A speech from the nobles was then in order.

It seems that marrying and giving in marriage must have been the prevailing nuisance in those days, for the first request the nobles made was "that the Banns should not be called out so frequently." They then asked that their notes might run on time, and that they might have the "droit au chasse,” which signifies, the right to adroitly chastise all persons who owed them. To all these claims the king nodded assent, although some declare that he was nodding to the ladies in the gallery; others, that he had gone to the Land of Nod.

The Chancellor had quoted Latin in a way that would have thrown many modern professors quite into the shade; the clergy spoke wholly in Latin; the nobles prayed in Latin, and swore in French; while the commons were, through ignorance, confined to plain French. It was now in order for the Tiers État to speak; and as it was not proper for them to speak in their drawers, at least a score of these receptacles tumbled from their casings and fell to the floor. Par consequence, all having the floor and being on a par, M. le President could not decide who fell first. At last remembering that "in Adam's fall, we sinnèd all," he called upon Adam, a roturier, who mounted the rostrum. His speech was so pathetic and characteristic of his class, that I quote it almost entire.

"M. le President and your Honneurs: For the last four and thirty years every part of this grande terre has been terrified by the frequent visits of the king's troupes. At one time the Noblesse (who truly are no blessing to the people); at another, the Piquiers du Roi (who do pick a row with anybody, and without any provocation); again, the Hallebardiers (who, as their name signifies, are totally depraved), these, all these, your Worships, nous ont fait beaucoup de mal,- maliciously tied the fatal noose about our necks. The indignant and indigent laborer is compelled to pay for the hire of the man who beats him (and wages are higher in these days), who turns him out of doors, and compels him to lie on the bare ground and bear other evils on no better ground. When the indigent roturier, your Honneurs, has by the sale of the coat on his back managed to pay for his taille (coat-tail), and deems himself safe with that becoming and useful appendage, then comes a band of soldiers to see, your Worships, what more he has for them to steal. They order him to search the town for one fish-ball and other extravagances; they call for wine, and to his whining remonstrances, only say, why not? They are so ill-bred as to demand white bread when they know he has only black; and- but I cannot proceed― (groans). .

...

"In fine, from want of beasts of labor, men and women are obliged to yoke themselves to their carts (thus making ca(r)ttle of themselves), or else se mettre au joug, — have recourse to the jug, — that sweet Lethean balm for all our misery. Many fearing to be seized for non-payment of their tail, their much prized tail, appear only by night. They have cried for help to the notables, but they were not able to assist them; they now cry to you, and let their prayer be heard! Turn a deaf ear to them, and hunger and starvation stand ready to claim them as their subjects since you cast them off. Jacta est alea, they ejaculate for aliment!

"

The speaker here was completely carried away by his emotions, or rather by some friends, who caught him as he fell back, exclaiming, "Think not because I faint, my story is a feint!"

The whole assembly then declared that their tailles were up, and they would not be cheated. At the ensuing disturbance the king awoke from one of his constitutional naps, asked if it was not dinnertime, and being told by the constable that it was, adjourned the States-General to the next day. Thus ended the first day.

NEW BOOKS.

Greek and Latin Texts. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1861.

Or this series of publications, so convenient and valuable to classical scholars, the thirteen volumes herein noticed are all that have yet been received. The Greek authors are: Eschylus in one volume, and Euripides in three volumes, edited by Paley, and prefaced by a short list of verbs and nouns to be noted; Herodotus in two volumes, edited by Blakesley, and Thucydides in three volumes, edited by Donaldson, both of the authors prefaced by a short address to the reader. The Latin authors thus far published, each confined to one volume, are: Virgil, edited by Connington, building upon the labors of Heyne and Wagner; Cæsar's Commentaries and Cicero's De Amicitia, De Senectute, and Select Letters, edited by Long; Horace, edited by MacLeane, the text in use here at present; Lucretius, from the text of Lachman, revised by Munro, who follows his Preface by a list of those revisions of the text which his own researches authorize him to make.

These volumes supply a want which has been felt daily by every student of Latin and Greek. To those who are fairly started in their collegiate

course the desire becomes strong to continue after graduation the classical studies which have excited their interest as undergraduates. The older and clumsier editions, "with copious notes," seem little calculated to satisfy such a desire. Not only do their bulk and cost preclude the idea of using them with pleasure, or obtaining a full library at a reasonable rate, but most of their notes give only such assistance to the struggling student as Chesterfield offered to Johnson. There is a feeling, too, that we would like in more advanced years to try our strength unaided with those which in younger days were wont to give us odds and try us sorely even then. Our school-books seemed to call up the remembrance of old defeats rather than anticipations of future pleasure, and so we have laid them aside or sold them to our successors. The difficulty is at length removed by an edition which will enable us to enjoy in manhood the familiarity of those whom we dreaded and admired in youth. Pocket-editions are a treasure in busy America, and the effect of their dissemination will be marked. It is not alone the convenience of having small volumes in the popular flexible binding, not alone the clearness of the print and the compliment and incentive which the absence of notes involves, nor yet alone the purity of the text and the authority of the editors' names, which make the series attractive; but it is the combination of all these excellences in a library of volumes whose trifling cost is marvellous, which makes this success an inestimable contribution to the treasures of Greek and Latin classics. Such a series, if completed as it has been commenced, cannot fail to add to the facilities for private study and the variety of individual acquisition, and to do its part in making education a matter of life-long interest, and in transferring the ancient classics from the list of our established tasks to an appropriate place among the most elevating and lasting of our pleasures.

Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Harvard College. By JAMES WALKER, D. D. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1861.

ALL who have heard Dr. Walker in Harvard College Chapel will be glad to learn that a selection of the sermons there preached - sermons so wise and so strong — has been published and presented to a larger audience. We all remember the pleasure experienced when his gentle and dignified countenance was seen in the pulpit some Sabbath morning, when the students confirmed the tradition of graduates of many years, that no one felt it irksome to attend when Dr. Walker preached. In this volume we find the secret of the power which his sermons always have. It comes from the fact that he selects living subjects, that he grapples with those difficulties which have occurred most forcibly to us, and that to their solution he brings the strength of his intellect, the richness of his learning, and the terse clearness of his style. When he announces to an audience of young men his purpose to discuss such subjects as the Choice of a Profession and the Conditions of VOL. VIII. NO. 69.

17

Success, with others on which his Baccalaureate sermons were preached, it is natural that his hearers should feel that to the words of such a man, on such subjects, they cannot give too much weight. To study for years the character of his hearers, to appreciate their capacities and necessities, and then to devote unusual powers and acquisitions to meet those necessities in a manner suited to those capacities, is the one way in which sermons can be made effectual. A perusal of this volume will show that this was Dr. Walker's method; the verdict of congregations for many years will testify that his efforts have been crowned with unusual success.

Seasons with the Sea-Horses, or Sporting Adventures in the Northern Seas. By JAMES LAMONT, Esq., F. G. S. New York: Harper and Brothers.

We have been much pleased with the reading of this book. Mr. James Lamont is quite a "brick," and he writes like a fast sort of a youngish old man, with a dash of conceit and affectation running through his pages; but yet he has done his work well, and we have seldom or never read a book on wild sports which we liked better. Perhaps the game which he hunted, from its novelty, gives an additional zest to the book, for he went in a little tub of a sloop, so he tells us, clear up into a latitude of eighty degrees north, among the ice-fields and mountains of Spitzbergen, to hunt after walrus, seal, reindeer, white bear, and norwhales. His voyage was an exceedingly romantic one, and on the whole he tells about it in such a simple manner as to make it very interesting.

Starting away from Leith Roads in early June, coasting along the Norway shore as far north as Hammerfest in a season of the year when that at all other times dreary land wears an aspect of loveliness which more favored countries never know, with the practised eye of the tourist he detects, and with the easy self-sufficient way of a man of the world narrates, the peculiar beauties of Norwegian scenery. At a little fish-town, called Hammerfest, in the highest latitude of the habitable world, he and another blade, a Scotchman by the name of Lindsay, fit out a miserable old sloop, and with seven men and a cook proceed due north, some five hundred miles or more, till they reach the open fiords of Spitzbergen. As it was midsummer time, they could hunt and fish night and day, for there was no sunsetting for weeks. His descriptions of walrus and bear fights are given with much spirit. It was their custom to make no great use of the harpoon, but they chiefly depended on the bullet in their contests with the walrus. They would shoot him as he lay basking on a cake of ice, or even in the water, provided they could be sure of securing him before he sank. The seal he found more uncertain game than the walrus, as he would lie just on the edge of an ice-cake, sleeping with one eye open, so that it was impossible to get near enough to him to shoot him so dead that he would not roll off into

the water, and die, if die he must, in his own element, and be sure of a decent burial. These hunters were mean enough to attack the bear in the water, when he could neither get out of the way nor defend himself; otherwise, as they admit, he would have given them trouble, for of all wild animals, Mr. Lamont assures us that the white bear is most formidable.

Lamont has been a great traveller, and he lets his readers know all about it. He has hunted elephants in Asia, lions and tigers in Africa, reindeer in Europe, and thus his experience makes him master of the subject in hand. We think his book an interesting one for the sporting part of our community. These bucks, both old and young, will find in Mr. Lamont one of their own kind.

Mr. Lamont is somewhat of a naturalist, a Darwinite we infer. This, however, is a field on which it would have been as well had he never entered; for such time as he has spent in writing disquisitions to prove the gradation of species will not materially add to the interest of his book among the majority of readers.

COLLEGE RECORD.

ORDER OF PERFORMANCES FOR EXHIBITION, TUESDAY, Oct. 15, 1861.

1. A Latin Oration.

(Music by the Pierian Sodality.)

"De Fide." Samuel Eaton Fitz, Chelsea.

2. An English Version.

la Litterature Française." 3. A Greek Version.* 4. A Disquisition. Brooklyn, N. Y.

"Voltaire." From Demogeot's "Histoire de William Guptill Hubbard, Somerville. Edward Bangs Drew, Chelsea.

"Madame de Swetchine." James Vila Blake,

5. A Dissertation.* "The Present Condition of the Scandinavian Kingdoms." Nathaniel Appleton Prentiss, Cambridge.

6. A Dissertation. "Sylvester du Bartas." Charles Carroll Balch, Newburyport.

7. A Latin Version. From the Earl of Strafford's Defence. Francis Alexander Marden, West Windham, N. H.

8. An English Version.* From the Third Olynthiac of Demosthenes. Roscoe Palmer Owen, Bath, Me.

9. A Disquisition.* "Sicily under the Bourbon Kings." George Alfred Fiske, Roxbury.

* Not spoken.