This number completes the sixth volume of our Magazine, and it is with great reluctance that we yield to the necessity which constrains us to discontinue its publication; but finding that the duties which its management imposed could only be met by the devotion of our entire time and labour, and having other and superior interests which require our attention, we are compelled to decide between the conflicting claims; and, in closing our career as journalists, indulge the hope, that our ministration has been acceptable to our readers, and that the pledges we gave at its commencement have been, to some extent, fulfilled.

Our grateful acknowledgments are due for the support which we have received, both from contributors and subscribers, but particularly to those who have so ably and so unweariedly laboured to build up the literary reputation of the journal, and on whose contributions its fair fame can securely rest.

We are aware that our last two num

bers have been deficient in variety, but the necessity of completing our serial articles made it necessary to allow them more space than we would otherwise have done.

The Rivals: A Tale of the Times of AARON BURR and ALEXANDER HAMIL TON. By Hon. Jere. Clemens. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1860.

Our readers will probably remember that one of the ablest and most interesting essays which has appeared in our columns, was devoted to a review of the career of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. The ability displayed in the article, and the complete and unanswerable argument by which the character of Burr was defended, and, for the first time, placed in its true light, necessarily provoked the opposition of all who, either from their political proclivities, or their faith in a stereotyped popular sentiment, were indignant that

any one could be found whose courage and intellect were alike equal to the sturdy and successful defence of a misunderstood, misrepresented and wrongfully-used man.

We have taken occasion, in our own columns and elsewhere, to sustain the positions assumed in that article; not, however, because the reviewers of the essay exhibited any peculiarly intimate acquaintance with the subject; or, in challenging its conclusions, displayed any historical research beyond the most common-place sources of information. Yet it cannot be denied, that, for long years, Burr was doomed to suffer all the pains and social penalties which are attached to one whose private character and public career were deemed to be immoral and treasonable.

Since the publication of the article to which we have referred, we have not seen any review of the subject which enters so fully into a defence of the illused Burr as the recent work of the Hon Jere. Clemens, the title of which is prefixed to this article.

of art, it has, perhaps, but slight claims to Simply regarded as a novel and work popular favour. The story is a mere thread, by which the prominent events in the life of its hero are connected. But assuming (what no one has a right to question) the honest purpose of the author-to furnish the results of a laborious examination of all the testimony, both written and printed, in such a form as would attract the attention of the general reader-we must regard his effort as very successful. We may make every allowance for the personal bias which has led him to paint the character of Hamilton in darker hues than even we are willing to believe are entirely correct, without diminishing our firm conviction that his general appreciation of the character and career of Burr is strictly true. In his preface, he says: "The work of Matthew L. Davis is a libel upon the man he professed to honour, and whom he called his friend in life." I went beyond these, and collected many old pamphlets and

documents relating to Burr and Hamil ton, and endeavoured to extract from them enough of truth to enable me to form a just estimate of the characters of both. That estimate once made, the book was made to correspond with it. The main historical facts alone being preserved, while all the rest is the offspring of the imagination."

"The history of the war proves conclusively that there was no better soldier, or more devoted patriot, in the long list of revolutionary heroes, than Aaron Burr; and all contemporary testimony agrees that no man ever lived of a more genial, hospitable, and kindly nature. Yet this man, unsurpassed as a soldier, unrivalled as a lawyer, pure, upright, and untarnished as a statesman, became, from the force of circumstances, the object of the bitterest calumnies that malice could invent or the blindest prejudice could believe. Persecution dogged him to his grave; and, although the life of a generation has passed away since then, justice still hesitates to approach the spot where the bones of the patriot-soldier repose. Under the garb of fiction, I have endeavoured to contribute my mite toward relieving his memory from the unjust aspersions which embitted his life. If I accomplish nothing more than to induce a portion of the rising generation to search the records of that life, I shall be amply repaid for the labour it has cost."

Having intimated our unwillingness to accept the author's portraiture of Hamilton as entirely just, it is only fair that we should allow him to state, in his own words, the impressions which he derived from a study of the character of one of the most largely endowed and influential statesmen of his time.

"Of Alexander Hamilton, I have written nothing of which I do not believe he was capable, after the fullest examination of his own writings and those of others. That I have entertained strong prejudices against him from boyhood, is true; that those prejudices may have influenced my judgment, is possible; but I tried to discard them, and look at his character in the light of reason alone. The more I studied it, the more I became convinced that the world never presented such a combination of greatness and of meanness, of daring courage and of vile malignity, of high aspirings and of low hypocrisy. Shrewd, artful and unscrupulous, there were no means he would not employ to accomplish his ends-no tool too base to be used when its services were needful. Loose in his own morals, even to licentiousness, he criticised those of Thomas Jefferson

with a severity no other antagonist ever equalled. Slander was his favourite weapon, and no one stood in his way who did not feel the venom of his tongue and pen."

