three centuries ago. In a political point of view, the effect will probably be to leave a vague feeling of satisfaction on the mind, inasmuch as all must be conscious that crime and cruelty are not so rife in these days as they were at that elder period. But it is not so much on this score that we object to this publication; it is because we consider it an offence against the recognized proprieties of life. The theme is abhorrent to our instincts, though in some respects full of a most mournful beauty: and it may therefore more fitly be left to such general imaginings as Art has connected with it.' This is indeed so: yet look at the public taste in this regard. The BROTHERS MASON have already printed four editions of the work: and even now its sale is undiminished.

THE JEWISH WAR OF FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS: a new TRANSLATION. By the late Rev. ROBERT TRAILL, D.D., M.R.I.A. Edited, with Notes, by ISAAC TAYLOR. In one Volume: pp. 604. Boston: J. P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.

A WORLD-renowned work, like this of JOSEPHUS, edited by such a scholar as ISAAC TAYLOR, (author of a volume elsewhere referred to in the present pages,) requires but little notice from any American critic, least of all, any thing beyond a mere record from any pen so humble as our own. It shall be our obiect, then, only simply and briefly to record the character of the Translation before us, and to present a few facts in relation to the author of the same. The present translation, therefore, we briefly repeat, of the Life of JOSEPHUS and his History of the Jewish War, by the late Dr. TRAILL, edited, with notes, by ISAAC TAYLOR, and copiously illustrated with plates, was originally issued in England in parts. The edition under notice is an accurate reprint of the original work, with the exception of the notes explanatory of the plates and such portions as have exclusive reference to them. A brief sketch is given of the life, character, and literary labors of the learned translator, from the pen of the no less learned and distinguished editor, from which we take a few extracts:

'WHATEVER might have been Dr. TRAILL'S intellectual endowments, or his accomplishments, it was his animation; his unwearied energy; his vivid and effective sympathies; his devotedness in labors of charity, and the zealous and affectionate discharge of his duties as a parish minister, that most distinguished him; and in the exercise of these useful virtues it was that he had become known, and had made himself the object of affection in his circle. It might have been difficult for those who knew him only as the pastor, and as the friend of the poor, and who witnessed his daily toils, as such, to imagine or believe that, even after the time when the spreading distress of the district had rendered these duties in the last degree arduous and oppressive, Dr. TRAILL still found time for carrying forward his usual literary labors, which in fact were not remitted until his last illness threatened his life. It was from that bed from which he did not rise, that he wrote to his friend: 'Send me no more proofs: I am upon a fever-bed.' The habit of rising at the earliest hour, and, during the winter, long before dawn, had given him a command of time, which enabled him to accomplish literary tasks without trenching upon his duties as the minister of an extensive parish.

Dr. TRAILL succeeded to the parish of Schull, county of Cork, in the year 1830, where his last years were spent in a course of unwearied endeavors to promote the temporal comfort and the spiritual good of his people. The parish of Schull, situated at the extreme south-west point of Ireland, is extensive and populous, and it is one of those districts which have become too well known as the scene of the most appalling sufferings. Dr. TRAILL had found the population in a state of deplorable destitution when first he became incumbent of the parish; nor had either his incessant ef

forts to cherish better habits among the lower classes, nor the munificent use he made of his private fortune, availed to bring them into a condition in which they might, in a less disastrous manner, have met the awful visitation of those years of famine. From the very first, and with a clear-sighted dismay, he had looked forward to what he knew must be the consequences of the approaching calamity; and while many continued to think that the worst evils would be evaded, his letters attest that he did not allow himself to entertain any such delusive expectation: Death by famine, and then by pestilence, will sweep this country of a third of its people!' Such were his forebodings; and to how awful an extent have they been realized! Well he knew that the habitual and extreme destitution of hundreds around him could have but one issue, if it should be aggravated only a little by scarcity.

'Dr. TRAILL'S Own means, together with funds that were liberally placed at his disposal by benevolent persons, known and unknown,' throughout Ireland, and by many in England, enabled him during the months of that terrible winter, to keep alive hundreds who otherwise must at an early time have perished. The cares, the sorrows, and the toil, consequent upon these offices of charity, affecting himself and the several members of his family, were excessive; and in his hurried notes to his friends he speaks of himself as worn out with grief and labor. At length, and especially after the time when the more arduous duty of administering spiritual aid to those who were dying of pestilence took the place of the comparatively easy task of feeding the hungry, the strain upon his mind and feelings became greater than even so energetic a frame could support. The minister of CHRIST, in passing from house to house, from hovel to hovel, attempted and endured more than human nature can sustain. A severe attack of dysentery was followed by fever; and after lingering awhile, (often seeming to rally, and always in the calm possession of his faculties,) he expired, in the confident assurance of that bright immortality which is warranted by the evangelic doctrine he had long professed and proclaimed.'

