cellent writer who has painted from nature, not from art, and who has founded a school strictly English. It is remarkable that the Latin poets should have produced no very prominent imitations. An oriental school of poetry may be expected to originate, of which sir William Jones will perhaps be reckoned the founder. The hints on English architecture are drawn up with much display of antiquarian research; yet we a little question the propriety of calling any style of architecture Saxon. The Saxons, when they invaded England, were a much ruder people than the previous inhabitants whom they contributed to re-barbarize. It is not, likely that they taught the method of building with hewn stone; but rather that they adopted a Roman or a Cimbric method of structure already in use. The word Gothic we are quite disposed to reject, as describing a style of building which did not come to us from the Goths; but neither can it be proved to have been invented in England. At Rheims and Paris stand the models of our Gothic cathedrals: from Normandy came our rhyme, our romance, our chivalry, our heraldry, and probably the architecture called Gothic. The church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois at Paris, which is of the rudest style we call Gothic, and has pointed arches, was founded in the seventh century, and is older than any domestic specimen of that style of building. The cathedral of Paris was completed under Philip Augustus before the close of the eleventh century. La Sainte Chapelle, again, which is one of the most finished and elegant specimens of the florid and ornamented Gothic or Norman, was finished in 1247; so that each style of architecture prevailed succes sively in the north of France earlier than here. The disquisition on Saxon literature properly recommends the publication of all the yet unedited manuscripts of that class deposited in our several public and private libraries. Why does the learned author, who displays much conversancy with the language, not himself undertake at least one of the editions he recommends? An explanation of the Saxon names of months is appended; and a translation from Eadmer. The life of Edgar Atheling is a valuable and admirably well-executed piece of biography, comprehending all the attainable information, and narrating the result with a neatness, a simplicity, a proportion, and a propriety, worthy of the chaste, correct, and elegant taste of the writer. The life of Edmund Mortimer is also good; but it contains more of disquisition, and is almost buried under the necessary notes. A French critic, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles Lettres, says, that poets seldom write prose well; that the restraint to which they are accustomed gives a stiffness to their phraseology; and that the habit of pursuing embellishments for every verse generates a tumid, frothy, sparkling diction. Dr. Sayers is an instance to the contrary. There is no English prose more easy, pure and plain than his: it has that Attic simplicity, that apparently unstudied fitness, in which critics place the highest and rarest merit of good writing. ART. IV.-Sketches relative to the History and Theory, but more especially to the Practice of Dancing; as a necessary Accomplishment to the Youth of both Sexes; together with Remarks on the Defects and bad Habits they are liable to in early life; and the best Means of correcting or preventing them. Intended as Hints to the young Teachers of the Art of Dancing. By FRANCIS PEACOCK, Aberdeen. 8vo. pp. 224. DANCING, which is now a profane, was once a sacred pastime. The Egyptians danced at the mysteries of Isis; they taught many of their military exercises in a dance called the Memphian: they even recorded and represented astronomical facts in a dance given on the feast of Apis. The Jews borrowed these religious ceremonies of the Egyptians. They not only danced in the wilderness around the golden calf; but at the feast of the Lord in Shiloh (Judges xxi. 19) they cele brated dances, which terminated like those with which Romulus entertained the Sabine women. These dances did not accord with modern ideas of decency: for when David brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edam, the daughter of Saul (2 Samuel vi. 20) reproached the king with having, like one of the vulgar, uncovered himself shamefully. Yet the practice of temple-dances was not therefore discontinued: in many of the Psalms(see Lorin's commentary on the third verse of the hundred and forty-ninth Psalm) the people are called on to praise the Lord in the dance. From the descriptions preserved of the three Jewish temples of Jerusalem, Samaria, and Alexandria, it is known, that a sort of stage was erected before the altar, where dances were publicly performed by the young, accompanied with music and with song. The words of the biblical commentator are, in utroque psalmo nomine chori intelligi posse cum certo instrumento homines ad sonum ipsius tripudiantes; and again, de tripudio seu de multitudine saltantium et concinnentium minime dubito. The Greeks naturalized the military, or Memphian, dance of the Egyptians, under the name of Pyrrhic. The javelin, the shield, the sword, were all employed in this exhibition. It was sacred to Pallas; and named from Pyrrhus of Epirus, who introduced it as conducive to military agility and skill. "Plato reduces the dances of the ancients to three classes: 1. The military dances, which tended to make the body robust, active, and well-disposed for all the exercises of war. 2. The domestic dances, which had for their object an agreeable and innocent relaxation and amusement. 