ter coming from the many presses of that great institution. "Of making many books there is no end ;" and in no department does the saying seem to be more strikingly true, than in the department of story-books. A rational supply in that department may be useful; the Dairyman's Daughter, the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and some among Mrs. Sherwood's unnumbered productions, with a few others that might be specified as belonging to the same rank, are too valuable to be lost; but est modus in rebus, and to fill up our juvenile libraries with nothing but story-books, is to do such an injury to the rising generation as cannot be easily repaired. We hope, therefore, that the Sunday School Union will go on and publish books for youth that have some substance. If they do so, the additional good which they will accomplish will yield them an ample reward.

It remains for us only to add a few passages, as specimens of the work before us.

The following paragraphs are selected from the chapter which describes the sickness and death of the Queen Keopuolani.

The dying hour of our kind patroness and friend was evidently fast approaching; and "hoping" as we do "in her death," we were anxious that some words might be drawn from her in conversation, that would prove an encouragement to our hearts, and a blessing to the immortals who with the deepest interest hung around her dying couch. After an hour, Mr Ellis and myself again called to see her. She was still asleep. The king, Kaahumanu, and Karaimoku, immediately and urgently requested that she might be baptized; saying, that it was her earnest and special desire, and that she had only that morning begged" to be washed with water, in the name of God." The king told Mr. Ellis, they did not wish her to be baptized, because they thought she could not be saved without it; but because she was a Christian, had the true faith in her heart, had given herself to Jesus Christ long before she was sick, and because all the people of God were baptized, and she had herself so earnestly resquested it. Mr. Ellis told them he would consult Mr. Richards and myself on the subject, and when she awoke, would converse with and baptize her. pp. 158, 159.

We found our friend so far revived, as to breathe regularly, and yet not so much so, as to speak intelligibly. An interested and interesting group of foreigners, missionaries, and merchants, and chiefs, near relatives and friends, surrounded the dying pillow, and waited a few moments, hoping that the fluttering spirit might still be roused entirely from its lethargy, ere it quitted its earthly tenement forever. But there being little prospect of this, Mr. Ellis proceeded at length to administer the sacred ordinance, which entitles all who receive it to the name of Christian. It was a solemn moment, and an awful place; and our prayer was, that it might be none other than "the house of God and the gate of heaven," to the immortal soul hovering on the borders of eternity.

Thus the highest chief of the Sandwich Islands, after having given satisfactory evidence of a renewed heart, and of sincere love to Jesus Christ,

was initiated into the visible church of God: and, as we hope and believe, in the course of an hour after, joined the invisible church above, having triumphed over the power of death and the grave. pp. 160, 161.

For months, at least, the predominating thoughts and feelings of her mind and heart appear to have been those connected with the eternal desti

ny of the soul. Long before coming to Lahaina, she said to Taua, her private chaplain, when conversing with him on the subject of religion: Great is the fear of my heart, that I shall never become one of the people of Jesus Christ: I have followed the customs of my country, and have been of the company of dark hearts; my thought is, that I shall soon die: and great is my sorrow, that the teachers of the good way did not come to us in the days of our childhood!" And afterwards, "I know their word to be true; good indeed is the word of God; and now I have found a Saviour and a good King, Jesus Christ, the Lord."

We have been informed by Taua, that since her establishment at Lahaina, messengers have arrived for him at midnight, to come and pray for her. On going to her residence, he has found her, with a few attendants, waiting his arrival: as he entered she on one occasion said, "I am sorry to call you from your rest; but my thoughts are upon God, and I cannot sleep. I am old, soon I shall die, and great is my fear that I shall not know enough of the right way to go to heaven. Speak to me of the good word of God, that my dark mind may be enlightened." And he has thus spent hours, in conversing and praying with her and her immediate attendants, while all the rest of Lahaina has been wrapt in sleep. pp. 161, 162.