Dr. TRAILL'S religious tastes, we are given to understand, as well as his fondness for Greek studies, had early directed his attention to the writings of JOSEPHUS; and it was soon after his entrance upon his duties as Rector of Schull, that he first indulged the ambition of attempting to render accessible to English readers the pages, of a writer so preeminently important. He felt that, in WHISTON's version. - cumbrous, abrupt, and repulsive as it is - the writings of the Jewish Historian are scarcely accessible. It is probable that he did not at the first distinctly measure the greatness of the task he had entered upon; nor perhaps did he duly estimate the difficulties which he soon found must attach to it. A gradually-acquired perception, however, of the vastness of his enterprise, animated his courage, rather than depressed it; and when, in conversation with literary friends, he discerned more clearly than at first, how much would be required of him, as the Translator of JOSEPHUS, the enhanced anxiety he felt did but stimulate his energies to meet the occasion. His was a mind not easily turned from its purpose and always undismayed by the prospect of toil. At the same time the sense he entertained of the high value of these writings, as related to sacred history, carried him forward with an impulse, which, to a mind like his, no motives but such as took their rise in religious feeling could give. The union, in Dr. TRAILL'S character, of a self-determining energy, with a genuine candor, and a ready deference to the opinion of others whose judgment he respected, was very remarkable; and this modesty led him to submit his labors, in the most unreserved manner, to the criticism of his friends, and of any whom he thought qualified to aid him by their remarks. It was in consequence of several such appeals to the opinion of others that he recast his version, again and again, and brought it, with the most laborious care, nearer and still nearer to the original; while he kept in view always its fluency in style, as English-adapted to the tastes of the mass of readers. It has already been announced, by advertisement, that Dr. TRAILL had long ago completed the translation of the Jewish War, as well as the Life of JOSEPHUS, and

the two Books against APION, and that he had made considerable progress also in translating the Antiquities. It has moreover been stated that the manuscript had been confided, for revision, to the care of a learned and experienced friend, a member of Trinity College, Dublin, whose valuabe Iservices had previously been engaged for correcting the sheets, as they passed through the press. And hence, the present version of 'The Seven Books of the Jewish War,' which not only constitute a history complete in themselves, but are by far the most important, and the most entertaining, of all the writings of JOSEPHUS. It is the history of the overthrow and of the scattering of the Jewish polity, worship, and nation, and connects the long and distant past with the present, and both with the future. The work cannot but strengthen the faith of men in the historic certainty and the DIVINE Origin of THE BIBLE.

THE WORLD OF MIND: AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY. By ISAAC TAYLOR. In one Volume: pp. 378. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS, Franklin-Square.

MR. TAYLOR is one of those thinking writers, who have very distinct notions of what they intend to say before they say it. Those who are acquainted with his earlier publications, especially those of a philosophical cast, will not be disappointed by this 'elementary treatise on intellectual philosophy.' His powers of analysis and disquisition are manifested on every page. His power of thought enables, and his habit of thought impels him, to discriminate the points of which he treats from others which are irrelevant, although in some respects connected. He takes the direct line to his specific object, looking before and after, clearly perceiving the point from which he starts, and that beyond which he cannot advance, and quietly elbowing aside the diverging lines and claims of collateral and inappropriate subjects. It is the best, as well as the shortest recommendation of the book to say, that it was written by ISAAC TAYLOR. His character as a writer is its guarantee. He may advance some things which not only are not advanced by other writers on intellectual philosophy, but to which the reader may refuse his assent, and regard as venturesome and undemonstrable; but he gives his reasons, and distinguishes between what is speculative and what is matter of consciousness and experience.

Thus, as a specimen of his directness and point, he clears the way to his specific theme, by observing: 'In all departments of philosophy, human curiosity is stopped at an earlier, or at a later stage by an impassable barrier, it meets what is inscrutable. The constitution of the elements in the material world is inscrutable; the gravitating force, and the principle of chemical affinity, and the nature of light, and the principle of vegetable life, those things are utterly inscrutable; so also, is the principle of animal life; and so, in like manner, but not more so, is MIND. At all these points alike, and at each of them for the same reasons, we reach a limit which the human mind has never yet passed. But it is not true that Mind is more occult, as to its inner nature, than is matter, or than the principle of vegetative and animal life; they are exactly as much so, and not more.'

