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lar form of society, being represented by some great bards of the earliest time, when it was actually the established one, should go down by imitation to their successors, and thus retain its place in poetry, after it has disappeared from real life. With every such allowance, however, we are compelled to believe that the Homeric poems were composed before the great early revolution, which transformed the states of Greece from monarchies to republics-if not before it commenced, yet before it had become general and predominant. With such data we cannot place Homer lower than the year 850, and may perhaps carry him a century further back.

The questions relating to the authorship of the Homeric poems have been generally connected with this other questión, whether they were originally reduced to writing. The inquiries are, no doubt, closely related: yet it has been too often assumed, that a decision in one case must be decisive also for the other. Thus Wolf, having proved, as he thought, that the poems could not have existed in writing before the sixth century, inferred that they could not have been composed as integers, or have existed in their collective form at any earlier time. The opponents of Wolf have frequently admitted the correctness of the inference, and regarded it as necessary to rest their cause on disproving the premises. At present, however, it seems to be the prevailing opinion that the premises of this argument do not justify the inference derived from them. It is the belief of Müller, for instance, that the Iliad and the Odyssey are the productions of a single author, but unwritten at the outset, and perpetuated in the same unwritten form for several generations. We cannot absolutely deny the possibility of this, though it is hardly made out by satisfactory analogies. It is said to have been not uncommon to find in Athens a man who could repeat the Iliad and Odyssey from beginning to end. But we should consider, how much easier it is to learn a long work from the written copy, than from the oral enunciation of another person. An eminent tragic actor will have a large number of parts stored up in his memory, and ready at a moment's notice: but the parallel must be taken with the same allowance as before. Much is said of the capacious and well-stored memories of Celtic bards, and modern Greek minstrels, and Persian tale-tellers. Yet we feel, that after all they fall far short of the achievement, which we are required to believe in regard to the Homeric poems. It is not without reason, therefore, that Mure exerts himself to show that the poems were originally written. His chapter on the age of alphabetic writing is particularly interesting and valuable. If it fails to make out in a manner perfectly satisfactory the main point of a written Homer, it proves certainly that writing was in common use at a much earlier date than Wolf assumed. There is overwhelming evidence, that it was frequent and familiar long before the time of Solon. It is admitted

indeed on all hands, that letters were known and used in Greece as early at least as the era of the Olympiads. But it has been claimed, that for a long period the art was applied only to monumental inscriptions, or to brief and scanty records: that there was nothing like the writing of a long continuous composition. This has been inferred from the want (rather assumed than proved) of a suitable material for writing: and from the rude and clumsy forms of the letters on the earliest monuments. But there are examples enough to show, that a people may write imperfectly on brass or stone, while yet they write easily and even elegantly on some more tractable material. It is perfectly certain, that the numerous productions of epic, elegiac and lyric poetry, composed in the eighth and seventh centuries before our era, must have been written as they were composed to imagine them perpetuated by memory alone would be transcending the bounds of the most extended possibility. And if alphabetic writing was common in the year 750, it may have been practiced a century or two earlier. Most of the arguments against giving it an earlier date than that, would equally preclude us from assigning one so early. Yet for this earlier time we have nothing from history but vague presumptions: and we naturally inquire, whether nothing to the point can be extracted from Homer himself. Here, however, we find ourselves drawn two ways. The very existence of these poems, with nearly thirty thousand lines, appears to furnish the strongest evidence of an art, which seems at first view indispensable to their creation and preservation. And yet the absence of any allusion to such an art, among their innumerable and multifarious descriptions, is a strong circumstance upon the other side. Mure claims, indeed, that such allusions are not wanting. But he maintains, that if they were, the silence of Homer would not be decisive. He instances several objects and processes, which must have been familiar in the Homeric age, yet are not distinctly referred to in the Iliad and Odyssey. Without denying all weight to these parallels, we must still hold that the omission of explicit reference to a well known art of writing is a much more striking and extraordinary case. Our author denies, however, that Homer has omitted such explicit reference. He finds an allusion to the art of writing in the expression, so often used of events which remain yet uncertain in the future, that "they lie on the knees of the gods." This he understands as signifying, that such events are inscribed in tablets, which rest, after the fashion of Greek penmanship, on the knees of the divinities who write in them. But this only increases the difficulty. For the expression is clearly proverbial, and if it is to be interpreted in this way, would show that the art of writing, not only in the general idea, but even in its particular methods, was familiar to the popular mind. It is all the more surprising then, that we do not have more frequent and unambiguous allusions. The idea

