known and quoted, we shall choose for our extracts some portions of "The Storm-Ship."

"In the golden age of the province of the New Netherlands, when it was under the sway of Wouter Van Twiller, otherwise called the Doubter, the people of the Manhattoes were alarmed one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and rolled over the very roofs of the houses: the lightning was seen to play about the church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times in vain to strike its weathercock. Garret Van Horne's new chimney was split almost from top to bottom; and Doffue Mildeberger was struck speechless from his bald-faced mare, just as he was riding into town. In a word, it was one of those unparalleled storms that only happen once within the memory of that venerable personage, known in all towns by the appellation of the oldest inhabitant.'

They

"Great was the terror of the good old women of the Manhattoes. gathered their children together, and took refuge in the cellars, after having hung a shoe on the iron point of every bed-post, lest it should attract the lightning. At length the storm abated, the thunder sunk into a growl, and the setting sun, breaking from under the fringed borders of the clouds, made the broad bosom of the bay to gleam like a sea of molten gold. The word was given from the fort that a ship was standing up the bay."

#

*

"In the mean time the ship became more distinct to the naked eye she was a stout, round, Dutch-built vessel, with high bow and poop, and bearing Dutch colours. The evening sun gilded her bellying canvass, as she came riding over the long-waving billows. The sentinel, who had given notice of her approach, declared, that he first got sight of her when she was in the centre of the bay; and that she broke suddenly on his sight just as if she had come out of the bosom of the black thunder-cloud. The bystanders looked at Hans Van Pelt, to see what he would say to this report: Hans Van Pelt screwed his mouth closer together, and said nothing; upon which some shook their heads, and others shrugged their shoulders.

"The ship was now repeatedly hailed, but made no reply, and, passing by the fort, stood on, up the Hudson. A gun was brought to bear on her, and with some difficulty, loaded and fired by Hans Van Pelt, the garrison not being expert in artillery. The shot seemed absolutely to pass through the ship, and to skip along the water on the other side, but no notice was taken of it!-What was strange, she had all her sails set, and sailed right against wind and tide, which were both down the river. Upon this Hans Van Pelt, who was likewise harbour-master, ordered his boat, and set off to board her, but after rowing two or three hours he returned without success ; sometimes he would get within one or two hundred yards of her, and then, in a twinkling, she would be half a mile off. Some said it was because his oars'-men, who were rather pursy and short-winded, stopped every now and then to take breath, and spit on their hands; but this it is probable was a mere scandal. He got near enough, however, to see the crew, who were all dressed in the Dutch style, the officers in doublets and high hats and feathers not a word was spoken by any one on board;-they stood as motionless as so many statues, and the ship seemed as if left to her own government. Thus she kept on, away up the river, lessening and lessening in the evening sunshine, until she faded from sight, like a little white cloud melting away in the summer sky."

"Messengers were despatched to different places on the river; but they returned without any tidings-the ship had made no port. Day after day and week after week elapsed, but she never returned down the Hudson. As,

* New-York.

however, the Council seemed solicitous for intelligence, they had it in abundance. The captains of the sloops seldom arrived without bringing some report of having seen the strange ship at different parts of the river; sometimes near the Pallisadoes, sometimes off Croton Point, and sometimes in the highlands; but she never was reported as having been seen above the highlands. The crews of the sloops, it is true, generally differed among themselves in their accounts of this apparition; but that may have arisen from the uncertain situations in which they saw her. Sometimes it was by the flashes of the thunder-storm lighting up a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her careering across Tappaan Zee, or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay. A tone moment she would appear close upon them, as if likely to run them down, and would throw them into great bustle and alarm; but the next flash would shew her far off, always sailing against the wind. Sometimes, in quiet moonlight night, she would be seen under some high bluff of the highlands, all in deep shadow, excepting her top-sails glittering in the moon-beams; by the time, however, that the voyagers would reach the place, there would be no ship to be seen: and when they had passed on for some distance, and looked back, behold! there she was again, with her top-sails in the moonshine !-Her appearance was always just after, or just before, or just in the midst of unruly weather; and she was known by all the skippers and voyagers of the Hudson by the name of the Storm-Ship.'"

