Realism," as a necessary part of the history of the gradual escape from these Logical forms into some insight of their relation to things as they are. Next we have in Chapter IV.," The Modern view of the relation of Logic to Science ;" in which the principles of Bacon are discussed; and in Chapter V. a disquisition "On the different Modern Schools of Logic." In this, the opinions are first discussed of those who contend that Logic has to do with

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