Need any well-informed Greek scholar be told, that the interchange or enallage of tenses is a phenomenon far enough from being uncommon in the Greek? For example; the Present is used for the Praeter and for the Future. It sometimes supplies the place even of the Imperfect, with its peculiar signification. The Imperfect is sometimes employed for the Aorists, and for the Present which denotes duration; the Perfect is employed as an Aorist, and often for the Present;-the Aorist is not unfrequently used for the Pluperfect, for the Future, and even for the Present; the Future is used for the Present, and often to designate, not what will be done, but what ought to be done. It would prolong the present discussion beyond all proper bounds, for me here to exhibit a detailed proof of all this. I must refer my readers, therefore, to my N. Testament Grammar, § 125; to Matthiae's Greek Grammar, Syntax, § 500 seq.; and to Winer's New Testament Grammar in relation to the use of the tenses. If he consults all these sources where examples are presented, no doubt can any longer exist, that such usages are spread far and wide over the domain of the Greek language; I will not say, so far as in the Hebrew, but I will venture to say -much further than any inattentive observer would even suspect.

Yet no one complains of the obscurity and ambiguity of the Greek on this account; and for a good reason, because little or no obscurity arises from this source. The context forces the

true sense upon the mind of the intelligent reader.

So was it, as I fully believe, with the Hebrew. He could manage as well, with his two original forms of tense, and the two adjectitious ones made by prefixing (the leading design of which was for the most part to make the appeal to the preceding context), and also the Participle and the Infinitive Mode, to express his views intelligibly and plainly, as we can with all our apparatus of may and can and shall and will and ought and must and should and could and would. That his language was more brief and energetic than ours, follows as a matter of course. We abide then by the old theory of the Hebrew tenses, at least until we obtain a better one. If Ewald's theory is true, it will not help us any in translating or even in understanding the Hebrew. It will embarrass us, on the contrary, in multitudes of places, because we shall be unable to reconcile them with it. Yet, with all my conviction that Prof. Ewald has failed to satisfy the just demands of philology, in the exhibition of his views,

I pay him the tribute of acknowledgment in respect to ingenuity and independence of mind. But I cannot go voluntarily into the dark path whither he invites me, until he lights up at least some brighter lanterns, or else brings the sun-beams to shine upon it.

ARTICLE VIII.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

By Robert B. Patton, Professor of Greek Literature in the University of New York City.

Ir cannot be doubted that the limited usefulness of our universities and colleges, and the circumscribed range of the studies and literary productions of their professors, are owing, in a great measure, to a deficiency of that invigorating intellectual aliment, which a large Library is intended to supply. The private studies of the professors cannot have that ample range which is necessary to give to their departments the interest and variety of which they are susceptible. Our public libraries, generally speaking, are not adapted to the present improved condition of the departments over which the professors preside; but present a condition of things far below the interesting point to which they have been raised by the elaborate researches of European scholars, the results of which are deposited on the shelves of transatlantic libraries. No wonder, then, that our professors shrink from an attempt so manifestly beyond their means to accomplish, and confine their literary labors to the most elementary productions. To the want of adequate libraries of reference, and not to an indifference to the great interests of literature and science, we must, in justice, attribute the much regretted fact, that our professors, who are not wanting, we believe, in talents or industry, or enterprise, are slow to venture into the arena of learned and profound authorship. We could present the names of more than one of our literary men, who have wept in secret over this desolation ;— who have travelled through the length and breadth of the land, to obtain access to some important work of reference, to enable them to put forth a work worthy of their station and the present condition of their

respective departments, and have returned to their homes in disappointment and despondency, abandoning for the present all hope of accomplishing their noble undertaking.

On the other hand, those who superintend the training of the youth in our universities and colleges are aware of the fact, that the most active and highly gifted minds among the students, having easily mastered the common course of instruction, and having nothing to invite them into the vast field beyond, sink into indolence, and not unfrequently into vice.

It is frequently asserted that the American people are eminently "a reading community." The truth of the remark is incontrovertible; and while we deplore the limited range of study and effort to which our literary men are necessarily confined, and acknowledge our vast inferiority to the countries of Europe on the score of public libraries and depositories of the learning of by-gone ages, we cannot but exult in the fact, that our private dwellings, whether in the crowded city, the retired village, or the solitary abode of the adventurer in "the far west," -from the splendid mansion of wealth and luxury, to the humble cot of indigence and toil—are furnished with popular literary works, and those, too, for the most part, of a decidedly moral and religious character.