3. The mediatorial dances, which were in use in expiations and sacrifices. Of military dances there were two sorts: the Gymnopedic dance, or the dance of children; and the Enoplian, or armed dance. The Spartans had invented the first for an early excitation of the courage of their children, and to lead them on insensibly to the exercise of the armed dance. This children's dance used to be executed in the public place. It was composed of two choirs, the one of grown men, the other of children; whence, being chiefly designed for the latter, it took its name. They were both of them in a state of nudity. The choir of the children regulated their motions by those of the men, and all danced at the same time, singing the poems of Thales, Aleman, and Dionysodorus. The Enoplian, or Pyrrhic, was danced by young men, armed cap-a-pee, who executed, to the sound of the flute, all the proper movements either for attack or for defence. It was composed of four parts: the first the podisin, or footing, which consisted in a quick shifting motion of the feet, such as was necessary for overtaking a flying enemy, or for getting away from him when an overmatch. The second part was the xiphism: this was a kind of mock-fight, in which the dancers imitated all the motions of combatants; aiming a stroke, darting a javelin, or dexterously dodg ing, parrying, or avoiding a blow or thrust. The third part, called the komos, consisted in very high leaps, or vaultings, which the dancers frequently repeated, for the better using themselves occasionally to leap over a ditch, or spring over a wall. The tetracomos was the fourth and last part. This was a 5 square figure, executed by slow and majestic movements; but it is uncertain whether this was every where executed in the same manof the military kind, being of opinion that it ner. Lycurgus instituted a dance, doubtless body, but a vast expertness in the use of their not only gave them strength and agility of weapons, and in the various evolutions of the art of war. It was accompanied with the singing of verses. It consisted of three choruses the first of old men, the second of young men, and the third of boys. The old men began and addressed the youth in these words: We once were young and gay as you, Valiant, bold, and active too.' The young men answered 'Tis now our turn, and you shall see You ne'er deserv'd it more than we.' Lastly, the boys cried out— The day will come when we shall shew Feats that surpass all you can do.'” The Bacchic dances of the Greeks were consecrated to jollity, to amusement, and to pleasure. The muse Terpsichore was supposed to preside over them; and Comus was said to have invented them. The annual dances of the vintagers, in which they smeared their faces with lees of wine; and the theatric dances, which accompanied and relieved the choral odes of the dramatists; were both orgies of Bacchus. Lycurgus instituted dancings in honour of Apollo: at one of these balls, Theseus saw Helen, fell in love with her, and carried her off. The old men at Sparta had an appropriate dance in honour of Chronos, or Saturn. Homer praises Merion bride by a vain display of agility in danas the dancer, Hippocleides lost his cing: his saying what cares Hippocleides for that? became a proverbial expression of dissembled contempt. The Athenians had funeral dances, of which the movement was slow, the dress white, the garlands worn of cypress, the filled up with sobs and howls of woe. music solemn, and the occasional pauses They had also dances distinguished by peculiar appellations, which employed a few, or two, or a single dancer. Demosthenes reproaches Philip with causing hornpipes (cordax) to be danced before him after dinner by naked boys. The hormus resembled a cotillion, and employed eight dancers, who frequently joined hands. The emmeleia sometimes resem bled our menuet by its gravity and dignity. The Romans imported the dances of the Greeks they were a more decorous people, and have left declamations and laws against dances, which the Greeks executed without a blush. Scipio Africanus entertained his guests with dancing. Mark Antony was censured for taking a licentious part in some religious dances. Under the reign of Augustus, Pylades carried the serious, and Bathyllus the comic pantomime to the highest perfection. The hymeneal dances began under Tiberius to assume so indecent a character, that the senate made a decree to suppress them, and to banish the dancingmasters from Rome. The priests of Cybele travelled about, like our tumblers, to perform dances in public for hire. Lucian has left an entertaining account of these exhibitions. The Goths, when Tacitus described them, had their dance of spears, in which young lads threw javelins at each other, and moved to and fro uninjured between the flight of darts. The first christians, in imitation of the Jews, gave balls in their churches. On the eve of great festivals, and after the close of the love-feasts, the young people danced on a stage in the choir. Scaliger thinks that the bishops were called præsules, a prasiliendo, because they set up the dance. Father Heliot has collected curious particulars of these religious or ecelesiastical balls, which were suppressed by the council of Carthage, in 397, under pope Gregory. Since that period, the idea seems to have been continually gain ing ground, that the happiness of man is displeasing to the deity, and that joyous rites may not form a part of public worship. This prejudice is injurious to the state. Quintilian recommends dancing to the orator, and Locke to the gentleman; but its most important value is to the soldier, Because the French are a people of dancers, they carry agility and skill in the military exercises further than their neighbours. In proportion as the imminence of domes tic defence increases, government ought to patronize among the common people a taste for dancing. Instead of roasting oxen whole, kindling bonfires, and distributing porter, a victory or a peace should be celebrated by a popular hop. Those cottonmills and spinning engines, which inflict a sedentary and unwholesome confinement on the adolescent, ought