CURRENT LITERATURE.
Materials and Models for Greek and Latin Prose Composilion. Selected and arranged by J. Y. Sargent and T. F. Dallin. (Rivingtons.)—The idea on which this volume is constructed is a very good ono. Passages from English authors have been put together (taken for the most part from Oxford examination papers). At the end of each reference ie made to ono or more passages of the great Greek and Latin prose writers in which there is some similarity of thought or subject. To give an instance, wo have the passage from the Spectator wherein is described the Indian's visit to "the great repository of souls,"—how he, pausing before a groat wood of tangled thorns, saw a lion crouching to spring ;- how ho found the stone which he stooped to pick up, the lion, and the thorn equally unreal. Here references are given to Plato, Republic,. 1814, and to the Philopatris of Lucian. A passage, again, on the death of Hampden, which we do not recognize, is illustrated by a reference to the "Agricola," ch. 45. To another, summing up the character of Banner, one of the Swedish generals in the Thirty Years' War, are appended references to Livy, xxi. 4, and Tacitus, Mist., i. 10. The passages are arranged in various sections, "historical," "rhetorical," roc., and a miscellaneous section is added for each language in which the student has to discover parallels for himself. "All composition in a dead language must be by imitation of forms already, as it were, stereotyped, but that is the best which insensibly recalls the tone of a classical author without either travestying his peculiarities or borrowing his phrases." There could not be a better conception of what is in- tended by good composition in the classical language, and the authors have given both teachers and learners a most excellent help for realizing it in this volume.
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