Dr. Channing has ever written. The subject was admirably suited to the peculiar cast of his mind. To set forth Bonaparte's moral character in its true light, did not require, as in the case of Cromwell and some others who have figured largely in history and have left an ambiguous reputation behind them, profound investigation, coolness of judgment, and intimate acquaintance with the rules of historical inquiry. It needed the combination of a heart glowing with love to the human race and hatred of every species of wrong and oppression, with an intellect that could express its convictions in earnest, burning words. These qualities Dr. Channing possessed in a high degree. And he has used them very effectively in his portraiture of Bonaparte. He stripped from this idol of military ambition its halo of false glory and laid bare its hideous features, at a time when it was the object of almost universal homage. He drew a picture of Bonaparte's desolating selfishness and oppressive tyranny in colors so true and glowing, that it contributed in no small degree to excite that deep abhorrence of his character and conduct which now so generally pervades the friends of humanity all over the world. Against the judgment pronounced by Dr. Channing on the great modern conqueror, the only defense of him now set up is that the reviewer's stand-point is not that of the historian; that Bonaparte was only the exponent of the military ambition of France, and that his wars and unrelenting tyranny were the result of the circumstances in which he was placed. This apology for Bonaparte may satisfy his French historians and their admirers. But it will never be accepted beyond that circle. It is impossible for any one who loves the welfare of his race to read Bonaparte's history from the period when he seized the reins of supreme power at the commencement of his consulship till they were wrested from his grasp by the combined armies of Europe, without coming to the conclusion that he was in the appropriate sense of the term a tyrant a man who remorselessly trampled the rights of his fellow beings under foot, and in accomplishing his schemes of selfaggrandizement made no more account of their lives than if they had been so many insects. The question will be inevitably forced upon his mind, if Bonaparte is absolved at the tribunal of history, what name in the annals of human guilt can be condemned?

Besides the reviews of Milton and of Scott's Life of Bonaparte, Dr. Channing published one also of Fenelon's writings. We pass over this last production without offering any remarks upon it, as it contains nothing very interesting, or which the author has not repeatedly expressed in various portions of his other works.

The next division of Dr. Channing's writings consists of sermons and tracts on Unitarianism. With this class of his works we have no sympathy whatever. His delineations of Calvinism

are generally mere caricature and gross misrepresentation. We look in vain for a fair exhibition of the doctrines and arguments of his opponents. There is in all these polemical tracts a harsh, bitter spirit of invective, which seems utterly alien from the usually kind and benevolent disposition of the author. Moreover, Dr. Channing was only an indifferent reasoner, especially on subjects which in order to be successfully investigated demand nice discrimination and close, protracted, subtle argumentation. His mind, as we have already said, was intuitive rather than logical in its cast. He was an eloquent writer, a good declaimer, but not a great reasoner. Hence in his controversial works we have plenty of sentiment and declamation, but no great amount of forcible, consecutive reasoning. Yet this class of his writings is not without considerable merit. They are productions well adapted to make a popular impression. We refer particularly to his sermons and smaller tracts on Unitarianism. These are written with all that earnestness of thought and vigor of style which have made their author such a favorite on both sides of the ocean. They are, therefore, well fitted to prejudice the mass of readers against orthodoxy. The Unitarians are busily engaged in circulating them through the land. In this they act wisely. For they have produced nothing else that can compare with them in fitness to accomplish the object they have in view.

From the polemical writings of Dr. Channing we pass to another class of his works,-his essays and sermons in behalf of those philanthropic enterprises of the age which aim at the extinction of war, slavery, and other kindred evils. These form decidedly the best part of his writings, with the exception of his article on Bonaparte. In these productions Dr. Channing appears altogether to the best advantage as a writer and a Christian. We know nothing of their kind in the English language superior to them. There is none of that mystic sentiment and vague declamation which deform, in a greater or less degree, most of his other writings. His thoughts and language are those of a man bent on speaking in the most effective manner. Fine writing and ambitious flights of oratory are lost sight of, and the wrongs and sorrows which man inflicts on man occupy his whole attention and call forth his withering indignation. To the works of no author can the oft quoted lines of Grey, "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," be applied with more propriety than to many passages in these productions of Dr. Channing. Nor is their ardent, effective eloquence their only merit. They are infused throughout with the spirit of a tender and Christian philanthropy. They seem to flow from a heart and mind filled with the benevolence of the New Testament. While they breathe the deepest abhorrence of the oppressor and the destroyer of his species, they manifest the warmest desire for his rescue from guilt and his restoration

to innocence and happiness. They are remarkably free from that harsh censure and unsparing denunciation which deform the pages and abridge the influence of so many other works which of late years have been published on the same subjects. With one of these publications we are particularly pleased, his largest treatise on slavery, which was published in 1835. There have been many books written on this subject, which, regarded as specimens of close logical reasoning, are greatly superior to this. But in point of adaptedness to secure the object at which it aims,— to awaken the public mind to a clear perception of the injustice and misery of the evil on which it had so long looked with indifference or complacency, to overwhelm the slaveholder with a sense of his guilt, to show that the slave, degraded as he is, is yet a man and entitled to the rights of a human being,-it stands at the head of antislavery publications. It is, indeed, one of the best books that have ever appeared in our country. It will hide a multitude of Dr. Channing's theological and literary sins.