There is one observation we must not omit; it is, that the style of the work under review is not so pure and select as that of the "Sketch Book." We could multiply instances-the frequent use of the word get, of bloody as a verb, &c. We press this on the author's attention, not only for his own sake, but for that of literature in general, which his former work has so much benefited. Before the appearance of the "Sketch Book," all writers seem to have been either above or below considerations about style, diction, and such things. Poetry had just succeeded, not only in throwing off its trammels, but was endeavouring to rid itself even of a decorous garb. Prose had begun to follow the example; and the lighter departments of literature, especially those of criticism and essay-writing, were abandoning rapidly all qualities of purity or elegance, whilst they sought novelty in singularity, and strength in abruptness. The success of the "Sketch Book" was a reproof to some random writers, of talents at least equal to those of its author, but whose publications were lying on the shelf. The beneficial consequences of this practical lesson appear to us manifest in the periodical literature of the day; which, in such a light-reading age as the present, must be of paramount importance, being the first to lead the way in deterioration or improvement. The essays of the “Sketch Book" and "Bracebrige Hall" we reckon under the class of periodical literature, and indeed they answer the description much better than most articles of Magazine and Review. Therefore whatever progress the author makes in future, and we have no doubt it will be of improvement, he should at least look to preserve that peculiar species of excellency to which he is certainly most indebted for the rise of his fame.

O.

REPUBLIC OF PLATO.*

HAVING thus sketched an outline of the mode in which the warriors are to be trained, Plato discusses the means of securing their faithful performance of the duties assigned to them. He seems abundantly sensible both of the importance and difficulty of providing a security adequate to this purpose.

The first and foremost of all securities, in his opinion, is a good education. This indeed would, taken singly, be insufficient; but without it, all others would be vain and ineffectual. To supply the defect of certainty, which would still remain, and to ensure the good behaviour of the military class, Plato proposes one or two other expedients.

His first expedient is to cheat their understandings with a fictitious tale and imposture. "You and your arms, and all your array, are in reality sprung from the maternal bosom of the earth; you are, therefore, under the strictest obligation to protect both your mother and your brother-citizens, whom she also has brought forth and supports. Your fellow-citizens are all your brothers; but the Deity has mixed up a certain quantity of gold in your original formation, which adapts and entitles you to the post of command; in the bosoms of the rest he has placed brass and iron, by which they become fitter for husbandry and other subordinate functions. This gold will in most cases be transmitted by you to your posterity; but if in any instance this should not happen, and any one of you should produce a degenerate son, you must without mercy degrade him down to the lower castes. For an oracle has declared, that when brass or iron shall govern, the state will be destroyed." (pp. 121, 122.)

Such is the story which Plato proposes to impress upon the military class, in order to generate in their minds a brotherly feeling towards their fellow-citizens. By what means any persuasion of its truth can be created, he himself professes entire ignorance. Socrates (who is detailing the scheme) asks Glaucon if he knows any contrivance to persuade them to which the latter replies, that he knows no method of making any set of men originally believe such a story; but, could they once be convinced of it, their sons and posterity would naturally and infallibly adopt a similar persuasion. (p. 122.)

:

As a farther expedient for ensuring the good behaviour of the warlike class, Plato fixes their constant abode in tents§ close to the city; they are to possess no individual property, except in cases of the greatest necessity||; even their tent and their storehouse T are to be accessible to every one; they are to eat all together, and a sufficiency of victuals is to be provided for them by the rest of the city. They are to be informed also, that as they possess within them the pure

Continued from page 517, vol. iv.

