and keeping no cow. This will be his best economy. His horse having less heavy work to do, will be more easily kept, and last longer. He will also be at the command of his master when needed, which, on the other plan, is not always the case. How often have we seen a minister trudging for ten or twelve miles through dub and mire, because Saunders Heavyside, with whom he marrows, has his horse away that day ploughing in the bog! And a woful ploughing to the poor horse it turns out to be; for, beginning to sink, and becoming flurried, while Saunders' patriarch remains cool, he runs away with the whole draught, and racks himself to death. From such casualties the plan of letting the glebe is free. It has also the advantage of saving the very serious expense of keeping a man-servant throughout the whole year, while a villager to groom the horse night and morning may be had for a trifle.

"The plan of keeping no cow may startle some people, but this point has, in the case of some ministers, been brought to the test of well-ascertained experience; and the result is said to be, that the sum necessary for the summer and winter keep of a cow, will more than suffice for supplying a large family with milk and butter. They will also be better supplied, for the butter of a onecow dairy is seldom good. But, more especially, an infinity of work will be saved. This last consideration is sometimes a most important one. For suppose a minister to have a large family, two servants, and no cow, and that the servants, though not oppressed, have such an efficiency of work that they cannot undertake any more; to give them the charge of a cow in these circumstances, will be to lay on the last pound which breaks the camel's back. A third servant will be needed, and then the minister may, if he can, boast of the profit of his dairy!" pp. 115-117.

In the chapter on Pigs, a subject that seems to rouse the genius of every one who touches it, Lamb, Sir Francis Head, and last, Dickens, the "Clergyman of the Old School" shows unaccustomed vigor, enlarges upon it with an evident relish, and displays, what is by no means so apparent when treating of any other creature, quite a sentimental humanity. He gives him the best and warmest quarter about the manse. Hear him.

"Show an economist the pig, and in one moment he knows how all is going on at the manse. If he hears it squealing, and sees it climbing the stone walls, and laboring to tear up the pavement, he knows that the poor animal has not got its breakfast,

just because there was no breakfast made ready to give it. Let an eye be cast into its bedstead, and he will find it so wet and dirty, that the creature is compelled to sit shivering in a corner till rheumatism, crinkets, and death itself close the career.' pp. 191, 192.

And again, soon after.

"Having resolved to keep pigs, and to do it properly, the first thing to be done is to erect a fit pig-house. Let some consideration and outlay be devoted to this measure, very important of its kind; because on this mainly depends the success of the whole plan. Let the sleeping apartment be dry as a bone, above and below, not large, but warm, and every way comfortable. Let it have a slope from the back part towards the door. If it be floored with flagstones, let these be laid on a foot at least of stones broken like road metal, and don't make them too close in the joints, that water may sink instantly down. As good a method as that of the pavement is to lay sleepers above the stone shivers as before, and to nail down upon these a firm substantial wooden floor, open also at the joints. If there be a saw-mill in the neighbourhood, apply for some of the slabs, and a cart-load of them may be had for from 1s. 6d. to 3s. The outer court should be large, airy, and laying to the sun; for swine are very fond of basking in its burning beams. It should be near to the dunghill, and above it, that the sap may run down into, and through it. The court should also be well paved with flagstones, or causeway stones, not laid on shivers as before, but bedded on half a foot of wellworked clay, and the seams made as small as may be, that no wet may sink. Let there be two stone troughs, not too large nor too deep, but so heavy and firmly set that they can't be moved by the nose of the sow, which is powerful beyond conception. There should also be two sleeping apartments, similar in all respects, so that when the one pig is put up to fatten before the other, it may be separated, and the richer food apportioned accordingly. The house should be tightly roofed, and slated as carefully as any man's house in the kingdom. And, in a word,. great punctuality and care should be devoted once for all to these objects; otherwise it were better to have nothing to do with keeping pigs. If circumstances admit of it, let the pig-house, and especially the sleeping apartments, be behind the boiler, that they may have the benefit of the heat from that fire. At the lower end of the pig court, let there be a condie through which the sap may perforate, and at the mouth of this let the ashes from the grates be laid, that they, again, may drink up that which might otherwise be comparatively lost, excepting to the air and the ol

factory nerves. Let no slovenly waster dare to affirm that in all this there is anything finical, it is all proper, and it will all pay; and in answer to all such soft simpering mannerism, let me tell you it is humane and Christian. But, says another, who has not visited his parish through and through for the last half score of years, how can a minister attend to all this, and do his duty as such? - Quite well after all, for it requires only to be done once in an incumbency, and it is as easy to do it well as it is to do it ill." - pp. 192, 193.