Rules for the Accentuation of names in Natural History, with Examples, Zoological and Botanical. By Lewis R. Gibbes, M. D., Professor Mathematics, President of Elliott Society Natural History, Charleston, S. C.; Corresponding Member of the New York Lyceum and Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia.-Published by the Elliott Society of Natural History.-Charleston, S. Č.: Russell & Jones. 1860.

The need of such a work by a competent hand has been long felt, and we are sure that the announcement of its completion by an author whose ability and peculiar fitness for the task is so well known, will be hailed with greatest pleasure. It is now ready for distribution to the members of the Elliott Society, and for sale by the publishers.

"The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., Head-Master of Rugby, &c., &c. By Thos. P. Stanley, M.A., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical His tory in the University of Oxford."

This work, the material for which has been drawn from sources both various and trustworthy, is arranged by Mr. Stanley with admirable tact; the life of its distinguished subject being divided into prominent periods, each illustrated by that portion of Arnold's correspondence which has special reference to the studies or the events of the time. A part of the first chapter is furnished by Mr. Justice Coleridge, and refers to Arnold's career as an undergraduate at Oxford. It presents a lively picture of his character and peculiarities as a young man, showing how intense his interest was in literature, ancient and modern, no less than in the stirring matters of that most important crisis of English history which embraced the period from 1810 to 1815.

"We fought over," says Justice Coleridge, Arnold's fellow-collegian, "the Peninsular battles and the Continental campaigns with the energy of dispu tants personally concerned in them." There were strifes of another kind, purely literary and intellectual, in which Arnold played a conspicuous part. Some of his opinions startled his associates a good deal; they were Tories in Church and State, and their conservative views were not a little outraged at times by their friend's disposition to question the

wisdom and immaculate nature of institutions they had always esteemed unassailable.

Many and long were the conflicts Arnold had with unequal numbers. "I have seen," Mr. Coleridge tells us, "all the leaders of the common-room en

gaged with him at once, and not always with great scrupulosity as to the fairness of their arguments." The excitement of these dialectic trials of the strength and learning of both parties resulted occasionally in angry collisions, which never seemed, however, to have led to any bitterness of feeling when the strife was fairly over.

Seldom has the rich promise of a noble youth been so amply fulfilled in maturer years as in the case of Arnold. If Mr. Coleridge's description of his collegiate course is interesting and valuable, still more interesting is Mr. Stanley's record of the intercourse he was privileged to enjoy with him in the vigour of the Doctor's manhood-an intercourse which begun when Stanley was a pupil at Rugby, (from 1829 to 1834,) and thenceforward, on more familiar terms, to the end of his great instruc

tor's life.

As a tutor, both private and public, Arnold's power consisted in "the intense earnestness which he gave to existence." "Every pupil was made to feel, that there was a work for him to do, and that his happiness, as well as his duty, lay in doing that work well." It is known that the old, somewhat brutal system of English public schools was so modified by the Master of Rugby, that the boys under his care were far more effectually stimulated to exertion by the self-respecting consciousness he awakened in their souls of "duties assigned to them personally by God," than through the constant application of that often useless and generally degrading argument of the birch. Not that flogging was altogether abolished; Dr. Arnold was too wise for that. There were, he knew, some individuals whose natures could be benefitted only by the stinging logic of a sound chastisement, and in such cases he assuredly did "not spare the rod." Nevertheless, the cardinal principle of his mode of instruction lay in an appeal to the morale and the heart; he strove to impart to all who came in contact with him his own lofty conceptions of the dignity of man as a responsible but independent being, a free agent, gifted with the powers of choosing spiritual light or darkness, the glory of honest, God-fearing labour, or the finamy (for truly infamy he deemed it) of a wicked inertness, which buries entrusted "talents" in the soil, droning through

the heavy years, alike a shame to humanity and a burden to the earth.

But it is not only of the position of affairs at Rugby, and the success of Dr. Arnold, in the capacity of chief of that famous Seminary, that Mr. Stanley's work affords us full and satisfactory information. It goes into the minutest details of his experience as a preacher and an author. In accomplishing this, the original Narrative, by the editor, has properly been made subservient to the introduction of Arnold's elaborate correspondence, wherein his opinions, and plans “are clearly given in his own

words."

His letters, besides recording the main events of his career-from early manhood almost to the day of his death

and, (when addressed to his intimates,) opening, with frank unreserve, his whole heart to view-are remarkable, also, as showing the vast range of his acquaintance, which included many of the greatest and wisest men in Great Britain and on the Continent.