† Οὔκεν τὴν μεγίστην τῆς εὐλαβείας παρεσκευασμένοι ἂν εἶεν, εἰ τῷ ὄντι καλῶς πεπαιδεύ μενοι εἰσίν: ̓Αλλὰ μὴν εἰσί γ ̓, ἔφη. Καὶ ἔγωγ ̓ εἶπον, Τῦτο μὲν ἐκ ἄξιον διίσχυρίζεσ θαι, ὦ φίλε Γλαύκων· ὃ μέντοι ἄρτι ἐλέγομεν, ἄξιον, ὅτι δεῖ αὐτὲς τῆς ὀρθῆς τυχεῖν παιδείας, ἥτις ποτέ ἐστιν, εἰ μέλλουσι τὸ μέγιστον ἔχειν, πρὸς τῷ ἥμεροι εἶναι αὐτοῖς τε καὶ τοῖς φυλαττομένοις ὑπ' αὐτῶν. p. 123.

† Οὐκ οἶδα ὁποία τόλμη, ἢ ποίοις λόγοις χρώμενος ἐρῶ. p. 121. § Οἰκήσεις στρατιωτικαί. p. 122.

[ ἂν μὴ πᾶτα ἀνάγκη.

Η ταμιείον.

gold from heaven, it would be both useless and sacrilegious in them to aspire after the corrupt coin which circulates on earth. (p. 124.) Nor ought they even to touch or drink out of gold or silver. On the nonpossession of individual property Plato lays such stress, that if this regulation were once overleaped, the military class would (he says) infallibly degenerate from their character of protectors, and become the tyrants and the worst enemies of their fellow-citizens.*

Adimantus, at this point, objects to Socrates, that from these severe regulations the situation of the military caste would become worse than that of any other citizens, and stript of every thing which is usually supposed to render life valuable. Socrates fully admits that the duty exacted of them would be hard, and their privations numerous; but in spite of all this, he thinks they might probably enjoy great happiness. Yet even if the case were otherwise, his scheme is directed to ensure the happiness of the whole, and that of any particular part must be surrendered without reserve, if required. (pp. 125-128.) Those rules must be adopted and enforced, upon every man, which may best qualify him for discharging his stated service to the community. But of all those circumstances which disqualify a man for the performance of his duty, great wealth or great poverty are the most important and operative. The governing caste, therefore, is to prevent most watch

* Οποτε δὲ αὐτοὶ γῆν σε ἰδίαν καὶ νομίσματα κτήσονται, οἰκόνομοι μὲν καὶ γεωργοὶ ἀντὶ φυλάκων ἔσονται, δεσπόται δ ̓ ἐχθροὶ, ἀντὶ συμμάχων τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν γενήσονται· μισ Εντές τε δὴ καὶ μισάμενοι, καὶ ἐπιβελεύοντες καὶ ἐπιβουλευόμενοι, διάξουσι πάντα τὸν βίον, πολυ πλείω καὶ μᾶλλον δεδιότες τὰς ἔνδον ἢ τὰς ἔξωθεν πολεμίους, θέοντες ἤδη τότε ἐγγύτατα ὀλέθρου, αὐτοί τε καὶ ἡ ἄλλη πόλις. Ρ. 124.

These plans for remodelling the temper and dispositions of the governing caste, will hardly fail to strike the reader as singularly insufficient, and even puerile, particularly the fiction which he designs to impress upon them. Plato himself avows that he knows not how to realize such a stratagem; and this confession attests his good faith, as unequivocally as the singularity of his provisions evinces his deep sense of the end to be secured. To intrust a particular class with irresponsible power, and then to insure their proper application of it, was the important problem. Plato saw that any man, or any class, if suffered to retain the usual propensities of their nature, and to contract the current associations, would be irresistibly tempted to abuse their power. He saw that this temptation could only be effaced by a system of education so thorough and searching as to monopolise the whole man, and to transmute effectually the governing principles of human conduct; by stifling all the separate ties of property and kindred; and by associating, somehow or other, the well-being of their fellow-citizens with their own sense of superior origin and merit. In short, unless the ruling class could be artificially elevated to the level of demigods, they would infallibly abuse an irresponsible power.

