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is sufficient for us, that whatever title the Indians pretended to claim was met by acknowledgment, and a readiness to make compensation for the property taken. Inasmuch as value passed on both sides, it seems to us fair enough to consider the transactions as bargains, in which each party obtained articles they valued more, in exchange for such as they valued less. The mere fact, that the Indians' deeds contain the words "give, grant, and yield up," will be no argument against this view of the subject to those who remember, that most deeds in fee simple run in a similar manner. It is a remark made by Hutchinson, that the lands thus obtained were, with some exceptions, not worth the cost which it had taken to bring them into cultivation; so that, after all, the Indians may have obtained, for their qualified right of possession, quite as much as any person would consider its value. In the whole matter we see no stress to be laid upon any portion, excepting that which manifests the spirit of justice, and respect for the rights of others, in which the settlement commenced. And this we do not understand our brethren of New York as wishing to dispute.

We have now done with the article upon the "Politics of the Puritans "in the "New York Review"; an article which, we must be allowed to think, does no honor to the pages of that able magazine, and which, for a disingenuous use of authorities, and an illiberal spirit, upon colonial history, has not been exceeded since the days of George Chalmers. Perhaps, if the authors should again incline to search out materials in the "Planter's Plea" for an attack upon the motives and principles of our ancestors, they will give more deliberate consideration to the passages with which we now close our task. We recommend them most particularly to their attention, for the manly and generous tone which contrasts so strongly with their own.

"Now, for the better preventing of such suspitions and jealousies, and the ill affections to this worke, that may arise thereupon; two things are earnestly requested of such as passe their censures upon it, or the persons that undertake it. The first is, that although in this barren and corrupt age, wherein we live, all our actions are generally swayed and carried on by private interests; insomuch as sincere intentions of furthering the common good (grounded upon that love through which wee are commanded to serve one another) be the won

ders of men; notwithstanding, men would not thinke it impossible, that the love which waxeth cold and dyeth in the most part, yet may revive and kindle in some men's hearts; and that there may be found some that may neglect their ease and profit to doe the church good and God service, out of a sincere love and affection to God's honour and the churche's good. Or if, in the world's infancy, men out of an ambitious humour, or at present for private advantages and expectation of gaine, thrust themselves out from their own dwellings into parts farre remote from their native soyle; why should not we conceive, that, if they doe this for a corruptible croune, that the desire and expectation of an incorruptible (the reward of such as deny themselves for the service of God and his Church) may as strongly allure such as by patient continuance in well-doing seeke immortalitie and life? And yet the favourable conceits that men entertaine of such as follow, in all their actions, the wages of their private gaine, and the jealousies that they are apt to entertaine of such as pretend onely the advancement of the Gospell, manifestly argue that the generall opinion of the world is, that some may be true to themselves and the advancement of their owne private estates, but hardly any to God and his Church. I should be very unwilling to thinke, they cherish this suspition upon that ground, that moved that sensuall Emperor to beleeve that no man was cleane or chaste in any part of his body, because himselfe was defiled and uncleane in all. This is then the first favour that is desired, of such as consider this action, to beleeve that it is neither impossible nor unlikely, that these men's intentions are truely and really such as they pretend, and not colours and cloakes for secret dangerous purposes which they closely harbour in their breasts, especially when all apparent circumstances concurre to justifie the contrary." - pp. 79, 80.

ART. VII. Geschichte der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, von Dr. GEORG HEINRICH BODE, Assessor der philosophischen Facultät zu Göttingen. Erster Band. Geschichte der Epischen Dichtkunst der Hellenen bis auf Alexandros den Grossen. Zweiter Band. Geschichte der Lyrischen Dichtkunst der Hellenen bis auf Alexandros den Grossen. Erster Theil. Ionische Lyrik, nebst Abhandlungen über - No. 107.

VOL. L.

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die ältesten Kultus- und Volkslieder, und über die Tonkunst der Hellenen. Leipzig. 1838. 8vo. pp. 524, 395. History of Grecian Poetry, by Dr. GEORGE HENRY BODE, Assessor of the Philosophical Faculty at Göttingen. Vol. I. History of the Epic Poetry of the Greeks, down to Alexander the Great. Vol. II. History of the Lyric Poetry of the Greeks, down to Alexander the Great. Part First. Ionic Lyric Poetry, together with Essays upon the most Ancient Religious and Popular Songs, and upon the Music of the Greeks.

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DR. BODE is not unknown to scholars in the United States. A residence of several years, as Greek Instructer in the Northampton School, brought him into personal relations with the principal men of letters among us. His Essay on the Orphic Poetry also, written at a very early period of his life, was introduced to American scholars through the pages of this Journal, and gave a most favorable impression of his abilities and learning. Soon after his return to Germany, he published an elaborate edition of several ancient mythographists, which confirmed the high opinion already formed of his literary attainments. The present work on the history of Greek poetical literature will place his name still higher among the scholars of the age, and will be an acceptable offering to the lovers of classical learning, wherever the German language is cultivated.