This circumstance, for which we are mainly indebted to the benign operation of our common school system, has already exerted a propitious influence in familiarizing our whole population with the advantages of literary culture, and in creating a thirst for more extended knowledge and higher intellectual cultivation. And what has been the result? Our whole country, with but few exceptions, presents, as it regards our literary culture, the aspect of an almost unbroken level. "So high shalt thou ascend, and no higher" must be said to every aspiring student, longing to reach the more elevated regions of comprehensive and successful research.

Thus, if we mistake not, the very fact to which, as citizens of this favored land, we point with honest exultation, as the fruit of our free institutions, now calls upon us with a voice that cannot be mistaken, to complete the noble structure of which we have laid the broad foundation, by establishing a vast storehouse of learning, an ample library of reference, by means of which the level of general information may, to a certain extent, be broken up ;-not by depressing any portion below its present elevation, but by affording an opportunity for such portions

as may demand it, to raise themselves above the surrounding crowd. And this, we contend, is the very essence of our liberal institutions to furnish opportunities and facilities for a generous competition, and a free development of talent, in every department of enterprise, whether physical or mental.

Again, the stupendous literary collections of Europe owe their origin, or, at least, their present imposing character, to munificent royal endowments and princely patronage, or positive legislative enactments, adapted to the genius and character of European governments, but which, we fear, will be looked for in vain, under a government like that of which we boast. One fact alone will show how such enactments and patronage may gradually swell the size of a public library, and secure to it the possession of the literature of the day in every department. The fact alluded to is this, that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England, and that of Edinburgh in Scotland, are entitled, by the existing copy-right law of the realm, to receive a copy of every printed work of which a copy-right is secured. But how different in the aspect of our political institutions! The very feature of our political character in which, as Americans, we have occasion to exult, is at variance with public endowments, foundations, or enactments, except so far as the common weal is literally concerned, and each individual member of the community, as well as the whole mass of our population, is personally and vitally interested. This broad line of demarkation, whose existence we should certainly deplore, if we could avail ourselves of no other resources, but which, under existing circumstances, we regard as essential to our political welfare, constitutes one of our strongest arguments in favor of the private munificence to which we appeal for the accomplishment of this noble object. It furnishes even now an imposing spectacle to the European statesman, to behold the numberless enterprises in which our citizens cheerfully embark their time and wealth and labor, calculated to promote the moral and religious welfare of our community, without a helping hand or a cheering smile from "the powers that be.” Will, then, our citizens shrink from an enterprise which proposes, as its aim, an elevated standard of literary character and intellectual worth throughout our country,-impressed as they must be with the conviction that, if it be not accomplished by private munificence, it will never be accomplished at all. We may still be left to indulge our despondency, and weep over

the literary desolation of this fair field, where learning and religion, literature and the arts, might so easily find a common sanctuary.

Again; it is obvious to the sagacious observer, that this country is to become the seat of war between Christianity and her foes, of every form and every degree of pretension. Already, in fact, it is so. And Christians must be prepared to maintain the external defence of our holy religion, by the same weapons by which she ever has been, and will be assailed by her enemies, namely, those which are furnished by profound and extensive research.

We wish, however, to direct the attention of our fellowcitizens to arguments of a more specific character, and less generally appreciated, derived from the peculiar and unrivalled condition and prospects of our large commercial cities.

These cities, if we mistake not, are soon to be numbered among the greatest commercial emporia in the world. And what an assemblage of ideas crowd upon the mind in conjunction with this interesting supposition! Who does not know that a great commercial city cannot, in the nature of things, be exclusively and merely a commercial city? A demand for skill in the various collateral arts, a thirst for general information, a desire to gratify the innate sense of beauty in the decorations of our public and private edifices, public spirit, and an honest pride of character, these are but a few of the concomitant circumstances that necessarily call forth indefinitely the energies. of such a city, in every department of labor and enterprise, and direct them far beyond the confines of mere trade and com

merce.

To the population, then, of our cities, their resources, their practical and ornamental arts, their intellectual and corporeal industry, their literary and scientific culture, who will dare to assign a limit? What mind can comprehend, at one view, the restless activity, the increasing ferment, the continual flow of wealth, into these grand reservoirs and the countless streams that shall again flow forth, in some form or other, as a blessing or a curse, to every portion of our country and of the globe?

To what, now, must we look, in conjunction with religion, to preserve us from the dominion of error and infidelity, to create and sustain a sense of our public dignity, to give efficiency and a laudable direction to our untiring enterprise, to raise us above mere animal existence to the character and aspirations of an inVOL. XI. No. 29.

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