life as a teacher in the Friederico-Werderan Gymnasium, having then just completed his twentieth year, on an annual salary of 130 dollars. The rector offered him 120, which he declined as too small, and being asked to name his terms demanded ten more!

His biographer gives a minute and therefore instructive account of the difficulties with which he had to contend, in learning the practical art of education and establishing his authority as a teacher. The question which soon arises when a new hand takes the reins— who is to be master-was settled between him and his pupils after one or two attempts at insubordination. The leading principle of his conduct towards them was truthfulness, and this, aided by their knowledge of his eminent qualifications, his zeal for their improvement, and his grave, firm and self-possessed temper, secured him both their attachment and their respect. An anecdote which we have heard him relate shows how skilfully he could deal with those sudden manifestations of the esprit de corps, in which juvenile feeling sometimes breaks forth. He had found it necessary for some delinquency to condemn a pupil to the carcer, the scholastic prison, which in Germany supplies the place of birch and cane. Sympathising for some reason with the culprit, the whole school rose up and demanded to go to prison with their comrade.

.

Very well," replied Zumpt, "but it must be in succession-one to-day and another to-morrow." The selfinflicted imprisonment did not go on beyond the third day. In such outbreaks there is usually a generous feeling, expanded by temporary heat beyond all due bounds. It would be increased by violence or even contempt, but if a ludicrous aspect can be quietly given to it, it collapses at once, as a few drops of cold water condense a large volume of steam.

In 1818 Zumpt published the first edition of his Grammar, a work which has made his name known wherever the Latin language is studied. Germany was not so deplorably ill provided in this respect as England, but the Grammar of Bröder, which was chiefly in use, though furnished with a full collection of examples, was very deficient in the enunciation of the rules and discrimination of the different ages of Latinity. The fulness and precision

with which the formal part of the grammar was treated by Zumpt, and the clearness with which the rules of syntax were laid down, were soon recognised by the public as giving his work a vast superiority over all others; it was very generally adopted in the Gymnasia of Germany, and translated into English, French, Polish and Russian. Before his death it had reached a ninth edition. To enlarge and improve it was the constant study of his life, and the additions which he made were so numerous, that it may be doubted whether its copiousness did not in the end rather impair its utility as a manual. Its influence on the system of scholastic teaching in this country must not be measured by the extent to which it has been adopted in schools. To induce Eton or Westminster to lay aside their grammars would be as difficult as to pro. cure a revision of the Articles; but the notes by which they are now accompanied, and the oral comments of the masters, show the influence of the more philosophical principles which Zumpt has made familiar to us.

Of his other publications the most considerable is his edition of the Verrine orations of Cicero. It is chiefly critical. Zumpt had formed his ideal of the philologer from the writings of the Dutch critics, and belonged to the school of Ruhnken and Wolf, rather than of Heyne. He thought the first and highest duty of an editor to be the exhibition of his author's text in the utmost purity to which it could be brought, by the careful collation and estimate of MSS., and the exercise of what has been called the divining faculty of criticism, which is nothing more than rapid perception, the result of long familiarity with an author and a thorough appreciation of his style. This branch of philology is the easiest to ridicule but the most difficult to practise, and those who have excelled in it are the men whom posterity regards as the great masters of their art. It must not be supposed, however, that Zumpt was ignorant of what may be called the material part of philology. His Dissertations on the Population of the Ancient World, De Legibus Judiciisque Repetundarum, and several others, show that he was well versed in antiquities. Still it is true that grammar, criticism and style were his proper field. Wolf pronounced that himself and Zumpt were the only men in Berlin who could write Latin, and CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 53.

Z

we know that scholars of first-rate eminence did not venture to produce their Latinity before the public, till it had undergone his revision.

He became in succession a teacher in other Gymnasia in Berlin, and ultimately Professor of History in the Military College, and of Latin Eloquence in the University. His domestic life was happy. The kindliness of his nature, hidden at first by a somewhat brusque manner, and the perfect sincerity and consistency of his character, procured him many valuable friendships. His incessant labours, however, undermined his constitution, and brought on a premature decay; and for some time before his death he had become entirely blind. Against this calamity, so grievous to a man of letters, he bore up cheerfully and energetically, and by the help of an amanuensis completed his edition of Q. Curtius.* He died at Carlsbad in 1849. The manner of his dismissal shall be described by his biographer.

