georgeous allegory has striven to clothe.

Hafiz has em

bodied in his poems many of the mystical ideas held traditionary among the Persians, and though he lived after the time of Mahomet, we may take him as the echo of many ages gone before. A few detached passages will afford a slight knowledge of the mystical poetry of the Persians.

"In eternity without beginning, a ray of thy beauty began to gleam; when love sprang into being, and cast flames over all nature.

"On that day thy cheek sparkled even under thy veil, and all this beautiful imagery appeared on the mirror of our fancies.

"Rise, my soul, that I may pour thee forth on the pencil of that supreme artist who comprised in a turn of his compass all this wonderful scenery!

Where are the glad tidings of union with thee, that I may abandon all desire of life? I am a bird of holiness, and would fain escape from the net of this world.

"The sum of our transactions in this universe is nothing; bring us the wine of devotion, for the possessions of this world vanish.

"O, the bliss of that day when I shall depart from this desolate mansion; shall seek rest for my soul, and shall follow the braces of my beloved.

"Dancing with love of his beauty like a mote in a sunbeam, till I reach the spring and fountain of light whence yon sun derives all his lustre."

The object of this ode is evidently the Supreme Deity, and the language is highly fitting and reverential but often when the poet gives free rein to his Pegasus he employs expressions almost licentious, and gives utterance to sentiments bordering on wild voluptuousness.

But in this we must only behold the passionate fervor of devotion, the burning effusions of a soul seeking after its source, as the human lover sighs and anguishes for the object of his affections, and in this way we may rank the mystical hymns of the Persians with the Canticle of Canticles in the Bible. "We profess eager desire," says the poet Maulavi, "but with no carnal affection, and circulate the cup, but no material goblet, since all things are spiritual among us, and all is mystery within mystery." In the later poets of Persia, therefore, even those who lived since Mahometanism overshadowed the land, we find the principles of Zendavesta and the works of the Magi constantly germinating and giving fruit.

Of the ancient poets of Persia but little is known, as there is but little known of ancient Persian literature, generally; all that has been handed down being very much garbled and not deserving of great credit. The Greeks were for a long time the sole depositaries of early Persian literature, and it is feared that the hatred which many years of war with the

Persian monarchs had begotten in their hearts did not inspire them with a strong interest in the treasures which they guarded. Hence we must look in the writings of Plato and the philosophers of the Alexandrian school for evidences of the character and style of many Persian writers, and must expect the bias of national antipathy to characterize their views and opinions. Of Persian writers there is but one who has had access to authentic sources of ancient Persian literature and lore, and that is the poet Firdousi, who possessed a few original annals in the Pahlavi language, which escaped the general destruction of Persian books when the Mussulmans invaded and conquered Iran. Firdousi lived in the eleventh century of the Christian era, and the four hundredth year of the Hegira, and composed a heroic poem entitled Shah Nameh, which contains the record of the Persian kings from Cainmaras to Yezdegerd, interspersed with astonishing fiction and delightful romance. In this work Firdousi follows the unsettled chronology of other Persian writers, but he relates battles, adventures, and the fortunes of kings and princes in a style as extravagant andpoetic as we admire in the Orlando Furioso. This work contains sixty thou sand destichs, and owing to the genuineness of the sources from which the materials of the history embodied in it were taken, it is regarded as useful as a chronicle as it is pleasing to the imagination as a poem. Besides Firdousi the poet, Nizami has written a work entitled "The Five Treasures of Nizami," which affords some curious information, interwoven with much romance and fiction. He gives a long history of Alexander the Great, in which the incidents of that monarch's reign assume a character altogether different from that given to them by Greek historians. We see, therefore, that few monuments of ancient Persian letters have reached us; and there exists no means of exactly determining the literary status of that people at the most interesting period of their history. But the zeal of recent antiquaries promises much that will be highly instructive and replete with interest when their labors will have been accomplished.

ART. VIII-Annual Catalogues of various Universities, Colleges, Seminaries, &c., &c., 1865.

OUR pile of catalogues is much smaller than it was this time last year; we find the number diminishing every year in proportion as we criticise. It is but just to say, however,

that there are exceptions. There are a few who take our criticisms in good part, and do not feel above adopting such suggestions as they think useful or judicious. We need hardly add that they are the best educators who are most willing to rectify any error they may have fallen into, and the most ready to check any vitiated habit, whether they happen to observe it themselves, or whether it is pointed out to them by others.

