M 
 

 BOUGHT WITH THE INCO 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 1891 
 
 ME 
 
 FUND 
 
 44^-//^ 
 
 A./A^A'^..^ . 
 
 
I University Library 
 PR 4705.F6t;9 
 v.1-2 
 Critical essays contributed to the Eciec 
 
 3 1924 013 344 753 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013344753 
 
CRITlCiL ESSAYS 
 
 CONTRIBtmSD TO 
 
 THE ECLECTIC REVIEW, 
 
 JOHN rOSTEE, 
 
 AJDTHOB a; "ISSAT3 ON DECiaiON 07 CHARAOTEB," SIC, ETO. 
 
 J. E. EYLAND, M.A. 
 
 VOL. 1. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1888. 
 
A- ' OZOH-CL. 
 
 LOXDON : 
 
 PRINTED BT WILUAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STA1[P0BD STBEET AHS CHABIHG CROSS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These volumes are, for the most part, a reprint of the 
 " Contributions, Biographical, Literary, and Philosophical to 
 the Hclectic Review, by John Poster, &c.," edited by my 
 friend Dr. Price, in 1844. 
 
 Dr. Price, in his preface, after giving some account of the 
 establishment and original constitution of the Eclectic 
 Review, informs us that, " Mr. Tester's connexion with the 
 Review commenced in 1806, his first paper being published 
 in the November of that year. Prom this period, to the 
 close of 1818, he was a stated and frequent contributor ; 
 after which he remitted his labours in this direction, furnish- 
 ing only thirteen papers from 1819 to 1828, inclusive. 
 
 " On the journal passing into the hands of the present 
 Editor in January, 1837, he made application to Mr. Poster 
 for literary assistance, and was authorized to announce him 
 as one of the stated contributors to the work. The impaired 
 condition of his health did not, however, permit him to do 
 much. An occasional article was all that could be looked 
 for, the fastidiousness of his taste concurring with the cause 
 just named, to indispose him to frequent composition. Hia 
 last contribution appeared in October, 1839, when, however, 
 the prospect was held out of still further aid. 
 
 " This prospect was unhappily not realized, though the 
 conditional promise was renewed from time to time. Writing 
 _to the Editor, January 28, 1841, Mr. Poster says,— ' With 
 my almost total want of memory, and miserable slowness in 
 any sort of composition, I am many degrees below the mark 
 for anything of material account — anything requiring much 
 reading or laborious consideration. As to long reading, my 
 eyes have their veto, and if I had read any considerable 
 book, I should, when I closed it, be just in the plight of 
 Nebuchadnezzar with his dream — minus the resource of any 
 one to call in as a substitute for Daniel.' " 
 
 In this new edition the Eeviews have been printed in 
 chronological order, without any attempt at classification. 
 Eunning titles have been added, which will in some 
 measure answer the purpose of an analysis, by directing 
 the reader at a glance to the principal topic of discussion ; 
 and in order as much as possible to give to these compo- 
 sitions the form of Essays, a general title, whenever prac 
 
17 PEEFACE. 
 
 ticable, has been substituted for that of the book under 
 review. 
 
 Several articles will be found in these volumes which 
 were not inserted in Dr. Price's Edition. In point of 
 intellectual ability, it is believed that they are not at all 
 inferior to the others, while their subjects will add to the 
 interest and variety of the work ; some of them will serve 
 to show more distinctly Mr. Poster's taste for Antiqmties 
 and the Pine Arts, to which, perhaps, justice has not yet 
 been done by the brief notices in his Biography.* On 
 the other hand, a few articles have been omitted, chiefly 
 relating to Indian Missions, which possessed but a temporary 
 interest ; a sufficient number, however, on that subject, 
 are retained, to be a memorial of the powerful manner in 
 which he advocated missionary efforts and the principles of 
 religious toleration, at a period when they were assailed with 
 a virulence and coarseness not likely we may hope ever 
 to be repeated. Since that time, the religious and social 
 relations of India have been undergoing great changes, 
 of which " the end is not yet." Though Christianity 
 must stiU, as ever, maintain a militant attitude, its assailants 
 are generally of a different order from the " Bengal 
 Officers" and " Scott- Warings," whose literary castigation 
 from Mr. Poster's pen can only be paralleled by that inflicted 
 on their prototypes, Thersites and Irus, by the brawny arm 
 of Ulysses. 
 
 In conclusion, these Critical Essays are once more pre- 
 sented to the public with the confident persuasion that (to 
 use Dr. Price's words) "in all the higher and more perma- 
 nent qualities of intellect, in their largeness of view, Dene- 
 trating subtlety of thought, deep insight into human nature, 
 and sympathy with the nobler and more lofty forms of 
 spiritual existence, they will be foimd eminently worthy of 
 the genius of their author, and subserve to his permanent 
 repute." 
 
 J. E. EYLAJSTD. 
 
 Northampton, 
 October, 1856. 
 
 • Life and Correspondence, Vol II., pp. 289, 293. Bohn's edition. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I, 
 
 ON TEAVEL WRITING. 
 Carr's Stranger in Ireland. — November and December, 1806 . ,1 
 
 ON MEMOIR WRITING. 
 Forbea's Life of Beattie. — JwnMory amd February, 1807 , . 17 
 
 THOUGHTS ON AFFECTATION. 
 Thoughts on Affectation, by a Lady. — Febrnwry, 1807 . • .34 
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 The Stranger in America. — /aree, 1807 44 
 
 ON MEMOIR WRITING. 
 Memoirs of Lord Kamea. — July and Awgitst, 1807 . . .63 
 
 ON BLAIR'S LIFE AND WRITINGS. 
 Characteristics of his Sermons. — December, 1807 . . . .81 
 
 ON DAVID HUME. 
 Life and Writings of David Hume, Esq., by Thomas Edward 
 Ritchie. — Jcmuary, 1808 95 
 
 HINDOO IDOLATRY AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 Vindication of the Hindoos, by a Bengal Officer. — March, 1808 . 110 
 
 VINDICATION OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONARIES. 
 Scott-Waring's Letters on India. — May, 1808 .... 132 
 
 ON POETICAL CRITICISM. 
 Stockdale's Lectures on the English Poets. — March, 1808 . . 144 
 
 ON PERSONAL VIRTUE IN ITS RELATION TO 
 POLITICAL EMINENCE. 
 Fox's History of the Reign of James II. — September, 1808 . . 167 
 
 ON STATESMEN. 
 Lives of British Statesmen, by John MacDiarmid, Esq. — October 
 and November, 1808 189 
 
 MEMOIRS OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 Memoirs of Sir Thomas More, by A. Cayley, Esq. — December^ 1808 217 
 
 CHRISTLiNITY IN INDIA. 
 
 Cunningham's Essay. — December, 1808 227 
 
 b 
 
n CONTESTS, 
 
 FAOB 
 ON PALET AS A THEOLOQUN. 
 Paley's Sermons. — Jarmary, 1809 • 238 
 
 AMERICA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 
 Memoirs of an American Lady. — February, \809 . . i . 251 
 
 ON THE PENINSULAR "WAR. 
 Chronicle of the Cid, by Robert Sonthey— March, 1809 . . 264 
 
 STDNET SMITH'S SERMONS. 
 Sermons, by Rev. Sydney Smith, M.A. — May cmd June, 1809 . 285 
 
 PALET'S MEMOIRS. 
 Memoirs of William Paley,D.D., by G.W. Meadley.— /wie, 1809 . 315 
 
 ROSE ON FOrS HISTORY. 
 Observations on Fox's History, by the Right Hon. George Roge — 
 Jidy, 1809 329 
 
 ON THEATRICAL AMUSEMENTS. 
 Plumtre's Four Discourses. — November, 1809 , , . . 343 
 
 CHARACTERS OP FOX. 
 Characters of Fox, by Philopatris Varvicensis. — December, 1809 . 358 
 
 EDUCATION IN REFERENCE TO RELIGION. 
 Edgeworth's Essays. — January cmd February, 1810 . . . 372 
 
 SANSCRIT LITERATURE. 
 The Ramayuna of Valmeeki. — September, 1810 .... 400 
 
 THE MORALITY OF WORKS OF FICTION. 
 Tales of Fashionable Life, by Miss Edgeworth. — October, 1810 . 417 
 
 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 Mr. Windham's Speech on Cruelty to Animals. — November, 1810 . 428 
 
 SOUTHS Y'S CURSE OF KEHAMA. 
 The Ciirse of Kebama, by Robert Southey. — March and April, 1811 453 
 
 VINDICATION OF FOX'S HISTORY. 
 A Vindication of Fox's History, by Samuel Heywood.- -December, 
 
 1811 -. . . 496 
 
 ^TESSE'S SERMONS. 
 Sermons, by William Jesse, M.A. — AprU, 1812 . . , .616 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ON TEAYEL-WEITING. 
 
 The Granger in Ireland ; or, a Tour in the Southern and Western 
 Paris of that CovMry, in the Year 1805. By John Carb, Eaq. 
 4to. 1806. 
 
 Mb Caee is a traveller whom any sensible observer would 
 lite to accompany a few hundred miles. He possesses, in 
 perfection, one qualification, for which many men who have 
 more curiosity than spirit or address, will envy him, and 
 very justly envy him ; a happy mixture of confidence, 
 adroitness, and insinuation. By means of this he obtains 
 access to every place and every person without the smallest 
 difficulty. The moment he arrives at any place as a perfect 
 stranger, he seems to inform himself of everything which it 
 would be desirable to inspect, and the next moment he is 
 introduced to the object of curiosity as readily as if he had 
 lived on the spot twenty years, and knew every person there. 
 He enters with equal ease the peasant's cabin, the country 
 ale-house, the city-hotel, and the splendid mansion of nobility. 
 No apprehensive awkwardness detains him at the gate of a 
 great man's house, hesitating some minutes before he 
 ventures to ring the bell, as many a poor scholar, or rustic 
 man of taste, and even many a philosopher would do, while 
 he tried to inspirit himself by recollecting the maxims of 
 Epictetus, or the noble sentiments of modern doctors on the 
 subject of the equality of mankind. He presents himself 
 frith an air perfectly unembarrassed, and the "pampered 
 menial" skips along the hall to announce, he has no doubt, 
 some old familiar acquaintance of my lord. If, on the 
 introduction, my lord should amidst his complaisance, show 
 any little degree of grave doubtful iuquisitiveness, Mr. 
 
2 Oir TEATEL-WBITIlfG. 
 
 Carr advances with such a frank and gallant air, that format 
 ceremony is ashamed to stay in the room, and quickly takes 
 itself off. 
 
 The travelling vehicles in some parts of Ireland are justly 
 described as miserable conveyances, and there is many a 
 worthy English gentleman that would deny himself the 
 sight of the most beautiful scenes, if he must visit them 
 under the pains and penalties of being jammed, and rattled, 
 and tossed, and stared at, in a jingle, a noddy, or a jaunting 
 car. Our author, though no stranger to the luxury of easy 
 or splendid carriages, was capable of very properly despising 
 a temporary inconvenience, if any gratification of his taste 
 for the beautiful or the sublime was to be obtained by 
 enduring it. And though a connoisseur in matters of good 
 living, and especially an excellent judge of wines, he could 
 make himself very easy and pleasant over the most homely 
 viands, in those wild situations, where it would have been 
 absurd to complain that the hostess had not studied any 
 large volume on the art of cookery, and had not a larder or 
 cellar ample enough to turn such study to any great practical 
 account. "With the exception of a few such slight incon- 
 veniences, no traveller ever went on under a more continual 
 sunshine of good fortune than Mr. Carr, according to his 
 lively narrative. The " Green Island " seems to have 
 arrayed itself in aE its beauties to receive him, and the 
 utmost politeness of its inhabitants met him at every stage. 
 TVor did these gratifying circumstances fail to produce the 
 due effect on the traveller, whose good-humour would appear 
 to have been but very few times interrupted. This good- 
 humour sparkles out in a continual series of light pleasan- 
 tries ; and though we would not harshly censure the gaiety 
 which an extensive view of an unhappy nation did not 
 repress, yet we cannot help thinking that a philanthropy of 
 the most elevated kind would occasionally have been pensive, 
 where Mr. Carr is very sprightly ; and that a refined love of 
 justice would have been severe and indignant, in a few 
 instances in which he is extremely tolerant. 
 
 Mr. Carr's intellectual qualifications are well adapted to 
 that kind of travelling which the present volume exhibits. 
 He does not survey a country with a view to form or illus- 
 trate moral or political theories, or to select the physical 
 
cake's steanger iir ieeiand. 3 
 
 subjects of scientific investigation. It is not in the particular 
 character of naturalist, virtuoso, antiquarian, or statesman, 
 that he travels, nor exactly in the character of philosopher, 
 but simply in that of a man of sense and taste, who wishes 
 fairly to see and hear whatever is most deserving of attention, 
 and to write a spirited description and narration of what he 
 happens to observe. "We certainly could have wished, on 
 some occasions, a little more grave research, at the same 
 time that we deprecate that pedantry which cannot make a 
 remark without extending it into a dissertation. It is with 
 a very ill will, we own, that we accompany a traveller, who 
 regularly at every town he comes to, or at every old heap of 
 stones near the road, plants himself in form to make a long 
 speech. Mr. Carr generally seizes with quickness and 
 accuracy the characteristic peculiarities of the people, and 
 of local situations, while he passes from place to place with 
 a celerity which gives us the idea of scampering. 
 
 In the preface, and in several other parts of the book, he 
 takes pains to apprize the reader, that none of his obser- 
 vations on the state of Ireland are to be construed as 
 referring to political questions, or as intimating any kind of 
 opinion on the causes of the late melancholy events in that 
 country. Probably, this is a well-judged forbearance in a 
 work Uke the present. Bat we earnestly wish that some 
 liberal Englishman, who has been long conversant with 
 mankind and with the speculations relating to their interests, 
 who is equally free from superstitious veneration for old 
 practices and from a rage for novelty and hazardous experi- 
 ments, who is pure from the infection of party interest, and 
 dares to arraign indifferently any party or every party at the 
 bar of absolute justice, would traverse Ireland expressly 
 with a view to form a comprehensive estimate of the moral 
 and political condition and wants of the people ; and then 
 present to the public the assemblage of facts, together with 
 the observations which he had been most prompted to make 
 while those facts were before him. 
 
 The first chapter narrates the journey from London (as 
 it should seem) to the entrance of the Bay of Dublin, and 
 it makes us perfectly acquainted with the dispositions of the 
 traveller. Our readers never met with a more gay and 
 animated gentleman in their lives. He never lets hirtself 
 
 £ 2 
 
4 OV TEATEL-WEITINO. 
 
 be long disconcerted by untoward circumstances. If for a 
 moment his indignation is excited hy "those detestable, 
 corrupt harpies called custom-house officers," he almost 
 immediately forgets them. And even the pains of sym pathy, 
 which he sometimes feels, do not become troublesome to the 
 reader, by producing long sentimental declamations. The 
 tragical objects which occasionally interrupt the course of 
 his pleasantry, do not in the least haunt him afterwards. 
 Though decorously serious, or at least demure, in the house 
 of mourning, he can laugh, dance, and sing, as soon as he 
 has quitted it. 
 
 The first chapter is marked by almost aU the character- 
 istics which distinguish Mr. Carr's manner of writing travels. 
 The descriptions are quick, clear, and lively. He marks so 
 well the prominent circumstances of each situation or society, 
 that he really makes his reader his companion ; and this we 
 deem very high praise. At the same time we are disposed 
 to complain, that he rather too often introduces from his 
 memory, at the suggestion of some very slight association of 
 thought, stories which might quite as well have been put in 
 any other part of the book, or in no part of it. These may 
 sometimes be curious in themselves, like the circumstance of 
 Mr. Bolton's wager at Paris (p. 6.), and might do very well 
 to keep up the chat with his associates in the coach ; but the 
 reader of a costly book of travels wiU not be so patient. He 
 wants information strictly relating to the place which the 
 traveller has thought it worth while to visit and describe ; 
 and can find miscellaneous anecdotes at any time, in any old 
 volume of a magazine. We might complain too, that our 
 author's, lavish eulogiums of all the people of rank that 
 happen to be civil to him, have sometimes made us a little 
 splenetic. "We certainly are pleased with his good fortune 
 in meeting so luckily with my Lady Tuite, &c. &c.; and with 
 his pathetic gratitude for slices of broiled mutton (especially 
 as it was "Welsh mutton), most seasonably given him when 
 he was nearly famished in the packet ; but when we are told 
 he made on the instant a solemn vow that aU his readers 
 should be informed of this most rare bounty, we cannot but 
 wish his conscience had permitted him to break it. "We have 
 a better opinion of Mr. Carr, than to think that if Pat 
 M'Cann, or Judith M'Nabb, or some such responsible per- 
 
CAEB S STRANG EE IN lEELAND. 5 
 
 Bonage, had divided the little stock of provisions with him, 
 he would not have been grateful; but we greatly doubt 
 whether he would have been so eloquent. 
 
 Now and then we meet with matters so trivial, that we 
 are sorry a man of sense should have condescended to record 
 them; for instance, the story about the boots (p. 24). 
 Nothing can tend more effectually to bring the writing of 
 travels into contempt, than to occupy splendid quarto pages 
 with incidents which a company of louts at a pot-house 
 must be reduced to a very great scarcity of subjects before 
 any of them would think it worth while to mention. Our 
 author is so determined from the outset, to have something 
 fwtmy, every few pages at least, that he will pick up the 
 slightest facts or the slenderest witticisms for that purpose, 
 rather than go soberly on his journey. About every mile- 
 post he stops to laugh, and insists that his readers shall join 
 him, whether they can or not. Sometimes indeed, we readily 
 perform our part of this ceremony ; as when he mentions 
 (p. 31), that " the secretary of a celebrated English agri- 
 cultural society received orders from its committee, to pro- 
 cure several copies of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth's Essay on 
 Irish Bulls, upon the first appearance of that admirable book, 
 for the use of the members in their labours for improving 
 the breed of cattle." 
 
 After escaping from what he calls oddly enough, " that 
 consummation of human misery, a cabin, after a short 
 voyage," he reaches Dublin, and frisks round a considerable 
 part of the city before dinner, admiring, as every stranger 
 will admire, several of the streets and squares, which are 
 allowed to be among the noblest in Europe. His extensive 
 previous travels enabled him to form a comparative judg- 
 ment with great advantage. But these proud exhibitions of 
 wealth and taste cease to please a humane traveller, as soon 
 as he beholds the hideous contrast between them and the 
 dwellings and entire condition of the poor. It is melancholy 
 to see in the immediate neighbourhood of all this splendour, 
 the ample proofs how little the prosperous and powerful 
 part of mankind care for the miserable. We do not pretend 
 to believe that the resources of the rich, and the power of 
 the state, could banish poverty, and the whole of its atten- 
 dant and consequent evils, from a great city; but it is 
 
6 OS TBA'VEL--WEITnrG. 
 
 impossible to see Buch sinks of filth, such a multitude of 
 wretched, ragged, and half-famished creatures crowded into 
 alleys and cellars, and such a prodigious number of mendi- 
 cants, without pronouncing the severest condemnation^ on 
 the idle and luxurious opulence, and the strange state policy, 
 which can preserve, year after year, a cool indifference to all 
 this misery. 
 
 Mr. Carr visited the beautiful scenes in the county of 
 Wicklow, and we should have thought meanly of his taste, 
 if he had adopted, in describing them, a language of less 
 animated admiration. "We should have required this language 
 from a man the most parsimonious of strong epithets ; but 
 from our author we have a special claim to emphatical terms 
 superlatively magnified, when speaking of grand subjects, 
 because he sometimes applies emphatical terms, especially 
 the word infinite, to very little ones, "We have hinted 
 before, that brilliant expressions are elicited from him with 
 wonderful facility and copiousness, whenever he comes 
 within the precincts or the apartments of an opulent villa. 
 In page 200, he describes a visit to such a viUa, the lady of 
 which patronizes a school of industry for girls. This school 
 it seems is in its nature a losing concern, and costs her some 
 inconsiderable sum every year. In the contemplation of 
 this generosity, Mr. Carr is so affected, that his thoughts 
 are transported for once to the joys of heaven, as the 
 unquestionable reversion awaiting such transcendent good- 
 ness. "We were half inclined to take exception to this 
 language, as somewhat too strong for the occasion ; but we 
 stood corrected for this feeling on reading the paragraphs 
 immediately following, which describe a magnificent and 
 most extravagantly expensive luxury in the appendages of 
 this mansion. That after such a consumption of money, any 
 small sum should have been reserved for a school of industry, 
 and that amidst such a " voluptuous" paradise, there should 
 have been any recollection of so humble a concern, appeared 
 to us an excess of bounty and condescension, which Mr. 
 Carr's panegyric had too feebly applauded. But though 
 the traveller's amiable propensity to celebrate good actions 
 becomes peculiarly strong in the genial neighbourhood of 
 rank and elegance, it would be unjust to deny that he is 
 capable of discerning excellence in subordinate stations of 
 
CAB£ S STEANGEB IN IBELAND. J 
 
 life. A little earlier in iis book he gives an example, which 
 we will transcribe, and we cannot help it if any reader should 
 deem this a specimen of much more rare and costly virtue, 
 than that which we have joined the author in admiring. 
 
 " The following little anecdote will prove that magnanimity is 
 also an inmate of an Irish cabin. During the march of a regi- 
 ment, the Honourable Captain P , who had the command of 
 
 the artillery baggage, observing that one of the peasants, whose 
 car and horse had been pressed for the regiment, did not drive 
 as fast as he ought, went up to him and struck him ; the poor 
 fellow shrugged up his shoulders, and observed there was no 
 occasion for a blow, and immediately quickened the pace of his 
 animal. Some time afterwards, the artillery officer having been 
 out shooting all the morning, entered a cabin for the purpose of 
 resting himself, when he found the very peasant whom he had 
 struck, at dinner with his wife and family : the man who was 
 very large and powerfully made, and whose abode was solitary, 
 might have taken fatal revenge upon the officer, instead of which, 
 immediately recognizing him, he chose the best potato out of 
 his bowl, and presenting it to his guest, said, ' There, your honour, 
 oblige me by tasting a potato, and I hope it is a good one, but 
 you should not have struck me — a blow is J-%rd to bear.'" — Pp. 
 IfiO, 151. 
 
 By means of a wide diversity of narrative and anecdote, 
 Mr. Carr furnishes a striking picture of the Irish character, 
 as it appears in the lower ranks throughout the middle and 
 southern parts of the country. His manner of exhibiting 
 the national character, by means of a great assortment of 
 weU-ehosen facts, and short conversations, gives a much 
 more lively representation than any formal philosophic work, 
 composed chiefly of general observations. At the same time, 
 it will not be unjust to remark, that only a very small portion 
 of toil and reflection is necessary for executing such a work. 
 Writing travelling memoranda was a pleasant employment 
 of many intervals and evenings, which would otherwise have 
 been unoccupied and tedious ; and, to form a volume, the 
 author had not much more to do than to revise these 
 Memoranda, and add certain extracts from old and new 
 oooks, with a few calculations and general statements. The 
 book is such an enumeration of particulars, and series of 
 short sketches, as a philosopher would virish to obtain in 
 order to deduce, by abstracting the essence of the whole 
 
8 ON TEATIl -WEITIKGf. 
 
 mixture, a comprehensive character of the people and the 
 country. It is like an irregular heap of materials which the 
 artist must melt together, in order to cast one complete and 
 well-proportioned figure. 
 
 It will be obvious to the readers of this volume, that the 
 Irish people have a national character widely different from 
 that of the English. And it will be the utmost want of 
 candour, we think, to deny that they are equal to any nation 
 on the earth, in point of both physical and intellectual 
 capability. A liberal system of government, and a high 
 state of mental cultivation, would make them the Athenians 
 of the British empire. By what mystery of iniquity, or 
 infatuation of policy, has it come to pass, that they have 
 been doomed to unalterable ignorance, poverty, and misery, 
 and reminded one age after another of their dependence on 
 a protestant power, sometimes by disdainful neglect, and 
 sometimes by the infliction of plagues. The temper of our 
 traveller is totally the reverse of any thing like querulous- 
 ness or faction ; but he occasionally avows, both in sorrow 
 and in anger, the irresistible impression made, by what he 
 witnessed, on an honest, and we believe we may say, generous 
 mind. He clearly sees that the lower order of the people, 
 whatever might be their disposition, have, in the present 
 state of things, absolutely no power to redeem themselves 
 from their deplorable degradation. Without some great, 
 and as yet unattempted, and perhaps unprojected, plan for 
 the relief of their pressing physical wants, they may remain 
 another century in a situation, which a Christian and a 
 philanthropist cannot contemplate without a grief approach- 
 ing to horror. Their popery and their vice wiU be alleged 
 against them ; if the punishment is to be that they shall be 
 left in that condition wherein they wiU inevitably continue 
 popish and vicious still, their fate is indeed mournful ; ven- 
 geance could hardly prompt a severer retribution. Mr. Carr 
 approves of the Union, and faintly expresses his hope that 
 great benefits may yet result from it ; but plainly acknow- 
 ledges that a very different system of practical administra- 
 tion must be adopted, before Ireland can have any material 
 cause to be grateful for this important measure. 
 
 It is a particular excellence of the book before ua, that 
 the diversified facts are so well exhibited, as to enable the 
 
CAEB's STEAITGEE IN lEELAND. 9 
 
 reader to delineate for himself, without any further assis- 
 tance of the author, the principal features of the Irish 
 character ; insomuch that were he to visit Ireland, he would 
 find that the previous reading of the book had made him 
 completely at home in that country. The author, however, 
 was willing to give a short abstract of his scattered esti- 
 mates of Irish qualities, in the following summary. Allow- 
 ing that the national character does really comprise these 
 properties, we must however think that impartial justice 
 would more strongly have marked some of the vices, which 
 considerably shade this constellation of fine qualities. 
 
 "With few materials for ingenuity to work with, the 
 peasantry of Ireland are most ingenious, and with adequate 
 inducements, laboriously indefatigable ; they possess, in general, 
 personal beauty and vigour of frame ; they abound with wit 
 and sensibility, though all the avenues to useful knowledge are 
 closed against them ; they are capable of forgiving injuries, 
 and are generous even to their oppressors ; they are sensible of 
 superior merit, and submissive to it ; they display natural 
 urbanity in rags and penury, are cordially hospitable, ardent 
 for information, social in their habits, kind in their disposition, 
 in gaiety of heart and genuine humour unrivalled, even in their 
 superstition presenting a union of pleasantry and tenderness ; 
 warm and constant in their attachments, feithful and incorrup- 
 tible in their engagements ; innocent, with the power of sensual 
 enjoyment perpetually within their reach ; observant of sexual 
 modesty, though crowded withiii the narrow limits of a cabin ; 
 strangers to a crime which reddens the cheek of manhood with 
 horror ; tenacious of respect ; acutely sensible of, and easily 
 won by kindnesses. Such is the peasantry of Ireland : I appeal 
 not to the affections or the humanity, but to the justice of every 
 one to whom chance may direct these pages, whether men so 
 constituted present no character which a wise government can 
 mould to the great purpose of augmenting the prosperity 
 of the country, and the happiness of society. Well might Lord 
 Chesterfield, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, exclaim, ' God 
 has done everything for this country, man nothing.' " — Pp. 292, 
 293. 
 
 The author gives plenty of specimens of the ignorance, 
 the fanaticism, the legends, and the superstition, of the 
 lowest rank of the people ; and whUe we read them, we 
 are indignant at the insinuation which occurs, we think 
 more than once, against the wisdom jr necessity of a 
 
10 OW TEATEL-WEITING. 
 
 proselyting spirit on the part of the protestants. The view 
 of such a state of the human mind ought to incite all pious 
 protestants to move heaven and earth, if it were possible, to 
 annihilate that monster of error and corruption which pro- 
 duces and sanctions, and will perpetuate in every country 
 where it continues to prevail, that degradation of which the 
 ignorant Irish are an example. But we cannot help per- 
 ceiving, in several passages of the present volume, that our 
 sprightly traveller is disposed to regard revelation itself 
 as rather a light matter ; we cannot wonder, therefore, at 
 his being unconscious how important is the difference 
 between an erroneous faith and worship, and the true. 
 One of these passages is in page 33 : " In God's name let 
 the Peruvians derive themselves from the sun ; let the 
 Chinese boast of the existence of their empire eight 
 thousand years before the creation of the world according 
 to our calculation, &c." If a man really holds the opinion 
 implied in such expressions as these (the palpable profane- 
 ness of which, too, deserves the severest condemnation), we 
 ought not to be surprised, that in the same volume or 
 chapter the reclaiming of bogs is represented as an object to 
 be strenuously promoted, and the reclaiming of miserable 
 papists as an object for which it betrays some defect of judg- 
 ment to show any great degree of zeal. Tet, on recollection, 
 we do a little wonder that Mr. Carr, though he should set 
 aside all considerations of purely religious advantage, here 
 or hereafter, should not see the importance, in relation to 
 political economy, of the lower order being raised to that 
 decent state of intellectual and moral improvement which 
 there is not the smallest chance of their attaining while 
 under the influence of a superstition which governs them by 
 besotting them While, however, we condemn such indif- 
 ference, especially when indifference affects the character of 
 superior wisdom, we equally condemn all corrupt and all 
 violent methods of advancing the protestant cause. It is 
 not by tempting the conscience of the papist with a pitiful 
 sum of money, nor by forcibly interrupting the foUies of his 
 public worship, nor by making him, for the sake of his 
 religion, the subject of continual derision, nor by unneces- 
 sarily excluding him from any advantage, that we could wish 
 to see genuine Christianity aided in its warfare against that 
 
cake's steangee in ieelaitd. 11 
 
 wretched paganism, into which what was once religion is 
 found degenerated among all very ignorant papists in every 
 country. We cannot but regret that both the civil and 
 ecclesiastical rulers of Ireland should have been, for the 
 most part, unacquainted with all apostolical methods of 
 attempting the conversion of the catholics. And it is me- 
 lancholy that the generality of the ostensible ministers of 
 religion at present in that country, should be so very little 
 either disposed or qualified to promote this great work. We 
 happen to know, that there are some brilliant exceptions to 
 this remark, the lustre of whose character, if it cannot pre- 
 vail to any distance, yet defines and exposes the obscurity 
 which surrounds them. 
 
 Our traveller was attentive to collect any kind of useful 
 or amusing information, respecting the several places which 
 he visited, and respecting the country at large. He is of 
 opinion, that Ireland is of a temperature probably more 
 mUd and equal than that of any other country. Its unri- 
 valled verdure is owing to its western position, where its 
 hills are the first interruption to the clouds of the Atlantic, 
 in consequence of which the proportion of rainy weather is 
 much greater than in England. We presume this circum- 
 stance would render it, with the advantage of an equal 
 cultivation, more richly productive of almost all the most 
 valuable kinds of vegetables ; and Arthur Toung, we recol- 
 lect, has given it as his opinion, that the soil of Ireland is 
 more fertile, acre against acre, than that of this country. 
 The agriculture is described as considerably progressive on 
 the whole, in spite even of the singularly hapless condition 
 of multitudes of its most valuable labourers. 
 
 One of the most curious and interesting parts of the book 
 is the account of the interior of the Irish bogs. In digging 
 to a great depth in one of them, there were found three 
 prostrate woods, one below another, and separated by suc- 
 cessive deep strata of earth. Mr. Carr refers the investigap 
 tion of these facts to more philosophic men, apparently 
 afraid of the gravity of such inquiries ; and lest even his 
 momentary descent into the abyss of a bog-pit should have, 
 on him or his readers, any such eflect as that of the cave of 
 Trophonius, he inspirits himself and them with a good story 
 of an " embalmed cobbler," once found, with all his imple- 
 
12 or TRAVEI-WEITING. 
 
 ments about him, in one of these places. Just in this 
 manner a bog-digger takes his glass of whiskey before he 
 begins. 
 
 In the narration of the hasty visit to so enchanting a 
 place as the lakes of Killarney, we were vexed that any of 
 the pages should be occupied about such-a-one Esq., and a 
 second Esquire, and a third, and so on. It lessens the 
 charm of the description, in the same manner as the crowded 
 quarter-sessions in the town spoiled in. a degree the pleasure 
 of being in the place itself. We coidd also have well spared 
 the foolish lines of Swift, called "A Gentle Echo on "Women." 
 We are, on the contrary, delighted with the little anecdote 
 of the huntsman, who set free a poor fawn which he had 
 caught, because the dam followed him with tones of distress. 
 Things like this are in harmony with the exquisite and 
 tranquil beauty of the scene. As travellers cannot relate 
 all the incidents they witness or hear of in each place which 
 they visit, it would be the part of a judicious artist to select 
 those which most harmonize with the character of the situa- 
 tion. Mr. Carr wants a good deal of improvement in this 
 point. Not that we could have the conscience to require 
 him to suppress all the humorous anecdotes which he hears, 
 but we really wish that, if he should ever visit another place 
 like Killarney, he will make such a choice of facts and 
 anecdotes, out of the whole mass which comes before him 
 as to aid the emotions of sublimity and beauty which are 
 peculiarly appropriate to the place, and which the actual 
 observer would be ashamed of himself if he did not feel as 
 the prevailing state of his mind, while he remained amidst 
 this magnificence of nature. We must not, however, for- 
 bear to add, that Mr. Carr does give a very pleasing account 
 of this noble scene, notwithstanding the spirit and tone of 
 the description are so unfortunately interrupted, when any 
 jokes or ludicrous incideots, those literary wild-fowl in the 
 pursuit of which our traveller is an incomparable sportsman, 
 happen to fly across his view. 
 
 He went to Limerick and Cork, which he describes 
 sufficiently in detail. The shocking accounts of the house 
 of industry at Limerick, and of the house of industry and 
 the old gaol at Cork, will sting the principal inhabitants, we 
 hope, through very shame, to the adoption of some more 
 
CABE's STEANSEE in lEELAlfD. 18 
 
 humane, more decent, and more useful regulations. On 
 reaching Kilkenny, he found " quite a jubilee bustle in the 
 streets." The sacred flame of charity was glowing through- 
 out the town. It was understood that numbers of human 
 beings were " sinking under want and misery ;" and a great 
 company of gentlemen, and other people, were convened to 
 make a noble effort of pure Christian munificence. And in 
 what manner, courteous reader, should you siippose the 
 resources were to be supplied for executing the pious design? 
 The money was obtained by means of theatricals, which are 
 performed during one month every year, with an incalculable 
 mischief, beyond all doubt, to the morals of the young 
 people. The balance, after deducting the expenses attending 
 the performance, is reckoned at about £200. This, as we 
 should infer, from another item in the account, is not a 
 fourth part of the whole sum paid for entrance into the 
 theatre ; but how much of even this smaller sum would 
 have been contributed for the charity, if it had not been ex- 
 tracted by means of this vain and noxious amusement ? 
 
 Mr. Carr seems to have visited Ireland in the capacity of 
 character-painter to the principal inhabitants. And as the 
 other class of artists, portrait-painters, are said to keep a 
 number of Venuses, Adonises, ApoUos, &c., within sight 
 while at their work, so we cannot be so simple as not to 
 suspect that this moral painter has played off the same 
 device on those who sat, and on us who are called to inspect 
 and admire. He meets with a certain General here, at 
 Kilkenny, whose generous patriotism may challenge the 
 whole empire to produce an equal. In this one instance, 
 however, Mr. Carr does not attempt to put the trick upon 
 us ; and we are thankful to him for his honesty. He might 
 have observed a discreet silence as to the particular proof 
 of this unrivalled generosity, and then we should have sup- 
 posed this patriotism displayed itself* in ; nay, should 
 
 have very deeply pondered all the forms in which it could 
 have been displayed, and tried to ascertain which is the 
 most generous and useful. Has he built a hospital for 
 the lame or blind ? Has he remitted his poor tenants half 
 their rents on account of a severe season ? Has he helped 
 a great many little farmers to cultivate pieces of waste land? 
 Or perhaps he has established large schools for the decent 
 
14 ON TEAVEIi-'WEITIira. 
 
 education of the brats of the wild Irish. No, he has done 
 Bomething much nobler : he has made, each year, a large 
 volunteer subscription, towards defraying the expense of 
 carrying on the war. Cunning Mr. Painter ! always per- 
 form in this manner ; and we shall not be tempted to the 
 sin of reviling you for having taken us in. 
 
 Our readers have often heard of the late Dean Kirwan, 
 long celebrated for his charity sermons ; and if eloquence 
 be rightly defined the art of persuading, it would appear 
 that he must have been one of the greatest orators of 
 modem times ; for the sums collected after his sermons, 
 amounted in all, as we are informed by Mr. Carr, to nearly 
 sixty thousand pounds. For purposes of mischief we have 
 often enough had occasion to see that a mere second-rate 
 eloquence is sufficient to obtain immensely greater sums ; 
 and we have observed human nature too long to wonder at 
 the fact ; but that a sum Hke the one here specified should 
 be granted to the pleadings of charity, does excite our 
 wonder we own, and also our curiosity to know the exact 
 nature of the eloquence which had so great an effect. Mr. 
 Carr has given several pages of specimens, which he obtain- 
 ed with difficulty from a reverend admirer of the Dean, who 
 had taken them down in short-hand. But whether it be, 
 that the writer gave a cast of expression of his own to the 
 sentences of the speaker, or whether there was a defect of 
 taste in selecting them, or whether they were accompanied 
 and enforced by unequalled graces of delivery, or whether 
 the great law of attraction exists in less force between 
 money and its owners in Ireland than in other countries, 
 or whatever other cause, of which we are not aware, con- 
 tributed its influence, we acknowledge that we have some 
 difficulty to comprehend how a kind of oratory so veiy 
 dissimilar to the noblest models of eloquence, could produce 
 the splendid result. These specimens too much remind us 
 of the worst literary qualities of Erench oratory. The 
 language has an artificial pomp, which is carried on, if we 
 may so express it, at a certain uniform height above the 
 thought, on aU occasions ;, like the gaudy canopy of some 
 effeminate oriental, which is still supported over him, with 
 invariable and tiresome ceremony, whether he proceeds or 
 stops, sleeps or wakes, rides or condescends to step on the 
 
caee's steangee in ieeland. is 
 
 ground. Tlie images seem rather to be sought than to 
 spring in the mind spontaneously, and to be chosen rather 
 for their splendour than their appropriateness. And the 
 train of thinking appears to have little of that distinct suc- 
 cession of ideas, and that logical articulation, which are 
 requisite to impress sound conviction on the understanding. 
 — We fear, however, that we begin to descry one capital 
 cause of the Dean's success, in something else than the 
 literary merits of his oratory : and our readers will hardly 
 avoid the same surmise when they read the following 
 passage. Expressing his reverence for the man, " however 
 he may differ in speculative opinions," who relieves the 
 wretched, &c. &c., he proceeds, " Should such a man be ill- 
 fated, here or hereafter, may his fate be light ! Should ha 
 transgress, may his transgressions be unrecorded ! Or if the 
 page of his great account be stained with the weakness of 
 human nature, or the misfortune of error, may the tears of 
 the widow and the orphan, the tears of the wretched he has 
 relieved, efface the too rigid and unfriendly characters, and 
 blot out the guilt and remembrance of them for ever!" 
 Now if an admired preacher, after a pathetic address to the 
 passions of a numerous and wealthy auditory, many of whom 
 had never accurately studied the doctrines of Christianity, 
 could hare the courage to proceed forward, and declare to 
 them, in the name of heaven, that their pecuniary Hberality 
 to the claims of distress in general, and especially to the 
 case of distress immediately before them, would secure 
 them, notwithstanding their past and future unrepented 
 and unrelinquished sins, from all danger of divine condemna- 
 tion ; intimating also, that, on the extreme and improbable 
 supposition that they should be consigned to the region of 
 punishment, it would prove so light an affair as to be rather 
 a little misfortune than an awfol calamity, he might cer- 
 tainly persuade them to an ample contribution. But that 
 an enlightened minister of a protestant church could have 
 the courage to declare or even insinuate the pernicious sen- 
 timent, awakens our utmost astonishment. We think there 
 can be no doubt that a certain proportion of the money 
 collected after the address, in which such a passage as this 
 was seriously uttered, would be paid literally as the atone- 
 ment for the past crimes, and as the price of an extended 
 
16 OK TEATEL-WEIIISG. 
 
 license to repeat them with impunitj. If the whole of the 
 oration was powerfully persuasive, we cannot fail to attribute 
 a large share of the success to that particular part, so sooth- 
 ing to apprehension, and so flattering to ignorance and cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 In returning towards Dublin, our author made a visit to 
 the house of Mr. Grattan ; and he might well feel himself 
 flattered by the welcome and the polite attention, which he 
 experienced there, and gratified by the mental luxuries which, 
 we may believe, scarcely another house could have supplied. 
 We should have been glad to receive some more particular 
 information about this distiaguished orator, than the 
 assurance merely of his being a polite and hospitable man, 
 an elegant scholar, and respectable in domestic relations. 
 We should have been glad to hear something of his studies, 
 his personal habits, his style of talking, or the manner in 
 which he appears to meet advancing age. Tet we acknow- 
 ledge it is a difficult matter for a transient visitor, who is 
 received on terms of formal politeness, to acquire much 
 knowledge on some of these particulars, and a matter of 
 some delicacy to publish what he might acquire. A number 
 of pages are occupied with passages from Mr. Grattan's 
 speeches ; some of which extracts, we believe, were supplied 
 to Mr. Carr from memory, and therefore are probably given 
 imperfectly. On the whole, however, these passages tend 
 to confirm the general idea entertained of Mr. Grattan'a 
 eloquence, as distinguished by fire, sublimity, and an im- 
 mense reach of thought. A following chapter is chiefly 
 composed of similar extracts from Mr. Ourran's speeches ; 
 in most of which the conceptions are expressed with more 
 lucidness and precision than in the passages from Grattan, 
 These specimens did not surprise, though, they delighted us. 
 We have long considered this distinguished counsellor as 
 possessed of a higher genius than any one in his profession 
 within the British empire. The most obvious difference be- 
 tween these two great orators is, that Curran is m ore versatile, 
 rising often to sublimity, and often descending to pleasantry, 
 and even drollery ; whereas Grattan is always grave and 
 austere. They both possess that order of intellectual 
 powers, of which the limits cannot be assigned. No con- 
 ception could be so briUiant or original, that we should 
 
rOEBES S LIFE OF DE. BEATTIE. 17 
 
 confi Jentlj pronounce that neither of these men could have 
 uttered it. We regret to imagine how many admirable 
 thoughts, which such men must have expressed in the lapse 
 of many years, have been unrecorded, and are lost for ever. 
 "We think of these with the same feelings with which we 
 have often read of the beautiful or sublime occasional 
 phenomena of nature, in past times, or remote regions, 
 which amazed and delighted the beholders, but which we 
 were destined never to see. 
 
 ON MEMOIE-WEITING. 
 
 An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D., late 
 Professor m Moral Philosophy and Logic, in the Marischal Col- 
 leqe and University of Aberdeen ; including many of his Original 
 Letters. By Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, Bart. 2 vols. 
 1807. 
 
 When a man of humble condition and education, who has 
 cultivated literature under the pressure of many disadvan- 
 tages, and perhaps distresses, comes before the public with 
 a work which has cost him great labour, costs the purchaser 
 but a moderate price, and communicates very necessary, or 
 at least very useful and seasonable information, he may 
 justly claim for the faults of his book the very last degree 
 of forbearance which criticism can exercise without surren- 
 dering its essential laws. But when a man of fortune, who 
 has had a liberal education, who has been intimate with many 
 of the most distinguished individuals, both in literature and 
 rank, for forty years, who would indignantly disown any 
 wish to raise money on the grave of his friend, who knows 
 that an ample memoir of that friend has already been given 
 to the public, and who adopts the easiest of all possible modes 
 of making up volumes, publishes a splendid work, he will 
 naturally disdain to be under any obligation to the clemency 
 of critics. We shall, therefore, feel perfectly at liberty to 
 express our honest opinion on these volumes; and laying 
 out of the question aU the excellences which the author 
 
 
 
18 Olf MEMOIE-WEITIlfG. 
 
 doubtless possesses, we shall consider him simply in the 
 character which he has assumed in appearing before the 
 public. 
 
 "We cannot but earnestly wish that the present epidemical 
 disease in literature, the custom of making very large books . 
 about individuals, may in due time find, like other diseases, 
 some limit to its prevalence, and at length decline and dis- 
 appear. What is to become of readers, if the exit of every 
 man of some literary eminence, is thus to be followed by a 
 long array of publications, beginning with duodecimos, 
 extending into octavos, and expanded at last into a battalion 
 of magnificent quartos ? This is reviving to some purpose 
 the Theban method of attacking in the form of a wedge; 
 and we do hope the curiosity, diligence, and patience of 
 readers will at last be completely put to the rout. 
 
 This swelling fungous kind of biography confounds all the 
 right proportions in which the claims and the importance of 
 individuals should be arranged, and exhibited to the atten- 
 tion of the public. When a private person, whose life was 
 marked by few striking varieties, is thus brought forward in 
 two volumes quarto, while many an individual of modern 
 times, who influenced the fate of nations, has been confined 
 to a sixth part of the compass, it reminds us too much of 
 that political rule by which Old Sarum, consisting of one 
 house, is represented by two illustrious senators, while many 
 very populous towns are not represented at all. If a pro- 
 fessor of a college is to lie thus magnificently in state, what 
 must be done for such a man as Mr. Pitt or Mr. Pox ? And 
 still more, what must be done after the exit of some persons 
 who are at present acting their part in human afiairs ? The 
 French Encyclopedie will be in point of bulk, but a horn- 
 book in comparison of the stupendous hosts of folios, which 
 must come forth after the departure of Bonaparte and 
 Talleyrand; provided, that is to say, that sufficient materials, 
 ia the way of paper, ink, Ac, can then be obtained where- 
 withal to furnish out this mighty blazon of monumental 
 history. And by the way, the makers of paper will do well 
 to take the hint from us, and have their warehouses ready 
 for the event which will happen sooner or later in their 
 favour, though to the confusion and dismay of the most 
 courageous and indefatigable readers. As to reviewers, the 
 
rOEBES's IIFE OF DE. BEATTIE. 19 
 
 most industrious and incorruptible of all the servants of the 
 public, they will then have the plea of absolute necessity for 
 resorting to the practice of which they have sometimes been 
 most unrighteously accused — that of reviewing books without 
 inspecting them. 
 
 The method of constructing large biographical works out 
 of an assemblage of letters, with here and there a page and 
 paragraph between for the purpose of connexion and expla- 
 nation, has plenty of plausible recommendations. There is 
 an appearance of great modesty ; the compiler makes no 
 claims to the honours of authorship ; all he is anxious for, is 
 to display in the simplest manner, the merits, talents, and 
 pursuits of his friend. That friend is thus made to present 
 himself to us in his own person, and his familiar correspon- 
 dence will disclose to us the internal qualities of the man 
 incomparably better, as it is so often repeated to us, than any 
 formal development of a biographer. The series of such 
 letters, continued through half the length of life or more, 
 will show the gradual progress and improvement of the mind. 
 If some of them are trivial or common, in subject or style, 
 even the smallest things said and vyritten by eminent persons 
 have their value ; it is pleasing to observe how great fiiinds 
 sometimes unbend ; and consoling to see in how many respects 
 they are like ourselves. These are recommendations proper 
 to be mentioned to the public; but there are others of which 
 the biographer can silently take the advantage to himself, 
 besides that extreme facility of performance which we have 
 hinted already. One of these is impunity. There is libtle to 
 be attacked in such a book, except what its author has not 
 written ; or if he is directly censured for introducing some of 
 the things written by the person who is the subject of the 
 book, the partiality of friendship is a plea always at hand, and 
 a feeling always accounted amiable. Another is a fair oppor- 
 tunity for the' biographer to introduce himself weij often, and 
 without the direct form of egotism ; since the probability is, 
 that not a few of the letters were written to him, and contain 
 of course, many very handsome things. His modesty pro- 
 fesses to hesitate about their insertion; but yet they must be 
 inserted, because they show in so striking a light, the kipd 
 disposition of his friend. 
 
 Such handsome things, we have no doubt, were amply 
 
20 ON MEMOIE-WEITING. 
 
 deserved by Sir W. Porbes, and even those more than hand- 
 Bome things, which he informs us he has omitted in printing 
 the letters. The indications of a sincere aifectiou for Dr. 
 Beattie, are very conspicuous ; and we attribute it to a real 
 partiality of friendship, that he has made this work much 
 larger than we think can be of service to the instruction of 
 the public, or the memory of his friend. The memory of that 
 was unquestionably too dear to him to have permitted the in- 
 sertion of one letter or line, which he did not sincerely believe 
 would give the same impression of the writer, which Sir 
 William himself was happy to cherish. It is, therefore, unfor- 
 tunate, that the reader should feel, at the close of the book, 
 that he would have been more pleased with both Dr. Beattie 
 and his biographer, if it had come to a close much sooner. 
 
 The parts written by Sir W. Porbes, are in a style per- 
 spicuous, correct, and classical ; generally relating however 
 to particulars which require no great effort of thought. 
 Many of these particulars are most unnecessarily intro- 
 duced, and lead into details which are extremely tiresome^ 
 not excepting even the analysis of Dr. Beattie's writings, 
 It had surely been enough to have stated in a few sen- 
 tences, the objects of his several performances, and then, 
 if the reader deemed those objects of importance, he would 
 take an opportunity of consulting the books themselves. 
 The notes contain a large assemblage of biographical and 
 genealogical records. When a new acquaintance of Dr. 
 Beattie is mentioned, it is deemed proper for us to be in- 
 formed of- his parentage, his connexions, his residence, his 
 offices, his accomplishments. In several instances a letter 
 of little interest is preceded by a long history of still less, 
 for the purpose of making that letter inteUigible, by detail- 
 ing some transaction to which it relates ; as in that part of 
 the book referring to the union of two colleges in Aberdeen. 
 Sir William is sufficiently a citizen of the world, we have no 
 doubt, to wish his book may be read in each part of the 
 kingdom ; why was he not enough a citizen of the world, to 
 be aware how small a portion of the kingdom can feel any 
 concern in this piece of history ? If he thought all these 
 matters would magnify the importance of his principal 
 subject, he is so far mistaken, that the reader is tempted to 
 quarrel with that subject, on account of this crowd of 
 
FOEBES S LIFE OF DE. BEATTIE. 21 
 
 appendages. The reader feels in this case, just as Sir 
 William would do, if some one of his friends of high rank, 
 whom he would be very glad to receive in an easy quiet way, 
 would never come to visit him for a day or two, without 
 bringing also a large troop of footmen, postilions, cooks, 
 nursery-maids, and other inhabitants of his house, kitchen, 
 and stables. We will not suppose it was his formal purpose 
 to make a very large book. Nor could it be his ambition to 
 display writing talents, as the subjects would have been 
 unfortunately selected for such a purpose ; and indeed we 
 do not accuse him of ostentation as an author. Perhaps it 
 is no great vice if he exhibits a little of it as a man. But 
 we have felt a degree of siu-prise that he should not seem 
 to be aware of the impression which would be made on the 
 minds of his readers, by his adding, at the end of almost 
 every note relating to one or another distinguished personage 
 of Dr. Beattie's acquaintance, "And I also had the honour 
 of his friendship." This occurs so often, that we have felt 
 that kind of irritation, which is excited when a man, that 
 we wish to respect, is for the tenth or twentieth time doing 
 or repeating a foolish thing in order to intimate his import- 
 ance. We persuade ourselves that this feeling arises from 
 our right perception of what would have preserved Sir 
 William's dignity ; perhaps, however, we deceive ourselves, 
 and the feeling springs from envy of his high fortune, for 
 we doubt if we were ever summoned to wait on a man of 
 such extensive and illustrious connexions before. 
 
 Previously to the insertion of any of Dr. Beattie's letters, 
 a succinct account is given of his life, from his birth, of 
 humble, but respectable parents, till his twenty-fifth year, 
 when he was appointed professor of moral philosophy and 
 logic in Marischal College, after having passed through the 
 offices of parish-clerk and schoolmaster in the neighbourhood 
 of his native place, and assistant in a respectable school in 
 Aberdeen. This rapid advancement, by means of merit 
 alone, is in itself sufficient to evince both uncommon ability 
 and industry. We are informed that the passion and the 
 talent for poetry were very early awakened in his mind, and 
 in one of his letters to a friend, in a later period of his life, 
 he acknowledges that his " Minstrel" is substantially _ a 
 description of what had been his own mental character in 
 
22 ON MEMOIE-WEITINS. 
 
 his youtL A prematurity of faculties appears conspicuous 
 through the whole course of his earlier life, and when he 
 was fixed at Aberdeen, those faculties were extended to the 
 utmost, in the society of a number of distinguished men, 
 such as Campbell, Eeid, Gerard, Grregory, and many others, 
 with whom he familiarly associated, and from that time 
 maintained an intimate friendship as long as the respective 
 parties lived. An entertaining account is given of these 
 literary friends forming themselves into a society for philo- 
 sophical discussion, to which the common people gave the 
 denomination of the Wise Club, in which the first ideas 
 were started of some of those theories which were afterwards 
 unfolded at large, in books that have obtained a high rank 
 in the philosophic school. It is pleasing to observe, that 
 the friendship among these scholars and philosophers was 
 very cordial, and not withered by that envy and jealousy 
 which the philosophic character has often enough failed to 
 preclude, when rival talents have created a comparison and 
 balance of reputation. Dr. Beattie retained his station at 
 Aberdeen all the rest of his life, which was diversified only 
 by his family connexions and cares, his publications, his 
 friendships, and his occasional visits to Loudon. A piece 
 of information is now and then interposed by the biogra- 
 pher ; but these circumstances are chiefly unfolded in Dr. 
 Beattie' s correspondence with Dr. Blacklock, Sir W. Eorbes, 
 Mr. Arbuthnot, Mrs. Montague, the Bishop of London, the 
 Duchess of Gordon, and several other friends. 
 
 From the time of Beattie' s establishment at Aberdeen, 
 till within a very few years of the end of his life, a period of 
 forty years, he prosecuted study and the business of author- 
 ship with indefatigable industry and ardour. And in passing 
 along the series of letters, our admiration is repeatedly 
 excited by the variety of attainments, the extent of accurate 
 reading, and the quantity of composition, for which he was 
 able to rescue time enough from his professional employ- 
 ments, wide correspondence, intercourse with society, and 
 domestic sorrows. A more instructive example is not often 
 displayed of what resolute application may accomplish, when 
 supported by a very warm interest in the business in 'which 
 it is exerted. But at the same time a warm passion for 
 literature, especially when a man writes, as weU as reads, ia 
 
FOEBES'S LIFE OF DE. BEATTIE. 23 
 
 apt to produce a species of extravagance, wtieh, to people 
 who are Bot in the same employment, appears excessively 
 ludicrous. A cork-cutter, or a maker of nails, or pins, or 
 pegs for shoes, who quietly betakes himself to his work every 
 morning, and goes soberly through it as a matter of course, 
 would be first surprised, and next diverted to laughter, to 
 see the importance, and earnestness, and solemnity, put on 
 by an author and a poet, while occupied about the making of 
 a line, the adjusting of a syllable, the changing of an epithet, 
 the measuring of dactyls, or the lengthening or shortening 
 of a paragraph ; and by the self-complacency, the air of high 
 achievement, and the congratulations of scholars, when he 
 has performed this great duty well. Even the detail of the 
 graver and more philosophic labours of writing cannot be 
 listened to long, when the writers are to give the account of 
 them, without the loss of gravity ; though it is true that the 
 gravity which is lost in laughing, may be quickly resumed 
 for censuring. 
 
 The letters of authors, from Pope's time, down to the 
 present instance, betray them to this ridicule and this 
 censure. There is no end of the amplifications and re- 
 petitions about my book, my poems, my ode, my epigram, 
 my translations, my corrections, my new edition, my next 
 production. I have taken great pains to amend the harsh- 
 ness of the tenth or fifteenth line ; I have excluded one 
 stanza, and inserted two ; I flatter myself that the objection 
 which has been made to it by the public wiU now be obvi- 
 ated; I have been particularly struck with a coincidence 
 
 between a passage in my essay, and one in Mr. 's 
 
 treatise ; I can prove that mine was not borrowed ; I have 
 written twenty pages of a dissertation on the subject we 
 were lately conversing upon ; you know I do not think 
 highly of my own talents ; I am inclined to think this wiU. 
 be a decisive performance however ; my last work is getting 
 much into vogue as I am informed. I hear the critics are 
 at work ; I defy them ; your approbation would sustain my 
 
 self-complacency, if they were all to condemn me ; Mr. 
 
 is very angry, but J. think he will not attack ; the work has 
 produced a great sensatioQ ; I am told that Dr. E., and 
 Bishop ¥., and Lord G. are delighted with it ; I have just 
 received a letter from Lady H., who pays me such compli- 
 
24 OS MEMOIE-WEITING. 
 
 ments as I will not repeat to you ; she tells me that Mr. J. 
 is wonderfully pleased and is very anxious to see me, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 If authors may be allowed to expatiate on these matters, 
 and in this manner, in their communications with their 
 intimate literary friends, the letters ought, for the sake of 
 the respectability of the writers, to be confined to those 
 friends alone. Should there be any exception, it would be 
 in the instance where some important principle of criticism 
 is discussed in immediate connexion with any articles of the 
 author's own performances, so that his remarKs respecting 
 his compositions, shall become instructive lessons on the art 
 of composition in general. But this is rarely the case in 
 those parts of the letters before us, which are occupied with 
 a multitude of minutiae about the writer's own studies. We 
 therefore think, that many of these letters convict Sir W. 
 Forbes of utterly mistaking the proper method of recalling 
 his departed friend, with dignity, into the public consider- 
 ation. 
 
 The first publication of Dr. Beattie was a volume of 
 juvenile poems, in a new edition of which he omitted several 
 pieces which his biographer regrets to lose ; especially a long 
 Ode to Peace, which is inserted in the appendix to the 
 present work. We think that Dr. Beattie showed more 
 discernment in wishing to let it sink into oblivion, than 
 Sir "William in fishing it up again. The term Chaos occurs 
 in the first stanza, and would have been a singularly appro- 
 priate title for the whole ode. It is not a description of 
 chaos, but the very thing itself; a mass of Hi-defined and 
 enormous images ; a confusion of crude elements, dashing, 
 rumbling, howling, and fighting all in the dark. 
 
 The " Minstrel " is the production of a maturer age, and 
 will always be read with delight by persons endowed with a 
 taste for nature, with tenderness of feeling, and elevated 
 imagination. The alleged deficiency of incident would 
 hardly appear to be a fault, in any work so rich in refined 
 sentiment and beautiful description. 
 
 An ample portion of the first volume is occupied with the 
 project, the completion, the publication, and the success, of the 
 "Essay on Truth." This is no place for the examination of the 
 principles of that celebrated book, which, beyond alldoubt,was 
 
FOEBES'S LIFE Or DB. BEATTIE. 26 
 
 vrritten witli the worthiest intention, and was of considerable 
 use at the time, in exposing some of the most obvious ex- 
 travagances of the sceptical philosophy, which was carried 
 to the very limit of sense by Mr. Hume, and pushed beyond 
 it into the most ridiculous folly, by some of his weak 
 admirers and wicked followers. The book wUl be an accep- 
 table resting-place to those who are averse to the labour of 
 abstract thinking, and an asylum to those who are terrified 
 by the consequences sometimes seen to result from attempt- 
 ing to prosecute such thinking beyond the power and reach 
 of the human faculties. But we cannot expect that phUo- 
 Bophers will ever be satisfied with this doctrine of common 
 sense. They will, we think justly, assert that there is no 
 boundary which can fairly limit and close the investigation 
 of truth on this side the region of metaphysics. The ulti- 
 mate principles must be there, whether they can be found 
 there or not ; and thither the investigation wUl absolutely 
 go, in spite of every contrivance to satisfy and determine it 
 at any nearer point. How far it shall go into that world of 
 abstraction, before its progress shall be stopped by humility 
 or despair, will depend on the strength of a merely philosophic 
 mind, and on the discretion of a pious one. 
 
 The author's expectations of the success of his essay were 
 not sanguine, and therefore surprise heightened his satis- 
 faction when it was received, if many of these letters do not 
 exaggerate, with such delight, as if Christianity and true 
 philosophy had been waiting, in the awful crisis of existence 
 or extinction, for its appearance. It seems to have been 
 welcomed like a convoy of provisions in a famishing garrison, 
 by many high characters in church and state, whose exul- 
 tation would really seem to betray the impression which 
 their talents had not prevented Mr. Hume from making on 
 their fears. The most flattering attentions thickened on 
 Dr. Beattie within the circle of his personal acquaintance ; 
 and he received from England many letters abounding with 
 expressions of admiration and ofiers of friendship, on the 
 Strength of which he was induced to make a visit to London. 
 At this period of the history, he is presented to us in a 
 difierent point of view from that of the scholar, poet, 
 and philosopher. We are fairly told, though with much care 
 to qualify the homeliness of the confession, that it was need- 
 
26 ON MEMOIB-WEITING. 
 
 ful to Dr. Beattie to eat, which we have often had occasion 
 to be sorry that philosophers, including reviewers, should be 
 under the necessity of doing. The means of subsistence 
 for himself and family were confined to the small stipend of 
 his professorship, and the emolument that might accrue from 
 his publications ; of which he received a comfortable sample 
 and assurance in the fifty guineas paid him for his " Essay 
 on Truth," which had only cost him the labour of four years. 
 His many generous and opulent friends in Scotland and 
 England were aware of his circumstances, and sincerely re- 
 gretted them. A comparatively small annual sum would 
 have given a man of his moderate wants and habits, the 
 feeling of independence ; and a strong and concurrent 
 sentiment of anxiety was awakened, in the miuds of a 
 greater number of noblemen and gentlemen than we can 
 charge our memories with, to find out any means of ob- 
 taining for him this advantage. They lamented the duty, 
 imposed on them by their high rank, of expending so many 
 thousands on their splendid establishments and their hounds ; 
 while the illustrious defender of truth, and their dear friend, 
 was in danger of something bordering on indigence. But 
 notwithstanding these unavoidable necessities of their own 
 condition, they would have been most happy to have made 
 some efibrt in his favour, had not a fatal obstacle stood in 
 the way. That obstacle was delicacy ; it might hurt his 
 feelings to insinuate to him the ofier of any thing which 
 they themselves regarded with such a generous scorn as 
 money. With sincere sorrow, therefore, they were reduced 
 to wait, and see what fortune might do for him. At last 
 Mrs. Montague, much to her shame, violated this delicacy 
 by informing him, that she would take upon herself to mend 
 his condition, if a slight expectation which had begun to 
 spring up from another quarter, should fail to be realized. 
 This expectation was realized not long after, and his illus- 
 trious friends rejoiced in the double good fortune, that their 
 delicacy was saved, and liis purse was filled. Sir W. Eorbes, 
 one of those friends, and an opulent banker in Edinburgh, 
 records this whole afiair in the most honest simplicity ol 
 heart, just as we have done ourselves. 
 
 This brings us, as we conceive, to the middle of our 
 song — 
 
rOEBES"S LIFE OF BE. BEATTIE. 27 
 
 Now heavily comes on in clouds the day, 
 
 The great, th' important day, big with the fate — 
 
 But it was a mucli better fate than that of our old friend 
 Cato. After many preparatory solemnities, Dr. Beattie was 
 introduced to their Majesties ; but a reverential awe forbids 
 lis to intrude our remarks on what passed in the royal 
 sanctuary. We wait near the entrance till the bold adven- 
 turer returns, to display his acquisitions and his honours, a 
 kind of spolia opima, similar to what Johnson, another great 
 literary hero, had carried off sometime before, and often, as 
 his historian tells, triumphantly exhibited to the wonder and 
 envy of his numerous acquaintance. At Dr. Beattie's 
 return, however, we find him so beset with a crowd and mob 
 of zealous friends, that we are glad to mate our escape from 
 the bustle, and can only say, that at length he went back to 
 Scotland with an annuity of £200. Highly appreciating 
 the royal bounty, he ever afterwards testified the liveliest 
 gratitude ; and his attachment was naturally increased by 
 the very flattering marks of friendship which he received 
 from their Majesties on subsequent occasions. 
 