This morning before she fell into the stupor, Auna and Taua approached her couch, and asked what her thoughts then were. She replied, "I remember the word of my teachers. I pray greatly to Jesus Christ to receive me. I am about to die; but it is not dark now, as it would have been, had I died in my former days. Pray for me; let all the missionaries pray for me. Great is my love to them, great is my love to you. My thought is, I love Jesus Christ, and that he will receive me to his right hand. Great is my desire to be washed with water in the name of God, before I die. I have given myself to Jesus Christ. I am his; and I wish to be like his people!" pp. 163, 164.

ART. IX.-REVIEW OF WORKS ON GREECE.

An Historical Sketch of the Greek Revolution.
D. late Surgeon in Chief to the Greek fleet.

pp. 452.

By SAMUEL G. Howe, M.
New-York: 1828. 8vo.

The Condition of Greece in 1827 and 1823, &c. By Col. JONATHAN P. MILLER, of Vermont. As contained in his Journal, &c. New-York:

1828. 12mo. pp. 30. ΓΕΝΙΚΗ ΕΦΗΜΕΡΙΣ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΑΔΟΣ. Εν Αιγίνη. 1828. Ev Sovian Tuwoy papia. [General Gazette of Greece. Egina. 1828. At the National press.]

If there be a man in this country, who has not watched with earnest interest the progress of the Greek revolution, with that man we desire to have nothing to do on the present occasion.

In the few pages which we propose now to devote to the consideration of the late revolution, and of the present posture of affairs in Greece, we desire to speak to those, and to none but those, whose hearts have sympathized with the struggles and the triumphs of a Christian nation, working out, on the fields of its ancient glory, its deliverance from the Mahommedan and barbarian oppression.

Dr. Howe has written well the history of one of the most interesting wars in the annals of the world. His work needs no recommendation of ours. Every man who reads it, will be too full of it to rest till his neighbors have read it with him. The very novel-reader may sit down to it, and such is the power, not of the author, but of the subject, such is the fascination, not of the style, but of the simpleand straight-forward story,he may even forget that it is not fiction.

Colonel Miller, in his journal of a short residence in Greece, as Agent of the New-York Greek Committee, has given us some not very finished, but very distinct and lively pictures of the distress, to which that country was reduced before the battle of Navarino put an end to the ravages of the Egyptians. The author makes no pretensions to literary skill; but his honesty and generosity are palpable, and the plain story of the misery which he witnessed in the discharge of his benevolent commission, needs no garnishing to make it horrible.

We have also before us a file of the Greek Government Gazette, published at Egina semi-weekly, on a sheet of the same dimensions with the Connecticut Courant before the revolution. There is some interest in merely looking on a newspaper printed on the soil of free and independent Greece, and in a language as nearly the same with that of Thucydides and Xenophon, as the language of our National Intelligencer is the same with that of the "Faerie Queene." The reviXY Epnuspis, though mostly occupied with the proceedings and documents of the government, constitutes a tolerable supplement to Dr. Howe's history; and enables us to judge of the actual condition of that country better, in some respects, than we could judge from the reports or journals of transient visit

*We take the liberty to recommend to scholars, and particularly to students of Greek, "A Grammar of the Modern Greek Language," recently published in Boston, by Col. Alexander Negris. Though written in the modern dialect, it is entirely intelligible to scholars of only ordinary proficiency in the ancient; and it answers well its intent, of at once describing and illustrating the existing form of a language which so many foreign conquerors, and so many ages of barbarian oppression, have not been able to rob of its riches, and which will probably be in future, as it has been of old, the most perfect instrument of thought which the mind of man has ever known.

ers, ignorant, as such visiters generally are, of the language and the manners of the people.