This reminds us rather forcibly of our friends the book publishers; for as long as they entertained the notion that we like others, would praise their publications indiscriminately, always declaring the last superior to all that had gone before it, they almost overwhelmed us with packages. We do not in the least exaggerate when we say that there was a time, not long since, when we used to receive from sixty to one hundred volumes a week, including whole sets of voluminous works. But the effect of a little criticism in diminishing the size of these bundles was really wonderful, especially when it was found that the most liberal advertising patronage did not secure them immunity at the hands of our critic, or open his eyes to their transcendent merits. We need hardly inform our readers that it is those who publish the worst books that have been the first to take umbrage at our venturing to find fault with them; just in proportion as the books were bad or indifferent, did they exhibit a falling off on our table; or what amounts to the same, in proportion as the books were good they were continued, and in the same proportion they are continued to the present day. It is exactly the same with the catalogues of universities, colleges, seminaries, &c. We cannot, indeed, purchase such of the latter as we want to examine when they are not forwarded to us in the usual way, as we cheerfully do those of the former, for the reason that catalogues are rather inventories of merchandise than the thing itself. Yet we seldom fail to secure a copy of any catalogue we want without leaving our study in pursuit of it, so that those who try to evade criticism in this way, and conceal their charlatanism, are scarcely less thoughtless than the ostrich that fancies she protects her whole body by thrusting her head into the sand.

But it is neither our business nor our intention to be. unfriendly either to publishers or professors; and need we say that we entertain no such feeling? On the contrary, there are no two classes whom we respect or esteem more; nor do we think that there are any who have stronger

claims on public respect and esteem, when they are qualified for their position, and disposed to acquit themselves of its duties. It is against those who are neither one nor the other that we make war.. If the judge passes sentence on certain members of any class whatever, it does not follow that he is the enemy of that class; it is much more correct to consider him as its friend, provided his judgment is founded on sufficient proof of their guilt. Supposing this guilt to consist in seeking to pass off brass for gold, or a counterfeit bankbill for the genuine, who would say that the party proved to have incurred it did not deserve to be exposed and punished? And the truth is that one who pretends to teach others what he does not understand himself, and charges them money for doing so, does more injury to society in proportion as he is believed than the utterer of false money. And if this be true of one teacher, it is so still more em phatically of six or a dozen, who unite together for the same purpose, although they may call themselves the faculty of a college or university. Indeed the evil is increased in this way in a much greater ratio than the numerical increase. If the parties who thus combine have sufficient intelligence to know their own want of capacity, they are morally, if not legally, guilty of that species of swindling known as obtaining money under false pretences. Nor has he who points out to us what is bad or spurious done his duty as an honest citizen until he has also indicated to us where the good or genuine is to be found; for who would feel more than half satisfied with one who, if his lips were parched with thirst, would inform him that the water of a particular well was not wholesome, except he also told him where the good water was to be found? At least such are our views on the subject. Nor do we think we ought to be the less willing to point out the pure and refreshing fountain, because its owners entertain theological opinions which are somewhat different from our own.

We will now allude briefly to what we consider the best means of securing a thorough education, and then mention some of the American institutions which, in our opinion, avail themselves of those means with most effect. Incidentally we shall speak of certain defects; but we prefer not to indicate the institutions at which we have found the latter most prevalent. In our view no language, ancient or modern, can be learned without an attempt to speak it to a greater or less extent. If we devoted ourselves forever to merely trans

lating any language, declining its nouns and conjugating its verbs, we should only have an imperfect knowledge of it; we should, indeed, know the words when we saw them, and understand what they mean, but if we heard them read or spoken, they would, in general, sound as strangely to us as if we had never studied the dialect to which they belong.

This would be a serious defect if we never had any use of it. or did not intend ever to use it, for conversational purposes; it would be pretty much the same as to confine ourselves to theorems in geometry or algebra, without making any attempt to illustrate those theorems. In demonstrating a proposition in either of those sciences, we acquire a familiarity not only with the principles on which it is founded, but also with those which form the bases of other propositions; so that we are enabled to deduce one set of facts or series of truths from another. Thus, for example, after we have fully demonstrated that the three interior angles of any triangle are together equal to two right angles, and that the square described on the hypothenuse of any triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the base and perpendicular, we become acquainted with a set of principles which enable us to understand several other propositions of whose nature we had previously been ignoraut.

In a similar manner, our efforts to speak any language makes us familiar with words whose real signification we should never have learned by translating alone. This is true of the particles both of Latin and Greek, especially of the latter, which has so large a variety of them. Let any one try it if only for a few months, and then see with how much greater facility he can translate any author that he had previously been reading. He will find that particles, especially adverbs of time and place, have much more meaning than he had ever supposed before; nay, that the want of understanding those particles, now rendered so familiar to him by the necessity of examining their nature, and comparing it with that of the particles of the vernacular, presents greater obstacles to his progress in translating than any other deficiency whatever.

That it requires a good deal of time and study to learn to use either Greek or Latin colloquially with even a tolerable degree of fluency, is very true; although by no means so much as is commonly supposed, even by those who consider themselves good classical scholars. But were the time and labor required three times as much as they are, they would be