smoothing out one wrinkle, or straightening a single crook. Rural life here is not a shrub sickly and pining at its removal from its native earth. It is thriving and vigorous, its native soil clinging to its roots, not one branch dead, not one leaf withered.

There is, indeed, a class of critics, who will be likely sometimes to take offence at our author's phraseology; -I mean that sapient class, who think Homer's similes vulgar, because they speak of sheep and kine; - or Edmund Burke guilty of bad taste, because he so often draws illustrations from the mechanic arts;—or the Old Testament writings unrefined, because so full of rural sights and sounds. Such critics may possibly quarrel with our author's phraseology for the very thing we particularly like it for; namely, that sprinkling of rusticity, which sets off so aptly the subject treated. To have spoken of the homely objects here brought before us in the silken language of the album, would have been casing a raw country boy in the full dress of a city exquisite.

This book is wonderful for its exactness of truth. We could almost hold up our hand in court, in testimony that we had ourselves been actors in all its scenes. Every graduate of a country school, who takes it up, will, unless we mistake, find it not easy to lay it down, until he has completed its perusal. And the city-born and city-bred, who would know just what rural life is, had better read this book with all convenient despatch.

It may be thought we should offer some specimens in justification of our encomiums, which, being representatives of our feelings, have not, we admit, been very stinted. We have no great opinion of specimens in general, and more especially in the case of a book like this, so much of the value of which consists in little nice touches, which, separate from their connexion, make but an indifferent show. However, in compliance with custom, we will cite one passage, to the verisimilitude of which, by the way, our own experience can bear witness.

Abijah Wilkins was a "surly, saucy, profane, and truthless" boy. He had, for years, been a thorn in the side of successive schoolmasters. Mr. Johnson, this winter's master, had been apprized of this boy's little pleasant peculiarities, and was prepared for them.

"Well, the afternoon of the first day, Abijah thrust a pin into a boy beside him, which made him suddenly cry out with the sharp pain. The sufferer was questioned, Abijah was accused, and found guilty. The master requested James Clark to go to his room and bring a rattan he would find there, as if the formidable ferula was unequal to the present exigency. James came with a rattan very long and very elastic, as if it had been selected from a thousand, not to walk with, but to whip. Then he ordered all the blinds next to the road to be closed. He then said, 'Abijah, come this way.' He came. 'The school may shut their books and suspend their studies a few minutes. Abijah, take off your frock, fold it up, lay it on the seat behind you.' Abijah obeyed these several commands with sullen tardiness. Here, a boy up towards the back seat burst out with a sort of shuddering laugh produced by a nervous excitement he could not control. Silence,' said the master, with a thunder, and a stamp on the floor, that made the house quake. All was as still as midnight. Not a foot moved, not a 'seat cracked, not a book rustled. The school seemed to be appalled. The expression of every countenance was changed. Some were unnaturally pale, some flushed, and eighty distended and moistening eyes were fastened on the scene. The awful expectation was too much for one poor girl. 'May I go home?' she whined with an imploring and terrified look. A single cast from the countenance of authority crushed the trembler down into her seat again. A tremulous sigh escaped from one of the larger girls, then all was breathlessly still again. Take off your jacket also, Abijah. Fold it and lay it on your frock." Mr. Johnson then took his chair and set it away at the farthest distance the floor would permit, as if all the space that could be had would be necessary for the operations about to take place. He then took the rattan, and seemed to examine it closely, drew it through his hand, bent it almost double, laid it down again. He then took off his own coat, folded it up, and laid it on the desk. Abijah's breast then heaved like a bellows, his limbs began to tremble, and his face was like a sheet. The master now took the rattan in his right hand, and the criminal by the collar with his left, his large knuckles pressing hard against the shoulder of the boy. He raised the stick high over the shrinking back. Then O what a screech! Had the rod fallen? No, it still remained suspended in the air. O,I wont do so agin, I'll never do so agin, -- O,—O,—don't, I will be good, - sartinly will!' The threatening instrument of pain was gently taken from its elevation. The master spoke. 'You promise, do you?' 'Yis, Sir,-O, yis, Sir.' The tight grasp was

withdrawn from the collar. Put on your frock and jacket and go to your seat. The rest of you may open your books again.’ The school breathed again. Paper rustled, feet were carefully moved, the seats slightly cracked, and all things went stilly on as before. Abijah kept his promise. He became an altered boy; obedient, peaceable, studious. This long and slow process of preparing for the punishment was artfully designed by the master gradually to work up the boy's terrors and agonizing expectations to the highest pitch, until he should yield like a babe to the intensity of his emotions. His stubborn nature, which had been like an oak on the hills which no storm could prostrate, was whittled away, and demolished, as it were, sliver by sliver."

This we call pictorial writing; and if it does not tempt our readers to go straightway and get the book, it is pretty clear that we cannot prevail on them to do so.

