and are needed to counteract the influences of the many infidel books in which the effects of the Christian civilization in the Island World are systematically misrepresented. We learn that Mr. Cheever is now engaged upon "The Autobiography of Captain Obadiah Conger," who was fifty years a mariner from the port of New-York. He is editing the MS. of the deceased sailor for the Harpers.
Mr. Job R. Tyson, whose careful researches respecting the colonial history of Pennsylvania have illustrated his abilities and his predilections in this line, is about to proceed to Europe, for the consultation of certain documents connected with the subject, preparatory to the publication of his "History of the American Colonies," a work in which, doubtless, he will not be liable to the reproach of histories written by New-Englanders, that they exaggerate the virtues and the influence of the Puritans. Mr. Tyson is of the best stock of the Philadelphia Quakers, and the traditional fame of his party will not suffer in his hands.
Mr. Henry James, the author of "Moralism and Christianity," must certainly be regarded by all who come into his fit audience as one of the greatest living masters of metaphysics. Mr. James has never been mentioned in the North American Review; but then, that peculiarly national work has not in all its seventy volumes an article upon Jonathan Edwards, whom Robert Hall, Dr. Chalmers, Dugald Stuart, Sir James Mackintosh, Kant, Cousin, and a hundred others scarcely less famous, have regarded as the chief glory in our intellectual firmament; it has never let its light shine upon the pages of Legaré; it has preserved the most profound silence respecting Henry Carey, William R. Williams, and Addison Alexander; so that it must not be considered altogether conclusive as to Mr. James's merits that he has not had the seal of the North American's approval. We regard him as one of the great metaphysicians of the time, not because, like Comte, he has evolved with irresistible power and majestic order any grand and complete system, but because he has brought to the discussion of the few questions he has attempted, so independent a spirit, so pure a method, such expansive humanity, and such ample resources of learning, as separately claim admiration, and combined, constitute a teacher of the most dignified rank, who can and will influence the world. We do not altogether agree with Mr. James; on the contrary, we have been regarded as particularly grim in our conservatism; but we are none the less sensible of Mr. James's surpassing merits as a writer upon the philosophy of society. We dedicate this paragraph to him on account of the series of lectures he has just delivered in New-York, upon "The Symbolism of Property," "Democracy and its Issues," "The Harmony of Nature and Revelation," "The Past and Future Churches," &c. We understand that these splendid dissertations will be given to the public in the more acceptable form of a volume. The popular lecture is not a suitable medium for such discussions, or certainly not for such thinking: one of Mr. James's sentences, diluted to the lecture standard, would serve for an entire discourse, which by those who should understand it, would be deemed of a singularly compact body, as compared with the average of such performances.
Professor Torrey, of the University of Vermont, is one of the few contemporary scholars, whose names are likely to survive with those of the great teachers of past ages. He has translated Schilling's Discourse on Fine Arts, and other shorter compositions from the German; but his chief labor in this way is, a most laborious and admirably executed version of Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church, published in Boston, and now being republished in London, by Bonn, with Notes, &c., by the Rev. A. T. W. Morison, of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Neander has sometimes been called, but with scarcely sufficient reason, the Niebuhr of ecclesiastical history. The only point in which he resembles the historian of Rome, is in that vast range of complete erudition which makes the Past in its minutest details as familiar as the Present, which is never content with derivative information, but traces back every tributary of the great stream of History to its remotest accessible source. In this respect the two eminent historians were alike, but with this point of resemblance the similarity ends. Neander is entirely free from that necessity under which Niebuhr labored, of regarding every recorded aggregate of facts as a mass of error which the modern philosophy of history was either to decompose into a myth, or reconstruct into a new form more consistent with preconceived theory.
The Works of John C. Calhoun will soon, through the wise munificence of the state of South Carolina, be accessible by the students of political philosophy and history in a complete and suitable edition, with such memoirs as are necessary for their illustration, and for the satisfaction of the natural curiosity respecting their illustrious author. The first volume will comprise Mr. Calhoun's elaborate Disquisition on Government, and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, in which are displayed in a systematic manner the author's opinions upon the whole subject of the philosophy of government. These treatises were begun many years ago, and though they had not received the ultimate revision which was intended, they are very complete, and by the careful and judicious editing of Mr. Crallé, his intimate friend and confidential secretary, will perhaps appear as perfect in all their parts as if re-written by Mr. Calhoun himself. These are now nearly stereotyped; and to correct some misapprehensions which seem to prevail in South Carolina, we state that only the stereotype plates are made in New-York, there being no foundries for stereotyping in Charleston, where the book will be printed and published. For this purpose the Legislature has appropriated $10,000, which will meet the expenses for fifteen thousand copies of the first volume, all but five hundred of which, printed on large paper, for public libraries, will be sold for the benefit of Mr. Calhoun's family. Another volume will contain Mr. Calhoun's official papers, and another his Letters upon Public Affairs. This, we think, will be the most interesting of the series. Mr. Calhoun wrote always with sincerity and frankness, and his communications to his friends contain, much more than his speeches and state papers, the exhibitions of his feeling, his regrets, fears, expectations, and ambitions. His speeches will probably make three volumes; the collection formerly printed by the Harpers did not embrace half of them; many of them have never been printed at all, but (particularly some of his most elaborate performances previous to 1817) exist in carefully prepared manuscript reports. All these speeches will be revised and illustrated by Mr. Crallé: and the series will be completed with the memoirs of the great senator, for which that gentleman has the most ample and interesting materials.
Archbishop Whateley's very ingenious Historical Doubts Respecting Napoleon Bonaparte, is the cleverest book of the kind yet written, not excepting the high church pamphlet treating of the Archbishop's own existence in the same way. But the idea was not original with Whateley: Mr. William Biglow of Boston wrote half a century ago, The Age of Freedom, being an Investigation of Good and Bad Government, in Imitation of Mr. Paine's Age of Reason, and intended, by a similar style of argument respecting the Discovery of America, &c., to expose that infidel's sophistries. We perceive that the Life of Jesus, by Dr. Strauss, has been met by another such performance in England, under the title of Historical Certainties respecting the Early History of America, developed in a Critical Examination of the Book of the Chronicles of the Land of Ecnarf; By the Rev. Aristarchus Newlight, Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Giessen, Corresponding Member of the Theophilanthropic and Pantisocratical Societies of Leipsig, late Professor of all Religions in several distinguished Academies at Home and Abroad, &c. The author very satisfactorily disposes of the events between the first French Revolution and the Battle of Waterloo, by putting them through the "mythic" circle invented by Dr. Strauss. The joke is carried out with remarkable ingenuity, and with the most whimsical resources of learning. The good doctor finds, a la Strauss, a nucleus, for here and there a great tradition, but remorselessly wipes out as altogether incredible many of the most striking and familiar facts in modern history.
Of Mr. Schoolcraft's great work, which we have heretofore announced, the first part has just appeared from the press of Lippencott, Grambo & Co., in the most splendid quarto volume that has yet been printed in America. We shall take an early opportunity to do justice to this truly national performance and to its author.
Dr. Robert Knox—whose book of infidel rigmarole, The Races of Men, was lately reprinted by an American house which was never before and we trust will never again be guilty of such an indiscretion,—we understand is coming to New-York to lecture upon Ethnology. He has the "gift" of talking, and is said to have been popular