If Plato has been unsuccessful in solving this grand problem, he cannot at least be accused of glossing over the difficulty, and deceiving mankind into a belief that it is a point easily accomplished, and requiring little provision or contrivance, which is the usual method with modern political writers. According to these latter, the all-sufficient security against any misapplication of power is, to place it in the hands of men of high birth and large property. Such persons are, by an aristocratical thinker, represented as exempt by inheritance from the weaknesses of average humanity, and free from all temptation to maltreat others. Thus to frame a principle, merely for the purpose of sanctioning an established usurpation, does indeed facilitate the task of invention, because it leaves the difficulty unconquered and the end unattained. Plato will not condescend to this flattery of birth and opulence, nor can he stoop to impose upon mankind, by telling them that the person who has a great deal of property, will for that reason cease to desire any more, and will become not only innoxious, but even earnest and laborious (without any assignable motive) in acquiring the talents essentially requisite to a good ruler.

fully the growth either of one or the other. (p. 128.) "But if a state of war should arise, will not the energies of the state be crippled, without some superfluous wealth?" Plato replies, that if his state was engaged in hostility with two others, it could easily buy off and ally itself with one of its enemies against the other, by promising as a reward the whole booty to be captured. And even if its enemy were at the outset only a single city, yet that city would certainly be divided into parties, which would interrupt its unity, and these internal divisions would render it weaker than the well-arranged and harmonious republic of Plato. A city governed in the vulgar manner, scarcely appears to Plato worthy of the appellation of one whole. It is many cities, not one city.* Nor would he permit his own republic to increase farther than is consistent with the entire preservation of its unity. Having indicated the general arrangements and education of his republic, Plato thinks it unnecessary to specify the particular laws relative to matters of detail. Men thus trained and relatively situated would, he says, readily discover the best modes of proceeding. Could the system of education be once successfully realized, and produce one set of human beings such as he conceives, all the ulterior perfections of polity and legislation could not fail to branch out. But the strictest caution would be necessary to prevent this plan of education from degenerating. Were the judicious mixture of music and gymnastics intermitted, or were music of a different character allowed, a complete alteration in the sentiments of individuals, and thence a subversion of the state, might result.† (pp. 129-133.) There are some excellent remarks on the little benefit produced by improvement in regulations of detail, while the general system of government and education remains unsound; and on the folly evinced by ill-governed cities, who rejected with abomination any proposal of reform, and clung to those statesmen whose fame depended upon the preservation of the vicious system. (pp. 134-5.)

For the establishment of temples and religious rites, as well as those ceremonies which propitiate the dead, Plato refers to the authority of Apollo, whom he would consult upon the subject. (p. 136.)

Wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, would, in Plato's opinion, be the result of such a system throughout his republic. The two former qualities belong exclusively to the governors and the military caste; the two latter to every citizen. Temperance teaches every individual to recognize a limit to his appetites, and brings about an unanimous feeling as to the propriety of submission on the part of the subject, and supremacy on that of the governor. (pp. 142, 143.) Courage (belonging exclusively to the military) consists in a right and rational comparative estimate of the objects of human apprehension. (p. 140.) Justice consists in the performance of a single and exclusive duty by each individual; and it prohibits any one man from assuming a business which another is better qualified to exercise. The rules of justice are observed when the three sections of the city, the governors, their

* Εκάστη αὐτῶν πόλεις εἰσὶ πάμπολλαι, ἀλλ' ἡ πόλις. p. 130.

† Οὐδαμῶς γὰρ κινῶνται μουσικῆς τρόποι ἄνευ πολιτικῶν νόμων τῶν μεγίστων, ὡς φησί τε Δάων καὶ ἐγὼ πείθομαι. p. 132.

† Τὰ οὐτῷ πράττειν, καὶ μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν, δικαιοσύνη ἐστίν. p. 144.