most fully from the Septuagint version, from the Chaldee paraphrases, from the Greek of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotian, and from the Latin of Jerome. The Jews acknowledge that the book of the law, shewn to the people, had not the points and accents; and that the Samaritan was deficient in vowel marks. The external forms of the letters underwent many changes from the time of Solomon to that of Ezra. The square Chaldee characters, adopted during the captivity, superseded the Phoenician, and Ezra used them in transcribing the ancient records. While we concede, with modern orientalists, that the genuineness of the particular form in which we have the books of the Old Testament is to be "allowed only in a limited sense," we promptly unite with them in maintaining that the "genuineness of the facts and of the spirit which is peculiar to these books, can by no means be rendered doubtful." We have before mentioned the anxious care and devout scrupulosity of the Jews concerning their scriptures. The principal laws were engraven on stone, and Michalis argues from instances of caution in preserving inscriptions, that the liability to loss or corruption was very small. Every motive which could make them faithful, existed. They felt themselves to be the chosen of Jehovah; and they knew that the laws and institutions established by his prophets were their defence, their glory, and their hope. This single thought was enough to produce a wakefulness which nothing could surprise; and we actually find a holy jealousy on this point, pervading the na As the words of God had been embalmed in their memories, so had they been secured for the comfort and guidance of succeeding generations. These records, how far soever they are abstracts from fuller ones, or extensions by Ezra of pre-existent documents, bear the impress of the ages from which they purport to come, as distinctly as the orations of Demosthenes belong to the time of Philip, or those of Cicero to the conspiracy of Cataline. It is the spirit and achievements of an age that give to its records their vital form; because these are the great materials of history; and to have them presented in conflicting positions is fatal to the genuineness of any record. Not on the rolls of history stand documents which more vividly and circumstantially fortify themselves in this way than the books of the Old Testament. Men may forge a number of plausible facts to make a history of any given period, but men cannot forge all the attendant circumstances which actual life connects with a nation's progress; much less can they counterfeit the spirit of that period, the living, moving, and peculiar energy of that people, surrounding it with all its fixtures, conflicts, and glories. "It is not so that men invent." No-the assembled scholars of the world cannot write the history of Moses' legislation, or of Solomon's reign, and omitting every thing which would prove them spurious, take in half the number of facts and circumstances which prove them in their present forms to have come from those ages. In pursuing the history of the Hebrew language, it will be often seen how the different sacred books bear the spiritual imprint of the ages wherein they originated, and render the inference plain, that it was the religion of the Hebrews which gave to them and their annals the annointing of immortality. Did our limits allow, we would here examine in order the several ages in which the Jews divide their history viz. 1. patriarchal, the first covenant with God; 2. Moses, and the giving of laws; 3. heroic ages under the Judges, the theocratic republic; 4. the reigns of David and Solomon, the theocratic monarchy; 5. the Prophets, the contest of theocracy with monarchy; 6. the Babylonish exile; 7. the age after their return from captivity.' The order of time in which the prophets exercised their commissions, is as follows: Jonah, 802 years before Christ; Joel, 800; Amos, 787; Hosea, 785; Isaiah, 760; Nahum, 758; Micah, 753; Jeremiah, 631; Zephaniah, 630; Habakkuk, 609; Ezekiel, 595; Obadiah, 587; Daniel, 555; Haggai, 520; Zechariah, 520; Malachi, 397. Tracing the varieties of the language through each of these writers would be desirable, but we shall make only a few remarks on some of them. The history of a language is but the history of those who have used it. Languages generally have their dawn, their meridian, and their decline; but with the Hebrew the first period is undiscoverable. In the announcement of laws, the recording of facts and composition of hymns by Moses, the language appears in its vigorous maturity. It has been supposed that poetry marks the first progress of a polished nation's history; but here we find prose predominating, and the gravity of pure historic narrative in close union with the fervid language of a prophetic ode. This argues an advance in mental culture, which is not seen in the Greeks till a thousand years afterwards in the time of Herodotus. The purity and power of the Hebrew tongue, as seen in Moses, was preserved for seven hundred years; and it flourished in great prosperity even under the idolatrous reign of Ahaz. Not anarchy or oppression could tempt the Israelites to neglect it. The reigns of the idolatrous kings were seasons of fresh and heartfelt sorrow to the pious Jews, yet amid all these discouragements the females of the country were educated, and the great intellectual men were busy in the work of melioration and reform. These statements may be proved from the triumphal ode of Deborah, and the ardent prayer of Hannah; from the establishment of the school of the prophets, the regular instruction of the people and the strict observance of public worship. While the language