Another portion of Dr. Channing's writings consists of sermons which he delivered in the ordinary course of his ministry. With some of these we are much pleased. The sermons on the character of Christ, the evidences of Christianity, the evil of sin, self-denial, immortality and a future life, are beautiful compositions. Of course there are many sentiments in them that an orthodox man must condemn in unqualified terms. Yet considered in a literary point of view, they are productions of great merit. They possess in a high degree simplicity and elegance of style, beauty and correctness of thought, and are fine expositions. of the subjects they are intended to illustrate and enforce. Still, it must be confessed, that like nearly all the sermons of Unitarian preachers, they are deficient in warmth of feeling, vigor of imagination and whole-souled earnestness,-defects which, in the case of the author, are undoubtedly to be attributed more to the frigid, negative system of Christianity he embraced than to a naturally cold temperament.

There are also some occasional discourses among the works of Dr. Channing which are of a superior order. The sermons on the ministry for the poor, and those on the deaths of Drs. Tuckerman, Follen and Worcester, are deserving of high praise. The three last are beautiful tributes to the memory of men whose names will be long cherished, not only by their immediate friends, but by multitudes in every part of our land.

The remainder of Dr. Channing's writings consists mostly of lectures which he delivered on various occasions before Lyceums and other similar literary associations. These discourses were received with high commendation when they were delivered, and since their publication they have deservedly increased the fame of their author. Some of them have been reprinted in England,

and have been received there with warm praise by that class of society for whose benefit they were designed.

Many authors of celebrity owe their reputation almost exclusively to their style, and many great thinkers from their deficiencies in this respect are unknown out of the small circle of a few select admirers. Dr. Channing's style is the cause of much of the praise he has received, and also of much of the censure that has been bestowed upon his writings. If candidly examined, it will be found to afford good reason for both. In many respects his style is a very commendable one. It is forcible, brilliant, and often eloquent. It is uniformly elegant and refined, and never runs into coarseness or vulgarity. Neither does it ever flag and become tame and common-place. Through the whole of his writings there is a sustained vigor and earnestness of language which few writers could maintain so long. As in the case of all authors of real merit, his style is the very image of his soul, and often seems well adapted for the subjects upon which he wrote. But while it possesses these commendable qualities, it has equal deficiencies. It is too uniformly on an elevated key, and hence from its want of repose often wearies the reader's attention. Aiming too much at elegance and refinement, it sometimes runs into mysticism and obscurity. It is altogether too ambitious and rhetorical in its structure. Not that it is deficient in simplicity, but its simplicity is too artificial to please. Occasionally it becomes even stilted, reminding us of the remark which has been made respecting him, that he aims to speak on a high key, but does not strike it with much power. It is, moreover, greatly wanting in that naturalness and those picturesque, idiomatic expressions, which form the charm of the style of Burke and Macaulay, and in fact, of most of the great writers of England. Instead of making the common language of life, divested of its vulgarities, the groundwork of his diction, the author employs those smooth beautiful words, both of foreign and native origin, which sound harmoniously to the ear, and which for a while may please, but, finally, pall upon the taste, and become as tiresome as a banquet of honey. In reading for any great length of time Dr. Channing's productions, the remark is often called to mind which Sir James Stephens made respecting the style of Isaac Taylor, "the sense aches for the even flow of a few plain words quietly taking their proper places."

ART. III.THE EARTH AND MAN.

The Earth and Man. Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography in its relation to the history of mankind. By ARNOLD GUYOT, Professor of Physical Geography and History at Neuchatel, Switzerland. Translated from the French by C. C. FELTON, Professor in Harvard University. Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln.

It is a very unpretending little volume, the title of which we place at the head of our paper; but it possesses unusual interest in several particulars, and we feel anxious therefore to bring it to the knowledge of all our readers. Without engaging in any discussion of its topics, we would point out, in some detail, those views of the author which seem to us to embody the principal merits of an admirable book.

Both the author and the subject of the work are somewhat new to us. Of the writer's personal history our only knowledge is derived from some of the notices which accompany the volume. From these we gather that Prof. Guyot was a colleague of Agassiz in the University of Neuchatel; and that he had pursued his investigations, and formed his views, of these subjects, under the stimulus of intercourse with the highest authorities, Humboldt and Ritter. We should be glad to know something more of the circumstances which have removed him from those congenial and attractive scenes to a residence among us, but, in the absence of any such information, can only conjecture that his removal may have been one of the disastrous results of the political commotions, by which that canton has been recently so seriously agitated.

The volume itself was prepared for the press under circumstances of peculiar interest. It was originally spoken, and formed a course of lectures, in the French language, in Boston. The author's views awakened so much interest in that community as to call forth a general and urgent request for their publication in English. This labor the author was encouraged to undertake by the generous proffer of assistance from a most competent quarter, Prof. Felton; who has thereby laid the American public under obligations which we take pleasure in acknowledging. The lecture of the evening was thus on the next day written by the author, and then translated by his kind coadjutor. We have seldom known an incident more favorable to the reputation of that community for an elegant and genial culture, than the prompt appreciation of scientific merit which demanded this work, and the courteous and friendly aid which brought it before the public.