It should be,

The elephant, on being heard,

Wise as he was, said pretty much the same;

Dame whale was much too huge, averred, &c. And in Fable III.,

“ The world is full of folks,

Of just such wisdom ;
The lordly dame provokes

The cit to build his dome,” &c.
Which is bad rhyme, and bad reason too. Translate,
The world is full of people, who are just such sages.

Each citizen, like mighty lord, a palace rears.

Each petty prince has his ambassadors ; Each marquis keeps his pages. The original is, “ Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages :

Tout bourgeois veut bâtir comme les grands seigneurs,

Tout petit prince a des ambassadeurs ;
Tout marquis veut avoir des pages.
For a mistranslation, take the lines from Fable IX.,

“ No, said the rustic rat ;

To-morrow dine with me.
I'm not offended at

Your feast so great and free."
It should be,

It is enough, the rustic cried,

To-morrow you will visit me ;
It is not that myself I pride

On all your regal jollity. The next stanza we must add, as being too paraphrastic, and because it contains the odious word swap.

« For I've no fare resembling ;

But then I eat at leisure ;

And would not swap for pleasure,

So mixed with fear and trembling." Translate,

But nothing comes to dash my joy,

I eat quite at leisure.

Good-by, then. Fie on the pleasure

That a fright can destroy. VOL. LIII. —NO. 113.

65

The original of these two stanzas is,

“ C'est assez, dit le rustique ;

Demain vous viendrez chez moi.
Ce n'est pas que je me pique
De tous vos festins de roi :
Mais rien ne vient m'interrompre ;
Je mange tout à loisir.
Adieu donc. Fi du plaisir,

Que la crainte peut corrompre." But a truce to fault-finding, which is so much easier than doing better one's sell, or even as well. We have already said enough, to show the bigh estimate we put upon the author and bis work. It only remains to say, that the volumes are published in a style befitting their literary merits, and are adorned with engravings from the plates of the splendid French edition, which we mentioned at the beginning of this notice. We close this brief review by giving a specimen or two of the manner in which the translator has executed bis task; and we will take them quite at random, as we did the passages for censure. Take, for the first example, the twellih Fable of Vol. I. ; and for the second, the eighth Fable of Vol. II.

"An envoy of the Porte Sublime,

As history says, once on a time,
Before the imperial German court

Did rather boastfully report
The troops commanded by his master's firman,
As being a stronger army than the German ;

To which a Dutch attendant,
Our prince has more than one dependant
Who keeps an army at his own expense.

The Turk, a man of sense,
Rejoined, I am aware

What power your emperor's servants share.
It brings to mind a tale both strange and true,
A thing which once, myself, I chanced to view.

I saw come darting through a hedge
Which fortified a rocky ledge,
A hydra's hundred heads; and in a trice

My blood was turning into ice.
But less the harm than terror,
The body came no nearer ;
Nor could, unless it had been sundered
To parts at least a hundred.

While deeply musing on this sight,
Another dragon came to light,
Whose single head avails

To lead a hundred tails ;
And seized with juster fright,

I saw him pass the hedge,

Head, body, tails, - a wedge

Of living and resistless powers, – The other was your emperor's force ; this ours.”

THE VULTURES AND THE PIGEONS.

“ Mars once made havoc in the air :

Some cause aroused a quarrel there
Among the birds ; not those that sing,
The courtiers of the merry Spring,
And by their talk, in leafy bowers,
Of loves they feel, enkindle ours ;
Nor those which Cupid's mother yokes
To whirl on high her golden spokes ;
But naughty hawk and vulture folks,
Of hooked beak and talons keen.