To undertake the history of Greek poetry is a very ambitious literary enterprise. Undoubtedly, the intellect of Greece was unfolded with wonderful symmetry. One life seems to have run through every form it assumed, whether in poetry, rhetoric, art, or philosophy. With all their diversities, the Greek people were singularly homogeneous, both physically and mentally. Their national existence, and their intellectual activity, were rounded off so as to be complete. Yet within the limits of this completeness, what diversities of intellectual habits, moral tendencies, and political views ! How strangely the Spartan soldier contrasted with the Athenian gentleman, the καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός of the ancient writers ! How widely the legislation of Solon departed from that of Lycurgus! And how the short, sharp, pithy conversational style of the Lacedæmonians, where wit and wisdom, repartee, sarcasm, and truth were blended, and formed a weapon,

* See North American Review, Vol. XXI. p. 388.

the edge of which nothing could resist, how curiously this compares with the fluent politeness, the "O most wonderful," "O most dear," and the graceful irony, and boundless versatility, of the smoothly winding Attic dialogue. And then, how strange the contrast between Greece united against the Persian invader, the Lacedæmonian and Athenian fighting and falling side by side; — and the same Greece broken into struggling parties, the Spartan armies ravaging the Attic fields, and the Attic fleets wasting the Lacedæmonian shores, and each inflicting on the other all the horrors of the longprotracted Peloponnesian war! How furious were the conflicts of opposite political principles; democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy! How violent the contrasts of philosophical opinions and systems! And yet all these contrasts were bound together by a subtile, all-pervading national feeling, which made them a part and parcel of the one and only Greek character. This Greek character was perfectly stamped on Greek literature and art; and a history of Greek literature cannot be severed from the history of art, nor from the political history of the country. For all these together form an organic whole, and are as intimately united as the limbs of an animated body. When they are sundered, life vanishes under the anatomist's fingers.

The permanency of this Greek spirit is not the least surprising phenomenon in the history of the world. It has endured, from the first glimmering of historic light, down to the present day, and the analogies between recent events and those of former times are at once striking and instructive. Between three and four thousand years ago, a royal government was established in Athens, by a foreign prince, who hushed the quarrels of warring tribes, established or renewed the forms of civil life, and built on the Acropolis a stronghold against invaders. And it was but yesterday, that the same city, and the same Acropolis, with the old Pelasgic wall, which outdates Theseus and Cecrops, still standing, were entered by a foreign prince, and made the seat of a new Hellenic kingdom; the centre of a civil power, which has already reduced the wild mountain tribes under a government of laws. Three thousand years ago the exploits of Grecian heroes, during a nine years' warfare against the dwellers on the Asiatic shore, were chanted by the singers of the Grecian isles; and singers of the same Grecian isles are even now celebrating the deeds of heroes in a nine

years' warfare with the swarthy hordes from the same Asiatic shore; and a modern Odysseus, of Ithaca, stands among the highest heroic names. The bards have taken up again the broken harp of Greece; and, though its compass is narrowed, and its strings are fewer than of old, still, tones of the old Hellenic spirit are drawn from it once more. Twenty-four or five centuries ago, Herodotus related the long train of slaughter and conflagrations that attended the Persian invasion, with the final overthrow of the turbaned Asiatics; five or six years ago, Sourmeles sent out from the press of Ægina, a like history of a like invasion of turbaned Asiatics, which has gained for its author the appellation of the inodern Thucydides. The assassination of Hipparchus, and the death of the assassin, were acted over again in the fate of Count Capo d'Istria. The piracies, mentioned by Homer, and described by Thucydides, have all been repeated, in modern times, among the islands of the Grecian seas. The superstitions of the Greek mythology are preserved, under slightly altered forms, among the songs of the Klephtic mountaineers. "They are the same canaille," remarked a French merchant in Athens, "that they were in the days of Themistocles." They have undergone innumerable revolutions and reverses; they have been ground to the earth by successive tyrants, who have, one after another, been swept away; but they have always cherished their national recollections, and their ancient Hellenic pride; they have written and spoken substantially the language of their great ancestors; they have ever refused to mingle with their barbarian oppressors; among their mountain fastnesses, a portion of them have preserved their Grecian liberty, as well as their Grecian spirit, unextinguished. Some have engaged in commerce, and acquired wealth; others have frequented the Universities of Western Europe, and returned thence, laden with the treasures of science and literature. Under all these circumstances they have never lost the consciousness of national existence, nor the mighty memories of the past; and they bear, to this day, in their features, indelible marks of their descent from those ancients, whose perfect forms are immortalized in the marble. They are the same lixones Azooi, the same brighteyed Achæans, of whom Homer sung "three thousand years

ago."

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The political history of the Greeks has been handled in various ways by modern writers. The English, whose po

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