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Another topic, introduced into the Dissertations, relates to the best mode of studying languages. Many of the remarks made by Gesenius, and the other authors of these Dissertations, on this point, are grounded in the nature of the human mind, are confirmed by their own experience in teaching, and are worthy the attention of the scholar, whatever his country and wherever he may be educated. It is a grand point in the acquisition of languages, while the faculties are kept in patient and vigorous exercise, not to burden them with too many dry details, and especially not to overload and constrain the memory. In the study of the Hebrew, after a person has become fundamentally acquainted with the theory of the vowels, and made himself master of the pronouns, verbs, and declensions, he ought not to be denied the pleasure of attempting to construe, and should endeavour to connect the theory and the practice, the grammar and the interpretation. Grammar,' says Jahn, is merely the medium of learning the languages with more facility, but the medium is not to be so commuted for the ultimate end, that more pains should be bestowed on the former than on the latter.' The Hebrew syntax, though not deficient in general principles, exhibits a multitude of peculiarities and exceptions. To commit to memory the whole of it, together with all the multiplied rules and exceptions, which appear in other parts of the grammar in the first instance, is unadvisable. They had better be learned by a recurrence to them, as occasion may require, after the student has begun to construe; a recurrence which will be pleasing, if he has imbibed the spirit of oriental literature. Let the student, after he has studied the whole or a part of a book, pursue the method of Wyttenbach, peruse it again carefully, and repeat the perusal, till he has trodden familiarly the crooked path of its anomalies, and its beauties begin to open more fully upon his mind.

ART. VI.-Memoirs of Algernon Sydney, by George Wilson Meadley, with an Appendix. 8vo, London, 1813.

No portion of English history presents stronger claims to attention than the last sixty years of the seventeenth century, a period in which that nation made the most rapid advances in civil and religious freedom. It is impossible to

trace without lively interest the progress of the spirit of free inquiry to which the reformation gave birth, and the great change in manners and opinions which resulted from it. This revolution in the minds of men was gradual, and for a long time unnoticed. The novel doctrines of the rights of subjects and the duties and accountableness of sovereigns, began early in that century to be agitated, rather as matter of speculation than with any view to their practical application. These opinions, however, soon gained ground, and began to be openly advanced and defended, when an ill-timed and oppressive exercise of the royal prerogative roused the resentment of the nation and led to a struggle, which terminated in the overthrow of the monarchy, and the death of the sovereign. The reaction, which naturally succeeded to a revolution so sudden and violent, had the effect to replace his son on the throne, with a degree of precipitancy and imprudence which gave no opportunity to obtain any provision for the security of the rights of the subject. These rights were accordingly disregarded by a profligate and thoughtless prince, who forgot even the trifling stipulations on which his restoration depended. The spirit of liberty had now however proceeded too far to be extinguished; the nation soon became sensible of its error; this weak and unprincipled family was again driven from the throne, and the century closed with the accession of William III, and the establishment of the British constitution nearly in the form in which it actually exists. Among the actors in this extraordinary train of events, are to be found some of the most illustrious names in modern history. Of this number Algernon Sydney is one of the most conspicuous His noble descent, his ardent and lofty spirit, the boldness of his opinions, and the intrepidity with which he supported them, the misfortunes of his life, and above all his untimely and cruel fate, conspire to excite an unusual degree of interest. As generally happens to those who fall a sacrifice to opinions, his memory has been cherished by his friends with the most enthusiastic devotion; and we may add, what can be said of few martyrs, that those who have discovered the least indulgence for his political creed, have rarely denied him the merit of consistency and disinterestedness. The part he took in political affairs is well known to the readers of history, but we have been furnished, until the publication of the volume under review, with very scanty information respecting his private life.

Nor is the deficiency so fully supplied by this work as we had reason to expect from the author's preface, in which he mentions the advantages he derived from having access to the manuscripts at Penshurst, and other important papers. Although by no means a new publication in England, Mr Meadley's book is very little known in this country; we shall therefore give a short abstract of its contents, which may enable the reader to form a tolerably correct judgment of the author's

success.

Algernon Sydney was descended from a line of ancestors equally distinguished by rank and merit. His great grandfather, sir William Sydney, was a favorite of Edward VI, who bestowed on him the park and manor of Penshurst in Kent; sir Henry Sydney, who was viceroy in Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, and the well known sir Philip Sydney, were his great uncles. His grandfather, sir Robert Sydney, governor of Flushing, was raised to the peerage by James I, as baron Sydney of Penshurst, and afterwards created viscount Lisle and earl of Leicester. From him the title descended to his son, who seems to have inherited with it no small share of the talents and virtues of his illustrious progenitors. He married the lady Dorothy Percy, daughter of the earl of Northumberland. Algernon, their second son, was born in 1622, and appears to have given early indications of uncommon powers. In 1632, at the age of ten years, he, with his elder brother, the lord Lisle, accompanied his father in his embassy to Christian IV, king of Denmark. his father was appointed ambassador to the court of France, and wishing to have his sons under his immediate inspection, he again took them along with him, and to his instructions, and the objects presented to the mind of young Sydney at that period, is in a great measure ascribed his early bias to political inquiries. On the return of lord Leicester to England, his son was sent to Italy, and resided some time at Rome during the pontificate of Urban VIII.

