lamp, the spirits will sink too far ever to be recovered again; and the remaining part of life will be too short for so total a change as must be made. other, before they arrive at old age. To the aged, and those who are passing off the stage of life, I have only two things to recommend, if they would make the last bour as easy, uninterrupted, and free from pain as may be. The first is, that they would avoid the injuries of the weather, as much as ever they can. The blood of the aged is ever most certainly poor and viscid; their perspiration little or none at all; and their concoctive powers weak. And conse quently they must be subjected to, and suffer by, the weakest injuries of the weather. Therefore I advise such to keep home, provide warm rooms and beds, and good fires, whenever the sky lowers, winds blow, or the air is sharp. Such are not to expect to raise, improve, or exalt their constitu tions or health. Freedom from pain, to prevent the vital flame being extinguished by accidents, and to have it burn as clear, and as long as nature, at their age, has designed it should, is all they ought to aim at. Exercise is only to purge off superfluities. If they, therefore, be careful not to exceed, they will want none, nor would it much contribute to their ease. For in old men the bones petrify; the cartilages and tendons turn into bones; and the muscles and nerves into cartilages and tendons; and all the solids lose their elasticity, and turn, in a great measure, into that earth they are going to be dissolved into. So that the solids wanting elasticity, exercise can do but little to shake off the load. It will therefore be enough for such, to air themselves when the sun lights them, and the summer breezes can refresh them; or, if they would lengthen out their days, to remove to a warmer climate, by which they may live as long as the crow.-The second thing I would advise such, is, to lesson their diet gradually, as hey grow older, before nature has orced this diminution upon them. This is a powerful mean to make their old age green and indolent, and to preserve the remains of their senses to the very last. By this alone, Cornaro lengthened out his days, and preserved his senses, in a great measure, entire, to a hundred years. He gradually lessened his diet so far, that, as his historian informs us, he came at last to live on the yolk of an egg three days. I will not take upon me to advise others, in what measure, either of time or quantity of food, they ought to diminish. But this, I think, they ought to consider, that since it is certain aged persons become children, as to the weakness of their digestions, they ought to diminish, as children increase in their food, from weaker to weaker, and from less to less. For as their solids are unelastic, their concoctive powers weak, their perspiration little, and the expenses of living scarcely any, their repairs (not to overlay the spark of life remaining) ought to lessen proportionally. And it is to the neglect of this, in aged persons, that those rheums, catarrhs, wind and colicks, loss of memory and senses, those aches and pains, and all that dismal black train of miseries, that wait on long life, is mostly owing; which, by a discreet and timely lessening their diet, might, in a great measure be prevented." In these passages from Cheyne my readers will have observed the beneficial effects which he attributes to maigre days. It may be interesting to them to hear the opinion of the Rev. William Jones on the same subject; and two such testimonies, I trust, will not be disregarded. They are the more important, because of the injurious effects to health which persons are so apt to apprehend from abstipence, when practised in a religious view. : "I who am obliged to live by rule, and am hitherto alive beyond hope, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 240. have seen the end of many younger and stronger men, who have unhappily presumed upon their strength, and have persevered in a constant habit of eating and drinking without reserve, till their digestive powers have failed, and their whole constitution has been shattered; so that either death or incurable infirmity has been the consequence. "What can be the reason why the French people are so much less troubled with distempers, and are so much more lively in their spirits, than the English? A gentlemau of learning, with whom I had the pleasure of conversing at Paris, made this observation on the subject: You English people give no rest to your faculties: you take three meals every day, and live in constant fulness without any relief? thus nature is overcharged, crudities are accumulated in the vessels of the body, and you fall early into apoplexies, palsies, insanity, or hopeless stupidity. Whereas, if we are guilty of any excess, our meagre days, which are two in a week, bring us into order again; and if these should be insufficient, the season of Lent comes in to our relief, which is pretty sure to answer the purpose.' "It is much to be lamented, and we are suffering for it in mind and body, that in these latter days of the Reformation, we have been so dreadfully afraid of superstition, that we have at length discarded every wholesome and necessary regulation; and because we do not whip our skins like the monks of antiquity, we stuff them till they burst. The consumption of animal food in England is by far too great for the eujoyment of health, and the public good of the community." Having, I fear, been already too prolix in my remarks and citations, I must abruptly conclude them for the present: but the subject is, to my mind at least, so highly useful, that I shall probably take another occasion, with your permission, of resuming it. 