in atonement to cater for their pleasures, and to attach a dancing-master to the establishment. The subscribers to Sunday-schools should pro vide, after mental fatigue, bodily recrea tion for their pupils, and engage a dancing usher to marshal the sports of the chil dren. Not only musicians but dancers should be attached to every regiment by the secretary at war, and stationed in every barrack, that cheap instruction in the at of dancing may every where be within reach. The physical education of the poor has too long and too inhumanly been ne glected: we steep their youth in ceaseless azotic confinement, and rear a melancholy band of withered and distorted carcases, Come back to our temples, ye Graces and ye Sports; joy, health and beauty are inseparable attendants of your train. Few sections of Mr. Peacock's useful and agreeable book are employed ab the literature of dancing. It is fuller of practical instruction, and is adapted to form the dancing-master for realizing the highest claims of his art. It will contribute to render that art more respectable, and to rank it among the fine arts, between mu sic and design. The observations on the Scotch red may be distinguished as among the most original and peculiar; such as are not to be found in Noverre, or other continent writers on this topic. The seventh sketch relates to choro graphy, or the art of writing out danas in specific characters. Why will not Mr. Peacock, who displays much talent and good sense, revive the system imagined by Mr. Jeuillet? It is the complexity of his method which has occasioned its da missal. He has not dissolved the dance into parts sufficiently elementary: his characters answer, like Chinese flourishes, to the words of the feet, not to the sylla bles, still less to the letters, which are the five positions, or, as Mr. Peacock proposes to innovate, the six positions. Betwe the second and the fourth positions there an intermediate attitude of the feet, useful in oblique movements, which, in this a thor's opinion, ought to be recognized as a sixth position.. The observations on defects of the body, and the means of cure, by the mediation of postures and attitudes, déserve the at tention of parents, whose children from bad nursing are become knock-kneed, or who have other more formidable deformities. These remarks have the sanction of long experience, the author being eighty. two years of age. His occupation seems alike to have prolonged his bodily and his intellectual activity. Weaver's essay toward a history of dancing, published in 1712, is, we believe, the most reputable English work on this department of the fine arts. We feel grateful to Mr. Peacock for enriching our literature with another, so well adapted to contribute to the more diffusive and more skilful tuition of the graces of motion. It has been well observed, that a complete ballet is the most beautiful spectacle which can be presented to human eyes. As much as the human form surpasses that of trees and rocks, does a groupe of dancers surpass a mountainlandscape. The timely sounds of the musician, the splendid colouring of the painter, the forms and attitudes of the sculptor are all enjoyed at once, and are all felt to be but subsidiary pleasures to the tale which motion tells. Il est hơnteux (says Noverre in his Lettres sur la danse) que la danse renonce à l'empire qu'elle peut avoir sur l'ame, et qu'elle ne s'attache qu'à plaire aux yeux. The Cynic Demetrius was denying the power of dancing to affect the passions: a pantomime dancer in the service of Nero was at table, and proposed to attempt his practical conviction. He got up, and without the assistance of music, represented a story in so striking a manner, that the philosopher broke out, into loud delight: "I hear, as well as see; you talk with your fingers; you talk with your toes." ART. VI-A brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. Part the First; in Three Volumes: containing a Sketch of the Revolutions and Improvements in Science, Arts, and Literature, during that Period. By SAMUEL MILLER, A. A. One of the Ministers of the united Presbyterian Churches in the City of New-York, Member of the American Philosophical Society, and corresponding Member of the Historical Society of Massachusetts. 8vo. THE history of literature and science has not been cultivated in Europe with an attention proportioned to its importance and its usefulness. The progress of culture ought to be a higher concern than the adventures of a dynasty. We record the feuds of barons and the wars of kings, as if they were lessons of experience from which any thing could now be learnt: let them busy the vulgar, but let them be shunned by the cosmopolite philosopher. Celebrity provokes a repetition of the actions which it includes: it is well for the sailor and soldier to fancy they shall shine in history: but a nobler arena of competition should be indicated to the opulent and the sovereign classes, than the heaths of battle or the liquid plains of artificial shipwreck. Human merit is not confined to the handling of a firelock: nor is that the noblest patronage, with however strict a regard to excellence it may be distributed, which recompenses killing with plunder. Conflicts of mind are a purer source of national glory. The compilations of erudition, the embellishments of fancy, the exertions of intellect, endure from age to age with undiminishing splendour. The strong live at all times; but they die unremembered, where the bard and the orator are wanting: while the writer is sufficient to his own fame, and inscribes an epitaph coeval with his utility. Empires themselves are finally estimated by the crop of genius they grow. ANN. REV. VOL. IV. The cities of commerce, the barracks of: soldiery, the palaces of monarchs, all crumble into dust; but not the obelisks of literary art. Athens was less wealthy than Carthage, less military