would be opened in the history of missionary efforts, and a new proof be afforded of the admirable connexion which God often establishes between one part of his providential dispensations and another; making the most unlikely and long-neglected means, which some happy discovery brings to light, efficacious for the accomplishment of his wise and inscrutable designs.

In order to prevent misconception, I must say that I consider signs and gestures, merely as auxiliary to the acquisition of oral language, and not as a substitute for it. In this subordinate capacity, as before remarked, its employment appears to me useful and important. Should my theory prove true, what a vast field is there for its practical application among the tribes of our fellow-men who have no written or printed language, but to whom every Christian mind must be deeply anxious to convey, not only every species of useful secular information, but above all the knowledge of "the only true God, and of Jesus Christ whom he hath sent!"

I will only add, that any who may feel a curiosity to examine the general principles of sign-language, and of the course of instruction of the deaf and dumb, will find an article on that subject in the Encyclopedia Americana, under the head Deaf and Dumb. These principles, if understood, and made use of, in the instruction of children and youth who can hear and speak, in their mother tongue, or in other languages, would lead to practical results of the highest importance.-Will not some of those who are concerned or interested in the education of youth, give this subject a more deliberate investigation than has, as yet, been bestowed upon it?

ART. III. REVIEW OF DANA'S POEMS AND PROSE

WRITINGS.

By Rev. NEHEMIAH ADAMS, Pastor of the Essex-street Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

Poems and Prose Writings by Richard H. Dana. Boston; Russell Odiorne & Co. 1833. pp. 450.

WHEN Julius Cæsar had marched his troops from the Alps to the mouth of the Rhine, he stood upon the coast of the Morini, and there for the first time descried the WHITE CLIFFS of Britain. The feelings of the Conqueror, as he gazed upon these post marks of his ambition, rearing their summits from an unknown world, may be better imagined than described. When we think of all that England has been, and then return to the moment when the Roman first marked it out for invasion and conquest, his fancy perching upon its WHITE CLIFFS, and looking abroad upon scenes which have been since crowded with incidents and covered with glory, and which we can hardly imagine were not even then moving in stately and beautiful life; we feel how vast is the importance which, in the history of man, is sometimes found connected with a single mind, and in what proximity to the Creator, as it regards the result of his existence, is a great Discoverer!

Now the soul of man, with its powers, its thoughts and feelings, its objects of contemplation, is itself an eternal world; and the man who discovers the CLIFFS of unexplored regions in it, and leads on to farther dominion, may be regarded as standing at least on an equality with the discoverer of continents, islands, and regions of seas. In every generation there are some whose thoughts seem to have made their dwelling place along the horizon that falls between their age, and that which is to come, where they have caught glimpses and received impressions of new forms of truth, which their successors have realized; though they have gained for their discoverers only the names of obscure dreamers and fanatics. Let the name of MILTON Suffice as an illustration.

The men who are best fitted for great discoveries in morals and mental science, are those whose reason bows with implicit reverence to the revelation of God, and are willing that the only province of reason should be to under

stand the evidence and the purport of revealed truths, without sitting in judgement upon them: for the explorer, who knows something of the boundaries which limit his search,on which side lies the sea, and where the chain of hills, is better qualified for success, than the man with whom there are no acknowledged confines, or impassable limits. And since communion with the Source of truth' giveth light,' as well by restraining from errour, as by opening new fields of thought; we naturally look, in our enquiries after truth, to men of religious minds, with more confidence than to others. If they have discovered new principles amongst the ever varying phenomena of the moral world, or untrodden paths. close by the beaten track, or fresh deductions from well known truths, we may entrust ourselves to their guidance, and hear their words, without the fear of those insidious influences of errour, which ordinarily pass into the mind. along with the inspirations of great but unsanctified talent.

If, then, there is a human being before whom we stand with feelings of mingled reverence and love, it is he whose spirit lifts itself up to commune with distant, and to us but partly discovered truths, and with a past and a coming eternity, borrowing from the former true wisdom and principles to guide men to the attainment of something that lies still onward in the progress of their being. For the soul of man is continually drawn towards the future by an irresistible desire for something to satisfy its immortal sympathies. Eternity lays hold upon it, and proves it to be like itself; as the unsearchable and awful power around the pole lays hold upon the needle, which straightway owns its relationship to the great mystery! And when a fellow being, by his own communion with transcendent principles and feelings, magnetizes our souls, the powers of the world to come get hold of us with a stronger attraction, and we feel how near our relation is to undiscovered, but great and glorious realities.

