Their personal conceit is of that boundless kind which only cholera or cold lead can abate. Now and then, one of these men can be caught and caged in Western society, where his learning or special skill can be made available. But they are almost useless for any work that demands respect for the spiritual realities, or the common sense even of the worldly American mind. They naturally affiliate with the WendellPhillips and Anna-Dickinson school of American reformers, though far more impracticable than they. Over their meerschaums and their wine, in their obscure societies, they convince each other they are the breeze that blows the ship of Western society towards the "radicallissimi" millennium. But they are the barnacles and seaweed that will be scraped off the keel when the good ship is put in dry dock for repairs.

The grand mistake in all their estimate of American Society is their omission to recognize a spiritual nature in man, together with the religious, moral, social, and civil obligations flowing therefrom. Whatever may be true of this peculiar people, the American people are endowed with souls, and recognize the logical consequences of this fact. The Western American people cannot live this German socialistic life, because that is constructed on the idea that man is only a clever animal. Men who believe this can do a multitude of things as the end of existence, whose charm is dispelled by the suspicion of a nobler origin and a vaster destiny. Our people cannot guzzle beer, smoke in gardens, or roll on the grass with their sweethearts, wives, and babies on Sunday, because they believe that on one day an immortal being ought to live a higher life of the soul than he can easily achieve in the toil and unrest of the other six. They cannot be infinitely jolly, and full of careless, sensuous delight in their families; because they believe themselves responsible for the civilization of a mighty people, and do not see how all the social twittering and chirping in creation is to bring this about. If they were less bothered by an old American notion of honesty, they might come into some of the radical notions of property which titillate the boozy brains of these

philosophical economists in the absence of pocket-money. They believe in teaching Young America to read and write the English language, confident that the Western mind will plough its way to a wisdom which shall overtop the learned folly of a thousand universities. The fact is, this clique is no faithful representative of the nobler side of Germany. To the real philosophy, the matchless criticism, the varied scholarship, the music, the theology, of the German mind, the West will make all due acknowledgment when its day comes. It will absorb as much of the charming geniality and catholic kindliness of its social life as can be blended with our own. But for this lager-beer brigade of atheistic anarchists it has only the regard of an express train, that thunders through a drove of mad bulls, leaving a few spots on the track to illustrate the result of an actual measurement of social forces.

men

Up to the present day, the Western-character, thus forming from manifold combinations of the richest elements in the world, has been completely developed only in industry, politics, war, and the beginning of the people's school, church, and social life. The vast majority of large-minded the men who, in older communities, would be scholars, divines, statesmen, literati-are engrossed in business. Business in the West is nothing less than the shaping of a new empire into a fit area for the experiment of the largest civilization yet seen upon the earth. In politics, the broad foundations of mighty commonwealths are being laid, in which humanity can expand into a true American manhood and womanhood. The people's common-school will finally absorb all other forms of education, and culminate, as in Michigan, in free universities, which can command the largest culture of the age for every child. In war, it has made one demonstration which has written a new chapter in human history, and turned the eyes of the world on the people beyond the Alleghanies. But, beyond this, the Western character has not been fully developed. Its day for literature and art has not appeared. Its social life is the broadest and most genial in the world, but still fluctuating

and crude, with great sloughs of coarseness and sensuality; and it doth not yet appear what it will finally become. Its organized religion represents its social far more than its religious life. But all things come in their order: "first the natural, afterward that which is spiritual;" and our children will see the West we only behold in vision, and recognize in it the most characteristic American life, and the broadest and highest organization into human affairs of the American Declaration of Independence and the Saviour's Golden Rule.

ART. II.-GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE.

The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula. By CARL RITTER. Translated and adapted to the use of Biblical Students. By WILLIAM L. GAGE. 4 vols., 8vo. pp. xiv., 451, 418, 396, 410. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.