In 1636

On the death of the unfortunate lord Strafford, the earl of Leicester received the appointment of lord lieutenant of Ireland, (June 14, 1641,) but owing to some distrust of him, which the king had afterwards imbibed, he could not procure his despatch. He sent, however, his two sons into Ireland, the lord Lisle being at the head of a regiment of horse, in which Algernon, then in his nineteenth year, commanded a troop.

Here both the brothers acquitted themselves with great honor against the Irish insurgents. Meanwhile the disputes between the king and the parliament had proceeded to an open rupture, and lord Leicester, notwithstanding his late disappointment, espoused the royal cause. Some jealousy however of his sincerity still existing in the mind of the king, he was unable to obtain possession of his government in Ireland; at which he was so much offended, that he soon retired to Penshurst, and seems never after to have taken an active part in politics. The two brothers quickly discovered that they had not escaped the suspicion that had fallen on their father, and in consequence obtained permission to return to England. They arrived at Chester, August 1643, where their horses were seized by the royalists in violation of their father's license, which induced them again to put to sea. On landing soon after at Liverpool, they were detained by the commissioners of the parliament till farther orders were received respecting them. A letter from Sydney to Orlando Bridgman, a royalist of Chester, praying that his horses might be restored to enable him to proceed to join the king at Oxford, and professing attachment to the royal cause, was intercepted, and in consequence himself and his brother were sent under guard to London. This circumstance tended to exasperate the king, who imputed it to an artifice of their own; and from this time Sydney appears to have deserted his interest, for we find that on the 10th of May, 1644, he was appointed a captain of horse in the duke of Manchester's army, the parliament voting four hundred pounds for his equipments and arrears. In a few weeks he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and on the 2d of July was seriously wounded, while charging gallantly at the head of his regiment in the battle of Marston Moor. When the army was new modelled (1645) Sydney procured the command of a regiment of horse in Cromwell's division of the army under the command of sir Thomas Fairfax. He bore upon his banner the following motto: Sanctus amor patriæ dat ani

mum.'

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On the 10th of May, in the same year, he was appointed governor of Chichester, and soon after elected into parliament for the borough of Cardiff. Although the royal cause in England had received a fatal blow at Naseby, (June 14, 1645,) and the king had surrendered himself to the Scots, his adherents in Ireland still kept the field in considerable force. Lord

Lisle was appointed lord lieutenant, in the place of lord Inchiquin, who had incurred the suspicion of the parliament, but who nevertheless, had sufficient influence in that body to prevent his successor from obtaining possession of his government until the year for which it had been granted had nearly expired. Sydney accompanied his brother to Ireland; two thousand pounds were voted in payment of his arrears, (Jan. 4, 1646-7,) and he was appointed lieutenant-general of horse in that kingdom, and governor of Dublin. Their stay in Ireland was short, for the interest of the lord Inchiquin was sufficient to prevent the renewal of lord Lisle's commission, as well as to remove Sydney from his post. In consequence, the brothers returned to England in April, and received the thanks of the parliament for their good conduct.

At this period the contest between the presbyterians and independents was proceeding with the utmost violence; the former endeavoring to preserve the ascendency they possessed in the parliament, and the latter, of whom the army was principally composed, strongly inclined to make use of the power they derived from this circumstance to put a stop to the arbitrary and selfish proceedings of their opponents. Sydney, who was entirely free from religious enthusiasm, seems not to have sided with either of those factions, but to have uniformly endeavored, by mildness and impartiality, to uphold amid the tempest of the passions the cause of rational liberty.

This contest was soon terminated by the violent measures of the army, who obtained possession by force of the person of the king, and removed the last impediment to their views by violently expelling the presbyterians from their seats in parliament. They next demanded the trial of the king, which the house was not in a situation to resist, and a commission was raised to sit in judgment upon him. Both Sydney and his brother were members of this court, and the former attended some of the preliminary meetings in the painted chamber. They were neither of them present, however, in Westminster Hall, but retired together to Penshurst, where they remained until sentence had been pronounced, and a warrant signed for the execution of their unhappy sovereign. It is difficult to account for the behaviour of Sydney at this momentous period, which seems not very consistent with his character or conduct on other occasions. That his declining to take a part in the condemnation of the king did not arise from con

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