We would gladly select some specimen of the author's style from the more eloquent parts of the work, but our limits do not allow it; and besides, we presume that by this time it must have been generally read. We wish that it were possible to give a more full account of the modern Jews; but the materials are wanting. It is as difficult to trace all the fragments of the nation now, as it would be to say on what shore every plank of a shipwreck is cast by the waves; for the nation no longer exists. There are Jews, indeed, who are still united to each other by common hopes and sufferings. But their religion is gone. The worship of the synagogue has supplanted that of the temple, and the rabbins fill the place of the priesthood. Their civil system is gone. All that constitutes a state is wanting. That they should retain their peculiarities under these circumstances, is strange, but not unexampled. We do not mean any disrespect to the Jews when we say that the Gypsy race are equally distinguished by their physical and moral characteristics from the nations in which they dwell. The Jews have a hope ever burning in their breasts, which prevents their wishing for an abiding city. Waiting for a new star in the east, they keep themselves in readiness to start at a moment's warning. Under such circumstances, a modern history of the Jews can be little more than an account of individuals or small societies. It cannot be a history of a single people.

The Jews are expecting a restoration. But they must be sad when they look about them, and ask what there is to restore. They cannot wholly disguise from themselves that a religion of visible signs and unexpressive forms, is not suited to the present age, nor to any that is likely to come. And if they say that its ceremonies shall be done away, they should remark that it will no longer be the same religion. Christianity is Judaism without its corruptions. That faith contained the truth that there is but one God-the same truth that Christianity has spread out into disclosures so profound and momentous. To refer again to an apostle's illustration, Judaism was the lamp, an artificial construction, Christianity was the rising of the sun. The lamp may be despised when it is no longer needed, but it gave a friendly light in the darkness of the world. Now to restore Judaism to its former station, would be striking out the experience of thousands of years. It would be nothing less than rolling back the sun of righteousness in the heaven, till it sinks under the horizon again. To restore their civil system, would be as

difficult as to restore their religion. It was calculated for a country of narrow bounds, where each might draw an easy subsistence from the soil, while none could become large possessors, and where the simplicity of manners should not require one to acknowledge the superiority of another. To restore such a system, would be renewing the childhood of the world. And what purpose would their restoration answer? A state of peace would be out of the question;--and how would their happiness be advanced by wars of conquest and ambition? The Jews believe that their restoration is to be cotemporary with the Messiah's coming. But when will their Messiah come? Strange indeed, that, when one mirage after another in their desert, has encouraged them with hopes that sunk into deep despair, they should still look forward with a trust which no disappointment can alter, no sickness of heart wear away!

The duty of Christians in this matter is clear. It is to present their religion to the Jews in an engaging light, and to show them that persecution is not more odious to those who suffer under it, than it is to Christianity. Wherever the Christain goes to convert others to his faith, he has much to do before he can gain a hearing. He must remove obstacles which the misconduct of Christians has placed in his way. He must show that Christianity is not fairly represented in the lives of many of its believers. Having persuaded them of this, he must show that the truth which Christianity insists upon more forcibly than any other, is, that no man, by opinions only, can ever forfeit his claim to the fellowship of all good men ;-a truth which embraces in its broad bright circle, all who do righteously and fear God—all in every nation, Greek or Jew,

ART. III.-A Journal of a Residence during several Months in London; including Excursions through various Parts of England; and a short Tour in France and Scotland, in the Years 1823 and 1824. By NATHANIEL S. WHEATON, A. M. Hartford: H. &. F. J. Huntington. 1830. 12mo. pp. 520.

'A DOUBLE portion of praise' is conceded by the North American Review to Captain Hall, ' for keeping his pages free

from the names of individuals, and the detail of what he saw and heard beneath the roofs of those who sought or fell into his society.'* Should this canon be established, the volume before us must expect from its critics little else than a summary condemnation. As, however, we feel some doubts respecting the very unqualified position of the able reviewer, and are anxious to ascertain whether or not the pleasure we have derived from Mr Wheaton's descriptions of individuals and private conversations, must be ascribed to a combined error of judgment in him, and vitiated taste in ourselves, we are inclined to bestow on the subject a little discussion.

The opinion we have just quoted appears to us to be one of those extremes, which are so frequently provoked by opposite extravagances and abuses. Prying, impudent, and gossipping travellers have, no doubt, been often guilty of wounding the feelings of their hospitable entertainers, and ministering to a prurient curiosity among their readers. But to insist that all travellers shall therefore suppress the names of individuals in their pages, and report none of their observations on domestic life and manners, or their private conversations with individuals, is really to impose unwarrantable fetters on the liberty of the press. Few are so coldly philosophic, as to feel no curiosity respecting the personal characters and habits of their cotemporaries, and especially of such as have attained some celebrity. Nor is this curiosity to be blamed. It is a part of our very nature. It springs from our liveliest social sympathies. To repress it, would be to repress a source, not only of great enjoyment, but of great utility. It may tend indeed to a morbid excess. Then, only, let it be reproved and checked.