was enjoying its golden age, David brought his contributions to its former richness. He improved it by shewing its power to express the deepest emotions of the human heart. His hymns partake so fully of his private feelings, that they reflect as in a mirror every feature of the man. No writer in the Old Testament seems like him to have a world within his own affections. Thus distinguished as a poet of the heart, we find in his compositions all the alternations of hope, fear, joy, disappointment, penitence, gratitude, and devotion. If he has less excellence in elegiac and historical, he stands unsurpassed in lyric and moral poetry. To feel the full force of his numbers we must read his own words, and then we shall see the great beauty of construction in Hebrew poetry. As this construction is a striking peculiarity, we will subjoin a short explanation. The Jews, and particularly David, were fond of music; their singers were numerous and trained to utter musical responses. Their choral chants partook of this peculiarity. The chorus, when assorted and stationed, were ready to answer each other in a moment, as in the following distich: 1st choir-"Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: 2d choir-For his mercy endureth forever." This metre-like form in the lines, though without any of the rythm and emphasis which are found in Pope and Virgil, was observed with all the care that such artificial construction would require. Lowth calls it parallelism. "It is," says Noyes, "a certain equality, resemblance, or parallelism between the members of each period; so that in two lines, or members of the same period, things for the most part answer to things, and words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure." There are three kinds of parallelism; the first called synonymous. This requires the sentiment of one line to be expressed by different but equivalent words, in the next, thus: "The earth is the Lord's, and all that is therein; And established it upon the floods." In the following lines the first answers to the third, and the second to the fourth: "As high as are the heavens above the earth, So great is his mercy to them who revere him; So far hath he removed our transgressions from us." There are many varieties of this kind, all shewing the richness of the Hebrew language. The same copiousness of phrase existed very early; for, in Gen. iv. 23, Moses puts into the mouth of an antedeluvian poet several lines, beginning "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, Wives of Lamech, give ear unto my speech." Second antithetic. This is where a sentiment in one line is illustrated by the opposite sentiment in another, thus "A wise son maketh glad his father; But a foolish son is the grief of his mother." "The memory of the just is a blessing, This form of construction was fitted to the pithy, epigramatic sentences of Solomon's proverbs, and there it abounds in some of the sweetest touches of didactic poetry. Third synthetic or constructive. In this parallelism the "members of the period answer to each other, not by the repetition of the same image or sentiment, or the opposition of their contraries, but merely by the form of construction, in which word does not answer to word, and sentence to sentence, as equivalent or opposite; but there is a corrrespondence and equality between different propositions, in respect to the shape and turn of the whole sentence, and of the constructive parts; such as noun answering to noun, verb, to verb, member to member, negative to negative, interrogative to interrogative," thus "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; The precepts of the Lord are sure, giving wisdom to the simple. The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The varieties under these several heads are almost infinite, and shew conclusively both the capabilities of the language, and the genius of the poet. Connected with this we must mention the fact, that in none of the Hebrew verse can be found the musical rythm, made so conspicuous in the Greek and Latin poets, by the beautiful succession of dactyles and spondees. No settled rules of prosody have yet been discovered, and abandoning all ideas of scanning, the critic must be content with the "the rythm of sentiment." It may be that they had music fitted to every line, in which case the ear would consult the sense, and make the poetic and musical emphases always fall together. Where this is skilfully done the whole force of musical sounds is brought to the aid of religious sentiment. The Hebrew parallelisms have advantages peculiarly their own. They admit of translation. In fact, no prose translation, however careless, can wholly conceal them; while Homer and Virgil translated appear like any other prose. It must have been, we think, a more arduous task to construct the beautiful sacred stanzas according to the antithetic parallelism, than the lines of Homer by his metrical rules. But what we have here to do is rather with the moral than with the frame of the song; with the matter rather than the manner : and though compelled by the narrowness of our limits to break off just when fairly embarked in our subject, we shall endeavor to do it more justice when bringing this paper to a conclusion in our next number. LES VÉTÉRANS. [FROM THE FRENCH OF BERANGER.] Naguère en des tems de douleur, On méconnent nos vieux services, Ah! they have now almost forgot Hands nerved to do, hearts throbbed to dare. Yes! we were there, for honor there: Our mother calls-we fly to shield. In dark defeat or well won field, Yet all the valiant could not fall, And sheltered now will they remain, And find them few but fearless all. To shield our king, to gild his crown, |