There are many writers who confine our thoughts and feelings to things around us. They are summer birds of wonderful beauty and enchanting song; but never lead us into higher regions, nor call us to follow their flight beyond the gardens and fruits and odours of our homes. There are men who can illustrate what others have discovered, and charm us with combinations of great beauty. To them we accord the admiration which we pay to the useful and pleasing arts; but

we look to the great moral discoverer, as the highest object of our reverence. The man who springs a new train of thought in our minds, so that we pause in his discourse to reflect and wonder; the sunlight of whose mind not merely plays sweetly upon the surface of the deep within us, but radiates into its solemn and awful recesses, disclosing buried riches, and the lost and forgotten truths of our first and happiest years; he is the man that makes us essentially wiser and better.

The present age abounds in the former class of minds, while the number of the latter is extremely small. Rome paid reverence to her orators and artists; but he who enlarged the boundaries of the empire, was hailed by the citizens as a god. While we love and respect those who with so great success can illustrate common truths, we receive the writings of a highly original mind with something of the feelings with which the Romans, upon the reception of the first letters from Julius Cæsar in Britain, decreed a thanksgiving of twenty days to the immortal gods.

DISCOVERY, in regard to mind, is different from what is generally supposed. Here, retrospection is foresight, and retrogression advancement. To simplify is to increase, and simplicity is true wisdom. The man who refers us to the elements of feeling, who brings out, from beneath the dust of time and care, the impressions which were made upon our youthful minds, helps us more than any other to know ourselves, redeems us from the false opinions and ways of the world to the freshness of truth and nature, and gives us clear insight into the soul. It is not the man who is continually taking us from ourselves to external objects, however beautiful, that assists our attainment of true knowledge, or that gives a character of originality to mind. His effect upon us is more like that of an exhibition, which draws from the crowd an expression of herd-like feeling, which for the time fuses all the deep, distinctive lines of personal character, and aggregates our different natures, no two of which are alike, into a mass. When for instance, a light and popular novel reigns ascendant in fashionable society, no one has failed to observe its effect in the common place admiration which is expressed by all, as though they had learned their tones and language one of another. Their minds act outwardly, and in so doing are like the numberless little streamlets made on the ground by the shower, which fall imme

diately into one prevailing wheel track. This gives pleasure, because it saves the trouble of reflection and the hazard of independent judgement. It serves, also, to keep up that excitement of polite society which relieves one from himself, while it satisfies the conscience which would not suffer a total banishment of reading or intellectual conversation from a life of pleasure.

But the writer who describes and illustrates merely what is external to us, whether in natural scenery, or in the passions and lives of others, is not the man that is wanted to bring in an age, like that which is gone, of original thought and literary effort. Instead of going forth into nature for new excitement and original productions, we cannot expect either, without a deep, attentive study of ourselves, listening to the instructions of our own hearts, and living more at home. For the man who has that knowledge of human nature which secures to his words a startling echo in our own souls, and makes us thereby feel that he is a master, is always one who by affliction, or natural thoughtfulness, or by conviction of his sins, and spiritual regeneration, (which more than any thing else discloses to a man the secret wonders of his soul,) has been made acquainted with his own nature. He is the man that tells us truths concerning ourselves, which conscience never fails to repeat in the reluctant ear; it is he that reveals the true greatness of our nature, and makes us thoughtful and solemn over ourselves. When we go with such a man to the streams and fields, to the ocean, the hills and woodlands, the sunset and the dawn, we seem to see new heavens and a new earth. gaze with him upon the sky, we feel that we never before saw it so beautiful; as we listen with him to the storm, we hear a voice of instruction in it, to which we were deaf before. At the cradle and at the grave, at the fireside and in domestic life, in its changes and its peace, in the old man and the child, we read with him a deep, and before hidden philosophy. The reason of the increased pleasure derived from such a man, above that received from another, is, that our souls are purified by his truth, their senses are cleared, their sensibilities quickened; so that what was not even seen before, or if seen, passed by as common, is now instinct with life. Through his influence our soul becomes acquainted with itself, and being now delivered from the VOL. I.

27

As we