"The Columbiad," a name essential to the work as the principal founder of the American Republic, and of the happiness of its citizens. Omitting the name of Mr. Paine in the history of America, and where the amelioration of the human race is so much concerned, is like omitting the name of Newton in writing the history of his philosophy, or that of God, when creation is the subject; yet this Joel Barlow has done, and done so, lest the name of Paine combined with his theological opinions, should injure the sale of the poem. Mean and unhandsome conduct! To remedy this opinion, though not in the fine style of Barlow, the following lines are suggested to be placed at the close of the 425th line in the 5th book of his Columbiad.

A man who honoured Albion by his birth, The wisest, brightest, humblest son of earth;

A man in every sense that word can

mean,

Now started angel-like upon the scene, Drew forth his pen of reason, truth, and fire,

The land to animate, the troops inspire; And call'd that independent spirit forth, Which gives all bliss to man, and constitutes his worth.

'Twas he suggested first, 'twas he who plann'd,

A separation from the mother land. His "common sense,” his "crisis" lead the way,

To great Columbia's happy, perfect day, And all she has of good, or ever may!As Eucild clear his various writings shone,

His pen inspired by glorious truth alone, O'er all the earth diffusing light and life,

Subduing error, ignorance, strife; Raised man to just pursuits, to thinking right;

And yet will free the world from woe and falsehood's night;

To this immortal man, to Paine 'twasgiv

en,

To metamorphose earth from hell to heaven."

This closes the manuscript. The author of it is of course unknown; and it would have been well for

mankind that his hero in the above recited lines had been unknown also except as the vindicator of American freedom. As the oppugner of divine Revelation, his name is associated with whatever is infamous, and Barlow, however his consistency may be affected, has wisely omitted the task of eulogizing Paine.

The Columbiad, you know, is published in our country in quarto with plates, and sells in guilt calf binding at twenty-five dollars. It is the most expensive original work ever brought before the American public; and I believe was unprofitable both to the author and publisher. A copyright was obtained which prevented it from appearing in any cheaper form, unless by the sanction of the author; and he was unwilling to have his poem dresssed in any humbler garb, than a splendid quarto. Little, you are aware, is now said concerning the work. Is it the circumstance of its dearness, or its want of merit, or both that have consigned it to comparative oblivion? Barlow, doubtless intended that like the Iliad and Æneid, it should be hand

ed down to posterity, and give him a name as imperishable as that of Homer or Virgil! One thing is certain, if American authors would be known and read they must consent to have their thoughts appear be fore the public in a form which will suit the purses of the poor as well as the rich. It is the high price of our Irving's works, that has confined them to a comparatively narrow circle of readers. My countrymen are a reading community, and fond of literature, but they do not like to pay much for it. I have seen a plain copy of the Columbiad in octavo printed in Paris, as the title page said, but it was most probably done in America, and the copyright evaded. The London edition in my possession is beautifully executed, both as to paper and the typographical part. This is more than enough perhaps, for a heavy poem; but it relates to my country, and that circumstance must be my apology for saying thus much.

To the Editor of the Christian Spectator.

SINCE your correspondents have taken in hand latterly to speak of Sabbath-breaking, suffer me a word or two on that subject. - One of the "by-laws and regulations of the Boston Athenæum" is the following. "The Reading Room is opened on Sunday afternoon after divine service, and closed at the same hour as on other evenings."I have no knowledge of the fact; but I suppose it not improbable that the reading room is more resorted to on that day than on any other. Indeed there must be a strong inclination to such a practice, or the above regulation, so uncongenial to the religious habits of New-England, would not have been admitted. Probably, however the proprietors of the Athenæum do not allow that the practice is a violation of the Sabbath."Where is the impropriety of spending an hour or two, after the tedium of divine service, in a quiet reading room?" -Jehovah's own commentary on his law is in the following words :-" If thou shalt call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:"-Let us then look into the reading room, and see how we are employed there. You shall find one poring over the late pamphlets respecting the "Greek frigates;" another is reading the low wit of Blackwood; another the news of the day; and, in short, each selects, as humour prompts him,

from the mass of periodicals, of all sorts, with which the liberality of the proprietors loads their ample tables. Among the rest, peradventure, some one takes up your own Spectator, and to him let me say, in reference to the employment above described; -Is this making the holy of the Lord, honourable, not doing our own ways, nor finding our own pleasure?

In no city in the Union is a more enlightened spirit of freedom cherished than in Boston. Of this its more than two hundred schools and more than ten thousand pupils are the best evidence. And with no gentlemen in the world would it be more superfluous to argue that our nation's safety depends on the preservation of its morals than with the two hundred and five most respectable proprietors of the Boston Athenæum. None are more aware than they, that the corruption of the people is the rottennes of a free state. And are they not equally aware that the Sabbath is the great means of preserving the public morals? Do they not know that, under a government like ours, the restraints of law are gossamer without it? In a word, the Sabbath lost, all is lost. It is the Sabbath with all its salutary influences that must sustain the tone of moral feeling in this great and free community; and those who treat it with neglect, and by their example "teach men so," are pulling down the strongest bulwark which God has given us for the safety of our civil institutions. It is devoutly to be hoped therefore, that the patriotism-if a more religious motive cannot influence them, will induce the Boston gentlemen to do away the above regulation, and that the doors of that conspicuous institution will be suffered to remain closed till the sacred hours are past. Ξένος.

:

HEX.

Letters to a Friend, on the Evidences, Doctrines, and Duties of the Christian Religion. By OLINTHUS GREGORY, LL. D., Professor of Mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, &c. &c. First American, from the fourth London edition. N. York: G. & C. Carvill. 1826.

2 vols. 12mo. pp. 300 and 302.

We were unwilling that this American edition of a valuable foreign work should leave the press, and mingle with the great community of authors, without bestowing on it some notice. There is such a multitude of books published at the present day, and it is so much the fashion to recommend them by their newness, that even valuable works soon lose, in a great measure, the distinction which their merits claim. They make their appearance like one in a great train of strangers: the last that enter attract the most attention, while others have passed on and become lost in the common

mass.

In respect to the work before us, if there is any circumstance, apart from the merits of its execution, which should commend it to special favour, it is the circumstance of its being written by a layman. A man of learning who steps aside from his own profession, like Bacon, and Locke, and Newton, to write for the Christian religion,

deserves the thanks of its friends; for besides that, from his acquaintance with other subjects of knowledge, and his peculiar habits of investigation, he may bring to the Christian doctrines new methods of illustration and defence, he deprives the infidel of a favorite weapon of attack: it cannot be objected to his performance, as has been done to the similar works of clergymen, that it is a clerical view of the subject-written in the way of the author's profession, and therefore from motives of interest or prejudice.

A book which treats of the "evidences, doctrines, and duties, of the Christian religion," must of necessity embrace a great variety of topics, and a multitude of particular facts and arguments; and it has been remarked that if there is any work more difficult to be produced than a book of this description, it is a critique on such a book. For as the original performance is a selection from a mass of materials, rather than a work of invention, to review it in all its parts is to compile a separate work; and as a main difficulty in the execution of the former consisted in bringing it within convenient limits, the labour is proportionably enhanced when an attempt is made to embrace the same field of inquiry within the still narrowercompass of a review. Our remarks on Dr. Gregory's book, therefore, will be