to hammer out, and temper, and polish the creations of their own mind-literary Camanches, who scour the plains, and steal everything and from everybody that chance may cast in their way.

We know that there is an abundance of copyists and imitators, but they are the growth, not of the soil of ancient lore, which has to be dug and made mellow by years of toil, but of the hot-bed of the current literature of these times. Every arrival from Europe brings in a fresh importation of books and pamphlets, which find their way to our great publishing houses, and then are multiplied ten thousand fold, to feed the craving desire of the public mind for everything foreign. This is the reason why so many books, claiming to be American, are redolent with ideas and modes of expression brought across the Atlantic. An increased attention to the classics, would counteract the servility with which everything foreign is greeted. There would be found other standards of criticism than those erected across the waters, other tribunals to which the learned might resort for the adjustment of literary controversies, than those in her Britannic Majesty's dominion. Homer and Horace would be deemed as good authority in matters of poetry, Plato and Xenophon in polished and well-pointed prose, Thucydides and Demosthenes in strength and energy of diction, as the penny-a-liners of a foreign magazine.

We need to be more Americanized in all that pertains to the fine arts and liberal sciences. We need a revolution, a declaration of independence in the republic of letters; for the political enthralment of 1776 was not more galling and oppressive, than that which enslaves to foreign dictation no small portion of the educated mind of our land. This revolution will never be effected, until our higher institutions of learning, both collegiate and professional, elevate the banner of freedom, and teach their sons a manly di regard of the flippant and uncourteous remarks upon American authorship, so frequently found in foreign newspapers and reviews-until those, whose education and position in society give weight to their example, patronize books that are truly American-until our scholars, poets, painters, and historians look upon the clear skies, and the verdant fields, and lofty mountains, and pellucid streams of their native land, and draw their inspiration thence, rather than from descriptions of foreign scenery, or long and expensive sojourns in foreign lands-in a word, until a high literary tariff, more effective than one imposed in dollars and cents, shall protect us from the worthless books, which are brought over in every packet and steamer.

It must be evident to every man, who looks upon this subject attentively, that there is a growing disrelish in the community for sober, substantial, instructive reading. The love of excitement has taken possession of the public mind. Every book is cast aside which does not administer, by its overwrought pictures of human THIRD SERIES, VOL. V., No. 3

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life, to this passion for the strange and marvellous. Hence it is not wonderful that the Spectator and the Rambler are regarded as dull and insipid, when compared with the writings of Dickens and Maryatt. Still less wonderful is it, that the Greek and Latin classics should be displaced by works belonging to this new school of fiction.

We are grieved at the reflection, that few professional men, even those who have received a liberal education, have any classical books in their library; that such works are the first to be disposed of, as being the least useful, while reviews, pamphlets, and periodicals, are carefully preserved, bound up, and placed in the most conspicuous part of the library. We tremble for the young men now coming upon the stage of action, unless they can be induced to forsake these dainties, this pound-cake of literature, and adopt the substantial, nutritious, invigorating food, which gave such mental strength to the Edwardses, the Dwights, the Adamses, and the Marshalls of other days.

We would say then to every young man, in a course of liberal education: If you would rise to eminence in the pursuits of literature and science-if you would become ornaments in the learned professions, or prepare yourselves for distinction and usefulness in the halls of legislation, beware how you indulge in the light reading which, under the specious title of cheap publications, is flooding our country. Waste not your time in the perusal of books, which are as little suited to the wants and susceptibilities of your immortal natures, as husks are for the purposes of food. Resolve to be scholars, not book-worms, whose whole time is to be spent in the library, but practical scholars, with minds richly stored with all that is valuable in ancient as well as modern literature, and thoroughly prepared for whatever sphere of action you may be called to occupy.

In conclusion, we repeat again our belief, that the cause of classical learning is becoming more appreciated in our country; and although counteracted by many influences, to some of which we have just referred, yet these will gradually disappear, or become so modified as to do no essential injury to the cause of sound education. Let those who are engaged in the important and honorable vocation of classical instructors, take encouragement from the past, and go forward with enlightened zeal in the prosecution of their duties. Let their standard of scholarship be more and more elevated. Let them firmly oppose every attempt to abridge the amount of classical reading, or the time given to this department in their respective institutions. Above all, let the harmony and singleness of purpose with which their labors are now conducted, ever continue; and let their only rivalry be in devising the most efficient means for the advancement of the cause entrusted to their keeping.

ARTICLE III.

THE SANDWICH OR HAWAIIAN ISLANDS: THEIR HISTORY AND RELATIONS TO THE REST OF THE WORLD.

By REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER, Pastor of the Chrystie-st. Congregational Church, N. Y.

THE name of the Sandwich Islands has become endeared to the church like Jerusalem or Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians. It evokes a train of grateful, we might almost say sacred associations, and the bare mention of it is enough to allure the interest of the Protestant world. The fact too that a number of American citizens are now resident at these Islands; and that it is a transplanted off-shoot from the old Puritan vine, in the form of New England missionaries, that, under God, has wrought so marvellous a change there; together with the natural desire to be definitely informed about a people and a country where the outlay of benevolence by the American churches has been so wonderfully rewarded, these considerations have been naturally enough suggested as grounds of favor for an independent, semi-religious, historical, and statistic article upon those remote islands of the Pacific.