Of the position which Greece once held, and the influence which that little country exerted on the ancient world, it were needless to speak in detail. Grecian colonies had gone forth, at an early period, to Asia on one side, and to Italy on the other. The conquests of Alexander planted Greeks in Egypt; and opened the way for Grecian enterprise to penetrate through every region of the world. The political subjection of the country to a foreign government, and the changes by which Achaia was at last numbered among the provinces of the Imperial Republic, instead of diminishing its importance, extended its power. The seat of the world's empire was indeed on the seven hills; but from the shores of the Egean and the banks of the Ilissus, went forth an influence mightier and more enduring than the sway of military force, the influence of civilization and intelligence, and arts. The language of Rome was the language of law; but that of Greece was every where the language of philosophy and politeness, and soon became the common dialect of commercial intercourse. Thus when the gospel was revealed, the records of the gospel, the Scriptures of the new covenant, were written in Greek; and the language of ancient learning is now the sacred language of Christendom. Thus too, though the church was formed in Palestine, and Christianity began its march from the city of David, we find the head-quarters of its operations, and the theatre of its most memorable early vicissitudes, in the cities of Asia Minor, and of Macedonia and Achaia. It was from Greece, rather than from the Holy Land, that the world was illuminated with the gospel. The light was first kindled by the lake of Galilee and on the hill of Zion; but it was from the Grecian cities, the centre of the ancient world, the radiating point of civilization and intelligence, that it was most rapidly diffused for the enlightening of the nations.

When Constantinople became the seat of empire, Greece became again the political mistress of the world. The metropolis of Constantine was a Grecian city, his court was Grecian; and from his reign commences the history of the Greek emperors of the East. But before that day, Christianity had begun to decline from its original purity and power. The papacy of the west, the quibbling metaphysics of the east, and the corruptions and superstitions of both, were already beginning to darken and deform the face of Christendom. Still. through the long dark centuries that followed, the seat of refinement, and of learning and the arts, was the Grecian metropolis on the Bosphorus; and when the princes of Europe,

rallying, at last united against the progress of Mohammedan invasion, and rousing the fanaticism of their subjects to mect the fanaticism of Islam, turned back' the tide of war upon Syria and shook the Caliphs and Soldans on their thrones,*those of them who saw the imperial city of the Constantines, carried home with them notions of civilization and refinement, of which the barbarous courts of Europe had before been ignorant. And when the Eastern Empire fell, and Turkish ferocity triumphed over the remains of Grecian spirit which had outlived centuries of progressive degradation, the learned men of Constantinople sought refuge in every country of Europe, bearing with them not only the treasures of ancient literature, but the New Testament in its original tongue; and the world became indirectly indebted to Greece for a new illumination. The fall of Constantinople, at the juncture at which it occurred, occasioned in the west the revival of learning and the reformation of religion. In the language of another, "suddenly men began to walk, because they had the light; and no scholar pretended to pre-eminence who did not learn the language of these exiles, and know the Greek, the everlasting standard of orthodoxy."

During the greater part of the four centuries which have since elapsed, Greece has been, as it were, blotted from the map of nations. Under what oppression Greece has suffered so long, no description can adequately tell. For four hundred years, Mohammedanism has held possession of the fairest countries of the world, the countries to which, of all countries, civilization, literature, refinement, and the arts, are most native and most congenial; and during these centuries-as indeed every where and in every age, with one or two surprising exceptions, since the birth of its founder-the reign of Mohammedanism has been the reign of unmitigated barbarism. All the world beside has been improving; science of every kind has made unparalleled advances; new arts, new powers have been invented; new worlds have been laid open for commerce to visit, and for enterprise to explore and occupy; but in every country under the Mohammedan sway, and especially in the ill-fated provinces of Turkey, there has been no improvement, save what has been effected within a few years past by Grecian enterprise reviving in spite of oppres

*The crusade is but a Christian name for an invention borrowed from the Mahommedans, when the condition of Europe and of Christendom required that their own devices should be turned against them, and that one principle of warlike fanaticism should be brought against another."-Foreign Quarterly Review, No. I. p. 27.