5 H K. REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. THE light which was thrown by Lowth upon the nature of Hebrew poetry, the discoveries which he made of its structure and character, and the skill and taste with which he brought out its ill-understood, though admitted, beauties, are too universally acknowledged to need our feeble praise. There are few scholars who have not felt and owned their debt to that enlightened critic, who may be regarded as the first inventor of the canons by which the pretensions of the primitive poetry of the East must now be measured. Those, however, who have accompanied him with most delight through the poetical parts of the Old Testament, were not, in general, prepared to follow up these researches in the New, when the present author invited them to the task. It was felt, that half of that volume consists of epistles, which are too familiar a style of composition, and the remaining half, in a great measure, of narratives, which are too simple, to be suspected of much embellishment; so that there only remains the book of Revelations, to which a critic would naturally turn for specimens of New-Testament poetry. Yet it was obvious to every reader, even of the English Tes tament, that the songs of Mary, of Zacharias, and of Simeon, breathe the very spirit of ancient poetry; that they are not only dressed in the figurative pomp, but formed in the antithesis and parallelism, by which it is characterized. It was obvious, also, that the beatitudes in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount are as artificial in their arrangement as they are poetical in their conception; that many others of bis divine sentences are cast, if we may so speak, in the same mould; and that some passages, even in the Epistles, particularly the Epistle of St. James, are laid out after the same model, and follow the structure of Moses and the Prophets. With these obtrusive examples occurring in various parts of the New Testament, it was natural to presume, that there might be other passages, in which the poetical structure was equally real and certain, though from the different notions of poetry introduced by metrical measurement and rhyme, and also from the prosaic distribution of it in our division into verses and chapters, besides something which is always lost by the babit of reading a work in translations, it might require some skill to discern, and still more to explain it. For how are these solitary specimens of a poetical form and manner to be accounted for? Are we to suppose, that, when the Holy Ghost visited Mary or Zacharias, he made them poets; and that, when he left them, they relapsed to their former level of ordinary feeling and conception, and lost, not only their holy inspiration, but their solemn diction also, and their command of dignified sentiment and expression? Is it not more probable, that the language of ancient psalmody was a language familiar to them, and that, by virtue of this familiarity, the possession of a sacred subject was almost identical with the possession of a style and manner suited to express it with propriety, according to the received method of the scribes and prophets of old? There is, at least (it must be acknowledged), much reason and much verisimilitude in the following modest representation of our author. "The character and complexion of Hebrew poetry have been very com petently preserved in that body of Greek translations, composed at different times, by different persons, and known under the name of the Septuagint Version. Nor should it be omitted, that the Hebraic parallelism occurs also, with much variety, in the Apocrypha: the book of Ecclesiasticus, for example, is composed of pure parallelisms: the book of Wisdom, too, affords fine specimens of this manner, though it is commonly overlaid by the exuberant and vicious rhetoric of the Alexandrine Platonists; while, not to mention other parts of the Apocryphal writings, in Tobit and the books of Maccabees there are examples both of lyric and didactic poetry, clothed in parallelisms which will hardly shrink from comparison with several in the genuine Hebrew Scrip tures. One other fact remains; namely, that, in the sententious formula of the Rabbinical writers, the manner of Hebrew poetry is frequently observed with much accuracy, though with a manifest declension of spirit. "The above circumstances appear worthy of consideration: and, if attentively considered, they may, probably, both suggest and authorize a few anticipations respecting the style of the New Testament. Here we have been examining a mode of composition, applied almost exclusively to sacred sub. jects; admitting considerable varieties; and, in all those varieties, more or less prevalent throughout the entire Old Testament; a manner, alike perfect in the sublime ode, the tender elegy, and the didactic aphorism; carefully retained, by the most ancient translators of the Hebrew Scriptures; happily imitated, by a succession of Jewish writers, whose authority is all but sacred; fondly, though feebly, cherished by those Rabbinical teachers who preceded, and who survived the destruction of the Jewish polity; and, what is of considerable importance in our present inquiry, a manner completely naturalized in the Greek language, by the Alexandrine versionists; and even by original Greek writers, in some of the books termed Apocryphal. ly asked, Is it in any degree probable "Now, the question may be confidentthat such a manner should have been abruptly and altogether discarded in the New Testament? Does not the very supposition run counter to all the analogies afforded by the works of Him who was the inspirer of both portions of the Sacred Volume? In the wide expanse