 Diiring this visit he was introduced to the distinguished 
 persons whose letters are here intermixed with his own. 
 Our remarks on the whole collection must be brief and 
 general. Together with a great deal that ought to have been 
 omitted, as neither having any intrinsic value, nor supplying 
 any additional illustration of the Doctor's qualities, they 
 contain much good sense, easy writing, and frank disclosure 
 of character. There is also a respectable share of true cri- 
 ticism ; but we own there are not many passages that appear 
 to us to reach the depths of either criticism or philosophy, 
 which indeed are the same. The variety of the descriptions 
 generally bear the marks of the poet and the man of taste. 
 The references to subjects of domestic tenderness present 
 him in so amiable a light that we deeply sympathize with 
 the melancholy which accompanied every recollection of the 
 state of his family ; and it must have been inevitable to a 
 man like him, to have that recollection almost continually in 
 his mind. The direct allusions, however, are not often re- 
 peated, and with much propriety Sir WUliam has no doubt 
 omitted many paragraphs relating to the subject. 
 
 Dr. Beattie's style is singularly free and perspicuous, and 
 
28 ON MEMOIE-AVEITIIfG. 
 
 adapted in the highest degree to the purpose of familiar lec- 
 turing to his pupils ; but for an author we should deem it 
 something less than elegant, and something less than ner- 
 vous. In early life he took great pains to imitate Addison, 
 whose style he always recommended and admired. But 
 Addison's style is not sufficiently close and firm for the us© 
 of a philosopher, and as to the exquisite shades of his colours, 
 they can perhaps never be successfully imitated. "We were 
 rather surprised to find the enthusiastic admirer of Addison 
 preferring the old Scotch version of the Psalms to every 
 other ; and the opinion of so respectable a judge put our 
 national partialities in some degree of fear. But we soon 
 recovered our complacency in our own venerable Sternhold 
 and Hopkins, who, in point of harmony and elegance, rich- 
 ness and majesty, and all the other high attributes of poetry, 
 have surely beaten their northern rivals. 
 
 In many parts of the letters, we are constrained to per- 
 ceive a degree of egotism inconsistent with the dignity of a 
 philosopher or a man. The writer seems unwilling to lose 
 any opportunity of recounting the attentions, the compli- 
 ments, the testimonies of admiration, which he has received 
 from individuals or the public. The complacency with which 
 he expatiates on himself and his performances, is but imper- 
 fectly disguised by the occasional and too frequent profes- 
 sions of holding himself and those performances cheap. 
 This is a very usual but unsuccessful expedient, with those 
 who have reflection enough to be sensible that they have 
 rather too much ostentation, but not resolution enough to 
 restrain themselves from indulging in it. It will unluckily 
 happen sometimes, that these professions of self-disesteem 
 wUl be brought into direct contrast with certain things that 
 betray a very different feeling. There is an instance of this 
 in the second volume (p. 173), where the expression, " you 
 have paid too much attention to my foolish remarks," is 
 printed in the same page with this other expression, " poor 
 Mr. Locke." 
 
 Another conspicuous feature of this correspondence is 
 the gross flattery interchanged between Dr. Beattie and his 
 friends. The reader is sometimes tempted to suspect, that 
 he has been called to be present at a farce where the princi- 
 pal persons are flattering for a wager. During the perusal 
 
FOEBES'S JAUS. OF DB. BEATTIE. 29 
 
 we have been obliged again and again to endeavour to drive 
 out of our imagination the idea of a meeting of friends in 
 China, where the first mandarin bows to the floor, and then 
 the second mandarin bows to the floor, and then the first 
 mandarin bows again to the floor, and thus they go on till 
 friendship is satisfied or patience tired. In his letters to 
 one individual, a duchess, the Doctor felt it his duty to take 
 notice of her person as well as abilities and virtues. But we 
 should conclude that all the other gentlemen of her acquain- 
 tance must have been very sparing of compliments to her 
 beauty, if she could be gratified by such as those of the 
 professor. 
 
 If it is not gross flattery that abounds in these letters, we 
 have the more cause to be sorry for having come into the 
 world some years later than Dr. Beattie and Sir W. Forbes. 
 There have been better times than the present, if during the 
 main part of this correspondence, every gentleman was an 
 accomplished scholar, every person of opulence and power 
 was humble and charitable, and every prelate an apostle. 
 Astrsea must have left the earth much later than report has 
 commonly given out. 
 
 The letters of the Doctor's friends constitute the smaller, 
 yet a considerable proportion of the series. Those of Mrs. 
 Montague are greatly superior to the rest, and excel in some 
 respects those of Dr. Beattie himself. The general praise of 
 good language is due to the whole collection. It may ap- 
 pear a caprice of our taste to dislike the frequent recurrence 
 of the words credit and creditable. " Highly creditable to 
 his understanding and his heart," " does equal credit to his 
 talents and his character," &c., &c., are phrases returning 
 so often, that they become disagreeable intruders on the eye 
 and the ear. The sameness of phrase is however strikingly 
 relieved by novelty of application, in a letter of condolence 
 from a learned prelate to Dr. Beattie, after the death of his 
 second son. (Vol. II., p. 309.) The mourning father is told 
 that, "The faith, the piety, the fortitude, displayed by so 
 voung a man, on so awful an occasion, do infinite credit to 
 nim." As if dying were a matter of exhibition, to be per- 
 itrmed handsomely to please the spectators. 
 
 Among the sensible and entertaining pieces of criticism 
 to be found in the Doctor's liters, we might refer to his 
 
30 ON MEMOIE-VEITIlfG. 
 
 observations on the novel of Clarissa, Ossian's Poems, the 
 Nouvelle Eloise, Metaatasio, Tasso, Caesar's Commentaries, 
 the diction of the Orientals, and the Henriade. In con- 
 nexion with the subjects of criticism, are the curious 
 remarks on the character of Petrarch, and the truly fantastic 
 picture of Lord Monboddo. A selection of about one-third 
 of the materials composing these volumes, would make a 
 very interesting and instructive book. 
 
 Though we have complained of the mass of extraneous 
 matter, yet some of the facts incidentally related, are such 
 as ought not to have been lost. The account of the excel- 
 lent lady, whose husband, with all his property, perished at 
 sea, and who was niece to the once celebrated Mrs. Catharine 
 Cockbum, would be very interesting, were we not convinced 
 from the internal evidence, that it is most incorrectly stated. 
 According to this account she lived till that late period when 
 Mrs. Montague settled on her an annuity for the short re- 
 mainder of her life, in great penury ; insomuch that it was a 
 matter of wonder how she contrived to preserve a tolerable 
 appearance in respect of clothing. Now this must be an 
 utter mistake or misrepresentation, for we are told that she 
 was well known to many persons of eminent rank, and in par- 
 ticular was highly esteemed by the Duchess of Grordon, the 
 possessor, as we learn from Dr. Beattie, of every beneficent 
 virtue, as well as every charm under heaven. The transport 
 of surprise and gratitude displayed by the aged sufferer, on 
 being informed what Mrs. Montague had done, and which 
 the narrative of Dr. Beattie and Sir W. Forbes would 
 reaUy leave us to attribute to her having never experienced 
 much bounty before, was owing unquestionably to a very 
 different cause. It was her benevolent joy that a part of 
 the ample supplies whicli she had received from her former 
 munificent patrons and patronesses, and especially the 
 Duchess, might now be applied to the support of other de- 
 serving persons in distress. While remarking on the error 
 of the statement, it strikes us as equally singular and meri- 
 torious, that we, who were never honoured with a smile or 
 nod from a peer or peeress — that we, in our obscure garrets 
 labouring at our occupation during the day by the few 
 glimpses of light that can steal through windows almost 
 stopped up with old hats and* bits of board to keep out the 
 
FOKBES S LIFE OIT DE. BEATTIE. 31 
 
 rain, and during the night by the lustre of farthing candles 
 — should be more solicitous about the reputation of people 
 of high rank, than Sir W. Porbes, the intimate friend of so 
 many of them, appears in this instance to have been. We 
 hope that this our virtue, in default of other recompense, 
 will be its own reward ; and we trust it wiU be a piedge, that, 
 whatever culpable dispositions may belong to reviewers, 
 they feel no inclination to speak evil of dignities. 
 
 We could have wished to entertain an unmingled respect 
 for the moral habits and religious views of Dr. Beattie ; and 
 it is an ungracious thing to detect any signs of a moral 
 latitude inconsistent with the religion which he wished to 
 defend. One of these signs is his passion for the theatre. 
 Who would ever dream, on reading the following passage, 
 that it could have been written by a zealous friend of the 
 religion of Christ ? 
 
 " I rejoice to hear that Mr. Garrick is so well as to be able to 
 appear in tragedy. It is in vain to indulge one's self in un- 
 availing complaints, otherwise I could rail by the hour at Dame 
 Fortune, for placing me beyond the reach of that arch-magician 
 as Horace would have called him. I well remember, and _ 
 think I can never forget, how he once aflfected me in Macbeth, 
 and made me almost throw myself over the front seat of the 
 two-shilling gallery. I wish I had another opportunity of 
 risking my neck and nerves in the same cause. To fall by the 
 hands of Garrick and Shakspere would ennoble my memory to 
 all generations. To be serious, if all actors were like this one, 
 I do not think it would be possible for a person of sensibility to 
 outlive the representation of Hamlet, Lear, or Macbeth ; which, 
 by the bye, seems to suggest a reason for that mixture of 
 comedy and tragedy of which our great poet was so fond, and 
 which the Frenchified critics think such an intolerable outrage 
 both against nature and decency. Against nature, it is no 
 outrage at all ; the inferior ofiicers of a court know very little of 
 what passes among kings and statesmen ; and may be very 
 merry when their superiors are very sad ; and if so, the Porter's 
 Soliloquy in Macbeth may be a very just imitation of nature. 
 And I can never accuse of indecency the man, who, by the 
 introduction of a little unexpected merriment, saves me from a 
 disordered head or a broken heart. If Shakspere knew his own 
 powers, he mugt have seen the necessity of tempermg his tragic 
 rage by a mixture of comic ridicule ; otherwise there was some 
 dancrer of his running into greater excesses than deer-stealing, 
 
32 OW MEMOIE-WBITINC}. 
 
 by sporting with the lives of all the people of taste in these 
 realms. Other playwrights must conduct their approaches to 
 the human heart with the utmost circumspection, a single false 
 step may make them lose a great deal of ground ; but Shakspere 
 made his way to it at once, and could make his audience burst 
 their sides this moment, and break their hearts the next. I 
 have often seen Hamlet performed by the underlings of the 
 theatre, but none of these seemed to understand what they were 
 about. Hamlet's character, though perfectly natural, is so very 
 uncommon, that few, even of oxir critics, can enter into it. 
 Sorrow, indignation, revenge, and consciousness of his own irre- 
 solution, tear his heart ; the peculiarity of his circumstances 
 often obliges him to counterfeit madness, and the storm of 
 passions within him often drives him to the verge of real 
 madness. This produces a situation so interesting, and a con- 
 duct so complicated, as none but Shakspere could have had the 
 courage to describe, and none but Garrick will ever be able 
 to exhibit. Excuse this rambling ; I know you like the subject ; 
 .and for my part I like it so much, that when I once get in, I am 
 not willing to find my way out of it." — Vol. I. pp. 218 — 220 
 
 We may also be allowed, to ask, how it consisted with 
 that full approbation which he uniformly avowed of the 
 Established church of England, to spend the Sabbath in a 
 convivial party with Sir J. Eeynolds, Baretti, and other 
 persons, some of whom would most likely have laughed at 
 him, had he hiated any recollection of the duty of public 
 worship ? This was not a singular offence with him. 
 
 Religious opinions, in the strict sense, are scarcely dis- 
 closed in any part of the work, except occasionally by 
 implication, as in the following sentence : " The virtue of 
 even the best man must, in order to appear meritorious at 
 the great tribunal, have something added to it which man 
 cannot bestow." We were sincerely grieved to meet with 
 so grand a mistake of the nature of Christianity. On the 
 whole, we fear Dr. Beattie conformed in his moral principles 
 too much to the fashion of reputable men of the world, and 
 in his religious ones too much to the fashion of scholars and 
 philosophers This fear was in no degree obviated, by our 
 finding the first of his precepts to a young minister of the 
 gospel to be exactly this, "Bead the classics day and night." 
 We are forcibly reminded, by contrast, of the injunctions 
 given to Timothy by the prince of the apostles. 
 
 We question, too, whether the Doctor, in another instance, 
 
rOEBES S LIFE OP BE. BEA.TTIE, 33 
 
 acquitted himself very uprightly as a "soul-doctor," (for thus 
 he terms himself) ; we refer to his prescription for a noble 
 duchess,* whose name occurs very often within these pages. 
 There was a period, we find, when that lady was disposed to 
 solitude _and reflection ; one of those awful periods at which 
 the destiny of an individual seems oscillating in suspense, 
 and a small influence of advice, or circumstance, has the 
 power to decide it. How Dr. Beattie used this intrusted 
 moment, may be seen from the following admonitions : — 
 
 " Seasons of recollection may he useful ; but when one begins 
 to find pleasure in sighing over Young's 'Night Thoughts' in a 
 corner, it is time to shut the book, and return to the company. . 
 . . Such things may help to soften a rugged mind ; and I 
 believe I might have been the better for them. But your Grace's 
 heart is already ' too feelingly alive to each fine impulse ;' and, 
 therefore, to you I would recommend gay thoughts, cheerful 
 books, and sprightly company." — Vol. 11. pp. 28, 29. 
 
 "We are doubtful which most to admire, the rigid friend- 
 ship of the adviser, or the notorious docility of the pupil ; 
 the degree iu which they both exemplify the predominance 
 of a devotional spirit, appears to be nearly equal. 
 
 Here our remarks must be concluded. The closing part 
 of Dr. Beattie' s life is as affecting as any tragedy we ever 
 read, and wiU appeal irresistibly to the sympathy of every 
 reader who can reflect or feel. His health had been ruined 
 by intense study, and the hopeless grief arising from the 
 circumstance already mentioned. Under the loss of his 
 nearest relative by what was far worse than her death, his 
 eldest son, an admirable youth, became the object of un- 
 bounded affection. At the age of twenty-two he died. A 
 few years after, his remaining son, not equally interesting 
 with the other, but yet an excellent young man, died also. 
 The afaicted parent manifested a resignation to the divine 
 will which cannot be surpassed. But nature sunk by degrees 
 into a state, from which his friends could not but congratu- 
 late his deliverance by death. 
 
 * Jane, Duchess of Gordon, daughter of Sir W. Maxwell, of 
 Monteith, Bart. 
 
34 
 
 THOUGHTS ON AFPECTATIOiy, 
 
 Addressed chiefly to Young People. 8vo. 1807. 
 
 The anonymous writer of this book is a lady, who in a 
 simple and dignified manner assigns herself to the elderly 
 class. "With us she loses nothing by this confession; for 
 the gallantry of reviewers is different from that of almost all 
 other men. We like an aged woman who entertains us with 
 sense and knowledge, ten times better than a young one 
 who would divert us with follies ; and our prime favourites, 
 the Muses themselves, had lost all the light attractions of 
 juvenility, long enough, we presume, before we had the 
 honour to be introduced to their acquaintance. 
 
 If the present writer had not given us the information, we 
 should nevertheless have been quite certain she is not young. 
 Her very extensive knowledge of characters and manners, 
 would have soon discovered to us a person long accustomed 
 to observe the world with that impartial, sober attention, in 
 which the judgment is no longer the dupe of fancy and 
 giddy passions. Her acquaintance with mankind has 
 extended to various classes, and especially, as it appears, to 
 a great number of the wealthy and fashionable ; and she has 
 exemplified the several kinds of affectation by many 
 instances from real life, so various and so appropriately 
 introduced, that they form no small part of the value of the 
 book. As a matter of course, she avoids mentioning the 
 names of any of the persons whose conduct supplied these 
 anecdotes ; but notwithstanding this observance of the rules 
 of benevolence and decorum, we have sometimes been 
 apprehensive that, since it is likely some of the persons 
 whose follies she has recorded will read her work, she may 
 excite a resentment which, in some possible instance, may 
 occasion her a little exercise of her philosophy. "We have 
 repeatedly imagined some high-spirited dame or gentleman 
 throwing down the book with indignation, and exclaiming, 
 " This impudent writer means me ; I know who she is now 
 I said something like this at such a time, and I remember 
 
THOUGHTS ON AFFECTATION. 35 
 
 this Mrs. was there; 'pon my honour I will be 
 
 revenged, that I will. Such scandalous impertinence! 
 And so this civil-speaking, demure-faeed hypocrite makes 
 her visits to write down everybody's faults and what every- 
 body says, and then puts it in a moralizing, canting book, to 
 make herself look wiser than her neighbours." If she is 
 secure of impunity, we have certainly reason to be pleased 
 that she has taxed, for contributions to her book, so many 
 individuals, families, and companies, who little imagined 
 that they were uttering speeches that were to be printed for 
 the purpose of enforcing moral and prudential instructions. 
 Our author uses the term Affectation, not in the confined 
 sense in which it frequently occurs, as descriptive of merely 
 a particular fault in manners ; but in its widest signification, 
 as applicable to all assumed false appearances, in the whole 
 social conduct of mankind. And her extensive and vigilant 
 observation has detected a greater variety of modes of affec- 
 tation, than we had apprehended to be in existence. These 
 she has arranged in two parallel lists of op|)osites ; as. 
 Courage — Cowardice: Modesty and Innocence —Boldness 
 and Impudence, &c. &c., making her remarks on them in a 
 series of pairs, in each of which two opposites are placec 
 immediately together. A somewhat too systematical ad- 
 herence to this plan has led her into an impropriety, as she 
 herself is partly sensible, at the section on the affectation of 
 the virtue of Truth. Taking this term in the sense of 
 veracity, she acknowledges there is no opposite affectation 
 to be found, as no one ever laboured or wished to sustain the 
 character of a liar. Taken in the sense of sincerity or plain 
 speaking (and, by the way, her remarks have very much 
 confused this sense with the former), it is surely opposed to 
 something quite different from bluntness, which she has 
 assigned as its opposite ; since bluntness is only this very 
 same plain-speaking, carried to such an excess as to become 
 rudeness. 
 
 A benevolent intention appears to pervade the book, 
 though it is throughout a satire on society and on human 
 nature. Her censures are often in the plainest style of 
 moral simplicity and seriousness, while her descriptions are 
 ludicrous. j4nd we can really believe that she has been 
 more grieved than diverted, by the results ^f that process of 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THOTTGHTS Olf AFFECTATION. 
 
 detection to which she has subjected all the companies in 
 which she has mingled. But we are sorry to be compelled 
 to entertain so good an opinion of her dispositions. We 
 have laboured in vain to persuade ourselves that she is a 
 stranger to all the virtues allied to candour and generosity. 
 And why labour for so odd a purpose ? Because, in reading 
 through her book, we have been continually reminded of 
 one sentence in the earlier part of it : " Generosity ia 
 always unsuspicious, and fancies more virtue tha,n reaUy 
 exists ; nay, is sometimes too credulous, but if this be an 
 error it is a most pleasing one," (p. 40). We have said 
 to ourselves at the end of each section : ' ]S'ow, if we were 
 certain that she has none of this generosity, we might 
 console ourselves by the persuasion that the case is not 
 quite so bad as she represents. But, on the contrary, we 
 are afraid she is generous; she has therefore the kindly 
 credulity which judges far too favourably of mankind ; and 
 if she, who views them in a light so much more favourable 
 than that of absolute truth, sees, notwithstanding, that at 
 least half their intercourse consists in mutual hypocrisy, 
 what would be pronounced of them by a person, who vrith 
 equal shrewdness should not have generosity enough to 
 beguile the judgment into such an error ? 
 
 WhUe we wish our author may have the good fortune to 
 preserve her generosity undiminished, we may have some 
 difficulty to forgive her for having lessened ourg. After 
 being made the witnesses of her course of experiments, in 
 which so many things have been divested of their first 
 appearances, we are afraid we shall not for some time be 
 able to enter into any society without a suspicion too 
 watchful for the indulgence of the friendly feelings. We 
 shall be repeating to ourselves, " They are not what they 
 seem ;" and instead of objects of kindness, shall be tempted 
 to regard them as mere subjects to try and sharpen our 
 sagacity upon. We may be in danger of feeling like a man 
 •yho is so intent on detecting a number of persons appearing 
 in masks, that he is almost pleased with the most lamen- 
 table accident that makes one of these masks fall off. Even 
 in our capacity of reviewers, the impression of her book may 
 affect us, in a manner unfortunate for the feelings of men, 
 whose highest gratification is well known to consist in the 
 
THotraHTS as aefkctation. S7 
 
 exercise of candour, and the conferring of praise. She can 
 easily believe that we shall deeply regret to feel that we 
 have in any degree lost that amiable simplicity and credulity 
 with which we have been accustomed to read dedications 
 and panegyrics ; expressions of the humble opinion enter- 
 tained by authors concerning their boots ; accounts of their 
 reluctance and hesitation to publish till the importunity of 
 friends prevailed ; wishes that some abler hand may take up 
 the subject; avowals of having neither expectation nor 
 desire of fame ; and disinterested professions, that it will be 
 a sufficient reward if but one person shall be benefited by 
 the performance. 
 
 Previously to an actual survey of mankiad, it might be 
 supposed that the qualities of which men assume a false 
 semblance to recommend themselves, should be almo*'*' all 
 good ones. But the volume before us illustrates the strange 
 fact, that almost every disagreeable and detestable distinction 
 of character is sometimes affected, as well as its opposite. 
 At the same time, it is proper to observe that in the case of 
 some of these disagreeable and odious things, the affectation 
 necessarily is the reality ; as, for instance, arrogance, impu- 
 dence, roughness and harshness, intemperance, and impiety. 
 "With regard to this last especially, we do not see how there 
 can be any room to apply the term affectation, excepting 
 merely to an insincere disavowal of religious belief; for as 
 to all the hateful expressions of profaneness, they are hand 
 fide absolute impiety, without any qualification. Indeed, it 
 is but justice to our excellent author to say that in the 
 section on Impiety she does chiefly confine the term affecta- 
 tion to this insincere disavowal of belief ; but in the section 
 on Impatience she has applied the term to swearing, and the 
 most horrid imprecations. It is true indeed that this 
 imprecation and swearing may be mentioned as the affecta- 
 tion of impatience; but this leaves the guilt under but an 
 equivocal, and therefore faint condemnation ; since, unless a 
 further distinction is strongly marked, the term affectation, 
 which should be confined strictly to the feigned impatience, 
 may seem as if it were a suf&cient term of censure for the 
 impiety also, and implied that the chief guilt of the impiety, 
 in this instance, were merely in its being the language of 
 affectation. It should be distinctly stated that the feigned 
 
38 THOTTGHTS ON AJETECTATION. 
 
 impatience is one bad thing, or at least foolish thing, and 
 that the impiety employed to support this affectation is 
 another, and incomparably ■worse. We were not pleased 
 with the remark in this section, that the "impious habit 
 taints manner with an offensive vulgarity." The consider- 
 ation of mere manners does not deserve to be mentioned or 
 recollected in connexion with the diabolical language which 
 she has just recited as what she had herself heard. But we 
 would not for a moment be understood to insinuate that our 
 author shows any intentional indulgence to the vile custom ; 
 on the contrary, she evidently feels the most emphatical 
 abhorrence of it : we only remark in this instance a want of 
 clear distinction in her condemnation of it. — She mentions a 
 curious circumstance in the section on the affected contempt 
 of religion :— 
 
 " That helieving and trembling are often mixed with apparent 
 contempt of duty I know to be a fact, from the very respectable 
 authority of an elderly person, who was for years a constant 
 attendant on six o'clock morning prayers ; and who has assured 
 me that at that vulgar hour it was by no means uncommon to 
 meet fashionable young men, whose usual conversation was of 
 the lightest sort, and who in gay company would have scoffed 
 at going to church, where they would have thought it a disgrace 
 to be seen at a late hour." — P. 105. 
 
 There is a great difference between that prudent and 
 necessary self-government by which a man avoids the 
 practical exhibition of the bad or foolish dispositions which 
 he feels, and regrets to feel, and that simulation of the direct 
 contrary qualities which may justly be termed affectation. 
 That which our author condemns as affectation, is generally 
 a very discriminative and strongly delineated picture of what 
 truly deserves the name. In a very few instances, however, 
 we have tnought that what she censures may be no more 
 than such a cautious repression of feelings as a wise man 
 would often wish to exert. In many cases in life, both 
 virtue and common sense forbid to let all out. And we have 
 now and then wished that our respectable author, when 
 describing what was overdone in the way of feigning a good 
 quality, had defined what would be just enough done in the 
 way of concealing a bad one. At the same time, it is to be 
 observed that this care to avoid disjplaying a bad quality 
 
THOTTGnTS OK ArFECTATION. 39 
 
 should be ever accompanied witli an effort and earnest wish 
 for the destruction of its existence. 
 
 In several instances our author makes assertions, at 
 which, considering her discernment in human character, we 
 could not help being surprised. "Gratitude," she says, 
 (pp. 42, 43) " seems so natural, as for it to be impossible ever 
 to affect that which must, without any effort, belong to 
 every being that exists. It is in the most exalted manner 
 constantly directed towards the Griver of all good, in whom 
 we live, move, and have our being. Gratitude to God 
 certainly admits not of affectation ; we all must, we all do 
 feel it." Surely sentences like these were written, either 
 under the immediate impression of some pleasing circum- 
 stance which deluded the author's judgment into an 
 extravagant charity, or in a moment of great inattention. 
 For it would seem impossible she should not be aware of the 
 notorious and melancholy fact that vast numbers of persons, 
 even of respectable education, and in what is called a Chris- 
 tian country, do not appear to feel one emotion of pious 
 gratitude throughout the whole year. They may now and 
 then utter the expression "Thank God," or some similar 
 phrase, which, in their careless way of using it is no better 
 than absolute profaneness, while their general language 
 abounds with du^ect insults to the Almighoy. They never, 
 as far as can be observed, spend one moment in anything like 
 devotional employment; and, instead of that conscientious 
 obedience which would be the evidence of gratitude to the 
 Supreme Benefactor, the tenor of their conduct but evinces 
 alternate forgetfukiess and contempt of his commands. 
 
 We could not help noticing one little circumstance of 
 inconsistency in her manner of mentioning the subject of 
 cards, in two or three different parts of the book. Playing at 
 cards " is at best, even when it injures neither fortune nor 
 temper (and how seldom does that happen !) a total waste of j 
 time, which might indisputably be better employed," 
 (p. 213). " I see no merit in actually not knowing how to 
 play at cards, and no want of good sense in occasionally 
 making up the party of those persons to whom it is an 
 amusement," (p. 178). " In a dictatorial style to decry, or 
 to announce contempt for, what is the entertainment of so 
 many people, is the sign of a weak understanding, of 
 
40 THOUGHTS ON AFFECTATION. 
 
 affected, and not of true prudence," (p. 214). If these 
 passages had fallen under £er eye at once, she would ha70 
 felt the necessity of somfe alteration. And would it not 
 have been obvious to her, what alteration ? All moral 
 speculation must be a dream, if that which is pronounced to 
 be at best a "total waste of time," should not therefore be 
 absolutely and unconditionally condemned. Is our estimate 
 of time come at last to this, that it is a thing which may be 
 totally wasted without guilt ? It is true that a person may 
 declare against cards in an affected manner ; but the expres- 
 sions we have quoted apparently go the length of attributing 
 affectation not only to a particular manner, but also to the 
 thing itself. A man may " decry and announce contempt " 
 from a motive less dignified than a purely moral one ; but it 
 is not easy to conceive anything more deserving of contempt 
 than the grave employment for hours together of a number 
 of rational beings in what she describes as a "laborious 
 amusement, which demands more application of the mind 
 than is required for the attainment of many a more desirable 
 art," and which after all is at best but a total waste of time. 
 If there be any possible case in which we can be certain of 
 not misplacing our contempt of the employment, and our 
 censure of the persons, it must be this. 
 
 In p. 114 she alludes to " the amusements suited to the 
 age" of young persons, in a way to include " dancing at the 
 ball." We think it would have well become the good sense 
 and benevolent intention so conspicuous in this volume, to 
 have pronounced that what experience proves to be a perni- 
 cious folly, is suited to no age. We must also protest 
 against the morality of such a passage as the following : " I 
 should feel highly gratified could I suppose it possible that I 
 shall persuade any one old gentleman" (she is speaking of 
 old beaux that affect youth) " instead of talking nonsense to 
 girls who laugh at him, to join their mothers and aunts at 
 the whist-table." If these two occupations are the onlv 
 alternative, why may not the poor old wretch choose which 
 he Hkes best, aUeging that the prettier fools, even 
 though they do laugh at him, are the more pleasant set of 
 the two ? But it is wrong for a writer who reveres what 
 this writer professes to revere, to seem to allow that either 
 of these employments can be the proper one for a miserable 
 
THOUGHTS ON AITECTATION. 41 
 
 creature :n danger of that last and deepest curse, — to clfese 
 a life of folly by a death without repentance. As she makes 
 repeated references in a serious and explicit manner to those 
 future prospects, a right contemplation of which would 
 dictate a plan of life widely different from what is generally 
 in vogue in polished society, she ought not to have shown 
 the least tolerance to anything essentially incompatible with 
 the principles of such a plan. There is no pardoning one 
 sentence that sanctions such things as balls for young 
 people and whist for old ones, in a book which sometimes 
 alludes to the Supreme Judge, to the improvement of time, 
 to the period of retribution, and to eternity. It cannot be 
 too often repeated that Cbristianity will be an absolute 
 monarch or nothing, that it has pronounced an irreversible 
 execration on those vain habits of which the things just 
 specified are a part and an evidence, and that a man 
 positively must reject them or reject it. The general 
 rectitude of our author's judgment has been beguiled by her 
 intercourse with the world, out of an accurate perception of 
 the aspect which Christianity bears on some of the world's 
 habits. And, therefore, a few of her strictures are content 
 to propose a modification of what they should have 
 condemned to destruction. 
 
 "We will select a few specimens of the illustrations, which 
 give a spirited and entertaining, as well as instructive cha- 
 racter to this volume : — 
 
 "It is too often a fact that the obscure petitioner will be 
 harshly refused, while the genteel charity is cheerfully engaged 
 in ; of this a strong instance occurs to me which I eannot help 
 relating. I one day applied to a rich and elegant lady for some 
 relief for a poor fiimily whom I knew to be in the greatest 
 distress, owing to the father's extreme illness preventing him 
 from the daily labour by which he maintained a lying-in wife 
 and several children, one of whom had lately had the misfortune 
 of breaking a leg. I was not a little hurt to be answered with 
 the greatest coldness, ' that it was impossible to relieve every- 
 body that was in want ; and that she had already given all she 
 
 chose to give in charity to Lady , in order to help her 
 
 poor coachman to Bath to visit his friends, and perhaps try the 
 efficacy of the waters for his stomach.' ' But,' said I, ' these 
 good people are your neighbours, the father has often worked 
 in your groimds, they are worthy and in great distress.' 'And 
 
42 THOUGHTS ON AFFECTATION. 
 
 what of that?' replied my acquaintance, 'I can't maintain aL 
 the people I hear of; besides, you know, there is such a thing as 
 the parish — let them apply to that.' I presently took my leave, 
 when on going out of the house I was stopped by a footmau 
 (whom I had observed to linger in the room busy in repairing 
 the fire, for a considerable time during our conversation), who 
 with tears in his eyes said to me, slipping a couple of shillings 
 into my hand, ' I have known honest Tom for years ; I wish 
 this were more ; but such as it is he is heartily welcome.' I went 
 away delighted ; and, as may easily be imagined, not without 
 thinking of the poor widow and her mite." — P. 14. 
 
 It is amusing to imagine the airs and attitudes in which 
 the lady alluded to will display her mildness and her charms, 
 if she should happen to read this story. In that case, we 
 hope this footman will be far enough out of her way. He 
 had better, we will assure him, be caught in any hail-storm 
 that will happen this winter, than be within reach of my 
 lady's beU when she reads this paragraph. Our worthy 
 author, too, had better meet Hecate and all her witches, 
 than come in the way of this personage about the same good 
 time. It was from her having given a great number of 
 illustrations in this manner, from real facts and persons, that 
 we were induced to express our concern that she may have 
 philosophy enough to brave the spite which her temerity 
 may have provoked. 
 
 It is not for us to say whether she is as correct as she is 
 humorous, and what is sometimes called wicked, in the fol- 
 lowing passages on the affectation of cowardice : — 
 
 " Fear produces so much compassion, that there is no occasion on 
 which it may not be pretty for a lady to be alarmed. She may 
 scream if the carriage goes a little awry ; or if she should unfortu- 
 nately be forced to enter a ferry-boat ; or perhaps the nasty wasp 
 may sting her. And then to shriek, and put herself in elegant 
 attitudes, as she flies round the room to avoid it, is delicate, and 
 interests the attention of the gentleman, who endeavours to 
 destroy this disturber of the lady's peace. If in a crowd, the 
 lady is to be afraid she shall be killed ; though with the assist- 
 ance of the gentleman who protects her, and pities her timidity 
 she gets as safely through the push as any other person. During 
 a walk, she may be in agonies for fear of a mad dog, or an over- 
 driven ox : indeed horses, cows, feeding quietly in the field, a 
 shabby looking man at a distance, or any thing, will do for the 
 display of the feminine attraction of cowardice. I have known 
 
THOUGHTS ON ArFECTATION. 43 
 
 a, poor mnocent mouse, or even a frog, throw a •whole party into 
 terrible confusion. But then, it must be observed, that these 
 terrors seldom show themselves if the ladies are unaccompanied 
 by some man, in whose eyes they wish to appear graceful : and 
 a woman walking with only her servant, would hardly fall into 
 hysterics at the sight of a toad ; though in company the same 
 hideous spectacle might have caused the most dreadful agitation 
 of spirits."— P. 28. 
 
 Of the affectation of being younger than a person really 
 ia, she gives a pitiable instance : — 
 
 "There cannot be a stronger proof of the very prevalent fond- 
 ness for youth, which belongs to every situation and time of life, 
 than in the behaviour of a woman who lived on charity. On 
 petitioning for some additional relief from her parish, she was 
 told by the person who was drawing up her case, that her age 
 must be mentioned ; but seeming rather averse to disclose the im- 
 portant secret, and saying she never had known exactly what it 
 was, ' Well,' said the friend, who meant to assist her, ' we must 
 make it all as bad as we can, consistently with truth ; so I may 
 certainly very safely say fifty.' 'No, no, ma'am,' interrupted 
 the poor creature, with the greatest earnestness, 'no, not so bad 
 as fifty ; I have been a-thinking, and am sure I ben't more than 
 forty-nine, and not quite half neither.' This wretched woman 
 was diseased, deformed, and in the most abject poverty ; and yet as 
 much affected youth as the fine lady, who puts on rouge, and 
 multiplies ornaments, to conceal years that will not be con- 
 cealed."— P. 289. 
 
 "We are inclined to attribute affectation to an instance, 
 which the author cibes as an example of dignity of conduct; 
 and which would have been eminently such, if not affected. 
 
 " The old general ofiicer was no coward, of whom it was well 
 known, that when excuses were offered to him by the friend of 
 a young man who had used very improper language at a public 
 place the night before, he received the apology by saying, "I am 
 verydeaf, sir,and did not hear half the poor young gentleman said.' 
 ' But he is very truly ashamed ; for he says he was foolish 
 enough to give you his address, and ask for a meeting this 
 morning.' ' He might,' returned the general, ' but pray don't 
 let him distress himself ; I did not look at it, and the crowd 
 being very great, I dropped the card ; so that I don't even know 
 his name."-'P. 25. 
 
 The stvle of this volume indicates a hand not habituated 
 
44 THE FUTUEE OF ENGLAND AND AMEEICA. 
 
 to tho business, or at least not to the critical rules, of com- 
 position. It is of an unformed, negligent, and at times 
 very incorrect cast ; and yet has occasionally that kind of 
 point and elegance, which we have observed to occur some- 
 times even in the ordinary conversation of all intelligent 
 women. 
 
 By one moment's attention, the author wiU perceive that 
 she has put a mistaken construction on the term "vanity," as 
 used in the apothegm of Ecclesiastes, cited in the beginning 
 of her introduction. 
 
 After what we have said, we need not add, that we feel 
 very sincere respect for this anonymous lady, whoever she 
 may be, and deem her book, with one or two little excep- 
 tions, a valuable miscellany of instructions, especially for 
 young persons in genteel life, for whom it is particularly 
 designed. 
 
 THE ETJTIJEB OP ENQLAND AND AMEEICA. 
 
 The Stranger in ArAerica. — Containing Observations made during a 
 lonff Residence in that Cowniry, on the Oenius, Manners, and 
 Customs of the People of the United States ; with Biographical 
 Particvlars of Public Characters ; Hints and Facts relative to the 
 Arts, Sciences, Commerce, Agriculture, Manufactures, Emigration, 
 and the Slave Trade. By Charles William Janson, Esq., late 
 of the State of Ehode Island, Counsellor at Law. 4to. 1807. 
 
 The appellation of mother-country has been familiarly ap- 
 plied to England in relation to America, and there was a 
 time when the title was very flattering to her vanity, and per- 
 haps very gratifying to her parental affections. She fancied 
 herself grown young again in the unfolding charms, the 
 vigorous health, the rising stature, and the active spirit of 
 her hopeful descendant, whose name she was continually 
 repeating, whose lineaments of resemblance to herself she 
 fondly traced, and whose honour she watchfully and even 
 fiercely defended, against every suspicious or unfriendly 
 demonstration. She looked round with no little exultation 
 
THE BTHANGEB IN AMEBICA. 45 
 
 mixed perhaps witli no little contempt, on some of her 
 neighbours, who could not show so fair and virtuous an off- 
 spring. 
 
 For some time aU went on very well. The matron, feel- 
 ing no rivalry with the blooming minor, was liberal in her 
 indulgences and moderate in her claims ; while the daugh- 
 ter, conscious of the necessity of protection, revering a 
 personage that every one else was seen to revere, and 
 affected with the kindness of the parental caresses, was 
 happy in the exercise of an almost uniform obedience. 
 The time, however, inevitably arrived when she could no 
 longer be treated as a child, and to the elder lady the 
 wisdom was not given, to know how to behave to her as a 
 person come to maturity. The matron began to feel a 
 certain indefinable jealousy, which gradually displayed 
 itself in a change of deportment from easy cordiality to 
 manners of alternate formality and petulance, followed by a 
 more rigid exaction of the homage and the services which 
 she had been accustomed to receive in the earlier years of 
 her young relative. The daughter expressed her regret at 
 this change, mingled with a degree of pride which ventured 
 to intimate that the age for silent obedience and un- 
 conditional submission was past, and presumed to mention 
 counter-claims, in the way of compromise. The senior 
 dame, incensed to hear of conditions and stipulations from 
 what had been so lately a helpless dependent brat, made 
 short work, and reduced the question to the alternative of 
 absolute submission, or the utmost vengeance of her power. 
 The damsel was instantly fired with the spirit of an Amazon, 
 sought the acquaintance, and accepted the aid, of her 
 motlier's most inveterate rival, and finally declared she 
 could establish herself in the world separate and free. This 
 determination she carried into effect, witb a courage and 
 address which triumphed over the greatest difficulties ; and 
 she has ever since maintained the behaviour of an equal, 
 tolerably civil when she has experienced civility, and in- 
 different or contemptuous, when the old lady could not, in 
 her manners, repress her spleen at recollecting, how lately 
 she possessed an absolute authority over this arrogant 
 virago. 
 
 Since that period, the maternal title has sounded but 
 
46 THE FTJTUEE OF ENGLAND AND AMEEICA. 
 
 ungraciously in the ears of the personage, who has lost 
 both the authority and the affection which render it flatter- 
 ing. In plain terms, the English nation, while contemplat- 
 ing the American States, is rather mortified than pleased, in 
 recollecting whence they have derived their origin, and 
 would perhaps regard them with somewhat more com- 
 placency, if they had been a people sprung from some 
 distant and forgotten stock. It had been less grating to 
 our pride, to have acknowledged an independence inherited 
 from a horde of Esquimaux or Tartars, than an independence 
 assumed in requital of our patronage, and in defiance of our 
 power. We hear of their advancing population, agriculture, 
 and commerce, not without some occasional feelings like 
 those of a man who observes the flourishing condition and 
 ample produce of an estate which he lately called his own, 
 but which an expensive litigation, and an adjustment of 
 what he may deem very questionable equity, has trans- 
 ferred to another claimant. This feeling will be occasionally 
 awakened, till the present generation shall be passed away, 
 and succeeded by a race to whom the loss of America will 
 be, not a matter of irksome remembrance, but merely a 
 fact ol history, like the loss of our ancient possessions in 
 JFrance. 
 
 Perhaps at length, when America shall have grown into a 
 magnificent association of empires, the pride of having been 
 their origin will be kindled afresh, and England, become, as 
 she may eventually become, one of the inferior states of 
 Europe, will boast that it is in America that she appears in 
 her glory, where her language, her literature, and the spirit 
 of her polity and laws, are extended from the shores of the 
 Atlantic to those of the Pacific Ocean, and from Lake 
 Superior to the Straits of Magt.llan. 
 
 We have said that England may eventually become one 
 of the inferior states of the Old World. Indeed this seems 
 inevitable (supposing no unforeseen causes to intervene), if 
 we have any right to believe that the other countries may 
 at length attain the same proportionate population, and an 
 equal eminence in knowledge and civilization. For when- 
 ever the nations shall become nearly equal in these errand 
 attainments, the precedence in importance and influence 
 will naturally fall to those of the number, that, possessing 
 
THE STEANaEE IN AMEEIOA. 47 
 
 the wideat extent of compact territory, have the greatest 
 numher of people at command. If, therefore, in the progress 
 of time, the greater and more southern part of the ilussian 
 empire, if Germany, consolidated, as it may very possibly 
 be, into one mighty state, and if Prance, though reduced to 
 narrower limits than those to which her arms have extended 
 her authority, should rise to the same intellectual and moral 
 level as England, each of them will then, according to the 
 most obvious principles of proportion, hold an immense 
 superiority over her, in the consideration, and in the power 
 of influencing the condition, of the world : and we cannot 
 see any insurmountable obstacles to the possibility of their 
 ultimate attainment of this rival improvement of the mind. 
 As to the importance which England derives at present from 
 her naval power, nothing can be more factitious and pre- 
 carious. This cumbrous engine, which is gradually exhaust- 
 ing the national vigour which actuates it, will become 
 useless, as the larger states continue to advance in that 
 knowledge which organizes numbers and physical resources 
 into national power. If she maintain amity with the greater 
 nations, she wiU not need this naval force, and if hostility, 
 she will lose it. Eor the skill derived from progressive arts 
 and repeated trial, combined with ampler resources supplied 
 by nature and numbers, will enable the superior states ulti- 
 mately to destroy it. And when the fighting navy of Eng- 
 land shall be finally humbled, the commercial navy must 
 foUow in a great measure its fate. But, indeed, the nationis 
 of a wiser age will probably cease to think foreign commerce 
 worth protecting or contesting at the expense of naval 
 armaments. They will find a much more useful employment 
 of their industry in the endless improvement of internal 
 economy (at present so miserably neglected ui our own 
 country), than in the manufacture of luxuries for foreign 
 markets. 
 
 "While thus anticipating the declining importance of Eng- 
 land in the rank of nations, we may feel a stronger interest 
 in looking forward to the future greatness of America (as 
 soon as we can surmount the mortification of having lost 
 her as a dependency), than we could feel in viewing the 
 rising magnitude »f states with which we never had any 
 Ultimate connexion; because, as we have observed, it will 
 
48 THE rrTITEI! or ElfGLAlfD AND AMEBICA. 
 
 seem to be Eogland still, that is pre-eminent among '.he 
 nations, when a vast continent is inhabited by people of 
 English descent and names, when maxims first derived from 
 England are the basis of their social system, and when 
 English authors are the authors most familiarly read and 
 admired, by perhaps, far more than a hundred millions of 
 persons. 
 
 The character and circumstances of such a people are 
 subjects of the highest curiosity, not from the present rank 
 which this people holds in the civilized world, but as afford- 
 ing some prognostics of the future moral condition of a con- 
 tinent, which will probably soon become, in every part, 
 finally independent of all the rest of the globe, and from the 
 wide separation of all its habitable regions from the other con- 
 tinents, will become a world of its own. We look with great 
 interest on the disclosure of the features and proportions of 
 a form, which is growing fast toward a gigantic magnitude ; 
 and on the first symptoms of character, in a youth who is 
 born to be a monarch. 
 
 Knowing what long periods of time are required, even in 
 the happiest progress of states, to eradicate evils admitted 
 into the first constitution of the society, and that, on the 
 contrary, time often but operates to confirm them, we look 
 forward with a degree of apprehensiveness to a period when 
 national foibles, as an indulgent moralist may be willin"' at 
 present to denominate them, vrill perhaps have become 
 aggravated into most pernicious vices, infecting cities yet 
 unbuilt, and the unnumbered cultivators of regions darkened 
 as yet with ancient woods, where not one civilized man has 
 ever wandered. If we should see the corruptions of civili- 
 zation advancing far more rapidly than its refinements ; if 
 we should observe the faculties of a people matured to the 
 perfection of cunning, while yet remaining stationary in the 
 very rudiments of scientific speculation ; if we should see a 
 selfishness that for the most paltry advantages will slight 
 even the plainest maxims of honesty, in a people surrounded 
 by the inexhaustible resources and treasures which convey 
 nature's own injunction to be liberal ;— we inquire anxiously 
 after every probable counteracting cause, which may tend to 
 interrupt the natural progress of depravity, from such be- 
 ginnings in the small state, to a complete and systematical 
 
THE STEANGEE IN AHTEICA. 49 
 
 usurpation of the energy of the large one. We earnestly 
 seek for any ground of hope, that the same general contempt 
 of all moral principles, and the same oppressions, rancours, 
 and miseries, may not overspread the new contineat, which 
 have supplied the principal materials of the history of the 
 old. With regard also to the government among such a 
 people, it is a glorious privilege to have begun with an ar- 
 rangement founded on the simplest and most comprehensive 
 principles, an arrangement not so decidedly fixed in all its 
 parts as to preclude many experiments and innovations, and 
 not too authoritatively administered to allow a boundless 
 liberty of discussion and animadversion ; but we tremble 
 lest rash exertions of popular freedom, combined with super- 
 ficial notions of the theory of government, should throw the 
 power into the hands of parties, that will leave it at last in 
 the hands of individuals, who will sacrifice the people in 
 their destructive contests with one another. 
 
 The double character of description and prophecy in which 
 we receive the accounts of a people, with so vast a prospect 
 before them, gives peculiar interest to the communications 
 of every sensible observer of their manners. A wandering 
 kind of residence, of many years, in America, has enabled 
 Mr. Janson to survey all the forms of society, in almost all 
 the United States, much more attentively and comprehen- 
 sively than if he had been a mere tour-making traveller. In 
 consequence of his long residence or sojourn, his book has 
 the advantage over the customary travelling journals, of 
 being less loaded with those tedious narratives of rainy 
 days, dirty inns, bad breakfasts, and disasters to coats, hats, 
 stockings, or boots, which have now, we believe, established 
 their right to at least a fourth part of every volume of 
 travels. Mr. Janson intermixes a portion of this kind of 
 history, but it is given chiefly on occasions where it is as 
 much a description of the manners and habits of the people, 
 as a story of his personal adventures. His book contains, 
 in. a very immethodical form, a large share of curious and 
 useful information ; and we wish we were not compelled to 
 perceive any of the usual symptoms of book-making, and 
 that Mr. Janson had been induced to compress the two 
 costly volumes (for he proposes a second) into one. There 
 are many things inserted, which we think have no propel 
 
50 THE rrTTiEE or ekglapd awd ameeica. 
 
 place in an account of the present state of America, especially 
 some details relating purely to the War of Independence, and 
 which have been purchased and read before, or must be pur- 
 chased and read again, in the regular histories of that war. 
 As he deemed this a lawful expedient for giving the proper 
 dimensions to the volume, we must commend his modera- 
 tion, for he ,might easily have taken ten times as much from 
 the same quarter. In these unnecessary details we include 
 the biographical sketches of Gates, Putnam, Hamilton, 
 Arnold, Pinckeney, and several other individuals. We are 
 not convinced of the necessity of enlarging, at this time, on 
 the machinations of the French minister Genet, and intro- 
 ducing his correspondence with members of the American 
 government ; of relating at length the quarrel and judicial 
 proceedings about a ship of a Mr. Ogden, which was em- 
 ployed in General Miranda's expedition; or of occupying 
 eight pages with a clumsy burlesque " from the pen of the 
 Hon. H. H. Blackenridge," on the order of the Cincinnati, 
 a subject, to be sure, on which better writing would have 
 been thrown away. The tedious and vexatious protraction 
 of proceedings in courts of law is not such a surprising 
 novelty, as to require long extracts from term reports, to 
 convince us of its possible existence in America ; Mr. Jan- 
 son's assertion would have been quite a suiScient authority. 
 The anjple history of two rival Anglo-American companies 
 of players, is extremely well-judged and weU-timed, if it is 
 really intended as a bitter satire on our country, which, 
 amidst the gloomy presages and astonishing events of the 
 present crisis, is completely at leisure, as we have occasion 
 to perceive, to be interested about such vicious trifles. 
 Whimsical and pompous advertisements are a harmless 
 amusement enough, but to us our indigenous produce would 
 have seemed too plentiful to need any importation across 
 the Atlantic. One or two of them, indeed, have a certaia 
 nationality iu their extravagance which entitled them to be 
 introduced. The mention of Mr. Emmett, now a distin- 
 guished pleader in the courts of New York, and formerly 
 one of the United Irishmen, is accompanied by an account 
 of the principal persons of that society, and of some of the 
 proceedings which terminated in the melancholy events of 
 1798. Now, we have heard of the additional virtues im- 
 
THE STEAWGEE IN AMEEIOA. 51 
 
 parted to winea by being taken on a long voyage and brought 
 back again, but we cannot conceive how the clearness or 
 importance of an historical document can be improved by 
 being thus made to traverse thousands of miles of sea. The 
 story of the adventures and sufferings of Generals Whalley 
 and Q-offe, who had been among the judges that condemned 
 Charles the First, and being proscribed at the Eestoration, 
 concealed themselves many years, till their death, in Con- 
 necticut, is an article foreign to what should, be the purpose 
 of the book, yet so interesting, that the reader cannot wisb 
 it to have been omitted. The num.erous extracts from news- 
 papers would seem to indicate, that political wisdom seldom 
 finds a more dignified vehicle in the United States. And 
 certainly there may easily be as much eloquence and sound 
 reasoning in the comments of a newspaper, as in a speech of 
 Mr. Eandolph or Mr. Otis ; but Mr. Janson would have 
 been much more sparing of these extracts, Lf he had duly 
 considered the difficulty of making them look respectable, 
 long after the occasions to which they refer, in another 
 counti-y which has newspapers and squabbles of its own, and 
 in a volume which costs two guineas. 
 
 The omission of what we should deem injudiciously 
 inserted, would deduct perhaps one-third of the substance of 
 the book. For the rest, though we may have our objections 
 to the quality of particular parts, we think Mr. Janson has 
 contributed very materially to extend our acquaintance with 
 the people of America. Being disappointed in the projects 
 with which he went to that country, suffering a very serious 
 loss, in company with many other persons, through a dis- 
 graceful proceeding of the government of Georgia, and ex- 
 periencing occasionally some marks of the aversion which he 
 informs us is still entertained by a large proportion of the 
 Americans against Englishmen, it was perhaps inevitable for 
 him to contemplate the American character under the influ- 
 ence of feelings tending to aggravate its faults. But we 
 think we perceive the general prevalence of an equitable 
 judgment, and that he does not consciously allow himself in 
 any misrepresentation. His attention has been directed in 
 a certain degree to most of the subjects of a European's 
 inquiries concerning the United States ; the cHmate and face 
 of the country, the manners, the population, the accommo- 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE rUTrEE OP ENGLAND AND AMEEIOA. 
 
 dations of abode and travelling, the extension of territory, 
 the political contests, and the prospects of emigrants. We 
 could have wished for more information respecting the state 
 of knowledge in the several classes of people, and also some 
 conjectures as to the proportions in which they are employed 
 in the different branches of industry. 
 
 Mr. Janson has been more attentive to separate facts than 
 to the connexion of various facts with one another, or the 
 general deductions from the whole. Even without such 
 deductions, it had been better if the facts had been more 
 classified. His moral map of America is dissected into such 
 small pieces, and these pieces are so effectually displaced, 
 that it is difficult to arrange into a tolerable order in our 
 minds, the information which these dislocated particulars 
 are really adapted to supply. As Mr. Janson probably, from 
 the first, recorded facts and observations without intending 
 to assume the privileges of the narrative series of the tra- 
 veller, it might have been the best method to have had a 
 number of distinct heads, under each of which all the articles 
 of the same nature should have been inserted. 
 
 His testimony confirms the allegations of Volney, and 
 very many former deponents, agaiust the climate of the 
 United States, as being in a high degree oppressive and 
 insalubrious. The severest extremes of heat and cold afflict 
 them all, except the two or three most southern states, the 
 heat of which therefore in summer, it may well be imagined, 
 is intolerable to persons brought up in the temperature of 
 such a country as England. And the inclemency of seasons 
 consists not only in the regular extremes, in summer and 
 winter, but also in sudden violent changes, which may take 
 place indifferently at one season or another. To the suffer- 
 ings and diseases caused by these extremes of weather, are 
 to be added all the inconveniences contributed to the account 
 by the exhalations of vast stagnant marshes, and by an 
 Infinity of reptiles and mosquitoes. 
 
 In traversing each part of the Union, Mr. Janson was 
 attentive to the natural produce, and to the state of the 
 cultivation. He has given various particulars relative to 
 the culture of indigo, cotton, rice, Indian corn, and 
 t Dbacco. 
 
 Being advised to purchase a few hogsheads of the lattei 
 
THE STEANGEB, IS AMEBICA. 53 
 
 plant, as a convenient mode of remittance to England, and 
 being at tlie time too much in haste to inspect the article 
 himself, our author relied, as he informs us, on the integrity 
 of the Quakers with whom he transacted, and learned the 
 propriety of cautioning those who may trade to Philadelphia 
 for tobacco, not to trust to the weights marked on the hogs 
 heads, but stipulate to have them re-weighed. In his three 
 hogsheads, the weight as marked in a British custom-house 
 was nearly five cwt. less than it had been marked in America! 
 And this kind of deception, he says, is very usual. 
 
 The work is deficient in point of information, respecting 
 the domestic character of the Americans, as displayed in 
 their forms of politeness, the cast of conversation in the 
 different ranks (if we may employ that term), the treatment, 
 estimate, accomplishments, and influence of the women, and 
 the education of children. The author tells us he was not 
 so happy as to become a lover in America ; but it was not, 
 therefore, necessary that he should hardly seem to recognize 
 the existence of the female sei on a great continent, the 
 moral destiny of the inhabitants of which, as of every other 
 civilized country, will depend so much on the education and 
 character of that sex. Perhaps the interrogative imperti- 
 nence of the Misses Archbold, who harassed him so cruelly 
 on the day after his arrival, irritated him into a vow that he 
 ■would never condescend to notice or mention their country- 
 women as long as he should live. And, as if in desperate 
 revenge, he fills page after page with the praises and adven- 
 tures of a lady of his own country, the magnanimous wife of 
 Major Acland, a British officer employed in the American 
 war. Without making any pretensions to gallantry, we do 
 think it is an unpardonable offence against the women of 
 America, that their entire number, amounting possibly to 
 fifteen hundred thousand, should not be deemed worthy to de- 
 serve as much space in his book, as one Englishwoman that 
 happened to tread on their ground in the year 1775. But it 
 is not on the score of sentiment that we remark on this sub- 
 ject ; it is on account of the absolute moral and political im- 
 portance of the women, as constituting the one-half of a 
 nation, and most essentially influencing the whole, that we 
 allege, not a defect of feeling, but of observation and judg- 
 ment, against a traveUer, who, in surveying a foreign coun- 
 
54 THE rUTTJEE OF ENGIiAlfD AND AMEEICA 
 
 try, overlooks the character and situation of the fema!* part 
 of its inhabitants. Two or three circumstances, casually 
 mentioned, respecting children, give us a very unfavourable 
 surmise as to their education. Somewhat more is said about 
 servants, and the following short passage may convey the 
 essence of the information. 
 
 " The arrogance of domestics in this land of republican liberty 
 ind equality, is particularly calculated to excite the astonish- 
 ment of strangers. To call persons of this description servants, 
 or to speak of their master or mistress, is a grievous affi-ont. 
 Having called one day at the house of a gentleman of my ac- 
 quaintance, on knocking at the door, it was opened by a servant 
 maid, whom I had never before seen, as she had not been long 
 in bis family. The following is the dialogue, word for word, 
 which took place on this occasion : ' Is your master at home V 
 — ' I have no master.' — 'Don't you live here V — ' I stay here.' — 
 
 ' And who are you then V — ' Why, I am Mr. 's help. I'd 
 
 have you to know, OTara, that I am no sarvant ; none but negers 
 are sarvants.' " — Pp. 87, 88. 
 
 With regard to the prominent and general qualities which 
 constitute what may be called the national character, the 
 reader of the work before us will be led to form a different 
 estimate from what his benevolence would have wished. 
 The conviction will be forced upon him that, however melan- 
 choly may be the moral condition of Europe, it is not to 
 America that he is to look at present for the reign of virtue, 
 for liberal views, for the rapid progress of knowledge, or for 
 amiable manners. He cannot avoid discerning that the pre- 
 dominant principle is an unremitting passion for gain ; the 
 cultivation of taste, the studies of abstract truth, and even 
 the splendid attractions of ambition, are regarded with indif- 
 ference or contempt in this grand pursuit ; and we wish it 
 could not be added that a scrupulous morality is seldom 
 allowed to impede its success. The transaction of the 
 G-eorgian government, related p. 263, is an indication that 
 the moral character of the individual is also that of the 
 state. All things are reduced to pecuniary calculation, 
 nature and art, sea and land, the things on the earth, and 
 the things under the earth. While a man of taste and 
 reflection contemplated one of the vast rivers, as a noble 
 spectacle ia the natural world, the American would be con- 
 
THE rXTTTTKB OF ENaLAlfD AlfD AMEEICA. 5S 
 
 sidering it merely as a channel of trade ; while the one 
 looked -with a sentiment of almost superstitious awe into the 
 gloom of an immeasurable forest, the venerable kingdom of 
 silence and solitude, excepting as haunted by mysterious 
 and invisible beings, with which his imagination would peo- 
 ple the twilight of every grove, the other would be reckon- 
 ing how many years and dollars would be required to burn 
 and clear a space of it, from this river to yonder hill. We 
 must acknowledge, however, that the passion for gain ap- 
 proaches nearer, than in any other of its forms, to some- 
 thing respectable and magnanimous, in this spirit of enter- 
 prise, which is continually invading and conquering the 
 Western wilderness with the implements and fires of culti- 
 vation. 
 
 Another conspicuous characteristic of the Americans is, 
 an ostentation of their freedom. They feel it a sufficient 
 license to be rude, that they cannot be compelled to be 
 otherwise. They are unable to comprehend, how manners 
 softened into mildness and deference, can at all consist with 
 a feeling of independence. They cannot verify it to their 
 own satisfaction that they really are not slaves, but by con- 
 tinually reminding you that you are not their master ; and 
 this is done alternately by iaattention and obtrusive 
 familiarity. 
 
 The excessive curiosity of the Americans, of which our 
 author often complains, might be sometimes teasing and 
 impertinent ; but we think he was rather too irritable under 
 his frequent examinations and cross-examinations. And we 
 may be allowed to suggest, that his vanity would, perhaps, 
 have been a little piqued, if the good people had not thought 
 it worth while even to ask him a single question, about 
 either himself or his country. The following dialogue might 
 perhaps have become amusing, if his impatience had not so 
 suddenly snapped it off. 
 
 " Seeing a pleasant little cottage on the river Connecticut, and 
 understanding that it was to be let, I knocked at the door, which 
 was opened by a woman, of whom I inquired the rent of the 
 house. — ' And where are you from 1 ' was the reply.—' Pray, 
 madam,' I again asked, 'is this house to be let?' — 'Be you 
 from New York or Boston 1 ' said the inquisitive dame. Th« 
 place was situated about half-way between those two towna 
 
56 THE STEATTGBB IN A.MEEICA. 
 
 Impatient at this mode of reply — ' I'll thank you, madam,' I 
 repeated, ' to acquaint me with the price demanded for this little 
 place?' — 'Pray what may you be?' rejoined she, as if fully 
 determined not to satisfy my inquiry till I had gratified her 
 curiosity. I was not less resolute than herself, and turned my 
 back in disgust." — P. 87. 
 
 The manners and customs are incomparaMy the worst in 
 the most Southern states ; and the author is ingenuous 
 enough to ascribe it to the total estrangement from all 
 knowledge, and inattention to all institutions of religion. 
 At Edenton, one of the principal towns of North Carolina, 
 the only place of worship is now reduced to a shelter for 
 cattle and hogs from the heat of the sun. A horrid kind of 
 armisement is acknowledged by the American writers to 
 prevail in these states — it is called gouging. 
 
 " Passing, in company with other travellers, through the state 
 of Georgia, our attention was arrested by a gouging match. We 
 found the combatants, as Morse describes, fast clenched by the 
 hair, and their thumbs endeavouring to force a passage into each 
 other's eyes ; while several of the bystanders were betting upon 
 the first eye to be turned out of its socket. For some time the 
 combatants avoided the thumb stroke with dexterity. At length 
 they fell to the ground, and in an instant the uppermost sprung 
 up with his antagonist's eye in his hand ! The savage crowd 
 applauded, while, sick with horror, we galloped away from the 
 infernal scene. The name of the sufferer was John Butler, a 
 Carolinian, who, it seems, had been dared to combat by a 
 Georgian ; and the first eye was for the honour of the state to 
 which they respectively belonged. 
 
 " The eye is not the only feature which suffers on these occa- 
 sions. Like dogs and bears, they use their teeth* and feet, with 
 the most savage ferocity, upon each other. 
 
 " A brute, in human form, named John Stanley, of Bertie 
 county, North Carolina, sharpens his teeth with a file, and boasts 
 of his dependence upon them in fight. This monster will also 
 exult in relating the account of the noses and ears he has bitten 
 off, and the cheeks he has torn. 
 
 " A man of the name of Thomas Penrise, then living in Eden- 
 ton, in the same state, attempting at cards to cheat some half- 
 drunken sailors, was detected. A scuffle ensued ; Penrise 
 
 * During the author's residence in North Carolina, Mr. Standen, the 
 postmaster, and a merchant of Edenton, had a part of Ms cheek bitten 
 off in an affray with O'Mally, a tavern-keeper in that town. 
 
THE STEANGEK IN AMEBICA. 57 
 
 knocked out the candle, then gouged out three eyes, bit off an 
 ear, tore a few cheeks, and made good his retreat. 
 
 " Near the same place, a schoolmaster, named Jarvis liucas, 
 was beset by three men, one Horton, his son, and son-in-law. 
 These ruflfians beat the unfortunate man till his life was despaired 
 of, having bitten, gouged, and kicked him unmercifully. On the 
 trial of an indictment for this outrageous assault, a Carolina 
 court of justice amerced them in a small fine only." — Pp. 301, 
 —303. 
 
 With what contempt we may justly regard a government, 
 that does not instantly put an end to such a practice by 
 main force! It does not surprise us to find, after these 
 statements, that duels are exceedingly frequent. 
 
 Another abomination of these Southern states is the num- 
 ber, treatment, and continual importation of slaves. Mr. 
 Janson, with deserved scorn, contrasts this practical enor- 
 mity, with that bombast about freedom, which shame has 
 not disabled the organs of the people of even these states to 
 utter. He had an extensive view of the miserable condition 
 of the slaves, and he describes with the energy of indignant 
 but not extravagant feeling. His descriptions are much of 
 the same colour with those which have so often represented 
 to us the general oppression, and occasional excesses of bar- 
 barity, exercised on the same race in the "West Indies ; and 
 on the persevering example of England, as exhibited in those 
 islands, may doubtless be charged, in no small degree, the 
 prevalence of the same execrable system in the American 
 states. We could make large and most impressive extracts ; 
 but we exult that, as to England, the time is at last arrived, 
 when it is no longer necessary to renew these odious repre- 
 sentations in order to excite the nation to press the abolition 
 of the traffic, which is the foundation of the evil, and we are 
 confident they will never be necessary in order to preclude 
 repentance of that decision, when it shall have been fully 
 carried into effect. As to the United States, the cause must 
 be left to Providence and its avenging plagues. But we are 
 aware the federal government passed an act some years since 
 that the slave trade should cease in the year 1808, and we 
 will endeavour to hope, notwithstanding what we can recol- 
 lect to have been done in England, that this decree of loug- 
 protracted justice may not prove nugatory when tiie term 
 ehall be completed. 
 
