"The dead, yet sceptred, sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns"--pass before our eyes in stately procession--each with his distinct physiognomy--his native port--and all clothed with a fresh immortality. Literature is considered not merely in reference to art--but in relation to the influence it has exerted on the destinies of mankind, and to the various modifications which the religion, the government, the laws, the manners, and habits of different nations have caused it to undergo. The first quality that must strike us in this work is the admirable arrangement which has formed so many and such various materials into one harmonious whole. By what an easy and natural transition does the author pass from the Greek to the Roman literature! With what admirable skill he passes, in the age of Hadrian, from the old Roman to the oriental literature, and from the latter back again to the Christian literature of the middle age! How skilfully he has interwoven, in this sketch of oriental letters, the notices of the ancients and the researches of the moderns on the East! The next characteristic of this work is gigantic learning. To that intimate familiarity with the poets, historians, orators and philosophers of classical antiquity which his earlier writings had displayed--to the profound knowledge of oriental, and especially Sanscrit, literature evinced in the above-noticed work of India; we now see added a knowledge of the long buried treasures of the old German and Provençal poetry of the middle age--the scholastic philosophy--the principal modern European literatures in their several periods of bloom, maturity and decay. What a strong light, also, is thrown on some dark passages in the history of philosophy! Where shall we find a more curious, graphic, and interesting account of the mystics of the middle age, and of the German and Italian Platonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries! Every page bears the stamp of long and diligent inquiry, and original investigation. The minute traits--the accurate drawing--the freshness and vividness of colouring--the truth and life-like reality in this whole picture of literature, prove that the artist drew from the original, and not a copy. No better proof can be adduced of the _accuracy_, as well as extent of learning which distinguished this illustrious man and his brother, than the fact that their different works on classical, oriental and modern literature have received the approbation of such scholars, as made those several branches of knowledge the special objects of their study and inquiry. Thus their labours on Greek and Roman poetry met with the high sanction of a Heyne, a Wolf, and other distinguished Hellenists--their works on Sanscrit literature have been commended by a Guignault--a Remusat--a Chezy, and our own academicians of Calcutta; and their critiques on Shakspeare and the early English poets have been approved by the national critics, and especially by