ART. VI.1. A Complete History of the several Translations of the Holy Bible and New Testament into English, both in MS. and in print; and of the most remarkable Editions of them since the Invention of Printing. By JOHN LEWIS, A. M. The Third Edition. To which is now added, a List of various Editions of the Bible, and Parts thereof, in English, from the Year 1526 to the Present Time, extracted from Bishop NEWCOME'S "Historical View of the English Biblical Translations" ; with a Continuation by Another Hand. London: 1818. 8vo. pp. 415.

2. The Existing Monopoly, an Inadequate Protection of the Authorized Version of Scripture. Four Letters to the Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London; with Specimens of the intentional and other Departures from the Authorized Standard. To which is added a Postscript, containing the Complaints of a London Committee of Ministers on the subject; the Reply of the Universities; and a Report on the Importance of the Alterations made. By THOMAS CURTIS, of Grove House, Islington, Secretary to the Committee. London: 1833. 8vo. pp. 115.

3. Oxford Bibles. An Article published in "The British Magazine" for March, 1833. — Mr. Curtis's Misrepresentations Exposed. 8vo. pp. 19.

THE people of this country are as much interested in whatever relates to King James's Bible, as the people of England. It is the authorized, or at least the generally received and accredited version of the Scriptures, wherever the English language is spoken. In England and most of its dependencies, and in this country, it is looked upon, not so much as a translation of the Bible, as the Bible itself. Mr. Curtis's pamphlet mentioned above, and Mr. Cardwell's tract on the "Oxford. Bibles," contain much curious information respecting the present state of the text of this version, and the changes it has undergone since its first publication in 1611. We propose to spread this information before our readers; but as the subject has not been much attended to in this country, we have thought it would be well to introduce it here with a pretty full account, chiefly historical and bibliographical, of the version itself, and the principal English versions by which it was preceded.

The common authorities on the subject are, Lewis's "Complete History of the Translations of the Holy Bible and New Testament into English," which we have set at the head of this article, Johnson's "Account of the several English Translations of the Bible," and Archbishop Newcome's "Historical View of the English Biblical Translations." Lewis's work is particularly valuable for its references and citations; but on all questions of taste or criticism his judgment is entitled to but little weight. Johnson's account, though often adduced as an authority, and honored with a place among Bishop Watson's "Theological Tracts," is not only meagre and unsatisfactory, but full of inaccuracies. Newcome relied for his historical information almost wholly on Lewis, whom he often copies word for word.

Fox, the martyrologist, in the Dedication to his edition of the Four Gospels in Saxon, published in 1571, says, that "our countryman Bede did translate the whole Bible in the Saxon tounge; that he translated againe the gospell of St. John in the English tounge a little before his departure: that K. Alfrede translated both the olde and the newe Testament

into his own native language: and that if Histories be well examined, we shall finde both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wickliffe was borne as since, the whole body of Scriptures by sondry men translated into thys our country tounge; insomuch, that Thomas Arundell, then Archbyshop of Yorke and Chauncellour of England, at the funeral sermon of Queene Anne, who dyed 1394, as Polidore seith, did avouch, that she had the Gospells in the vulgare tounge with divers expositors upon the same, which she sent unto hym to be viewed and examined." Mr. Lewis shows very satisfactorily, that by Fox's "English tounge" we are here to understand the Anglo-Saxon, and that Queen Anne's Gospels were in this language, and not in English as it began to be spoken and written after the Conquest.

Sir Thomas More refers repeatedly in his Dialogues to the translations, "that were already well done of old before Wiclif's daies," and says expressly that "the hole byble was longe by fore his daies by vertuouse and wel-learned men translated into the englysh tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness wel and reverently red.' It is also observed in a Prologue, printed as Wiclif's in 1550, and said to be taken from a manuscript Bible then in the King's Chamber, that "the common latine bibles had more need to be corrected than had the english bible lately translated." On these authorities Lingard,* Charles Butler,† and others hold, that several versions of the sacred writings had been made into English, properly so called, by Catholic hands, and were already in circulation, before Wiclif's was undertaken. Others, among whom we may mention, as of the highest authority on this question, Lewis, ‡ Baber, § and Vaughan, incline to the opinion, that More must have intended Anglo-Saxon Bibles, or that he mistook the antiquity of some of the English Bibles extant in his time, or that he referred to English versions of parts of the Bible. "If,"

* History of England, Vol. IV. p. 267, English Edition.

Memoirs of the English Catholics, Vol. I. p. 221. Butler makes More say, in the extract given above, "the whole Bible," instead of "the hole (holy?) byble."

History of English Translations of the Bible, p. 44.

Historical Account of the Saxon and English versions of the Scriptures, previous to the Opening of the Fifteenth Century. Prefixed to his edition of Wiclif's New Testament.

Life of Wycliffe, Vol. II. p. 42.

VOL. XIV. N. S. VOL. IX. NO. 111.

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