58 EELIGIOTJS SECTS. 
 
 Aa a very welcome relief and contrast to these views of 
 the American civilization, we wish we had room for Mr. 
 Janson's account of the general character and administra- 
 tion of the criminal laws, and his statements respecting the 
 prisons, which seem well contrived for schools of industry 
 and reformation. 
 
 Eespecbable efforts are making in Philadelphia in favour 
 of science and literature ; but we fear a long train of years 
 must pass away before these wiQ become popular attainments 
 over the wide extent of the States. 
 
 The information relative to religion, is nearly confined to 
 an account of the essential fanaticism of the childish fol- 
 lowers of one Ann Leese, and the occasional and circum- 
 stantial fanaticism of several wiser and better denominations. 
 We are well aware that extravagances have been committed 
 by the Methodists, and other classes of Christians ; but we 
 can easily perceive that Mr. Janson never thought it worth his 
 while to inquire into the doctrines of any of them, as main- 
 tained by the more rational part of the respective societies, 
 or to distinguish the transient or local excesses of these 
 societies, from their more permanent character. He pro- 
 bably apprehended no danger of mistake in admitting the 
 wildest aspect, which ignorance and weakness would give to 
 a mode of religious profession, as its true and only charac- 
 ter ; and felt himself fortunate in the opportunity of being 
 witty by means of the term " elect." Eeligion itself, in the 
 abstract, is not very familiar, we fear, to our author's 
 thoughts, nor were we apprised of his feeling any interest 
 about the subject, till we found the rejection of Christianity 
 alleged among the sins of Thomas Paine, in a needless, 
 virulent, and low invective, which occupies an entire chapter 
 towards the end of the volume. "We must not, however, 
 refuse the due applause to some of his observations on 
 ecclesiastical concerns. There is a happy boldness of opinion, 
 in his approbation of a bishop for raising money to build a 
 church, by means of a lottery set on foot for the purpose. 
 But by telling this in England, we will hope he cannot mean 
 any malicious insinuation, that if here episcopalian churches 
 and all their appointments, were to cease to be raised and 
 maintained by the absolute power of the state, the cordial 
 attachment and voluntary liberality of the people, would 
 
THE STEANGEE IN AMEEICi. 59 
 
 ever abandon them to the necessity of supporting themselves 
 by such ingenious expedients. 
 
 "We are amused -with several singular adventures, and 
 especially, in an extreme degree, by a long and fierce noc- 
 turnal battle between an unarmed rustic and a bear, in a 
 place named Dismal Swamp, in Virginia, in which battle the 
 bear was vanquished and slain. The weight of the man was 
 191, that of the bear 305 pounds. 
 
 We are sorry to find Mr. Janson deeming it worth his 
 while to repeat the fable, as at present it appears to us, and 
 apparently to him also, about the man that wandered in 
 company with a small band of savages, up the Missouri, till 
 they found a nation of Welsh Indians, of whom it is pre- 
 tended he gave a long account to a Mr. Ohilds, who gave it 
 to a Mr. Toulmin, who has published it as a probable story. 
 It was very needless to repeat it in England, after Mr. Jan- 
 son and all of us know that Captain Lewis's party advanced 
 near the head of the Missouri, and that Mr. Mackenzie 
 traversed the region of its sources, and never saw or heard 
 the slightest trace or tradition of such a people, though 
 they conversed with natives who were accustomed to rove 
 hundreds of leagues over the vast wilderness. 
 
 The last subject we have to notice, is what relates to the 
 prospects of settlement for strangers from Europe. This 
 the author professes to have iu view as one of the chief 
 objects of his book. And he appears to exult in having 
 made out a strong case against emigration. But we are as 
 Borrv as he is pleased. Eor one of the great desiderata for 
 those of the inhabitants of Europe, who cannot force them- 
 selves to become enamoured of eternal wars and iacreasing 
 taxes, after doing their very utmost to convert their own 
 unfashionable and perverse feelings, and who look forward 
 with an almost hopeless anxiety to the establishment or 
 rather ruin of their families, is some distant peaceful land, 
 where the resources of nature are not scrambled for by an 
 overgrown population, nor wasted by the corruption and 
 extravagance of governments. "Were there such a country, 
 we should detest the of&ciousness of any man who should 
 labour to excite the government of an old, over-populous 
 state to prevent emigration to it. From the facts illustrated 
 by Mr. Malthus, it appears very desirable that there could 
 
60 EMIGEATION OF a?nB lEISH. 
 
 be some grand outlet, other than a field of battle, for a part 
 of the population of a crowded country, unless it were pos- 
 sible the government of such a country should acquire the 
 wisdom to open to the last acre, all its own resources of 
 cultivation. 
 
 As to the clandestine emigration, under circumstances of 
 the most revolting inconvenience, of numbers of the Irish 
 peasantry, to which fact this author wishes to call the atten- 
 tion of the state, we think it proves one thing at least, that 
 they are beyond all endurance wretched where they are ; for 
 we know it is a general law of human nature to desert with 
 reluctance the native soU. Let Mr. Janson, and any other 
 writer, do all that correct representations of the circum- 
 stances of a distant country will do, to confirm this natural 
 partiality ; but they would deserve the severest reprobation 
 of every philanthropist, if they should endeavour, from the 
 mere bigotry of patriotism, to raise the arm of power to 
 intercept miserable beings in their escape to a place, where 
 they may yet make one more trial, whether the possession of 
 life is to be considered as a blessing or a curse. 
 
 "We hope America may yet become a happy asylum for 
 Europeans, when a much greater extent of the Western 
 country shall be cleared, and the climate improved by the 
 cultivation, when good and direct roads shall have given a 
 facility of reaching the interior of the continent from the 
 Atlantic coast, when there shall be a regular system for dis- 
 posing of its produce to the greatest advantage, and when 
 the population shall be numerous enough to create some of 
 the conveniences and refinements of society, without being 
 so numerous as to raise extremely high the price of land. 
 Per the present, America is a most excellent place for me- 
 chanics and hardy rural labourers, excepting what is to be 
 apprehended from an unfriendly cUmate, and from destruc- 
 tive diseases, which are indefinitely aggravated by the gross 
 mode of living, and the frightful consumption of raw spirits. 
 But the persons who wish to establish themselves by the 
 purchase of lands, wiU feel great hesitation after reading the 
 statements of Mr. Janson, respecting the expense of sup- 
 porting a family while a most tedious journey is made into 
 the back settlements, merely, in the first place, to determine 
 where to settle, the toil of clearing the land, the exorbitant 
 
THE STEAK GEE ITS AMEEICA. 61 
 
 price of labour, and the difficulty of finding a market for tne 
 produce, when it shall exceed the wants of the family. As 
 to purchasing land, without personal inspection, of the com- 
 missioners appointed for selling it, in London, or any of the 
 cities of the United States, we are confident no man wiU do 
 it after reading some parts of this book, which describe the 
 nefarious deceptions practised by those agents. "We hold it 
 our duty to present an extract relative to these subjects, and 
 with this we conclude our review. 
 
 " To enumerate the different frauds, and to lay open the arts 
 practised upon deluded Englishmen by these gangs of coalesced 
 adventurers, would alone exceed the limits of these sheets. To 
 such a pitch of bare-faced deceit did they arrive, that the Ame- 
 rican government was at length obliged to be its own land-agent, 
 and to open offices for retailing land to English settlers. To the 
 disgraceful and villanous deeds of land-speculators. Dr. Priestleyj 
 and indeed most of the recent English settlers, could bear testi- 
 mony. False titles, forged grants, fictitious patents, and deeds 
 of bargain and sale of land in the clouds were daily imposed 
 upon the unwary. Sometimes, indeed, the conspirators would 
 discover a tract, which was under some indispensable necessity 
 of being sold, of which they would make a bona fide purchase, 
 and under this cloak have they conveyed it, again and again, 
 perhaps a dozen times. In other instances, the land granted was 
 described to begin at a sycamore tree on such a point ; from 
 thence running in a parallel line till it struck a mulberry tree ; 
 from thence running due south till intersected by an oak. In 
 short, the described portion comprised the most valuable timber, 
 and rich, clear land, and all for one dollar per acre. In these 
 cases the purchaser would often find his land, and the remains 
 of the trees described ; but alas ? instead of rich meads, fertile 
 plains, valuable forests, and meandering rivers, he found a barren 
 desert, not producing a single shrub. The trees had been planted 
 for deception only, and the navigable rivers had found another 
 course. Colonel Michael Payne, of North Carolina, marshal of 
 the state, informed me that he was obliged to attend a sale of 
 land in the interior part of the state, which had been levied upon 
 under an execution issuing out of the federal court, and that 
 upon his journey over one of the most barren and rocky coun- 
 tries he had ever travelled, he observed a party of men planting 
 tress. So strange an employment in so dreary a spot induced 
 the colonel to inquire of the labourers what benefit they expected 
 to derive from their labour. He also observed two or three 
 carts, loaded with young trees, and a man at a little distance, 
 
62 FEAUDS or LAND-AGENTS. 
 
 surveying the ground, who said, in answer to the colonel's ques- 
 tions, that the land was advertised for sale in London at half a 
 fiiinea per acre, and that they were ' cooking it up a little.' 
 his cookery consisted in planting a few young trees, the 
 choicest growth of a far distant forest, as divisional lines and 
 marks. The cook proved to be a confederate land-speculator, 
 and a ci-devant congress man. The colonel added, that from the 
 nature of the soil, and unpropitious situation of the land, a colony 
 of English farmers could not make it worth a shilling. 
 
 " The new state of Kentucky is more extravagantly described 
 and extolled than any other part of the United States. From 
 the accounts I have collected from such as have explored that 
 country, the land is certainly of a superior quality to some of 
 the states, and well watered by large rivers. It has increased 
 much in population since the peace of 1783, but that it does not 
 equally allure all who visit it to settle there, is certain. Many 
 have returned, after struggling against the numerous difficulties 
 of subsisting in a new country, one, two, and three years before 
 they could make their daily bread. A new settler should have 
 what is here termed ' plenty of force ;' that is, he should not 
 attempt the planting and farming business without about a dozen 
 labourers. This assistance, with two or three hundred pounds, 
 may in a few years complete the clearing of a few hundred acres 
 of land, the erecting of log-houses, and other necessary woi'k. 
 This land, thus cleared, will produce tobacco, hemp, wheat, 
 barley, oats, clover, and most European fruits and vegetables. 
 But, while we mention the quality of the land, another question 
 naturally arises ; namely, how is the superfluous produce to be 
 carried to market 1 It is at present above a thousand miles to 
 export produce from the extreme parts of Kentucky, Ohio, and 
 Tenessee, by water to the commercial cities in the United States, 
 and a great many hundred by land ! We find none of these 
 difficulties fairly demonstrated by the writers and compilers of 
 American voyages, history, and travels. The corn of these 
 states could not, without great loss, be sold in Philadelphia, at 
 the rate of the grain grown in its vicinity." 
 
 This last sentence, we axe confident, is iacorrect. 
 
63 
 
 ON MEMOIE-WHITING. 
 
 Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Eon. Eenry Home, of 
 Karnes ; containing Sketches of the Progress of Literature arid 
 general Improvement in Scotland, during the greater part of the 
 Eighteenth Century. 2 vols. 4to. 1807. 
 
 The principal facts relative to the individual who forms the 
 leading subject of this work, may be given in a few words. 
 Henry Home was the son of a country gentleman of small 
 fortune, and was born in the year 1696. About the age of 
 sixteen, he was bound by indenture to attend the office of a 
 writer to the signet in Edinburgh, with a view to prepare 
 himself for the profession of a solicitor. Being sent one 
 evening by his master with some papers to the President of 
 the Court of Session, he was so handsomely treated by the 
 venerable judge and his daughter, and so enchanted with 
 the character of dignity and elegance in their manners and 
 situation, that he was instantly fired with the ambition of 
 attaining eminence iti the public profession of the law, and 
 resolved to qualify himself for an advocate. He commenced 
 a most laborious course of study, as well in the departments 
 of literature and science, as in the knowledge more pecu- 
 liarly appropriate to his intended profession, and made a 
 rapid progress in them all. He was called to the bar at the 
 age of twenty-seven, published various writings on legal 
 subjects, obtained at length the first eminence as a pleader, 
 and was appointed at the age of fifty-six one of the judges 
 of the Court of Session, by the title of Lord Kames. His 
 moral and metaphysical studies were prosecuted with as 
 much ardour as those of the law; he was personally acquainted 
 with most of the philosophers of the time ; and by means 
 of his writings became celebrated as a philosopher himself. 
 When he was near the age of seventy, his fortune received 
 the addition of a very large estate, left to his wife, to whom 
 he had been married at the age of forty-five ; this estate he 
 was almost enthusiastically fond of cultivating and adorning. 
 About the same period that he obtained this wealth, his 
 legal rank was raised to that of a Lord of Justiciary, a judge 
 of the supreme criminal tribunal ia Scotland, of which office 
 
64 ON MEMOTE-WEITIlfG. 
 
 he con tinued to discharge the duties till his death, in 1782, 
 in the eighty-seventh year of his age. 
 
 Lord Xamea was a very conspicuous man in his time, and 
 deserved to pass down to posterity in a record of consider- 
 able length. He has rendered a material service to litera- 
 ture by his "Elements of Criticism;" and from the work 
 before us it is evident, that his professional studies contri- 
 buted the most important advantages to both the theory 
 and the administration of law in Scotland. The improve- 
 ment in agriculture also, in that country, seems to have 
 taken its rise, in a great measure, from his zeal and his 
 example. He received from nature an extraordinary activity 
 of mind, to which his multiplied occupations allowed no 
 remission, even in his advanced age ; we find him as inde- 
 fatigable in his eightieth year, as in the most vigorous and 
 ambitious season of his life. The versatility of his talents 
 was accompanied by a strength and acuteness, which pene- 
 trated to the essence of the subjects to which they were 
 applied. The intentions with which he prosecuted such a 
 wide diversity of studies, appear often excellent ; very few 
 men so ingenious, so speculative, so systematic, and occa- 
 sionally so fanciful, have kept practical utility so generally 
 in view. The great influence which he exerted over soiiie of 
 the younger philosophers of the time, several of the most 
 distinguished of whom were proud to acknowledge them- 
 selves his pupils, was employed to determine their specula- 
 tions to useful purposes. His conduct in the office of judge 
 appears to have impressed every impartial man that witnessed 
 it, with an invariable opinion of his talents and integrity. 
 As a domestic and social man, his character was that of 
 frankness, good humour, and extreme vivacity. His prompt 
 intelligence continually played around him, and threw its 
 rays on every subject that even casualty could introduce 
 into conversation. His defects as a speculatist were, that 
 he had not, like the very first order of minds, that simplicity 
 of intellect that operates rather in the form of power than 
 of ingenuity, and is too strong to be either captivated or 
 amused by the spacious faUaciea of a fantastic theory ; and 
 that, as far as we have the means of judging, he had a 
 higher respect for the conjectures of mere reason, than for 
 the authority of revelation. 
 
MEMOIES or LOED KAMES. 65 
 
 The name of Lord Kames is sufficiently eminent to ren- 
 der an account of his life interestiag, though it appeared 
 more than twenty years after his death. But we greatly 
 admire the modesty with which Lord Woodhouselee, better 
 known to the literary world under the name of Mr. Fraser 
 Tytler, has been waiting, during this extended interval, for 
 some abler hand to execute a work, to which he, very 
 unaccountably, professes himself inadequate. This long 
 delay, however, has been of immense service to the magni- 
 tude of the performance, which has perhaps been growing 
 many years, and has risen and expanded at length, into a 
 most ample shade of cypress over the tomb of Lord Kames. 
 
 In order to give the book this prodigious size, the author 
 has chosen to take advantage of Lord Karnes's diversified 
 studies, to enlarge on the several subjects of those studies ; 
 of his profession of law, to deduce the history of Scottish 
 law, and of the lives of its most distinguished professors 
 and practitioners, accompanied by dissertations on law in 
 general ; and of his happening to be a Scotchman, to go 
 back as far as the tenth century in order to prove that there 
 were scholars then in Scotland, and return all the way 
 downward, proving that there have been scholars there ever 
 since. In his youth Lord Kames was acquainted with a 
 particular species of beaux, peculiar to those times, which 
 animals had, if our author is to be believed, a singular 
 faculty of uniting the two functions of fluttering and think- 
 ing ; and therefore several individuals are to be separately 
 described, (vol. i. p. 57, &c). It was extremely proper to 
 give us a short account of the species, as forming a curious 
 branch of entomology ; but it does not seem to have been 
 so indispensable to describe, individually, beau Forrester 
 and beau Hamilton. Because one of Lord Karnes's early 
 friends, a Mr. Oswald, was a member of parliament, a sheet 
 and a half must be occupied by uninteresting letters, which 
 this Mr. Oswald wrote to him about temporary and party 
 politics. A larger space is filled with letters from Dean 
 Tucker, which, excepting one, and perhaps two or three 
 paragraphs of another, are not of the smallest consequence, 
 further than their being written to Lord Kames ; but there- 
 fore they are inserted. Lord Kames was acquainted with 
 David Hume, and therefore, in his life, there must be a very 
 
66 ON MEMOIE-WEITING. 
 
 long account of the publication and reception of "Hume's 
 Treatise of Human Nature," with a very long extract from 
 its conclusion. Lord Kames wrote a well known book 
 called the " Elements of Criticism," and therefore actually 
 fifteen pages at once are fiUed with an extract from that 
 book. We have taken aU due pains, but ineffectually, to 
 reconcile ourselves to this mode of enlarging the size of a 
 book by uninteresting letters, and indolent extracts. But 
 even if a large work were constructed without this lazy 
 expedient, and consisted almost wholly of the honest work- 
 manship of the author, we have still an invincible dislike to 
 the practice of pouring forth the miscellaneous stores of a 
 common-place book, of relating the literary, the legal, the 
 philosophical, and the political transactions of half a century, 
 and of expending narrative and panegyric to a vast amount 
 on a crowd of all sorts of people, under the form and pre- 
 tence of recording the life of an individual. It is an obvious 
 charge against this species of writing, that it can have no 
 assignable limits, for as the object is undefinable, we can 
 never be certain that it is gained ; and therefore the writer 
 may go on adding volume to volume, stiU pretending that 
 all this is necessary to his plan, till his whole stock of 
 miscellaneous materials is exhausted ; and then he may tell 
 us with a critical air of knowing what he is about, that he 
 has executed, however imperfectly, the plan which he had 
 considered as best adapted for doing justice to the interes- 
 ting subject. But if instead of this he were to tell us, 
 (perhaps on having found another drawerful of materials) 
 that another volume was necessary for giving right propor- 
 tions and a right conclusion to his work, we could not con- 
 tradict him, because we should not know where to seek for 
 the rules or principles by which to decide what would be a 
 proper form or termination ; unless we were to refer the 
 case to be settled by our patience, or our purse, according 
 to which authorities in criticism, we may possibly have 
 passed, a good way back, the chapter or paragraph, which 
 appeared very proper for a conclusion. Every work ought 
 to have so far a specific object, that we can form some notion 
 what materials are properly or improperly introduced, and 
 within what compass the whole should be contained. Those 
 works that disdain to recognize any standard of prescription 
 
MEMOIBS OF LORD KAMES. 67 
 
 according to which books are appointed to be made, may 
 fairly be regarded as outlaws of literature, which every prowl- 
 ing reviewer has a right to fall upon wherever he finds them. 
 
 Another serious objection against this practice of making 
 a great book of a mass of materials so diverse that they have 
 no natural connexion, and in such quantity that the slender 
 narrative of an individual's life is insufiicient to form an arti- 
 ficial connexion, is, that it is extremely injurious to the good 
 order of our intellectual arrangements ; as it accustoms the 
 reader to that broken, immethodical, and discursive manner of 
 thought which is preventive or destructive of the power both 
 of prolonged attention and continuous reasoning. Jiist 
 when a man has resolved, and possibly begun, to put his 
 mind under severe discipline, in order to cure its rambling 
 propensities, when he has perhaps vowed to do penance in 
 mathematics for his mental dissipation, he is met by one 
 meretricious pair of volumes after another, presenting all the 
 seducing attractions of novelty, variety, facility of perusal, 
 amusement somewhat dignified by an admixture of grave 
 sense, and all this in an attire of the utmost elegance, from 
 the type to the outside covering. The unfortunate sinner 
 renounces his vows, throws away his mathematics, and 
 becomes as abandoned a literary libertine as ever. If it be 
 said, that a book thus composed, merits, at the most, no 
 more serious accusation than merely that of its being a 
 miscellany, and that we have many miscellanies and collec- 
 tanea which are well received by the public, as a legitimate 
 class of books ; we answer, yes, we have miscellanies and 
 collectanea, without number, and they are a pest of literature ; 
 they reduce our reading to a useless amusement, and pro- 
 mote a vicious taste that nauseates the kind of reading 
 which alone can supply well-ordered knowledge, and assist 
 the attainment of a severe and comprehensive judgment. 
 These heterogeneous productions drive away the regular 
 treatises, the best auxiliaries of mental discipline, from the 
 tables of both our male and female readers ; and the volumes 
 of our Lockes, and Hartleys, and Eeids, are reduced to be- 
 come a kind of fortifying wall to the territory of spiders, on 
 the remotest and dustiest shelf in all the room. 
 
 Against an assemblage of multifarious biography of dis- 
 tinguished men, under the ostensible form of a record of the 
 
 F 2 
 
68 ON MEMOIE-WKITINS. 
 
 life of an individual, we have to observe that il has the 
 fallacious effect of making that individual appear as always 
 the king of the whole tribe. This would not be the effect, 
 if merely so much were mentioned, concerning other emiaent 
 persons, as should be indispensable to the history of the one 
 immediately in question. These short references might just 
 give us an impression of the high rank of those other persons, 
 and induce us to seek in the proper quarter for more ample 
 information concerning them : they would be brought into 
 no comparison with the person whose life is exclusively to 
 be related. But when so much is said of them, that we seem 
 to have a competent memoir of each, so that we do not 
 want to inquire any further, and when all these memoirs 
 together do not occupy so large a space as that filled by the 
 chief personage, this individual comes to hold in our thoughts 
 a magnitude superior to that of the rest, nearly in proportion 
 to the ampler space he fills in the book. There is enough 
 to bring them into comparison with him, and too little to 
 illustrate and support their claims in that comparison ; 
 and they seem but assembled as bashaws round their Grand 
 Turk. In the work before us, Lord Kames appears (for we 
 have been at pains, with the help of Erasmus's De copia ver- 
 horum et rerum, to find a nobler simile than the last), like 
 Jupiter on the top of the Scottish Olympus, looking kindly, 
 though majestically, down on the inferior personages of the 
 worshipful assembly, such as Hume, Eeid, Adam Smith, 
 Millar, and many others. Lord Woodhouselee does not 
 expressly proclaim the superiority, and perhaps no more did 
 Mercury or Ganymedes ; it is enough that Jupiter did, and 
 that Lord Kames does, sit on the most spacious throne. 
 But then let us turn to the historian and eulogist of some 
 other member of that great philosophic hierarchy, and the 
 venerable order is strangely confounded and revolutionized; 
 Dr. Adam Smith, for instance, places David Hume on the 
 proudest eminence, and Kames, and all the rest of them, are 
 made to know their places. This game of shifting dignities, 
 this transferring of regal honours, must continue, til] each 
 panegyrist shall have the discretion to confine his work so 
 much to an individual, as to avoid the invidiousness of con- 
 stantly, in effect, running a parallel between him and hia 
 contemporaries. 
 
MEMOIHS OF LORD KA.MES. 69 
 
 We also object to the telling, in the life of one man, of so 
 mncli about the life, and works, and actions of another, 
 because if the life of that other is likewise to be written, the 
 biographer of the former actually forestalls or pilfers the 
 materials which are wanted by the biographer of the latter. 
 And thus the same thing is told twice, or, if but once, it is 
 told in the wrong place. But it is certain to be told twice, 
 for the trade of mutual borrowing, and mutual stealing, 
 never throve better than among the biographers of the 
 present day. 
 
 In reading this, and some late voluminous works, pur- 
 porting to be the lives of particular persons, and in observing 
 the multitude of memoirs of other persons appended or 
 interwoven, we have earnestly wished, that each country, 
 and especially North Britain, had been a good while since 
 provided with a standard approved dictionary of all its names 
 of any consequence ; with a sufficient quantity of information 
 under each, and with a concise supplement regularly added 
 every few years. In that case, the writer of a particular and 
 eminently distinguished life, would not have needed, and could 
 have had no pretext, to swell the bulk of his work with an 
 account of every person, of the smallest note, whom he had 
 occasion to mention, as contemporary, or in any manner con- 
 nected, with the principal person, or even as having preceded 
 him by years or centuries. We might then be referred, in 
 one line, to the article in. the dictionary, to be consulted at 
 leisure, and go on, without circuit or interruption, with the 
 main subject. We still wish this were done, with the utmost 
 haste ; since we do not know how many more ponderous and 
 costly works, like the present, may else come out, loaded 
 with secondary subjects, and even with the substance of some 
 01 the very same articles which have encumbered this and 
 recent publications. Tor making such a dictionary, it wUl 
 be of service to consult these works of which we have com- 
 plained, and extract from them several articles relating to 
 persons of whom, though deserving of some notice, no infor- 
 mation, as it should seem, may be found anywhere else. 
 There is, for instance, in the book before us, a particular 
 account of an obscure, but apparently an able man, of the 
 name of Colin Maclaurin. It was a disappointment to us 
 
70 ON MBMOIE-WEITING. 
 
 not to see this followed by some account of Maclaurin'a 
 master, another obscure man of the name of Newton. 
 
 Having thus honestly protested against this mode of 
 raising a large and costly book by collecting a heap of 
 heterogeneous materials, and having informed our readers 
 that the life of Lord Kames, though very long and busy, 
 forms but a rather slight and arbitrary combination of the 
 contents of these volumes, we must now express our opinion 
 of the merit of these contents separately considered; and 
 produce some extracts illustrative of their quality. And 
 we are prompt to testify, that in many instances their 
 quality is high. Lord Woodhouselee is an able and prac- 
 tised thinker, possessed of ample stores of learning and 
 general knowledge, well acquainted with tne history, the 
 schools, and the questions of philosophy ; a discriminative 
 judge of character, and writing in a style which we deem a 
 finished example of what may be called transparent diction. 
 It is so singularly lucid, so free from all affected rhetoric 
 and artificial turns of phrase, so perfectly abstracted, with 
 the exception of a law term or two, from every dialect 
 appropriated to a particular subject, that we have never 
 viewed thoughts through a purer medium. It is so pure 
 and perfect, that we can read on a considerable way without 
 our attention being arrested by the medium ; it is as if 
 there were nothing, if we may so express ourselves, between 
 us and the thought. And we are made to think of the 
 medium after some time, only by the reflection how very 
 clearly we have apprehended the sense, even when relating 
 to the uncouth subjects of the law, or the abstruse subjects 
 of metaphysics. By this pure and graceful diction, we are 
 beguiled along with the author, through several prolix and 
 unnecessary details, without being indignant — till we are 
 past them — that he should have occupied himself and us 
 with things too inconsiderable to deserve a fifth part of the 
 space they fill. 
 
 "We have been greatly pleased and instructed by many of 
 the reasonings on topics of philosophy, law, and criticism, 
 the result of mature and comprehensive thought, and but 
 very little tinctured by the peculiarities of any sect or 
 school, though somewhat partial, of course, to the opinions 
 
Memoirs of lobd k4.mes. 71 
 
 of Lord Kames, who, in spite of the immense disparity of 
 age, was the intimate friend of the author's younger years. 
 Many of his observations and statements elucidate the 
 history and progress of law, science, and literature in 
 Scotland. We have only to regret, that he had not elabo- 
 rated his thoughts on these various subjects into a digested 
 series of finished essays, instead of throwing them together 
 in a mass, to swell beyond all reasonable bounds the import- 
 ance of an individual. A great part of this matter might 
 just as well have been appended to the life of any one of 
 half a dozen other of the Scottish philosophers of the last 
 century ; a proof of the impropriety of its being all incor- 
 porated with the history of one. 
 
 As to the letters to Lord Kames, which constitute a 
 material portion of the work, we have already said, that 
 many of them ought to have been omitted. But a consider- 
 able number are highly distinguished by sense or ingenuity ; 
 we refer to several from Dr. Pranklin, many from Mrs. 
 Montague, one from Lord Chancellor Hardwieke on courts 
 of equity, one or two from David Hume, and a few long 
 ones, of great value, from Professor "Walker and Dr. Eeid. 
 The very long and intimate friendship with this last eminent 
 philosopher, continued to the death of Lord Kames. Their 
 characters are thus amusingly contrasted by Mr. Dugald 
 Stewart : — 
 
 " With one very distinguished character, the late Lord Kames, 
 he (Dr. Eeid) lived in the most cordial and affectionate friend- 
 ship, notwithstanding the avowed opposition of their sentiments 
 on some moral questions to which he attached the greatest 
 importance. Both of them, however, were the friends of virtue 
 and of mankind ; and both were able to temper the warmth of 
 free discussion with the forbearance and good-humour founded 
 on mutual esteem. No two men, certainly, ever exhibited a more 
 striking contrast in their conversation, or in their constitutional 
 tempers : the one slow and cautious in his decisions, even on 
 those topics which he had most diligently studied ; reserved 
 and silent in promiscuous society ; and retaining, after all his 
 literary eminence, the same simple and unassuming mamjers 
 which he brought from his country residence ; the other, lively 
 rapid, and communicative ; accustomed by his professional 
 pursuits, to wield with address the weapons of controversy, and 
 not averse to a trial of his powers on questions the most foreign 
 
72 ON MEMOIE-WBITINO. 
 
 to his ordinary habits of inquiry. But these charaeteristical 
 differences, while to their common friends, they lent an additional 
 charm to the distinguishing merits of each, served only to 
 enliven their social intercourse, and to cement their mutual 
 attachment."— Vol II., p. 230. 
 
 Their correspondence, and no doubt their conversations, 
 were directed very much to the most abstruse questions of 
 physical and metaphysical science. Indeed, we deem it 
 honourable to Lord Karnes, that most of bis friendships 
 appear to have been as laborious as they were sincere. 
 The whole quantity of intellectual faculty existing among 
 his friends was put in permanent requisition. And when 
 he at any time heard of strong minds among his contem- 
 poraries, beyond the circle of his acquaintance, it was not 
 long before he was devising how to trepan them, as ele- 
 phants are caught in the east, in order to make them work. 
 He had all kinds of burdens ready for them, and no burden 
 so light, that any of them could frisk and gambol under it, 
 in the wantoness of surperfluous strength. It was at their 
 peril, that any of them showed signs of thinking little of 
 the difficulty of a discussion in law or criticism ; they were 
 sure to have a whole system of metaphysics laid on their 
 backs at the next turn. Very early in life he commenced 
 this plan, and thought himself on the point of catching one 
 of the stoutest of the elephantine race. Dr. Clarke had 
 some years before published his celebrated Demonstration of 
 the Being and Attributes of &od. Mr Home, at the age of 
 twenty-seven, wrote him a long letter, proposing objections, 
 and demanding new arguments and solutions. Its uncere- 
 monious and almost presumptuous style, however, evinced 
 a want of skill as yet in his inveigling srt ; the device was 
 too coarsely adjusted to trepan one of the most discerning 
 of the giant species, who just stopped a few minutes in 
 passing, tossed about with his trunk, as if in scorn of the de- 
 sign, some, of the piles of materials with which it had been in- 
 tended to load him, and then moved quietly off into the forest. 
 — In simple language. Dr. Clarke wrote him a short, civU, 
 and argumentative letter, and the correspondence went no 
 further. 
 
 Lord Kames had always a very strong partiality to meta.- 
 physical studies ; and he evinced even in that letter to Dr. 
 
MEMOIES OF LOED EAKS3. 73 
 
 Samuel Clarke, whicli we have already noticed with disap- 
 probation of its spirit, an acuteness adapted to excel in 
 abstract speculations. In first introducing Mm in the 
 character of a philosopher, Lord Woodhouselee takes occa- 
 sion to make some observations on the tendency and value 
 of metaphysical researches. 
 
 " Allowing them to be conversant about the noblest part of 
 our frame, the nature and powers of the human soul ; and grant- 
 ing that they give the most vigorous exercise to the understand- 
 ing, by training the mind to an earnest and patient attention to 
 its own operations ; still I fear it must be admitted, that as 
 those abstract studies are beyond the limits of the faculties of 
 the bulk of mankind, no conclusion thence derived can have 
 much influence on human conduct. Even the anxiety shown by 
 metaphysical writers to apologize for their favourite pursuits, 
 by endeavouring, with great ingenuity, to deduce from them a 
 few practical consequences with respect to life and manners, is 
 strong proof of the native infertility of the soil, on which so 
 much labour is bestowed to produce so small a return. It is not 
 much to the praise of this science, that the most subtle and in- 
 genious spirits have, for above two thousand years, assiduously 
 exercised themselves in its various subjects of discussion, ana 
 have not yet arrived at a set of fundamental principles on which 
 the thinking world is agreed. Neither have the uses, to which 
 this sort of reasoning has sometimes been applied, tended to 
 enhance its estimation. The attempts that have been made to 
 found morality on metaphysical principles, have for certain been 
 prejudicial, on the whole, to the cause of virtue. The acutest of 
 the sceptical writers, availing themselves of Mr. Locke's doctrine 
 of the origin of ideas, and the consequences he has thence drawn 
 respecting morals, have done much more harm by weakening 
 our belief in the reality of moral distinctions, than the ablest of 
 their opponents, combating them on the same ground, and 
 with the same weapons, have found it possible to repair. The 
 baneful industry of the former has, it is true, made the labours 
 of the latter in some degree necessary, and therefore useful ; and 
 it is in this point of view that the writings of those metaphysi- 
 cians, who are antagonists of the sceptical philosophy, are 
 entitled to attention and to praise." — Vol. i. p. 21. 
 
 Such observations are of much weight aw coming from a 
 person so well versed in metaphysics. But it will be impos- 
 sible for the reader of these volumes to believe the author 
 can mean to be very rigid ia proscribing metaphysical study; 
 
74 OK METAPHYSICAL STTTDIE3. 
 
 to which we can perceive that his clear understanding is in 
 no small degree indebted. Nov will any enlightened man, 
 we think, condemn, without great qualification, what is evi- 
 dently the sublimest class of speculations, what demands the 
 strongest mental powers, and their severest exertion, and 
 makes a bold effort to reach, in some small degree, that kind 
 of knowledge, or, if we may so speak, that mode of knowing, 
 which perhaps forms the chief or peculiar intellectual dis- 
 tinction between us and superior spirits. Metaphysical 
 speculation tries to resolve all constituted things into their 
 general elements, and those elements into the ultimate mys- 
 terious element of substance, thus leaving behind the various 
 orders and modes of being, to contemplate being itself in its 
 essence. It retires awhile from the consideration of truth, 
 as predicated of particular subjects, to explore those unal- 
 terable and universal relations of ideas, which must be the 
 primary principles of all truth. It is not content to acknow- 
 ledge or to seek the respective causes of the effects which 
 crowd every part of the creation, but would ascertain the 
 very natiu-e of the relation between cause and effect. Not 
 satisfied to infer a Deity from the wise and beautiful order 
 of the universe, it would descry the proof of this sublime 
 fact in the bare existence of an atom. To ascertain the laws 
 according to which we think, is a gratifying kind of know- 
 ledge, but metaphysical speculation asks what is it to think, 
 and what is that power which performs so strange an opera- 
 tion ; it also attempts to discover the nature of the con- 
 nexion of this mysterious agent with a corporeal machine ; 
 and of the relation in which it really stands to that external 
 world, concerning which it receives so many millions of 
 ideas. In short, metaphysical inquiry attempts to trace 
 things to the very fijst stage in which they can, even to the 
 most penetrating intelligences, be the subjects of a thought, 
 a doubt, or a proposition; that profoundeat abstraction, 
 where they staad on the first step of distinction and remove 
 from nonentity, and where that one question might be put 
 concerning them, the answer to which would leave no further 
 question possible. And having thus abstracted and pene- 
 trated to the state of pure entity, the speculation would 
 come back, tracing it into all its modes and relations • till 
 at last metaphysical truth, approaching nearer and nearer to 
 
MEMOIES or LORD EAMES. 75 
 
 fche sphere of our immediate knowledge, terminates on the 
 confines of distinct sciences and obvious realities. 
 
 Now, it would seem evident that this inquiry into primary 
 truth must surpass, in point of dignity, all other specula- 
 tions. If any man could carry his discoveries as far, and 
 make his proofs as strong, in the metaphysical world, as 
 Newton did in the physical, he would be an incomparably - 
 greater man than even Newton. The charge, therefore, of 
 being frivolous, alleged sometimes angrily, and sometimes 
 scornfully, against this department of study, is, so far as the 
 subjects are concerned, but a proof of the complete igno- 
 rance of those who make it. Ignorance may be allowed to 
 say anything; but we are very much surprised, when we 
 sometimes hear men of considerable thought and knowledge, 
 declaring, almost unconditionally, against researches into 
 pure metaphysical subjects ; and also insisting, that our 
 reasonings on moral subjects must never, for a moment, 
 accept the pernicious aid of metaphysical distinctions. We 
 cannot comprehend how it is possible for them to frequent 
 the intellectual world, without often coming in view of some 
 of the great questions peculiarly belonging to this depart- 
 ment of thought ; such as those concerning the nature of 
 the mind, the liberty or necessity of human action, the 
 radical distinction between good and evil, spact diu-ation, 
 eternity, the creation of. inferior beings, and the attributes 
 of the Supreme. And we wonder that, if it were only to 
 enjoy the sensation of being overwhelmed in sublime mys- 
 tery, and of finding how much there is reserved to be learnt 
 in a higher state of existence and intelligence, an inquisitive 
 mind should not, when these subjects are forced on the 
 view, make a strong, though it were a transient, effort of 
 investigation. Nor can we conceive how a man of the least 
 sagacity can deeply examine any moral subject, without 
 often finding himself brought to the borders of metaphysical 
 ground ; and there perceiving very clearly that he must 
 either enter on that ground, or leave his subject most par- 
 tially and imsatisfactorily discussed. All subjects have first 
 principles, toward which an acute mind feels its investiga- 
 tion inevitably tending, and all first principles are, if inves- 
 tigated to their extreme refinement, metaphysical. The 
 tendency of thought toward the ascertaining of these first 
 
76 ON METiPHTSICAL STTTDIES. 
 
 principles in every inquiry, as contrasted with a disposition 
 to pass (thougli perhaps very elegantly or rhetorically) over 
 the surface of a subject, is one of the strongest points of 
 distinction between a vigorous intellect and a feeble one. 
 
 It is true enough, to the grief of philosophers, and the 
 humiliation of human ability, that but a very small degree 
 of direct success has ever crowned these profound researches, 
 or perhaps will ever crown them in the present state of our 
 existence. It is also true, that an acute man who will abso- 
 lutely prosecute the metaphysic of every subject to the last 
 possible extreme, with a kind of rebellion against the very 
 laws and limits of nature, in contempt of his senses, of 
 experience, of the universal perceptions of mankind, and of 
 divine revelation, may reason himself into a vacuity where 
 he will feel as if he were sinking out of the creation. Hume 
 was such an example ; but we might cite Locke and Reid, 
 and some other illustrious men, who have terminated their 
 long sweep of abstract thinking, as much in the spirit of 
 sound sense and rational belief as they began. 
 
 Tet while we must attribute to weakness or ignorance 
 the contempt or the terror of these inquiries, it is so evident 
 from the nature of things, and the whole history of philo- 
 sophy, that they must in a great measure fail, when ex- 
 tended beyond certain contracted limits, that it is less for 
 the portion of direct metaphysical science which they can 
 ascertain, than for their general effect on the thinking 
 powers, that we deem them a valuable part of intellectual 
 discipline. Studies of this nature tend very much to 
 augment the power of discriminating clearly between 
 different subjects, and ascertaiuing their analogies, depend- 
 encies, relative importance, and best method of investiga- 
 tion. They enable the mind to dissipate the delusion of 
 first appearances, and detect fallacious subtleties of argu- 
 ment. Between the most superficial view of a subject, and 
 its most abstracted principles, there is a gradation of prin- 
 ciples stiU more and more abstracted, conducting pro- 
 gressively, if any mind were strong enough to follow, to 
 that profoundest principle where inquiry must terminate 
 for ever : now, though it be impossible to approach within 
 the most distant glimmering sight of that principle, yet a 
 mind sharpened by metaphysical investigation, wiU be able 
 
MEMOIES OF LOliD KAMES. 77 
 
 sometimes to penetrate to the second, third, or fourth place 
 ic this retiring gradation, and will therefore have a far more 
 competent understanding of the subject, from being able to 
 investigate it to this depth, than another mind which has 
 been accustomed to content itself with an attention merely 
 to the superficies. A man habituated to this deeper ex- 
 amination of every subject which he seriously thinks, will 
 often be able, and entitled, to advance his propositions with 
 a confidence to which the man that only thinks on the 
 surface, of a subject must be a stranger, unless indeed he 
 can totally forget that there is anything deeper than the 
 surface ; but then he may very fairly be excused from 
 making any propositions at all. 
 
 On the whole, we are of opinion, that though it is most 
 unwise to dedicate the chief part of a studious life to 
 metaphysical speculation, except in the case of those few 
 extraordinary minds which can carry this speculation so far 
 as to render to mankind the service of practically ascer- 
 taining the limits which human ability cannot pass, a 
 moderate portion of this study would be of the greatest 
 use to all intellectual men, as a mode of acquiring, in the 
 general exercise of their understandings, at once the double 
 advantage of comprehensiveness and precision. 
 
 While, therefore, we are doing honour to abstract science, 
 for the superior talents which it requires iu the investigator, 
 for the augmented powers which it confers in the progress 
 of study, and for the elevatidg dignity which it bestows iu 
 the successful result, we are wUling to remember, that after 
 all it is but of subordinate importance. And we cannot 
 help admiring the wisdom of that arrangement, by which 
 nothing that is truly essential to the well-being of man is 
 denied to the exertion of such powers as man generally 
 possesses. The truths connected vrith piety and the social 
 duties, with the means of personal happiness, and the 
 method of securing an ulterior condition of progressive 
 perfection and felicity, lie at the very surface of moral 
 inquiries ; like the fruits and precious stores of the vegetable 
 kingdom, they are necessary to supply inevitable wants, 
 and are placed by Divine Benevolence, within the reach of 
 the meanest individual. The secret treasures, however, of 
 the moral, as of the physical world, lie deep and remote 
 
78 Olf METAPHYSICAL STrDIES. 
 
 from casual observation, and are only yielded up to a series 
 of skilful and laborious efforts : they are indeed wonderful 
 and splendid ; they may gratify the ambition of the curious 
 and ostentatious, and they may denote the gradations of 
 mental nobility ; they may even be applied to more useful 
 purposes ; but they afford no substantial enjoyments, they 
 constitute no part of the necessaries or comforts of exist- 
 ence ; a man who wants them, may yet be happy, contented, 
 and secure ; and he who possesses them in profusion, may 
 glitter in the array of intellectual opulence, yet pine, and 
 perish. 
 
 About the middle of his life Lord Kames became ac- 
 quainted with David Hume, who was considerably younger 
 than himself, and who was just then making a manful 
 attempt for fame, and against religion, in the publication of 
 his " Treatise of Human Nature." His letters, describing 
 the views and feelings which possessed his mind at that 
 time, and which he seems to have retained with little altera- 
 tion through life, exhibit but a very mean moral picture of 
 the man. The printing of his " Philosophical Essays," 
 which Lord Kames dissuaded, gave occasion for his lord- 
 ship's full appearance before the public as a philosopher, in 
 his " Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural 
 Eeligion," in which he set himself to oppose the opinions of 
 Hume. 
 
 The intelligent reader will be anxious to meet with this 
 book ; for he is given to expect that the author makes out a 
 fine account of human nature, as a well-poised, well regu- 
 lated, and most harmonious moral system. He must be 
 curious to see in what manner he disposes of the stupendous 
 depravity, which through all ages has covered the earth 
 with crimes and miseries : and how he has illustrated the 
 grand and happy effects resulting from the general and 
 permanent predominance of the selfish over the benevolent 
 affections, from the imbecility of reason and conscience as 
 opposed to appetite, from the infinitely greater facility of 
 forming and retaining bad habits than good ones, from the 
 incalculable number of false opinions embraced instead of 
 the true, and from the depravation which is always found to 
 steal very soon into the best institutions. He must, surely, 
 be no less solicitous to see the dignity and certainty of 
 
MEMOIES or LORD KAMES. 79 
 
 the moral sense verified in the face of the well-known fact, 
 that there is no crime which has not, in the absence of 
 revelation, been committed, in one part of the world or 
 another, without the smallest consciousness of guilt. 
 
 It is too evident that our philosopher felt it a light 
 matter, that his speculations were sometimes in opposition 
 to the book which Christians deem of paramount authority. 
 He would pretend, in a general way, a kind of deference 
 for that book, and yet go on with his theories and reason- 
 ings all the same. In this we consider his conduct, and the 
 conduct of many other philosophic men, as most absurd, 
 setting aside its irreligion. The book which avows itself, 
 by a thousand solemn and explicit declarations, to be a 
 communication from heaven, is either what it thus declares 
 itself to be, or a most monstrous imposture. If these phi- 
 losophers hold it to be an imposture, and therefore au 
 execrable deception put on the sense of mankind, how con- 
 temptible it is to see them practising their civil cringe, and 
 uttering phrases of deference. If they admit it to be what 
 it avows itself, how detestable is their conduct in advancing 
 positions and theories, with a cool disregard of the highest 
 authority, confronting and contradicting them all the while. 
 And if the question is deemed to be yet in suspense, how 
 ridiculous it is to be thus building up speculations and 
 systems, pending a cause which may require their demoli- 
 tion the instant it is decided. Who would not despise or 
 pity a man eagerly raising a fine house on a piece of ground 
 at the very time in doubtful litigation ? Who would not 
 have laughed at a man, who should have published a book 
 of geography, with minute descriptions, and costly maps, of 
 distant regions and islands, at the very time that Magellan 
 or Cook was absent on purpose to determine their position, 
 or even verify their existence ? If Lord Karnes was doubt- 
 ful on the question of the truth or imposture of the most 
 celebrated book in the world, a question of which the deci- 
 sion, the one way or the other, is the indispensable prelimi- 
 nary to so many speculations, why did he not bend his 
 utmost strength to decide it ? This had been a work of 
 far more importance than any of those to which he applied 
 himself; of far more importance than his reasonings on the 
 existence of a Deity, since the very object of these reasonings 
 
80 ON METAPHTSIOAL STITDIES. 
 
 was to prove that we have a natural, intuitive, and invincible 
 assurance that there is a God, and therefore, in fact, that we 
 need no reasoning or writing on the subject. Or, if he 
 would not make an effort towards the decision of this great 
 question himself, why would he not lie quiet, till the other 
 examiners should decide it ; cautious, even to anxiety, not 
 to hazard, in the meanwhile, a single position of such a 
 nature as must assume that the question was already decided, 
 and decided against the pretensions of the book professing 
 to be of divine authority ? But such positions he made no 
 difficulty of advancing, especially in what was called, at that 
 time, his magnibm opKS,the "Sketches of the History of Man." 
 
 The leading doctrine of this work appears to be that man 
 was originally in the state of a most ignorant savage, and 
 that all his knowledge and improvements subsequently 
 attained, as well in morals and theology as in arts and 
 sciences, have resulted from the progressive development of 
 his natural powers by natural means : in this same work, 
 notwithstanding, the author affected to pay some deference 
 to the Mosaic history. This idle and irreligious notion was 
 retained and cherished in spite of the able reasoning of Dr. 
 Doig, of which Lord "Woodhouselee gives a lucid abstract, 
 followed by a curious account of the commencement of the 
 acquaintance between Dr. Doig and Lord Kames. 
 
 The other distinguished literary performance of Lord 
 Karnes, was the "Elements of Criticism." The biographer 
 introduces his remarks on this work by a very curious 
 inquiry into the history of philosophical criticism, the 
 invention of which he attributes to the Scottish philo- 
 sopher, after an acute examination of the claims of both the 
 ancients and modems. We are very much entertained by 
 this ingenious investigation ; though Lord "Woodhouselee's 
 own acknowledgment of the near approaches to this species 
 of criticism in one or two of the ancients, and the actual, 
 though very imperfect development of it in several modem 
 writers, especially Akenside, warrants our hesitation to 
 assign to Lord Kames the title of inventor, which is 
 wrested, by a rather nice distinction, from Aristotle. In 
 the "T^reatise of Ehetoric," Aristotle gave an elaborate 
 analysis of the passions, and of the sources of pain and 
 pleasure, expressly with a view to instruct writers and 
 
ON BLAIE'S LirE AND WEITTKaa. 81 
 
 speakers how to iaterest those passions. If this was not 
 actually deducing, it was making it easy for the persons so 
 instrutted to deduce, from the very constitution of the 
 human mind, the essential laws of good writing and eloquent 
 speaking. It was showing that excellence in these arts 
 must consist in the adaptation of all their performances to the 
 principles of human nature. By thus illustrating the manner 
 in which the human mind can be subjected to the powers of 
 eloquence, Aristotle laid at least the foundation of philo- 
 sophical criticism. It is true that this could not so strictly 
 be called criticism till it should be carried a little further, 
 till a number of precise inferences from this explication of 
 the passions should be propounded, as laws of criticism, and 
 these laws be formally applied to the productions of genius. 
 But this was nearly a matter of course when the first great 
 work of elucidating the passions was accomplished ; when, 
 the nature of the materials was ascertained, it dictated at 
 once the mode of operating on them. By a very slight 
 change of form, each proposition relative to the passions 
 might have been made a critical rale, applicable to its 
 respective part of the works to be addressed to them. This 
 had been a very slender effort for the great philosopher if 
 he had chosen to pursue his subject so far ; and therefore it 
 does not claim any very high degree of fame, if a modern 
 has done what he omitted. We allow however to Lord 
 Kames " the merit of having given to philosophical criticism 
 the form of a science, by reducing it to general principles, 
 methodizing its doctrines and supporting them everywhere, 
 by the most copious and beautiful illustrations." 
 
 ON BLAIE'S LIFE AND WEITINGS. 
 
 in Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair, B.I)., 
 F.R.S.E., one of the Ministers of the High Church, and Professor 
 of Rhetoric and Bdles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. 
 By the late John Hill, LL.D.,. F.E.S.E., Professor of Hu* 
 manity in the University. 8vo. 1807. 
 
 Thehe appears to be some cause for apprehension, lest 
 the extravagant admiration once lavished on Dr. Blair should 
 
82 lETTEES ON EHETOETO 
 
 decline, by degrees, into a neglect that will withhold even 
 common justice. No productions so celebrated at first, as 
 his sermons, have perhaps ever come in so short a time to 
 be so nearly forgotten. Even before the conclusion of the 
 series, the public enthusiasm and avidity had begun to lan- 
 guish, and the last volume seemed only announced in order 
 to attend the funeral of its predecessors. The once delighted 
 readers excused the change of their taste by pretending, and 
 perhaps believing, that a great disparity was observable be- 
 tween the two prior volumes and those which followed them. 
 The alleged inferiority might possibly exist in a certain 
 degree ; but the altered feeling was in a much greater 
 degree owing to the recovery of sober sense, from the tem- 
 porary inebriation of novelty and fashion ; and the recovery 
 was accompanied by a measure of that mortification, which 
 seeks to be consoled by prompting a man to revenge himself 
 on what has betrayed him into the folly. 
 
 As a critical writer, however. Dr. Blair has suffered much 
 less from the lapse of years. His lectures have found their 
 place and established their character among a highly respect- 
 able rank of books, and will always be esteemed valuable as 
 an exercise of correct taste, and an accumulation of good 
 sense, on the various branches of the art of speaking and 
 writing. It was not absolutely necessary they should bear 
 the marks of genius, it was not indispensable that they 
 should be richly ornamented ; but yet we can by no means 
 agree with this biographer, that ornament would have been 
 out of place, and that the dry style which prevails through- 
 out the lectures is the perfection of excellence in writings 
 on criticism. It has been often enough repeated, that such 
 a bare thin style is the proper one for scientific disquisitions, 
 of which the object is pure truth, and the instrument pure 
 intellect : but, in general criticism, so much is to be done 
 through' the intervention of taste and imagination, that these 
 faculties have a very great right to receive some tribute, of 
 their own proper kind, from a writer who wishes to establish 
 himself in their peculiar province. And the writings of 
 Dryden, Addison, and Johnson, will amply show what graces 
 may be imparted to critical subjects by a fine imagination, 
 without in the least preventing or perplexing the due exer- 
 cise of the reader's understanding. We ai-e not so absurd 
 
ON blaib's life and weitings. 83 
 
 as to reproaeli Dr. Blaii for not having a fine imagination, 
 but we must censure his panegyrist for attempting to turn 
 this want into a merit. Philosophical criticism, indeed, like 
 that of Lord Kames and Dr. Campbell, which attempts to 
 discover the abstract principles, rather than to illustrate the 
 specific rules, of excellence in the fine arts, — rand between 
 the object of which, and of Dr. Blair's criticism, there is 
 nearly the same difierence as between the office of an anato- 
 mist who dissects, or a chemist who decomposes beautifal 
 forms, and an artist who looks at and delineates them — may 
 do well to adhere to a plainer language ; but the biographer 
 has judiciously withdrawn all claims, in behalf of Dr. Blair, 
 to the character of a philosophical critic. He has acknow- 
 ledged and even exposed the slightness of the professor's 
 observations on the formation of language. He has not, 
 however, said one word of the irreligious inconsistency and 
 folly of professing a zealous adherence to revelation, and at 
 the same time, labouring to deduce the very existence of 
 language, in a very slow progress, from inarticulate noises, 
 the grand original element of speech, as it seems, among the 
 primaeval gentlefolk, at the time when they went on all-four, 
 and grubbed up roots, and picked up acorns. Our readers 
 will remember the happy ridicule of a part of this theory, in 
 one of Cowper's letters, in which he humorously teaches one 
 of these clever savages to make the sentence, " Oh, give me 
 apple."* They may find the system ably and argumenta- 
 tively exploded in EousKeau's "Discourse on the Inequality 
 of Mankind." While this part of the lectures is given up 
 to deserved neglect, we think the work will, on the whole, 
 always maintain its character, as a comprehensive body of 
 sensible criticism, and of very valuable directions in the art 
 of writing. We agree with this biographer, in admiring 
 especially the lectures on the subject of style. 
 
 But it is rather on the unrivalled excellence of the ser- 
 mons that Dr. Hill seems inclined to found the assurance of 
 Dr. Blair's celebrity in future times. In order to persuade 
 ourselves into the same opinion, we have been reading some 
 of the most noted of those performances. And they possess 
 some obvious merits of which no reader can be insensible. 
 
 * To the Rev. W. Unwin, April 5, 1734. (Vol. v. p. 22. Soutliey's 
 1st Editi 
 
 Ot 2 
 
S/i STYLE OF HIS SEEMONS. 
 
 The first is, perhaps, that they are not too long. It is not 
 impertinent to specify the first, because we can put it to 
 the consciences of our readers, whether, in opening a volume 
 of sermons, their first point of inspection relative to any one 
 which they are inclined to choose for its text or title, is not 
 to ascertain the length ? The next recommendation of the 
 doctor's sermons, is a very suitable, though scarcely ever 
 striking, introduction, which leads directly to the business, 
 and opens into a very plain and lucid distribution of the 
 subject. Another is a correct and perspicuous language ; 
 and it is to be added, that the ideas are almost always strictly 
 pertinent to the subject. This, however, forms but a very 
 small part of the applause, which was bestowed on these 
 sermons during the transient day of their fame. They were 
 then considered by many as examples of true eloquence ; a 
 distinction never perhaps attributed, in any other instance, 
 to performances marked by such palpable deficiencies and 
 faults. 
 
 In the first place, with respect to the language, though 
 the selection of words is proper enough, the arrangement of 
 them in the sentence is often in the utmost degree stifi" and 
 artificial. It is hardly possible to depart further from any 
 resemblance to what is called a living, or spoken style, which 
 is the proper diction at all events for popular addresses, if 
 not for all the departments of prose composition. Instead 
 of the thought throwing itself into words, by a free, instan- 
 taneous, and almost unconscious action, and passing ofiT in 
 that easy form, it is pretty apparent there was a good deal 
 of handicraft employed in getting ready proper cases and 
 trusses, of various but carefully measured lengths and figures, 
 to put the thoughts into, as they came out, in very slow 
 succession, each of them cooled and stiflfened to numbness 
 ia waiting so long to be dressed. Take, for example, such 
 sentences as these : " Great has been the corruption of the 
 world in every age. Sufiicient ground there is for the com- 
 plaints made by serious observers, at all times, of aboundin" 
 iniquity and folly." " For rarely, or never, is old age coi> 
 temned, unless when, by vice or folly, it renders itself con- 
 temptible." _ " Vain, nay often dangerous, were youthful 
 enterprises, if not conducted by aged prudence." " If dead 
 to these calls, you already languish in slothfal inaction'" &o. 
 
oir blaib's life and weitin-gs. 85 
 
 " Smiling very often is the aspect, and smooth are the words 
 of those who inwardly are the most ready to think evil of 
 others." " Exempt, on the one hand, from the dark jealousy 
 of a suspicious mind, it is no less removed, on the other, 
 from that easy credulity which," &c. " Formidable, I admit, 
 this may justly render it to them who have no inward fund," 
 &c. " Though such employments of fancy come not under 
 the same description with those which are plainly criminal, 
 yet wholly unblamable they seldom are." " With less 
 external majesty it was attended, but is, on that account, 
 the more wonderful, that under 'an appearance so simple, 
 such great events were covered." 
 
 There is also a perpetual recurrence of a form of the sen- 
 tence, which might be occasionally graceful, or tolerable, 
 when very sparingly adopted, but is extremely impleasiog 
 when it comes often ; we mean that construction in which 
 the quality or condition of the agent or subject, is expressed 
 first, and the agent or subject is put to bring up the latter 
 clause. For instance : " Pampered by continual indulgence, 
 all our passions will become mutinous and headstrong." 
 " Practised in the ways of men, they are apt to be suspicious 
 of 'design and fraud," &c. " Injured or oppressed by the 
 world, he looks up to a Judge who will vindicate his cause." 
 
 In the second place, there is no texture in the composi- 
 tion. The sentences appear often like a series of little 
 independent propositions, each satisfied with its own distinct 
 meaning, and capable of being placed in a different part of 
 the train, without injury to any mutual connexion, or ulti- 
 mate purpose, of the thoughts. The ideas relate to the 
 subject generally, without specifically relating to one ano- 
 ther. They all, if we may so speak, gravitate to one centre, 
 but have no mutual attraction among themselves. The 
 mind must often dismiss entirely the idea in one sentence, 
 in order to proceed to that in the next ; instead of feeling 
 that the second, though distinct, yet necessarily retains the 
 first still in mind, and partly derives its force from it ; and 
 that they both contribute, in connexion with several more 
 sentences, to form a grand complex scheme of thought, each 
 of them producing a far greater effect, as a part of the com- 
 bination, than it would have done as a little thought stand- 
 ing alone. The consequence of this defect is, that the 
 
86 STTLE OF HIS SEBMONS. 
 
 empliajtis of the sentiment and the crisis or conclusion of 
 the argument comes nowhere ; since it cannot be in any 
 single insulated thought, and there is not mutual depend- 
 ence and co-operation enough to produce any combined 
 result. Nothing is proved, nothing is enforced, nothing is 
 taught, by a mere accumulation of self-evident propositions, 
 most of which are necessarily trite, and some of which, when 
 they are so many, must be trivial. With a few exceptions, 
 this appears to us to be the character of these sermous. 
 The sermon, perhaps, most deserving to be excepted, is that 
 " On the Importance of Eeligious Knowledge to Mankind," 
 which exhibits a respectable degree of concatenation of 
 thought, and deduction of argument. It would seem as if 
 Dr. Blair had been a little aware of this defect, as there is 
 an occasional appearance of remedial contrivance ; he has 
 sometimes inserted the logical signs yb*- and since, when the 
 connexion or dependence is really so very slight or unim- 
 portant that they might nearly as weU be left out. 
 
 If, in the next place, we were to remark on the figures 
 introduced in the course of these sermons, we presume we 
 should have every reader's concurrence that they are, for 
 the most part, singularly trite ; so much so, that the volumes 
 might be taken, more properly than any other modern book 
 that we know, as comprising the whole common-places of 
 imagery. A considerable portion of the produce of imagi- 
 nation was deemed an indispensable ingredient of eloquence, 
 and the quota was therefore to be had in any way and of 
 any kind. But the guUt of plagiarism was effectually 
 avoided, by taking a portion of what society had long agreed 
 to consider as made common and free to aU. When occa- 
 sionally there occurs a simile or metaphor of the writer's 
 own production, it is adjusted with an artificial nicety, bear- 
 ing a little resemblance to the labour and finish we some- 
 times see bestowed on the tricking out of an only child. It 
 should, at the same time, be allowed, that the consistency of 
 the figures, whether common or unusual, is in general accu- 
 rately preserved. The reader will be taught, however, not 
 to reckon on this as a certainty. We have just opened on 
 the following sentence : " Death is the gate which, at the 
 same time that it closes on this world, opens into eternity." 
 (Sermon on Death.) We cannot comprehend the consiiruc- 
 
ON BLAIE S LIFE AND -WBITINGS. 87 
 
 tion and movement of such a gate, unless it is like that 
 Vnich we sometimes see in place of a stUe, playing loose in 
 a space between two posts; and we can hardly think so 
 humble an object could be in the author's mind, while think- 
 ing of the passage to another world. 
 
 "With respect to the general power of thinking displayed 
 in these sermons, we apprehend that discerning readers are 
 coming fast towards an uniformity of opioion. They will aU 
 cheerfully agree that the author carries good sense along 
 with him, wherever he goes ; that he keeps his subjects dis- 
 tinct ; that he never wanders from the one in hand ; that he 
 presents concisely very many important lessons of sound 
 morality ; and that in doing this he displays an uncommon 
 knowledge of the more obvious qualities of human nature. 
 He is never trifling nor fantastic ; every page is sober, and 
 pertinent to the subject ; and resolute labour has prevented 
 him from ever falling in a mortifying degree below the level 
 of his best style of performance. He is seldom below a 
 respectable mediocrity, but, we are forced to admit, that he 
 very rarely rises above it. After reading five or six sermons 
 we become assured, that we most perfectly see the whole 
 compass and reach of his powers, and that, if there were 
 twenty volumes, we might read on through the whole, with- 
 out ever coming to a bold conception, or a profound iuvesti- 
 gation, or a burst of genuine enthusiasm. There is not iu 
 the train of thought a succession of eminences and depres- 
 sions, rising towards sublimity, and descending into fami- 
 liarity. There are no peculiarly striking short passages 
 where the miud wishes to stop awhile, to indulge its delight, 
 if it were not irresistibly carried forward by the rapidity of 
 the thought. There are none of those happy reflections 
 back on a thought just departing, which seem to give it a 
 second and a stronger significance, in addition to that which 
 it had most obviously presented. Though the mind does 
 not proceed with any eagerness to what is to come, it is 
 seldom inclined to revert to what is gone by ; and any con- 
 trivance in the composition to tempt it to look back with 
 lingering partiality to the receding ideas, is forborne by the 
 writer, — quite judiciously, for the temptation would fail. 
 