of nature, there is no abruptness of transition. The forms, indeed, and the colourings, are infinitely various; but so harmonically blended, and so nicely shaded off, that it is impossible to define, with accuracy, where one begins, and where another ends. And if this be so in God's inanimate works, shall we not much more expect the same keeping, the same congruity amidst variety, throughout his living world? In the latter, we cannot suppose that even the style and manner were fortuitous: design pervades the whole matter of both Testaments; and unity is the soul of that design; but the matter and manner of Scripture are, beyond the matter and manner of any other body of writings, most intimately connected; so intimately connected, that unity of matter demands and implies, in this divine book, a correspondent unity of manner. And, on this ground alone, we may reasonably conclude, that a manner largely prevalent in the Old Testament, cannot be relinquislied in the New. "This question may, however, be regarded in another and a more popular light. Let us only consider, what the New Testament is, and by whom it was written. It is a work suppletory to, and perfective of, the Old; composed under the same guidance that superintended the composition of the Old; written by native Jews, Hebrews of the Hebrews; by men whose minds had, from infancy, been moulded after the form and fashion of their own sacred writings; and whose whole stock of literature (except in the case of St. Paul, and probably of St. Luke and St. James) was comprised in those very writings. Now, surely, it is improbable in the extreme, that such men, when they came to write such a work, should, without any assignable motive, and in direct opposition to all other religious teachers of their nation, have estranged themselves from a manner so pervading the noblest parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, as the sententious parallelism. Of such an estrangement, no less can be said than this, that it would imply a constraint and pressure upon the natural movements of minds so disciplined and trained, altogether inconsistent with that ease, and freedom, and simplicity, which characterise the style of the New Testament, from its commencement to its close. While, with respect to Him, who spake as never man spake, and who had all varieties of language at his command, it was so much his usage, in every allowable method and degree, to accommodate his manner to the tastes and prejudices of his countrymen, that bis departure from it in this instance, would have been perhaps a solitary departure." pp. 75-78. From this statement it results, that in the opinion of Mr. Jebb, the artificial arrangement in parallel sentences would to a Jewish teacher be the natural order of construction, and that the arrangement which we call natural, but which is in effect a grammatical arrangement, would be to him constrained. "But this, after all, is no question of probabilities: it must be decided by an experimental appeal to facts; and facts bearing on the subject are neither dif. ficult to be found, nor hard to be stated. It has been, for many years, my first literary object to search the Scriptures of the New Testament, for facts of the nature alluded to; for passages, namely, which bear evident marks of intentional conformity to the Hebrew parallelism. A selection of those passages I have examined with all the attention in my power; and the result of my examination, I propose to give in the fol. lowing pages of this work." p. 79. Such is the scope of Mr. Jebb's volume. Such are the aim and tendency of this truly luciferum experimentum, with which he has opened a new field of inquiry; and, as we have no doubt that he will be followed by many fellow-adventurers, we thus early give our advice to every one, who is at all interested in these researches, to possess himself of an interleaved Bible, for the sake of entering on the blank side every such new translation of any particular passage as, being literal in its phraseology, has the advantage of exhibiting in a happy manner the turn and spirit of the original. Such a Bible needs not be long unused: for some ingenious and valuable specimens may be collected from the volume before us, and others will no doubt be soon added; a judicious selection from which cannot fail to throw much light upon the sacred text. First, then, it should be known, that with the profoundest respect for the memory and services of Lowth, the author denies altogether the existence of synonymous parallelisms, the first kind of parallelisms adduced by that writer; and Mr. Jebb is very successful in establishing by many examples from all parts of the Old Testament, and particularly from the book of Proverbs, where the second mem. ber of a sentence has been commonly regarded as little more than an unmeaning echo of the first, that there is usually, if not always, a gradation and climax, by which the sentiment is illustrated, defined, and enforced. We shall give under this head an example from the Old Testament, and another from the New, that the simili tude of style may appear, "A wise son rejoiceth a father; But a foolish son is the grief of his mother. Prov. x. 1." p. 25. "A wise son rejoiceth even a father; whose demands are high, and whose affections are commonly of the sterner cast: but a foolish son is sorrow even to his mother, whose tenderness would be less ready to perceive his defects, and, when perceived, more apt to extenuate them. The appropriative term his, wanting in the case of the father, is added in that of the mother; probably to heighten the pathos." pp. 32, 33. On Matt. xxi. 43, 44, Mr. Jebb observes, that there is "In the first couplet, a negative pu |