"Præterierat major pars mensis Junii, ipsi quidem satis jucunde ; videbatur enim valetudinem paulatim emendare neque medici expedire putabant naturam mali quo laborabat ostendendo spem omnem adimere. Solito autem jucundior fuerat dies a. d. viii. Kal. Iul. Adierat visendi causa post prandium familiaris quidam vetustissima consuetudine cum illo conjunctus, sermones fuerant et cum hoc et cum suis hilares, pleni caritatis, pleni consiliorum ac spei. Tum tempestive in lectum sese recepit, noctemque satis quiete nec moleste transegit. Mane postridie ejus diei expergefactus circa horam sextam, ubi aquam bibendam sumpsit, quasi ad dormiendum sese composuit. Discessit igitur ab lecto quæ cum eo erat uxor fidelissima, ne dormire cupientem interpellaret ; ille ut corpus composuerat, sine ulla doloris significatione neque ulla omnino voce edita, subito nervorum defectu extinctus est. Neque uxor animam excessisse sensit, adeo corpus nihil ex solito aspectu mutatum dormientis speciem præbebat; ipsi nos cum divinatione quadam mala, ut ægrotantem consolaremur domo exciti ad aquas Carolinas properassemus, ubi tribus fere horis post advenimus, jussique leniter ingredi ad lectum accessimus, quid accidisset cognovimus."

A true Euthanasia! and we echo the concluding words of the biographer, "Have, pia anima, nosque ad imitationem tuarum virtutum incende."

* During this time he also edited Sallust and Four Books of Livy for the Chambers's of Edinburgh, and was engaged on Horace, as a part of the same series at the time of his death.

ART. IV.-CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.

Casa Guidi Windows. A Poem. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: Chapman and Hall. 1851.

OLD things appear new to new minds. Here is an English visitor to Italy sufficiently read in the political history of the country, declaring her own part in the last of the three European Hopes and Disappointments which Italy has caused, by its rise and fall, within thirty years. An inveterate and incurable, because well-grounded, dissatisfaction with their present condition, makes the Italians always ready, on any occasion, to burst forth into a practical protest, whether in a well or an ill judged manner, against its continuance. God has given to nations the same species of vital tenacity which he has given to individuals: once alive, neither man nor people will give up a proper existence without an intense and oft-renewed struggle. They die very hard. To kill a nation is an immense undertaking. The symbolists need not go to so local and temporary an affair as the draining and cultivation of the Peloponnesus, for the interpretation of the Fable of the Hydra. The Hydra is National existence, the peculiarity of whose numerous heads is that for every one cut off two immediately supply its place, unless the sources of the fresh life be absolutely burnt up with fire; and that the centre head is immortal. We may tell Austria and Russia that their combat is in vain, and that the prestige of the Heraclean success is not theirs, though the instructive symbol of the Heraclean labour may be taken to themselves. These struggles, though ending in the defeat of the peoples, are not vanity-the series of the failures does not lessen but increase the certainty of the final triumph. The Italian struggles are not so heroic or so destructive as those of Poland and Hungary, but, coming at certain intervals, they revive to each generation the consciousness of the fact, and the conclusions to which the fact leads, that Italy is not part of Austria, and that Italians have not ceased to be one among the distinct peoples and nationalities of the world. Thus, then, the rise, and slaughters,

and weary imprisonments, and failure of 1821, the similar though stiller features of 1830, and the wider sweep of the same events and feelings in 1848, are not in vain. They are the national protests renewed at intervals-so that each generation shall make and feel them afresh, and grow up under their influence-and they gather momentum and significance every time they are made. The last struggle, too, has this hopeful peculiarity. It has been indigenous, and example-giving-not extraneous and example-taking. In 1821, it was the revolution of Spain that supplied courage and pretext to Naples and Piedmont; in 1830 it was that of France. But in 1848 Italy herself, nay, that power in her which was supposed to be the immoveable centre of corruption and despotism, rose spontaneously, and it was Rome-it was the Italian Papacy-that sent the ferment and the spirit of just reforms through the nations of Europe.

Though therefore the old features recur though frightened and politic princes play the same lying, cowardly parts at first, and the same treacherous and despotic parts at last-though the Austrian comes in at last and settles the matter as usual-though Italians begin with the same brave cries, and end in the same submissive silencethough the tailor and the sign-painter and the haberdasher are the media through which they most successfully show to the world and to each other their love of freedom, and desire of self-government-and though the same excess, childishness and ignorance, bring back the old victims to the old yoke, which is easily put on them again, when they are hungry and dispirited, and want quiet and comfortable quarters again, yet the movement of 1848 is the most important and hopeful of any yet, and must necessarily have successors.

It is not our purpose to enter upon that tolerably wellworn subject. We have to do with a Poem by a Lady, not the programme or resumè of a Politician. Mrs. Browning takes advantage of her residence in Florence at the rise and the fall of the revolutionary curtain, to tell us what she saw and felt on both occasions; and very pleasantly she tells her interesting story. But we have several faults, notwithstanding, to find with her Poem--how could we be critics if we had not? Its first great defect lies