 A reflective reader will perceive his mind fixed in a won- 
 derful sameness of feeling throughout a whole volume: it ia 
 
88 DEFECTS or HIS SEBMOKS. 
 
 bardly relieved a moment, by surprise, delight, or labour, 
 and at length, becomes very tiresome ; perhaps a little 
 analogous to the sensations of a Hindoo while fulfilling his 
 vow, to remain in one certain posture for a month. A 
 sedate formality of manner is invariably kept up through a 
 thousand pages, without the smallest danger of ever luxuri- 
 ating into a beautiful irregularity. We never find ourselves 
 in the midst of any thing that reminds us of nature, except 
 by that orderly stifihess which she forswears, or of freedom, 
 except by being compelled to go in the measured paces of a 
 dull procession. If we manfully persist in reading on, we 
 at length feel a torpor invading our faculties, we become 
 apprehensive that some wizard is about turning us into 
 stones, and we can break the spell only by shutting the 
 book. Having shut the book we feel that we have acquired 
 no definable addition to our ideas ; we have little more than 
 the consciousness of having passed along through a very 
 regular series of sentences and unexceptionable propositions ; 
 much in the same manner as perhaps, at another hour of 
 the same day, we have the consciousness or remembrance of 
 having just passed along by a very regular painted pallisade, 
 no one bar of which particularly fixed our attention, and the 
 whole of which we shall soon forget that we have ever seen. 
 The last fault that we shall allege, is some defect on the 
 ground of religion; not a deficiency of general seriousness, 
 nor an inlrequency of reference to the most solemn subjects, 
 nor an omission of stating sometimes, in explicit terms, the 
 leading principles of the theory of the Christian redemption 
 But we repeatedly find cause to complain that, in other 
 parts of the sermon, he appears to forget these statements, 
 and advances propositions which, unless the reader shall 
 combine with them modifications which the author has not 
 suggested, must contradict the principles. On occasions, 
 he clearly deduces from the death and atonement of Christ, 
 the hopes of futurity, and consolations against the fear of 
 death ; and then, at other times, he seems most cautious to 
 avoid this grand topic, when adverting to the approach of 
 death, and the feelings of that season ; and seems to rest all 
 the consolations on the review of a virtuous life. We have 
 sometimes to charge him also with a certain adulteration of 
 the Christian moral principles, by the admixture of a portion 
 
oh'blaie's life aub weitings. 89 
 
 of the wordly spirit. As a friend to Christianity, he wished 
 her to be a little less harsh and peculiar than in her earlier 
 days, and to show that she had not lived so long in the 
 genteelest world in the creation, without learning politeness. 
 Especially it was necessary for her to exercise due complai- 
 sance when she attended him, if she felt any concern about 
 his reputation, as a companion of the fashionable, the 
 sceptical, the learned, and the afluent, and a preacher to the 
 most splendid congregation in the whole country. It 
 would seem that she meekly took these delicate hints, and 
 adopted a language which no gentleman could be ashamed 
 to repeat, or offended to hear. The sermons abound with 
 specimens of this improved dialect, but we cannot be sup- 
 posed to have room here for quotations ; we will only 
 transcribe a single short sentence from the Sermon on 
 Death: ""Wherever religion, virtue, or true honour call 
 him forth to danger, life ought to be hazarded without fear." 
 (Vol. ii. p. 224.) Now what is the meaning of the word 
 " honour," evidently here employed to denote something 
 distinct from virtue, and therefore not cognizable by the 
 laws of morality ? Does the reverend orator mean, that to 
 gain fame or glory, as it is called, or to avert the imputation 
 or suspicion of cowardice, or to maintain some trivial punc- 
 tilio of precedence or arrogant demand of pride, commonly 
 called a point of honour, between individuals or nations, or 
 to abet, as a matter of course, any cause rendered honourable 
 by being adopted by the higher classes of mankind, — a 
 Christian ought to hazard his life ? Taken as the ground 
 of the most awful duty to which a human being can be 
 called, and yet thus distinguished from religion and morality, 
 what the term means can be nothing good. The preacher 
 did not, perhaps, exactly know what he intended it to mean : 
 but it was a term in high vogue, and therefore well adapted 
 to be put along with religion and virtue to qualify their 
 uncouthness. It was no mean proof of address to have 
 made these two surly puritans accept their sparkish com- 
 panion. If this passage were one among only a few 
 specimens of a dubious language, it would be scandalous in 
 us to quote it in this particular manner ; but as there are 
 very many phrases cast after a similar model, we have a 
 right to cite it, as an instance of that tincture of the uu- 
 
90 CAUSES OF HIS POPTTLAEITT. 
 
 sound maxims of the world, which we have asserted to he 
 often perceptible in these sermons. This might be all ir. its 
 place in the sermons of the despicable Torick ; but it is 
 disgusting to hear a very grave divine blending, with Chris- 
 tian exhortations, the loathsome slang of duelling lieutenants, 
 of gamblers, of scoffers at religion, of consequential fools 
 who believe their own reputation the most important thing 
 on earth, and indeed that the earth has nothing else to attend 
 to, and of men whose rant about perhaps the glory of dying 
 for their country, is mixed with insults to the Almighty, and 
 imprecations of perdition on their souls. 
 
 This doubtful and accommodating quality was one of the 
 chief causes, we apprehend, of the first extraordinary 
 popularity oi' these sermons. A great many people of gaiety, 
 rank, and fashion, have occasionally a feeling that a little 
 easy quantity of -religion would be a good thing ; because it 
 is too true, after all, that we cannot be staying in this world 
 always, and when one goes out of it, why, there may be 
 some hardish matters to settle in the other place. The 
 prayer-book of a Sunday is a good deal to be sure toward 
 making all safe, but then it is really so tiresome ; for penance 
 it is very well, but to say one likes it, one cannot for the life 
 pf one. If there were some tolerable religious thing that 
 one could read now and then without trouble, and think it 
 about half as pleasant as a game of cards, it would be com- 
 fortable. One should not be so frightened about what we 
 must all come to some time. — Now nothing could have been 
 more to the purpose than these sermons ; they were wel- 
 comed as the very thing. They were unquestionably about 
 religion, and grave enough in all conscience ; yet they were 
 elegant ; they were so easy to comprehend throughout, that 
 the mind was never detained a moment to think ; they were 
 undefiled by Methodism ; they but little obtruded peculiar 
 doctrinal notions ; they applied very much to high life, and 
 the author was evidently a gentleman ; the book could be 
 discussed as a matter of taste, and its being seen in the 
 parlour excited no surmise that any one in the house had 
 been lately concerted. Above all, it was most perfectly free 
 from that disagreeable and mischievous property attributed 
 to the eloquence of Pericles, that it " left stings behind." 
 
 With these recommendations, aided by the author's repu- 
 
BLAIE's LT]?E AlTD WEITINGS. 91 
 
 tation as an elegant critic, and by his aquaintance with per- 
 sons of the highest note, the book became fashionable ; it was 
 circulated that Lord Mansfield had read some of the sermons 
 to their Majesties ; peers and peeresses without number were 
 cited, as having read and admired ; tiLl at last it was al- 
 most a mark of vulgarity not to have read them, and many a 
 lie was told to escape this imputation, by persons who had 
 not yet enjoyed the advantage. Grave elderly ministers of 
 much severer religious views than Br. Blair, were, in sincere 
 benevolence, glad that a work had appeared, which gave a 
 chance for religion to make itself heard among the dissipated 
 and the great, to whom ordinary sermons, and less polished 
 treatises of piety, could never find access. Dainty young 
 sprigs of theology, together with divers hopeful young men 
 and maidens, were rejoiced to find that Christian truth could 
 be attired in a much nicer garb than that in which it was 
 exhibited in Beveridge, or in the Morning Exercises at Crip- 
 plegate. 
 
 If the huzzahs attending the triumphal entry of these ser- 
 mons had not been quite so loud, the present silence concern- 
 ing them might not have appeared quite so profound. And 
 if there had been a libtle more vigour in the thought, and 
 any thing like nature and ease in the language, they might 
 have emerged again into a respectable and permanent share 
 of public esteem. But as the case stands, we think they are 
 gone or going irrevocably to the vault of theCapulets. Such 
 a deficiency of ratiocination, combined with such a total want 
 of original conception, is in any book incompatible with its 
 staying long in the land of the living. And, as to the style, 
 also, of these performances, there were not wanting, even in 
 the hey-day and riot of their popularity, some doctors, cun- 
 ning in such matters, who thought the dead monotony of the 
 expression symptomatic of a disease that must end fatally. 
 
 We should apologize to our readers for having gone on 
 thus far with our remarks, without coming to the work which 
 has given the occasion for introducing them. 
 
 This volume has disappointed our expectation of finding a 
 particular account of the Life of Dr. Blair, enlivened with 
 anecdotes illustrative of his character. Nearljr half of it is 
 occupied not in criticizing, but actually in epitomizing, the 
 Doctor's writings, a labour of which it is impossible to com- 
 
92 INFLATED STTT,E. 
 
 prehend the necessity or use, except to make up a handsome- 
 looking volume. Several of the most noted of the sermons 
 are individually dissected, in a tedious manner, and compared 
 with several of the sermons on the same subjects, in the vol- 
 umes of some of the celebrated French preachers, but with- 
 out any critical remarks of consequence. The other half of 
 the book does relate mainly to the man himself, but is writ- 
 ten much more in the manner of a formal academical eulogy, 
 than of any thing like a lively and simple memoir. It is not 
 florid, but it is as set and artificial as the composition of Dr. 
 Blair himself; and indeed seems a very good imitation, or, 
 at least, resemblance. Except in the acknowledgment of 
 one or two slight weaknesses, as we are taught to deem them, 
 in the Doctor's character, it is a piece of laboured and un- 
 varied panegyric, carried on from page to page, with a 
 gravity which becomesatlengthperfectlyludicrous. Hardly 
 one circumstance is told in the language of simple narrative ; 
 every sentence is set to the task of applause. Even Dr. 
 Blair himself, whose vanity was extreme, would have been 
 almost satisfied, if such an exhibition of his qualities and 
 talents had been written in time to have been placed in his 
 view. 
 
 To avoid several pages of extracts, we must remark, that 
 Dr. Blair was something of a beau, and very fond of novel- 
 reading. Every reader will be surprised and provoked to 
 find so very small a share of personal history. It is -we]! 
 known that we are not in general to look for many incidents 
 and adventures in the life of a scholar and clergyman ; but 
 we should have supposed that a period of eighty-three years 
 might have furnished more matters of fact than what could 
 be comprised in a quarter of that number of pages. Those 
 which are here afforded, consist of little beside the notice 
 and dates of the two or three more obscure preferments of Dr. 
 Blair, on his road to what is described the summit of ecclesi- 
 astical success and honour, the High Church of Edinburgh ; 
 his appointment as Professor of Belles Lettres ; his failure 
 of being placed in the situation of Principal of the Universi- 
 ty of Edinburgh, which he expected to receive from the pure 
 gratitude and admiration of his country, without any solici- 
 tation; and, the important circumstance of preaching his last 
 Bermon. This circumstance will be henceforward inserted, 
 
Olf BLAIR S LIFE AND WEITINGS. 93 
 
 we i;rust, with its precise date, in all chronicles of tie mem. 
 orable things of past times ; for it is enlarged on here, as if 
 it had been one of the most momentous events of the century. 
 lie died December 27th, 1800, in the eighty-third year of 
 his age, and the fifty-ninth of his ministry. 
 
 The Doctor's successful progress through life was on the 
 whole adapted to gratify, one should think almost to satiety, 
 that love of fame which his biographer declares, in so many 
 words, to have been his ruling passion ; nor had the passion 
 which. Dr. Hill does not say, was second in command, the 
 love of money, any great cause to comj)lain. 
 
 "We sincerely wish to persuade ourselves that, with all his 
 labour of encomium, this Dr. Hill has done less than justice 
 tohis subject. For if we are to take his representation as acurate 
 and complete, we have the melancholy spectacle of a preacher 
 of religion, whose grand and uniform object in all his labours 
 was advancement in the world. This is clearly the only view 
 in which his admiring friend contemplates those labours. 
 The preacher's success is constantly dwelt on with delight ; 
 but this success always refers to himself, and his own worldly 
 interests,. not to any religious influence exerted on the minds 
 of his inferior, and afterwards, his splendid, auditories, ^is 
 evangelical office is regarded as merely a professional thing, 
 in which it was his happiness to surpass his competitors, to 
 attain the highest reputation, to be placed in a conspicuous 
 station, to obtain a comparative afiiuence, to be most sump- 
 tuously flattered by the great, and to be the intimate friend 
 of Hume, Smith, Home, Eerguson, and Robertson. There 
 is hardly a word that attributes to the admired preacher any 
 concern about promoting the Christian cause, the kingdom 
 of Christ, or the conversion of wicked men, — in short, any 
 one of those sublime objects for which alone the first mag- 
 nanimous promulgators of Christianity preached, and labour- 
 ed, and suffered. It is easy to see that, though Dr. Blair's 
 reputed eloquence had been made the means of imparting 
 the light, and sanctity, and felicity, of religion, to ten 
 thousand poor wicked peasants, yet if he had not sought and 
 acquired high distinction in polished society, his learned 
 biographer would have been utterly disinclined to celebrate 
 him, as deeming him either a grovelling spirit, incapable of 
 aiming at a high object, or the victimof malignant stars that 
 
9i CHUKCH PATEONAGE. 
 
 forbade Hm to attain it. We could make plenty of citations 
 to acquit ourselves of injustice in this representation ; there 
 are many passages of a quality similar to the following : — 
 
 " His Lordship (Chief Baron Orde) in his official capacity, was 
 a regular hearer of the Doctor's Eermons, while his court sat, and 
 there was no one better qualified to judge . of the preacher's 
 merit. This merit, too, was never more conspicuous than when 
 it was honoured with the approbation of the venerable Judge. 
 Dr. Blair's literary reputation p there thoroughly established. 
 And the unwearied labour he underwent in bis closet, while 
 composing his sermons, was repaid by the admiration of a dis- 
 cerning audience." — p. 187. 
 
 The Doctor is commonly reputed to have had a tolerably 
 iiufiScient attachment to pelf. He might have higher 
 inotivesfor clinging so fast to the patronage of Lord Melville, 
 but it is irksome to hear of his being " so much, indebted to 
 that patron's munificence," with the addition of the fulsome 
 cant that, " every favour wbich he received (from this patron) 
 was multa dantis cum laude, and did honour to the hand 
 that bestowed it." This patron is presumed to have been 
 at the bottom of the pension of 200Z. granted from the public 
 treasury. 
 
 [n reading so many things about patronage, and munifi- 
 cence, and protection, and advancement, and success, it 
 cannot fail to occur to any reader of sense to ask, with a 
 sentiment very indignant in one reference, or very compas- 
 sionate in the other — If all this was necessary to Dr. Blair, 
 with a very small family, and with all the internal means 
 attributed to him of advancing his interests, what is to 
 become of ever so many hundred hapless clergymen, in 
 Scotland and elsewhere, who have large families, slender 
 livings, and no General Prazers, Chief Barons, and Lord 
 Melvilles to "protect" them, no means of getting into the 
 High Church of Edinburgh, no chance of attracting the 
 notice of Eoyalty, and a pension of £200, and no hope of 
 collecting tribute by means of a literary reputation " extend- 
 ing beyond the bounds of the British empire V* 
 
05 
 
 ON DA^ID HTJME. 
 
 Aecourtt of the Life and Writings of David Hume, Esq. By Thomas 
 Edward Ritchie. 8vo, 1808. 
 
 This is by no means so ample a memoir as the number of 
 pages would seem to indicate. The last eighty pages are 
 occupied with Hume's publication in French, relative to the 
 affair with Rousseau ; a translation of this pamphlet is 
 inserted in the narrative, accompanied by several additional 
 letters on the same business, and engrossing more than a 
 hundred pages ; and about one hundred and thirty pages 
 are filled with criticism on Hume's writings, eight pages 
 that were printed in the first edition of his " Essays," but 
 in the later ones omitted by the author, and a critique on 
 "Wilkie's "Epigoniad," sent by Hume to the"CriticalB.eview." 
 Much less than half the book, therefore, is occupied with 
 what is strictly biographical, even if we include a consider- 
 able number of his letters to some of his distinguished 
 friends, especially Dr. Robertson. In so much of the volume 
 as we owe to the pen of Mr. Ritchie, we do not find occasion 
 for any great measure of either praise or blame- It is 
 written with perspicuity, in a style not clumsy, but not 
 remarkable for elegance. The detail of the few events of 
 Hume's life would be sufficiently orderly, if there appeared 
 less eagerness to seize and dilate every circumstance that 
 can be introduced as an episode. A character of sense and 
 independence is visible throughout ; and the present is one 
 of the very few biographers who are free from the weakness 
 of enthusiastically admiring, or the hypocrisy of ajffecting so 
 to admire, the mixed and imperfect subject of their pages. 
 If he could have brought himself to the obsequiousness of 
 promising to laud his subject up to the pitch of eulogy 
 which would have gratified the delicate ears of Hume's 
 living relations, he might have been enabled to supply a great 
 deficiency of information respecting the early years and 
 habits of" the philosopher ; but we are compelled to approve 
 the independent conduct described in the note at page 4. 
 
 " In the hope of being enabled to fill up any chasm in this 
 narrative, I applied to a near relation of Mr. Hume, and was 
 
96 DATID HTTMB. 
 
 told, that if the work was to advance his fame, and a copy 
 of the manuscript furnished to the family, the information 
 wanted would, perhaps, be supplied. With such conditions I 
 refused compliance, choosing rather to remain satisfied with the 
 little I had otherwise obtained, than to fetter my sentiments, and 
 subject myself to so laborious a task, in return for what was 
 probably of little importance." 
 
 In the narrative part, great use is necessarily made of 
 Hume's own memoir, called " My Own Life," with the addi- 
 tion of Dr. Smith's details of the circumstances which 
 preceded the exit. This is followed by a general estimate 
 of Hume, as a metaphysician, a moralist, a writer on general 
 policy, and a historian. It is a brief review of all Ma 
 writings, and evinces a good share of acuteness and know- 
 ledge. The last eighteen pages of this review are fi11p.fl 
 with a curious collection of sentences from the " History of 
 England," as they stand corrected in the later editions, 
 compared with the same sentences of the first edition, which 
 are placed in an opposite column, with here and there a 
 suggestion from Mr. Eitchie of still further corrections, 
 • wanted in some of these sentences. It would not seem that 
 Mr. Hume's composition can pretend to high merit on the 
 ground of correctness. 
 
 It is not the biographer's fault that Hume's life furnished 
 but a singularly meagre and uninteresting detail. It is 
 curious to think how many thousands of his contemporaries 
 whose names are forgotten, would have supplied each a far 
 more animated and entertaining narrative. The story of 
 many a common soldier or sailor, many a highwayman, many 
 a gipsy, many a deserted child, and many a beggar, would 
 have kept awake the attention which is much inclined to 
 slumber over an account of this celebrated philosopher.— 
 He was born at Edinburgh in 1711. There was some unde 
 fined quantity of nobility in the blood of his ancestors on 
 both sides, and therefore we suppose ia his own, of which 
 he is said to have been always extremely vain. "We are told 
 " the juvenile years of Hume were not marked by anything 
 which can attract our notice. His father died while our 
 historian was an infant, and left the care of him, his elder 
 brother Joseph, and sister Catharine, to their mother, who 
 although in the bloom of life, devoted herself to the educa'' 
 
TEEAXISE ON HTIMill NATUBE. 97 
 
 tion of her cliildren with laudable assiduity." He went to 
 school and to college, was designed by his friends for the law, 
 but was often guilty of slyly stealing from the lectures of 
 his venerable tutors, Voet and Vinnius, into the much more 
 dashing company of Cicero and Virgil. These gentlemen 
 had certainly taken care to make their own fortunes, in their 
 day ; but their harangues and hexameters were of so little 
 service to that of their admirer, which had no broader basis 
 than the patrimony of a Scottish younger brother, that he 
 determined to enter on some commercial pursuit. He there- 
 fore left the citizens of Kome, and went to try his skill 
 among those of Bristol ; but finding himself after a few 
 months, totally unequal to the bustle incident to a mercantile 
 situation, he abandoned the attempt, and went to Franco. 
 Thence he returned to London in 1737, and, in the following 
 year, published his " Treatise of Human Nature." 
 
 Under the profession of showing what qualifications are 
 requisite for the satisfactory performance of such a work as 
 this pretends to be, Mr. Eitchie has given a sketch of the 
 history of philosophy, or rather a catalogue of philosophers, 
 from Plato to Hume. But we do not exactly comprehend 
 the design of this, unless he means to be understood, that 
 to be able to indite a philosophical treatise on human nature, 
 the writer must have studied all that has ever been written, 
 by all the philosophers of ancient and modern times. "We 
 could certainly wish that Hume had deemed this an indis- 
 pensable pre-requisite to the privilege of writing and vending 
 his own sceptical cogitations ; but it is too evident that none 
 of the infidel philosophers have ever had the conscience to 
 acknowledge the obligation of this preliminary duty. This 
 enumeration of distinguished names ends with a real 
 curiosity, a list of about a sixth part, as the author believes, 
 of " the commentators and scholiasts on Aristotle's philo- 
 sophical works," which accumulates the titles of books 
 containing, in all, a quantity of writing which would have 
 amounted to several hundred quarto volumes. 
 
 It is well known, from Hume's own acknowledgment, 
 that this his first performance was utterly neglected by the 
 public. In making the acknowledgment, he praises the 
 equanimity which he maintained on the occasion, aiid the 
 facility with which his cheerful and sanguine temper 
 
98 DATtD HITMB. 
 
 returned to the nabit of animation and hope. Mr. Eitchie 
 has in his text consented to say the same thing, but has 
 subjoined a note which gives another representation of the 
 philosopher's patience and tranquiUity. 
 
 "In the 'London Review,' vol. v. p. 200 (anno 1777), edited 
 by Dr. Kenrick, there is a note on this passage in our author's 
 biographical narrative, rather inimical to the amenity of dis- 
 position claimed by him. The reviewer says, — 'So sanguine, 
 that it does not appear our author had acquired, at this period of 
 his life, that command over his passions of which he afterwards 
 makes his boast. His disappointment at the public reception of his 
 " Essay on Human Nature," had indeed a violent effect on his 
 passions in a particular instance : it not having dropped so dead- 
 born from the press, but that it was severely handled by the 
 reviewers of those 'times, in a publication entitled, The Works of 
 the Learned; a circumstance which so highly provoked our 
 young philosopher, that he flew in a violent rage to demand satis- 
 faction of Jacob Robinson, the publisher, whom he kept, during 
 the paroxysm of his anger at his sword's point, trembling behind 
 the counter, lest a period should be put to the life of a sober 
 critic by a raving philosopher. " 
 
 The repugnance of mankind to receive instruction should 
 not deter an enlightened and benevolent man who may 
 have failed in the first effort, from soliciting their attention 
 again, and holding up salutary truths afresh to their view. 
 Mr. Hume displayed in a high degree this generons per- 
 severance. Having endeavoured to explain to an ungrate- 
 ful and indocile nation, that there is a wonderful difference 
 between impressions and ideas ; that there is no such con- 
 nexion between causes and effects, as 'to support any 
 argument in defence of religion or for the being of a God ; 
 that no man can admit the truth of the Christian religion 
 but by a miracle taking place in hia mind at every ]noment; 
 that the Deity, if there be any such being, is just so great 
 ns his actual visible worlts indicate, and no greater; together 
 with various other precious and pious doctrines; it had 
 been a desertion of the great cause of truth and utility to 
 have let these discoveries sink in silence, merely because 
 the public had paid but little attention to them on their 
 first or second promulgation. They might be received 
 Hgaiu with the same indifference ; but whether men would 
 bear or whether they would forbear, the philosopher was 
 
OS THE HTTM.IN UNDBESTANDIWa. 99 
 
 rr solved tte truth should be testified to them once more. 
 After a few years, the substance of the "Treatise on 
 Human Nature " was new-modelled and republished, with 
 .greater maturity of reasoning, in his "Inquiry concerning 
 .Human Understanding," and his "Inquiry concerning the 
 Principles of Morals." These works, however, experienced 
 the same neglect as the first. The grief of the disinterested 
 .reformer of the judgments and morals of men may well be 
 imagined to have been, extreme, at this repeated proof of 
 their perverseness and hardness of heart ; a grief so purely 
 benevolent, that it could be but imperfectly consoled by the 
 reflection, that he had at least performed his own part, and 
 acquitted himself of all the guilt. In regard to such a case, 
 ■ one is anxious to believe, if one could, that really virtue is 
 its own reward. If it be not .so, there could be few 
 spectacles more pitiable than that of a philosophical philan- 
 thropist, like Mr. Hume, toiling without a.ny success as to 
 the immediate object, and without any hope of a life after 
 death to reward him amidst a happy rest from his labours. 
 His generous distress was not, however, doomed to be 
 altogether without mitigation. About the same period of 
 his Efe at which the two "Inquiries" ineffectually tried to 
 obtain attention, he published some of his " Essays," which, 
 finding a more favourable reception, relieved in some 
 measure the forlornness of his literary prospects, and gave a 
 fresh stimulus to that indefatigable application to study, 
 which even his disappointments had scarcely been sufficient 
 to relax. 
 
 There are various expressions in this and other parts of 
 the volume, pretty plainly indicating Mr. Kitehie's own dis- 
 positions towards religion. His condemnation of these 
 proceedings against infidelity does not appear to arise in 
 any degree, from a concern for the cause of religion, which 
 he" might think this an injudicious and injurious mode of 
 defending, but from a contempt of the zeal which could 
 thiak it worth while to take any interest about religion at 
 all, or in ani/ way to make a strenuous effort in its defence. 
 Nor is it apparently his anxiety for the endangered liberty 
 of the press, that prompts the indignation, but really a 
 friendly sympathy with the cause of Deism, and with Hume 
 considered in the character of its advocate and apostle, to 
 
 h2 
 
iOO DATID HUMB. 
 
 whose writings possibly the biographer feels indebted and 
 grateful for some part of his freedom from prejudice and 
 superstition. 
 
 But, while we cannot entertain the smallest respect for 
 the motive of our author's censure of these proceedings, we 
 disapprove, as much as he can do, the exertion of temporal 
 force, whether in an ecclesiastical or purely secular form, or 
 any proceedings tending to this exertion, against the pro- 
 pagators of erroneous speculations. We disapprove it for 
 the obvious reasons which have been repeated innumerable 
 times. 
 
 1. The exertion of force for the suppression or punish- 
 ment of error, proceeds on a principle which is itself the 
 most impious of all errors ; it assumes the infallibility of 
 the power that makes it. 
 
 2. Though the power, whether an individual or a cor- 
 poration of persons, exercising such authority, were an 
 infallible judge of truth, there can be no proof derived from 
 the Christian institutes, that the Governor of the world has 
 invested the temporal authority with any right of inter- 
 ference or punishment, one step beyond the offences which 
 immediately violate the good order of the body politic. 
 But the most absolute proof from this source is required, 
 since nothing can be more dangerous and wicked, than to 
 hazard an encroachment on the peculiar and exclusive 
 province of the divine jurisdiction. 
 
 3. As this exercise of power is not authorized by Chris- 
 tianity, so neither can it be justified by any practical 
 experience of its being adapted to produce its intended 
 effect. The experience of ages testifies its inefficacy. The 
 reaction of the human mind, against what has been felt as 
 persecution, has commonly produced a more obstinate ad- 
 herence to the obnoxious opinions, which have thenceforth 
 been propagated with more daring zeal, or with more 
 sedulous cunning, so that their extermination could be 
 effected only by exterminating their believers. 
 
 4. If this power is to be exercised at all, there are no 
 definable limits to its exercise, since there can be no in- 
 disputable rules for deciding what error is too small, or 
 what punishment is too great. It will be impossible to 
 ascertain the proportions "f turpitude and pernicious 
 
OM Tin libi;ett of the peess. 101 
 
 tendency in tlie various forms and degrees of error ; and 
 among the adherents to any given system of opinions, there 
 will not be wanting some who can foresee the most dreadful 
 consequences necessarily resulting from the rejection of 
 even the minutest of its articles, and who, therefore, if in- 
 vested with power, and unrestrained by policy, would enact 
 fines, imprisonment, exile, or death, against the slightest 
 deviation from the appointed creed. 
 
 5. If we could even admit the possibility of such an 
 exercise of human power being just in the abstract, it is 
 impossible to find or imagine any man, or corporation of 
 men, so sublimely virtuous as to exercise it with an ex- 
 clusive disinterested regard to its object. In all cases that 
 ever yet occurred, worldly advantage, or the spirit of party, 
 or some other mean principle, has mingled in those pro- 
 ceediugs of temporal power, against heretics and un- 
 believers, which have been professedly dictated by a pure 
 love of truth. 
 
 Lastly. It seems no less than a virtual rejection of 
 religion, to admit that its evidence is not such as to support 
 it, without the assistance of a provision to iniliet temporal 
 pains and penalties on its adversaries and deserters. 
 
 In these observations we have used the word temporal 
 power, notwithstanding that the proceedings meditated 
 against Hume were of an ecclesiastical nature. It is scarcely 
 necessary to observe, that wherever the church is formally 
 supported as a corporate body by the authority, and as the 
 constituent part of the state, it has the power of the state 
 in all its institutions and proceedings, and can either inflict 
 punishment by a process of its own, or consign the ofiender 
 over to the civil magistrate. If the excommunication which 
 would have followed the success of the proposed measure 
 against Hume and Karnes, had amounted to no more than 
 purely an ecclesiastical anathema, the expression merely of 
 the opinion of the clerical body, they would have laughed at 
 the church and all its assemblies and debates ; but as the 
 case stood, they both felt no little anxiety ; for, as Mr. 
 Eitchie observes, " when their adversaries were armed with 
 a sentence of excommunication, they had it in their power 
 to institute a criminal process in the ordinary courts of 
 justice. Similar measures of severity had not unfrequenfcly 
 
102 DAVID HUME. 
 
 been resorted to in England, where Woolston had not only 
 been exalted to the pillory, but bore on his person manifest 
 evidence of the humane and tolerant spirit of a national 
 clergy," (p. 70). All men of liberal minds rejoice that 
 these methods of refuting and restraining infidelity have 
 long since become obsolete. Eor some years past our 
 government and clergy have had the vsdsdom to consign the 
 question, in all its parts, to the pure jurisdiction of reason ; 
 and the writings of our Christian advocates have shown 
 how safely the sacred cause may be left without any other 
 aid, except the influence of heaven. Eeviewing the actions 
 of past ages, we may exult in it as a grand attainment of the 
 human mind, and a noble distinction of the present times, 
 that men are become persuaded religion possesses within 
 itself the means of its triumph, and is of too lofty a spirit 
 to accept any obligations from magistrates, pillories, and 
 prisons. 
 
 These discussions in the ecclesiastical courts somewhat 
 contributed to bring into notice the portion of the " History 
 of England " which Hume published about this time. Eor 
 a number of years, however, the sale was slow, and the 
 slender share of reputation most mortifying to his ruling 
 passion. With the exception of two or three tracts, he had 
 not even the consolation of exciting literary hostility, which 
 would have been beyond all comparison more gratifying to 
 him than this silent and inglorious toleration. He pretends 
 indeed, in his memoir of his own life, that some parts of the 
 history did excite a violent clamour ; but this story seems to 
 have been of the same accuracy as that of the redoutable 
 Falstafi^, when he swore he had been set upon by some fifty 
 rufiians at least ; for the biographer, " after a diligent search 
 into the literary histories of that period, has been unable to 
 discover any of that outcry which assailed the sensitive ears 
 of Mr. Hume. In later times, indeed, his accuracy, im- 
 partiality, and political tenets have been attacked, and with 
 justice, hut without any clamour, and seldom with illiber- 
 ality," (p. 106.) 
 
 Mary pages are occupied with a history of the successive 
 literary societies in Scotland, the fiankenian Club, the Poker 
 Club, the Select Society, the Philosophical Society, and the 
 Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, of several of which Hume waa 
 
HUIIE AND BOBBKTSON COMPARED. 103 
 
 a member, together with the most emineut of Lis contem- 
 poraries. It is justly asserted that these associations greatly 
 contributed, beside their effect on the individuals composing 
 them, to promote in Scotland a literary taste, a refinement 
 of composition, and a bold and comprehensive speculation. 
 
 A kind of amicable rivalry in historical composition, 
 confirmed the habits of intimate communication between 
 Hume and Eobertson ; the greater number of the letters of 
 Hume which are published, or rather re-published in this 
 volume, (for many of them have been printed before), are 
 addressed to his brother-historian. Both these and his 
 other letters are in general excellent specimens of an easy 
 diction, unaffected good sense, politeness, and sometimes 
 delicate pleasantry. 
 
 . Hume enjoyed the high advantage over his accomplished 
 friend of residing at several times a number of years in 
 Prance and Italy, as well as of spending considerable por- 
 tions of time in the English metropolis. From this citizen- 
 ship of the world he necessarily acquired a considerable 
 degree of freedom from local prejudices, tastes, and dialect, 
 an ampler collection of facts for an inductive estimate of 
 human nature, and a richer store of images, supplied by so 
 many views of nature and art, for giving life, colour, and 
 variety, to the pictures and narrations of history. And yet 
 it is almost wonderful that, in point of fact, he so little after 
 all excelled in these respects his untravelled rival. If it be 
 admitted that Hume has the advantage in shrewdness of 
 minute discrimination, yet we believe it is felt by sensible 
 readers that Robertson is quite as much a master of general 
 principles, that he gives a still greater prominence to 
 important facts, and that, in the art of infusing into the 
 scenes a moral interest which shall command the passions, 
 he far surpasses his frigid contemporary ; in short, that 
 history under the management of Eobertson is less a scene 
 of' the dead than under that of Hume. The style also of the 
 former is almost as exempt from nationality of phrase as 
 that of the latter. 
 
 In quality of secretary to the British ambassador, Hume 
 visited Vienna and Turin, and about the age of fifty was 
 employed as chargi d'affaires at Paris. It was at this time 
 that he became involved in the well-known affair with 
 
104 DATID HUME. 
 
 Eousssau, wbict has more of the character of an adventure 
 than any other circumstance of his life, and of which the 
 story and documents, in French and English, iill almost half 
 the present volume. Our philosopher invited Eouaseau to 
 take refuge in England, from the danger which threatened 
 him in France on account of his " Emilius," which had given 
 offence to the ecclesiastical order. Eousseau availed himself 
 of the invitation ; and Hume really appears to have taken 
 extraordinary pains, with extraordinary patience, to place 
 him in an agreeable situation, which was at last effected in 
 Derbyshire. Eor a short time the expressions of gratitude 
 and admiration were raised to a style of fulsome excess. 
 But very soon the morbid mind of Eousseau began to con- 
 ceive dark suspicions that his pretended benefactor was only 
 a wicked and traitorous agent of that grand conspiracy, 
 which it was now most evident that all mankind had taken 
 ttie trouble to enter into, against his peace, his fame, and 
 even his personal safety. Tlie circumstances which excited 
 the suspicion, and soon confirmed it into an invincible per- 
 suasion, were more trivial than even those from which 
 dramatists have represented the commencement and pro- 
 gress of mistaken jealousy. A more amusing exhibition was 
 perhaps never made, of the servility of a strong under- 
 standmg to a wretched temperament, than that afforded by 
 a number of letters of Eousseau, and especially by one of 
 great length, describing the whole progress of his feeliags, 
 and replete with virulence, eloquence, and perverse 
 ingenuity. The reader at this time may be entertained by 
 the quarrel without caring which of them was in the wrong, 
 though his censure will inevitably fall on the citizen of 
 Geneva. The dispute was well worth perusing for the sake 
 of the contrast between the men ; for the world will 
 probably never see again such an instance of the two 
 extremes of the philosophic character brought in contact. 
 We could amuse ourselves by compounding in imagination 
 these two elements in equal proportions, or with various 
 degrees of the predominance of either. It may be worth 
 while for any one who proposes to set up for a philosopher 
 to do this, in order to find the standard to which it may be 
 prudent to conform himself. About an equal mixture of 
 them would make a man whom all would be constrained to 
 
Hume's last days. 105 
 
 admire ; but no mixture would constitute one whom a good 
 man could approve or revere. Even if the history of the 
 world did not supply a far nobler class of human beings, to 
 be placed in contrast with such as the persons in question,' 
 or as any imaginable combination of the two characters, it 
 would still be evident that men most religiously devoted to 
 the pursuit of fame, that is, idolatry of self, devoid of any 
 pure, unmingled wish to do good, and neglectful or con- 
 temptuous of the authority of the Supreme Spirit, are 
 creatures of a very degraded order, mere terrm filii, not- 
 withstanding the sagacity which can illustrate the records of 
 time or unfold the nature of man, notwithstanding the 
 originality which can invent new systems, or the eloquence 
 which can adorn them. 
 
 The account of the closing part of Hume's life has long 
 been very well known to the public ; but we are inclined to 
 print it once more, as exhibiting what would probably be 
 admitted, and even cited by infidels, as an example of the 
 noblest and most magnanimous deportment in the prospect 
 of death, that it is possible for any of their class to main- 
 tain ; an example indeed which very few of them ever in 
 their serious moments dare promise themselves to equal, 
 though they may, like Mr. Ritchie, deem it in the highest 
 degree enviable. It may be taken as quite their apostolic 
 specimen, standing parallel in their history to the instance 
 of St. Paul in the records of the Christians, " I have fought 
 a good fight," &c. Mr. Hume had visited Bath, but was 
 returning to Scotland under au increase of his fatal malady. 
 At this period, however, 
 
 " His cheerfulness never forsook him. He wrote letters to hia 
 literary friends, informing them of his intention to be at Edin- 
 burgh on a certain day, and inviting them to dine with him on 
 the day following. It was a kind of farewell dinner ; and among- 
 those who came to partake of the hospitality of the dying his- 
 torian were Lord Elibank, Dr. Smith, Dr. Blair, Dr. Black, 
 Professor Fergusson, and John Home. 
 
 " At his return to Edinburgh, Mr. Hume, though extremely 
 debilitated by disease, went abroad at times in a sedan chair, 
 and called on his friends ; but hia ghastly looks intimated the 
 rapid approach of death. He diverted himself with correcting 
 hia works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, 
 with the conversation of his friends and sometimes in the even- 
 
106 DiVID HUME. 
 
 ing with a paj-ty at his favourite game of whist. His facetious- 
 ness led him to indulge occasionally in the bagiitelle. Among 
 other verbal legacies, in making which he amused himself, the fol- 
 'lowing whimsical one has been related. The author of ' Douglas, 
 is said to have had a mortal aversion to port wine, and to 
 have had frequent disputes with the historian about the manner 
 of spelling his name. Both tiiese circumstances were often the 
 subject of Mr. Hume's raillery ; and he verbally bequeathed to 
 the poet a quantity of port wine, on condition that he should 
 always drink a bottle at a sitting, and give a receipt for it under 
 the signature of John Hume. 
 
 " Dr. Smith has recorded an instance of Mr. Hume's sportive 
 disposition ; and it also shows the placidity of his mind, not- 
 withstanding tiie prospect of speedy dissolution. Colonel 
 Edmonstone came to take leave of him ; and on his way home 
 he could not forbear writing Hume a letter, bidding him once 
 more an eternal adieu, and applying to him the French verses 
 in which the AbbS Chaulieu, in expectation of his own death, 
 laments his approaching separation from his friend the Marquis 
 de la Fare. Dr. Smith happened to enter the room while Mr. 
 Hume was reading the letter ; and in the course of the conver- 
 sation it gave rise to, Mr. Hume expressed the satisfaction he 
 had in leaving his friends, and his brother's family in particular, 
 in prosperous circumstances. This, he said, he felt so sensibly, 
 that when he was reading a few days befqre Luoian's ' Dialogues 
 of the Dead,' he could not, among all the excuses which are 
 alleged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, find one 
 that fitted him. He had no house to finish ; he had no daughter 
 to provide for ; he had no enemies upon whom he wished to 
 revenge himself. 'I could not well imagine,' said he, 'what 
 excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. 
 I have done everything of consequence which I ever meant to 
 do. I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends 
 in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave 
 them : I therefore have all reason to die contented.' 
 
 " ' He then diverted himself,' continues Dr. Smith, ' with 
 inventing several jocular excuses which he supposed he might 
 make to Charou, and in imagining the very surly answers which 
 it might suit the character of Charon to return to them.' 'Upon 
 further consideration,' said he, ' I thought I might say to him. 
 Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. 
 Allow me a little time that I may see how the public receive 
 the alterations. But Charon would answer', When you see the 
 efifect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There 
 will be no end of such excuses ; so, honest friend, please step 
 into the boat. But I might still urge, Have a, little patience, 
 
Hume's last days. 107 
 
 good Charon : I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the 
 public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction 
 of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of 
 superstition. But Chax-on would then lose all temper and 
 decency : You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many 
 hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so 
 long a term 1 Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering 
 rogue.' 
 
 "The hour of his departure had now arrived. His decline 
 being gradual, he was in his last moments perfectly sensible, and 
 free from pain. He showed not the slightest indication of 
 impatience or fretfulness, but conversed with the people around 
 him in a tone of mildness and affection ; and his whole conduct 
 evinced a happy composure of mind. On Sunday, the 25th of 
 August, 1776, about four o'clock in the afternoon, this great and 
 amiable man expired." — Pp. 298 — 301. 
 
 On this most remarkable exhibition we think there was 
 room for the biographer to have made several observations ; 
 as, 
 
 First, supposing a certainty of the final cessation of con- 
 scious existence at death, this indifierence to life, if it was 
 not affected (which indeed we suspect it to have been in 
 part) was an absurd undervaluation of a possession which 
 almost all rational creatures, that have not been extremely 
 miserable, have held most dear, and which is in its own 
 nature most precious. To be a conscious agent, exerting a 
 rich combination of wonderful faculties, to feel an infinite 
 variety of pleasurable sensations and emotions, to contem- 
 plate all nature, to extend an intellectual presence to indefi-i 
 nite ages of the past and future, to possess a. perennial 
 spring of ideas, to run infinite lengths of inquiry, with the 
 delight of exercise and fleetness, even when not with the 
 satisfaction of fall attainment, and to be a lord over inani- 
 mate matter, compelling it to an action and a use alto- 
 gether foreign to its nature, — to be all this, is a state so 
 stupendously different from that of being simply a piece of 
 clay, that to be quite easy and complacent in the immediate 
 prospect of passing from the one to the other, is a total 
 inversion of all reasonable estimates of things ; it is a 
 renunciation, we do not say of sound philosophy, but of 
 commou sense. The certainty that the loss wiL aot be felt 
 after it has taken place, will but little soothe a man of 
 
108 DATID HrME. 
 
 unperverted /niad in considering what it is that lie is going 
 to lose. 
 
 Second, the jocularity of the philosopher was contrary to 
 good taste. Supposing that the expected loss were not, 
 according to a grand law of nature, a cause for melancholy 
 and desperation, but that the contentment were rational ; 
 yet the approaching transformation was at all events to be 
 regarded as a very grave and very strange event, and there- 
 fore jocularity was totally incongruous with the anticipation 
 of such an event : a grave and solemn feeling was the only 
 one that could be in unison with the contemplation of such 
 a change. There was, in this instance, the same incon- 
 gruity which we should impute to a writer who should 
 mingle buffoonery in a solemn crisis of the drama, or with 
 the most momentous event of a history. To be in harmony 
 with his situation, in his own view of that situation, the 
 expressions of the dying philosopher were required to be 
 dignified ; and if they were in any degree vivacious, the 
 vivacity ought to have been rendered graceful by being 
 accompanied with the noblest effort of the intellect of 
 which the efforts were going to cease for ever. The low 
 vivacity of which we have been reading, seems but like the 
 quickening corruption of a mind whose faculty of percep- 
 tion is putrifying and dissolving even before the body. It 
 is true that good men, of a high order, have been known to 
 utter pleasantries in their last hours. But these have been 
 pleasantries of a fine ethereal quality, the scintillations of 
 animated hope, the high pulsations of mental health, the 
 involuntary movements of a spirit feeling itself free even in 
 the grasp of death, the natural springs and boundings of 
 faculties on the point of obtaining a still much greater and 
 a boundless liberty. These had no resemblance to the low 
 and laboured jokes of our philosopher ; jokes so laboured as 
 to give strong cause for suspicion, after all, that they were 
 of the same nature, and for the same purpose, as the expe- 
 dient of a boy on passing through some gloomy place in the 
 night, who whistles to lessen his fear, or to persuade his 
 companion that he does not feel it. 
 
 Third, such a manner of meeting death was inconsistent 
 with the scepticism to which Hume was always found to 
 avow his adherence. For that scepticism necessarily ac- 
 
HTIME S LAST DATS. 109 
 
 fcnowledged a possibility and a chance that the religion 
 which he had scorned, might, notwithstanding, be found 
 true, and might, in the moment after his death, glare upon 
 him with all its terrors. But how dreadful to a reflecting 
 mind would have been the smallest chance of meeting such 
 a vision ! Tet the philosopher could be cracking his heavy 
 jokes, and Dr. Smith could be much diverted at the sport. 
 
 Fourth, to a man who solemnly believes the truth of 
 revelation, and therefore the threatenings of divine ven- 
 geance against the despisers of it, this scene wiU present as 
 mournful a spectacle as perhaps the sun ever shone upon. 
 "We have beheld a man of great talents and invincible per- 
 severance, entering on his career with the profession of an 
 impartial inquiry after truth, met at every stage and step 
 by the evidences and expostulations of religion and the 
 claims of his Creator, but devoting his labours to the pur- 
 suit of fame and the promotion of impiety, at length acquir- 
 ing and accomplishing, as he declared himself, all he had 
 intended and desired, and descending toward the close of 
 life amidst tranquillity, widely-extending reputation, and the 
 homage of the great and the learned. We behold him 
 appointed soon to appear before that Judge to whom he 
 had never alluded but with malice or contempt ; yet pre- 
 serving to appearance an entire self-complacency, idly jest- 
 ing about his approaching dissolution, and mingling with 
 the insane sport his references to the fall of " superstition," 
 a term of which the meaning is hardly ever dubious when 
 expressed by such men. We behold him at last carried olf, 
 and we seem to hear, the following moment, from the dark- 
 ness in which he vanishes, the shriek of surprise and terror, 
 and the overpowering accents of the jnessenger of ven- 
 geance. On the whole globe there probably was not acting, 
 at the time, so mournful a tragedy as that of which the 
 friends of Hume were the spectators, without being aware 
 that it was any tragedy at aU. 
 
 If that barbarous old Charon would have permitted a cen- 
 tury or two more of life, it is probable that Hume would 
 have been severely mortified in viewing the effect of his 
 writings against " superstition," an effect so much less 
 than his vanity no doubt secretly anticipated. Indeed, his 
 strictly philosophical works seem likely to fall into utter 
 
110 EISDOO IDOLATET ASH CHEISTTANITT. 
 
 neg.ect. The biographer justly observes, that, though very 
 acute, they are not very lucid or systematic in point of 
 reasoning ; and they have none of that eloquence, which 
 sometimes continues to interest the general reader m works 
 that are becoming superannuated in the schools of philoso- 
 phv. Many of his shorter essays will always be read with 
 much advantage; but his History, we need not say, is the 
 basis of his permanent reputation; and it will perpetuate 
 the moral, as well as the intellectual cast of his mind ; it 
 will show a man indifferent to the welfare of mankind, con- 
 temptuous of the sublime feelings of moral and religious 
 heroism, incapable himself of all grand and affecting senti- 
 ments, and constantly cherishing a consummate arrogance, 
 though often under the semblance and language of philo- 
 sophic moderation. 
 
 HINDOO IDOLATEY AND CHEISTIANITT. 
 
 A Vindication of the Hindoos from the Aspersions of the Rev. 
 Claudius Buchanan, M. A.; with a Refutation of the Arguments 
 exhibited in his Memoir, on the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical 
 B.itablishment for British India, and the ultimate Civilization 
 of the JVatives, by their Conversion to Christianity. Also, Remarks 
 on an Address from the Missionaries in Bengal, to the Natives of 
 India, condemning their Errors, and inviting them, to become 
 Christians. The whole tending to evince the Excellence of the 
 Moral System of the Hindoos, and the Danger of interfering 
 with their Customs or Religion. By a Ben&al Officer. 8vo, 
 1808. 
 
 Notwithstanding the laudable pains taken, by some of the 
 pious people of these times, to engage our respect at least, 
 if not to effect our conversion, to the " religion" of the 
 Brahmins, we cannot profess to have entirely overcome all 
 the difficulties of admitting the doctrine of transmigration. 
 Till very lately, we had no doubts whatever on the subject ; 
 we could most conscientiously have declared a total disbelief 
 
HINDOO IDOLATEY AJSD CHKISTIA.NITT. Ill 
 
 of that doctrine ; but it is the privilege or misfortune of 
 candid minds, to be in every stage of their intellectual course 
 susceptible of the impression of every new argument, so that 
 you shall find them, in February, veering tovrard the belief 
 of what they had deemed utterly absurd in the December 
 preceding. In time, however, they learn to be a little 
 cautious of instantly avowing each new direction of their 
 opinions : we, therefore, do not wish to be just now called 
 upon to express ourselves decidedly, as to our views of this 
 grand tenet of Indian faith : we shall only say that the sole 
 argument which has gone far to change our former views of 
 the subject, arises from the appearance of such an author as 
 the one now before us. For it would seem rather difficult 
 to believe, that such a piece of entity should have originated 
 in this country of England, to which, notwithstanding, we 
 are to refer, as far as appears, the commencement of his 
 }iresent stage of mundane existence : he does not perhaps 
 distinctly say this, but it is impossible for us to assign such 
 a nativity to the sister island, because we are all apprized of 
 the valuable privilege conferred on that soil by St. Patrick, 
 of never having cause to regret the want of ichneumons. 
 And our partiality for England, though the country pro- 
 duces, we know, many things for which it is never the better, 
 would really make it desirable to hope, that the moral agent 
 before us received its being and acquired its properties in 
 some distant country and age, though it does not say whether 
 it has any dim traces of recollection of having, early in the 
 Kdlijoog, infested the precincts of some idol's temple in the 
 East, and tasted under the infernal altar the blood of a 
 human sacrifice. The surmise of an origin not very recent, 
 is suggested by the appearance of something more virulent 
 and inveterate in the quality of the being, than could have 
 grown from inhabiting any small number of malignant 
 substances and forms. Whether this may not have been an 
 instance of a sacrilegious sinner doomed to " pass," accord- 
 ing to the Institutes of Menu, (p. 352), " a thousand times 
 into the bodies of spiders, of snakes, or mischievous toad- 
 sucking demons," it is not for us to pretend to determine. 
 It is also difScult to guess how the last transit was suffered 
 to go into the veritable or apparent shape of a man, if that 
 improvement of condition was in any possible connexion 
 
112 HIKDOO IDOLATBT AND CHEISTIANITT. 
 
 with amendment of quality. But yet, on consideration, this 
 may perhaps be partly explained; for as there is in the 
 creature one good quality, this may become in the place of 
 a bad one: this good property is honesty, as opposed to 
 hypocrisy 
 
 The several preceding remonstrants against the measures 
 for imparting Christian instruction to the Hindoos, while in 
 effect presenting themselves as the abettors of paganism, 
 with all its abominations, were disposed notwithstanding to 
 keep up a certain language of pretended respect for Chris- 
 tianity. Their hypocrisy was indeed clumsily managed, just 
 in proportion to their ignorance of the nature of the sacred 
 cause which was to be mocked by it ; but believing no doubt 
 that all the friends of that cause were little better than fools, 
 they thought it might be easy to gull them without much 
 dexterity of phrase, and they imagined, we suppose, some 
 possible advantage to themselves in so doing. While ear- 
 nestly plotting, therefore, a mortal sacrifice of Christianity, 
 so far as it is any thing more than a local superstition, to be 
 allowed where it always prevails, they adopted a proceeding 
 which was but a very awkward imitation of the smooth 
 treachery of that most miserable man who is " gone to his 
 own place," a place however not likely to be so lonely as 
 some divines have imagined. But this Bengal Officer justly 
 despises all such shallow and useless policy ; and comes 
 forward in the honest avowed character of a soldier of Herod 
 or Pilate, whose rude heathenism laughs at the uncouth 
 grimaces of pretended holiness with which the less coura- 
 geous conspirators are proceeding to their purpose. He does 
 not cant, in feeble and stupid hyperbole of falsehood, to Mr. 
 Twining's tune of " surrendering life rather than the Chris- 
 tian religion." He makes none of Major Scott Waring's 
 clumsy pretences of respect for the Holy Scriptures, and 
 "our good old church," or of believing the "truths of our 
 religion," and hoping no one wUl attribute his reviling of 
 missionaries, and his anger at the " new mania of conversion," 
 " to indifference to the eternal welfare of the natives of 
 India." He is content, and perhaps even proud, to provoke 
 the abhorrence of the public by his impious audacity, and, in 
 much consistency with the bravery of his character, leave" 
 undivided to his coadjutors the satisfaction of being rewarded 
 
HINDOO IDOLATET AKD CHBISTIAIflTT. 113 
 
 witli its contempt for their hypocrisy. We can easily 
 suppose lie would address them in some such terms as these : 
 " Where is the use of your pretending what you know, or 
 might know, that not a mortal will believe? Even if any 
 body would believe your sham palaver of liking the church, 
 tlie bible, and all that, what good would - it be ? Is on^ 
 always to be putting on a set of pretended notions, and 
 adjusting them like a parson his pulpit clothes at a vestry 
 lOoking-glass, before one is to venture out into the world ? 
 If one cannot do what one pleases and say what one thinks, 
 but must be canting a parcel of stuff, just because bishops 
 and priests are paid to cant it, it were better to shoot oneself 
 without more ado. I am for a man of spirit showing that 
 he does not care for all the priests and methodists on earth. 
 What the plague should keep us from telling them that we 
 are none of their dupes ? Ton are not afraid, I suppose, of 
 these Christians, and the person they call Christ p If you 
 are, you have made a fine blunder in saying so much as you 
 have already ; I wish it may not be too late for you to get 
 reconciled to mother-church ; try the first opportunity by 
 all means, I beg of you, and be prodigious penitent, and 
 subscribe to the Bible Society. At any rate, do not go on 
 making pretences of some kind of respect for Christianity, 
 while every body may see that you are insulting and practi- 
 cally disclaiming it, and that you would caper with joy to 
 see all the Bibles in the world piled up for a bonfire. Por 
 myself, they may call me infidel, or heathen, or atheist, if 
 they please, but they shall never call me hypocrite or 
 coward ; and as to you, I should really think that while you 
 are throwing away all other reputation, you might as well 
 keep that of courage ?" 
 
 We can easily conceive, that the accession of this hero 
 will not give an unmingled satisfaction to the band. Though 
 his views, his spirit, and his object, are but the same as theirs, 
 his ingenuous boldness makes a more perfect disclosure, than 
 they would probably have wished till some more favourable 
 season. It is not indeed any very refined artifice of manage- 
 ment that they could have comprehended, or therefore 
 applauded ; Mr. Twining' s understanding, especially, might 
 not have been able to distinguish the new ally from a 
 Christian, had he written with any thing Uke the delicate 
 
114 HINDOO IDOIiATBT AND CHBISTIANITT. 
 
 subtilty and finesse of such an author as Hume. A tolerably 
 broad style of expression was quite necessary to meet the 
 perceptions of the junto ; but still they cotild have recognized 
 the marks of fraternity in our author, without his absolutely 
 going the length of chanting psalms to the loathsome Doorga,. 
 and celebrating the sublime theology of that passage in the 
 Institutes of Menu, which contains a clause relating to the 
 EXCEETioifs of the divinity ! Not that they might have had 
 any objection to all this in itself, and in its proper place, that 
 is in Bengal ; but in England there is a certain remainder 
 of the fashion of decency, which imposes the necessity of a 
 small measure of policy ; and therefore they would have 
 been much more glad of his assistance, if he had not rushed 
 so furiously forward in the costume of the gymnosophists, to 
 beat the gong of the idol's temple, and sumnlon the people 
 to the mass of Seeva. Such as he is, however, the party 
 must have him for an associate ; in compassion they must 
 have him, for he is fit for no other company ; he has lost 
 caste in the civilized society of Christendom ; this irretrie- 
 vable sacrifice made for the cauoe, is evidence of his merit, 
 and wUl secure his fidelity. And though it would have been, 
 in the party, an extremely moderate and humble petition, to 
 have asked of the Indian gods to send them a co-operator 
 much better versed in rules of art and discretion, and very 
 much better capable of constructing sentences, than this 
 unfortunate imp, yet we think they may make good service 
 of him in a cause, in which they will not be able every day 
 to find creatures of sufficient vice and stupiditv to be 
 employed. He is quite the Caliban for their drudgery, their 
 curses, and their incantations ; admirably fitted to fetch wood 
 for baking their idols and burning their women; the genuine 
 " hagseed," whose very dialect betrays the descent from 
 Doorga or Sycorax. He is exactly for their purpose, if they 
 want an organ through which they may eructate and disgorgel 
 the vilest slanders against blameless missionaries, profane 
 every thing that is sacred, assert every thing that is false, 
 and deify every thing that is abominable. 
 
 The chief part and object of the production before us, is 
 the direct assertion, extended and illustrated to great length, 
 of the excellence of the Hindoo " religion," which is repre- 
 sented as so firmly fixed in the minds of the people, that it 
 
HISDOO IDOLATET AND CHBISTIANITT. 115 
 
 is maJness to presume the possibility of displacing it by- 
 Christianity ; and so adequate to all their spiritual and 
 moral interests, that if Christianity could be substituted, 
 it would be no advantage to them. Collateral topics are 
 treated in a rambling way, several of them in a sort of 
 attack on Dr. Buchanan. The subject of the missions is 
 the essence of the business. Most of what he has to say 
 directly on this subject, seems to have been set down pre- 
 viously to the appearance of Major Scott "Waring's pam- 
 phlet, but is so perfectly iu the same strain, that each might 
 be taken as au echo of the other. 
 
 His flimsy observations relating to the missions, having 
 been answered and exploded by anticipation, in the various 
 publications that have been called forth by the two former 
 writers, a very slight additional notice will suffice. It is 
 needless to cite notorious facts, in contradiction of his 
 assertion of the impracticability of converting the Hin- 
 doos. But it may be remarked here, and might have been 
 remarked before, that these men let themselves talk, as if 
 nothing were effected where prodigies are not effected, and 
 as if a thing could never be done which cannot be done 
 in an instant. "What do they suppose the missionaries 
 expected to effect, and in what time ? Do they imagine 
 that Mr. Carey, for instance, landed in India with the 
 notion that all who came to worship the Ganges, or to burn 
 their motliers, or expose their children on its banks, one 
 season, were to come there the next to be baptized ? Or 
 that the want of moonlight the half of each month would be 
 supplied by the light of Hindoo temples, set on fire over 
 the heads of their gods by their recent worshippers all 
 through Hindostan ? The missionaries were painfully in- 
 structed, before they went, in the obduracy of human 
 nature ; in the fatal resistance which truth has everywhere 
 to expect from ignorance and prejudice, and a pure religion 
 from desperate moral depravity. They had found too much 
 of this, even in a country like England, to indulge for one 
 moment the dream that they were to transform and illumi- 
 nate crowds of miserable pagan barbarians, by just touching 
 them with a testament or a tract. As they could not 
 presume to promise themselves, for the present, that extras 
 ordinary exertion of divine power which their confidence in 
 
 I 2 
 
116 HINDOO IDOLATBr ANB CHUlSTIAXlTr. 
 
 prophetic declarations foresaw as the felicity of some future 
 age, they formed their calculation nearly on the recorded 
 and usual effect of human labours for the promotion of 
 religion. They could not need to be told, in order to keep 
 their imagination sober, that a handful of men commencing 
 hostility, on such a calculation, against a most comprehen- 
 sive and inveterate superstition, must expect so slow a 
 success, that only their setting as high a value as ever 
 benevolent apostle, or if possible as ever the still more 
 benevolent angels of heaven did, on one pagan delivered 
 from the abhorred den of idolatrous superstition, would 
 console them on a numerical view of their acquisitions. 
 Almost such a value they do set, in the slow progress of 
 their success, on each individual ; and therefore their ani- 
 mation is sustained, notwithstanding their cause does not 
 obtain multitudes and princes, the only standard by which 
 these of&cers and merchants are capable of estimating 
 success, 
 
 If the missionaries reaUy did go to India with hopes 
 somewhat too elated, it was in a great measure from the 
 fallacious accounts which a former set of infidel reporters 
 had concurred in giving to Europe of the i«mocence, mild- 
 ness, and civilization of the Hindoos ; a fallacy which this 
 Vindicator is silly enough to attempt imposing on the now 
 better-informed public once more, and vrithout the smallest 
 aid of elegance, ingenuity, or learning. The missionaries 
 Imew they should find idols almost as plentiful as stumps of 
 trees, and millions of unhappy mortals prostrate before 
 them ; they were prepared for this, but they had perhaps 
 trusted these deceivers rather too far, to make, in its fuU 
 extent, the infallible inference as to the moral depravity of 
 the people ; the consequence was, a feeling of no little sur« 
 prise to find them almost all cheats, liars, and adulterers. 
 However, they have had the courage to labour against both 
 the idolatry and the moral depravity ; they confide in thf 
 ultimate benignity of Heaven to the unhappy nations of the 
 East ; and this Bengal Officer may be assured, that they 
 look on the yet little company of first converts with as 
 much delight, — whether considering the intrinsic value of 
 BO many Christianized minds, or regarding them as the pre- 
 cursors of an infinite multitude to become the disciples and 
 
HUroOO IDOLATET AlTD CHEISTIANITT. 117 
 
 agents of the Christian cause long perhaps after they shall 
 have retired from their mission to their reward, — as he ever 
 did, in the day of victory, on ten times as many of the same 
 race of people lying dead on the field. 
 
 To attempt explaining to him the elevated religious 
 nature of the motives by which they are actuated, vpould 
 undoubtedly be much the same thing as to accost the facul- 
 ties of the post aforesaid, or even those of Mr. Twining : 
 but we may hope to make it intelligible to him by what 
 motives they are not actuated, when we state, that these 
 missionaries in a great measure, if not entirely, support 
 themselves by their secular employments, which they under- 
 took, in order that the contributions from England might 
 be applied to the purposes of the mission in a stricter sense 
 than that of supporting themselves and their families, and 
 with a generous unanimous determination to devote to the 
 same exclusive purpose whatever surplus might arise to any 
 or all of them from such employments. This is the first 
 calumniator that has made it necessary to say one word 
 respecting the motives of the missionaries in India. 
 
 If it will please him better, we will impute it to malignity 
 rather than to a hopeless eclipse of understanding, that in 
 talking about interference and toleration, he, like the rest 
 of the party, deprecates the use of the methods of mere 
 persuasion, and represents their consequences in terms 
 which identify them with methods of force. 
 
 Now, what is it exactly that these terms, justice, forbear- 
 ance, indulgence, liberality, and toleration, are opposed to, 
 in relation to our conduct toward the Hindoos ? The 
 new doctors of philanthropy take great pains to shift and 
 complicate the answer to this question. They feel how 
 strikingly rational it would look to answer directly and 
 precisely, that the injustice, the injury, the restraint, the 
 iUiberality, the interference, and the intolerance, against 
 which they so zealously remonstrate in behalf of the Hin- 
 doos, is actually neither more nor less than a permission, 
 on the part of our government, to a number of Christian 
 teachers, of exemplary virtue and literary acquirements, to 
 visit the towns and villages, trusting their personal safety 
 entirely to the inhabitants, while they inform them what 
 their own Sastras say of their fods to infer from these 
 
118 HINDOO IDOIATET AND CHBISTIANITT. 
 
 testimonies that they cannot be right objects of worsliip, 
 and to toll them of another Being, to them yet unknown, 
 that exclusively claims their devotion. Eut what then are 
 the interference and intolerance, which all this rhetoric of 
 liberality is exerted to avert from those people ? Has the 
 government ever meditated any general sweeping measure 
 against the privileges of their priesthood, against the rites 
 of their temples, against the fantastic observances inter- 
 woven with their whole economy of life, or against the laws 
 of their castes ? The government never fnought of any 
 such thing. It has not even interfered with the female 
 sacrifice, with their exhibitions of self-torture, nor with 
 their regaling the sharks and crocodiles with the warm 
 living bodies of their children, till the prohibitory regula- 
 tion of Marquis Wellesley was called forth by accounts of 
 the excess to which this festival of Hindoo charity was 
 carried at Gonga Saugor. Is it this act of " interference" 
 which has caused the alarm with which our priests of the 
 crocodile have begun to preach, in such pious fervour, 
 against injustice, illiberality, and intolerance ? But if so, 
 why do they not try to preserve so.-ne appearance of dis- 
 crimination in fixing the criminal charge ? "WTiv are the 
 missionaries brought into the question ? It was'not their 
 fault that the Marquis had the presumption to perpetrate 
 this crime against the adored demons of India. Let the 
 Marquis bear his own guilt ; let him even be impeached in 
 the British Parliament for this act of rebellion against the 
 Pandemonium, the ancient paramount government of Hin- 
 dostan, under which he ought to have known his place and 
 duty better, than to interfere with any of its sacred appoint- 
 ments ; but let not the missionaries be brought in for any 
 share of his guUt or punishment. 
 