This is humane counsel, and the author deserves well of the swinish herd. It is but right that the only animal, quadruped perhaps we should say, of which absolutely the whole is eaten, those parts being esteemed chief delicacies, which, in other more comely creatures, are utterly refused, should be kindly cared for by those who after he is dead love him so well. But for the most part he presents but a piteous spectacle in his treatment during life of the ingratitude of man. Everybody knows what a common pig-stye is how very wet, dirty, and disagreeable a place; even its upper story, when it has one, rarely presenting a floor clean and dry, while more usually the patient sufferer passes day and night in conditions of abandonment, which it would be impossible to make intelligible to those who have not seen for themselves. Not so, however, in the apartments of the Clergyman of the Old School, where rooms are secured in connexion with fires, and where the brief life he is but an annual of this epicure's friend, is passed in as high a state of enjoyment as could probably be provided for him. Notwithstanding all the Agricultural Commissioner has urged upon the subject, it may be useful to have seen in the preceding extract the same opinions echoed from the other side of the Atlantic.

But we must close our notice of these pleasant volumes; neither being the book we should like to see upon the worldlife of the minister, and trust yet to see; both being excellent in their way, and answering the ends proposed by their authors.

6. 6. Fillor

SPECIMENS OF FOREIGN STANDARD LITERATURE.*

THIS is the fourteenth volume of Mr. Ripley's series of Specimens from Foreign Standard Literature. It has already been some time before the public, and its merits are well known. Mr. Brooks, the principal translator of these lyrical pieces, has before this tried his hand at the work of translating. One or two of the dramatic masterpieces of Schiller have been very ably translated by him into English. His versions show an accurate knowledge of the German language no small accomplishment—and a power of appreciating the spirit of the German poets; they show, too, uncommon facility and grace in English versification. Mr. Brooks is a very faithful translator; faithful both to the letter and spirit of his originals. He takes no liberties with his author's language or sentiments, but such as are necessary in transferring poetical conceptions from one language into another; at the same time, he generally succeeds in avoiding the stiffness which is apt to characterize very disagreeably those translations which are entitled to boast of their fidelity. This fidelity both to substance and form, in translating from one language to another, is absolutely essential to a good translation. We need not say, that a great proportion of the English versions from the ancient and foreign languages are sadly deficient in this leading excellence. Juster ideas on this subject have begun to prevail. Mr. Longfellow's extraordinary translations from nearly all the languages now spoken under the sun, and from some that are not, have set an example of the closest and most literal fidelity, and the freest rhythmical movement demonstrating not only that the problem can be solved, but solved in such a way that a person familiar with the languages, but a stranger to the particular works, would be at a loss to tell which was the original and which the translation. This example all future translators must follow, and approach as nearly as they can.

Mr. Brooks commands a rich and racy English style. He is a master of English composition, and in the choice of his words manifests a strict and correct taste. He uses instinctively what

*

Songs and Ballads, translated from Uhland, Körner, Bürger, and other German Lyric Poets. By CHARLES T. BROOKS. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1842. 12mo. pp. 400.

all now understand and acknowledge to be the most forcible, expressive, and picturesque part of the composite language we have the good luck to call our mother tongue-namely, the Saxon element; but he so uses it as to make his style pointed, energetic, and direct, without painfully abstaining from the more sonorous words which we inherit, or have in some other way taken possession of, from the Latin and French. This mixture of different elements gives an enchanting variety to English style, that can be rivalled, we venture to say, by no other language now in existence. It enables an author, who has sounded all its powers, and mastered all its keys, to give his discourse the greatest precision, to express his ideas with the greatest fulness, to mark the slightest differences in the tones of thought, with the greatest readiness and force. And what can surpass the ever changing music which the language is shown to be capable of producing, both in verse and prose, in the works of the masters of English composition; in the varied and artful rhythms of Milton, and the stately cadences, scarcely less rhythmical, of Burke?

But to return to the volume now before us. A former number of the series contains an excellent selection from the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller, translated chiefly, and admirably translated, by Mr. Dwight. But Goethe and Schiller, preeminent as they were, must not be considered as exhausting the lyrical treasures of German literature. These two great names have been so often and so loudly sounded in the trump of Fame, that foreign students are apt to forget that Germany has other poets-and especially lyric poets—almost if not quite equally worthy of admiration. Germany is eminently a poetical land; the German heart is essentially lyrical; German feelings have been lyrical, and lyrically expressed from the very earliest periods of the national history. What were all the Minnesingers and Meistersingers of the Middle Ages, but so many lyrical warblers, through whose melodious voices the mighty German heart poured itself out? That bright beginning of German lyrical poetry has been followed by an unbroken series of poets whose genius has been lyrical, and whose works have been only a natural expression of German sentiment and feeling. Indeed, if we were to select any one word as more descriptive of the character of the German poetical literature than any other, it would be lyrical. Many of Goethe's most popular lyrical pieces are in substance the productions 3D S. VOL. XVI. NO. II.

VOL. XXXIV.

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