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we may infer, if the calculations prove correct, that this level will not differ very greatly in its results from the triangulation of Lieut. Symonds.

On the 9th of June, the whole party after an absence of a little over two months, had returned to St. Jean d'Acre on the Mediterranean. They brought back their boats in as complete order as they received them on board at New York. The party were in fine health. Save a flesh wound to one man from the accidental discharge of his piece, not an accident or mishap had occurred to any one. The Arabs would point to them and say, "God is with them."

They were most anxious to have levelled from Acre to the lake of Tiberias; but at this time, after so long exposure, the party was so exhausted from the heat and fatigue, that it was judged necessary to get as soon as possible among the mountains. They traced en route the Jordan to its highest source at Hasbeiya; making careful observations as they proceeded. Thence they crossed Anti-Lebanon to Damascus. Although thus prevented from levelling to the lake of Tiberias, they have, nevertheless, full observations of the barometer and the boiling water apparatus from Acre by way of the lake and river Jordan to the Dead Sea.

The party reached Beirût on the 30th of June; having been compelled to forego crossing the highest peaks of Lebanon from increasing exhaustion and illness. On their arrival they mustered but four able-bodied men; and of the rest several (among them Lieuts. Lynch and Dale) required immediate medical attention. On the 12th of July, Lieut. Lynch writes: "The cases have all yielded to vigorous treatment; and I am assured that all danger is past." He adds: “I deem it a duty as imperative as grateful, to express our obligations to the gentlemen of the American Mission,-the Rev. Mr. Smith and Dr. De Forest in particular. By their judicious kindness they have all practically evinced a warm interest in our welfare."

"We are awaiting," he says, "the return of our ship,-our eyes ever eagerly scanning the horizon in the hope of once more beholding her. We look to the sea as our best physician; hence our anxiety to be once more embarked upon it."

But their hopes were soon subjected to mournful disappointment. Two days after the date of the preceding letter, Lieut. Dale was taken ill of a nervous fever. He was removed to the summer residence of the Rev. E. Smith at B'hamdûn, a village on the higher parts of Lebanon, just south of the Damascus road. Here he died on the 24th of July. Four days after, Mr. Smith wrote as follows:

"B'hamdûn, July 28, 1848. "I am sorry to inform you, that Lieut. Dale, the second officer of the Dead Sea expedition, is no more. He died at my house in this village on the 24th, after a sickness of eleven days, of a nervous fever. When one thinks of Costigan, and Molyneux, and Dale, he is almost led to imagine there is a fatality attending all attempts to unveil the mysteries of the Dead Sea."

A later letter from the Rev. W. M. Thomson gives the closing

scene:

'Abeih, Aug. 3, 1848.

"Mr. Smith will have made you acquainted with the melancholy termination of the Dead Sea expedition. After keeping the body of Mr. Dale for several days in the hopes of taking it to America, they were obliged to bury in Beirût. I performed the religious services last Sabbath at sunset. The poor sailors fired their farewell rounds over the grave; and then we parted immediately, they to sail at once in their hired ship, and I to return to my mountain home,—a sad, sad adieu! I have rarely had my sympathies more deeply awakened than in this case of Dale."

Lieut. Dale had hardly reached the age of thirty-five; he was a man of fine appearance and elegant manners, and was selected by Lieut. Lynch to be his companion because of his experience in the exploring expedition under Capt. Wilkes, and as an engineer, first in connection with the Coast Survey, and afterwards in Florida. His loss will doubtless be greatly felt in making up the report of the expedition; the end of which he was permitted to behold, but not to participate in its fruits, nor to enjoy its rewards.

We wait for the official report, before we can have a full view of the scientific results of the expedition. What it has accomplished, has been done well. But it is obvious, that several of the great problems connected with the vallies of the Jordan and of the Bŭkâ'a, have not been solved, for want of time. Let us hope that these also will not long remain undetermined.

The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso; elucidated by an analysis and explanation of the fables, together with English notes, historical, mythological, and critical, and illustrated by pictorial embellishments; with a clavis, giving the meaning of all the words with critical exactness. By Nathan Covington Brooks, A. M., Professor of the Greek and Latin languages, and Principal of the Latin High School, Baltimore. Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliot and Co. 1848. 8vo. pp. 388.

THIS is a formidable title and volume for the first four books of the Metamorphoses, for that is all of the fifteen, and even the four are curtailed somewhat by the judicious omission of objectionable parts. The letter press of the octavo page is also large, and the type small both of the text and notes. The quantity of matter to be read, or which may be read, is therefore considerable. We must, however, think this a fault in a school-book, for students in the early stages of Latin, as unnecessarily increasing the expense. The apology, doubtless, is a desire to make the book attractive; but as the editor informs us in the Preface, the book is designed to follow Caesar's Commentaries, we doubt if the object is attained by the copious extracts from ancient and modern writers, given for illustration-students at that stage will not appreciate them.