 Or do these writers, in their deprecations of intolerance 
 and interference, mean to refer to such proceedings as those 
 forced changes in the military exterior which provoked the 
 miitiny of Vellore ? Why then do they not speak to the 
 point ; and, in protesting against the continuance or repeti- 
 tion of such measures, arraign the Madras government, or 
 the commander of the army, or whatever higher power 
 authorized the one or the other in the unfortunate experi- 
 ment, for a most wanton and dangerous insult on their 
 
HINDOO IBOLATBT AND OHEISTIANITT. 119 
 
 soldiers. If they are too sneaking to do this, for fear, 
 perhaps of having on their hands a number of what are 
 called aifairs of honour, let them not spend their wrath on 
 the harmless messengers of religion, who had no more to 
 do in any way with that sanguinary business than we have 
 while writing these remarks on their noble-spirited accusers. 
 Assuredly, to fall foul of the caps, and whiskers, and red- 
 streaked foreheads of sepoys, was the very last thing that 
 would ever have come into the heads of the missionaries, 
 even though they had been in the Christianizing company 
 of the officers at Vellore ; they would have been about very 
 different work, and might have prosecuted it till the arrival 
 of the tenth Avatar, before mutiny or massacre would have 
 been the consequence. There would have been some 
 reasonable quantity of difference, very perceptible to these 
 barbarian soldiers, though it does not seem to be so to the 
 English advocates of their superstition, between the orders 
 and operators of personal violence, and two, or three, or ten 
 missionaries, explaining the contents of the four gospels. 
 And even supposing the extreme case, that the spirit of 
 Moloch had entered into them, their victims would have 
 been obvious, few, and unconnected with any others ; those 
 victims would have been ready, and there the sacrifice to 
 the dii inferi would have ended. From how many deadly 
 griefs, such a sacrifice, especially had it involved all the 
 missionaries, might have saved our philanthropists ! 
 
 If this author should say that his homilies against 
 intolerance are chiefly intended against Dr. Buchanan's 
 proposal for the government to abolish the Hindoo holidays, 
 the excessive polygamy of the Koolin Brahmins, and the 
 privileges of the monstrous swarm of mendicants, to restrain 
 in a measure the female sacrifices, together with other 
 abominations, and to curb the excesses of the 700,000 
 pilgrims to jaggernaut ; we would ask, once more, what 
 all this has to do with the missionaries ? These are 
 suggestions for the solemn consideration of the government, 
 which we are to presume does not like all these outrages of 
 superstition on the good order of society ; as but few of 
 them are authorized by the sacred books of the Hindoos 
 themselves, and the government has probably sufficient 
 power to put them down in part without any hazard, we 
 
120 HIITDOO IDOIA.TBT AND CHEISTIANITT. 
 
 think, notwithstanding this author, that Dr. Buchanan is 
 right in recommending it to be done. But meanwhile, 
 whether it is done or not, or whether it ought to be done or 
 not, the missions will no more interfere with this whole 
 concern, or with any part of it, than they wiU with the 
 sowing of the rice-grounds. If they should happen to 
 detain two or three dozen persons from the orgies of 
 Jaggernaut, we suppose the 700,000 may possibly not be 
 aware of this deficiency in their numbers, or will hardly 
 think of taking their revenge by driving all the Europeans 
 into the sea. It is not so much, forsooth, that their 
 "religion" teaches them to care about one another; nor 
 will the magazines of grain in the neighbourhood of the god 
 be in the least want of additional consumers. 
 
 But, in truth, all these remarks levelled to the purpose of 
 getting a precise answer to the inquiry, what it is exactly 
 that the charge of interference and intolerance is to be fixed 
 upon, — are very needless. The obnoxious suggestions held 
 out by Dr. Bachanan, with their imaginary or exaggerated 
 iU consequences, the Vellore mutiny, excursive episodes to 
 the distance of Eosetta, Buenos Ayres, and even Mexico, in 
 Messrs. Twining and Scott Waring, and in the article now 
 before us retrospects so far back as the Crusades, St. 
 Bartholomew, and the crimes of superstition recorded in 
 our own " blood-stained annals," as they are justly called, 
 whimsically jumbled with some ponderous bufibonery in 
 misrepresentation of the proceedings and hazards of the 
 Methodists itinerating among the Irish Catholics, — are all 
 of most excellent use in varying and distending the reader's 
 view to a vast compass of alarming vision, while there is still 
 one precise point to which the effect of all this is meant to 
 converge. To that one point the author frequently reverts, 
 in order to preserve in the reader's mind the due bearing of 
 all his exhibitions : but does not stop long there, lest he 
 should lose the effect of his scattered topics of intimidation, 
 and be reduced in the reader's view to the bare exclusive 
 resources of impiety. The object is, by assembling a 
 number of frightful histories, and enlarging on the possible 
 mischief of this or that measure, which in fact has not the 
 smallest connexion with the missionary system, and by 
 taking care continually to associate these various repre> 
 
HINDOO IDOLATET AND CHEISTIANITT, 121 
 
 Bentations with references to the missions, — to make the 
 missions take all the portentous colours of these associated 
 shapes of evil, and stand forward to view as the embodied 
 concentration of all real and imaginable perils. It is not 
 military innovation, or the prevention of sacrificing children 
 at Saugor, or the castigation of the gymnosophist Saniassis 
 into a little decency and clothing, or the suppression or 
 allowance of Hindoo holidays or polygamy, that these men 
 really care about ; it is precisely the attempt to introduce 
 pure Christianity as contained in the New Testament, into 
 India, that excites their anger ; and it is this very attempt, 
 made in a manner as peaceful and disconnected from all 
 shadow or even possibility of force or constraint, as that in 
 which any good thing ever attempted to enter any country, 
 — that these men wish to brand with the names of illiber- 
 ality, interference, and intolerance. The missionaries ask 
 of the government just the permission, the mere permission 
 and no more, to pursue their own undertaking, of course by 
 the sole means of persuasion and Christian books ; and this 
 permission, if granted, is the intolerance to the Hindoos. 
 It is intolerance to fifty millions of idolaters, that a few 
 Christian instructors should be allowed to tell them that 
 they are guilty and deluded beings, that there is a 
 Redeemer of sinful mortals, that the true God has revealed 
 himself, that idolatry is absurd and wicked, and that women 
 should not be burnt, nor children exposed. It is intolerance 
 to the pagans to suffer a single word to be said to them in 
 condemnation of any thing which on the ground of their 
 superstition they do wrong, or in contradiction of any thing 
 they believe erroneously. It is intolerance to them and to 
 their idols to sufier a few verses of the Bible to be read in 
 the neighbourhood of one of their houses, even with their 
 own consent, or a prayer to be made to the Almighty for 
 their salvation, if it is where they can hear that prayer ; so 
 that, according to this latest improvement in the tlieory of 
 civilization, to tolerate any mode of faith and worship is to 
 establish it, and that too with all the rigour of popery in the 
 dark ages, insomuch that it shall be a crime for any one of a 
 different persuasion to attempt to make a proselyte from it, 
 or even ofier a written statement of his opinions, and thp 
 reasons and authority of them. A Hindoo, it seems, lives 
 
122 niNDOO IDOLlTET AND CHEISTIAXITT. 
 
 Under an intolerant government, unless that government 
 shall give him a solemn pledge that no Christian shall ever 
 insult him with the remark, that the ugly piece of wood he 
 is worshipping cannot give him rain, or harvest, or health, 
 or pardon of his guilt. This is verily a new notion of tole- 
 ration and its opposite, and would help to place many 
 celebrated characters in a new light. Nero and Diocletian 
 had an enlarged liberality, to which no historian has had the 
 sense to do justice. They went, to be sure, a little too far 
 in favour of their heathen subjects, as they sometimes did 
 even more than enjoin the total silence of the Christians ; 
 but they are amply excused for that slight excess by the 
 consideration that they were themselves really of the pagan 
 faith. Henry the Pourth committed an inexpiable outrage 
 of intolerance against his popish subjects by the Edict of 
 Nantes ; and therefore Louis the Fourteenth showed himself 
 the paragon of tolerant princes by revoking it. But even 
 Ms merit might be eclipsed if there were a protestant king 
 of a country chiefly inhabited by papists, and if he were to 
 compliment their faith by a law of banishment against any 
 one of his protestant subjects that should presume to 
 attempt making a proselyte, or but offer a copy of a 
 reformed catechism. If his present Majesty, as sovereign 
 of the Indian provinces, should be induced to extend this 
 latest improvement of toleration to his heathen subjects in 
 that quarter, there will be other reforms to be adopted 
 nearer home. It must be enacted in the way of toleration 
 to the Irish catholics, that no protestant shall presume to 
 pray or preach in their hearing, or offer them a tract against 
 image-worship or transubstantiation. Now, in sober sad- 
 ness, would not any thing like this be the last excess of 
 impious absurdity ? But what then would it be to make an 
 enactment — not against the attempt to gain converts from a 
 corrupted to the true mode of Christian faith, but against 
 converting to that faith any of the miserable slaves of the 
 vilest paganism ! Let it be added that this toleration would 
 be the very rivet of their slavery, though the word sounds, 
 and is employed as meaning, something like liberty. In 
 this manner, to tolerate these heathens is to deprive them 
 by force of any means or chance of the benefit of ever 
 becoming Christians ; for the force which restrains the agent 
 
HINDOO IBOLATST AND CHHISTIANITT. 123 
 
 of any good, is equally a force employed against tlie subject 
 that niigbt have received it. 
 
 As to the alarm, pretended by this writer, as well as the 
 others, to have been excited in India by the missionaries, 
 creating a necessity, on the ground of safety and true 
 policy, of suppressing them, it is totally and incontestably 
 false. They know perfectly well that if nothing is done to 
 excite the fears or anger of the natives, but what is done by 
 the missionaries, the English gentlemen may continue to 
 sleep in their open bungalows, just as safely as they have 
 done before ; they may all, for any thing the Hindoos will 
 do to prevent, live to make their fortunes, and come home 
 to proclaim their irreligion. 
 
 Though we do not, however, believe a word of what is 
 reiterated to hoarseness by these men, about the alarming 
 effect of attempting to teach Christianity in Hindostan, we 
 may be allowed to admire the felicity with which the 
 point is argued in such a passage as the following : — 
 
 " It is likewise known, that the disaffection at Palamcottah, 
 somewhat excited by recent alterations in dress, and other 
 (apprehended) changes of Asiatic costume, was highly aggra- 
 vated by an unhappy report in circulation, — that five hundred 
 Europeans were on their way from Madras, for the purpose of 
 enforcing the conversion to Christianity, of all the Mahomedans 
 in the garrison. This single fact should satisfy Mr. Buchanan, 
 of the impolicy and manifest danger of agitating religious 
 questions among the natives of India." — P. 160. 
 
 The logic of it appears to stand thus : The troops were 
 alarmed and enraged at the supposed approach of five 
 hundred soldiers to drive them into Christianity, or Christi- 
 anity into them, with their bayonets ; the missionaries are 
 no soldiers, have no bayonets, and are not a twentieth part 
 of five hundred ; therefore the troops must be alarmed and, 
 enraged at the attempts of the missionaries. Or if the 
 passage would evasively be explained to mean, that the 
 proceedings of the Christian reformers would be sure to 
 give occasion for such false reports, and that such reports 
 would always be sure to excite indignation and commotion, — 
 it has not the smallest force. For if the troops to whom 
 such reports have been carried, have uniformly found them 
 to prove false, and that no such operators or i mplcments of 
 
124 HINDOO IDOLATET AND CHEISTIAlflTT. 
 
 conversion have been ever brought into their sight, they 
 must be incomparably more stupid than their English frienda 
 will allow their race to be represented, if their indignation 
 does not, at the second time, turn on the miscreants, who- 
 ever they may be, that attempt to alarm them by false 
 information. If they have not thus much sense, the case is 
 bad indeed ; for it will always be easy for the native princes, 
 or any discontented or malignant individual of lower rank, 
 or for the emissaries of a hostile European power, to employ 
 the vagabond Saniassis or Eakeers, and numberless other 
 fit instruments of mischief, or even for any of this worthless 
 tribe to employ themselves, in propagating reports in the 
 native army that the government means to force them vi et 
 armis out of their superstition ; nor can this be at all pre- 
 vented, by this writer's proposed " silencing for ever " of 
 the missionaries. It will only be necessary to improve the 
 falsehood, by saying that the silencing was a mere temporary 
 trick of government— that the missionaries have been sufiered 
 to open again, and have received a whole ship's cargo of 
 auxiliaries from England. 
 
 "We might here remark that the Hindoos are, by this 
 Vindicator, made exceedingly good or exceedingly bad, just 
 as suits the immediate purpose. Eirst, they need none of 
 the moral improvements which Christianity would pretend 
 to bring them ; when he is maintaining this, there is not a 
 good quality under heaven in which these people do not 
 excel : — but next, it is dangerous to attempt the introduction 
 of Christianity among them ; when this is to be proved, then 
 they are perfect devils of rage and revenge, prompt to every 
 atrocity, and certain to repay the good wishes and kind 
 efforts of their instructors with "extermination." The 
 same may be said of his representations of the character of 
 their " religion ; " when it is to be proved such, that Christi- 
 anity is unworthy to become its substitute, then it is sub- 
 lime, beneficent, and of the best moral tendency ; but when 
 he is to show the dire hazards attendant on permitting a 
 mission, then the spirit of this same religion is described in 
 the following terms : — 
 
 "With despotic influence, and mounted on the pinnacle of 
 superstition, it attracts within its vortex all the discordant 
 atoms of civil feuds, and rival animosities ; and stands, like tha 
 
HINBOO IDOLAIBY AND CHjalSTIANITT. 125 
 
 genius of Puuishment, ' with a black hue and a red eye,' n:enar 
 cing desolation ;— or like the demon of Distrust, with dark 
 suspicious, and cautious step, it silently approaches the mansions 
 of peace, with the contracted brow of sullen discontent ; till 
 urged by the congenial assimilation of universal dissatisfaction, 
 like the feU tyrant of the forest, it springs, unsuspected, on tht 
 foe, and devotes him to destruction." — P. 165. 
 
 _ We should sooner have proceeded to what certainly forms 
 tne most prominenc feature of this publication, the explicit 
 assertion and illustration of the excellence of the Hindoo 
 theology and morality, as placed in competition with 
 Christxanity, if we could really have attached any parti- 
 cular importance to such a phenomenon in literature. 
 As appearing in print in England, such a thing may un- 
 doubtedly be called a phenomenon, even notwithstanding the 
 gradation by which we have come to the show, through 
 the respectable exhibitions of Messrs. Twining and Scott 
 Waring : but we apprehend that such thiugs are common 
 enough in the coiiee-houses, and at the mess, in Calcutta; 
 and therefore any of our friends that may have been there, 
 would be apt to divert themselves at our simplicity, if we 
 continued long in the attitude of wonder. The singularity 
 of the thing consists, in the heroic impudence of bringing 
 such an importation from the camps and taverns of India, 
 to be obtruded on the attention of people here, whose 
 curiosity has been tolerably saturated by this writer's two 
 predecessors. But we suspect that something depended on 
 his performance or non-performance of this feat : the piece 
 has a good deal the appearance which might be expected 
 in a thing done for a wager, unwarily offered, in a convivial 
 hour, by some good companion, who imagined that no man 
 had effrontery enough to write such a pamphlet, and was 
 also of opinion that this author had not faculties to make a 
 pamphlet at all. On this latter account especially, it might 
 have been thought the safest challenge possible ; for it 
 might be very well known that he could not read one line 
 of the sacred books of the Hindoos, though he has passed 
 BO many years in their country ; it might not be difi&cult to 
 guess, what he somewhere acknowledges, that the slight 
 smattering of Hindoo mythology in his possession, was be- 
 stowed on him by the illuminated wandering rabble of holy 
 
126 HINDOO IDOHATET AND CHEISTIANITT. 
 
 beggars ; and it would be tolerably evident, that his dialect, 
 his ingenuity, and his logic, were — perfectly on a level 
 indeed with the merits of the cause, but a small matter defi- 
 cient for the task of its advocate. But his courage was up to 
 the " sticking-place," and as, according to the good homely 
 adage, " where there is a will, there will be a way," he had 
 the good fortune to learn that a few books had been 
 translated by Sir William Jones, Mr. "Wilkins, and one or 
 two more scholars. He eagerly possessed himself of the 
 Institutes of Menu, the Ayeen Ackbary, the Heetopades, 
 and the Greeta ; and went to work on this immense mass of 
 learning, which he might get through in a fortnight, 
 without refusing himself the entertainment of many a lounge 
 at Christie's, and many a saunter in the Park. It would 
 seem as if his time had been fixed for him ; or it might 
 possibly have been from a sort of slashing soldierly im- 
 petuosity, that he goes directly to the cutting of large pieces 
 out of Menu, and serves them up at his " repast," as he plea^ 
 santly calls it, without the smallest dressing or garnish. It 
 would generally have been supposed, that when Christianity 
 was to be in effect exploded, and another religion declared 
 the legitimate regent of the human miad throughout a vast 
 empire, no little was to be done in the way of introduction 
 and preparation, by an array of general priuciples, by deep 
 historical research, by a statement of evidence on each cause 
 respectively, and by a careful comparison of the principles 
 and tendency of two immensely different systems. The 
 renowned Mr. Thomas Taylor would take us through leagues 
 and leagues of dissertation, historical, metaphysical, and 
 mathematical, previously to introducing us to his pantheon, 
 and putting the censer into our hands. But this was not to 
 the taste, nor according to the habits of our mythological 
 soldier; who, even in the operations of his martial profession, 
 we dare surmise, was never detached by his commander from 
 the downright point-blank business in which he could be 
 of some service, to the execution of designs requiring skilful 
 management, ingenuity, and combination, in which he 
 could be of none. He begins his illustration of the excel- 
 lence of the moral and religious system of the Hindoos, by 
 just saying, that the missionaries scandalize their Sastras, 
 as bemg filled with childish fables : and he then falls directly 
 
-HINDOO IDOLA-TET: and CHEISTIANITT. 127 
 
 ou the grand substance of his undertaking, that of 
 transcribing several dozen of pages from the Sastras, for he 
 really knows no better than to suppose that the 
 Heetopades and the Greeta are of that class of books ! He 
 pauses one moment, here and there, to ask whether these 
 are mere fables for children, as the missionaries had 
 profanely asserted ; and at length concludes the achievement 
 with this paragraph : — 
 
 " If the ' Sastras of Barbarians ! ' thus manifest an exalted idea 
 of God ; a comprehensive sense of moral duties ; a belief in the 
 immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and 
 punishments ; — what is it, then, that the missionaries propose 
 teaching to the Hindoos ? " — P. 44. 
 
 To this question, put at the end of an assortment of 
 passages, selected carefully from the above-mentioned 
 Indian books, — of which passages a considerable number 
 convey positions which must, even in the selector's own 
 opinion, be absurd and false — no believer in Christianity, we 
 suppose, will hold himself called upon to reply in behalf of 
 that divine system. The man who, together with some good 
 and some indifferent moral maxims, can select sentences 
 about the study of the Veda being the highest means of 
 felicity both in this world and the other, about the Divine 
 Spirit being the whole assemblage of gods, about the com- 
 position of the body of that Divine Spirit, the solar and 
 igneous light being his digestive heat and visual organs, 
 water being his corporeal fluid, the earth being the terrene 
 parts of his fabric, his heart being the moon, the guardians 
 of eight regions being his auditory nerves, his progressive 
 motion being Vishnu, his muscular force Hara, his organs of 
 speech Agni, his exceetion Mitra, his procreation Brahma : 
 about the punishments of the wicked in Asipatravana, the 
 sword-leaved forest, their being mangled by ravens and owls, 
 swallowing cakes boiling hot, assuming the form of beasts, 
 and suffering successive agonizing births ; about the certain 
 destruction which will fall on any family which a woman not 
 duly honoured may choose to curse ; about the tremendous 
 guilt and punishment of. tasting spirituous liquors, with 
 grave information (for the benefit of distillers) of the several 
 sabstances i'rom which these liquors may be made ; about 
 the punishment of a false witness by being bound under 
 
128 HINDOO IDOLATET AND OHEISTIAKTTT. 
 
 water with snaky cords by Varuna, the lord of the Ocean, 
 during a hundred transmigrations, — the man who can bring 
 an assemblage of such follies, and, by implication, the 
 collective masd of mythological fooleries and preposterous 
 morals, of filthy rites and human sacrifices, of which these 
 selections are but an infinitesimal part, and set them in the 
 face of Christianity as a triumphant challenge of comparison, 
 is not a creature to be reasoned with by a Christian. He is 
 an absolute Pariah of morality and sense ; and it would be 
 a profanation of Christianity to talk to him about it. That 
 sacred system must not be invited by its friends to stoop for 
 one moment to the ignominy of being compared with a 
 superstition which combines every monstrosity which could 
 result from priestcraft, poetry, and madness ; it would be 
 the same thing aa to solicit an angel from heaven to come 
 and stand in comparison with a Saniassi, or with a Bengal 
 officer. In making a brief remark or two, we wish therefore 
 to place Christianity as much as possible out of the question.' 
 The leading remark is, that there is no talking rationally 
 about religions and their respective properties and merits, 
 without a reference to the grand question whether they are 
 true or false ; that is, whether as professing to be a divine 
 communication, any given system brings evidence of that 
 origin or does not. If a professed religion is destitute of 
 this evidence, it is bad in its very radix : it is a wicked 
 contrivance to impose, and assuredly for a bad purpose too, 
 on the human mind ; and this being the very basis of its 
 character, it is idle and odious trifling to descant in its 
 favour on a few things good in themselves, which it was 
 impossible for even a system of falsehood to be framed with- 
 out involving. The good maxims or sublime sentiments 
 occasionally found in a pagan religion are but like the minor 
 virtues, which it is possible an impostor or murderer may 
 possess, if the system as a whole is essentially founded in 
 fraud, and maintains its existence by deceiving the under- 
 standings of its believers. And this is the demonstrable 
 character of all religions on earth but one* : that one brings 
 with it a prodigious force of evidence that it is what it 
 
 * The Jewish is of course considered as included with the 
 Christian religion. 
 
X1.XJ.VD00 IDOLATHT AST) CHEISTIAlflTr. 129 
 
 professes to be, a direct communication from the Almighty ■ 
 m other words, that it is authentic as a whole: there is 
 theretore no longer any kind of competition or comparison 
 Detween that one and any other systems assuming the name 
 ot religion. Set in contrast with them, it is not to be 
 considered as differing from them in decree, but in the very 
 essence of its institution. It comes authoritatively from 
 the Omnipotent ; they blaspheme him by falsely proclaiming 
 that they do so. To put down, then, the impious jargon in 
 lavour of the Hindoo "religion," we have only to say that 
 that religion is false ; that though there are occasional truths 
 m the detail, the system is false. 
 
 This sentence being passed on a superstition, the investi- 
 gation of its properties is reduced to a matter of curiosity 
 only ; and as such, that of the Hindoos may be highly 
 interesting to inquisitive and philosophic men ; just as the 
 murderer Patch, when no longer regarded as a man, was said 
 to have been, however, an admirable subject for dissection. 
 The leading properties of this superstition are exceedingly 
 conspicuous. Krst, it is the most marvellous system of 
 priestcraft that the world ever saw, or the spirit of darkness 
 ever inspired. The Brahmins are every thing, and every 
 thing is for the Brahmins. It is astonishing to see with 
 what ingenuity and vigilance their interest has complicated 
 itself with every thing existing or acting throughout the 
 whole economy of society. All the large and palpable 
 advantages they are privileged to seize rampant ; but the 
 policy of the system has also insinuated their monopoly and 
 precedence into all the minutest circumstances ; a spider 
 could not get into a narrower angle, an earwig could not 
 edge into a closer crevice, than the craft of Brahminism is 
 seen to do throughout every page of the Institutes of this 
 superstition. It bears on every part of it the glaring 
 evidence of having been framed, not for the benefit of man- 
 i'ind as a genus, but of the privileged class as a species. 
 
 Adverting to what may be called the theology of the 
 system, no one denies that a number of very abstracted and 
 elevated ideas relating to a Deity are found in the ancient 
 books, whether these ideas had descended traditionally from 
 the primary communication of divine truth to our race, or 
 had diverged so far towards the east from the revelation 
 
130 HINDOO IDOLATHT XTTD CHEISTIAIflTT. 
 
 imparted through Moses to the Jews. But it is also 
 obvious that the Indian writers had a very imperfect hold of 
 these ideas, and tried in vain to fix them in a stability of 
 definition, or prolong them through their speculations as the 
 stamina of their doctrines. Immediately after a noble 
 thought there shall come a train of fantastic and puerile 
 conceits, adapted to prove that the superior conceptions 
 were not original in minds so little capable of habitually 
 thinking up to their level. They had some notion of a 
 supreme spirit; but this idea had a wonderfully slight 
 influence to prevent or to dignify the dreams of mythology ; 
 for their literature swarms with an infinity of gods or 
 debtas, many of them of a ridiculous, and many of an 
 insufierably odious description. This Vindicator is angry 
 at Dr. Buchanan for asserting that the Hindoos have " no 
 moral gods." But the Doctor may assert it again with 
 undiminished confidence, and support himself with such an 
 accumulation of evidence as no reader's disgust would let 
 him go to the end of. There is not one of the divinities 
 of any notorious consequence that is not competently 
 stocked with vices, according to the sacred books of 
 their adorers ; and we wonder this new worshipper should 
 not have been kept, by the consciousness of his profound 
 ignorance, from the foUy of exposing himself so far as to 
 adduce the Indian Triad in refutation of Dr. Buchanan's 
 assertion ! 
 
 He talks, with delight, of the pious and moral allegory 
 which is perfectly obvious and intelligible to him throughout 
 the whole region of Hindoo mythology ; and cites, as an 
 example, Doorga fighting Mykassoor in the form of a 
 bufialo, which means — how is it possible it can mean any 
 thing else ? — that virtue wars with vice ; which notable piece 
 of instruction, he says, is exhibited in pictures in ever so 
 many places in Calcutta, where vice is no doubt very much 
 restrained by this palpable and formidable lesson, this 
 "speaking picture of good sense," as he calls the disgustiag 
 and hideous figure of Doorga. True enough, much of the 
 mythology was originally founded in allegory ; but boundless 
 extravagancies of imagination have, in most cases totally 
 obscured the original meaning, and not one Hindoo in a hun- 
 dred, that hears the story, knows or cares anything about 
 
flINDOO IDOLA.TET AKD CHHISTIANITT. 131 
 
 the moral ; by which neglect, indeed, he probably suffers very 
 trifling loss in the article of religion. 
 
 But mythology enters but little into the " religion " of a 
 great proportion of the Hindoos ; for the lower order are a 
 very little more than mere worshippers of idols, and not a 
 few of the unlearned part of even the Brahmins fail to carry 
 their ideas beyond the idol, to which this writer pretends 
 that even the most ignorant approach with no other view, 
 than to aid their minds to raise their contemplations to 
 " celestial beings." 
 
 It is well known that excesses of indecency, of a grossness 
 almost inconceivable, and certainly unutterable, are practised 
 as rites of worship before some of the idols. The Vindi- 
 cator, however, says, — 
 
 "Of the nature of the 'disgusting vices practised before thesfl 
 idols,' I am entirely ignorant ; for though I have visited many 
 temples of celebrity, in Bengal, Benares, M utha, Canouge, and 
 Hurduar, and a hundred places besides, yet I have never wit- 
 nessed any exhibition at their shrines that bore the appearance 
 of indecency."— P. 100. 
 
 He may be perfectly sincere in this declaration, and yet 
 have actually vritnessed such vices ; for there is a moral 
 pense necessary, as well as the sense of seeing, to perceive 
 fully the disgusting quality of vice and indecency. He has 
 probably seen in these hundred temples, very many times, 
 the direct worship of the Li/ngam !!! — ^but it was not worth 
 while, certainly it was not, to indulge any squeamish feelings 
 of European moral taste ! We could here fill many pages 
 with loathsome descriptions, now on our table, of what it 
 must have been inevitable for him sometimes to have seen ; 
 and it cannot be for fear of hurting the moral sensibility 
 which has been refined into Indian delicacy, that we forbear 
 to insert them. 
 
 As to the morality of the Hindoo system, it would 
 necessarily be of the most depraved character, if there were 
 no other cause than the castes. A large part of the moral 
 code must relate to the interchange of equity among human 
 beings ; but what is to be the basis of such a code, when 
 these human beings are assumed, or rather made, to be se- 
 veral distinct races of creatures, who can scarcely have any 
 
 k2 
 
132 ■wauing's lettees on india. 
 
 principles of social justice in cotnition, — and when every rule 
 and precaution for tlie preservation of this distinction, 
 operates to the exclusion of benevolence ? What will be 
 the spirit of that morality, of which it is an express injunc- 
 tion on the Brahmin to despise the Sudra P Between the 
 pride and contempt of the one, and the wretched degradation 
 of the other, all kind affections, and all generous exercise of 
 justice are annihilated. Apart however, from the castes, the 
 Hindoo morality defies all comparison for absurdity. The 
 compressed view of it, in the Institutes of Menu, is extoUed 
 by this unfortunate writer, as the model of wisdom, and is 
 mostexactlydeservingofhispraise; forit is probably the most 
 ridiculous and abominable assemblage of absurdity and 
 priestcraft that ever insulted the slaves of superstition in any 
 age or country. 
 
 VINDICATION OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONAEIES. 
 
 A Reply to a Letter, addressed to John Scott Waring, Esq., in Refu- 
 tation of the illiberal and unjust Observations and Strictures of 
 the anonymous Writer of that Letter. By Major Scott "Waring 
 8vo. 1808. 
 
 A CLASS of saints in India, — and it is the most sanctified 
 class, — commands the admiration of the natives, and excites 
 the ridicule of foreigners, by the exhibition of limbs dis- 
 torted and stifi"ened by a voluntary penance to please the 
 gods. It must be amusing enough to the profane, to see 
 the solemn gravity of countenance with which the yogi or 
 faheer comes along with his arms raised and crossed over 
 his head for life, or with one arm sent bolt upright from 
 the shoulder, never again to interfere in the concerns of 
 its owner, and never to come in contact with his person, 
 unless_ mischance or malice should happen to snap down 
 the withered stick. It must be curious to consider, that 
 while other men's limbs will perform an infinite number of 
 optional movements, his will remain faithful to their " reli- 
 gious" crook or poker-fashion, and will be found cutting 
 the air in just the same figure, if the public shotild be 
 
TIlTDICATIOir or THE BAPTIST MISSIOXAEIES. 133 
 
 favoured witb the sight of them twenty years hence. 
 Something analogous to this appears to have taken place 
 in the mental faculties of our worthy acquaintance, Major 
 Scott Waring. When in the preface to his " Observa- 
 tions" he first set himself forth in a disgusting posture, we 
 could have no idea that he was, to the exactest nicety, to 
 stiffen in that very predicament ; from the evident aversion 
 to Christianity, we might indeed have expected perform- 
 ances not less true in their general spirit to Paganism than 
 the first ; but it could not be foreseen that from the 
 moment of finishing that first, the writer's mind should 
 become incapable of altering, thenceforth, the action of its 
 faculties, even in the smallest perceptible degree, and that, 
 as a true intellectual faheer, it should be cramped into one 
 precise specific mode of inviolable deformity. Such how- 
 ever seems to be the case ; two large pamphlets have quickly 
 succeeded the first, and the three taken together form such 
 an instance of hopeless iteration, of absolute dead sameness, 
 as the English public never saw before ; and it wiU happen 
 contrary to all present probability, if this most unfortunate 
 man do not continue to the very last day of his life repeat- 
 ing incessantly, without the chance of any variation, even of 
 phrase, that the missionaries are mad Calvinistic sectaries, 
 that the Indians never can be converted, that it is madness 
 to think of it, that there has never been one good convert, 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 It is certainly a hapless condition to have the mind thus 
 set and shrivelled into one unalterable and degrading posi- 
 tion of its faculties ; but if we regret to see the spectacle, it 
 is not on account of Christianity, as the object of the fixed 
 enmity of such a mind ; for no mode of hostility can be 
 more innoxious than the pure insensate reiteration, without 
 the possibility of a diversification or novelty, of a few false 
 or futile propositions. Not, however, that the Christian 
 religion could have had anything to fear from the slender 
 talents of our fakeer, even if this fatal arrest had not anni- 
 hilated their free agency, by crooking and clinching them 
 into this one peculiar cramp of impiety. 
 
 In making a very few remarks on the assertions repeated 
 in our author's second and third pamphlets, it is not of the 
 smallest consequence which of these assertions is noticed 
 
134 -WABIirG's lETTEES ON DfDIA. 
 
 first. It is said over again, a countless number of times, 
 that the increase of missionaries, bibles, and tracts, had 
 been represented to the mutinous troops at Vellore, and 
 had greatly contributed to rouse their apprehensions that 
 the Government intended to force them into Christianity. 
 Now whecher he did or did not receive this account from 
 " gentlemen in India," we can imagine his anger and vexation 
 on finding it proved an utter falsehood, in a recent and deci- 
 sive publication,* attributed to a person of the very highest 
 authority, who has informed the public, that in a very long 
 and minute examination of a great number of the surviving 
 sepoys, before a commission of inquiry at Madras, none of 
 those troops, in assigning the causes of their anger and 
 tumult, made any mention of missionaries or Christian hoohs, 
 which beyond all question they would eagerly have done in 
 extenuation of their conduct, if that conduct had in any 
 degree whatever been prompted by such a cause. Por the 
 truth of this statement, he appeals to the official reports of 
 that commission, now deposited in the India House. It 
 will take some considerable time, for the unfortunate Major 
 to collect himself up from the splinters and fragments in 
 which he is dashed by this demolishing blow. 
 
 A very favourite sentence in all the three pamphlets, and 
 which is repeated beyond the patience of enumeration, is 
 that unless the missionaries are recalled, or at least all their 
 Christian operations suppressed, our Indian empire wiU. be 
 terminated within twelve months, by a general insurrection 
 of the people. Now the only English missionaries who 
 have as yet been able to make any very active exertions, 
 are those in Bengal; and this same man says that these 
 missionaries have been confined to a very narrow scope, and 
 have produced but a slight eficct of any kind on the minds 
 of the people. 
 
 He incessantly cites the expression of one of the mission- 
 aries, Mr. Marshman, that the appearance of one of them 
 in a bigoted city " would create universal alarm," and asks 
 how there can be any safety for our empire and people if 
 such men are permitted to remain. It is to be regretted 
 
 * Considerations on the Practicability, Policy, and Obligation 
 of communicating to the Natives of India the Knowledge of 
 Christianity. 
 
VINDICATION 01' THE BAITIST MISSIONAEIES. 135 
 
 tnat Mr. Marshman tad not used a more precise term, or 
 added some explanation, in speaking of the sensation caused 
 in the popular mind by the appearance of the missionaries ; 
 but if he has used a term of a signification too little defined 
 for so important a subject, is it not the last excess of 
 absurdity for a man in England to assume to interpret this 
 term by any other rule than that supplied by this missionary 
 himself and his associates ? Is it not a stupidity beyond 
 example to talk and rant in a way which assumes that the 
 missionary, in this single expression, must mean some other 
 hind or degree of alarm than that which he and the others 
 describe and illustrate, with so much simplicity, diversity, 
 and particularity of narrative, in the substance of their 
 communications ? Does this man imagine that, in writing 
 the expression in question, Mr. Marshman was letrayed for 
 once into the acknowledgment of some quite dififerent kind 
 of alarm, which had been so carefully concealed, that not a 
 hint of it had been suffered to transpire in the numerous 
 letters and journals, till this unlucky sentence revealed the 
 secret? Verily it was most marvellous, that after Mr. 
 Marshman and his associates had with unequalled care and 
 collusion kept this alarm a profound secret for a number 
 of years, this identical and discreet Mr. Marshman should 
 deliberately sit down to declare it in a paper which he had 
 no doubt would be printed in Europe. Or say that this 
 dire secret was communicated in confidence to Mr. Fuller, 
 the secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society (for the 
 letter was addressed to him), and that it was through Ms 
 simplicity that it was betrayed in England. No, no, it had 
 been much more for the ease of the Major's galled feelings 
 that Mr. Fuller had been a man simple enough to have been 
 capable of falling, in such a case, into such an error. But 
 it is quite ludicrous to see this unlucky phrase of Mr. 
 Marshman reverted to so many score of times, with such an 
 air of significance and solemnity, as if it had let out some 
 portentous discovery, and as if this one solitary expression 
 contained the sole and entire information to be found in all 
 the ample statements of the missionaries, respecting the 
 manner in which they are regarded and received by the 
 natives. The kind of alarm to which Mr. Marshman refer- 
 red, 18 illustrated through every sheet of the Periodica] 
 
136 WAEING'S LETTEB8 ON INDIA. 
 
 Accounts ; every reader is competent from those documents 
 to judge of its nature, extent, and probable result ; and 
 every reader whose glimmering of sense has not been extin- 
 gaished in prejudice and irreligion, can see that an alarm 
 which never excites the people to anything more than occa- 
 sional expressions of abuse, which never asks the missionary 
 whether he is not commissioned by his government, nor 
 ever expresses to him a suspicion chat he is so, and which 
 permits the unprotected itinerant to return with impunity 
 and without the smallest apprehension, to the same place, 
 and on the same errand, as often as he pleases, may fairly 
 be allowed at least a few centuries to grow into a desperar 
 tion and a compact which shall threaten the safety of the 
 English and their empire. 
 
 At the suggestion of the writer of the anonymous letter 
 to which this third pamphlet is a reply, the Major has 
 furnished himself with the statement of the Baptist Mis- 
 sionary Society, which by giring him a few facts not pre- 
 viously known to him, has for a few moments a little relieved 
 him from the distress and durance of desperate sameness, 
 and thrown one very transient gleam of something like 
 novelty, over a wide tract of incomparably dull and stagnant 
 composition. He charges the missionaries with having gone 
 illegally to India, with violating the law of the country in 
 itinerating without passports, and of having been " in open 
 rebellion" at the time when two new missionaries, arriving 
 at Calcutta, and being commanded by an order of councU 
 to return to Europe, pleaded the protection of the Danish 
 Government at Serampore, where they had joined their 
 brethren previously to the passing of this order. But little 
 needs be said on any of these particulars. If, in 1793, 
 Messrs. Carey and Thomas found the government so adverse 
 to permit any attempt toward Christianizing the Hindoos, 
 (even before there were Twinings and Scott Warings so 
 covetous of disgrace as to rant about the danger and intoler- 
 ance of such an attempt), that a passage to Lidia could not 
 be obtained in an EngUsh ship, they must have felt a less 
 degree of zeal than good men are accustomed to feel for a 
 great object, if they could not have resolved to put their 
 undertaking on the ground of committing themselves to a 
 Superior Power, and abiding the consequence. That coii- 
 
TrrrnicATioN of the baptist missiojtaeies. 137 
 
 Bequenee proved to be, an ultimate necessity of retiring from 
 the British territory ; and thus even an enemy might allow, 
 that something like an even balance was struck between the 
 missionaries ajid the Christian government, which they had 
 80 insulted and endangered, by venturing, unauthorized, to 
 touch a corner of its million of square miles, with a view to 
 impart the gospel to some of the miserable pagan inhabitants. 
 Thus they went out imauthorized ; and if it should be 
 admitted, that the refusal of a passage in an English ship, 
 was really and strictly a prohibition of their entering India 
 (which however their admission in India proved that it was 
 not), and if it should then be asked — Was not this violating 
 a primary Christian obligation of obedience to government ? 
 it would become a Christian to answer, that this obligation 
 does not extend to any thing purely religious ; for if it did, 
 it would by the same law extend to every thing in religion 
 which it would be possible for a government to force within 
 its cognizance, and would make it a duty to hold the authority 
 of the magistrate more sacred than any other authority in 
 the universe, even were he to forbid a Christian teacher to 
 carry religious instruction into the next parish, or the next 
 village, or the next house, or even avowedly and visibly to 
 give religious instruction to the persons in his own house ; 
 and this would be an obligation, which we need not say that 
 no Christian's conscience was ever yet capable of feehng. 
 
 It should however be observed, that Messrs. Carey and 
 Thomas and their friends, did not feel themselves precisely 
 in such a dilemma. They knew that the refusal of an 
 authorized passage did not amount to an absolute prohibi- 
 tion of their entering India ; and they knew besides, that if 
 it had, both our own and aU. other governments are willing 
 to connive at many things which they do not choose expressly 
 to authorize ; and they trusted that, if once they were in 
 India, the disinterested purity of their motives, and the 
 peacefulness of their conduct, would secure them a silent 
 toleration in the prosecution of a work, in which it would 
 be evident it was impossible they could have any political 
 or lucrative object in view. Such a connivance they did 
 experience a considerable time, and were thankful that a 
 purely benevolent and religious design could obtain even 
 thus much indulgence ; while they knew that the purpose of 
 
138 wAEiira's lettees on india. 
 
 solely making a fortune would have obtained not tolerance, 
 but a full legal sanction, for the departure from England, and 
 the pursuits in India. 
 
 After fixing their principal residence within the Danish 
 settlement, they thought it right to continue to avail them- 
 selves of the privilege of connivance, to itinerate into the 
 British dominions. Jfothing was done clandestinely ; the 
 government knew that they travelled to various places to 
 preach to the natives, and that they did this without pass- 
 ports ; it knew that they dispersed tracts and testaments ; 
 it knew that several missionaries had been gradually added 
 to the number ; and knowing aU this, the government ap- 
 pointed the chief of these missionaries to a highly respect- 
 able station in the college of Fort WiUiam, while the 
 principal clergymen of the Bengal establishment became 
 the zealous friends of the men and of their designs. Now 
 what would have been thought of the sense of Mr. Carey 
 and his associates, if they had been seized with a violent 
 anxiety to forego their privileges, and to fetter themselves 
 with a law, of which the governing power was content to 
 suspend the operation ? 
 
 Some acknowledgment is perhaps due to our author, for 
 relieving the dull depravity of his uniform pages, with here 
 and there an extra piece of folly, so ludicrous as to brisken 
 the desponding reader, and enable him to get on half a 
 sheet further. The best thing of this sort in his last pam- 
 phlet, is where he talks of the missionaries being " in open 
 rebellion," on the occasion of their pleading the rights of 
 Danish subjects, for the two additional ones who were com- 
 manded to return to Europe. To talk of nine men, without 
 a pistol, sword, or pike, among them all, being "in open 
 rebellion " against the power of a great empire, had been 
 almost sufficiently absurd, even for this unfortunate man 
 and his associates, if these nine men had really been sub- 
 jects of the British government ; but it does sound like a 
 fatuity in which this ill-fated man can have no rival asso- 
 ciates, when it is said of a company of persons who were 
 absolutely the subjects of another government, the former 
 seven by their formally recognized establishment under it 
 for a number of years, and two strangers by their being 
 added to the number, through the conveyance of an Ame- 
 
TINDICATION OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONABIES. 189 
 
 riean ship cleared for Serampore. It was by sufferance, 
 that they were at any time on British territory ; but on the 
 Danish they were by authority. We suppose our author, 
 when he was at once an officer and clergyman in India, 
 used to get into a violent fret when any soldiers not belong- 
 ing to the corps under his command happened to be near 
 him, and had not the manners humbly to ask for his orders, 
 and devoutly listen to his reading of prayers. 
 
 By the way, he piques himself not a little on this exploit 
 of reading prayers, and says, in so many words, he " thinks 
 he made a much better clergyman than any Calvinistic 
 Methodist or Baptist in India would have made, for pro- 
 testants of the Church of England." (Eeply, p. 41.) As- 
 suredly, had we been of his congregation, we should have 
 endeavoured to comport ourselves in a manner worthy of 
 protestants of the Church of England ; but yet we cannot 
 help imagining the distress to which we might on some 
 unfortunate occasion have been reduced, by the too pos- 
 sible circumstance of the worthy Major's Prayer-Book being 
 mislaid or wickedly secreted. It would have overwhelmed 
 us with mortification, to hear perhaps some ignorant cor- 
 poral say to his comrade, that the Prayer-Book, not the 
 man, was the chaplain : nothing indeed could have been 
 more stupid or false, but still we fear we should have had 
 no prayers that day. Or if, to complete the mischief, some 
 layman, just like Mr. Carey, had by HI luck happened to 
 come among us at this moment of distress and confusion^ 
 and had obtained permission this once to pray for us, 
 Major and all, in his devout, affectionate, and rational 
 strain, with his fine fluency of expression, and a happy 
 adaptation to immediate characters and circumstances, we 
 cannot but fear that though we as well as the Major might 
 have remained unshaken, the stupid soldiery might have 
 fancied this a far superior kind of performance to the 
 Major's reading, and might, the next Sunday, have deserted 
 to the Methodists by dozens, rank and file. The Major and 
 we, however, should have entertained all due contempt for 
 the taste and opinion of the rabble, the very dregs of the 
 people. 
 
 Throughout the Major's pamphlets, especially the two 
 latter ones, there is a moat laborious effort to flatter and 
 
140 WABIKCt's LETTEB3 ON INDIA. 
 
 coax the clergy and other members of the Established 
 Church, while an equal toil is sustained to bury alive all 
 sectaries, and the missionaries as sectaries, under as large a 
 heap of abuse as this man's vulgar malice could accumulate. 
 But, really, even in this last humble vocation he fails sadly. 
 He is too sterile even to invent or vary terms and phrases 
 of obloquy; and " madmen," and " illiterate bigots," with 
 the addition of " hot-headed Calvinists," nearly circum- 
 scribe the reach and resources of his vocabulary. This fact 
 might warn him, that he has now done nearly aU he can do, 
 and had better be content without afflicting his faculties 
 ■wdth any further trial, since when a man fails in that thing 
 which he is confessedly able to do best, it is aU. over with 
 him as to the matter of talents. And as to the attempt to 
 cajole the members of the Established Church, it will defeat 
 itself, we should think ; as all serious persons in that 
 church, who may read the Major's pamphlets, wiU adopt 
 the memorable words of the ancient, "What bad thing 
 have we done, that has obtained us this man's praise ?" 
 But he wiU not leave them at a loss ; he most fervently 
 extols the church and its clergy for having scarcely ever 
 made an effort to diffuse the gospel into heathen countries ; 
 while the hated sectaries, without the smallest view to 
 their own interest, are forsaking their homes, parting from 
 their friends, surrendering for ever all possibilities of ease, 
 luxury, or wealth, and compassing sea and land to make 
 proselytes. This is the most sagacious artifice by which 
 it was ever attempted to wheedle the members of the es- 
 tablishment, and the choicest compliment ever paid to their 
 Christian principles. But even if those Christian prin- 
 ciples were as debased as he assumes, by extolling them on 
 the ground of such merits and such a contrast, he will find 
 that the members of the church are not so bereft of policy 
 as to thank him for his compliments, or allow him to consti- 
 tute himself their representative. They will be aware that 
 nothing under heaven would have a more powerful and 
 instantaneous effect to multiply dissenters, by driving con- 
 scientious men out of the church, than for the clergy and 
 distinguished members of that church to suffer their princi- 
 ples to be identified, in the view of the public, with those 
 of this unhappy man and his coadjutors. There may be 
 
TINDICATION or THE BAPTIST MISSION ABIES 1-il 
 
 some few clergymen who would not abscond from their 
 congregations and their Christian connexions, from the 
 ignominy of having been cited by him as coinciding with 
 his notions and wishes : his friend the Bishop of Asaph, of 
 whom he asks, with an incomparably ludicrous simplicity, 
 " Was he a bigot or irreligious?" would no doubt, had he 
 been living, have braved such disgrace ; but the great 
 majority of churchmen will feel it necessary to their 
 characters, even if they do not to their consciences, to 
 resist the attempt to brand them with the stigma of an 
 alliance of principle with a man who abhors nothing on 
 earth so much as the attempts of Christianity to extirpate 
 the abominations of Paganism ; and some of the more 
 serious of them will be so confounded to find that their church 
 must acknowledge such a man for one of its members, that 
 as the only consolation for belonging to it, they will attach 
 themselves wholly to that evangelical section of it which he 
 hates. 
 
 The missionaries are sectaries, and therefore totally unfit 
 and disqualified, as a very large portion of these pamphlets 
 is occupied in repeating, to teach Christianity, even if a 
 mission were to be permitted in Hindostan. Now what is 
 the meaning of all this ? Does the unfortunate man reaUy 
 mean to say that the Established Church is infallible, and 
 that too while it is before his face that its members are 
 unable to agree as to the purport of its articles, or to the 
 extent of the obligation under which they are to be 
 subscribed, and are indefinitely divided and opposed in 
 their opinions, forming a political compact for a temporal 
 advantage of religious parties who are respectively schis- 
 matics in each other's estimation ? If the infallibility of 
 such a church, or indeed of any church, is an absurdity too 
 gross for even this man to advance, where is the sense or 
 decency of railing against sectaries ? If the church may be 
 wrong, the sectaries, or some of them, may be right ; the 
 authority for imputing error is perfectly equal on either 
 side, and is no other than freedom of individual judgment — a 
 freedom evidently not to be contraivened but by demon- 
 strated infallibility or the vilest tyranny. But perhaps the 
 Major, forbearing to make any claim of infallibility for the 
 Established Church, and any pretence of better natural 
 
142 WAEING's lETTEES OW rNDIA. 
 
 faculties in the minds of its members than in those of the 
 sectaries, will say, however, that the religious instructions 
 and studies, from which churchmen form their theological 
 opinions, are infinitely better adapted to give them a true 
 knowledge of Christianity, and to prepare them to impart it 
 to heathens, than those by which such men as Mr. Carey 
 and his friends are qualified for that important office. How 
 so ? The profound and devout study of the Scriptures is 
 confessedly the grand process for understanding religion, 
 and the sedulous, and repeated, and varied explication of 
 them to persons under every diversity of circumstances, is 
 the best imaginable discipline for acquiring the talent of 
 instruction and persuasion; on this ground we may defy 
 any church in Europe, whether established or schismatical, 
 to supply more accomplished missionaries than Mr. Carey 
 and several of his friends, — men whose biblical labours are 
 prosecuted with an ardour which threatens our pagans at 
 home, and the Brahmins and the Bonzes of the East, with a 
 translation of the Bible into every language of Asia iu the 
 course of a few years, and who at the same time have 
 preached more' in a twelvemonth than perhaps any of the 
 dignitaries of any establishment in Earope. And pray what 
 does the sapience of our Major imagine it likely that the 
 subscription to Thirty-nine Articles, and the imposed hand 
 of a prelate could have added to men like these ; and which 
 of the Christian doctrines have they failed to understand or 
 explain, for want of these momentous pre-requisites ? But 
 it is not the essential endowments of the men that the Major 
 would care about, if he could permit any mission at all to 
 Hindostan. The only question with him would be, whether 
 they had passed through certaLu formalities of mere human 
 and political appointment, and declared themselves members 
 of a certain ecclesiastical corporation, or whether they acted 
 simply as men to whom heaven has given understanding 
 and the New Testament, and who can acknowledge no other 
 authority in religion. If the latter, not all the virtue and 
 learning of Carey could obtain license or toleration ; if the 
 former, the men would do perfectly well, though their 
 qualifications should reach no further than the abQity of 
 reading, like the Major when he was chaplain, a number of 
 printed prayers and sermons. He has no idea of religion as 
 
TINDICATION OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONARIES. 143 
 
 a tbuig which exists and can be taught independently of 
 the appointments of the state ; and when its conveyance to 
 a foreign country is the subject in question, the only view 
 in which his unfortunate understanding is capable of 
 regarding it, is that of an article of commerce, under the 
 distinction of lawful and contraband. The exportation of 
 Christianity from England in any other than English 
 bottoms, and by any other than persons of the Established 
 Church, is to be considered, he thinks, as a branch of the 
 smuggling trade, and ought to be prohibited or punished 
 accordingly. This really appears to be the whole extent of 
 any conception that he has on the subject ; so that when he 
 says (Eeply, p. 80), that Messrs. Carey and Thomas "were 
 smuggled out to India" (he writes it in italics), and when 
 he somewhere applies the same term to the sending of a 
 missionary to Buenos Ayres, he really does not seem to 
 wish to be understood as adopting a figurative expression. 
 
 His anger at this last transaction breaks out afresh in 
 each successive pamphlet ; and he takes the trouble to say 
 over again, that it was a violation of the articles of capitu- 
 lation, which engaged to the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres 
 the free exercise of their religion. It would be hopeless to 
 repeat to such a besotted imderstanding that freedom is 
 violated by nothing but coercion. But why does he not say 
 again what he said in the preface to his Observations, that 
 " the universal hatred of which the General and Admiral 
 complain, is more likely to have been caused from the folly 
 of sending out a Protestant Missionary than by any other 
 circumstance F" (preface, p. Lxx). This vile absurdity was 
 at first safely left to itself in the absence of public and 
 official documents respecting the circumstances in South 
 America; but some of our readers will have observed, in 
 reading the Eeport of G-eneral Whitelocke's trial, that 
 General Craufurd and Colonel Pack asserted the extreme 
 irritation of the natives to have arisen from reported 
 cruelties committed hy the Sritish. 
 
 It were easy, but very useless, to employ many pages 
 more in exposing the folly and depravity exhibited in this 
 pamphlet. We will dismiss it by applauding the honesty of 
 one particular part, which would reveal the main principle 
 of all that this man has written on the present question, if 
 
144 stockdalb's lecttjees 
 
 that principle had not already been suflBciently apparent : 
 he praises and recommends, without any hint whatever oi 
 exception, the pamphlet called "A Yindication of the 
 Hindoos," which pamphlet is no less than a downright and 
 most vulgar and impudent defence of the collective abomi- 
 nations of the heathenism of Hindostan. We are glad to 
 see these men reciprocally adopting one another as 
 congenial friends in the same cause. Mr. Twining, in his 
 second edition, referred with approbation to Major Scott 
 Waring. Major Scott Waring referred with complacency 
 and approbation to Mr. Twining and his production ; the 
 Vindicator of the Hindoos cited the Major as his ally, and 
 now the league is completed by the Major's applauding 
 reference to the Vindicator. As if desperate both of his 
 cause and his character, he has even claimed the 
 "Barrister" as an associate. 
 
 POETICAL CEITICISM. 
 
 Lectures on the Truly Eminemt English Poets. By Percival 
 Stockdale. 2 voIs.'Svo. 1807. 
 
 An apprehension of not receiving quite so much instruction 
 as a very large work ought to convey, was excited in our 
 minds, we will acknowledge, by the title of these volumes. 
 We could not see the promise of intellectual precision, in 
 the attempt to qualify the epithet, specifying the class of 
 poets, with an adverb which confases the meaning ; still less 
 when this adverb is put as the prominent and distinctive 
 term of the designation. The reader knows that each of the 
 English poets is either eminent or not so, and asks what 
 inconceivable class of eminent poets it can be, from which 
 the truly eminent are to be distinguished. The preface 
 indeed explains, that this word was inserted, because Dr. 
 Johnson has introduced among the eminent poets some 
 names which had no just claim to be there. But besides that 
 the title of any large work, professing to be of an important 
 
CRITICISM OS THE ENGLISH POETS. 145 
 
 and permanent quality, should have in itself a perfect 
 meaning exclusive of any tacit reference to other books, it 
 seems obvious to remark, that Dr. Johnson's placing the 
 lives of several very inferior poets among those of the emi- 
 nent ones, has in no degree rendered those inferior poets 
 eminent ; and therefore there needs no double array of dis- 
 tinctive words to inclose the elevated ground occupied by 
 the great poets, and guard it from unhallowed intrusion. 
 
 It is one of the chief objects of this work, to follow the 
 track of Johnson through the writings, and through parts 
 of the history, of several of our great poets, in order to 
 rectify some of the wrongs which we all acknowledge to have 
 been done by our celebrated biograplier. This was surely a 
 meritorious design ; for there are parts of the Lives of the 
 Poets which every lover of literary or moral justice would 
 be glad to see stamped with an indelible brand of reproba- 
 tion, with a disgrace so signal and conspicuous, as to be a 
 perpetual warning against the perversion of criticism and 
 private history by political and religious bigotry and per- 
 sonal spleen. He would wish the work of the formidable 
 critic to bear, like the wolf of Eomulus in the capitol, so;ne 
 lasting marks of the effect of lightning. But the difficulty 
 of inflicting such effectual retribution on Johnson as to 
 rescue the victims of his injustice, is too forcibly proved to 
 us, even by our own feelings. There has been a great deal 
 of sensible and incontrovertible writing in defence of Milton 
 and Gray, and our judgments are perfectly convinced that 
 the one was a much more amiable man, and the other a 
 much greater poet, than Johnson has represented ; yet, in 
 spite of this conviction, it is always Johnson's moral picture 
 af Milton, and Johnson's estimate of the poetry of Gray, 
 that are the first to recur to our minds when the names are 
 introduced. The energy of the writing has reduced us to a 
 jertain degree of the same kind of subjection as that which 
 Milton himself has imposed on our imagination with regard 
 ;o Satan and our first parents, of whom we may strive in 
 rain to form ideas materially difierent from those which have 
 )een fixed in our minds from reading " Paradise Lost." 
 ind, therefore, while we have often wished to see the great 
 iterary tyrant deposed, we are afraid that something more 
 B requisite for the achievement than merely to convince the 
 
14fi STOCKDALE's lECTXTEEa. 
 
 people of his injustice ; it is necessary to display something 
 like a rival vigour of talent, an eloquence adapted to com- 
 mand by its energy, separately from the justice of its object, 
 a power which shall appear formed on purpose to crush or to 
 baf&e giants and monsters. There was no chance for inva- 
 ding the den of Oacus till Hercules arrived, nor for the 
 deliverance of the Greeks from that of the Cyclops, but 
 through the agency of Ulysses. 
 
 There could not be a more zealous vindicator of injured 
 poets against the iniquity of criticism than the present 
 writer. He will obtain full credit for courage and sincere 
 enthusiasm in the cause, for more than ordinary resources 
 of some kind, displayed in extending the warfare over so vast 
 a field of paper, and perhaps for a generous and liberal 
 motive to the hostility. Nevertheless, we think it will end, 
 as the other quarrels of Europe were tiU lately accustomed 
 to end, in the status quo ante helium. Each of the poets will 
 hold exactly the same place in the public and in each reader's 
 estimation as before. Indeed, our author's opinions of them 
 do not materially differ from those which are generally 
 entertained already, excepting his strange idolatry of 
 Chatterton. It was perfectly well understood before that 
 Spenser had wrought a rich imagination into perplexing 
 labyrinths of allegory ; that Milton advanced into regions of 
 which every other poet had stopped and trembled at the 
 dark confines, and of which the inhabitants might almost 
 have mistaken him, as to his intellectual grandeur, for one 
 of themselves ; that Shakspere could make all sorts of 
 human creatures with far less trouble than by the method 
 ascribed to Deucalion and Pyrrha, of tossing pebbles over 
 their heads ; that Dryden performed wonders of diversified 
 excellence both in poetry and prose, under what are called 
 the frowns of fortune ; that the works of Pope are the per- 
 fection of beauty in literature ; and so of the rest. It was 
 not necessary for this to be repeated at such length, unless 
 for the sake of some bright and original illustration, or with 
 the development of some new characteristic in the genius 
 and works of each of our well-known poets. But no man 
 who has read and admired them, will read them the next 
 time witL any new perceptions derived from the workbefure 
 us ; nor will the gall which Johnson may have sprinkled an 
 
CEITI0I8M ON THE ENGMSH POETS. 147 
 
 their -writings, or on the features of their character, be at 
 all removed by this long process of critical lustration. 
 
 From the beginning of this work to the end, there is a 
 total renunciation of all method and regularity ; it exceeds 
 all former examples of literary rambling. The author seems 
 to go through his subject by a succession of purely casjial 
 motions, just' as we used, when we were boys, to go through 
 a wood picking nuts, where our turning to the right, or the 
 left, or going forward or backward, was determined, at each 
 step, by what happened to pop on our sight at the moment. 
 He will go on perhaps one or two pages with tolerable pro- 
 priety after some particular topic ; this topic vanishes in 
 turning the corner of some unlucky sentence ; another starts 
 up, and is eagerly pursued about the same length, when this 
 also slides out of sight, and leaves the pursuer to chase any 
 thing that happens to present itself next. He will begin 
 nerhaps with a flaming eulogium of a favourite poet ; at the 
 tenth or twelfth sentence, the name of Johnson may chance 
 to come across him ; this is sure to send him off in a violent 
 invective against the bigotry, the spleen, the prejudice, the 
 want of taste, and the illiberaUty of the great critic ; quickly 
 the impulse takes a turn, and shoots him away from Johnson 
 to strike impetuously against the stupidity of the age, and 
 perhaps the flimsy works of its poets ; through these he 
 dashes in a moment, and is gone, almost before we can cry 
 out for mercy for them, to attack booksellers, antiquarians, 
 metaphysicians, priests, courts, tasteless ministers of state, 
 and proud mean-spirited patrons.; it is never long, however, 
 I'cfore he reverts to himself, with new avowals of indepen- 
 dence of judgment, of ardour for truth, and worship of 
 genius, and with very equivocal expressions of an humble 
 estimate of his powers to do justice to his undertaking. 
 Eor fifty pages together there shall be no sign of progress, 
 but the advancing figures at the top. We are kept in a 
 most violent motion but cannot get on. An active boister- 
 ous kind of diction whirls the very same sentiments, praises, 
 and invectives, in an everlasting eddy. Each eminent poet 
 in the train is overwhelmed with a profuse repetition of the 
 same epithets of magnificence, which are rather flung at him 
 than applied to him. The gentle bards are actually pelted 
 with praise ; the favours of their eulogist are sent from a 
 
 l2 
 
J 48 stockdale's iecttjees. 
 
 eross-bow, and impinge on the revered personages w ith such 
 a vengeance as to cause an echo through the vrhole temple 
 of the muses. The impassioned violence of the author's 
 maimer, and his incomparably strange phraseology, prevent 
 the continual recurrence of the same forms of undiscrimi- 
 natiag applause and condemnation from acquiring exactly 
 the appearance of common-place. It is perceived indeed to 
 be his common-place ; but it is so different from that of 
 other writers, that it maintains a cast of novelty for a con- 
 siderable time, and leads us farther than we should have 
 been induced to go, if the same endless repetition of senti- 
 ments so defective in intellectual force had invited us in 
 ordinary language. 
 
 A certain expression of ingenuousness and sensibility in 
 the author's character, makes us resist, as long as we can, 
 the conviction that this turbulence of the language does not 
 arise from a vigorous intellectual operation, agitating the 
 composition by a rapid succession of new forms of energetic 
 thought, but from an impetuosity of temperament, rendered 
 still more vehement by a continual recurrence of the mind, 
 in its desultory course, to the same ideas. "When this con- 
 viction can no longer be escaped, we do wonder to observe 
 with how small a portion of effectual thinking it is possible 
 to write many hundred pages. 
 
 A constant extravagance of expression is the moat ob- 
 vious feature of the performance. The author never thinks 
 of using the sober established diction of simple criticism ; 
 his feelings are always in an ebullition, and running over 
 with a fire and steam that drive off all other critics and 
 admirers of poetry, who are virtually reproached with being 
 as cold as arctic fishes. For epithets and enthusiasm, Lon- 
 ginus was a Scotch metaphysician in comparison. He has 
 just the language of a person who has seen something mar- 
 vellous for the first time, and is telling it to persons who 
 have never seen it at all ; the language in which the first 
 adventurers to India might be supposed to tell, at their 
 return, of elephants, and palaces, and Moguls, and temples, 
 and idols of massy gold, and to tell it all over again with an 
 impossibility of making themselves tired. The word 
 "glorious "is applied to the poets and their verses, in a 
 manner, and with a frequency, which -vvoiild have irritated 
 
OEIXIOISM ON THE ENGLISH POETS. 149 
 
 every man of those poets, if they could have heard this critic, 
 into a resolution neyer to employ that word again. " Illus- 
 trious," and "immortal," would have been in danger of the 
 same exclusion. The application to writers and their works, 
 of terms appropriate to celestial subjects and beings, involves 
 a profaneness, in which we wonder what literary advantage 
 an author can see to reconcile him to the guilt. Shakspere 
 is here "divine," Milton is "divine," Dryden is "divine," 
 Pope is "divine," Chatterton is "divine," and probably 
 several others of the poets ; and how much more does any 
 body know about them from such a description ? What is 
 the use of being told of a "divine genius," a " divine soul," 
 a "divine poem," or of writing or of reading that Dryden 
 beheld in Shakspere, "his divine master ?"* "What is to be 
 learned from this extravagance, except that the author has 
 never accustomed himself to a discriminative estimate of the 
 works that he admires, and that he has found out there is 
 room enough in terms of vastness to hide the want of terms 
 of precision ? 
 
