Hence we see the distinction between nam and quia, (both causal conjunctions,) which our grammarians have never developed. Nam introduces a co-ordinate clause, which, like the other clause to which it is attached, expresses a judgment in actu; quia introduces a subordinate clause, which expresses merely a judgment in facto, while the clause to which it is attached expresses a judgment in actu.

In the subordinate proposition, the indicative modifies, not immediately of itself, as the subjunctive does; but only mediately, by means of one of its own modifications. This is the distinction between the indicative and the subjunctive in a subordinate or dependent clause.

We shall not trouble our readers by exhibiting a tabular view of subordinate propositions in the indicative mode; but shall merely notice some prominent examples in which our principles illustrate the distinction between the indicative and the subjunctive mode.

(1.) The instances mentioned by Sosipater, the grammarian, Cum declamo, venit, and Cum venisset, declamavi. The former merely marks the identity of time, where no internal connection can be supposed between the two propositions, At what time I declaim, at that time he comes. The latter marks an internal connection between the two thoughts, Upon his coming, I declaimed.

(2.) Male fecit Hannibal qui Capuae hiemarit, is to be rendered Hannibal erred in wintering at Capua; because there is an internal connection between the two thoughts. But Hannibal male fecit, qui Capuae hiemarit, is to be rendered, The Hannibal who wintered at Capua erred, the subordinate clause serving only to define what Hannibal is intended.

(3.) Nauta est felix, qui in littus si receperit, is to be rendered the sailor is happy in having safely gained the land, because the subjunctive clause falls with its full weight on the main proposition. But Felix est nauta, qui in littus se recepit, is to be rendered, The sailor who has safely gained the land, is happy; because the indicative clause merely defines, by means of a preceding act of judgment, what sailor is intended.

(4.) In the same way the phrases Nuntium misit qui diceret, and Nuntium misit qui dicebat, may be distinguished. Our views, then, of the different modes may be stated summarily as follows:

The appropriate use of the indicative mode is to express an objective or positive judgment of the mind. In a leading proposition, whether standing by itself, a part of a compound sentence, qualified by a subordinate proposition, or joined in ano

ther leading proposition in a co-ordinate sentence, it expresses such judgment in actu. In a subordinate clause, it expresses the same in facto.

The appropriate use of the subjunctive is to express a subjective or problematical judgment, and it is found only in a subordinate proposition. Where it appears to stand in a main proposition, it is merely an abridged form of speech.

The infinitive differs from the subjunctive, only in being destitute of person and number, and in receiving its subject and predicate in the accusative.

The imperative proceeds not from the intellect, but from the desires of the mind acting appropriately; for it is a great mistake to consider language as the offspring of the intellect only.

The interrogative mode differs not from the indicative in form. It is, strictly speaking, an imperfect proposition proposed to another to answer or fill up.

In the work before us, the author has brought together, with great diligence, the opinions of his predecessors on the subjunctive mode. He has made a copious selection of examples, and accompanied them with judicious remarks. But the conclusion to which he comes, "that the clause in which the subjunctive form of the verb appears is attached to the predicate; and that the clause in which the indicative mode is, belongs to the subject;" is not, we believe, a universal principle; nor, if true, does it seem to be an adequate explanation of the thing.

ART. VIII. Sacred Poetry of the Seventeenth Century; including the whole of GILES FLETCHER'S Christ's Victory and Triumph. Vol. I. London: John Hatchard and Son, 1835.

In our visits to the familiar haunts of the Muse amidst the distant times of the old English literature, we are like travellers who have entered upon a pleasant region of country, hung with fruits and filled with the rare products of nature. Every where smiling and fertile, the richest treasures of the field lie extended before us, so that we have but to stretch forth our hand by the way to pluck the early blossoms of poetry and invention. The choice is distracted by the variety of objects. The age which began with Shakspeare and ended with the

rise of Milton, was prodigal of talent. The human intellect which had long sought the shades of the cloister, and busied itself in the dim perplexities of Schoolmen, when it came forth freely into the light of nature was struck, like the eye of childhood, with every appearance and incident. It fastened upon every thing before its view; it sounded the depths of ancient learning, made discoveries in natural history, investigated the laws of science and analyzed the faculties of the mind. It was inquisitive, of foreign countries, catching eagerly at every traveller's sale of Persia or the Indies, and well acquainted with itself at home. It left behind for posterity a complete record of the habits, feelings, and principles of society. Perhaps the finest study of real life lies among the books of that period, which are perfect transcripts of character when it was open to the most stirring and noble incitements to action. We may peruse the lives and writings of Poets, Prose Writers, Wits, Scholars, Divines, Courtiers, Soldiers, and Travellers. A review of the literary names of that period which may be generally comprehended from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, awakens a glorious vision of the past. To read the titles on the shelves of the library, is like walking through the Louvre in the days (which Hazlitt loved to write of) when all the old enthusiast painters looked out from the canvass on the walls. The mind is carried out of itself by the magical syllables of Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Webster, Kit Marlowe, Massinger, Shirley, Middleton, Decker, Heywood, Ford, Lord Brooke, among the dramatists, the living painters of the manners and passions; for Poets, Spenser, Sydney, Raleigh, the two Fletchers, Drayton, Browne, Carew, Suckling, Wotton, Daniel, Wither, Drummond of Hawthornden, Crashaw, Herbert, Quarles, Cotton, and Walton; for Divinity, the imaginative Jeremy Taylor, the clear intellectual South, the logical Barrow, witty Bishop Corbet, the pathetic Hall, the epigrammatic Donne, the quaint learned Fuller, at whose banquet of the sciences we have always the king's jester throwing in points and pleasantries in the pauses of the entertainment. Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne may be classed separately or as philosophers, the one of common life, the other tempting the most dizzy heights of speculation. It is a brilliant muster-roll of warriors for the truth; of well-equipped knightly adventures with some of the light-armed infantry of literature. These seem to have fathomed every capacity of the human mind. At the same moment we have the youth and maturity of intellect, gay poetry and grave philosophy, learning flourishing with fancy, and wit with judgment.

