tion in a grand epic. How is it in case of the Homeric poems? Grote fixes the siege of Troy at 1150 B. C., the composition of the Iliad at about 850 B. C., leaving an interval of more than three hundred years between the supposed time of the events and that of the poem, while the origin of written language he makes some two hundred years still later. The same writer supposes the Iliad to have been completed before the age of Pisistratus, while some think that the final compilation was made by order of that magistrate about 550 B. C. On any supposition, here is a broad land of shadows which each. man may enter to glean, and have the satisfaction of feeling that his gleanings derive most of their coloring and substance from the subjective processes of his own mind. What were the elementary forms of these poems we may never know, but we cannot conceive of the earliest efforts at composition as being extended. The stimulus is wanting to the necessary exertion. There could be no rivalry strong enough to prompt it. This must be a slow and gradual process, which in its progress would generate the material for some master mind of a coming age to seize upon, develop, and refine into the perfect and extended work. True, the absence of written compositions and other influences which divide the mind of our age may have favored the Greek epics. The plot of the Iliad did not call for genius. In this respect it falls below the Eneid or the Nibelungen Lied, far below the Paradise Lost. It is a simple narrative of great beauty. As answering the demands of a perfect ear for poetic numbers, it has no rival among epics. A nation with an ear fine by nature, left for centuries with a beautiful language addressed only to the ear, its poetical productions handed down through generations of men, embracing the genius and taste of the nation, trained as their only work to recite them in public, their language being the finest and most flexible the world ever saw, there could have concurred no more favorable circumstances for developing such a work as the Iliad. Not reduced to writing it could not pass through ten, fifteen, or twenty generations of reciters without receiving those changes of which the genius of the nation was capable.

The greatest difference in the circumstances producing the two poems was the change of religion in the one case. The

Greek nation developed itself under the influence of the original Polytheistic system. No violent change was wrought in their mythology or religion from its inception until long after the culmination of its development. In the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the system, though disbelieved by many, was but the natural growth of that which saw the dawn of the nation, much less was there any change brought in before the Homeric poems were complete. The polytheism of the German might have furnished an equal amount of material to adorn an epic had such poem been composed before the system was superseded by Christianity. We have learned comparatively little of German paganism; and if the Greek system had been superseded by a power so mighty as Christianity before it became crystalized in the Homeric poems, we should have had but the faintest traces of its existence, and the Iliad, if ever produced, would have been shorn of half its power. The monotheism of the Bible and its growth into Christianity is indeed more sublime, but it has only the sublimity of a distinct idea and a simple unity which withers as a blast all the foliage and flowers with which polytheism could have adorned an epic. Milton has indeed gained and held the highest summit of the sublime, but he has done this by breathing upon the dry bones of an extinct polytheism, and restoring them to a transient life, as Homer had used them when a living system. The same is true of all the systems of Western Europe except that of Rome; they became extinct before literature had taken their full and distinct impression, and yet we know enough of the Germanic system to conceive how its loss may have stinted the growth of its future epics. We have little of Walhalla compared with Homer's full and glowing accounts of the councils of the gods in cloud-capped Ida and Olympus, and yet we have enough to aid our conceptions as to what it might have been if developed in a great epic. The attributes of the gods of the North, while they fall not below those of the Greeks in heroism, have a mildness toward mortals, and a moral beauty unknown in Greek mythology. Freya is the Goddess of Love; her eye is an eternal spring; her neck and cheeks are light; she is a friend of sweet song, and loves to hear the prayers of mortals! Heimdall is the watchman of the gods, stationed at Heaven's bridge,

race.