 We shaU not be required to give any regular account of 
 the successive lectures, or of any one of them. The number 
 is twenty, and the poets forming their subjects are Spenser, 
 Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Young, Thomson, Chat- 
 terton, and Gray. We were more pleased with the vindica- 
 tion of Milton against the Uliberality of Johnson, than any 
 other part. And the supremacy of Milton's genius and 
 performance gives a better grace to the lecturer's extra- 
 vagant language, than it could receive from any other of his 
 subjects. We will extract some paragraphs in his best 
 manner. 
 
 " I have been defending the out works of our poetical hero ; 
 let me take a view of his large and lofty citadel. Milton's poem 
 is founded on our religion. Here the poet made a most judicious 
 choice because by that choice, the sentiments of our best belief, 
 and of our profoundest veneration, co-operated with genius, to 
 give a kind of reality even to the vast objects of his peculiarly 
 amplifying and creative powers. The choice was nappy for 
 another reason. Conscious that those powers were of a magni- 
 tude almost more than human, he was determined that they 
 
 * Rousseau also is " divine " and " glorious." We are even 
 told of" the glorious Fielding." 
 
150 STOCKDiLE's LECirBES. 
 
 fihould produce images worthy of their immensity. He knew 
 that too excessive a greatness in mind, in character, and in form, 
 could hardly be attributed to the persons and regions which 
 lay before him. He knew it ; and he took a flight without 
 limits : he saw, and he presented to ow sight, the most contrasted 
 and astonishing objects ; perfect beauty, and perfect deformity ; 
 beings of infinite dread, and of infinite majesty. His theatre is 
 unbounded space ; its scenes, its machinery, and its heroes, 
 exist and act in unbounded duration. The descriptive powers 
 of the poet, his spirit and his fire are congenial with his objects. 
 Those powers either give us a calm, but heartfelt delight ; they 
 captivate our fancy with their serene, but expanded charms ; or 
 we are irresistibly transported with their rapidity, and their 
 ardour. Without any general, or infatuated prejudice ; but 
 with nature, I hope, and reason, for me.* MiUon might dispense 
 with those rules of accuracy which, perhaps, could not, with 
 propriety, be altogether neglected by any other poet ; though by 
 a generous poet, they will never be minutely observed : and I 
 wish that I had ability and importance enough to enfeeble the 
 reign of their coercion. In his serene and beautiful, and in his 
 tumultuous and tremendous scenery, he arrests our eager at- 
 tention ; he wins all the interest of our heart ; he converts 
 fiction into reality ; he seizes, and holds fasts, by his potent, 
 magical spell, every faculty of the soul ; — by the thunder, and 
 lightning of his muse, or by the persuasion, and pathos of her 
 eloquence. Who can object, and censure, because, in the fourth 
 book of Paradise Lost, Satan, a spirit, invisible by nature, ex- 
 poses himself, in a visible form, to the resentment of his adver- 
 saries ; when, at the side of Eve, in the same book, he starts up, 
 from the toad, in his own shape, at the touch of the spear of 
 Ithuriel ? Who, that is endowed with the power of reciprocating 
 fancy, can thus object, and censure ; can admit comparative 
 trifles into his mind, while, in reading that exquisite book to 
 which I refer, he is embosomed in the bloom and bliss of Para- 
 dise ; while he imbibes the harmonious, the celestial strains of 
 our seraphic poet 1 Who, that hath learned the best of learning ; 
 to refine learning by sentiment ; what active, and expanded 
 breast, born with a passion for the great, and the unbounded, 
 can harbour the frosty logic of criticism ; can attend to the cold 
 severity of reason ; when they would restrain the poetry, the 
 inspiration of Milton ? While sibch a reader, in the sixth book — 
 a book of a more arduous and astonishing structure, is agitated 
 with as excessive rapture as poetry can give, and as human 
 nature can bear ; — will he not treat as a caviller and a trifler ; 
 
 * We congratulate the reader who can understand this sen- 
 tence. 
 
CEITICISM ON THE ENGLISH POETS. 151 
 
 will lie not treat -with a noble contempt or indignation, the 
 critic who shall remind him, that ethereal substances are neces- 
 sarily invulnerable ; that it was, therefore, their own fault, if 
 they were crushed with their armour 1 Will not Johnson ; will 
 not even Addison shrink in his eye ; while, in dread conflict, 
 Michael and Satan are engaged ; the cherubim and seraphim 
 standing aloof, in anxious expectation ; while the heavenly 
 angels are appalled, when the cannon of Pandsemonium begins 
 to play ; while those recollected angels tear up the mountains, 
 and launch them at the foe ; — while all creation shakes at the 
 tempest of this war ; all but the throne of God !" — Pp. 136, 139. 
 
 " By being intimately conversant with Milton, our mental 
 powers and affections are piirified and exalted to their highest 
 degree of sentiment, by another cause, by nature ; I mean, by 
 their communication and contact with a great mind. Milton's 
 genius, as I have already observed, naturally pursued images for 
 which it was formed ; it ranged amidst the vast and unbounded ; 
 every thing, with him, is upon a great scale. Hence, if we are 
 not absolutely in the dregs of mortality, the productions of his 
 genius dilate and sublimate our souls with collatei-al ideas. 
 Certainly we must leave all earthly dross behind us, when we 
 mount, with Milton, to the gold that bespangles the firmament. 
 When we survey the august and stupendous forms of his heroes 
 and demigods ; when we listen to their new, but striking, and 
 inspiring eloquence ; to an eloquence characteristic of their 
 forms ; we feel an ambition for true greatness, for the noblest 
 pursuits and passions. When we travel, with him, through im- 
 measurable space ; through Earth, Erebus, Chaos, and Olympus ; 
 we look back on our own sublunary state with indifference ; on 
 human beings, with a mild superiority of sentiment. Our 
 morality and religion expand with our excursions ; we deem 
 nothing so diminutive as human pride ; indeed, this " great globe 
 itself, and all who it inhabit," seems but specks on the whole 
 creation. If such effects are produced by a great poet, in the 
 mind of the reader, I will not, with other critics, elaborately 
 endeavour to find a moral in Milton." — pp. 157, 158. 
 
 " What an extraordinary being was this man, whether we view 
 him in his moral, religious, or poetical character ! It is almost 
 impossible for an unprejudiced, good, and susceptible mind, 
 which is powerfully actuated with the love of poetry and virtue; 
 it is almost impossible for such a mind to recollect the full 
 memory of Milton, without paying to that memory an enthusi- 
 astic homage ; a kind of inferior adoration. I should suppose 
 that no sensible, and feeling mind could read the following little 
 plain account of him which is transmitted to us, from Dr. Wright, 
 an old clergyman of Dorsetshire, without strong emotions. Tlia 
 
152 stookdaIiE's lbctttbes. 
 
 Doctor tells us that ' Milton lived in a small house ; with but 
 one room, as he thought, on a floor ; where he found him up one 
 pair of stairs ; in a chamber hung with rusty green ; sitting in 
 an elbow chair ; black clothep, but neat enough ; pale, but not 
 cadaverous ; his hands, and fingers, gouty, and with chalkstones; 
 and that among other discourse, he expressed himself to this 
 purpose ; that were he free from the pain which the gout gave 
 him, his blindness would be tolerable.' See Biog. Brit, page 
 3116 : note at SS. Compared with this poor small house ; and 
 with its faded hangings of rusty green, how does the splendour 
 of what Versailles was ; how does the pomp of the Escurial 
 shrink ; and how are they obscured, to a vigorous and well- 
 regulated understanding ; and to an active and generous fancy ! 
 thus compared, to what an insignificance does a Charles the 
 Fifth ; to what an insignificance does a Louis the Fourteenth 
 sink before the august inhabitant of that humble tenement ! 
 before our moral, and poetical hero !" — Pp. 222, 223, 
 
 In the course of the work, there are many brief and often 
 unsatisfactory discussions of literary questions. A flighty 
 enthusiasm is ill adapted to speculation ; for this will often, 
 in the critical department, require some aid from metaphy- 
 sics, the introduction of which, in any considerable degree, 
 our authors deprecates, with an emphatic condemnation of 
 Lord Kames and his Elements of Criticism. It may be true 
 enough, that Lord Kames had not himself a very delicate 
 taste, and that he and other Northern philosophers some- 
 times extinguish all the charm of literary beauty by an 
 extreme frigidness in their process of inquiring why it 
 pleases, and that, in pursuing, this inquiry to the utmost 
 reach of subtilty, they entertain too much contempt for 
 those more obvious laws of feeling, by which any reflective 
 man may ascertain the immediate cause of his pleasure in 
 reading any work of eloquence or true poetry. But we may 
 be permitted to observe, that if, as our author maintains, 
 criticism should confine itself, and if all liberal criticism 
 must confine itself, to explain only the more obvious causes 
 of the pleasure, and the more obvious rules according to 
 which literary performances must be executed in order to 
 impart such pleasure, it would seem almost superfluous to 
 comment at all on works of taste, since, thus far, no reader 
 of sense will need the critic's assistance, or thank him for 
 obtruding it. "We can feel but very slight obligation to a 
 
CEITICI8M ON THE ENGLISH POETS. Iu3 
 
 critic, who is to do little more than tell us that this passage 
 is beautiful, and the other sublime ; we were perfectly sen- 
 sible of this 'beauty and sublimity before, and of an obvious 
 and superficial cause of its pleasing us. It is a deeper ex- 
 planation that we have to ask of the critic ; we would wish 
 to ask him, in the general, what is that relation between the 
 constitution of our nature and the qualities of sublimity and 
 beauty which empowers those qualities to affect us so much, 
 and, in particular, which of the laws or principles of that 
 relation is concerned in the emotion we feel in any given 
 instance of the effect of fine writing. If he is not prepared 
 to do tl)is, or at least to attempt it, we cannot receive him 
 with any high degree of respect ; if he only proceeds to 
 declare, here and there, his feelings of admiration, we shall 
 be disposed to tell him that we also can/eeZ, but that neither 
 his feelings nor ours will be admitted by a third party, as 
 the standard of truth in criticism ; and we shall endeavour 
 to persuade him, as we ourselves are persuaded, that we may 
 all gain a good deal of advantage by passing some time in 
 the company of the Caledonian philosophers, who will en- 
 deavour to explain to us why we feel, and to ascertain some 
 rules, independent of caprice, for distinguishing when we 
 feel right. And our author may be assured, that no man 
 ever had more occasion for a little of this philosophic lore, 
 than he has himself, according to the testimony of this very 
 performance. 
 
 In the lectures on Dryden, nothing struck us more than 
 the lax morality of our author, who is, notwithstanding, a 
 zealous declaimer for virtue throughout the book ; but he is 
 so infatuated with admiration of genius, that he seems to 
 think it can do no wrong, as having something very like a 
 privilege to frame a system of morality of its own, in con- 
 tempt of that which has been instituted by the Creator of 
 the world. Dryden very powerfully assisted to aggravate 
 the depravity of the age in which he lived ; and yet, from a 
 consideration of his talents, his ardent poetical feelings, hia 
 poverty, the vices of his age, and the persecution of church- 
 men, who with unparalleled malignity and presumption took 
 it upon them to censure the profligacy of his writings, the 
 apologist contrives to make out that Dryden was a very 
 proper man, and believes he «ras not without " the 
 
Io4 STOCEDALr.s' LECTTJEES. 
 
 support and approbation of conscious virtue." He closes 
 the case with the following passage, which, if it had appear- 
 ed ill an abler work, would have deserved the last possible 
 severity of condemnation. 
 
 " Dryden's plays are licentious ; and so far they tend to be 
 unfavourable to virtue. But when he wrote, they would infalli- 
 bly have been damned if they had been more chastened by mo- 
 rality. Congreve was never in the unhappy circumstances of 
 Dryden, yet his comedies are far from being delicate. He knew 
 that the manners and taste of his time, demanded some moral 
 sacrifices, if he meant that his plays should be successful. How- 
 ever, if stall-fed theology can convince me, that it -^rould rather 
 have starved than have written as loosely as Dryn^en wrote, I 
 will give our poet no quarter for his dramatic immoralities." — 
 Pp. 381, 382. 
 
 As to Dryden's poverty, and its attendant miseries, which 
 have excited so much generous compassion and indignation 
 in the present and many other authors, we are afraid we do 
 not feel all the sympathy that we ought. "We know indeed, 
 very well, that nature has made it absolutely necessary to a 
 great poet to consume at least a hundred times as much in 
 diet and clothing as must suffice for one of us critics (and 
 this, by the way, is very likely to be one main cause of the 
 hostility which we are sometimes reputed to feel against the 
 tuneful tribe, whose voracity threatens us with famine) — 
 but still we are very apt to excuse our insensibility with 
 regard to Dryden, when we are told by Congreve that his 
 hereditary income was a " competency," though he pleads it 
 was " little more than a bare one," when we hear of his 
 receiving for one dedication a present of £500 (a sum of 
 more value than £1,500 now), and when we know that he 
 had a prodigious facility of composition, and might as a 
 writer, have been popular without being vicious. Even this 
 apologist, however, censures him for the debasement to 
 which he reduced himself in his notorious dedications. As 
 to the versatility of Dryden's genius, and the very high 
 literary excellence of many parts of his writings, we should 
 coincide with any language of admiration short of that ex- 
 travagant one habitually employed by Mr. Stockdale. We 
 will make one more display of the quality of his diction, by 
 
CEITICISM QN THE ENGLISH POETS. 155 
 
 extracting, from the conclusion of the lectures on Dryden, a 
 passage ou the influence of poetry. 
 
 " It gives a more hideous deformity to vice ; — more celestial 
 charms to virtue ; the heaven-desoended magic of poetry accom- 
 panies its disciple through every transition of his life : — it 
 actuates and brightens his waking hours ; it whispers peace and 
 serenity to his dreams ; it habitually works his mind to a gentle 
 emotion; — a pleasing agitation; — a delightful luxuriance ot 
 fancy. The surrounding objects take a similar relief ; and he is 
 in a stronger and livelier contact with nature. — This poetical 
 and mighty magic, heightens, to his view, the tints and fra- 
 grance of the spring ; it gives a purer transparency to the 
 waters ; a more striking scenery to the course of a majestic 
 river ; it elevates the mountains ; — it aggrandizes the dread 
 magnificence of Heaven ; — it inspires a demonstration of the 
 existence, and providence of a God ! We see, and we/ee?, that he 
 was the author of our solar system ; — and that ' he made the stars 
 ahor 
 
 " All this would seem Arabic or romance ; or even madness, 
 to those whose reading goes not beyond reviews, and whose 
 virtue goes not beyond discretion. But I flatter myself," &e. &c. 
 Pp. 401, 402. 
 
 Chatterton occupies nearly 400 pages, and gives a bound- 
 less scope to all the lecturer's excesses, which rush forth in 
 denunciations of the illiberality and ingratitude of the age 
 and nation, in fierce invectives against Horace Walpole, Mr. 
 Bryant, and the good burghers of Bristol, adorations of the 
 "divine genius," who is now in the " Elysian fields," in 
 ■which, says Mr. S., " I have no doubt his vindicated and 
 beatified soul enjoys eternal felicity," and in awful intima^ 
 tions that the Almighty may never again " grant an equal 
 phenomenon to an ungrateful world." The whole volumi- 
 nous amplification about this unfortunate young man is 
 unnecessary and useless in a literary view, and parts of it are, 
 in a moral one, really very disgusting. His genius is extolled 
 to the last monstrosity of hyperbole ; his persevering false- 
 hoods relating to the poems, and his well-known vicious 
 habits, are extenuated into innocence, if not into merit, and 
 even the spirit that impelled him to his wretched exit is 
 partly applauded. He was a great genius, the world treated 
 him unhandsomely, and therefore he was absolved from 
 moral and religious obligation. It was presumption to can- 
 
130 stockdale's lectuees. 
 
 Bure liim if he scoffed at Christianity, if he abandoned 
 himself to dissipation, and if he destroyed himself because 
 he had not the means of supporting it. "We cannot profess 
 to know how far any one will think such moral absurdity 
 is atoned for, by the following sort of compliments to 
 Christianity : 
 
 " A most generous and heavenly system ! which will always 
 have the love, and the zeal of every sensible head ; which is 
 actuated by an honest and feeling heart ; of every independent, 
 and ingenuous mind ; whether he is smiled or frowned on, 
 by the hierarchy : who, by their luxury, and pride, and pomp of 
 life, are the representatives of any thing rather than of the 
 Christian religion, So remote, indeed, is the time in which our 
 Saviour Uved ; so extraordinary and astonishing are his mission 
 and character ; and so far from the constant course of nature 
 are all the other objects which ushered and accompanied his 
 revelation, that an honest and virtuous man may, to some de- 
 gree, be a sceptic ; but he wiU be a sceptic with that modesty and 
 moderation which the subject of his scepticism deserves : while 
 he doubts, he wiU revere ; while he fears that a system which 
 provides more effectually than all others, foi the well-being, for 
 the comfortable existence of mankind, may be human he will 
 most ardently wish that it may be divine ! Such was the 
 scepticism of the unprejudiced and illustrious Eousseau. He 
 states the main topics and arguments in favour of Christianity, 
 and against it, when it is considered as a divine revelation, per- 
 spicuously and completely ; and he gives them all their force. 
 I must honestly acknowledge, that the result of this fair and 
 dispassionate reasoning is a reluctant diffidence with a pre- 
 ponderance of belief. 
 
 " Such was the scepticism of the elegant and sublime Eousseau; 
 whose reasoning faculties were as acute and vigorous, as his 
 imagination was warm and luxuriant And I must think it an 
 unquestionable truth, that deliberate and vindictive hostilities 
 against Christianity ; the best guide ti our lives ; the best 
 soother of our woes ; the best friend to aU true pleasure ; were 
 never maintained by any man who was, at once, good and great. 
 To rail at it, or to ridicule it, are infrllible proofs of a bad taste, 
 and of a bad heart. To persecute this divine institution, from 
 the press, with a malignity of the deepest dye ; to attack it with 
 a savage ferocity ; to attempt to undermine it, with a miserable 
 and illiterate sophistry ; to make it the subject of low, clownish 
 gambols of the mind ; which pass with the writer, and with hia 
 gang, for wit ; this gothic warfare was reserved for our intellec* 
 
rOX S JAMES THE SECOND. 157 
 
 tual ruffians and assassins ; it was reserved for the literary 
 profligacy of the present times." — Pp. 139 142. 
 
 "VVe lament 'that a man, who has had so many years 
 granted him for the investigation of the evidences of Chris- 
 tianity, should be approaching near the period of his quitting 
 the w^orld, with so slender a hold on its consolations, and so 
 dark an eclipse of its hopes. And how melancholy it is to 
 hear him avow, that a very different kind of hope animates 
 his ambition in the evening of his life. 
 
 " To liberal, benevolent, and generous minds, whose good 
 wishes I hope to deserve, I here honestly and openly declare, 
 that I am not a little ambitious of a literary immortality ; and it 
 would gratify me extremely to feel the rays of its orient lustre 
 warm, and animate my languid frame before it descends to the 
 tomb." 
 
 On this we have only two short and simple remarks ; 
 first, this immortality does not await him, and secondly, it 
 would be of no use to him if it did. 
 
 PEESONAL VIETrE IN ITS EELATION TO 
 POLITICAL EMINENCE. 
 
 4 History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II. ; with 
 an Introductory Chapter. By the Eight Hon. Charles James 
 Fox. To which is added an Appendix. 4to. 1808. 
 
 Mant of our celebrated countrymen will always be recol- 
 lected with regret by persons who take the most serious 
 view of human characters and affairs ; but there is no name 
 in the English records of the past century that excites in 
 us so much of this feeling as that of the author of this 
 work. The regret arises from the consideration of what 
 such a man might have been, and might have done. As to 
 talents, perhaps no eminent man was ever the subject of so 
 little controversy, or ever more completely deterred even 
 the most perverse spirit of singularity from hazarding a 
 
158 fox's JAMES THE SECOITD. 
 
 hint of doubt or dissent by the certainty of becoming utterly 
 ridiculous. To pretend to talk of any superior man was the 
 same thing, except among a few of the tools or dupes of 
 party, as to name generals to whom Hannibal, or Scipio, or 
 Julius Csesar, ought to have been but second in command ; 
 or poets from whose works the mind must descend to those 
 of Shakspere and Milton. If all political partialities could 
 be suspended in forming the judgment, we suppose the 
 great majority of intelligent men would pronounce Pox the 
 greatest orator of modern times ! and they would bs careful 
 to fix the value of this verdict by observing, that they used 
 the term orator in the most dignified sense in which it can 
 be understood. Other speakers have had more of what is 
 commonly, and perhaps not improperly, called brilliance, 
 more novelty and luxuriance of imagery, more sudden 
 flashes, points, and surprises, and vastly more magnificence 
 of language. Burke, especially, was such a speaker ; and 
 during his oration the man of intelligence and taste was 
 delighted to enthusiasm in feeling that something so new as 
 to defy all conjectural anticipation was sure to burst on him 
 at every fourth or fifth sentence, and in beholding a thou- 
 sand forms and phantoms of thought, as if suddenly brought 
 from all parts of the creation, most luckily and elegantly 
 associated with a subject to which no mortal had ever 
 imagined that any one of them could have been related 
 before. Tet this very auditor, if he had wished to have a 
 perplexing subject luminously simplified, or a vast one con- 
 tracted according to a just scale to his understanding; if 
 he bad wished to put himself in distinct possession of the 
 strongest arguments for maintaining the same cause in 
 another place ; if he had been anxious to qualify himself for 
 immediate action in an affair in which he had not yet been 
 able to satisfy himself in deliberation ; or if he had been 
 desirous for his coadjutors in any important concern to 
 have a more perfect comprehension of its nature, and a 
 more absolute conviction as to the right principles and 
 measures to be adopted respecting it, than all his efforts 
 could give them, he would have wished, beyond all others, to 
 draw Fox's mind to bear on the subject. Eor ourselves, we 
 think we never heard any man who dismissed us from the 
 argument on a debated topic with such a feeling of satisfied 
 
CHAEACTEE OF FOX's ELOQUENCE. 159 
 
 and final conviction, or such a competence to tell why we 
 were convinced. There was, in the view in which subjects 
 were placed by him, something like the daylight, that simple 
 clearness which makes things conspicuous and does not 
 make them glare, which adds no colour or form, but purely 
 makesvisiblein perfection therealcolourand form of all things 
 round ; a kind of light leas amusing than that of magnificent 
 lustres or a thousand coloured lamps, and less fascinating 
 and romantic than that of the moon, but which is immeasu- 
 rably preferred when we are bent on sober business, and not 
 at leisure, or not in the disposition to wander delighted 
 among beautiful shadows and delusions. It is needless to 
 say that Pox possessed in a high degree wit and fancy ; but 
 superlative intellect was the grand distinction of his 
 eloquence ; the pure force of sense, of plain, downright 
 sense was so great, that it would have given a character oi 
 sublimity to his eloquence, even if it had never once been 
 aided by a happy image or a brilliant explosion. The 
 grandeur of plain sense would not have been deemed an 
 absurd phrase, by any man who had heard one of Eox's best 
 speeches. 
 
 And as to the moral features of the character, all who 
 knew him concur in ascribing to him a candour, a good- 
 nature, simplicity of manners, and an energy of feeling, 
 which made him no less interesting as a friend, and might 
 have made him no less noble as a philanthropist than he was 
 admirable as a senator. 
 
 We have very often surrendered our imagination to the 
 interesting, but useless and painful employment, of tracing 
 out the career which might have been run by a man thus 
 pre-eminently endowed. We have imagined hira first risiilg 
 up through a youth of unrivalled promise to the period of 
 maturity unstained by libertinism, scorning to think for one 
 moment of a competition with the heroes of Bond Street, or 
 any other class of the minions of fashion, and maintaining 
 the highest moral principles in contempt of the profligacy 
 which pressed close around him. It Is an unfortunate state 
 of mind in any reader of these pages, whose risibility is 
 excited, when we add to the sketch that solemn reverence 
 for the Deity, and expectation of a future judgment, without 
 which it is a pure matter of fact that there is no such thing 
 
160 rOX'S JAMES THE SECOND, 
 
 on earth as an invincible and universal virtue. Instead of un- 
 bounded licentiousness, our imaginary young statesman has 
 shown his contempt of parsimony by the most generous modes 
 of expense which humanity could suggest, and his regard 
 for the softer sex, by appropriating one of the best and most 
 interesting of them in the fidelity of the tenderest relation. 
 We have imagined him employing the time which other young 
 men of rank and spirit gave to dissipation, in a strenuous 
 prosecution of moral and political studies ; and yet mingling 
 so far with men of various classes, as to know intimately of 
 what materials society and governments are composed. We 
 have imagined him as presenting himself at length on the 
 public scene, with an air and a step analogous and rival to 
 the aspect and sinew of the most powerfid combatant that 
 ever entered the field of Olympia. 
 
 At this entrance on public action, we have viewed him 
 solemnly determining to make absolute principle the sole 
 rule of his conduct in every instance, to the last sentence 
 he should speak or write on public affairs ; to give no 
 pledges, and make no concessions, to any party whatever ; 
 to expose and prosecute, with the same unrelenting justice, 
 the generally equal corruption of ministries and oppositions; 
 to cooperate with any party in the particular case in which 
 he should judge it in the right, and in all other cases to 
 protest impartially against them all ; and to say the whole 
 truth, when other pretended friends of public virtue and 
 the people durst only to say the half, for fear of provoking 
 an examination of their own conduct, or for fear of abso- 
 lutely shutting the door against all chance of future ad- 
 vancement. We view him holding up to contempt the 
 artifices and intrigues of statesmen, and hated abundantly 
 for his pains, no doubt, but never in danger of a retaliation 
 of exposure. He would not have submitted to be found in 
 the society of even the very highest persons in the state, 
 on any other terms of intercourse than those of virtue and 
 wisdom ; he would have felt it a duty peculiarly sacred and 
 cogent to make his most animated efforts to counteract any 
 corruption which he might perceive finding its way into 
 such society, and if those efforts failed, to withdraw himself 
 BO entirely as to be clear of all shadow of responsibility. 
 Virtue of this quality would be in little hazard of afflicting 
 
WHAT rOI MIGHT HATE BEEIT. 161 
 
 any government with a violent impatience to have the man 
 for a coadjutor, and therefore our imagination never placed 
 him oftener or longer in any of the high offices of state, 
 than about such a space as Pox vras actually so privileged ; 
 indeed a considerably shorter time, for even had it been 
 possible that any set of men would have acceded at first to 
 such conditions of coalition as he would have insisted on, 
 there could hardly have failed to arise, in the course of a 
 month or two, some question on which this high and inflex- 
 ible virtue must have dissented so totally, and opposed so 
 strenuously, as to have necessitated, on the one part or the 
 other, a relinquishment of office; and it could not be 
 doubtful one instant on which part this surrender must 
 take place, when the alternative lay between a man of pure 
 virtue and the ordinary tribe of statesmen. But office 
 would not have been requisite to the influence of such a 
 heroic and eloquent patriot. Our imagination has repre- 
 sented him as not only maiataining, in the public council of 
 the nation, the cause of justice in all its parts, sometimes 
 with the support of other men of talents, and sometimes 
 without it, but also as feeling that his public duty extended 
 much beyond aU. the efibrts he could make in that place. 
 As it is absurd to expect integrity in a government, while 
 the people are too ignorant or too inattentive to form any 
 right judgment of its proceedings, and as no person ia the 
 whole country would have been so qualified to present 
 before it simple and comprehensive illustrations of its situ- 
 ation and interests, or would indeed have been a tenth part 
 so much attended to, we have imagined him publishing 
 from time to time instructions to the people, in the form of 
 large tracts, stating, with all his unequalled clearness and 
 comprehension, the duties of the people with respect to the 
 conduct of government, and the nature and tendency of the 
 important questions and measures of the times, with an 
 anxious and reiterated effort to impart just views on the 
 general topics of political science, such as the rights of the 
 people, the foundation of the authority of governments, the 
 principles of taxation, and peace and war. If these great 
 duties allowed any time for the more formal schemes of 
 literary performance, he might have taken up some period 
 of the English or any other history, which afforded the best 
 
 V 
 
162 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 ocnasions for illustrating the most interesting points of 
 political truth, and forming a set of permanent national 
 lessons. But we could almost have regretted to see him so 
 engaged, since very often the ascertaining of some very- 
 inconsiderable fact, or the unravelling of some perplexity, 
 which, though of consequence possibly to the completeness 
 of the history, is not of the smallest importance to its use, 
 must have consumed the labour and time which might have 
 produced a powerful illustration of some subject im- 
 mediately momentous to the public welfare, and prevented 
 more mischief than all histories of England ever did 
 good. 
 
 During this whole career, the favourite of our imagination 
 keeps far aloof from all personal turpitude ; and Howard 
 was just as capable of insulting misery, or John de "Witt of 
 carrying on a paltry intrigue, or Eustace St. Pierre of 
 betraying his feUow-citizens, as our statesman of mingling 
 with the basest refuse of human nature at Newmarket and 
 the gambling house, not to mention houses of any other 
 description. We should have suspected ourselves of some 
 feverish dream or transient delirium, if our fancy had ever 
 dared so monstrous a representation, as that of the elo- 
 quence which could fascinate and enlighten every tender 
 and every intelligent friend, and influence senates whose 
 decrees would influence the destinies of the world, expend- 
 ing itself in discussions with jockeys, and debates with 
 black-legs ; of the intellect which could hold the balance of 
 national contests, or devise schemes for the benefit of all 
 mankind, racked with calculations on dice and cards ; of the 
 vehement accuser of public prodigality transferring thou- 
 sands upon thousands, at the cast of these dice and cards, 
 to wretches who deserve to be cauterized out of the body 
 politic, without making, at the same time, any very careful 
 inquiry, whether the claims of all his industrious trades- 
 men had been satisfied. If the virtue of other statesmen 
 and patriots was found melting away in the arms of 
 wantons, or suffocated with the fumes of wine, or reduced 
 to that last consummation of dishonour, a subscription of 
 friends to repair a fortune dissipated in the most ignoble 
 uses, our patriot would have been incensed that such men 
 should presume to make speeches against corruption, and 
 profane the name of pubUc virtue. 
 
WHAT FOX MIGHT HATE BEEN. 163 
 
 If, in pursuing his career to a conclusion, we placed him 
 in office towards the close of his life, we beheld him most 
 earnest, we will say devoutly earnest, to render the last 
 part of his course more useful than all that had preceded, 
 by a bold application of those principles which he had 
 maintained through life, to the purposes in which alone 
 they can be of any use, the practical schemes of reform ; 
 and if he found it impossible to effect or even to propose, 
 those reforms he had so many thousand times averred to be 
 essential to the safety of the state, indignantly abandoning, 
 before death summoned him, all concern in political office, 
 with an honest, and public, and very loud declaration of its 
 incurable corruption. In virtue of the privilege belonging 
 to all creators of fictitious personages, we should certainly 
 have invoked death to a premature removal of our favourite, 
 if we could have fancied the remotest possibility that he 
 might, in the last, and what ought to be the most illustrious 
 period of his life, sink into the sUent witness of aggravated 
 and rapidly progressive corruptions, the approver of oppres- 
 sive taxes on people of slender means, and the eloquent 
 defender of sinecures held by lords. But we could not 
 suffer the thought, that the personage whose course we had 
 followed through every triumph of virtue, could at last, for 
 the sake of a few sickly months of office, deny his degraded 
 country the consolation of being able to cite, after he was 
 gone, the name of one consistent and unconquerable patriot 
 at least, in contrast to the legion of domestic spoilers and 
 betrayers ; or refuse himself the laurels which were ready to 
 be conferred on him by the hand of death : no, we beheld 
 him retaining to the last stage, the same decisive rectitude 
 which ennobled aU the preceding ; and after humbly com- 
 mitting himself to the Diviae mercy, in the prospect of 
 soon removing to a state for which no tumults of public life 
 had ever been suffered to interrupt his anxious preparation, 
 realizing what the poet predicted of a former statesman, 
 
 . " ' Oh, save my country, Heavea ! ' shall be thy last." 
 
 How pensive has been the sentiment with which we have 
 said, all this is no more than wTiat ^ox might lime been ,- 
 nor has this feeling been in the least beguiled by the splen- 
 dour of all the eulogiums, by the fragrance of all the incense, 
 
 H 2 
 
161 rOX's JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 conferred and offered since Hs death. His name stands 
 conspicuous on the list of those, who have failed to accom- 
 plish the commission on which their wonderful endowments 
 would seem to tell that they had been sent to the world, by 
 the Master of human and all other spirits. It is thus that 
 mankind are doomed to see a succession of individuals rising 
 among them, with capacities for rendering them the most 
 inestimable services, but faithless, for the most part, to their 
 high vocation, and either never attempting the generous 
 labours which invite their talents, or combining with these 
 labours the vices which frustrate their efficacy. Our late 
 distinguished statesman's exertions for the public welfare 
 were reaUy so great, and in many instances, we have no 
 doubt, so well intended, that it is peculiarly painful to be- 
 hold him defrauding such admirable powers and efforts of 
 their effect, by means of those parts of his conduct in which 
 he sunk to a level with the least respectable of mankind ; 
 and we think no man within our memory has given so 
 melancholy an example of this self-counteraction. It is im- 
 possible for the friends of our constitution and of human 
 nature not to feel a warm admiration for Pox's exertions, 
 whatever their partial motives and whatever their occasional 
 excesses might be, in vindication of the great principles of 
 liberty, in hostility to the rage for war, and in extirpation of 
 the slave trade. This last abomination, which had gradually 
 lost, even on the basest part of the nation, that hold which 
 it had for a while maintained by a delusive notion of policy, 
 and was fast sinking under the hatred of all that could pre- 
 tend to humanity or decency, was destined ultimately to 
 fall by his hand, at a period so nearly contemporary with 
 the end of his career, as to give the remembrance of his 
 death somewhat of a similar advantage of association to 
 that, by which the death of the Hebrew champion is always 
 recollected in connexion with the fall of Dagon's temple. A 
 great object was accomplished, and it is fair to attribute the 
 event, in no small degree, to his persevering support of that 
 most estimable individual who was the leader of the design: 
 but as to his immense display of talent on the wide ground 
 of general politics, on the theory of true freedom, and 
 popular rights ; on the great and increasing influence of the 
 crown ; on the corruption and reform of public institutions; 
 
rOX S BElF-OOrNTEEACTION. 165 
 
 on severe investigation of public expenditure; on the 
 national vigilance proper to be exercised over the conduct 
 of government ; and on the right of any nation to change, 
 when it judges necessary, both the persons and the form of 
 its government ; we have observed with the deepest mortifi- 
 cation, times without number, the very slight and transient 
 effect on the public mind of a more argumentative and 
 luminous eloquence, than probably we are ever again to see 
 irradiating those subjects, and urging their importance. 
 Both principles and practices, tending toward arbitrary 
 power and national degradation, were progressively gaining 
 ground during the much greater part of the time that he 
 was assaulting them with fire and sword ; and the people, 
 notwithstanding it was their own cause that he was main- 
 taining by this persevering warfare, though they were 
 amused indeed with his exploits, could hardly be induced to 
 regard him otherwise than as a capital prize-fighter, and 
 scarcely thanked him for the fortitude and energy which he 
 devoted to their service. He was allowed to be a most ad- 
 mirable man for a leader of opposition, but not a mortal 
 could be persuaded to regard that opposition, even in his 
 hands, as bearing any resemblance to that which we have 
 been accustomed to ascribe to Cato, an opposition of which 
 pure virtue was the motive, and all corruptions whatever 
 the object. If the very same things which were said by 
 Fox, had been advanced by the person whose imaginary 
 character we have sketched in the preceding pages, they 
 would have become the oracles of the people from Berwick 
 to Land's End ; corrupters and intriguers would have felt 
 an impression of awe when he rose to speak ; no political 
 doctors or nostrums could have cured their nerves of a 
 strange vibration at the sound of his words — a vibration very 
 apt to reach into their consciences or their fears ; there 
 would have been something mysterious and appalling in his 
 voice, a sound as if a multitude of voices articulated in one ; 
 and though his countenance should have looked as candid 
 and friendly as Fox's did, these gentlemen would have been 
 sometimes subject to certain fretful, peevish lapses of imagi- 
 nation much like those in which Macbeth saw the apparition 
 of Banquo, and would have involuntarily apostrophized him 
 as the dreaded agent of detection and retribution. They 
 
166 rOX'S JAMES THB SECOnJ. 
 
 would have felt themselves in the presence of their masterj 
 for they would have been taught to recognize, in this one 
 man, the most real representative of the people, whose will 
 would generally be soon declared as substantially identical 
 with his opinions. 
 
 How then did it come to pass, that 'Fox had no such 
 •influence on the national mi/id, or on the government? The 
 imswer is perfectly obvious, and it forms a very serious 
 admonition to all patriots who really wish to promote the 
 welfare of the people, by an opposition to corruptions of the 
 state. The talents, and the long and animated exertions, of 
 the most eloquent of all our countrymen failed, plainly be- 
 cause the people placed no confidence in his virtue, or in 
 other words because they would never be persuaded to 
 attribute virtue to his character. 
 
 A signal notoriety of dissipation accompanied the outset 
 of his public career. WhUe the political party which he 
 opposed might be very reasonably astonished that the en- 
 gagements of the turf, of the bagnio, and of the sanctuaries 
 dedicated to the enshrined and associated imps of chance 
 and fraud, should seem to divert no part of the energy with 
 which they were attacked in their quarters at St. Stephen's, 
 and while the tribes of bloods, bucks, rakes, and other 
 worthy denominations and fraternities might be proud to 
 have for their leader a genius, who could at the same time 
 beat so many grey-beards of the state on their own ground, 
 the sober part of the nation deplored or despised, according 
 to the more generous or more cynical character of the indi- 
 viduals, the splendid talent which could degrade itself to so 
 much folly and immorality. Too great a share of the same 
 fatal reputation attended the distinguished statesman, with 
 whatever truth, duriag the much greater part of his life. 
 We say, with whatever truth ; for we know no more of his 
 private history than what has been without contradiction 
 circulated in the talk and the printed chronicles of scandal ; 
 with exaggerations and fictions, no doubt ; but no public 
 man can have such a reputation without having substantially 
 such a character. And by a law, as deep in human nature 
 as any of its principles of distinction between good and evil, 
 it is impossible to give respect or confidence to a man who 
 habitually disregards some of the primary ordinances of 
 
rOX'S MOEAL EEPTTTATION. 167 
 
 morality. The nation never confided ia our eloquent states- 
 man's iategrity; those who admired every thing in his 
 talents, and much in his qualities, regretted that his name 
 never ceased to excite in their minds the idea of gamesters 
 and bacchanals, even after he was acknowledged to have 
 withdrawn himself from such society. Those who held his 
 Opinions, were almost sorry that he should have held them, 
 while they saw with what malicious exultation they who 
 rejected them could cite his moral reputation, in place of 
 argument, to invalidate them. In describing this unfortu- 
 nate effect of the character, we are simply asserting known 
 matter of fact. There is not one advocate of the principles 
 or of the man, who has not to confess what irksome and 
 sUencing rebuffs he has experienced in the form of reference 
 to moral character ; we have observed it continually for 
 many years, in every part of England which we have fre- 
 quented; and we have seen practical and most palpable 
 proof, that no man, even of the highest talents, can ever 
 acquire, or at least retain, much influence on the public 
 mind in the character of remonstrant and reformer, without 
 the reality, or at any rate the invulnerable reputation, of 
 virtue, in the comprehensive sense of the word, as com- 
 prisiug every kind of morality prescribed by the highest 
 moral code acknowledged in a Christian nation. Public 
 men and oppositionists may inveigh against abuses, and 
 parade in patriotism, as long as they please ; they will find 
 that even one manifest vice will preclude all public confi- 
 dence in their principles, and therefore render futile the 
 strongest exertions of talent ; a slight flaw in otherwise the 
 best tempered blade of Toledo, will soon expose the baflled 
 wight that wields it to either the scorn or pity of the spec- 
 tators, and to the victorious arm of his antagonist. _ It has 
 possibly been said, that a man may maintain nice principles 
 of integrity in the prosecution of public affairs, though his 
 conscience and practice are very defective in matters of 
 private morality. But this would never be believed, even if 
 it were true : the universal conviction of mankind rejects it 
 when it is attempted, in practical cases, to be made the 
 foundation of confidence. 80 far is this from being believed, 
 that even a conspicuous and complete reformation of private 
 morals if it be but recent, is still an unsatisfactory security 
 
168 fox's JAMES THE SECOBU. 
 
 for public virtue ; and a very long probation of personal 
 character is indispensable, as a kind of quarantine for a man 
 once deeply contaminated to undergo, in order to engage 
 any real confidence in the integrity of his pubUe conduct ; 
 nor can he ever engage it in the same degree, as if a uni- 
 form and resolute virtue had marked his private conduct 
 from the beginning. But even if it were admitted, that all 
 the virtues of the statesman might flourish in spite of the 
 vices of the man, it would have been of no use, as an argu- 
 ment for confidence in the integrity of Fox's principles as a 
 statesman, after the indelible stigma which they received in 
 the famous coalition with Lord North. In what degree that 
 portion of the people, that approved Pox's political opinions, 
 really confided in his integrity as a firm and consistent 
 statesman, was strongly brought to the proof, at the time of 
 his appointment as one of the principals of the late admini- 
 stration. His admirers in general expressed their expectar- 
 tions in terms of great reserve ; they rather vnshed, than 
 absolutely dared to believe, that it was impossible he should 
 not prefer a fidelity to those great principles and plans of 
 extensive reform, which he had so strenuously inculcated, 
 to any office or associates in office that should require the 
 sacrifice of those plans, and that he would not surely have 
 taken a high official station, without some stipulations for 
 carrying them, at least partially, into efiect. But they 
 recollected the tenor of his life; and though they were 
 somewhat disappointed, and deeply grieved, to find him at 
 his very entrance on office proposing and defending one of 
 the rankest abuses, and afterwards inviolably keeping the 
 peace vrith the grand total of abuses, in both the domestic 
 and the Indian government, they did, at least many of them, 
 confess, that they had always trembled for the consequence 
 of bringing to such an ordeal a political integrity which, 
 while they had sometimes for a moment almost half-believed 
 in it, they had always been obliged to refer to some far 
 difierent principle from a firm personal morality, supported 
 by a religious conscience. 
 
 We have remarked on the slight hold which our great 
 orator had on the mind of the nation at large ; it was morti- 
 fying also to observe, how little ascendancy his prodigious 
 powers maintained over the minds of senators and ministers 
 
ESTIMATE OF TOX's CHABACTEB. 169 
 
 It v/as irksome to witness that air of easy indifference, with 
 which his most poignant reproaches were listened to ; that 
 readiness of reply to his nervous representations of the 
 calamities or injustice of war ; the carelessness often mani- 
 fested while he was depicting the distresses of the people ; 
 and the impudent gaiety and sprightliness with which arrant 
 corruption could show, and defend, and applaud itself ia his 
 presence. It is not for us to pretend to judge of what 
 materials ministers and senators are composed ; but we did 
 often think, that if eloquence of such intensity, and so 
 directed," had been corroborated ia its impetus by the autho- 
 ritative force which severe virtue can give to the stroke of 
 talent, some of them would have been repressed into a very 
 different kind of feeling and manners from those which we 
 had the mortification to behold : we did think that, a man 
 thus armed at once with the spear and the aegis, might have 
 caused it to be felt, by stress of dire compulsion, " How 
 awful goodness is." 
 
 On the whole, we shall always regard Pox as a memor- 
 able and mournful example of a gigantic agent, at once 
 determined to labour for the public, and dooming himself to 
 labour almost in vain. Our estimate of his talents pre- 
 cludes all hope or fear of any second example of such 
 powerful labours, or such humiliating failure of effect. We 
 wish the greatest genius on earth, whoever he may be, 
 might write an inscription for our eminent statesman's 
 monument to express, in the most strenuous of all possible 
 modes of thought and phrase, the truth and the warning, 
 that no man will ever be accepted to serve mankind in the 
 highest departments of utility, without an eminence of 
 virtue that can sustain him in the noble defiance — Which of 
 you convicts me of sin ? 
 
 We can see that a good life of Fox wiU never be given to 
 the public. If his biography is written by any of his inti- 
 mate friends, who alone possess competent materials, they 
 will suppress, and may even be excused on the ground of 
 affection, and propriety for suppressing, many things which 
 are of the very vitality of the character. The historian of 
 such a man ought to be at once knowing, philosophical, and 
 impressed with the principles of religion ; and it may easily 
 be guessed whether such a writer is likely to be found, or u 
 
170 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 he were found, to be put in possession of all the requisite 
 information. We must notice a sentence ia Lord Holland's 
 preface (p, xlv.) : — 
 
 " It is true, that at the melancholy period of his death, advan- 
 tage was taken of the interest excited by all that concerned him, 
 to impose upon the public a variety of memoirs and anecdotes 
 (in the form of pamphlets), as unfounded in fact, as they were 
 painful to his friends and injurious to his memory. The confi- 
 dent pretensions with which many of those publications were 
 ushered into the woi'ld, may have given them some little circu- 
 lation at the time, but the internal evidence of their falsehood 
 was sufficiently strong to counteract any impression which thw: 
 contents might be calculated to produce. It is not therefore with 
 a view of exposing such misrepresentation, that any authentic 
 account of the life of Mr. Fox can be deemed necessary." 
 
 His Lordship is quite mistaken. These pubKcations 
 have produced a permanent effect on the generality of their 
 readers. They may not indeed implicitly believe every 
 particular these pamphlets contain, but there is not one 
 reader in twenty that doubts of their being mainly true. 
 How should the case be otherwise ? Persons remote from 
 the sphere of Mr. Fox's acquaintance, can detect no internal 
 evidence of falsehood. They have all heard anecdotes, 
 which they have never heard contradicted, of his earlier 
 habits, adventures, companions, and places of resort ; and 
 when they are furnished with a large addition of what seems 
 to them quite of a piece with what they have heard or read 
 before, how are they to perceive any internal evidence of 
 falsehood ? or who can blame them for believing straight 
 forward, if there be no contradiction between one part of 
 the production they are reading and another, and no 
 material contradicion between the several productions they 
 happen to meet with ? The substance of these pamphlets 
 is so settled in the minds of the great majority of their 
 readers, as the true history and character of Mr. Tox, that 
 a formal work from one of his friends would have no small 
 difficulty in displacing the belief. They will judge, how- 
 ever, whether they ought not to attempt it, and whether 
 justice to him be not a superior consideration to any points 
 of delicacy relating to his surviving associates or opponents 
 in political concerns. 
 
fox's THEOEY of HISTOEr. 171 
 
 " TeUing the story of those times," was Mr. Pox's 
 description of history. But if we try, by a strong effort of 
 imagination, to carry ourselves back to any given period of 
 past times, and if we take back along with us the history 
 which professes to tell the story, it will be striking to con- 
 sider how little it is in the power of history to perform. 
 Let our country be the scene and any past age the time. 
 That country at the time, perhaps, contained seven or eight 
 millions of human beings. Each one of these had his 
 employments, interests, and schemes, his pleasures and 
 sufferings, his accidents and adventures, his youth and the 
 changes of advancing life; and these pleasurable and painful 
 interests had an iafiziite importance to the individual whose 
 thoughts they filled, and whose heart they elated or afflicted. 
 Of this immense crowd, and all their distinct, their anxious, 
 and, in their own view, eventful courses of life, history 
 knows nothing. Incalculable thousands, therefore, and 
 tens of thousands, of emotions of joy and agony, of ardent 
 hopes, of romantic schemes, of interesting disclosures, of 
 striking dialogues, of strange incidents, of deep-laid plots, 
 of fatal catastrophes, of scenes of death, that have had their 
 place and their hour, that have been to certain human 
 creatures the most important circumstances in the world 
 at the time, and collectively have constituted the real state 
 of the people, could not be saved, and cannot be redeemed, 
 from sinking into oblivion. This vast crowd of beings have 
 lived in the social and yet separating economy of families, 
 and thus have been under an infinite number of distinct 
 polities, each of which have experienced innumerable fluctua* 
 tions, as to agreement or discord, as to resources, number, 
 cultivation, relative sorrows or satisfaction, and intercourse, 
 alliances, or quarrels, with the neighbouring little domestic 
 states. AU this, too, though constituting at all times so 
 great a part of th e moral condition of the good and evil of 
 the community, is incapable of being brought within the 
 cognizance of history. There are larger subdivisions of the 
 nation, yet still so small as to be very numerous, into the 
 inhabitants of villages and towns, with all the local interests 
 and events of each ; and even these are for +he most part 
 invisible in the narrow sketch of the history of a nation. 
 We may add all the train of events and interests connected 
 
172 rox's JAMES THE BECOND. 
 
 with religious associations, with the different employments 
 of the people, with civil and literary professions, and with 
 all the departments of studious life, together with the 
 lighter, but both characteristic and influential course of 
 amusements and fashions. 
 
 No one ever wished to see the world so literally fiUed 
 with books as to leave no room for the grass and corn to 
 grow, nor therefore regretted that a host of writers of 
 superhuman knowledge and facility had not been appointed 
 to record all the things interesting to individuals, or 
 families, or districts, that have been done or said in a whole 
 nation during centuries ; but it is at the same time to be 
 acknowledged, that nothing really deserving to be called a 
 history of a nation can be written, unless the historian 
 could exhibit something that should be a true and correct 
 miniature of what has thus been an almost boundless 
 assemblage of moral being and agency. He must, in 
 description, reduce this vast assemblage of particulars to 
 some general abstract, which shall give the true measures of 
 aU the kinds of good and evil that have existed in a whole 
 nation at the assigned period ; and he must contrive some 
 mode of narration that shall relate, as one course of action, 
 the whole agency of millions of separate, and diversified, and 
 often mutually opposing agents. But how is all this to be 
 done ? The historian does not know a ten-thousandth part 
 of all those facts of good and evil among individuals the 
 collective amount of which formed the moral character and 
 condition of any people during any given period, and which 
 collective amount he is required to ascertain as he proceeds, 
 and to give in a continued abstract ; nor, indeed, if he could 
 know so vast an assemblage, would it be possible for him so 
 to combine and compare all these things together, as to 
 make any true abstract and estimate of the whole ; nor if he 
 could make such a summary estimate, would it be of any 
 material value, as thus divested, of all particular appropri- 
 ation to individuals, and given as the description of the 
 character and state of an imaginary being called a nation. 
 A nation having one character and condition, and acting as 
 one being, is but an idle fiction after all ; since in plain 
 sense it is as individuals that men are good or evil, ara 
 happy or miserable, and are engaged in an infinite diversity 
 
OS NATIONAI, KISTOEIES. 173 
 
 of aefcon, ajid not as constituent particles of some multitu- 
 dmous monster. 
 
 What is it, then, that a work professing to be the history 
 of a nation actually does ? What it does is precisely this : 
 it devotes itself to a dozen or two of the most distinguished 
 persons of the times of which it professes to relate the 
 story ; and because the stations and actions of those persons 
 much affected the state and affairs of the nation, frequent 
 notice is taken of the people in the way of illustrating the 
 conduct of those principal persons. The natural order 
 would seem to be, that the people, consisting of so many 
 millions of living and rational beings, should form through- 
 out the grand object ; and that the actions of these leading 
 individuals, who by the very nature of the case will occupy^ 
 after the historian's best efforts to reduce their factitious 
 importance, a very disproportionate share of attention, 
 should be narrated as tending to explain, and for the 
 purpose of explaining the state of the nation, and the 
 changes in its character and affairs. It might be presumed 
 that the happiness or calamities, the civilization or 
 barbarism, the tranquillity or commotions, of a large 
 assembled portion of the human race, is a much more con- 
 siderable object of interest than the mere names, characters, 
 and proceedings of about as many men as might be 
 conveyed in a common stage-waggon ; and that the writer, 
 who is making records of that nation, should be much more 
 anxious, both to illustrate whatever in its condition and 
 qualities was quite independent of these chief persons, and 
 to elucidate the effect, on the popular condition, of the 
 actions of these persons, than just to relate that these par- 
 ticular persons acted in that particular manner, and then 
 call this a history of the nation. But this latter is obviously 
 the mode in almost all. the works professing to be national 
 histories. Throughout the work the nation appears as a 
 large mass of material, which a very few persons in succes- 
 sion have inherited, or bought, or stolen, and on which they 
 have amused themselves with aU manner of experiments. 
 Some of them have chosen to cast it into one kind of polity, 
 and others into another; and sometimes rival proprietors 
 have quarrelled about it, and between them dashed and 
 battered it out of every regular form, wasting and destroy* 
 
174 roi's JAMES THE SECOKD. 
 
 ing it, as men will often do in quarrelling about what eacJ 
 of them professes to deem very valuable, by tossing largi 
 pieces of it at each other's heads. And all the while tha 
 relator of the fray views this material in no other light than 
 that of the question which of the two has the most right to 
 it, and which of them shows the most strength, dexterity, or 
 determination, in employing it in the battle, If it is at one 
 time moulded into a fair and majestic form, it is regarded 
 purely as showing the hand of the artist ; if at the next turn 
 it is again reduced to a mass, and thrown into some loath- 
 some shape, it is no further a matter of concern than to 
 marvel at the strange taste of the sovereign political potter. 
 In plaiji terms, history takes no further account of the great 
 mass of a nation or of mankind than as a mere appendage to 
 a few individuals, and serving them in the capacity of a 
 mechanical implement for labour, the passive subject -of 
 experiments in legislation, the deluded partisan of faction, 
 and the general's disposable, that is consumable, force for 
 war. The story of this great mass is briefly told, not for its 
 own sake, but merely as a part of the story of the chiefs, 
 and in a manner which indicates that the interests of the 
 mOlion were quite of secondary account in the historian's 
 view to those of the individual. The histories of nations, 
 therefore, are not what they pretend, and are commonly 
 taken to be : history pretends to be the same thing to the 
 time of a nation that geography is to the local space that it 
 inhabits ; but a traveller that has just gone along a few of 
 the great roads of a country and visited its chief towns, 
 might just as properly call a sketch and a map of this 
 journey a geographical survey of the country, as any of our 
 national histories can pretend to be a satisfactory view of 
 the state of a people through a course of ages. 
 
 It may indeed be alleged that the grand defect in question 
 is in a great degree the inevitable misfortune of history, 
 from the very nature of things, which makes it impossible 
 for the historian to do more than record the actions of a few 
 conspicuous men. "We acknowledge this to be partly true ; 
 and have only to observe that history therefore, from the 
 narrowness of its scope, is of vastly less value as a revealer 
 of human nature and a teacher of moral principles, than it 
 haa been commonly and pompously represented- to be. 
 
pox's HISTOEICAL THEOBT. 173 
 
 Exclusive of mere facts, the only truths that history 
 peculiarly illustrates are few and obvious. It were 
 needless to mention the most conspicuous of its demon- 
 strations, the stupendous depravity of our nature ; the 
 whole of the interesting fragment before us, for instance, 
 contains absolutely nothing but an account of foUies and 
 crimes, except indeed the heroic conduct of some persons 
 who perished for opposing them. The more specific truths 
 illustrated appear to be these : the invariable tendency of 
 governments to become despotic, the universal disposition of 
 nations to aUow them to become so, the extreme hazard to 
 liberty when sought by revolutions efiected by arms ; and 
 the infinite mischief of religious intolerance, and of aU such 
 measures of the state as naturally tend to create it, and give 
 it an organized force and operation. 
 
 A rigid adherence to Mr. Fox's theory (it is not so much 
 his practice) of historical composition, would still more 
 contract its scope and diminish its value. Lord Holland 
 has explained this theory. 
 
 " It is indeed probable, that his difficulties on this occasion 
 were greater than any other modern historian would have had 
 to encounter. I have mentioned them more particularly, because 
 they in some measure arose from his scrupulous attention to 
 certaia notions he entertained on the nature of an historical 
 composition. If indeed the work were finished, the nature of 
 his design would be best collected from the execution of it ; but 
 as it is unfortunately in an incomplete and unfinished state, his 
 conception of the duties of an historian may very possibly be 
 misunderstood. The consequence would be, that some passages, 
 which, according to modern taste, must be called peculiarities, 
 might, with superficial critics, pass for defects which he had 
 overlooked, or imperfections which he intended to correct. It 
 is therefore necessary to observe, that he had formed his plan so 
 exclusively on the model of ancient writers, that he not only felt 
 some repugnance to the modern practice of notes, but he thought 
 that all which an historian wished to say, should be introduced 
 as part of a continued narration, and never assume the appear- 
 ance of a digression, much less of a dissertation annexed to it. 
 From the period therefore that he closed his introductory chap- 
 ter, he defined his duty as an author to consist in recounting 
 the facts as they arose, or in his simple and forcible lan- 
 guage, in idling the story of those times. A conversation which 
 passed on the subject of the literature of the age of James IL 
 
176 fox's JAMES THE SECONB. 
 
 proves hia rigid adherence to these ideas, aud perhaps the 
 substance of it may serve to illustrate and explain them. lu 
 speaking of the writers of that period, he lamented that he had 
 not devised a method of interweaving any account of them or 
 their works, much less any criticism on their style, into his his- 
 tory. On my suggesting the example of Hume and Voltaire, 
 who had discussed such topics at some length, either at the end 
 of each reign, or in a separate chapter, he observed, with much 
 commendation of the execution of it, that such a contrivance 
 might be a good mode of writing critical essays, but that it was 
 in his opinion incompatible with the nature of his undertaking, 
 which, if it ceased to be a narration, ceased to be a history. 
 Such restraints assuredly operated as taxes upon his ingenuity, 
 and added to that labour, which the observance of his general 
 laws of composition rendered sufficiently great. On the rules of 
 writing he had reflected much and deeply. Hia own habits 
 naturally led him to compare them with those of public speak- 
 ing, and the different and even opposite principles upon which 
 jxcellenoe is to be attained in these two great arts, were no 
 unusual topics of his conversation." — Preface, pp. 35 — 38. 
 
 The obvious question here is, how history could ever 
 come to have such a specific nature. According to this 
 representation, history might be a thing as defined as a 
 species of animal or vegetable, which must absolutely have 
 always a certain number of precise attributes, and could not 
 have more or less without becoming a monster. But by 
 what sovereign authority was its organization thus defini- 
 tively fixed, and where are we to look for its pure original 
 type ? And even if there were such an original definition 
 and type, and if according to that authority nothing but a 
 continuous narration should be entitled to the denomiaation 
 of history, of what trifling consequence it would be that 
 this name should be refused to a work that luminously nar- 
 rated events, that made intervals in this narration, and filled 
 them with eloquent, appropriate reflections, and profound 
 reasonings, adapted to make the narration of facts both more 
 striking and more instructive. The writer of such a work 
 might say — I do not care whether you allow my work to be 
 called a history or not ; even keep the insignificant term, if 
 you will, sacred to the dry narrator, who has not under- 
 standing enough to make important reflections as he goes 
 on ; ii it is on account of the eloquence and reasoning in 
 my work that the name of history is denied it, I have only 
 
MODES OF WEITnr& HISTOBT. 177 
 
 to say that I have then written something better than 
 history. 
 
 History as an art is no more bound up by technical and 
 exclusive laws than oratory or poetry. It is just any mode 
 of narration in which any man chooses to relate to other 
 men a series of facts. It may be written as a mere 
 chronicle, or ia a continuous and artfully arranged relation 
 ■without reflections, or ia a narration moderately interspersed 
 with short observations, which cause but a momentary 
 interruption of the story, or in a form admitting such 
 frequent and large dissertations as to become in some sense 
 a course of historical lectures. These various methods of 
 bringing back the past to view, are adapted to the various 
 kinds of inquisitiveness with which men seek a knowledge 
 of the past. A few may be content with the bare knowledge 
 that certain things happened at certain times : many wish 
 to have the events adjusted into an order which shall exhibit 
 their connexion from the beginning to the end ; some wish 
 to comprehend the causes and tendencies of events, as well 
 as to be apprized of any remarkable contemporary circum- 
 stances, or distinguished men, that without being directly 
 involved in the train of events, had any relation with any 
 stage of them ; and a few . are even desirous of formal 
 deductions of moral and political doctrines. Excepting 
 perhaps the first of these modes, it would be idle exclusively 
 to appropriate or refuse the denomination of history to any 
 one of them ; and especially to refuse the title, if it is 
 deemed a title of dignified import, to such a mode of 
 recording the events of past ages as should tend to explain 
 the causes and various relations, and to enforce whatever 
 important instrnctions they are capable of being made to 
 yield to the readers ; for surely the highest office that his- 
 tory can pretend to execute is that of raising on ages of the 
 dead a tribute of instruction for the living. "We have 
 already said that the wisdom derivable from history is not 
 very copious ; but as far as may be, it should seem to be the 
 business of history to collect all the little streams of valuable 
 instruction in the distant regions of time (as the rUls and 
 rivulets among the remote mountains of Africa are drawn 
 by successive confluence to form the Nile), and bring them 
 down in one fertilizing current on the lower ages. 
 
178 Fox's JAMBS THE SECOND. 
 
 To say that, tte ancient historians confined themselves to 
 a straightforward, unbroken course of narration, is just the 
 same thing, with respect to its authority in directing our 
 practice, as to say they built their houses or shaped their 
 clothes in this or that particular way ; we have always an 
 appeal to the nature and reason of the thing. And we have 
 also an appeal to universal colloquial practice, which may be , 
 assumed to be substantiaUy the model for all communica- 
 tions that are to be made from one human being to another 
 by written words. If a man were relating to us any inter- 
 esting train of actions or events of which he had been a 
 witness, or had received his information from witnesses, we 
 should expect him often to interrupt his narration with 
 explanatory remarks at least ; and if he were a very intelli- 
 gent man, we should be delighted to hear him make, obser- 
 vations tending to establish important general truths from 
 the facts related. "We should positively compel him to do 
 something of this; for we should just as much think of 
 giving the lie to aU he said, as of suffering him to go on an 
 hour without raising some questions, both of fact and of 
 general speculation. And we do not comprehend how 
 written history can be under any law, unless some dictum 
 of pedantry, to forbid it to imitate in a moderate degree 
 what is so natural and so rational in a narration made 
 personally by a judicious man to intelligent companions. 
 
 Besides the information of the distinguished statesman's 
 opinions on historical composition, the preface contains 
 various interesting particulars of his habits and studies. It 
 appears that his feelings were so far from being totally 
 absorbed by ambition, that his mental resources were so 
 great, and his susceptibility of interest so lively and 
 versatile, that in the intervals of his most vehement public 
 exertions, and during the season in which he seceded in a 
 great measure from the political warfare, he enjoyed 
 exquisitely the pleasures of elegant literature and rural 
 nature. It is no less pleasing than it is unusual and 
 wonderful, to see the simple and cordial feelings of the 
 human being, and the taste of the man of letters, thus pre- 
 serving their existence amidst the artificial interests and the 
 tumults of a statesman's life, and unfolding themselves with 
 energy in every season of retreat from the political sphere. 
 
rox S LITEEAET HABITS. 179 
 
 ■With a ttae philanthropist, however, it will be a question of 
 conscience how far he may innocently surrender himself 
 even to the refined gratigcations of imagination and taste, 
 while sensible that very important interests may be 
 depending on his more or less continued prosecution of the 
 rougher exercises of political argument. There is no 
 preserving patience to hear a man like Mr. Pox, and in 
 such a period as that he lived in, talk of employing himself 
 in preparing an edition of Dryden's works ; an occupation 
 in which he might consume, in settling the propriety of 
 some couple of poetical epithets, just as much time as would 
 have sufficed for preparing the outlines of a speech on the 
 subject of parliamentary reform. It would be a fine thing, 
 indeed, to see the great statesman solemnly weighing the 
 merits of the meaning of some awkward line, which the poet 
 perhaps wrote half asleep, when driven to finish the "tale" 
 of verses which some Pharaoh of a bookseller had two or 
 three times sent his imps to demand, for money paid, and 
 perhaps spent in the wine that had imparted the cast of 
 somnolency to the verse in question. Nor is it solely on 
 the ground of his possible public usefulness, that we feel 
 some want of complacency in hearing him exclaim, " Oh, 
 how I wish that I could make up my mind to think it right, 
 to devote aU the remaining part of my life to such subjects, 
 and such only!" It will suggest itself that toward the 
 close of his life there might be, setting out of the question 
 too any labours due to the public, some other things proper 
 to be thought of, besides the vindication of Eacine's poetical 
 merits, and the chastisement of Dryden and others who had 
 not done them justice. Notwithstanding, if aU duties and 
 services of stronger claim could have been first discharged, 
 it would have been very gratifying to have received from 
 him that projected treatise on Poetry, History, and Oratory, 
 on the subject of which Lord HoUand speaks. 
 