Travellers have often been condemned for a too great fondness of generalizing. Give us, their unsatisfied critics have said to them, not your impressions, your inferences,-but descriptions from the spot, details from the life; and leave conclusions to us. But how can this be done, without sometimes raising the curtain of domestic hospitality, and lending to the picture within, a vivid and individual interest, by the inscription of a name?

Were we disposed to legislate on the subject, we might draw some such lines of discrimination as the following, respecting the employment of names in a book of travels.

North American Review, Vol. XXIX. p. 522.

Persons, whose characters or professions have led them much into public life, may very properly be designated by their names. It were mere fastidiousness or affectation for them to shrink from the notoriety. They court it, or are inevitably exposed to it, by their very pursuits. Not that a traveller, or any other writer, is entitled to take every liberty, even with public men. There is a decorum to be observed in books, as there is in private conversation. When one of our friends returns from abroad, we meet him perhaps in a crowded circle, and while our host is questioning him on his adventures, the whole company slide into the silence of listeners. Here is a little public. The welcome traveller entertains them with various anecdotes of conspicuous or interesting personages, inspiring a mingled pleasure and gratitude, so long as he confines himself within the bounds of modesty and good taste. But it is no difficult matter to render himself ridiculous or odious, by descending into unimportant details, or ungratefully exposing certain peculiarities in those who have treated him kindly when abroad. Why may not the same latitude, accompanied by the same restrictions, be indulged to him, who talks to a wider circle through the medium of a book?

It may perhaps be replied, that the cases are not exactly parallel, inasmuch as the author virtually rehearses his anecdotes in the presence of the persons to whom they relate,—an act, which, in private society, would be a manifest breach of decorum. But neither is this the true statement of the case. It would be more correct to compare the person, who is described by name in a book of travels, to one who overhears conversation about himself in an adjoining room, or who will probably learn it through the medium of a friend. Now let us allow that he feels some annoyance in this. The question is, whether one of the most delightful departments of literature must be suppressed, to save a few distinguished individuals the amount of inconvenience thus incurred. We should say, certainly not. It is one of those taxes, which eminence must consent to pay. It is to be classed with your daily letters of introduction from all parts of the country, or with the buzz of fame in the street and the saloon, which persecutes the modest ear of one who has been making some successful exertion in public. True magnanimity knows how to bear with and smile at what it cannot very well help. If men will rise to the highest stations in the legislature or at the bar, or charm and instruct

whole communities by their discourses and publications, they must consent that we, who crowd the lower slopes of the hill, should trouble them with our curious gaze, and search with some interest after their peculiarities in the books of travellers. True, much candor, delicacy, and discrimination, are required for the task of description. An eye of jealous criticism, and a right spirit of public opinion, should frown down that idle. or libellous flippancy, which seeks rather to thrust itself into notice, than to gratify a rational curiosity, or do justice to living greatness. And this is to place the book of travels on the same footing with everything else in this uncertain world, where newspapers, and tongues, and pens, are perpetually liable to press beyond the bounds of strict propriety. Their whole liberty must not be taken away, but the requisite checks must be imposed.

Some individuals, by their eminence and the course of their lives, are so entirely the property of the public, that a desire to learn everything connected with their persons, is not to be harshly resolved into an appetite for scandal. When Fearon, in his Sketches, so minutely described the family dinner of which he partook at the table of the Ex-president Adams, we doubt if any reader of taste and candor felt offended at the disclosure, or could more easily have forgiven any other passage in that boyish book. Did travellers usually give the bill of fare of private tables, it would be intolerable indeed. But here, all mere petty household curiosity was absorbed in a comparison between the republican simplicity of the good patriarch's mode of living, and those images of style and splendor, which the remembered chief magistracy of a great and powerful country naturally suggested to the mind. Even the North American Review quotes willingly from Captain Hall the substance of a conversation which he held with Mr Noah Webster," without reproving him for disclosing the private observations of that eminent man; forgetting, moreover, in this instance, at least, to keep its own pages free from the names of individuals.' We blame neither the review nor the traveller for this; since every observation connected with literature, which reaches us through an honorable channel from Noah Webster, shall be received with gratitude.

While on this subject, we may cursorily inquire, whether the passion, so prevalent in England, for speculating on the foibles and vices of the great, merits quite the exceeding repre