In addition to his life-long correspondence with Mr. Justice Coleridge, we find him writing frequently to such able, philosophic thinkers as Chevalier Bunsen, and others of equally high intellectual calibre, upon the gravest questions of politics and theology. Nor was he, in his letters, or his studies, unmindful of the claims of literature, past and present. His excellent edition of Thucydides is, we believe, regarded as the best work of the kind prepared by any Englishman, whilst his Lectures on History, for vigour and originality of view-clearness of style and accuracy of learning-possess few equals (in that special department of thought and investigation) in our literature.

Had Dr. Arnold's life been spared but a few years beyond the period of his premature and sudden decease, it is probable that he would have given to the world a work far more important than any which now bears his name. He had long been evolving the plan of this production, in reference to "The State and the Church," which, had it been completed, would, undoubtedly, have formed a glorious monument to his genius, integrity and knowledge.

But it was not destined so to be. On the morning of the 12th June, 1842, one day previous to his forty-seventh birthday, Arnold "awoke with a sharp pain across his chest," which soon increased to torturing agony. A physician was summoned, but he could do no good. In about two hours, the sufferer expired of the same disease which had carried off his father, viz., an organic disease of the heart No warning had been vouchsafed him; but the earnest

We ventured to predict, at the time, that his work would be signally successful. It affords us real pleasure to be able to say that we were right. Not only has Mr. Timrod's book succeeded in a pecuniary sense, but its reception by the critics, both North and South, has been such as to stimulate the author to new and still nobler labours.

The public have accorded to him the possession of a fine imagination, a subtle comprehension of the secrets of metrical harmony and a highly-cultiva ted artistic power. His longest poem, "The Vision of Poesy," upon the general scope and merits of which we have before commented, seems to have enforced the admiration of all the review

ers.

"The New York Tribune"-a journal not to be suspected of partiality to Southern productions-says, "that it presents a lofty idea of the art and mission of the poet, expressed in language of remarkable terseness and condensation;" whilst of the minor pieces in Mr. Timrod's volume, the same critic declares, that "they have been treated with a lively and delicate fancy, and a graceful beauty of expression."

"The Tribune" is by no means singular in its opinion.

Wherever the poems have been noticed at all, they have been noticed with praise. And this praise, it has pleased us to remark, is spontaneous and earnest. It partakes, in no respect, of the nature of those disheartening puffs, evidently made to order, which can never raise an inferior work to respectability -but which unluckily do possess the power of prejudicing even the candid mind against the books so "beplastered."

Having previously referred, as fully as space allowed us, to "The Vision of Poesy," we desire now to speak of Mr. Timrod's miscellaneous performances. It must be manifest to

every scholarly reader, that his pieces in blank-verse are his best. He has studied this mode of versification with great care and patience; and few, we think-very few young poets-have succeeded so well in mastering its difficulties.

A Tyro naturally deems it easy to compose unrhymed heroics, and so indeed it is, so long as the mere correctness of metre-the conventional number of feet in a line-be looked upon as the "one thing needful."

But the truth is, there are not many, even among the great poets, who have mastered the intricacies of this noble, and essentially English, measure. Milton was a consummate master of it; and so, in a different sense and style, is Alfred Tennyson. Keats, in that glorious poetical Torso, "Hyperion," equals Milton in some of his strongest passa ges; and there are two of the younger brotherhood of modern singers, Matthew Arnold in England, and Richard Henry Stoddard of New York, who have devoted particular attention to the laws of blank verse, and have produced several admirable specimens of the harmony and power of which it is capable. The latter part of Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustrum," and a Greek tale by Stod dard, entitled, "The Fisher and Charon," will warrant our high estimate of their authors' ability in the department of verse we are discussing.

Some of Mr. Timrod's poems, of the same kind, will bear comparison with these examples of exquisite rhythmical

art.

Of the merits of his "Arctic Voyager," we have often spoken; but there are other pieces in his work not unequal to it. Such is "The Summer Bower," full of passages of sweet, natural description. The versification to an unpractised reader, would appear somewhat bald; yet nothing really can be finer than its terse vigour, conjoined to a flowing and graceful melody.

"The Dramatic Fragment," beginning,

"Let the boy have his will," &c., although illustrating a wholly different description of blank-verse, is, perhaps, even more striking.

Next to these poems, and the arch and tender lyrics, many (indeed the majority of which), first reached the public ear through our own columns, we are most pleased with Mr. Timrod's Sonnets. They are fourteen in number, and are all of them exceedingly meritorious; rare and lustrous little gems of thought, sentiment and music.

One or two of them are truly philo