 Many persons will be surprised to be informed that Mr. 
 Fox was slow in composition ; and this inconvenience was 
 increased by his extreme solicitude to keep his page clear of 
 any trace of his trade, as he should seem to have regarded 
 it, of public speaking. Prom this solicitude he refused 
 admittance, by Lord Holland's account, to many expressions 
 and sentiments which in a speech would have been eloquent, 
 
 sr 2 
 
180 rox's JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 This will be deemed an unfortunate and injurious fastidious* 
 ness in our great orator ; for the consequence is, that we by 
 no means find ia the writing the whole mental power we 
 Know there was in the man. There is a certain bareness, 
 and almost coldness, of style, from which a reader, not 
 otherwise acquainted with the force of his talents, would 
 never learn the irresistible power of his eloquence : in pass- 
 ing along the pages of the work before us, we earnestly, and 
 too often vainly, long for some of those mighty emanations 
 of sentiment which used to set us on fire in hearing him. It 
 were strange indeed, if he considered these living fires as 
 something of too professional and vulgar a kind, to be allowed 
 to impart their animation to history. It were strange if 
 history, because its subjects are chiefly dead men, should be 
 required to preserve a kind of analogy with their skeletons, 
 and be cold, and dry, and stiU, like them. It is certainly 
 the office of history to show us " a valley of dry bones ;" 
 but it interests us most by the energy which transforms the 
 whole scene into life. 
 
 Many pages of Lord Holland's preface are occupied with 
 a very curious account of the fate of King James's manu- 
 scripts, deposited in the Scotch College at Paris. Mr. Eox's 
 inquiries fiilly ascertained that they were destroyed during 
 the late revolution. 
 
 The period of our history, selected by Mr. Fox, was evi- 
 dently adapted for what was of course Ms purpose, to illus- 
 trate the nature and basis, and the whole progress of the 
 attainment, of that political freedom which this country 
 since the Eevolution of 1688 has enjoyed, notwithstanding 
 many just causes of complaint, in a higher degree than per- 
 haps any other nation of ancient or modem times. The 
 events of that period were of a kind which, contemplated 
 merely as a dramatic scene, containing a certain portion of 
 incident, show, and action (the only view, unfortunately, in 
 which most of us regard history), had in former years rather 
 a strong efi'ect on the imagination, even when we did not 
 take the trouble to think deeply of the political tendency 
 and result. But in this respect the case will be found to be 
 now greatly changed. What has taken place in our own times, 
 has thrown all the transactions of several centuries past, 
 considered as matter of magnificent exhibition, quite into 
 
EEMAEKS ON FOX'S IIISl'OET. ISl 
 
 the shade. It is but very occasionally that the mind catches 
 a momentary sight of the transactions of the times of the 
 Charleses, James, and William, through some opening in 
 the stupendous traia of revolutions, wars, abdications, 
 dethronements, conquests, and changing constitutions, which 
 has been moving, and is still rapidly moving, before our 
 eyes. Who will think of going back to trace the adventures of 
 one or two monarchs-errant of former times, when there are 
 whole parties of them up and down Europe, with a sufficient 
 probability of additions to the number ? Who will go almost 
 two centuries back to survey a nation risen in arms against 
 a tyrant, though totally ignorant of the true principles of 
 liberty, when they can see such a phenomenon, just spring- 
 ing up in the neighbourhood a few weeks since ? The con- 
 tests of parties iu those times, the questions of prerogative, 
 the loyalty of faction leaders, the devising of plans of 
 government, the ravage of armies, the progress of a com- 
 mander into a despotic monarch, the subsidence of national 
 enthusiasm into the apathy of slaves, are apt to affect us as 
 an old and dull story, at a time when no one cares to buy a 
 map of BvLPope, or count its kingdoms, or go over the list of 
 its monarchs, or read one page about the nature of its con- 
 stitutions of government, or ask one sentence about the rival 
 parties in its states, from knowing that a few months may 
 put all such information out of date. On such accounts, as 
 well as from the present indisposition to any study of poli- 
 ties as a science, we have little expectation that the interest- 
 ing production before us will do more than merely gratify, 
 the literary curiosity excited by the name of the great 
 author. The noble spirit of liberty which pervades every 
 paxt of it, will be flatly offensive to many of his countrymen; 
 and wiQ appear to others as a kind of high-spirited and 
 patriotic romance, proving that the sanguine temperament 
 of the orator of the people wonderfully retained his juvenility 
 of opinion in his more advanced age, in spite of the years 
 and the events that have made them vyiser. 
 
 So much of the volume as Mr. Fox wrote, consists of 
 three chapters, of which the first is called introductory, and 
 contains a brief retrospect of the reign of Charles II., and 
 some of the circumstances of what was named the Common- 
 wealth. The two latter go over about seven months of the 
 
182 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 reign of James II., and form the commencement of the 
 intended history, which, if the aathor had lived and enjoyed 
 leisure, would probably have been brought down to a period 
 lower than the Eevolution ; it does not appear that his 
 thoughts had decidedly fixed on any precise point of time as 
 the limit. 
 
 It was not to be expected that any singular novelty either 
 of fact or doctrine should be brought out, in the review of a 
 period so often subject to researcli and controversial dis- 
 cussion ; but we feel, as we did expect to feel, that we go 
 over the ground with a better light than we have done before. 
 There is a simplicity in the opening out of the involved 
 crowd of characters and affairs, which brings both the indi- 
 vidual objects, and their relations to one another, more pal- 
 pably into our sight. "We feel how delightful it is to go 
 through an important and confused scene in the company of 
 such an illuminating mind, and how easily we could surren- 
 der ourselves to an almost implicit reliance on its judgment. 
 Connected with this extremely discriminating analysis, and 
 distinct statement of facts, the reader will find every where 
 a more tmaffected unlaboured independence of opinion, than 
 in perhaps any other of our historians ; the author seems to 
 judge freely, as by a kind of inherent necessity ; and he con- 
 demns (for indeed this is the duty of his office in almost 
 every page), with an entire indifference to those circum- 
 stances to which even historians are often obsequious. He 
 passes sentence on nobles and kings with as little fear, and 
 at the same time in as calm a tone, as the court that sum- 
 jnoned, immediately after their death, the monarchs of 
 Egypt. With respect to this calmness, it gives a dignified 
 air to history ; yet we will acknowledge that in several 
 instances, in this work, after the indictment and proof of 
 enormous wickedness, we have wished the sentence pro- 
 nounced with somewhat more emphasis. The mildness of 
 the man, occasionally, a little qualifies in expression the 
 energy of justice ; but it only qualifies, it does not pervert 
 it ; he most impartially condemns where he ought, and we 
 have only wished, in a few cases, a severer acerbity of language. 
 The criminal charges, however, are made with a fulness and 
 aggravation which might sometimes perhaps be deemed to 
 excuse the historian from formally pronoimcing any judg- 
 
EEMAEKS ON FOl'S HISTOBT. 183 
 
 mcnt, as no expression could be found by wliicli the character 
 of the criminal could be more blasted, than it is already by 
 the statement of the crimes. 
 
 If the work had been carried through the whole of the 
 Selected period, it would have been an admirable contrast 
 and antidote to the parallel part of Hume's history, in point 
 of honesty of representation. Our author justly accuses 
 Hume of a constant partiality to the cause of the tyrants in 
 his statement and reasonings, and of a base disingenuousness 
 in his observations on the conduct of Charles II. respecting 
 the death of Algernon Sidney ; he convicts him of a direct 
 and shameful fabrication of a parliamentary debate in 1685, 
 which debate did not take place, nor anything like it ; and 
 he ascribes to him an almost puerile respect for kings, as 
 guch. After all this, we own it requires our whole stock of 
 patience to read those extremely respectful and flattering 
 expressions which he seeks every occasion, and once or twice 
 goes much out of his way, to bestow on this historian ; 
 expressions which are applied not only to his talents, to 
 which they would be always due, but to his character, to 
 which these articles of accusation, exhibited by his admirer, 
 may prove what sort of moral priaciples are fairly attribut- 
 able. The passage relating to the condemnation of Sydney, 
 is a good specimen of our author's decided manner of ex- 
 pressing his opinion, and also of his strange prejudice in 
 favour of Hume's moral qualities. 
 
 Was it ever understood, till now, that a man eminent at 
 once for the depth and soundness of his understanding, and 
 the integrity and benevolence of his heart, can be an apolo- 
 gist (the full evidence of the nature of the facts being before 
 him), for the foulest murders of a tyrant ! "Would not that 
 integrity and benevolence of heart have been high in favour 
 at the court of such a tyrant, which should have put in exer- 
 cise so strong an understanding to preserve his majesty in a 
 state of entire self-complacency while perpetrating the mur- 
 der of one of the noblest of his subjects and of mankind ? 
 As to posthumous infamy, and the retribution to be inflicted 
 by history, we wonder whether such a thing ever once 
 occurred to the thoughts of a tyrant, who, in pursuing to 
 death a man of such heroic virtue as to have offended or 
 alarmed him, could spurn every human sympathy, defy the 
 
184 fox's JAMES THE SECOITD. 
 
 indignation of all good men, and find a tribe of courtiers, 
 eomprifling nobles, prelates, and scbolars, ever ready to ap- 
 plaud his justice. And if by " conscience" is here meant, 
 that sentiment which connects with our actions a reference 
 to a Grod and a future judgment, it is surely a very hopeful 
 thing, that a man, who can deliberately brave the divine 
 vengeance, should be iutimidated from committing a crime, 
 by thinking of the fearful doom which awaits him in the 
 paragraphs of some historian ! 
 
 In speaking of the fate of Charles I., Mr. Pox, in an 
 argument of great candour and delicacy, disapproves of his 
 execution, on the ground both of justice and policy, but 
 especially the latter. He passes in too much haste over the 
 character of Cromwell, and gives a rather equivocal estimate 
 of it, except indeed as contrasted with that' of Washington, 
 whom he takes the occasion, afforded by the partial simi- 
 larity of the situations of the two men, to celebrate in terms 
 of the highest possible eulogium. 
 
 We should hope the notion that good political institu- 
 tions will be certain of an eficacious operation, by the mere 
 strength of the dead vrisdom, if we may so call it, that resides 
 in their construction, independently of the character of the 
 men who are in the administration of them, has lost its 
 influence on the public mind ; if not, the following striking 
 lesson ought to contribute to expel such a vain fancy. 
 
 "The reign of Charles II. forms one of the most singular, 
 as well as of the most important periods of history. It is 
 the era of good laws and bad government. The abolition of 
 the Court of Wards, the repeal of the writ de Heretico Com- 
 burendo, the Triennial Parliament Bill, the establishment of the 
 rights of the House of Commons in regard to impeachment, the 
 expiration of the License Act, and above all, the glorious statute 
 of Habeas Corpus, have therefore induced a modern writer of 
 great eminence to fix the year 1679 as the period at which our 
 constitution had arrived at its greatest theoretical perfection, 
 but he owns, in a short note upon the passage alluded to, that 
 the times immediately following were times of great practical 
 oppression. What a field for meditation does this short obser- 
 vation, from such a man, furnish ! What reflection does it not 
 suggest to a thinking mind, upon the inefficacy of human laws, 
 and the imperfection of human constitutions ! We are called 
 from the contemplation of the progress of cur constitution, and 
 
EEMABKS OK FOl's HISTOET. 185 
 
 our attention is fixed with the most minute accuracy to a 
 particular point, when it is said to have risen to its utmost 
 perfection. Here we are then at the best moment of the best 
 constitution that human wisdom ever framed. What follows 1 
 A time of oppression and misery, not arising from external 
 causes, such as war, pestilence, or famine, nor even from ahy 
 such alteration of the laws as might be supposed to impair this 
 boasted perfection, but from a corrupt and wicked admiaistra- 
 tion, which all the so-much admired checks of our constitution 
 were not able to prevent. How vain, then, how idle, how pre- 
 sumptuous is the opinion that laws can do everything ! and how 
 weak and pernicious the maxim founded upon it, that measures, 
 not men, are to be attended to !" — P. 20. 
 
 The historian appears to have examined a great deal of 
 evidence on the subject of the pretented Popish plot, as the 
 result of which he gives it as his opinion, that the greater 
 part of those who were concerned in the iniquitous prosecu- 
 tion of the Papists, were rather under the influence of "an 
 extraordinary degree of blind credulity," than guilty of 
 '* the deliberate wickedness of planning and assisting in the 
 perpetration of legal murder." 
 
 It is most melancholy to contemplate a great nation, 
 which not very long before had been animated, in however 
 rude a manner, and however iU-iastructed in political 
 science, with a high spirit of liberty, which had raised its 
 strong arm against the impositions of a monarch who 
 thought it necessary for a governor to be a despot, and had 
 prostrated him and his armies ia the dust, submitting at 
 last to the unqualified despotism of a much more odious 
 tyrant. The view is stUl more mortifying, when we con- 
 sider that this tyrant had never performed any one great 
 action, and possessed no one virtue under heaven, to palliate 
 even in appearance his depravity, and lessen to the people, 
 • the ignominy of being his slaves. But it is most mortifying 
 of all to find that these slaves were beaten and trodden 
 into such fatuity, that they voluntarily abdicated all the 
 rites of both men and brutes, and humbly lauded the 
 master who sported with their privileges, their property, 
 and their blood. No inconsiderable part of this volume 
 consists of descriptions of such national hiuniliation ; and 
 we transcribe a short specimen, immediately following the 
 account of Charles's tumiag off his last parliament, with 
 
18& rOX's JAMES THE SECONI), 
 
 the full resolution never to call another; to "which resolu- 
 tion, indeed, Louis had bound him, as one of the conditions 
 on which he was to receive his stipend," — 
 
 " No measure was ever attended with more complete success. 
 The most flattering addresses poured in from all parts of the 
 kingdom ; divine right and indiscriminate obedience were every- 
 where the favourite doctrines ; and men seemed to vie with 
 each other who should have the honour of the greatest share in 
 the glorious work of slavery, by securing to the king, for the 
 present, and, after him, to the duke, absolute and uncontrollable 
 power. They, who, either because Charles had been called a 
 forgiving prince by his flatterers (upon what ground I could 
 never discover), or from some supposed connexion between indo- 
 lence and good nature, had deceived themselves into a hope that 
 his tyranny would be of the milder sort, found themselves much 
 disappointed in their expectations. The whole history of the 
 remaining part of his reign, exhibits an uninterrupted series of 
 attacks upon the liberty, property, and lives of his subjects." — 
 P. 43. 
 
 The most outrageous operations of Charles's tyranny were 
 carried on in Scotland. This work exhibits, in considerable 
 detail, the horrible system of proscription and murder, 
 which has given him a very reasonable claim to the com- 
 pany, in history or anywhere else, of Tiberius ; for so we 
 must be allowed to think, notwithstanding Mr. Fox has 
 taken exception to Burnet's classing these two names 
 together, forgetting that he himself had done the very same 
 thing in an earlier page. 
 
 The scene becomes more hateful at every step ; till at 
 length we behold one general spectacle of massacre, in 
 which the most infernal riots of cruelty to which military 
 ruffians, fully let loose, could be stimulated, were authorized 
 and applauded by a government, which colleges and digni- 
 taries, and a large and preponderating part of the nation, 
 adored as of divine authority, and really deserved, as a 
 reward of such a faith, the privilege of adoring. It is after 
 viewing such a course of transactions, that we want expres- 
 sions of somewhat more emphatical reprobation, in closing 
 the account with this wicked monarch, than those, though 
 very strong and comprehensive, which Mr. Fox has used in 
 the concluding delineation of his character. It was very 
 proper to notice his politeness and affability, his facility of 
 
CHAELES II. AlTD HIS MISTEES3ES. 187 
 
 temper, and kindnesses to his mistresses; but we think 
 they should not have been so mentioned, as to have even 
 the slightest appearance of a set-off against the malignity of 
 his wickedness and the atrocities of his government. 
 
 The manner in which Charles's kindness to his mistresses 
 is mentioned, is a remarkable illustration of the importance 
 of personal morality to a historian, as well as to a statesman. 
 
 "His recommendation of the Duchess of Portsmouth and 
 Mrs. Gwyn, upon his death- bed, to his successor, is much to hia 
 honour ; and they who censure it, seem, in their zeal to show 
 themselves strict moralists, to have suffered their notions of vice 
 and virtue to have fallen into strange confusion. Charles's con- 
 nexion with those ladies might be vicious, but at a moment 
 when that connexion was upon the point of being finally and 
 irrevocably dissolved, to concern himself about their future 
 welfare, and to recommend them to his brother with earnest 
 tenderness, was virtue. It is not for the interest of morality 
 that the good and evil actions of bad men, should be con- 
 founded."— P. 64. 
 
 "We do not know that any moralist ever forbade a depart-i 
 ing criminal to be concerned for the welfare of his surviving 
 companions in guUt, only it would be enjoined that shame 
 and penitence should mingle with this concern ; but every 
 moralist will be indignant at this gentle equivocal mode of 
 touching that vice, by which it is notorious that the 
 example of the king contributed to deprave the morals of 
 the nation, as much as his political measures to exterminate 
 its freedom. It is most signally remarkable what a careful 
 silence is maintained, in this work, respecting the state of 
 morals during this reign. Is it then no business of history 
 to take account of such a thing ? Even regarding the matter 
 in a political view, is the depravity of a people never 
 to be reckoned among the causes, and the most powerful 
 causes, of their sinking quietly under despotism ? 
 
 The commencement of James's reign, as far as the work 
 before us has illustrated it, was a mere continuation of the 
 preceding, as James, at his accession, graciously promised 
 his subjects it should. This promise was received with 
 grateful joy by a large proportion of the English nation, 
 and by the governing party even in Scotland, whose fulsome, 
 abominable address of congratulation is given in this work. 
 
188 fox's JAMES THE SECOND. 
 
 Their joy and loyalty were carried to the height of euthusi- 
 aam, no doubt, when they found the same infernal work of 
 massacre animated to redoubled actiyity, and were honoured 
 with the charge of executing an act, which extended to all 
 persons Jiearing conventicle preaching, the punishment of 
 death. 
 
 Though James was a papist, Mr. Eox has proved, by the 
 most decisive arguments, that his grand leading object was 
 the establishment of an absolute despotism ; and that any 
 designs he might entertain of introducing Popery, would 
 have been kept in reserve till this was accomplished. 
 Meanwhile he much courted the zealous adherents of the 
 Established Church, and he plainly intimated that they had 
 been found the firmest Mends of such government, as that 
 of his father, his brother, and himself. It is strange that a 
 man of Mr. Fox's candour should, throughout the book, 
 have contrived to find the very same thing. It surely 
 became him, in the justice of history, to have particularized 
 the many noble efforts made by the churchmen of those 
 times, in resistance of the doctrines and the practices of 
 of despotism. He ought to have taken notice of what was 
 so zealously done and written, by ecclesiastical dignitaries, 
 in behalf of liberty of conscience, and in prevention of all 
 persecution for religious opinions and methods of worship. 
 
 A large space is occupied with the invasions and pro- 
 ceedings of Monmouth and Argyle. The account of the 
 execution of Monmouth is finely written; but the most 
 interesting part of the whole volume, is the account of the 
 last days and the death of Argyle. "VVe should have tran- 
 scribed this part, but that we are persuaded it will appear 
 in very many publications, and in every work that shall 
 profess to be a collection of the finest passages in the 
 EngUsh language. It is a picture drawn with the happiest 
 simplicity, though with one slight blemish, of one of the 
 most enchanting examples of heroic virtue that history or 
 poetry ever displayed. It is closed with what we felt to be 
 the most eloquent sentence ia the whole work. 
 
189 
 
 ON STATESMEN. 
 
 Lives of British Statesmen. By John MacDiaemid, Esq., Avih&f 
 of an Inquiry into the System, of NatioTial Defence in Great Bri- 
 tain, and cf an Inquiry into the Principles of Sviordination. 
 4to. 1808. 
 
 If we tave not learnt to feel for statesmen, as such, a suffi- 
 cient share of that reverential respect which pronounces 
 their names with awe, which stands amazed at the immen- 
 sity of their wisdom, which looks up to them as the con- 
 centrated reason of the human species, which trembles to 
 iQsinuate or to hear insinuated against them the slightest 
 suspicion of obliquity of understanding or corruption of 
 moral principle, and which regards it as quite a point of 
 religion to defend their reputation, it has not been that we 
 have not received many grave instructions and rebukes on 
 this head from much better men. A hundred times it has 
 been repeated to us, that a peculiar and extraordinary 
 genius is reqxdsite to constitute a statesman; that men, 
 who by situation and office are conversant with great con- 
 cerns, acquire a dignity and expansion of mind ; that those 
 who can manage the affairs of nations prove themselves by 
 the fact itself to be great men ; that their elevated position 
 gives them an incomparably clearer and more comprehen- 
 sive view of national subjects than is to be attained by us 
 on the low level of private Hfe ; that we ought, in deference 
 to them, to repress the presumption of our understandiags ; 
 that in short it is our duty to applaud or be silent. 
 
 With a laudable obsequiousness we have often tried to 
 conform ourselves to our duty, at least as prescribed ia the 
 latter part of this alternative ; and we have listened respect- 
 fully to long panegyrics on the sagacity, fortitude, and dis- 
 interestedness of the chief actors and advisers in state 
 affairs, and to inculcations of the gratitude due to men who 
 win thus condescend, in. their lofty stations (which at the 
 same time it is presumed they can claim to hold for no 
 other purpose), to toil and care for us the vulgar mass of 
 mankind. Presently these laudatory and hortatory strains 
 would soften into an elegiac plaintiveness, bewailing the 
 
190 tlTES OP BBITISH STATESMEN 
 
 distresses of men. in high situations in the state. The 
 pathetic song has deplored the oppressive labours of thought 
 required in forming their schemes, their cruel exposure to 
 the persecutions of an adverse party, the difficulty of pre- 
 serving harmony of operation in a wide and complex system 
 iavolving many men and many dispositions, their anxiety in 
 providing for the wants of the state, the frequent failure of 
 their best concerted measures, their sleepless nights, their 
 aching heads, and their sufferings from the ungrateful 
 reproaches of the people. Here our impatience has over- 
 come our good resolutions, and we have been moved to 
 reply. We have said — Is not the remedy for aU these 
 sorrows at all times in their reach? They can quit their 
 stations and all the attendant distresses whenever they 
 please, in behalf of other men who are waiting, eager almost 
 to madness, to obtain their share of all the vexations you 
 are commiserating. But whUe you are so generously de- 
 ploring the hardships of their situation, they are anxiously 
 devising every possible contrivance to secure themselves in 
 possession of it, and nothing less than the power that put 
 them in can wrench them out. It is vastly reasonable to 
 be requiriag lenient judgments on the conduct, and respect- 
 ful sympathy for the feelings, of public men, while we see 
 with what a violent passion power and station are sought, 
 with what desperate grappliag claws of iron they are retain- 
 ed, and with what grief and mortification they are lost. It 
 might be quite time enough, we should think, to commence 
 this strain of tenderness, when in order to fill the places of 
 power and emolument it has become necessary to drag by 
 force retiring virtue and modest talent from private life, and 
 to retain them in those situations by the same compulsion, 
 in spite of the most earnest wishes to retreat, excited by 
 delicacy of conscience, and a disgust at the pomp of state. 
 So long as men are pressing as urgently into the avenues of 
 place and power as ever the genteel rabble of the metropolis 
 have pushed and crowded into the play-house to see the 
 new actor, and so long as a most violent conflict is main- 
 tained between those who are in power and those who want 
 to supplant them, we think statesmen form by eminence 
 the class of persons, to whose characters both the contem- 
 porary examiner and the historian are not only authorized, 
 
■EIGOEJUS ESTIMATE OP STATESMEN A DTOT. 19J 
 
 but in duty bound, to administer justice in its utmost 
 rigour, without one particle of extenuation. "While forcing 
 their way toward offices in the state, and while maintaining 
 the possession once acquired, they are apprized, or might 
 and should be apprized, of the nature of the responsibility, 
 and it is certain they are extremely well apprized of the 
 privileges. They know that the public welfare depends, in 
 too great a degree, on their conduct, and that the people 
 have a natural instinctive prejudice in favour of their lead- 
 ers, and are disposed to confide to the utmost extent. They 
 know that a measure of impunity unfortunate for the public 
 is enjoyed by statesmen, their very station affording the 
 means both of concealment and defence for their delinquen- 
 cies. They know that in point of emolument they are more 
 than paid from the labours of the people for any services 
 they render ; and that they are not bestowing any particular 
 favour on the country by holding their offices, as there are 
 plenty of men, about as able and as good as themselves, 
 ready to take their places if they would abdicate them. 
 When to all this is added the acknowledged fact that the 
 majority of this class of men have trifled with their high 
 responsibility, and taken criminal advantage of their privi- 
 leges, we can have no patience to hear of any claims for a 
 special indulgence of charity, in reading and judging the 
 actions of statesmen. 
 
 On the ground of morality in the abstract, separately 
 from any consideration of the effect of his representations, 
 the biographer of statesmen is bound to a very strict appli- 
 cation of the rules of justice, since these men constitute, or 
 at least belong to, the uppermost class of the inhabitants of 
 the earth. They have stronger inducements arising from 
 situation, than other men, to be solicitous for the rectitude 
 of their conduct ; their station has the utmost advantage: 
 for commanding the assistance of whatever illumination a 
 country contains ; they see on the large scale the effect of 
 all the grand principles of action ; they make laws for the 
 rest of mankind, and they direct the execution of justice. 
 If the eternal laws of morality are to be applied with a soft 
 and lenient hand in the trial and judgment of such an order 
 of men, it wiU not be worth while to apply them at all to 
 the subordinate classes of mankind ; as a morality that 
 
192 LIVES or BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 exacts but little where the means and the responsibility are 
 the greatest, would betray itself to contempt by pretending 
 to sit in solemn judgment on the humbler subjects of its 
 authority. The laws of morality should operate, like those 
 of nature, in the most palpable manner on the largest sub- 
 stances. 
 
 Another reason for the rigid administration of justice to 
 the characters of men that have been high in the state, is to 
 secure the utility of history, or rather to preserve it from 
 becoming to the last degree immoral and noxious. For 
 since history is almost entirely occupied with the actions of 
 this class of men, and for the much greater part with their 
 vices and their crimes, and the calamitous consequences, it 
 is easy to see that a softened mode of awarding justice to 
 these characters will turn the whole force of history to the 
 effect of depraving ova moral principles, by partially con- 
 ciliating both our feelings and judgments to those hateful 
 courses of action, of which we are already very much too 
 tolerant in consequence of being from our childhood fami- 
 liarized to the view of them, in every account of the past 
 and present state of the world. And in this way we are 
 inclined to think that history has actually been, on the 
 whole, the enemy of morality. Its readers will have too 
 light an impression of the atrocity of great crimes and 
 great criminals. Great crimes constitute so large a pro- 
 portion of the historian's materials for constructing splendid 
 exhibitions, that if he does not insensibly become almost 
 partial to them, as a general does to a band of the most 
 cruel savages whose ferocity he has repeatedly employed to 
 obtain his victories, his hatred admits at least a certain 
 softening of literary interest ; and in many a glowing de- 
 scription of enormous wickedness, we fancy we see the hand 
 of the painter or poet rather than the moral censor. Artful 
 combinations of odious circumstances, epithets to aggravate 
 each indignant Une, eloquence of execration, are possibly 
 not spared ; but we stiU find ourselves rather invited as 
 spectators of a splendid tragedy, than summoned as jurors 
 in a solemn court of justice. The diminution or modifica- 
 tion, in the historian's mind, of the abhorrence of crimes, in 
 consequence of the benefit which he derives from them as 
 striking materials for his work, aids the operation of any 
 
THE BAD MOEALITY OE HISTOET. 193 
 
 other cause -whicli may tend to render Mm indulgent to the 
 actor of them. And often the great criminal has had some 
 one virtue, or at least some very showy faults, adapted, in 
 in the historian's view, to relieve and even extenuate the 
 account of his wickedness ; he might have munificence, 
 a love of letters, a very lofty kind of ambition, or what a 
 lax morality would term a liberal love of pleasure ; at any 
 rate, he probably had talents, and this is perhaps after all 
 the most seductive of the distinctions by which a bad man 
 can dazzle our judgments. The historian, besides, acquires 
 a kind of partiality for an emiaent actor in the times and 
 transactions which he describes, from even the circumstance 
 of being, in imagination, so long in his company. In pro- 
 secuting his work, he returns to this person each morning, 
 for weeks, months, or even years ; the interest of the lite- 
 rary labour consists in following this person through the 
 whole train of his proceedings ; the disposition for quarrel- 
 ling with him gradually subsides ; the odious moral features 
 are famiUarized to the view ; while perhaps the conviction 
 of his great attainments, and the wonder at his achieve- 
 ments, are progressively augmented ; extenuations suggest 
 themselves, and occasionally even partial claims on applause- 
 the writer becomes a kind of participator in the activity 
 and importance of the transactions, while he is clear of all 
 the guilt : and thus by degrees the rigour of justice is for- 
 gotten, and flagrant iniquity is exhibited with so little 
 prominence of turpitude, that it depends very much on the 
 moral state of the reader's own mind, whether he shall 
 regard it with indulgence or detestation. "We shaU not 
 wonder at the bad morality of history, if we combine this 
 view of the injurious effect of the historian's studies on his 
 mind, with the consideration that the eminent historians of 
 antiquity were pagans, and the most distinguished ones of 
 modern times very near the moral level of paganism, by 
 means of their irreligion. 
 
 It is, again, very desirable that a rigid justice should be 
 maintained in delineating and recording the characters and 
 actions of statesmen, because it is in the nature of the 
 people, in all countries, to feel a kind of superstitious vene- 
 ration for those who are so much above them as to have the 
 command of their public affairs. Place men, of whatever 
 
 o 
 
194 LITES 01' BEITISH STATESMBIT. 
 
 Bort, in power, and there wiU need no burning fiery furnace 
 to intimidate their fellow-citizens into referential prostra- 
 tion. On the mere strength of their situation they shall 
 gain credit to almost all they pretend, and acknowledgment 
 of right to all they arrogate ; fine talents and fine qualities 
 in abundance shall be ascribed to them ; and the crowd 
 shall look up with awe to the beings that can make speeches 
 and enactments, appointments and imposts, treaties and 
 wars. Or even if the deficiency of integrity and abilities 
 is so notorious as to force a reluctant conviction on the 
 people, the high station secures a certain tolerance which 
 a man in humbler life must not too confidently expect for 
 vices and incapacity. It is matter of great difficulty and 
 efibrt for these men to sin away the whole stock of credit 
 and partiality, which sounding titles and elevated stations 
 have raised for them in the popular mind. Even our pride 
 is in their favour ; our pride as respecting ourselves is 
 unwilling to believe, that we are all passing our lives in 
 submissive homage to persons not at all our betters in 
 wisdom or morals ; and our pride of national comparison 
 feels it absolutely necessary to maintain, that we are wise 
 enough to put as much wisdom at our head as any people 
 in the world can boast. "We mean this as a description not 
 of the English nation in particular ; it is the case of every 
 nation. 
 
 Now this superstitious respect for persons possessing 
 consequence in the state is injurious to the people in two 
 ways ; it deteriorates their moral principles, and it endan- 
 gers their political condition. If statesmen, as a class, had 
 been proved by experience to be the purest of all saints, 
 then tins excess of reverence for them might be a most 
 salutary sentiment, as reinforcing the attractions and au- 
 thority of virtue by all the influence held over our minds 
 by these its noblest examples. But it 'has been found till 
 now, or at least tiU very lately, that statesmen in general 
 deem it necessary to keep in their possession about the 
 same quantity of vice as their neighbours ; and the respect 
 which the people feel for the men, on account of their 
 station, prevents the just degree of contempt or abhorrence 
 for the vice. AU. the palliation which vice acquires, as 
 beheld m connexion with respected personages, it is sure 
 
ITECESSITT OP POPTTLiE TIGILANCE. 195 
 
 afterwards to retain as viewed in itself; the principles 
 therefore by which its noxiousness should be esteemed are 
 depraved ; and all who are disposed to like it, will gladly 
 take the privilege of committing it at the same reduced 
 expense of conscience and character, as their superiors. 
 In every community the estimate of the evil of immorality, 
 in the abstract, wiU iafallibly be reduced nearly to the 
 level of that opinion of its evil which is entertaiaed respect- 
 ing it, as committed by the most privileged class of that 
 community. 
 
 As to the danger which threatens the political condition 
 of the people, no illustration can well make it plainer. If 
 statesmen were an importation of celestials, partaking in 
 no degree of the selfishness and perversity of mortal men, 
 it would be a delightful thing for us to throw into their 
 hands an unlimited power over all the great concerns of a 
 nation, and prosecute our iadividual purposes, and indulge 
 our tastes and domestic affections, in perfect security that 
 all would go right in the general affairs of the nation. Or 
 if the constitution of things were such, that the interest of 
 the leaders were necessarily coincident entirely with the 
 interest of the people, it might be safe to dismiss the 
 anxiety of vigilance under the presiding direction of even a 
 party of mere human creatures ; as the passengers in a ship 
 give themselves very tranquilly to their amusements or their 
 sleep, because they are certain the ojBSicial conductors of the 
 vessel have necessarily just the same interest in its safety as 
 themselves. But it is obvious that innumerable occasions 
 wQl present themselves to men in power, of serving their 
 own interests quite distinctly from those of the people, and 
 decidedly to their detriment. Indeed, the personal interests, 
 of these men are necessarily opposed to the grand popular 
 interest of freedom itself, insomuch that no people ever 
 long maintained their internal liberty, who. did not maintain 
 it by precaution against the very statesmen they were 
 obliged to employ. Every thing that ascertains the freedom, 
 of the people necessarily fixes the bounda to the- power of 
 those who are placed over them ; and it would be requiring 
 too much of human nature to expect that men, whom 
 ambition, for the most part, has raised to the stations of 
 power, should not regard with an evil eye these limitations 
 
 o 2 
 
196 LITES OF BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to the scope of their predominant passion, and consider 
 them as obstacles which thej are to remove or surmount if 
 they can. And their high station, as we have observed, 
 affords them many facilities for concealing and protecting 
 themselves, in the prosecution of measures for the gradual 
 subversion of liberty ; in which course and for which pur- 
 pose very many statesmen, according to the testimony of 
 history, have employed the powers and resources vested, 
 and the confidence reposed in them by the nation, as the 
 persons ofB.cially engaged to guard its interests. Now, the 
 thing which beyond all other things would be desired by 
 men with sach designs, is the prevalence in the public 
 mind of a blind veneration for statesmen, that attributes to 
 them rectitude and talents of too high an order to be 
 inspected and scrutinized, and controlled by any profane 
 arrogance of the people. Under favour of this state of the 
 popular mind, they have but to make pompous professions 
 of patriotism, and act in tolerable concert, and they may 
 obtain unlimited confidence while they axe both wasting 
 the immediate resources of the country, and assiduously 
 sapping away all that which can enable each individual 
 inhabitant to say, I am no man's property or slave. It is 
 the duty, therefore, of all who wish well to mankiud, to 
 remonstrate against this pernicious infatuation ; and it is 
 our official duty to represent that the biographical flatterers 
 of statesmen are among the most wicked perverters of the 
 public mind. 
 
 Mr. Macdiarmid is not of this class. His language is 
 perhaps a little too indulgent, occasionally, to meet our 
 ideas of the severe duties of the office he has chosen ; but 
 we regard him on the whole as a faithful and impartial 
 biographer. He never gets into such a current of panegjrric 
 that he cannot for his life stop to notice a fault. He 
 appears in a considerable degree the friend of several of the 
 eminent men whose actions he records ; but he is such a 
 friend as, if he could have been contemporary and acqiiainted 
 with any of them, would not have withheld those candid 
 animadversions which might have contributed to make them 
 greater benefactors of the times, and greater ornaments to 
 history. He does not profess to present their characters in 
 any new light, noi to have drawn facts and anecdotes from 
 
OENEKAL QUALITIES OF MaCBIABMId's WOEK 197 
 
 r ire and impublislied records, but he thought it might not 
 be an unacceptable service to the public to give a somewhat 
 more ample, and a more minute and personal sketch, of 
 these distinguished men, than can be found, or could vfith 
 propriety be contained, in any one history of their times. 
 Accordingly, he has employed much industry and judgment 
 in deducing, from the information supplied by a number of 
 historical and biographical works, very clear narrations of 
 the Uves of Sir Thomas More and Lords Burleigh, Strafford, 
 and Clarendon. The narration is very successful in the 
 point of keeping the individual always fully in view, while it 
 is often necessarily extended, by the public nature of his 
 actions, to the whole breadth of the national history of his 
 times. The writer in general confines himself very strictly 
 to his narration, and is very sparing of reflections ; a for- 
 bearance practised, no doubt, from the conviction that a 
 narrative written with fidelity, force, and discrimination, 
 might in general be very safely left, from the obvious 
 simplicity of its moral, to the reader's own imderstanding. 
 It is also a commendable modesty to keep at a great 
 distance from the fault of those historians who might seem 
 to be persuaded that the transactions they record took 
 place positively for no other purpose on earth but to draw 
 forth certain wise notions from their minds. Tet many 
 readers, and we do not disclaim to be of the number, are 
 indolent enough to wish the historian would just give the 
 direction to their thoughts ; and if he can manage to time 
 his reflections well, and to avoid being very trite or prolix, we 
 are very willing to divide with him the merit of being very 
 philosophical on every circumstance of the narration. We 
 are not, perhaps, of opinion that Mr. Macdiarmid's reflection* 
 would have been more than usually profound; but they would 
 have stiU further manifested that sound, liberal sense which 
 is already so apparent. The style has quite the measured 
 and equable form of set historical composition ; it is, how- 
 ever, perspicuous, unaffected, and in a very respectable degree, 
 vigorous. The book offers a more speedy and elegant intro- 
 duction than was before attainable, to an acquaintance with 
 four of the most distinguished characters in our political 
 history. 
 
 With regard to the first of them. Sir Thomas More, we 
 will acknowledge it must be nearly impossible for the 
 
198 LIVES or BEITISH STATESMEW. 
 
 historian of Ms life to avoid becoming very decidedly, and 
 even enthusiastically attached to him. No great harm 
 would result from a relaxation, in this instance, of that law 
 of severity under which we have represented that the lives 
 of statesmen ought to be written ; for no second instance of 
 the same kind will be found in the subsequent political 
 annals of England. Indeed, he is a person so unique in the 
 records of statesmen, that we can see no chance that any 
 utility in the way of example, would arise from a display of 
 his Itfe and character. Some small degree of similarity is 
 pre-requisite, as the basis of any reasonable hope of seeing 
 an example imitated ; and therefore it would seem very 
 much in vain, as to this purpose, to display a statesman and 
 courtier who was perfectly free from all ambition, from the 
 beginning of his career to the end ; who was brought into 
 office and power by little less than compulsion ; who met 
 general flattery and admiration with a calm indifierence, and 
 an invariable perception of their vanity ; who amidst the 
 caresses of a monarch longed to be with his children ; who 
 was the most brilliant and vivacious man in every society 
 he entered into, and yet was more fond of retirement even 
 than other statesmen were anxious for public glare ; who 
 displayed a real and cordial hilarity on descending from 
 official eminence to privacy and comparative poverty ; who 
 made all other concerns secondary to devotion ; and who, 
 with the softest temper and mildest manners, had an 
 inflexibility of principle which never at any moment knew 
 how to hesitate between a sacrifice of conscience and of life. 
 The mind rests on this character with a fascination which 
 most rarely seizes it in passing over the whole surface of 
 history. In this progress we often meet with individuals 
 that we greatly admire ; but the bare sentiment of admira- 
 tion may fail to make us delighted with the ideal society of 
 the object, or interested in its fate. In the company of Sir 
 Homas More, the admiration scarcely ever stands separate 
 from the more kindly feelings ; it seems but to give the last 
 emphasis to the inexpressible complacency with which we 
 listen to him, converse with him, observe his movements, 
 and follow him wherever he goes. If personally acquainted 
 with such a man, we should, in absence from him, be 
 incessantly haunted with a necessity and a passion to get 
 
OHAEACTEE Or MOEE. 199 
 
 near him again; and should not only feel the most 
 animated pleasure, but also, in spite of the contrast between 
 our intellectual powers and his, should feel as if we had five 
 times more sense than usual, when stimulated and supported 
 by the vigour of a genius which seemed entirely to forget 
 any comparison between itself and those around, which 
 kiadly lent itself to assist every one to think, and gladly 
 aided any one to shine, while it had never once any other 
 ambition than to diffuse happiness or impart instruction. 
 The absence of every kind of selfishness, the matchless 
 gaiety and good humour which accompanied his great 
 talents, and his wonderful facility of using them, divested of 
 the least timidity every one that approached him, except 
 pretenders and villains. His manner of displaying his 
 talents delighted his friends into such a total forgetfulness 
 of fear, that only his exalted virtue could preserve to him 
 that veneration which again his facetiousness prevented 
 from oppressiag those who felt it. Perhaps there never 
 was a person that possessed many various qualities in such 
 perfect combination, as, in an equal degree with More, to 
 make the effect of them all be felt in the operation of any 
 one of them. His playful wit never put his severe virtue 
 and his wisdom out of recollection ; and at the same time it 
 was acknowledged, that so imperial a virtue had never 
 before been seen so much at its ease in the company of 
 pleasantry and humorous fancy. The habitual influence, 
 therefore, of his character, was a happy and most singular 
 complexity, of operation; as he could exert, and did almost 
 involuntarily exert, not in succession and alternation, but at 
 one and the same time, the wit, the philosopher, and the 
 Christian. 
 
 Distinguished statesmen generally become what may be 
 called technical characters ; the whole human being becomes 
 shaped into an official thing, and nature's own man, with 
 free faculties, and warm sentiments, and unconstrained 
 manners, has disappeared. An established process regulates 
 the creature into a mechanical agency ; the order of its 
 manners is squared to the proper model, formed between 
 the smooth complaisance of the courtier, and the assuming 
 self-importance of the minister ; the whole train of thinking 
 turns on measures of state, on councils, acts, debates, and 
 
200 LITES OF BRITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 iatrigues and the charaister of the court, the cabinet, and 
 senate, sticks to the being most iaseparably, even in the 
 domestic circle, in visits to friends, and in. country rambles. 
 In More, on the contrary, the general natural man was 
 always predominant above any artificial character of office. 
 The variety of his interest, the animation of his sentiments, 
 and the strength of his powers, would not suffer affairs of 
 state to repress the living impulses of his mind, or reduce 
 to a formality of action that elasticity which played in aU 
 directions with infinite freedom. Even in the transactions 
 of office, it appears that his wit sometimes threw its sparkles 
 through the gravity of the judge. In reading the lives 
 of most other statesmen, we seem to be making a very 
 unmeaning and unentertaining visit, to see them among 
 their secretaries, or going to their councils, or at their 
 levees, or seated in their robes ; in reading of More, it 
 seems to be the statesman that makes a visit to us, in the 
 dress of an ordinary person, with manners formed by no 
 rule but kindness and good taste, talking on all subjects, 
 casually suggested, with an easy vigour of sense, and no 
 further reminding us of his station and its habits, than by 
 the surprise now and then recurring on our own minds to 
 recollect that so wonderfully free and pleasant a man ia 
 really a great officer of state 
 
 More's character derives some adventitious lustre, from 
 comparison with the persons most conspicuous in the public 
 affairs of England ab that time. His being contemporary 
 and intimately connected with Henry VIII., might seem as 
 if intended to show in one view the two extremes of human 
 nature. His modesty and disinterestedness contrast admi- 
 rably with the proud, insatiable ambition of Wolsey ; his 
 independence and magnanimity with the courtly servility 
 which it is impossible not to impute to the otherwise excel- 
 lent Cranmer. 
 
 Amidst the early display and fame of talents and learn- 
 ing, his favourite wish was to become a monk, but was 
 overruled by his father, who was earnest for his adopting 
 the profession of the law. This at length he did, and with 
 the greatest success, notwithstanding he continued to direct 
 a large proportion of his studies to classical literature and 
 to theology. At the age of twenty-three he entered the 
 
MOEE'S lOFTT INTEGEITT. 201 
 
 House of Commons, in the latter part of the reign of 
 Henry VII., in which situation his first exertion was little 
 less than the hazard of his life, by an eloquent resistance to 
 an iniquitous demand of money, made by this tyrant, and 
 which the fears of the house would have silently yielded but 
 for the courageous virtue of More, which roused them to 
 refuse the grant. He was, however, compelled, in conse- 
 quence, to exchange the bar for complete retirement ; but 
 this only served to complete his knowledge, and mature his 
 virtues, while the tenderest domestic relations occupied his 
 afiections, and all the time that could be spared from his 
 studies. He returned to his practice at the accession of 
 Henry VIII., whose favourite, after a little while, he very 
 reluctantly became, and so continued for many years, not- 
 withstanding that lofty integrity which never once made 
 the smallest sacrifice of principle to the will of the monarch. 
 After holding several important situations, he was eon- 
 strained to accept that of bigh-chancellor, in which he 
 administered justice with a promptitude and a disinterest- 
 edness beyond aU former example, tiU the period of Henry's 
 quarrel with the pope, respecting his divorce of the queen, 
 and his marriage with Anna Boleyn. More foresaw that in 
 his office of chancellor he should be compelled to an explicit 
 opposition to the king, very dangerous to himself ; and by 
 earnest request obtained the acceptance of his resignation. 
 In prosecuting his determination relative to the marriage, 
 throwing off in consequence the authority of Eome alto- 
 gether, and ultimately assuming himself the supremacy of 
 the English church, the tyrant required the approbation, by 
 oath, of the chief persons in the state. Especially the 
 approbation of More, though now but a private person, was 
 of far greater importance to him than that of any other 
 individual. He was aware that More was conscientiously 
 unable to give this approbation, and knew well that nothing 
 on earth could induce him to violate his conscience ; yet, 
 after repeated attempts at persuasion, he angrily insisted on 
 his taking the several oaths, summoned him before a council, 
 and gave him time to deliberate in prison. After enduring 
 with unalterable patience and cheerfulness the severities of 
 a year's imprisonment in the Tower, he was brought to trial, 
 condemned with the unhesitating haste which always dis- 
 
202 ijItes of beitish btatesmbn. 
 
 tinguishes the creatures employed by a tyrant to effect hia 
 revenge by some mockery of law, and with the same haste 
 consigned to execution. Imagination cannot represent a 
 scene more affecting than the interview of More with his 
 favourite daughter, nor a character of more elevation, or 
 even more novelty, than that most singular vivacity with 
 which, iu the hour of death, he crowned the calm fortitude 
 which he had maintained through the whole of the last 
 melancholy year of his life. Thus one of the noblest beings 
 in the whole world was made a victim to the malice of a 
 remorseless crowned savage, whom it is the infamy of the 
 age and nation to have suffered to reign or to live.* 
 
 * In a subsequent paper on Gayley\ Memoirs of Sir Thomas 
 More, Mr. Foster recurs to this subject, and dwells upon it with 
 a beauty and force which strikingly exhibit the nice discrimina- 
 tion and sound moral sense by which his intelleet was distin- 
 guished. The passage should be read in connexion with his 
 remarks on the hilarity of Hume. 
 
 " Some grave and pious persons have been inclined to censure 
 this gaiety, as iucongruous with the feelings appropriate to the 
 solemn situation. We would observe, that though we were to 
 admit as a general rule, that expressions of wit and pleasantry 
 are unbecoming the last hour, yet Sir Thomas More may be 
 justly considered as the exception. The constitution of his mind 
 was so singular and so happy, that throughout his life his humour 
 and wit were evidently, as a matter of fact, compatible, in almost 
 all cases, with a general direction of his mind to serious and 
 momentous subjects. His gaiety did not imply a dereliction, 
 even for the moment, of the habitude of mind proper to a wise 
 and conscientious man. It was an unquestionable matter of 
 fact, that he could emit pleasantries and be seriously weighing 
 in his mind an important point of equity or law, and could pass 
 directly from the play of wit to the acts and the genuine spirit 
 of devotion. And if he could at aU other times maintain a 
 vigorous exercise of serious thought and devout sentiment, 
 unhurt by the gleaming of these lambent fires, there was no 
 good reason why they might not gleam on the scaffold also. He 
 had thousands of times before approached the Almighty, 
 without finding, as he retired, that one of the faculties of his 
 mind, one of the attributes of extraordinary and universal 
 talent imparted to him by that Being was become extinct in 
 consequence of pious emotions : and his last addresses to that 
 Being could not be of a specifically difierent nature from the 
 former ; they could only be one degree more solemn. He had 
 
MOEE S ADHEEENCE TO POPBBT. 203 
 
 Sir Thomas More'a constant adherence to the church of 
 Eome was evinced by his writing against the Eeformers in a 
 strain of violence most uncongenial with his general cha- 
 racter, by his superstitious discipline of a hair shirt and a 
 knotted whip, by certain severities exercised on persons 
 declaring against Popery, by his expressing in the inscrip- 
 tion which he wrote for his tomb his hostSity to heretics, 
 and by his deliberate preference of death to yielding any 
 Sanction to a measure by which the English monarch arro- 
 gated the ecclesiastical supremacy which had previously 
 been acknowledged in the popes. In the earlier part of his 
 life, however, he manifested a freedom of opinion which by 
 no means threatened to grow into that bigotry, which in the 
 latter part formed the only, but certainly very serious foil 
 to so much excellence. In his " Utopia" he made no scruple 
 to censure the corruptions and ridicule the follies prevalent 
 in the Eoman church, and there can be no doubt that to a 
 certain limited extent he would have zealously concurred in 
 a plan of reform. Till the tumults attending the Eeforma- 
 tion excited him to wish that Christendom might be tran- 
 
 before almost habitually thought of death, and most impressively 
 realized it ; and still he had wit, and its soft lustre was to hia 
 friends but the more delightful for gilding so grave a contem- 
 plation : well, he could only realize the awful event one degree 
 more impressively, when he saw the apparatus, and was warned 
 that this was the hour. As Protestants, we undoubtedly feel 
 some defect of complacency, iu viewing such an admirable 
 display of heroic self-possession mingled with so much error ; 
 but we are convinced that he was devoutly obedient to what he 
 believed the will of God, that the contemplation of the death of 
 Christ was the cause of his intrepidity, and that the errors of 
 his faith were not incompatible with his interest in that sacrifice. 
 " There is so little danger of any excessive indulgence of sallies 
 of wit in the hour of death, that there is no need to discuss the 
 question how far, as a rule applicable to good men in general, 
 such vivacity as that of More would in that season comport with 
 the Christian character ; but we are of opinion that it would 
 fully comport in any case substantially resembling his ; in any 
 case where the' innocent and refined play of wit had been 
 through life one of the most natural and unafiected operations 
 of the mind, where it had never been felt to prevent or injure 
 serious thinking and pious feeling, and where it mingled with 
 the clear indications of a real Christian magnanimity iu death." 
 
204 LITES or BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 quillized by a paramount authority in religion, his veneration 
 for the pope nad by no means gone the length of ascribing 
 an absolute unlimited authority in religious matters. At all 
 times he held the decrees of general councils iu higher 
 respect than those of the papal court ; and when Henry 
 VIII. was about to publish the famous book which procured 
 him and all his successors the title of Defender of the Taith, 
 More vainly remonstrated with him agaiast the extravagant 
 terms in which that book set forth the pope's authority. _ 
 
 He probably was not himself aware how firmly the popish 
 superstitions had taken hold of his mind, till they were 
 attacked by Luther; and then he found them become so 
 sacred in his opinion, that he deliberately avowed, and with 
 unquestionable sincerity, in his " Apology," that he deemed 
 heretics worse than robbers and murderers. And since his 
 philosophy had fallen far short of admitting the principle that 
 human authority has no right to punish modes of faith, he 
 considered heretics as amenable to the tribunals of the state, 
 and the magistrate bound to prosecute the enemies of God. 
 The progress of his mind to bigotry and persecution is ex- 
 plained by Mr. Macdiarmid with much intelligence, and with 
 the utmost candour toward the admirable person whom he 
 is painfully forced to accuse. 
 
 It is impossible now to ascertain how far More was prac- 
 tically a persecutor. If it were possible, we should go into 
 the inquiry with a strong apprehension of finding, that he 
 did in some measure contribute to the rigorous execution of 
 the laws enacted, or brought into more decisive operation 
 against the Protestants, during part of the detestable reign 
 in which it was his fate to live. It is unquestionable how- 
 ever that some of the Protestant writers have greatly 
 exceeded the truth, in charging him with numerous acts of 
 direct personal cruelty in the exercise of his power. They 
 have used expressions from which it might almost be infer- 
 red, that one of his ordinary methods against Protestants 
 was the infliction of corporal suffering. But we have his 
 own express aifirmation, which we consider as of higher 
 authority than all other testimony, that he had recourse to 
 personal violence on account of the declared renunciation of 
 Popery only in two instances, that of a boy of his household, 
 and that of a man who was guilty of indecent outrages on 
 
IXTOLEEAKCE OF THE EEFOEMEES. 205 
 
 persons, particularly on women, attending' the mass. These 
 two he caused to be " stripped," he says, but not so much, 
 he affirms, as to cause them any lasting pain or injury. 
 Without however proceeding the odious length that has 
 been most imjuatly imputed to him, he might, ia his high 
 official capacity of chEiacellor and president of the Star- 
 chamber, exercise much legal intolerance ; and from such a 
 view we can only join with all good and wise men in 
 lamenting the deplorable darkness and perversity of human 
 reason, which both in that and later times so obstinately 
 refused to perceive or acknowledge, that religious opinions 
 are entirely beyond the jurisdiction of human authority. 
 What is most humiliating of all, — many of the Eeformers 
 themselves, though asserting liberty of opinion in their dis- 
 sent from the church of Home, could not comprehend that 
 other men had the very same right to dissent from them. 
 The larger portion of the history of the Reformed churches 
 has been the history of Popish iatolerance, variously modi- 
 fled indeed, in its action, by national and local character, 
 and by the particular temper of leading individuals, but well 
 furnished with its conclaves, its holy offices, its political 
 intrigues, its bulls, its dungeons, and even its executioners, 
 and operating rather on a reduced scale of power, than with 
 any mitigation of malignity. All this, say the Protestants, 
 is very arrogant and impious in the Papal church ; but the 
 Papal church is erroneous, and the Papal church is not ours : 
 • — of what inestimable utility, in the true church, would be 
 a modified exercise of that high authority, which is indeed 
 80 wrong and pernicious in the corrupt one ; it were very 
 unfortunate to lose entirely so grand an advantage gained 
 over the human mind by ecclesiastical authority ; certainly 
 it has been very improperly acquired and used by the 
 church that gained it, but beinff gained, might it not become 
 a holy thing in the hands of holy men ? — the conqueror was 
 no doubt guilty of ambition and injustice, but his successors 
 who are of course wise and beneficent, may do much more 
 good by retaining the subjugated provinces and the spoils, 
 than by restoring liberty and property. Can the power he 
 too great, when the only object to which it is possible for it 
 ever to be applied ia our hands is the support of the genuine 
 cause of Grod ? When strong measures have been employed 
 
206 LIVES OF BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 to promote and establish enoi, are we not in duty called 
 upon to use means equally strong to maintain the truth ? 
 Sentiments of this kind are unhappily felt and expressed by 
 bigots, not only in aU establishments, but in aU sects, hovp- 
 ever manifestly incompatible with their primary and funda- 
 mental principles. 
 
 As long as the Popish establishment stands, it wUl have 
 the effect, not only of setting an example, venerable by age, 
 of ecclesiastical dominion, but of continually suggesting how 
 far it might be carried ; and it will tend to prevent any set 
 of men from ever suspecting themselves of intolerance, so 
 long as they stop short of the downright tyranny which that 
 church has always practised, and prevent them from cor- 
 dially allowing an absolute freedom of thought and pro- 
 fession, satisfied with just so much authority over men's 
 religious opinions as argument, eloquence, and virtue can 
 maintain. On accoimt of this influence, as well as of the 
 immediate noxiousness of the Papal dominion wherever it 
 exists, we have fervently to wish for the downfall of all its 
 establishments, and humbly to pray, that the movements of 
 the present awful crisis may happily be made so far benefi- 
 cial as to result in their final demolition. We come back 
 to the book before us by observing, that the detestable 
 quality of religious, and especially Popish bigotry, is hardly 
 more conspicuous in the exhibitions of Smithfield and St. 
 Bartholomew, than in the fact of its having sometimes filled 
 with virulence such an otherwise almost angelic being as 
 Sir Thomas More. 
 
 We must be more brief in our notice of the remaining 
 lives. That of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, presents to our view 
 beyond all doubt the most useful minister that ever managed 
 the affairs of our country. He held the important station 
 during very nearly the whole reign of Elizabeth ; and we 
 shall not allow it to constitute any impeachment of either 
 our loyalty or gallantry, that we have wished, while reading 
 the account of his life, that he had been the monarch instead 
 of our famous queen. It is impossible to say what share of 
 the better part of her fame was owing to Mm, but we are 
 inclined to think, that if we could make out an estimate of 
 that reign, wanting all the good which resulted from just so 
 much wisdom and moderation as Cecil possessed, beyond 
 
ELIZABETH'S CONFIDEITCE IN CECIL. 207 
 
 any other statesman that coiild have been employed, and 
 including all the evil which no other minister would have 
 prevented, we should rifle that splendid period of more than 
 half its honours. A very considerable proportion of his 
 political labour was a contest with his sovereign, a contest 
 with caprice, with superstition, with bigotry, and vdth the 
 prodigality of favouritism. This would no doubt reflect 
 great honour on the sovereign who could, notwithstandiag, 
 retain in her favour and service so upright a minister, if the 
 fact had not been, that his services were just as indispen- 
 sable to her government as those of a cook or postillion 
 were to her personal accommodation. She had the sense to 
 be convinced, and the prudence to act on her conviction, 
 that no other man in her dominions could so happily direct 
 her affairs through the extreme dangers of that memorable 
 period. Though, therefore, she would sometimes treat him 
 ■with the meanest injustice, contriving to throw on him the 
 odium of any dishonourable or unpopular action of her own, 
 and would occasionally make him the object, like the rest of 
 her ministers, of her abusive petulance, addressing him with 
 the titles of " old fool," " miscreant," and " coward," yet 
 she made him always her most confidential counsellor, zeal- 
 ously defended him against his enemies, refused his urgent 
 solicitation, when advanced far in life, to be allowed to retire 
 from his office, and anxiously visited his sick room in the 
 concluding period of his life, and not remote from the close 
 of her own. 
 
 Excepting one or two sublime examples in the Jewish 
 history, Sir Thomas More was probably the only great 
 Statesman that ever rose to eminence and power without 
 ambition. Though Cecil's virtue could descend to no base 
 expedients for advancement, he was from his early youth of 
 a very aspiring disposition ; and certainly, if the most extra- 
 ordinary industry and attainments could merit distinction 
 and honourable employment, no young man ever had 
 superior claims. He very soon drew the attention of the 
 court, obtained the utmost that his ambition could desire, 
 and held a ministerial office probably a greater number of 
 years than any other man in our history. With the excep- 
 tion of a very few objectionable or doubtful circumstances, 
 it seems impossible to use language too strong in praise of 
 
208 WTES OF BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 this admirable minister. No stateaman since his time has 
 given the nation, after long experience of his conduct, such 
 a profound, complacent feeling of being safe. The idea 
 which gradually cam.e to be entertained of him was almost 
 that of a being not needing sleep or recreation, always 
 active by an invincible necessity, not subject to any caprices 
 of temper nor obscurations of understanding, created and 
 endowed to live for the state and for no other purpose, and 
 so far above all meanness of self-interest as to make it not 
 at all worth while to examine his conduct ; and after being 
 minister several times ten years, he seemed, in the appre- 
 hension of the people, to have outlived any danger of being 
 removed from his office by death. If any unexpected 
 public event happened in England or the surrounding 
 countries, it was felt to be certain that the faithful old 
 sentinel would be the first to see it, and would descry and 
 avert any danger it might involve. If parties threatened to 
 run high, it was recollected that OecU's discernment and 
 impartiality would calmly judge and balance their respective 
 principles and merits, and that his incomparable powers of 
 conciliation had already quieted or moderated many a 
 political war. If a new man was raised to some important 
 station, it was well-known that Cecil, in his appointments 
 and recommendations, trampled on all pretensions but those 
 of personal qualification. If the queen's favourites were 
 given to wild courses, and seemed to endanger the sobriety 
 of her government, it was not doubted that Cecil would keep 
 a vigilant eye on their proceedings, and would dare, if it 
 shoidd become necessary, even to admonish her majesty on 
 the subject. If a tax was imposed, it was relied on that the 
 careful and frugal minister would not have sanctioned it 
 without an indispensable necessity. If a negotiation was 
 carried on with foreign states, it was quite a certain thing 
 that Cecil would neither provoke them nor cringe to them, 
 would sacrifice no national advantage either through pride 
 or meanness. And if a military expedition was to be 
 equipped, it was not a matter to be doubted that some just 
 and important object was to be gained at the smallest 
 possible hazard and expense. Such a man was of necessity 
 violently hated by every party and every individual in con- 
 stant succession, that had any aiean projects of self-interest 
 
Cecil's modeeate poiict. 209 
 
 to prosecute at the expense of the public welfare ; but the 
 bulk of the nation must have wished centuries of life, if it 
 had been possible, to the iacomparable minister. The 
 character of his understanding was that of vast compre- 
 hension, which could view the most complicated system of 
 concerns in aU its parts, and in due proportion, at once ; 
 and therefore saw how to promote the advantage of the 
 whole by the expedients devised for any particular part. 
 The character of his political temper, if we may so express 
 it, was a vigorous moderation, prompt and resolute in its 
 measures, and yet seeking to accomplish the end by the 
 most temperate means and in the quietest manner. 
 Moderation was conspicuous in the general scope and 
 direction of his designs, as well as in the manner of effect- 
 ing each particular object. He was the invariable opponent 
 of war, which he, unaccountably, judged an expedient very 
 rarely necessary even in the most turbulent times, and of 
 which he most perfectly beheld the vUe and hideous 
 features through the romantic, dazzling kind of heroism so 
 much in vogue in those enterprising times. But the 
 greatest and most continued efforts of his moderate policy 
 were made in the endeavour to preserve to the people some 
 slight shadow of religious liberty, in opposition to the half 
 popish queen, and a most bigoted and persecuting hierarchy, 
 that incessantly counteracted his liberal schemes. 
 
 The boasted reign of Elizabeth was a period of great 
 barbarism, as far as related to the royal and episcopal 
 notions of the rights of conscience, and of great cruelty in 
 the practical administration of the religious department. 
 Cecil remonstrated in a spirited manner against the pro- 
 ceedings of the prelates, which he charged with being nearly 
 the same as those of the Inquisition; but when he 
 attempted to interpose his official authority in defence of 
 the victims of their intolerance, he found they had so 
 entirely the approbation of the queen, that they would set 
 his remonstrances and interposition at defiance. She was a 
 bigoted devotee to various popish superstitions, was passion- 
 ately fond Df gaudy and childish ceremonials in the ecclesi- 
 astical institutions, was the bitter enemy of every thing like 
 real liberty of religious opinion, and, iu short, was alto- 
 gether unworthy of being, where circumstances had placed 
 
210- LITES OF BEITISH STATESMEK. 
 
 her, at the head of the Protestant cause. The accideut of 
 her being placed in this distinguished situation, and being 
 consequently hated and conspired against by all the Catholic 
 governments, was the grand security for the animated 
 loyalty of her Protestant subjects; and even the Puritans,- 
 towards whom the measures of her reign symbolized a good 
 deal with the plagues of Egypt, were so desperate of any 
 other defence against the horrors of a real Popish dominion 
 and persecution, that they entered into associations for the 
 protection of her person and government. Their loyalty, 
 therefore, was obviously in a great degree self-interested ; 
 but the following passage, among very many others of a 
 similar kind that might be extracted, will tend to show that 
 it was also in no small degree generous and gratuitous. 
 Away then with the charge of faction and turbulence which 
 has been made against this venerable class of sufferers, 
 unless the charge of faction is also to be applied to the 
 principle of returning good for evil. 
 