than Sparta, less wisely governed than Crete; but, having been the dwelling-place of learning, taste, and science, its language is still the toil, and its ruins still the pilgri mage of the accomplished. We are glad to observe that the new world sets out with so few of the prejudices of the old; and that one of the most opportune books, which American literature has yet added to the stock of English: reading, should precisely have been consecrated to the history of human improvement. In this retrospect of the eighteenth century we seek in vain for the pedigrees of kings and the carnage of warfare; we hear of no revolutions but those in the theory of science, of no achievements but. those in literature and art. Happy the. people to whose peaceful leisure such contemplations are chiefly dear; their emulation will be directed to the discovery of truth, to the production of beauty, to the realization of improvement; they will seek wealth from industry, not from pillage; fame, from mental, not corporeal vehemence; and happiness from the diffusion of comfort, not from the agitations of hostility, While Europe rebarbarizes under her Frederics and her Bonapartes, America may beckon to securer shores the 3 A trembling virtues, the patient industries, the curious researches, and the forsaken muses. The plan adopted by Mr. Miller for giving a convenient chronological account of the intellectual revolutions and improvements of the eighteenth century is to divide knowledge into the several classes of 1. Mechanical Philosophy; 2. Chemical Philosophy; 3. Natural History; 4. Medicine; 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Geography, Mathematics, Navigation, Agriculture, Mechanics, Fine Arts, and Physiognomy; 12. Philosophy of the Human Mind; 13, 14. Classical and Oriental Literature; 15, 16. Modern Languages, Theory of Language; 17, 18. History and Biography; 19. Romances and Novels; 20. Poetry; 21, 22. Literary and Political Journals; 23. Literary and Scientific Associations; 24, 25. Encyclopædias and Education; and 26. Literary History of the Nations newly civilized. Under each of these heads, many of which are subdivided into various sections, an account is given of the men and books which have most affected the progress of each. The author's resources of intelligence are too exclusively British. Germany has been by excellence the literary nation of the eighteenth century, especially for the last forty years: but the knowledge of German literature here displayed is scanty, and always second-hand. The periodical publications even of Great Britain for the last decennium of the late century have not been enough consulted: the recent information being negligently incomplete. The distribution of matter is not without imperfection: there are too many classes for distinct recollection; and they are somewhat indefinite and confused. The earliest characters whom Mr. Miller marshals before our notice in his introduction, as pioneers to the enquiries of the eighteenth century, are Newton and Locke, great but not rival names. Newton is justly extolled. The reasoning power he displayed in the mathematical forms of syllogizing has seldom been approached, never surpassed. A striking instance of his a priori penetration is the inference from its refractive power that the diamond would be found inflammable, although he knew no method of exposing it to combustion. His use of words is less skilful than his use of signs. Such combinations of phrase as vis inertia, where the terms are interdestructive and of course unintelligible, occur in his writ ings. His chronology disappoints; it wants erudition, it wants sagacity; the very ground-work of the systery reposes on authorities, which deserved apprecia tion, but not confidence. Locke is excessively extolled. Almost all that is true or valuable in Locke preexists in Hobbes, whose metaphysod writings are far superior for observation, for originality, for precision, for clames, for condensation, and for taste in ilustra tion. Locke's is an artificial reputatio, founded by the revolutionists of 10ss fr party-purposes, and propagated over the continent on trust by Voltaire. Stame, who had a clear head, attacked it indirectly in his Tristram Shandy; Hume, dicth, in the first note to the second volume of his essays; and of these wounds the high reputation of Locke would have died, but for the American war, which gave a tac tious value to his supposed principles of 1 government; and for the unitarian sect, which found an accommodation in the shelter of his authority. On what topic can a good dissertation be found in ali Locke? We protest against the inal awards of a literary tribunal, which presumes to rank him with a Hobbes, a Hartley, or a Hume. Hutchinson and his school are treated with too much civility. These men have not in view the progress of information, but of error: they are systematic offus cants; not reasoners, but mystics. They should be classed, like the Alexandrian Platonists, among those who have made it their occupation to defer the advancemen of knowledge, to puzzle with useless investigation, to darken the human intellect, to quench the torch of inquiry, and to divert from the pursuit of truth. Ther erudite speculations are not to be recorded as innocent, but as infamous. O that such names could be wiped out of the aurals of British literature! The ensuing chapter treats of electricity. To Mr. Dufay of Paris is ascribed the first observation of a difference be tween what he called vitreous and resinous electricity. Dr. Franklin altered this nomenclature into positive and negative electricity: herein he delayed the progress of truth. He had, however, the great merit of ascertaining the identity of electric fluid and lightning: he also detected the unexplained operation of points; but he attributes to the water (page 37), of the Skuyikil a conducting power, |