that is, the rainbow; has an eye so sharp as to see five hundred miles, and by night as by day; and an ear so keen as to hear the grass grow in the fields and the wool on the lambs' backs. Such fragments now collected in the northern Eddas were excluded by the rise of Christianity. It is true that the elements of the pagan theology falling into the ground sprung up in an abundant growth of legends of saints and knightly heroes, but they never filled the chasm which had been left for them. Infidels despise them as being a part of Christianity, many believers as fungi deforming its otherwise beautiful exterior while he who unites the true Christian with the true philosopher views these things as indifferent to Christianity, but as marking a most interesting step in the development of the But although these legends occupy the place and keep up the very spirit of the ancient mythology in the minds of the common Germans, they cannot rise in our minds to the dignity of the similar stories of the pagan system—they are too trifling to be received into Christian society as belonging to it, and too near related to be received as foreign guests. Grote hits very well the characters of the Nibelungen Lied as compared with those of Homer. Though the Grecian freeman of the heroic age is above the degraded level of the Gallic plebes, as described by Cesar, he is far from rivaling the fierce independence and sense of dignity combined with individual force, which characterize the German tribes before their establishment in the Roman empire."* The great hero of the Greeks, Achilles, as seen in the very opening of the Iliad, is haughty and revengeful, submits in sullen silence to his chief, but retires cherishing thoughts of vengeance. Agamemnon is no better-resorts to a trick in the assembly involving the gods with him. Nestor rises indeed above this level, but still is privy to Agamemnon's artifice. Ulysses carries out his part of the plot by smiting the common people with his scepter, treating even the princes little better, beating Thersites upon the back so as to raise great welks, because he alone had dared to speak upon the other side of the question in debate. This shows a character perfectly servile in the people. Hector's last interview with Andromache presents indeed some of the noblest traits of human character, which shine

History of Greece, vol. ii, p. 78.

the more brightly from their solitude; but the heroes of the poem are throughout haughty, revengeful, and false, in this last respect showing themselves worthy ancestors of the modern Greeks.

On the contrary, Siegfried is one of the noblest and most beautiful characters ever drawn. Kriemhilde is an instance This controls her life even

of supreme devotion to a husband. for twenty-six years after her first husband's death. The pious acts of her widowhood, her marriage to Attila in order to avenge Siegfried's murder, and desire for revenge, which she cherishes with great moderation at first, but finally allows it to transcend all bounds, are but the proofs of her devotion to Siegfried. More beautiful domestic scenes are rare in palace or cottage than those in the account of Siegfried at home with his parents, Sigmund and Siegelinde.

It is the province of genius to form imperishable creations. The march of history may disprove the facts of such works, that of science may overthrow their philosophical or other theories, the progress of language may make them to modern readers somewhat like the fashions of the Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam in a New York drawing-room of to-day; but their life is still untouched. We might read all the English history extant, and the persons of Shakspeare's historical plays would remain in our minds the living embodiment of English history, so far as they go. The theology which Bunyan has made incarnate in Christian and his fellow-pilgrims is that which will live in our minds and hearts in spite of all didactic treatises. All the classic dictionaries in the world are without power to dissolve the heroes crystalized in our minds by the Iliad. And so the heroes of the Nibelungen Lied, Siegfried and Kriemhilde, Gunther and Brunhilde, Sigmund and Rudiger, and even Hildebrand, Attila, and Theodoric, though but slightly touched in the poem, will continue to visit our thoughts as conceived by the poet of the Nibelungen Lied and painted by Schnor, nor will any amount of reading on the subject greatly modify the images with their equipages and costumes connected with the court and convivial life, the chase, the tournament, the battle, and the domestic scenes of the time, as found in this work. The moral question how far the mind ought to be thus permanently peopled with images

drawn from the mythology, legends, and improbable traditions of early and barbarous ages, we shall not discuss. Suffice it to say, that time is better spent in the view of living pictures of the distant past, than in obtaining fictitious and distorted ones of our own age, making ourselves, our neighbors and friends much better or worse than the truth. Why have not our great American poets, our Bryants and Longfellows, gleaned more in the field of the middle age epic?

ART. VI.-KIDDER'S HOMILETICS.

A Treatise on Homiletics: Designed to Illustrate the true Theory and Practice of Preaching the Gospel. By DANIEL P. KIDDER, D.D., Professor in the Garrett Biblical Institute. 12mo., pp. 495. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1864.

THE public were advertised in advance of the appearance of Dr. Kidder's work, and though under other circumstances we should have received the announcement with but the common approval due to a good and generous undertaking-there being a goodly number of excellent works on this subject-yet in this we felt a lively interest. It is fit that at this time the attention of the Churches should be called to the sphere and dignity of the pulpit, destined as it is to a mission and power it has never yet achieved, and charged with an augmenting responsibility as the progress of the world and the foregleamings of Providence betoken a new era of evangelism. Besides, the subject of Homiletics has been by no means exhausted, and the suggestions of each age should be added to the previous stores, while the appearance from time to time of such works as the one before us is a timely admonition to the ministry of the claims and high functions of the sacred office. We further hail this work with a welcome as being the first of its kind issued from the Arminian press written from the Arminian stand-point. For preaching has not only a general character to maintain for sound eloquence and evangelism, but does of natural consequence also take on a denominational complexion