of destiny occurs on every page. If in this one phrase it is associated with writing, why do we not find the same association in other expressions and connections? Why do we hear nothing of a book of fate? Why nothing of a book at all? Why is no bard represented as writing his poems? why no soothsayer as writing his prophecies? why nobody as writing anything? Here, however, our author interposes, and tells us, that we hear in the Iliad of a sealed letter sent by Protus to Jobates, king of Lycia, with instructions to kill Bellerophon the bearer. The passage has been generally understood of late, as referring to some sort of conventional signs, or pictorial representations, by which the Lycian king was informed of his kinsman's wishes. Mure opposes this explanation in a labored argument, and shows that the passage may without absurdity be understood as a poetic description of a written letter. He has hardly shown, however, that his own interpretation is necessary, or that, when connected with the other indications of the poems, it is even probable. On the whole we find ourselves constrained to admit, that the Homeric poems do not contain any distinct and unequivocal reference to an art of writing: and this fact we think can only be accounted for by supposing, that such an art, if known at all, was not at that time familiar to the great mass of the Hellenic people. It may have been already common with the traders of the sea-coast towns, who borrowed it from their Phoenician visitors. It may have extended itself to the priests, to be used in their temple records. It may have come to be employed by the minstrel-guilds, to perpetuate their finest compositions. But to the great body of the nation, we must believe it to have been as yet unknown. It found no place, therefore, in the Homeric stock of description and illustration. The early epic poetry was addressed to the popular mind, and whether written or not was designed to operate upon that mind by oral recitation. It must of course confine itself to objects of general familiarity. The whole question is one, in regard to which a somewhat doubtful probability is the utmost height that we can expect to attain; and the view here given seems to us to have a greater probability, to be encumbered with fewer difficulties, than any other.

If we had not trespassed too long already on the patience of our readers, we should be glad to follow our author through the Epic cycle, the Hesiodic or didactic school of poets, and especially through the interesting account of the early lyrical poetry, which occupies his third volume, and might fitly claim an article by itself. We think it unfortunate, however, that he was precluded by the chronological limits of his work from taking up the great Theban poet, who, if not the greatest master of the lyre, is our best extant specimen of the lyric muse of Greece. The deficiency will be supplied, though

with less of continuity than could be wished, in the next published volumes of the work. An undertaking of such extensive and elaborate research can hardly be expected to advance with much rapidity. It will be the universal wish of scholars, however, as well in this country as in Europe, that its stages may be as swift, and its stops as few and brief as possible.

ART. II. ENDLESS PUNISHMENT, A RESULT OF CHARACTER.

LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERGYMAN. Life and Correspondence of John Foster.

THIS famous letter contains John Foster's argument against the future punishment of the wicked. He regards future punishment as an arbitrary infliction directly by God's hand for the sins of this life; while his argument implies a denial of man's free-agency, its force depends on the absence of a comprehensive and philosophical view of the unity of the soul's entire existence, and of the connection of the future state with the present as one whole. It is not intended, in this article, to examine Foster's arguments in detail, but to present a train of thought striking at the fundamental error on which his reasoning depends.

When a child dies, it has been beautifully said that it never grows old. It is thought of always as a child; it is embalmed in the affections a half-opened bud, never losing its sweetness, never blooming into maturity, never withering in decay. When the image of such a long-lost child flashes on the mind in contrast with its former equals, now vigorous in manhood or withering in old age, we are startled at the vivid revelation of the changes wrought by time.

A few years ago the body of a young man, retaining undecayed the fullness and beauty of opening manhood, was dug from a coal mine in England. None recognized him, or even remembered that one had perished on that spot. But, as the discovery was noised abroad, a woman, wrinkled, and bent, and leaning on a staff, tottered to the spot; there after a moment's scrutiny, she cast herself, with a piercing cry, on the body and embraced it with intense affection. It was her betrothed, who, just before their marriage was to be consummated, had perished in the mine. Then she was young and fair like him; now, wrinkled and de

crepit, she stands over his youthful form, and measures in the contrast, the ravages of three score years.

Once at a semi-centennial alumni meeting, as the graduates were entering their names at the desk, we saw two gray-haired men come forward from different parts of the house, and greet each other as classmates, amid the acclamations of the throng. They had not met since they graduated, nearly fifty years before; and now, as they scrutinized each other's faces, searching for the well-remembered features of former years, they were compelled to see in a moment the changes effected by passing from youth to age.

When scenes like these reveal the changes of a whole life-time in the flash of a moment's glance, and we are saddened by contemplating the ravages of time on the body, we may profitably reflect and full of solemnity is the thought-that not less real are the changes wrought on the soul. The simplicity of the soul in childhood has long since, perhaps, been seamed with cunning, its credulity corrugated and stiffened into skepticism, its blushing modesty bronzed in impudence, its affections soured into misanthropy, and the whole soul seared and furrowed by manifold transgressions. Could the soul suddenly make itself visible, so that we could see at a glance the scathing influences of a sinful life upon it, the spectacle would be more affecting than that of the ravages of time on the body.

This idea accords with the language of the Bible: "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee. Know, therefore, and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God." We do not say that the prophet intended in these words any exact philosophical theory as to the influence of sin; but we must suppose that he intended to describe sin as itself the agency in inflicting its own punishment.

There are various ways in which sin effects this result. The more closely we examine the delicate and wondrous mechanism of the soul, the more apparent it is that sin disorders it in all its parts. It embitters the memory, it defiles the imagination, it troubles the conscience, it inflames the desires, it makes the habits into chains and fetters, it turns every faculty and susceptibility into an instrument of torture, and the sinful soul, like the bomb-shell in its terrific career, carries within itself the burning elements of its own destruction. This subject is too large for a single article. We will confine ourselves to a single branch of it the ruin necessarily resulting from a sinful character.

When a lecturer on temperance holds up before his audience the stomach of a drunkard, or a picture of it; when he exhibits, in their different stages, the progressive effects of alcohol in dis