We subjoin the following notice of the contents from the Richmond Compiler, with which we in the main concur.
From the Richmond Compiler.
We have already announced the appearance of the Literary Messenger for March 1836. We always read the work with pleasure, and have frequently awarded to it the high praise it so well deserves. In the present instance, we are forcible struck with a sort of merit so rare in publications of the kind, that, to a certain class of readers, our praise may sound like censure.
We hazard nothing in saying, that in the pages before us, there is more substantial matter, more information, more food for the mind, and more provocative to thought, than we have ever seen in any periodical of a miscellaneous character. A chapter from Lionel Granby—a jeu d'esprit from Mr. Poe—some of the reviews—and a page or two of description—together with a very few metrical lines—make the sum total of light reading.
We would not be understood to mean that the rest is heavy. Far from it. But we want some word to distinguish that which ought to be read and studied, from that which may be read for amusement only. He who shall read the rest of the number, must be very careless or very dull, if he is not edified and instructed. We will add, that his taste must be bad, if he is not tempted to receive the instruction here offered by the graces of style, the originality of thought, and the felicity of illustration, with which the gravest of these articles abounds.
This remark applies in all its force to Professor Dew's Address, which all who cherish a well-balanced love, at once for the Sovereignty and the Union of these States, will read with delight. Those who have yet to acquire this sentiment, will read it with profit. If there be any man who doubts the peculiar advantages, moral, intellectual and pecuniary of a system of federative harmony, contradistinguished from consolidation on the one hand, and disunion on the other, let him read, and doubt no more.
A subject of less vivid interest has been treated in a style at once amusing and instructive, by the author of the Essay on the Classics. No one can read that essay, without feeling that there must be something to refine and sublime the mind of man in the studies in which the writer is so obviously a proficient. Are these the thoughts? are these the images and illustrations? is this the language, with which the study of the classics makes a man familiar? Then it is true, as the poet has said:
| "Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros." |
"Mutatis mutandis," we would award the same general praise to an Essay on Education, and to the addresses from Judge Tucker of the Court of Appeals, and Mr. Maxwell of Norfolk. As to the continuation of the Sketches of African History, it is enough to say that it is a continuation worthy of what has gone before.
The reviews are, as usual, piquant and lively, and in that style which will teach writers to value the praise and dread the censures of the critic. Among the articles reviewed, we are pleased at the appearance of Dr. Hawk's historical work. We are delighted, too, to find him, though not a Virginian, coming to the rescue of Virginia, from the misjudged or disingenuous praises of men who knew not how to appreciate the character of our ancestors. No. It is a new thing with Virginians to lean to the side of power. Those who have taught her that lesson, have found her an unapt scholar. The spirit of Virginia tends upwards, and we have all seen