This was the growth of a peculiar age-a time fraught with wonder and excitement. The nations, it is commonly said, during the dark ages were buried in the deep sleep of ignorance and infancy: they now awoke with the fresh feelings and sensations of youth. The fine dreams of chivalry, knighterrantry, alchymy, astrology, hovered before them in their waking moments, and gave a colour to their thoughts; dim traditions, brought by travellers, of far countries, lent a vague and misty air of awe to portions of the earth that have since grown prosaic and commercial. It was no little benefit to the imagination in that day to believe in the dances of Lapland witches on the cold cliffs by moonlight, the shadowy eastern empire of Prester John stretching far away in Africa, or the Phoenix springing from its lone nest in Arabia. A ready faith in strange legends, verging on credulity, by withdrawing the mind from its own interests, opened a ready avenue to sympathy. We read of rare instances of friendship and affection in private life, of zeal in religion, and patriotism in politics. All things were done with due earnestness and sincerity. If the Reformation gave a new impulse to the mind, it was the influence of the Catholic Church, not yet abated, that held the soul in a certain seriousness and solemnity. The sound of the high cathedral worship or the low whisper of the confessional had not yet died away on the deserted aisles. The humble sighs and prostration of penance, the bead-roll of Ave Maries, the lives of the saints, the images sculptured on the walls, the paintings of martyrs and churchmen, the burning candles at the altar, the crucifix, had not yielded their embrace of the heart; or rather, they had left deep traces of a sombre, serious character, a dark soil which was to produce vigorous and luxuriant developments of character.

The age had not then learned the heartless system of indifference which would render it vulgar to admire, or unmanly to feel warmly a burst of emotion. It might want elegance and polished refinement, (though it had its courtly graces never surpassed in Sydney,) but it possessed youth and energy which were more than amends. Somehow or other it was peculiarly favourable to the efforts of literature. The habits of the time supported a generous warmth of feeling that cherished into life the most hidden thoughts and conceptions of the writer. Letters were then in their full privilege, and nobility acknowledged, when a whole court hung upon the poet's word; and it was thought no act of indecorum for authors to compliment one another on their wit and fancy. Those were the times of Astrophel and Stella, when the poet and lover's sigh was caught gently

on the air, and joined its strain with the music of the groves. There was then better sympathy for the lively and pregnant issues of the brain, and a quip or conceit was taken for the refinement and happier medium of thought, and made the most of its light-heartedness and sometimes its wisdom. Let us slip back among the misty shades of the past, and sit down to a genuine banquet of fancy with the poetical GILES FLETCHIn a few lines of his own verse which may be applied to his poem:

ER.

"Bring, bring, ye Graces, all your silver flaskets,
Painted with every choicest flower that grows,
That I may soon unflower your fragrant baskets,
To strow the fields with odours."

It makes one younger to throw off from the shoulders a few centimes of this heavy burden, time, and approach near to the early days of the world when the intellect was fresh, and one could indulge in sentiment or fancy unhackneyed, and in the racy expression of one's untrammelled thoughts.

To the light, laughing graces of poetry, Giles Fletcher adds the deeper earnestness of piety; his Muse, ever fond of the beauties of earth, lives between the meadows and the groves, alternately sporting in the sunshine or retiring mournfully to the shade. The quiet lover of true poetry, adorned in simple maidenly attire, with no impulses stronger than those of religion, no ornaments more garish than those of nature, will not regret to devote an hour to the company of our poet. The active, ever-employed world may pass him by in neglect, as it has done for these two hundred years; but there are other admirers, a few true knights yet clinging to the banished court of the Muses to whom we appeal.

Before proceeding on our task, we have to regret the few materials we have left us for the Poet's life. We have sought among the old literary records of the age, alighting upon the name of many an humble accomplished scholar or neglected true poet, but have found but little to reward us in our search for the history of the Fletchers. The most is recorded by Fuller in his Worthies, and to be gathered from a few incidental passages in the mutual writings of the brothers. Izaak Walton, in his "Lives," has shown us of what the biography of that period, with its numerous finished characters, might consist. Will not some simple-minded student, a follower of the contented angler in taste and benevolence of heart, collect together the loose fragments of personal history, and preserve them with a similar spirit for the world? In this time of miscellaneous,