"Placed far amid the melancholy main."

the Ararat of the North Pacific, these lone Islands were first made known to the rest of the world through their discovery by Captain Cook in 1778. They lie between the meridians of 1601 west longitude, and the parallels of 19 and 22 north latitude: 2800 miles from California, northeast; 5000 from China west: 5000 from South America east; 2700 from the Society Islands on the south. The names of those inhabited are Hawaii, Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, Niihau, embracing an area of about 6100 square miles.

The origin of all the islands is volcanic. They were evidently formed by repeated eruptions from the bed of the sea, depositing layer upon layer of volcanic matter, until by this process and the gradual subsidence of the sea, they have attained their present elevation. That process may be still seen going on in the largest of these islands, (Hawaii) the interior of which would seem to be a vast reservoir or chamber of pent-up mineral fire, that lets off now and then some of its redundant elements by violent emission, as the lancet does from the arm of a man threatened with apoplexy. Kauai, the northwestern-most of the groupe, is the oldest made, as proved by the lava there being entirely disintegrated, or frequently formed into basalt, like that of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Hawaii, which Captain Cook naturally enough miscalled Owyhee, is the southeastern-most and latest formed, being

the only one where there is an active volcano, and that in the southern portion of this large island. Volcanic fire seems to be working to the south and east, towards the great furnaces in the range of the Andes on the continent of South America.

When these islands first came to be inhabited cannot be conjectured whence is probable. Tradition reaches not to their origin, although curious fables of Hawaiian cosmogony do. But the natives preserve the genealogy of seventy-three kings, have the names of some of the south Pacific islands, knew the direction of the Society Islands, the nearest inhabited groupe, and have tales of their ancestors coming thence; and their language is a dialect of the one great family of Polynesian tongues. When but a few years ago a Japanese Junk came ashore at Waialua on the island of Oahu, and the natives saw the few survivors, men looking much like themselves, who had been drifted for nearly a year, and were five thousand miles from their homes, the missionary there told us, that the first inference and talk of the natives was, now we know whence our fathers came from. A number of facts like this point to the way in which all the islands of the Pacific may have been populated, and indicate, too, how the highly civilized aborigines of South America may have had their beginning directly in a pair of Japanese blown off by a Typhoon from the shores of eastern Asia, instead of our having to trace them down from Behring's Straits through the length of North America.

The temperature of these islands is equable, and the climate in every way salubrious. The northeast trades fan them perpetually on the windward side, and there is a regularly alternating gentle land and sea breeze on the leeward side. The heat experienced is at no place in the groupe so great as at New Orleans in the summer time, or often at New York. For the year round there is always the purest air, and a variety of climate can be commanded by change of situation, that is not to be had elsewhere in the world within the same area. American constitutions debilitated by the uniform heat of a leeward residence, find repair and health by moving to a station where they can be fanned by the trades; and persons constitutionally inclined to pulmonary disease when living at the sea side, are benefitted by recourse to the mountain air. The highest elevation of the mercury observed in ten years at Lahaina (the port on the leeward side of Maui where most of the whale ships recruit,) was 86 degrees of Fahrenheit: the lowest 54. Greatest difference in any one day 19°, a diurnal range which is of very rare occurrence, the difference between noon and morning, or noon and night being seldom more than ten degrees. The highest range observed is in June, the lowest in January. The greatest heat noted at Honolulu for twelve years was 90°, greatest cold 53°; mean 75°. Sudden weather changes are unknown, nor are there storms of long continuance, and in every

view the Sandwich Islands may be deemed one of the most healthful countries in the world. Families are reared in great safety, as the remarkable increase of the missionaries shows. Children there do not have to run the gauntlet of those formidable diseases that invade families in climes less favored with genial skies and perpetual summer.

The human constitution, it is evident, had attained to great perfection at the Sandwich Islands, and, their barbarism and sensuality to the contrary notwithstanding, there was high physical health and beauty before it was poisoned and marred by the mixture of abandoned foreigners and the fresh provocatives to profligacy thereby given. The reverse is now painfully true, for disease is rife, and there is evidence of fatal, we fear irremediable detriment having been done to the native constitution. Still the physical aspect of Hawaiians, as a race, is pleasing. Their complexion is a clear olive brown, as near in color to the kernel of an English walnut as anything we know. They call themselves Ka ulu the red-skin in contrast with the Keokeo, white skin. Their features would make them to be classed by physiologists with the Malay division of the human family, from which doubtless they have sprung. They have generally thick lips and large nostrils, but the nose is not flat, nor the hair woolly, but uniformly strait and black. They have rather high cheek bones like the North American Indian, and the erect European forehead, certainly not depressed or retreating as one of the late histories mistakenly characterizes it.

The national Hawaiian head is of a good size, and phrenologically well-shaped, though it has rather unduly large a base, and is flattened and straight at the back. This unnatural flatness of the occiput is thought to be owing to the way the mother holds her babe, which is by the left hand supporting the back of its head. Frequently, too, they lay its little head in a hard gourd-shell on purpose to flatten it; and the way of all Hawaiians when sleeping, is to lie upon the back, which tends to keep the skull of the form given it in childhood. It is deemed becoming to a man to have his hair very short behind; and manly beauty, in their view, depends more upon the plane figure and breadth of the occiput, than upon the height and fullness of the forehead. We have often heard them wonder at what they deem the fondness of foreigners for round heads.

In person, the Hawaiians are well-formed, large-limbed, and somewhat taller than the average of Americans. The race of the high chiefs especially, was large, athletic, and finely-proportioned. We have seen among the few that survive, specimens of muscular power, and manly beauty, that might be the archetypes of Jupiter Tonans or Apollo Belvidere. The chief women.