The carcase of a dog, 't is said,

Had to this civil carnage led.
Blood rained upon the swarded green,
And valiant deeds were done, I ween.
But time and breath would surely fail
To give the fight in full detail;

Suffice to say that chiefs were slain,
And heroes strowed the sanguine plain,
Till old Prometheus, in his chains,
Began to hope an end of pains.
'Twas sport to see the battle rage,
And valiant hawk with hawk engage ;
'T was pitiful to see them fall,
Torn, bleeding, weltering, gasping, all.
Force, courage, cunning, all were plied;
Intrepid troops on either side
No efforts spared to populate
The dusky realms of hungry Fate.
This wofül strife awoke compassion
Within another feathered nation,
Of iris neck and tender heart.
They tried their hand at mediation,

To reconcile the foes, or part.

The pigeon people duly chose

Ambassadors, who worked so well

As soon the murderous rage to quell,
And staunch the source of countless woes.
A truce took place, and peace ensued.

Alas! the people dearly paid

Who such pacification made !
Those cursed hawks at once pursued
The harmless pigeons, slew and ate.
Till towns and fields were desolate.
Small prudence had the friends of peace
To pacify such foes as these !

The safety of the rest requires
The bad should flesh each other's spears :
Whoever peace

with them desires
Had better set them by the ears.”

ART. IX.- CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. -- Pantology ; or a Systematic Survey of Human Knowl

edge ; proposing a Classification of all its Branches, and illustrating their History, Uses, Relations, and Objects ; with a Synopsis of their leading Facts and Principles ; and a Select Catalogue of Books on all Subjects, suitable for a Cabinet Library. By Roswell PÅRK, A. M., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia : Hogan &

Thompson. 1841. 8vo. pp. 587. The author of this work has endeavoured to furnish a general view of all departments of knowledge and all subjects of human inquiry, wherein they should be arranged into proper classes, and their mutual relations and dependencies be clearly perceived. It is the same scheme, which once tasked the intellect of Bacon, and which was taken up at the stage where he left it by D'Alembert, and so far modified and enlarged as to serve for an introduction to that vast repository of learning, wit, and infidelity, - the French Encyclopédie. But it is generally admitted, that the arrangement there given is quite unsatisfactory, and that we may expect every future attempt of the same kind to be open to serious objections.

There are inherent difficulties in the way of a proper execution of the plan, whether the principle of division be taken from the faculties of the mind, or from the nature of the objects which we wish to classify. Professor Park has made a bold endeavour to conquer these difficulties, and as success would be highly honorable to him, so there can be little discredit in failure, where Bacon and Locke have failed before him. His classification is based upon the differences between the objects of investigation, and not upon the various powers of mind which are exercised in the respective pursuits. In this we think he has judged wisely, for although one faculty may be predominant in a particular study, a concurrence of all the mental powers is generally requisite for entire success, and the difference in degree between them is not sufficiently marked to afford a safe principle of arrangement. Besides, an analysis of mind in reference only to its various spheres of exertion, from the very fact that the intellectual powers are closely blended in nearly all pursuits, must be very partial and incomplete, and a mistake in this preliminary would vitiate the whole process. We like the principle on which the classification before us is based, and in the execution there is sufficient evidence of care, learning, and ingenuity, to make it deserving of an attentive examination. We give no abstract of the details of the scheme, for a glance at the encyclopedical tree, which forms the frontispiece to the volume, will convey a more accurate idea of it, than could be given in several pages of text. When new ideas of classification are introduced, we suppose that new terms must be invented to express them, and it must be confessed, that Professor Park's tree of knowledge bears some vocables of a prickly and forbidding surface. They are, of course, compounds from the learned languages, and, in these days of " little Latin and less Greek,” we fear the number of them will prove an obstacle to the general adoption of the writer's views. The advantages which he hopes will follow from the use of his system are, the aid furnished to the memory in impressing and retaining ideas, the increased facilities for study when the objects of inquiry are properly arranged, and a more satisfactory method of distributing the contents of libraries.

But the new system of classifying the arts and sciences, even in its full developement, occupies but a small part of this comprehensive volume. Professor Park seems to have thought that the value of his work would be greatly enhanced, if it contained a brief summary of the knowledge, which it was proposed to classify. The book is therefore a sort of Encyclopædia in miniature, and one who reads it through and recollects it all, will have a good claim to be considered as a general scholar. A