We think better of the pictorial embellishments. These are numerous and large, well executed and for the most part chaste. Yet here are some unfortunate exceptions-how can the pursuit of Daphne by Apollo, of Syrinx by Pan, of Coronis by Neptune, represented pictorially, be called chaste? These with several others, remind one of a recent advertisement in Punch-"A new art of printing, by a designing Devil," etc. These faults aside, which however are inexcusable, the embellishments are the greatest merit of the book.

A great fault of the book is the excess of help, which, therefore, becomes no help, given to the student. We refer particularly to the clavis, the superabundance of notes, and translation of words and phrases, and the redundance of the explications. The first two relieve the student from just that labor necessary and beneficial, in

awakening his own powers of research and discrimination. The last, by the uncertainty and contradiction in which the fables are involved, hopelessly, tend only to confuse the juvenile mind. These helps come in the place of specific references to principles, rules, and exceptions in the Grammar which, at this stage, it is the great business of the student to fix in his memory and contemplate in individual application. The editor is not alone in these faults; many editors of classics are now helping students in the same way-by dispensing with dictionaries and grammars—to learn as little as possible of the language they study. Those who adopt this method, of course, will be offended with these criticisms.

But we have graver objections to this work. The Preface states, "Since many of the fables are corrupt traditions of Scriptural truths, I have traced them back to the great fount of purity, the Biblical record, and have given in the notes the parallel passages from the sacred volume." We are sorry that any man should attempt to do this in the rapid process of book making now prevalent, and obviously characteristic of the editor, if we may judge from his Ovid and the advertised works accomplished and in progress. There is great danger in tracing these fables back to the great fount of purity, lest the Bible and Ovid be somehow placed on a level, and the youthful mind be insensibly led to look on the latter with some of the reverence which he owes to the former. If frequent errors, from slight investigation, creep in, and if cautions are scarce where there is evident allusion to Bible history, impressions most injurious may be fixed, which maturer years will not remove. The first note, in our opinion, inadvertently teaches atheism.

NOTE.

"Ante mare et tellus, et, quod tegit omnia coelum,

Unus erat toto Naturae vultus in orbe,

Quem dixere chaos;

"Ante; formerly, at the first. The account which Ovid gives, derived from tradition and the writings of the earlier poets, agrees in many respects with the Mosaic account. He begins his narrative with a word similar in meaning to the commencement of Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Now with Moses, the word, means a point before all things, when neither sea nor land nor heaven, or even their primordia, existed. But with Ovid ante means only the time when the elements were reduced to order;-chaos already-and for aught Ovid knew, having always existed. This is a heaven-wide difference. The ancient heathen never reached the idea of an original creation—out of nothing, but only an arrangement of a chaos already existing; in

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short, metamorphosis was the extent of their conceptions. The pregnant sense of Moses is: In absolute vacuity, chaos as well as all things began to be, and Jehovah created all things, and not Jupiter. It opposes atheism and idolatry. What Ovid says, and the best the poor heathen could say, is: Chaos existing, some god, whoever he might be, cut the formless congeries into parts and made them members of one whole. This is atheism and idolatry, and the editor does not lead the youthful mind to contemplate the difference.

NOTE 2." Tellus.

The earth, in all the cosmogonies of the ancients, is produced from chaos: του χάους δὲ θυγατήρ ἐστι καὶ ἡ γῆ, -PHORNUTIUS.”—Of course, the cosmogony of Moses, for he was one of the ancients. Does Moses teach that the earth was produced from chaos?-arranged, it may be, but not created, as the youthful mind is left to infer?

NOTE, p. 25, on the line

"Hanc Deus et melior litem Natura diremit."

"Deus et natura. This refers to the two principles, mind and matter. We may consider the force of the particle et as expositive: God and Nature-even Nature; or, by the figure hendiadys, the God of Nature. The intelligent heathens considered God and Nature synonymous. Thus Strabo :

"Nihil autem aliud est natura quam Deus et divina quaedam ratio toti mundo et partibus ejus inserta."

The power which fashioned the universe Aristotle denominates "Nature;" Anaxagoras calls it "Mind;" so also Plato in his Phaedon. Thales says: "God was that mind which formed all things out of water." Amelius the Platonic, in perfect accordance with what St. John says of the λóyos, remarks: "And this is that reason or word, by which all things that ever were, were made." "Chalcidius declares: "The Reason of God is God himself, "just as St. John says: "The Word was God." "Jupiter is a spirit which pervades all things."

"All Nature is but art unknown to thee."-Pope.

The tendency of this note, we think, is dangerous. It places the pantheism and atheism of the heathen philosophers in such juxtaposition and society with the New Testament, as to lead the youthful mind to think the instructions identical, and to look on the heathen as pretty wise and clever reasoners, notwithstanding Paul says, the Gentiles by wisdom knew not God. Nor do we think this fault atoned for by the judicious remark in the preceding note: "How much more