Since, as noted in some of our recent numbers, we have come to adopt, as an ultimate fact of consciousness, that we think in words—that we conceive, are conscious of, remember, and express our thoughts only in words and equivalent signs -our curiosity leads us, on opening a work like this, to ascertain what view the author takes of the office and instrumentality of Language. On page 31 he shows the necessity of words, terms, names - - in dealing with the simplest abstractions, distinctions of colors, and the like; and on the next page, our absolute dependence on them 'when we advance from the simpler kinds of abstractions toward those which are more remote.' Like his predecessors, however, he does not seem distinctly to perceive that all our thinking is absolutely dependent on words as its vehicle and instrument; but takes the contrary for granted. He all but sees that we are conscious of no thoughts apart from words- that there are no wordless thoughts — that we think in words. Often what he says clearly implies this; but education, hereditary opinion dictates reservations, or possible exceptions. Thus in his chapter on 'Language, as related to mental operations,' he treats of language, words, 'as the means of communication - mind with mind; as the instrument of thought-the tools of

thought.' 'There are certain operations, in carrying forward, which it can scarcely be imagined that even the strongest minds, advantaged by the most perfect discipline, could dispense with this assistance, or could think to any good purpose otherwise than as leaning, from step to step, upon words, phrases, propositions.. The infant, while listening to the voices that soothe, or that startle the ear, is yielding itself to a process, in the course of which the world of words comes to adhere, point after point, to the world of objects; and these adhesions, multiplying every day, and becoming more and more firm or indissoluble, are at length so thoroughly riveted, or welded, that the union could scarcely be more intimate if, in fact, the mother-tongue were born with the mind itself. If the human family had known only one language, it would scarcely have been possible for us to entertain the supposition that words are nothing more than arbitrary signs, and that they might therefore have been other than they are. In fact, millions of men pass through their destined course of years, with no other consciousness than this. Thought and language have never been sundered, in all their experience, from infancy to age.' Yet he supposes these millions to be only the uneducated; that education relaxes the bond which connects thoughts and words, and gives the mind a discoursive, emancipated power of unverbal thought. His illustrations, however, fail, as in the nature of the case, we think they should and must fail, to do more than show, that education rectifies the erroneous use, and, indefinitely, augments the stock of words.

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The ethical bearings and implications of this work, are of the safest and soundest. Its comprehensive title, The World of Mind,' includes what relates to the manifestations of mind in the inferior animal races. Accordingly, it consists substantially 'of an exhibition, first, of what is common to all orders of living beings, and then a setting forth of what is peculiar to the human mind, and which is the ground of its immeasurable superiority.' This broad plan gives scope to the author's accustomed originality, as well as to his acute and practised powers of discrimination.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

BOCKER.

THE LATE HENRY CARY, ESQ.: 'JOHN WATERS,' OF THE KNICKER- We promised, in our April number, again to advert to the personnel of the writer of the 'JOHN WATERS' papers in the KNICKERBOCKER, in 'times long by-past,' and also to afford to our thousands of new readers some additional touches of his rare quality. Let us address ourselves to the first branch of our subject. Mr. CARY was an accomplished GENTLEMAN. It might safely be left to the distinguished friends who knew him well; who so frequently sat together around his refined and most hospitable board; to affirm all this, and much more. He esteemed all the physical blessings of this life as evidences of the DIVINE Bounty; neither to be slighted, nor to be lightly regarded. 'There is,' he says, 'a mysterious connection between the soul and the body, which may be availed of through the senses to some advantage; so that by temperance, frequent ablutions, seasonable exercise, fine weather, fresh air, and agreeable objects of taste, of sight, and of touch; bright clouds, flowers at morning with the song of birds, and paintings of delicious coloring for the eyes to repose upon, the spirit becomes for a time less disquieted, and the current of sorrow is broken or diverted. I do not think there is any unmanliness or desertion of Christian duty in availing one's self of these appliances. Grief is a warfare, and there are auxiliary forces which involve exertion in order to bring them into the field.' We have often fancied, in common with many of Mr. WATERS' most intimate friends, that in his chapters upon 'My Uncle the Parson,' he drew at the same time a real portraiture and his own model of a gentleman. Let us hear somewhat of this same 'UNCLE:'

'HE used, I remember, to sit at his own table rather as a guest than as a master of the house; receiving every little courtesy with thanks, and making himself agreeable to the whole party, as if enjoying the civilities of the entertainment, while we were all his hosts; and the refinement of manner with which he fed himself with his small hands after the ruffles at the wrist had been carefully folded under the cuff, and his napkin adjusted, the precision and skill with which it was prepared, lifted, and presented to the mouth; received, cherished, and intelligently consumed; made me sometimes feel that it was a nutriment for the spiritual quite as much as for the natural existence, that was spread before him, and that his enjoyment was a calm and precious gratitude, rather than a physical indulgence. There was a just appreciation, without the least approach to avidity-a tranquil pleasure, and an enlightened zest. My uncle the parson was an adept at the use of the knife and fork. It may be supposed by persons unversed in the science, that the easiest thing in the world is to divide a pair of boiled fowls, and slice up a billet of salted pork. It is not so, my masters. Nothing is easier indeed than to tear the one piece-meal; and maul the other into fragments; but to apply the knife with unerring exactness to the line