FOUR solid octavos upon the Lands of the Bible, attractive to the eye by the bright color of their covers, by their luxury of paper and type, by the name of their author, and by the charm of their subject, which, worn as it is, never fairly becomes wearisome to a student of the Bible! Shall we not find in these the last word concerning the sacred soil, and the wise and final decision of the numerous disputed questions? Will not this work of the acknowledged master in geographical science, the great organizer of the chaos of voyages, journals, and letters in all tongues, — will not this work bring an authority which we may implicitly trust, a verdict which cannot be set aside? That expectation is not realized. These full volumes, interesting as they are, settle hardly any important Biblical question. They give the best literature of the subject; but they leave readers to judge for themselves among the conflicting accounts and opinions. We are left more uncertain than ever, after the discussion of Ritter, whether the Serbal of Lepsius may not be the Sinai of the Exodus, and the traditional claim of the Mount of Moses be

discredited. The place of Golgotha is still undetermined. We are at liberty still to find a site for Cana in Galilee, and to conjecture the place of Capernaum by the seaside. Elijah's abode is not yet identified; and even the discussion of the vexed questions of Tarshish and Ophir, exhaustive as this seems, does not give full satisfaction. The evidence for India preponderates, but not enough to exclude reasonable doubt.

The work of Ritter is rather the material for a geography of the holy lands, than a systematic treatise. It brings together the accounts of the best writers, ancient and modern, but does not fuse them into a scientific and positive statement. We learn what Greek and Hebrew, Arab and Christian, have said about the sites and the legends; but we have not a regular work of a new writer, built solidly and squarely from this foundation of conglomerate. And, in addition to this intrinsic defect of the work, there are several incidental defects in the translation which is here given. It is not a translation of the full work, but is abridged by the translator; and we are not satisfactorily informed on what principles the omitted matter has been left out. Neither the author nor the translator seems to have visited any of the regions which they describe; the knowledge which they have of the sacred lands is all at second-hand, from reading, and not from journeying. Neither of them, too, is acquainted with the Arabic language, an accomplishment indispensable in the thorough treatment of Arabian themes. There are no maps to illustrate the geographical details; and in these studies, for all but the fewest readers, accurate maps are essential to comfortable study. There are perpetual references in the text to statements and descriptions elsewhere given and in other works. And, as the original work was published fifteen years ago, no account is taken of the numerous important books which have appeared in the interval, except in the slight and frequently irrelevant notes of the translator. In the account of Jerusalem, for instance, hardly any use is made of the investigations and discoveries of Barclay, in the streets, caves, and water-courses, which he has so patiently explored.

Among those whom the translator includes as "too well known to the reader to require specification," is Sepp; yet neither the text nor the notes of these volumes show any actual acquaintance with the discussions of Sepp: indeed, it does not appear that the editor of these volumes has ever read one chapter of the voluminous and original work which he describes as so "well known." The same thing may be said of his acquaintance with numerous other works noted in his catalogue. There are also occasional annoying typographical blunders, which show carelessness of proof-reading.

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But, with all these incidental defects, and with the original composite structure of the work, the thanks of Biblical students are due to the industrious editor of these volumes, for giving them, in such excellent, idiomatic English, a work of so much interest and value, a work which condenses so well the substance of a Palestinian library. No matter if it does not settle the disputed questions: it does what is better, in bringing before us the land in its various aspects of winter and summer, sunshine and shade, beauty and ruin. With no attempt at fine writing or picture-painting, it brings before us a gallery of pictures, a series of panoramic views, more vivid and life-like than the fancies of such writers as De Saulcy, Lamartine, and Chateaubriand. Ritter makes the dry narrative of some writers that he quotes graphic, and tones down the imagination of other writers. If he does not interpret all the wonders and solve all the puzzles of Palestine and the Peninsula, he gives the land its proper relief and proportion before the eye; shows how the mountains stand, how the plains lie, and what hides in the caverns; shows the rocks and the men as they are now, and as they have been for thousands of years. The combinations of Ritter leave a picturesque effect, quite as real as the descriptions of Stanley; and he rounds off into graceful shape the accurate measurements of Robinson, who is his highest authority and his most trusted guide. The American scholar goes in the centre and at the head of that group of scholars and observers which the reader follows all through these volumes. When Ritter differs from Robinson, he apologizes for his temerity.