 " Elizabeth, holding very different sentiments from these, not 
 only prescribed peculiar forms for the worship of her people, bat 
 was determined that they should use no other. The puritans, 
 on the other hand, without calling her right in question, 
 objected to the forms which she had appointed, because they 
 had been previously employed in the Popish worship, as mystical 
 symbols, and were associated in the minds of the people with 
 the , grossest superstitions. They resolved, therefore, that no 
 worldly considerations should induce them to assume what they 
 accounted appendages of idolatry ; while the queen, on her part, 
 prepared to employ aU her authority in support of this exertion 
 of her supremacy. 
 
 " Finding that her council, the ablest and wisest council that 
 England ever saw, were decidedly averse to measures which 
 threatened to involve the nation in the most dangerous dissen- 
 sions, she resolved to effect her purpose by means of the bishops, 
 particularly Archbishop Parker, who readily and zealously 
 entered into her views. The severities to which these now pro- 
 ceeded, were only surpassed by the frivolity of the pretences 
 under which they were exercised. While the fervent attach- 
 ment to the use of surplices, corner-caps, tippets, the cross in 
 baptism, and the ring in marriage, were considered as the distin- 
 guishing characteristics of a Christian, any dislike to these forms,^ 
 which were allowed to be in themselves indifferent, was accounted 
 a sufficient crime to subject the most learned and pious clergy- 
 
Cecil's ■woNDBEFrL iwdustet. 211 
 
 man to^ imprisonment and exile ; or, as a mitigated punishment, 
 to be turned out of his living, and with his family consigned to 
 indigence. The most pernicious effects necessarily flowed from 
 tjiese excesses. While the church was weakened by the loss of 
 a' large portion of her most able divines, and degraded by the 
 iiitroduction of a great number of men who could barely read 
 the prayer-book, and write their own names, without even 
 pretending to preach, the people began everywhere to collect 
 round their expelled teachers, and to form conventicles apart 
 from the Establishment. Yet these bad consequences only set 
 the queen and her bishops upon obtaining new statutes to reach 
 the refractory ; and at length, even the laity were brought 
 within their grasp, by an act which provided that non-attend- 
 ance at public Worship, in the parish churches, should be punished 
 with imprisonment, banishment, and if the exile returned, with 
 death. An arbitrary commission was appointed with fuU powers 
 to bring all religious offenders to punishment ; and as any 
 resistance to the injunctions of the queen, as supreme head of 
 the church, was at length construed into sedition and treason, 
 rnany subjects, of unquestioned loyalty, were imprisoned, 
 banished, and even executed." — P. 156. 
 
 There could be no hazard in affirming, that a man com- 
 bining greater industry with greater powers of execution, 
 never lived since the beginning of time. And when it is 
 considered through what a very long period these exertions 
 were maintained, and that for the most part they were most 
 judiciously directed to the public good, we may be allowed 
 to dwell with high complacency on this great character, 
 notwithstanding the censure which we think justly due to 
 the magnificence of his private establishment, and the repro- 
 bation deserved by one or two iniquitous modes of taxation 
 which he suggested to Elizabeth. And though it was 
 certainly very unnecessary, except to his ambition, for him 
 to occupy so vastly wide a sphere of official employment, 
 and it might have been more truly patriotic to have en- 
 deavoured to introduce other men of merit into some of the 
 departments, both in order to give them a share of the 
 deserved distinction, and to qualify them to serve the nation 
 after death should have closed his own labours, yet we would 
 earnestly -prp.ss this wonderful example of industry, as a 
 pattern and a monition, on the consciences of many worthy 
 people who may applaud themselves for having passed a 
 busy week, in wtue of about so much real application as 
 
 £ 2 
 
212 LIVES or BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 would have been compressed into less than half a day of our 
 indefatigable statesman. 
 
 Notwithstanding the rigorous occupation of his time and 
 faculties by the business of the government, we are informed 
 that he could lay aside all the formality of the statesman in 
 the company of his select friends, and in amusing himself 
 with his children and grandchildren. We are gratified by 
 all the indications that religion had a habitual influence on 
 his mind ; and his maxim, given in the first sentence of the 
 following quotation, wiU fiirnish the most dignified explana- 
 tion of the principle which secured the general rectitude of 
 his own useful and admirable life. 
 
 " It was usual with Mm to say that he woidd never trust any 
 man but of sound religion, for he that was false to God would 
 never be true to man. Prom his speeches and discourses 
 we are led to conclude that his religious sentiments had a 
 powerful effect in confirming his fortitude amidst the perilous 
 circumstances with which he was often surrounded. At the 
 awful period when Philip was preparing his Armada, and when 
 the utter destruction of the English government was confidently 
 expected abroad and greatly dreaded at home, Burleigh appeared 
 uniformly collected and resolute ; and when the mighty prepara- 
 tions of the Spaniards were spoken of in his presence with 
 apprehension, he only replied with firmness, ' They shall do no 
 more than God will suffer them.' The strictness of bis morals 
 corresponded with his religious professions ; nor could his 
 enemies, who severely scrutinized his most indifferent actions, 
 impute to him even the vices peculiarly incident to his rank." — 
 P. 245. 
 
 Devout references to the Deity might not be of ordinary 
 occurrence among ministers of state of that day : the more 
 extensive prevalence of sincere piety among the great in the 
 present times, must be the cause that we now so very 
 frequently hear our statesmen, in adverting to dangers of a 
 similar kind, utter with true devotional solemnity such 
 reflections as that expressed by Cecil on occasion of the 
 Armada. 
 
 The next life is that of Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 
 and it is the longest and most important of the series. It 
 is evidently the result of severe thought, and very diligent 
 research; and to us it appears to be written with the utmost 
 impartiality that is possible to any man who really holds 
 
WENTWOETH, EAEL OF STKArFORD. 213 
 
 certain decided principles relative to the right and wrong 
 of governments. "We can perceive in the writer no trace of 
 the demagogue or partisan ; the amplest justice is done to 
 the talents of the distinguished person, and in several 
 points his conduct is liberally applauded for integrity; 
 •while the very fair advantage is given him throughout of 
 being his own evidence and advocate, as his letters and 
 despatches are taken as the principal authority. This life is 
 a most interesting piece of composition, in which the 
 account of an extraordinary individual is very dexterously 
 managed to combine and animate various general sketches 
 of the affairs of the most memorable period of our history. 
 The narration of Strafford's active political career, which 
 commenced early in his life, is preceded by a rapid but very 
 able and luminous statement of the contest which had been 
 zealously maintained, through several ages, between the 
 respective claims of the monarch and the people ; which 
 great contest, as he clearly shows, was precipitated very 
 fast towards a decision, at the period when Strafford entered 
 on the public stage. The preceding sovereigns, and by no 
 means less than the rest James's immediate predecessor, 
 had held a very magnificent language on the subject of 
 the royal power and prerogatives; but Elizabeth took 
 care to avoid the necessity of bringing the obnoxious ques- 
 tion to issue in the most dangerous form of large demands 
 of money. Her extreme economy in the public expendi- 
 ture, her admired talents, the unequalled policy of her 
 great minister, her being the chief of the Protestant cause, 
 and the influence which her sex maintained on the chival- 
 rous part of the nation, had aU concurred to secure for her 
 a tolerance of the arrogant pretensions which she so pru- 
 dently forebore to follow up into a complete practical 
 assertion. It was not within the capacity of James to 
 understand, that the nation must be greatly transformed if 
 it could endure the same language, even though combined 
 with the same practical forbearance, from a stranger, of the 
 slenderest endowments, of prodigal and low habits, sus- 
 pected of Popery, and governed by such a favourite as the 
 infiimous Buckingham. But he was resolved that they 
 should not only hear the loftiest strains of the jus divinum, 
 but should be made to acquiesce in all the modes of verify- 
 
214 LIVES OF BEITISH STATESMEN. 
 
 ing it on their purses, their creeds, and their persons. He 
 was indeed compelled to observe the popular formality of 
 calUng parliaments; but he revenged himself hj stout 
 though laconic lectures to them on passive obedience, by 
 insults, by declarations of their futility, by peremptory 
 demands of money, and by petulant orders of dissolution. 
 This was the state of things at the time that Strafford, a 
 young gentleman of large fortune, of very high spirit, of 
 powerfud talents, and by no means devoid of all good 
 qualities, entered into parliament; and it required but a 
 short time to make him very prominent among the leaders 
 of the popular cause, to the support of which none of his 
 contemporaries brought more courage, or more eloquence. 
 He entered so fully into the arguments of this cause as to 
 deprive himself, fl" he should desert it, of all apology 
 on the ground of juvenile rashness and inconsideration. 
 It was of course not long before so formidable an opponent 
 received overtures from Buckingham, in behalf of himself 
 and the court which he ruled. AVhat surprise would be 
 felt by any reader who should not have lived long enough 
 to know how these matters regularly go, to find that these 
 overtures were received and replied to with the greatest 
 possible politeness by Strafford, though he had a thousand 
 times, within a few preceding months, pronounced the man 
 by whom they were made to be the greatest miscreant in 
 Europe, and to be intent on such designs as every man ot 
 virtue ought to oppose, even to the hazard of his \i£e ! He 
 instantly placed himself in the attitude of patient waitings 
 and in part payment of the price of the good things he 
 was going to receive, began, in parliament, to endeavour to 
 moderate the tone of the popular party ; though most 
 zealous for their great cause, he was anxious they should 
 not prosecute it in the spirit and language of faction. Our 
 benevolent sympathy was extremely hurt to find, that this 
 virtuous patriot was deceived and insulted by Buckingham, 
 who on second thoughts, had determined to do without him. 
 It then became proper to discover again, that no energy of 
 opposition in parliament could be too vehement against the 
 designs of the favourite and the king. 
 
 That king was Charles I., who having made a long and 
 very strenuous effort to subdue the people and the parlia- 
 
STEAITOED S DETOTEDTTESS TO CHAELES I. 215 
 
 Bienfc to his arbitrary government by authority and intimi- 
 dation, was induced again to try the expedient of converting 
 some of the boldest of the refractory into friends by means 
 of honours and emoluments. He was instantly successful 
 with Strafford, who accepted a peerage, and the presidency 
 of the Council of York ; and became, and continued to the 
 end of his Hfe, the most faithful and devoted servant of the 
 ting, and of his despotic system of government. He might 
 seem to have felt an almost enthusiastic passion for despotism 
 in the abstract, independently of any partiality for the parti- 
 cular person who was to exercise it. After a few years of 
 his administration as viceroy of Ireland, he exulted to de- 
 clare, that in that country the king was as absolute as any 
 monarch in the whole world. And when, after the very 
 long series of struggles between Charles and the people, 
 the question was coming rapidly to the last fatal arbitre- 
 ment, he urged the king to the prompt adoption of the 
 most vigorous and decisive measures ; and he was mortified 
 almost to distraction when he saw him, notwithstanding 
 this energetic advice, falling into a wavering and timid 
 poUey. His own character and measures, indeed, had 
 always been distinguished by an extraordinary and almost 
 preternatural vigour. His energy and fortitude did not 
 desert him, even when at length he found himself falling 
 under the power and vengeance of that irresistible popular' 
 spirit which embodied its determined force and hostility in 
 the Long Parliament, aided with respect to Strafford, by the 
 hatred and court influence of the queen. He maintained 
 the most graceful and dignified firmness on the scaffold, to 
 which he was consigned in the result of the most memorable 
 trial, except that of his royal master, in the records of our 
 history ; a trial in which a perversion of law was made the 
 expedient for accomplishing what was deemed a point of 
 moral justice not formally provided for by law. As in aU 
 such cases, the bad effect became conspicuous, as Mr. 
 Macdiarmid observes, in the admiration which the heroic 
 eufferer excited in his death ; whereas, if he had only been 
 doomed, as he did well deserve, and would have been felt to 
 deserve, to perpetual imprisonment or exile, his name and 
 character would have sunk down quietly to their proper 
 level, and he would simply have been recollected as one 0/ 
 
216 LIVES OP BEITISH STATESMES. 
 
 the many able unprincipled men, who have chosen to identify 
 their fame with that of the despots of whom they have con- 
 sented to be the tools. 
 
 The lives of Strafford and Clarendon furnish a very wide 
 field for observation ; but it is a beaten field, and we have 
 really left ourselves no room for repeating those poKtica] 
 and moral reflections which ought to be familiar to every 
 Englishman. And besides, our situation is somewhat 
 invidious with regard to one great subject, which is un- 
 avoidably made prominent in almost every page of these 
 two lives. By the principles of our undertaking, we are 
 pledged not to advance any opinions on the grand contro- 
 versy between the religious establishment of our country 
 and the dissenters from its communion ; — or more precisely, 
 we are engaged to avoid discussing the abstract propriety of 
 an establishment, and also the propriety of that form of 
 establishment now existing in the country. These are 
 questions, it is true, quite distinct from the conduct of the 
 church, or any of its distinguished members, as political 
 agents in the transactions of a history. Viewed in this 
 light, their operations, their influence, their virtues, or their 
 vices, are just as fair subjects of observation as those of 
 the eminent dissenters, or any other of the agents, involved 
 in our national history. But it is not quite certain that we 
 can exercise our right to this undoubted extent without 
 giving considerable offence. Even at this liberal period, 
 when religious churchmen and dissenters regard each other 
 much more as brethren, and much less as even rivals, there 
 are some whom it would be hard to avoid offending, and in 
 whose opinion we should scarcely seem to preserve our 
 pledged neutrality, while condemning the violent and fatal 
 intolerance of the church during the reigns of the Jameses 
 and the Charleses, though it be evidently impossible to 
 discuss the merits, or even narrate the events, of those 
 roigns without it. 
 
217 
 
 MEMOIRS OF SIE THOMAS MOEE. 
 
 Memoirs of Sir Thomas More, with a new Translation of hii 
 Utopia, his History of King Richard III., and his Latin Poems. 
 By Arthur Cayley, the younger, Esq. 2 vols., 4to., 1808. 
 
 Ajf extended article in our two last numbers,* occupied, for 
 the greater part, by Sir Thomas More, forbids us to yield to 
 the temptation of assigning more than a very few pages to him 
 in our notice of the present voluminous work. Yet, as readers 
 of political biography, we might well be forgiven, in consi- 
 deration of the moral dreariness of the subject in general, 
 for lingering long in sight of a statesman who never once 
 slighted the dictates of conscience, nor in any concern forgot 
 his accountableness to the G-ovemor of the universe. Some- 
 where in the map of the world, we remember to have observed 
 a promontory called Cape Parewell, and to have imagined to 
 ourselves the pensiveness with which the adventurers who 
 named it so, might be supposed to have looked on it, while 
 departing into the barren, treacherous waste of the wide sea, 
 which they might traverse thousands of miles before their 
 sight would again rest on a grove or a declivity green with 
 grass. In taking leave of a political character like More, 
 who can tell the extent of historical research, or the pro- 
 tracted duration of future waiting, before we come to such 
 another ! 
 
 The present author has obtained the greater part of his 
 materials necessarily from the same books as Mr. Macdiar- 
 mid, making besides a very ample use of More's English 
 works, a more ample use indeed than could be allowed if 
 they were not become very scarce. The narration is too 
 much interrupted and diversified by letters, and by extracts 
 from More's poetry, to assume any thing of the formal 
 style of history ; it is very correctly designated by the title 
 of memoirs. The parts which are in Sir Thomas's own 
 words are perhaps the most interesting, the simplicity of the 
 antique expression seeming to give stronger effect to the 
 
 * Macdiarmid's " Lives of British Statesmen.'' 
 
218 MEMOIES OP SIE THOMAS MOEE. 
 
 ftnimation and significance whicli inspirit every sentence ; 
 just as a person of ninety or a hundred years old, whose 
 manners should be lively, and whose conversation should 
 glow and glitter with fancy, and wit, and keen intelligence, 
 if such a person were to be found, would at many seasons 
 have attractions for us, with which those of the sprightliest 
 and fairest of our young acquaintance could maintain no 
 competition. By means of these selections from More's 
 letters and other prose writings, and of a great number of 
 anecdotes agreeably told, together with very characteristic 
 and curious pieces of verse, Mr. Cayley has certainly given 
 a striking exhibition of this memorable person. His obser- 
 vations are generally pertinent ; and his applause of Sir 
 Thomas, which in passing on we thought rather too un- 
 qualified in one or two instances, we found reduced nearly 
 to the standard of justice at the conclusion, by a strong 
 censure of the intolerant spirit which dimmed the lustre of 
 his character in his conduct toward the Protestants. 
 
 "We are however by no means satisfied with the very 
 slight manner in which the biographer has disposed of the 
 charges of Strype and Burnet : who very possibly had too 
 little susceptibility to the rare and admirable parts of More's 
 character, but whose respectable authority, as historians, 
 demanded some accurate investigation of their accusatory 
 statements, from a biographer who had taken up his work 
 on so wide a scale. His quotation from More's Apology, 
 denying his having employed torture, is decisive as far as it 
 goes ; but surely Mr. Cayley did not think it was to stand 
 as a comprehensive denial of all the facts alleged by the 
 Protestant historians. Sir Thomas himself, when represent- 
 ing before the court appointed to examine him, the injustice 
 of being reduced to an explicit declaration for or against the 
 king's ecclesiastical supremacy, and when shrewdly remind- 
 ed by the secretary that he himself in his judicial office had 
 deemed it right to reduce persons suspected of what was 
 called heresy to as severe an alternative, instantly admitted 
 the fact, by remarking between the two cases a difference, 
 which he considered as justifying his conduct ; and this 
 admission, and the justification, will serve to render not im- 
 probable too many of the charges against him. "We are 
 not pretending that many readers would now feel any very 
 
DEFECTS OF ME. OATLET 8 MEMOIRS. 219 
 
 deep concern in taving an accurate proof made out of all 
 the official proceedings against Protestantism, of an indivi- 
 dual, however distinguished in his time, whose influence on 
 the state of the Christian church has ceased for centuries ; 
 but the biographer must not be permitted to take this com- 
 parative indiflerence, respecting the accurate proof of remote 
 facts, as a license for indolence, unless he will have the 
 discretion at the same time to confine his book to a less 
 ostentatious magnitude. "When he determines to take all 
 possible advantages of his subject, it can never be fair to 
 avoid its difficulties. If he is content to collect and digest 
 within very moderate limits such facts as confessedly need 
 no very laborious research, it is very well ; but when he 
 comes forth with 300 quarto pages of memoirs, and appends 
 400 more reprinted and translated from the works of the 
 person of whom he writes, it would be a contempt of literary 
 justice that he should be allowed to make up his own part 
 of the publication entirely of the facts most easily found, 
 with very large pieces of extract, which only needed to be 
 transcribed, and indulgently excuse himself from any dis- 
 quisitions, however important to the character in question, 
 that require historical investigation. When he chooses his 
 work shall have the benefit, in bulk and price, of such a 
 mass of appendix that costs him so little, we surely have a 
 right to insist that what he really does himself shall be done 
 in the most finished style of workmanship. Such a stately 
 publication, concerning an individual, should not, except 
 through a total deficiency of records, have left the most 
 important part of his history involved in nearly all its 
 former uncertainty. Wtile therefore we are considerably 
 gratified by the memoirs, as telling us a great many facta 
 concerning a most rare character, but facts, for the most part, 
 rather easily collected by the biographer, we must tax Mr. Cay- 
 ley with some degree of indolence, whether regarded as an 
 investigator of historic truth, or the apologist of the illu8« 
 trious statesman. 
 
 if we accuse him of indolence, we do not charge him with 
 any perversion, or with servility to any spirit of party, as a 
 narrator and judge. He displays a respectable freedom ot 
 thought, and forms, we think, in general, just estimates oi 
 the men and rhmgs broiigtit in his v/iew m the course of liia 
 
220 MEMOIES OF SIE THOMAS MOEB. 
 
 work. "We were pleased particularly with the reuiarka oa 
 the character and conduct of Erasmus, at the close of the 
 memoirs of More, whom he survived only about a year. The 
 friendship between these illustrious rivals in literature, wit, 
 and celebrity, appears to have been that of two men, each of 
 whom knew that his friend, if lost, could never be replaced 
 by his equal. Pine portraits of both, with short fac-similes 
 of their hand-writing, are placed as frontispieces to these 
 volumes. 
 
 The youth of Sir Thomas threw out luxuriantly the blos- 
 soms of that virtue, wit, and genius, in which he was 
 destined to excel all his English contemporaries. Prom his 
 English works Mr. Cayley has given some ingenious poetical 
 devices, written when he was a boy, for a series of emble- 
 matical pictures, and a very long copy of excessively 
 humourous verses, reciting the story of a sheriff's officer, 
 who assumed the guise of a friar, in order to gain access to 
 apprehend a man who was slyly acting the sick recluse on 
 account of his debts, which false friar incurred the most 
 ludicrously lamentable disasters in attempting to execute 
 his purpose. 
 
 We have before given a slight sketch of the successive 
 events of the Hfe of our admirable wit and statesman, and 
 shall therefore do little more here than extract a few anec- 
 dotes and one of his letters. 
 
 '■ His second wife appears from the following anecdote to have 
 been leas a philosopher than himself on the occasion of his 
 quitting his high ofiSce. During his chancellorship, one of More's 
 attendants had been in the habit, after the church service was 
 over, of going to his lady's pew to inform her when the chancel- 
 lor was gone. The first holiday after the resignation of his office. 
 Sir Thomas came to the pew himself, and making a low bow, 
 said, Madam, my lord is goTie. His lady at first imagined this to 
 be one of his jests, and took little notice of it ; but when he in- 
 formed her seriously that he had resigned the seal, she was in a 
 passion. The facetious knight called his daughters, and asked if 
 they could espy no fault in their mother's appearance. Being 
 answered in the negative, he said, 'Do ye not perceive that her 
 nose standeth awry 1 ' 
 
 " The good lady is reported to have exclaimed, with her usual 
 worldly feeling on this occasion, ' Tilly vally, what wiU you do, 
 Mr. More 1 will you sit and make goslings in the ashes ? it ia 
 better to rule than be ruled.'" — Vol I., p. 122. 
 
ANECDOTES OE MOEE. 221 
 
 While he was sitting one day in his hall, a beggar came to 
 complain to him that Lady More detained a little dog that be- 
 longed to him. The chancellor sent for his lady and ordered her 
 to bring the dog with her. He took it into his hands, and 
 placing liady More at the upper end of the hall, desired the beggar 
 to stand at the lower end. I sit here, he said, to do every one 
 justice ; and he desired each of them to call the dog. The little 
 favourite immediately forsook his new mistress and ran to the 
 beggar ; upon which Lady More was compelled to indulge her 
 partiality by purchasing the animal." — Yol. I., p. 114. 
 
 " During his chancellorship, he had made a decree against 
 Parnell at the suit of Vaughan, and was now in his adversity 
 accused of having received a gilt cup, as a bribe, of Vaughan's 
 wife. Being summoned before the council, More gravely con- 
 fessed that ' forasmuch as that cup was, long after the aforesaid 
 decree, brought him for a new years gift, he, upon the importu- 
 nate pressing upon him thereof, of courtesy refused not to take 
 it.' Here Lord Wiltshire, Anna Boleyn's father, exclaimed in 
 triumph, ' Lo, did I not tell ye, my lords, that ye should find 
 this matter true.' More desired their lordships ' as they had 
 courteously heard him tell one part of his tale, that they would 
 vouchsafe of their honours indifferently to hear the other.' He 
 then declared, that although he had indeed with much difficulty 
 received the cup, yet immediately thereupon he caused his butler 
 to fill it with wine, and he drank to the lady. When she had 
 pledged him, he gave her the cup again, that she might give it 
 to her husband as a new-year's gift from him ; and at his urgent 
 request, though much against her will, she at last received it. 
 Vaughan's wife, and other witnesses present, confirmed his 
 statement."— Vol. I., p. 252. 
 
 " When one of the family of Manners said to More, ' honores 
 mutant Mores,' the knight readily retorted on him, that it was 
 true in English, for then it applied to Manners. 
 
 " When a debtor to the knight, on being asked to discharge his 
 claim, expiated on the uncertainty of this life, and the inutility 
 of money in the grave, concluding pompously memento morieris. 
 More answered him, memento Mori ceris. 
 
 " When one of his friends brought More an ill-written work, 
 to receive his opinion of it previously to its publication, the 
 knight told him gravely 'it would be better in verse.' The man 
 took home his book, versified it, and brought it again to More. 
 ' Yea, marry,' said the knight, ' now it is somewhat, for now it is 
 rhyme ; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.' "— Vol. I., p. 247. 
 "After his condemnation, a light-headed courtier, as More's 
 great-grandson calls him, having come to the knight, not to talk 
 of serious matters, but to urge him to change his mild. Sir Thoioas, 
 
222 MSKOIES OF BIB THOMAS MOBE. 
 
 wearied by his impertinence and importunity, a last replied, / 
 have changed it. The report of this soon reached the king, and 
 More was commanded to explain himself. The knight now re- 
 buked the courtier for troubling his majesty with what he spoke 
 in jest ; his meaning he said was, that whereas he proposed to 
 have been shaved, that he might appear as usual at his execu- 
 tion ; he had now changed, his mind, and his beard should share 
 the fate of his head."— Vol. I., p. 229. 
 
 After reading these, and a great many more such instances 
 of humour and gaiety, — after being told that his jocularity 
 accompanied him in the gravest official situations and en- 
 gagements, and his wit in the most awful ones, as it vividly 
 darted out its beams at the sight of the executioner and the 
 axe ; in short, that he uttered pleasantries almost as 
 naturally and involuntarily as he breathed, — a person wiU 
 be entirely unable to comprehend, unless he reads the whole 
 account of the character, how this very same man should, with 
 all the same natural grace and ease, utter and write expres- 
 sions which no one can read without tears ; how the man, who 
 but two miautes since vanquished the gravity of the 
 austerest auditor with his arch turns and gay images, can 
 now without an efibrt, and with the most captivating and 
 irresistible expression of simplicity and sincerity, be making 
 the most devout and affecting references to death and the 
 Sovereign Judge. No character so exquisitely compounded 
 of different elements, has been heard of since his time. It 
 is a humble comparison, else we should say that the character 
 resembled those textures in which several colours are so 
 interwoven, that the slightest movements in the light give 
 them a quick alternation of predominance and brilliance, 
 while neither hurts, but each seems to set off more richly 
 the lustre of the other. 
 
 In the short intervals of his trial, he recounted the pro- 
 ceedings, in letters to his eldest daughter ; one of which we 
 will partly transcribe, as a specimen both of his language 
 and his character. The Secretary Cromwell had been 
 urging him to re-consider the subject of the king's su- 
 premacy, and to make such a declaration as would satisfy 
 the king and preserve the prisoner's life. 
 
 " Whereunto I shortly, after the inward affection of my mind, 
 answered, for a very truth, that I would never meddle with the 
 world again, to have the world given me. And to the remnant 
 
ceomwell's conteesation with moee. 223 
 
 of the matter, I answered in effect as before ; showing that I 
 had fully determined with myself, neither to study nor meddle 
 with anymattter of this world ; but that my whole study should 
 be, upon the passion of Christ, and mine own passage out of this 
 world. 
 
 " Upon this I was commanded to go forth for a while, and 
 afterwards call in again. At which time Mr. Secretary said 
 unto me, that though I were a prisoner, condemned to perpetual 
 prison, yet I was not thereby discharged of mine obedience and 
 allegiance unto the king's highness. And thereupon demanded 
 me, whether that I thought, that the king's grace might not 
 exact of me such things as are contained in the statutes, and 
 upon like pains as he might upon other men 1 Whereto I an- 
 swered, that I could not say the contrary. Whereunto he said, 
 that likewise as the king's highness would be gracious to them 
 whom he found conformable, so his grace would follow the 
 course of his laws towards such as he shall find obstinate. And 
 his mistership said further, that my demeanour in that matter 
 was a thing which of likelihood made others so stiff therein as 
 they be. 
 
 " Whereto I answered, that I gave no man occasion to hold 
 any point, one or other ; nor never gave any man advice or 
 counsel therein, one way or other ; and for conclusion, 1 could 
 no further go, whatsoever pain should come thereof. I am, 
 quoth I, the king's true, faithful subject, and daily bedesman ; 
 and pray for his highness, and all his, and all the realm. I do 
 nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish 
 every body good. And if this be not enough to keep a man 
 alive, in good faith I long not to live. And I am dying already, 
 and have, since I came here, been divers times in the case that 
 I thought to die within one hour. And, I thank our Lord ! I was 
 never sorry for it, but rather sorry when I saw the pang past. 
 And therefore, my poor body is -at the king's pleasure ; would 
 God my death might do him good ! 
 
 " After this Mr. Secretary said, ' Well, you find no fault in 
 that statute, find you any in any of the other statutes after V 
 Whereto I answered. Sir, whatsoever thing should seem to me 
 other than good in any of the other statutes, or in that statute 
 either, I would not declare what fault I found, nor speak thereof : 
 thereunto finally his mistership said full gently, that of any 
 thing which I had spoken there should none advantage be taken. 
 
 " Whereupon I was dehvered again to Mr. Lieutenant, who 
 was then called in ; and so was I, by Mr. Lieutenant, brought 
 again into my chamber. And here am I yet, in such case as I 
 was neither better nor worse. That which shall foUow lieth in 
 the hand of God, whom I beseech, to put in the king's grace's 
 
224 MEMOiEs or sis. thomas moeb. 
 
 mind that thing which may be to his high pleasure ; and in mine, 
 to mind only the weal of my soul, with little regard of my body; 
 and you, with all yours, and my wife, and all my children, and 
 all our other friends, both bodily and ghostly heartily well to 
 fare. And I pray you and them all, pray for me, and take no 
 thought whatsoever shall happen me. For I verily trust in the 
 goodness of God ; seem it never so evil in this world, it shall 
 indeed in another world be for the best. . Tour loving father." 
 —Vol. I., Pp. 202. 
 
 His replies and defence, delivered in a gentle and argu- 
 mentative manner, were eloquent, saintly, and heroic. After 
 receiving the fatal sentence, he made the following address 
 to his judges : — 
 
 "More have I not to say, my lords, but that, like as the 
 blessed apostle St. Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, 
 was present and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept 
 their clothes who stoned him to death, and yet be they now both 
 twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends 
 together for ever, — so I verily trust, and shall therefore right 
 heartily pray, that though your lordships have now here on 
 earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in 
 heaven all meet together, to everlasting salvation." — Pp. 227. 
 
 It appears that the cheerful fortitude with which he en- 
 countered death was not so spontaneous, as not to have cost 
 him many painful efforts to obtain its predominance. 
 
 ""When he resigned his office. More withdrew his attention 
 entirely from public affairs, and devoted himself to prayer and 
 to his wx-itings. He lessened his establishment, sold part of his 
 effects, and sent his children to their own houses. He is said 
 to have passed many sleepless nights in the anticipation of his 
 fate, and to have prayed with fervour for courage under it, 
 — for his flesh, he said, could not endure a jiUvp. He once went 
 so far as to hire a pursuivant to come on a sudden at dinner- 
 time to his house, and knocking hastily at the door, to summon 
 him before the council the next day. This was to prepare his 
 family for what they had to expect. 
 
 " ' He would talk,' says Mr. Eoper, ' unto his wife and children 
 of the joys of heaven and pains of hell, of the lives of holy mar- 
 tyrs, of their grievous martyrdoms, of their marvellous patience, 
 and of their passions and deaths, which they suffered rather 
 than they would offend God. And what a happy and blessed 
 thing it was, for the love of God to suffer the loss of goods, im- 
 prisonment, loss of land and life also. Wherewith, and the like 
 virtuous talk he had so Ions before his trouble encouraged them. 
 
HEEOIC BEHATIOrS A,T HIS EXEOUTIOH. 225 
 
 that when he afterwards fell into trouble indeed, hia trouble was 
 to them a great deal the less." — P. 142. 
 
 " In the course of hia imprisonment, More seems never for a 
 moment to have lost sight of the end which it was probable he 
 should come to. He owns that he was of an irritable habit by 
 nature, and weak against bodily sufferings. Yet the whole 
 force of his mind appears to have been exerted at this time, in 
 preparation to meet his fate with constancy and composure. We 
 shall find that the effects of his endeavours, even to human eyes, 
 were wonderful ; that no man ever overcame worldly suffering 
 in the end more completely, or met so severe a fate with less 
 dread of the stroke."— P. 196. 
 
 The account of the manner in which he met that stroke, 
 is certainly one of the most singular narratives in the history 
 of mankind. 
 
 " At the appointed time he was conducted from his prison by 
 the lieutenant of the Tower to the place of execution : 'his 
 beard being long,' says his great-grandson, ' his face pale and 
 lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his eyes often 
 towards heaven.' Yet his facetiousness remained to the last, of 
 which three instances are related to have passed, even on the. 
 scaffold. On ascending this structure, he found it so weak that 
 it was ready to fall : upon which he said to the lieutenant, ' I 
 pray see me up safe, and for my coming down let me shift for 
 myself.' As Henry had so prudently imposed silence on him 
 at this time. More only desired of his spectators that they would 
 pray for him, and bear witness that he there suffered death in 
 and for the faith of the Catholic church. This said, he knelt, and 
 repeated a psalm with great devotion. He then rose cheerfully, 
 and the executioner asking his forgiveness. More kissed him and 
 said, 'Thou wilt do me this day a greater benefit than ever any 
 mortal man can be able to give me. Pluck up thy spirit, man, 
 and be not afraid to do thy office. My neck is very short ; take 
 heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving thy honesty.' 
 When he laid his head on the block, he desired the excecu- 
 tioner to wait till he had removed his beard, 'for that had never 
 committed treason.' ' So with great alacrity and spiritual joy,' 
 adds his great-grandson, ' he received the fatal blow of the axe." 
 —P. 234. 
 
 Sbme grave and pious persons have been inclined to 
 censure this gaiety, as incongruous with the feelings appro- 
 priate to the solemn situation. "We would observe, that 
 though we were to admit as a general rule, that expressions 
 of wit and pleasantry are unbecoming tlie last hour, yet Sir 
 
226 MEM.OIES OF SIE THOMAS KOBE. 
 
 Thomas More may be justly considered as the exception. 
 The constitution of his mind was so singular and so happy, 
 that throughout his life his humour and wit were evidently 
 as a matter of fact, compatible, in almost all cases, with a 
 general direction of his mind to serious and momentous 
 subjects. His gaiety did not imply a dereliction, even for 
 the moment, of the habitude of mind proper to a wise and 
 conscientious man. It was an unquestionable matter of fact, 
 that he could emit pleasantries, and be seriously weighing 
 in his mind an important point of equity or law, and could 
 pass directly from the play of wit to the acts and the 
 genuine spirit of devotion. And if he could at all other 
 times maintain a vigorous exercise of serious thought and 
 devout sentiment, unhurt by the gleaming of these lambent 
 fires, there was no good reason why they might not gleam 
 on the scaffold also. He had thousands of times before 
 approached the Almighty, without finding, as he retired, 
 that one of the faculties of his mind, one of the attributes 
 of extraordinary and universal talent imparted to him by 
 that Being, was become extinct in consequence of pious 
 emotions : and his last addresses to that Being could not be 
 of a specifically different nature from the former ; they could 
 only be one degree more solemn. He had before almost 
 habitually thought of death, and most impressively realized 
 it ; and still he had wit, and its soft lustre was to his friends 
 but the more delightful for gilding so grave a contemplation: 
 well, he could only realize the awful event one degree more 
 impressively, when he saw the apparatus, and was warned 
 that this was the hour. As Protestants, we undoubtedly 
 feel some defect of complacency, in viewing such an admir- 
 able display of heroic self-possession mingled with so muck 
 error ; but we are convinced that he was devoutly obedient 
 to what he believed the wiU of God, that the contemplation 
 of the death of Christ was the cause of his intrepidity, and 
 that the errors of his faith were not incompatible with his 
 interest in that sacrifice. 
 
 There is so little danger of any excessive indulgence of 
 sallies of wit in the hour of death, that there is no need to 
 discuss the question how far, as a rule applicable to good 
 men in general, such vivacity, as that of More, wotdd in that 
 season comport with the Christian character ; but we are of 
 
moee's pleasaktet justifiable. 227 
 
 opinion, that it would fully comport, in any case substan- 
 tially resembling his ; in any case where the innocent and 
 refined play of wit had been through life one of the most 
 natural and unaffected operations of the mind, where it had 
 never been felt to prevent or injure serious thinking and 
 pious feeling, and where it mingled with the clear indica- 
 tions of a real Christian magnanimity in death. 
 
 CHEISTIANITT IN INDIA. 
 
 Oii-istmnity m India. An Essay on the Duty, Means, and Con- 
 sequences of introducing the Christian Religion among the 
 Native Inhabitants of the British Dominions in the East. By 
 J. "W. CtruNiNGHAM, A.M., late Fellow of Jesus College, Cam- 
 bridge. 8vo. 1808. 
 
 No state of society in which a man can be educated is 
 sufficiently pure and enlightened, to prepare him for be- 
 holding, with a correct impression, the condition of the 
 various tribes of mankind with respect to religion. He 
 may first be carefully taught, and may afterwards deeply 
 study, the nature and tendency of religion, as exhibited in 
 the Scriptures and the works of the Christian writers ; and 
 in such a course of instructions and study he must no 
 doubt have formed to himself an elevated idea of the effect 
 which would be produced on the human mind and character, 
 and on the general state of society, by the complete and 
 unmodified operation of Christianity ; but stiU his idea of 
 this effect wiU be greatly below the right standard, if during 
 this course he is ia a situation for seeing much of the cha- 
 racter of mankind. While the mind is attempting to model 
 a finished character, and to give the full prominence in this 
 ideal picture to the fair virtues of devotion, faith, humility, 
 sanctity, and charity, and whUe it is attempting to imagine 
 a world full of beings, of such an amiable and celestial kind, 
 — it is impossible that the crippled, diminutive, and de- 
 formed shapes, which for the most part these virtues are 
 doomed to wear in the Christian world, continually intmd- 
 
 q2 
 
228 CHBISTIANITT IN INDIA. 
 
 ng on his sight, should not materiaQy pervert the operation 
 by which the mind is endeavouring to form to itself the 
 idea of a complete Christian and of a Christian world, and 
 infuse into that idea a certain measure of the surrounding 
 and prevailing imperfection. The artist who produced the 
 Medicean Venus would in vain, with the same genius, have 
 attempted such a phenomenon, in the course of a long resi- 
 dence among the Hottentots, even though furnished with a 
 volume of the clearest and minutest instructions and de- 
 scriptions relative to the principles and lines of beauty ; his 
 power of delineating in his imagination a perfect form 
 would have been depraved by an invincible pre-occupation. 
 It is true indeed, that, in our attempt to form a noble con- 
 ception of what an individual or a numerous society under 
 the perfect government of the Christian religion would be, 
 we are assisted not only by a book of precepts and defini- 
 tions, but also by many ancient and modern examples, of 
 an excellence approaching in a respectable degree towards 
 completely embodying the Christian principles. And this 
 is most valuable assistance ; but still, these examples are 
 not so often presented to view, nor so habitually present to 
 thought, as to preclude much of the operation of that un- 
 fortunate influence, by which the crowd of men as they are 
 lowers our conception of what man ougM to be. And with 
 this imperfect standard of the excellence of Christianity 
 gradually fixed in his mind, a man cannot feel the utmost 
 of that disgust and regret which should in justice be excited 
 by their religion around him. Besides, if it were possible 
 to acquire and preserve, amidst so much irreligiou, a perfect 
 standard in the judgment, yet the moral feelings, which 
 ought to accompany the application of it, would be deficient 
 in vividness, as habit tends to make us indifferent in 
 beholding that of which we even perceive all the evil. 
 
 In order to imagine a man who should feel the perfectly 
 correct and full impression from a view of the state of reli- 
 gion in the several parts of this ill-fated world, we must 
 suppose him possessed of extreme sensibility, early and 
 progressively affected by the grand truths and objects of 
 religion, brought up, till the age of maturity in the society 
 of two or three of the purest and most devout of human 
 beings, in a state of entire seclusion from the world, well 
 
EELIGION AMONG PEOTESTANTS. 229 
 
 inclined to believe that mankind are now far better than, if 
 what history he has read do not libel them, they formerly 
 were, and chiefly occupied, in his soft retirement, in con- 
 templating religious truth and ideal scenes of moral beauty. 
 And we must suppose also, though contrary indeed to pos- 
 sibility, that when this man is brought forth from his 
 bowers of paradise, and led round the world to survey the 
 various classes and nations of mankind, he shaU retain, in 
 passing through scenes increasing at each remove in im- 
 piety and depravity, all that strong perception of the malig- 
 nity of the evils presented to his view, with which he first 
 set out. 
 
 Let it be supposed that his first stage of observation is 
 a Protestant country, like our own. Here one conspicuous 
 circumstance woidd gratify him exceedingly ; the book, but 
 for which there would have been no genuine knowledge of 
 religion on earth, is almost in every house, and the inha- 
 bitants are absolutely free to form their opinions from its 
 sacred documents. The vast and extending system of 
 efibrts for promoting the knowledge and influence of reli- 
 gious truth by the diversified means of aU manner of writing 
 and moral teaching, would delight him, till he came to 
 compare it with the stUl vaster system for promoting show, 
 elegance, fashion, and amusement. A selection of persons, 
 respectable in point of numbers, till compared with the 
 mass of the population, might be found approaching to 
 some tolerable resemblance of the strong delineation of 
 Christian character ever borne on his mind as the rule for 
 estimating moral and religious excellence. But his satis- 
 faction would be greatly exceeded by his grief and wonder 
 when he viewed the nation collectively, and ventured a kind 
 of calculating conjecture at the stupendous disproportion 
 between the measure of religious thought, motive, and 
 practice, actually existing in the nation, taken as an aggre- 
 gate, and that other measure, which would be enough to 
 constitute them all such persons as Christianity requires. 
 The immense and obvious exhibition of immorality, pro- 
 faneness, and infidelity, would strike his senses as palpably 
 and as odiously as the putrid exhalations of a surrounding 
 fen ; and his mortification and disgust would pass through 
 all the varied degrees as he turned his attention <o the 
 
230 CHEISTIAiriTX IS INDIA, 
 
 more decorous part of society, and observed tte general 
 want of high moral principle, the indifference or very slight 
 attention to the concerns which religion so emphatically 
 insists on, the contentment with mere forms and ceremonies 
 among some who would not be deemed to disregard it, and 
 the ignorance and illiberality of others who really are in 
 earnest in their profession of it. 
 
 "We wUl suppose him next to go to the Popish countries 
 on the Continent, and, still, with his sensibility to every- 
 thing in the religious condition of these countries quite as 
 lively as if he had been conveyed directly thither from his 
 origioal retirement. Supposing he had never before wit- 
 nessed any idle ceremonies, any pomp of evolutions and 
 decorations, applied to bedizen the primitive simplicity of 
 the Christian institution, it would be the farthest thing in 
 the world from his thoughts, on beholding the pageants, 
 the tricks, and grimaces, which would meet his view in a 
 Popish country, that these were exhibited as parts and 
 appointments of Christianity. Some of them would appear 
 a bad imitation of the opera, and others an humble rival of 
 the puppet show ; the only wonder being how any human 
 creatures could perform such ridiculous mummeries and 
 antics with such gravity of face. The discovery that this 
 most miserable farce pretended to an awful sanctity, and 
 that the chief managers were held in reverence as the pecu- 
 liarly consecrated servants of God, might as well be accom- 
 panied by information of the absurd and impious tenets, 
 and the several base maxims of morality, which compound 
 themselves with this ritual to constitute, all together, the 
 main substance of any thing acknowledged as religion in 
 that country ; for there would be no new surprise prepared, 
 by delaying the discovery, that a vile and fantastical cere- 
 monial of superstition must be founded on such notions as 
 will infallibly coalesce with immoral principles, and result in 
 immoral practices. Now our observer, having formed his 
 idea of Christianity from the New Testament, as consisting 
 of a number of very plain, with one or two very mysterious 
 doctrines, as prescribing and inspiring a worship of simple 
 devotion, very nearly divested of all rites, and as both 
 imperiously commanding and naturally producing a pure 
 and dignified morality, — with what sentiments would he 
 
KELiaiON AMOKG MAHOMETAKS. 231 
 
 contemplate this religious tragi-comedy of mummery, error, 
 and vice ? "Would he not feel nearly the same impressioL.8, 
 with the addition of much indignation, as if he had found 
 the whole nation tainted with a disgusting and pernicious 
 disease, and at the same time so infected in their minds as 
 to be ostentatiously exhibiting the marks' of that disease 
 with an air of satisfaction and pride ? Would he not be 
 almost tempted to think, that somethin'g like the miraculous 
 power, which was first exerted to introduce Christianity on 
 the earth, as a holy and sublime system, must since have 
 been surrendered to wicked men to be employed in trans- 
 forming it into a system of corruption ? Would it not 
 strike him as the most signal and direful of all judgments of 
 the Almighty on the greater part of what is called the 
 Christian world, that he should thus have abandoned his 
 own best communication, to be debased to a state in which 
 it becomes a perverter of those minds which it was originally 
 adapted to enlighten and elevate ? And would he not feel 
 an irresistible conviction, that as long as Christianity, in 
 spite of the sacred Scriptures, and of all the labours of 
 reformers, is retained in this state of debasement, there can 
 be no real prosperity or peace in such nations, but an abso- 
 lute certainty of successive calamities, becoming still more 
 awful as the train advances, and smiting them with a 
 continual stroke till they are either destroyed or reformed ? 
 Let the supposed observer be conveyed next to a country 
 of Mahometans, where again he will find something pur- 
 porting to be a religion, and even teaching the worship of 
 one Q-od. But the nature and attendant circumstances of 
 this religion would soon unfold themselves to his view. 
 And when he saw its pretended sacred book supplanting 
 the revelation of God by a farrago of ridiculous trifles, vile 
 legends, and vUer precepts, mixed with some magnificent 
 ideas, stolen for the base purpose from that revelation, like 
 the holy vessels of the Temple brought in to assist the 
 debauch of Belshazzar and . his lords ; when he saw a 
 detestable impostor acknowledged and almost adored in the 
 office of supreme prophet and intercessor, this imposition 
 enjoined in the name of God, to be enforced as far as the 
 power of its believers can reach with fire and sword, the 
 happiness of another world promised to eva» oanguinary 
 
232 CHEISTIANITT IN INDIA. 
 
 fanatic that dies in this cause, or even in any war that a 
 Mahometan tyrant may choose to wage, the representation 
 of that other world accommodated to the notions and tastes 
 of a horde of barbarians, and, as a natural and just conse- 
 quence of all, the whole social economy, after the energy 
 and zeal of conquest had evaporated, living in a vast sink of 
 ignorance, depravity, and wretchedness, — the shame and 
 abhorrence with which he would contemplate such a moral 
 exhibition, would tend to subside in a contempt of the 
 human mind, which he would be compelled to regard as a 
 base, servile thing, just fit to be the dupe of all delusions, 
 the drudge and devotee of all wickedness, and the sport and 
 rightful property of whatever individuals of the mass have 
 so much more vigour and depravity than the rest, as to be 
 able to erect a despotism of delusion and iniquity. In 
 passing away from such a hatefal scene, it would require a 
 high degree of the Christian spirit to prevent his rejoicing 
 that such an impious faith, and debased morality, are so 
 well rewarded by physical plagues. His religion, however, 
 would triumph over his anger, and he would quit such a 
 country with deepest regret and compassion, making that 
 pensive appeal to heaven, "Hast Thou made all men in 
 vain. " 
 
 But the last excess of alternate grief and indignation 
 would be reserved for him to feel, on coming among a 
 nation of absolute pagans. It has been the labour of hi& 
 contemplative life to exalt his ideas of the divine essence, 
 and as far as possible to abstract them from all those 
 grosser modes of conception in which created objects are 
 presented to our minds. He has made many an earnest, 
 though unsuccessful eflfort, to refine his thoughts to the 
 conception of a pure spirit. After an intense exertion to 
 reach the abstraction of the attributes of intelligence, 
 benevolence, and power, he has exulted to think of their 
 combination in infinite force in one awful Being. Knding 
 however, his faculties utterly sinking and lost in any trial to 
 contemplate these attributes under the predicament of 
 infinity, he has laboured to elevate and expand his idea of 
 the divinity to the utmost possible magnificence, by 
 thinking of the grandest objects and operations in the 
 \iniverss as the effects and imperfect displays of his attri- 
 
BEGEABING INFLTOirCIi 01' PAGANISM. 233 
 
 butes, and as helping a feeble mind to attain, a slight, an 
 exceedingly slight, approximation towards a right conception 
 of the Supreme Mind. To these ideas, arising from the 
 vastness of the universe, the number, magnitude, and order 
 of the heavenly bodies, the wonderful contrivance and power 
 everywhere conspicuous, and especially ia the creation of 
 such numberless legions of iateUigent beings, he has been 
 solicitous to add the strongest illustrations of the Deity 
 given in the inspired Scriptures. And finally, the contem- 
 plation has not terminated in the speculative magnificence 
 which at once elevates and overwhelms the understanding, 
 but has ultimately rested, with all the inexpressible 
 emphasis derived from such magnificent views, on our own 
 solemn relations with the God of justice and the God of 
 mercy. Jn the course, and under the just, impression of 
 such contemplations, let him enter a country where the 
 majestic idea of a deity, originally imparted to our race, is 
 transmuted into an endless miscellany of fantastic and 
 odious fables, in what are esteemed the sacred books, and 
 in the minds of that small proportion of the inhabitants 
 that read them ; and where the mass of millions, together 
 too with the more cultivated few, fall prostrate in adoration 
 of the rudest pieces of mud and lumber that their own 
 hands can shape. Let him walk out from his retired room 
 or tent, after his soul has been raised in prayer to a real 
 and an infinite Being, and approach one of those many 
 shrines which in a populous district he may see deforming 
 the country around him, and behold a number of creatures 
 in his own shape fixed in petrified reverence, or performing 
 grave ritual antics before a filthy figure, or sometimes ac 
 unshaped lump of wood or stone, daubed black and red, 
 which piece of rubbish, without a shape, or in a shape more 
 vile and ugly than it is possible for European hands to 
 make, stands there in substitution for that Infinite Spirit 
 which he has just been worshipping : — it stands for the most 
 part in real and perfect substitution; but if it were in 
 representation, the case would be very little better. Let 
 him go on a variety of excursions, to make out if he can a 
 list of all the modes, aU equally vile, into which their 
 idolatry has varied its prolific caprice. Let him gently 
 interrogate, or remonstrate with some of its wretched 
 
234 CHEISTIANITT IN INDIA. 
 
 slaves, and see to what a depth of infatuation the depravity 
 of the mind can gravitate. Let him observe the innumer- 
 able ceremonial fooleries, mixed with filthy consecrated 
 customs ; and then for a moment recollect, if indeed he can 
 be willing to have such opposites for a moment associated 
 in his mind, the simplicity and spirituality of the Christian 
 worship, the dignity of the very tastes which the religion 
 cultivates, and its appropriate purity of manners. Let him 
 observe, as performed at the dictate of the laws, customs, 
 and priests of this superstition, such barbarous and whim- 
 sical self-inflicted penances and torture, and such sacrifices 
 of living relatives, as it would be supposed some possessing 
 fiend had compelled the wretched pagans to adopt for his 
 diversion ; let him observe, amidst these tyrannic rigours of 
 a superstitious conscience, an entire want of conscience with 
 respect to the great principles of morality, and the extinc- 
 tion, in a great degree, of the ordinary sympathies of human 
 nature for suffering objects ; let him notice the deceitful 
 and cruel character of the priests, exactly conformable to 
 the spirit of the superstition ; and let him consider those 
 unnatural but insuperable distinctions of the classes of 
 society, which equally degrade the one by a stupid servility, 
 and the other by a stupid pride. And finally, let him reflect 
 that each day many thousands of such deluded creatures are 
 dying, destitute of all that knowledge, those consolations, 
 and those prospects, for which he adores the author of the 
 Christian revelation. How would he be able to quell the 
 sentiment of horror which would arise in his mind at every 
 view and every thought of what we have thus supposed him 
 to witness ? He would feel as if something demoniac 
 infested all the land, and pervaded all the air, inspiring a 
 general madness previous to a general execution. Tor he 
 would feel an unconquerable impression that a land could 
 tot be so abandoned of the divine mercy, but to be soon 
 Irisited by the divine vengeance ; and that vengeance he 
 Ivould hardly at some moments be able to deprecate, while 
 Beholding the occasional extraordinary excesses of frantic 
 abomination. It would appear to him, that the very time 
 was come for a glorious display of justice, and that such a 
 solitude as that which Noah found, on descending from the 
 ark, would be a delightful sequel to this Dopulous and 
 
WEIiANOHOLT CONDITION OF PAOANa. 235 
 
 raging tumult of impiety. In his retired and reflective 
 moments, his indignation would again relent ; and he would 
 fervently implore that the mercy of Heaven would not suffer 
 so large a part of the earth to continue darkened as if by 
 the smoke of the infernal pit, and that all means, ordinary 
 and extraordinary, might immediately be put in action for 
 reclaiming any part of the infatuated and thus far devoted 
 race. 
 
 Impressions and emotions, somewhat like those we have 
 described, would probably be experienced by a man possess- 
 ing a perfect and undiminishable moral and religious sensi- 
 bility, if conducted, as a witness, through the gradations of 
 impiety to the paganism of our Asiatic subjects. If Indian 
 traders, officers, and adventurers, feel an easy complacency 
 at this last view, it only proves that they are not persons 
 vrith whom any religious, any Christian argument can be 
 held. A moral sense that belongs to complete man is 
 wanting to them ; so that infinitely the most important of 
 the elements and phenomena of the moral world are 
 unapparent and impalpable to them ; just as much so as 
 that class of things and properties are to our present five 
 senses, which might, as Locke observes, have become 
 perceptible to us by means of a sixth or seventh sense, 
 which the Creator could no doubt have given us. To these 
 men, all the concerns and interests designated by the terms 
 divine, spiritual, immortal, are nearly the same as non- 
 existent. And as, with their bare half of that perceptive 
 faculty which is essential to complete rational man, they 
 cannot for their lives make themselves see the millions of a 
 vast nation in any character more important than that of 
 consumers of exported commodities, or growers of rice and 
 indigo, or fabricators of manufactures, or the materials for 
 recruiting regiments, — nor comprehend how any greater evil 
 can exist or arise among them than their consuming or 
 producing less of marketable commodity, or their choosing 
 to be governed by one set of their fellow-mortals rather than 
 another, they are most violently angry at a class of men 
 who must needs pretend to see these millions in a far 
 different and infinitely more important light, as beings that 
 have souls, accountable to their Creator, but merged in the 
 most melancholy ignorance of themselves and of him; as 
 
230 PALET AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 hideously degraded by a hateful superstition ; and therefore 
 as objects whose condition calls mightily for the compassion 
 and assistance of their more favoured brethren. But it is 
 this latter class of men who can perceive the moral, 
 religious, and eternal interests of mankind, and of any 
 portion of mankind, as inconceivably more momentous than 
 all their political and commercial economy; who cannot 
 behold without horror a countless population prostrating 
 themselves before idols, and who think a government that 
 does not do all it can to reduce the evil will incur the 
 vengeance of God, — it is only this class of men that can be 
 admitted as competent of mind to reason on our obligations 
 respecting the religious condition of India. Among these 
 Mr. Cunningham stands conspicuous. 
 
 PALET AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 Sermons on several Subjects. By the late Rev. WiuiAif Palet, 
 D.D., Subdean of Lincoln, and Eector of Biahopswearmouth. 
 8vo. 1809. 
 
 "We regard this book in the light of an invitation to 
 attend the funeral of one of the most powerful advocates 
 that ever defended the best cause. And if our regret were 
 to be in proportion either to the value of the life which has 
 terminated, or to the consideration of how many instances 
 of such talent so happily applied may be expected hereafter, 
 it would be scarcely less deep than that which we feel for 
 the loss of our most valued friends. But the regret is not 
 required to correspond to this latter consideration ; because 
 the Christian world does not absolutely need a numerous 
 succession of such men. It has been the enviable lot of 
 here and there a favoured individual, to do some one impor- 
 tant thing so well, that it shall never need to be done again: 
 and we regard Dr. Paley's writings on the Evidences of 
 Christianity as of so signally decisive a character, that we 
 could be content to let them stand as the essence and the 
 close of the great argument on the part of its believers ; 
 
palet's etidences oe cheistianitt. 237 
 
 and should feel no despondency or chagrin, if we could be 
 prophetically certified that such an efficient Christian rea- 
 soner would never henceforward arise. "We should consider 
 the grand fortress of proof as now raised and finished— the 
 intellectual capitol of that empire which is destined to leave 
 the widest boundaries attained by the Eoman very far 
 behind. 
 
 It would seem that the infidels, notwithstanding their 
 perseverance in their fatal perversity, do yet nearly coincide 
 in this opinion of Dr. Paley's writings : as none of them 
 have presumed to attempt a formal refutation. They are 
 willing to enjoy their ingenuity of cavilling and misrepre- 
 senting, their exemption from the restraints of religion, and 
 their transient impunity, under the ignominious and alarm- 
 ing condition of conceding, that they have no reply to a 
 remonstrant who tells them that their speculations are false, 
 that their moral principles are corrupt, and that their pros- 
 pects are melancholy — who calmly proves to them that cer- 
 tain declarations and requisitions have been made by the 
 Governor of the world, and that if they choose to repel and 
 ridicule them, they are indeed quite at liberty to do it, but 
 must make up their minds to abide the consequences, 
 which consequences are most distinctly foreshown in those 
 declarations. 
 
 With respect to those persons whose judgments are un- 
 decided on the grand inquiry, whether Christianity is of 
 divine authority or not, we would earnestly press on their 
 minds the question, whether they really care, and are in 
 earnest on the subject ; whether they value their spiritual 
 nature enough to deem it worth while to attain, by a serious 
 investigation, a determinate conclusion on the claims of a 
 religion which at once declares that spiritual nature to be 
 immortal, and affirms itself to ofier the only means for its 
 perpetual happiness. If they really do not care enough 
 about this transcendent subject, to desire above all things 
 on earth a just and final determination of their judgments 
 upon it, we can only deplore that anything so precious as a 
 mind should have been committed to such cruelly thought- 
 less possessors. We can only repeat some useless expres- 
 sicns of amazement to see a rational being holding itself in 
 Buch contempt; and predict a period when itself will be 
 
238 PALET AS A THEOLOGIAlf, 
 
 still mucli more amazed at the remembrance how many 
 thousand insignificant questions found their turn to be con- 
 sidered and decided, while the one involving infinite conse- 
 quences, was reserved to be determined by the event — too 
 late therefore to have an auspicious influence on that event, 
 which was the grand object, for the sake of which it ought 
 to have been determined before all other questions. If, on 
 the contrary, a strong solicitude is felt to put an end, in the 
 shortest time possible, to all doubts respecting the authority 
 of the Christian religion, the very first duty, next to that of 
 imploring sincerity and illumination from heaven, is to 
 study the works of this author. It is impossible to hear, 
 with the slightest degree of respect or patience, the expres- 
 sions of doubt or anxiety about the truth of Christianity, 
 from any one who can delay a week to obtain the celebrated 
 View of its Evidences, or fail to read it through again and 
 again. It is of no use to say what would be our opinion of 
 the moral and intellectual state of his mind, if after this he 
 remained still undecided. 
 
 It is not perhaps to be required, as a general rule, that a 
 man who extends his investigations round the whole border 
 and circumference, if we may so express it, of a great system 
 of truth, constructing defensive arguments, and planting 
 " armed watch" at every point open to attack or actually 
 attacked, and everywhere looking out to a great distance 
 to ascertain from what quarter and in what direction an 
 enemy may come, should carefully and separately examine 
 all the interior parts of this system. It were too much to 
 insist that the military guardian of a whole country, who 
 takes the charge of its thousand miles of frontier, should 
 acquaint himself with the rural and local economy of its 
 several districts, or cultivate himself some particular piece 
 of its ground. He might tell us it is enough that, while his 
 talents and exertions are maiutaining the general security, 
 there is happy scope given for the good management of all 
 the affairs in detail, by men, whose cares are not forced to 
 such a painful expansion. A man who sedulously and ably 
 performs, for all other Christian students and teachers, the 
 great office of bringing into their hands, from an immensely 
 extensive field of inquiries, all the most decisive proofs of 
 the divine origin and authority of the system, may well 
 
PALET'S NATUEAIi THEOXOGT. 239 
 
 demand that they iu return should furnish to him more 
 accurate investigations of its component parts than his ex- 
 tended labours will have allowed him to prosecute or finish, 
 instead of invidiously scrutinizing and exposing the defects 
 of his knowledge in the detail. To have exhibited what will 
 be appealed to for ages to come, as a most luminous concen- 
 tration of evidence, in proof that divines have really a direct 
 revelation from Grod to explain and discriminate into a sys- 
 tem of particular doctrines, is a much more difficult and 
 important service, than assuming this great general truth, it 
 would be to give the clearest elucidation of one, or two, or 
 ten of those doctrines. And besides, the other studies pro- 
 secuted by Dr. Paley, with a direct view, as it is fair to 
 infer from their ultimate application, of vindicating the first 
 principle of all religion, the belief a God, were of a nature 
 to absorb long spaces of his life, as they extended to verj 
 wide and scientific departments of knowledge. 
 
 Trom the consideration of studies extended over such 
 ample and various ground, and yet all made to conduce to 
 the advancement of religion, we should think it uncandid to 
 exact from this distinguished author a minute precision 
 throughout the whole list of theological questions. It is 
 true, indeed, that the importance of religion, as a whole, 
 must consist in the aggregate importance of all its parts : 
 but we are not making any contrast, or referring to any 
 proportion of importance, between the aggregate and the 
 separate parts ; we are merely pointing to the much more 
 extended scope, and the much severer process, of the great 
 general argument, as compared with the argument on any 
 specific Christian doctrine. This specific argument requires 
 of course but one document, of which it assumes the validity, 
 but to the establishment of which validity so many other 
 documents, and so many methods of investigation, were 
 antecedently required. 
 
 Nevertheless, on first hearing of the publication of the 
 sermons of Dr. Paley, we thought it not improbable that he 
 might occasionally have exerted the whole force of his 
 enriched and penetrating mind on some selected point of 
 Christian doctrine or morals ; and were prepared to expect 
 a number o£ elaborate, and therefore important, dissertations. 
 We were not apprized that the volume would chiefly consist 
 
240 PAtET AS A THEOLO(jHAN. 
 
 of the very short and hastily written discourses which were 
 composed in the ordinary course of his professional services. 
 The shortness, indeed, of some of them, is tantalizing and 
 vexatious "When an important subject has been concisely 
 laid forth, when two or three views of it have been very 
 transiently unfolded, when some most striking argument 
 appears to be just opening, of which we earnestly wish for 
 an ample illustration, then, even just then, comes the twelfth 
 or the thirteenth page, and suddenly puts an end to the 
 reasoning and the discourse, leaving us to a mortification 
 rather similar to what we recoUect to have felt on being 
 obliged to shut up a volume of prints of the structures of 
 Baalbec, when we had looked through about half the series, 
 or on being suddenly called away from a philosophical lecture, 
 when the most curious experiments were going to be made in 
 illustration of an interesting proposition. Several of the sub- 
 jects are indeed prolonged to two or three sermons, but we end 
 almost all of them with an impression of the incompleteness 
 of the discussion, from the narowness of the allotted space. 
 But for some rather unceremonious addresses on some 
 rather uncourteous subjects, we must be led to entertain a 
 lofty idea of Dr. Paley's auditory ; for how important must 
 have been the employments with which their time was 
 accustomed to be occupied, when such a preacher could 
 seldom presume to trespass beyond fifteen minutes ! But 
 with regard to congregations in general, it is surely very 
 fair to observe how useless such discourses must be. If even 
 Dr. Paley, with his admirable power of compression and 
 lucid statement, is quite unable in such a contracted space 
 to do justice to the bare argument of a subject — to say 
 nothing of those modes of representing and enforcing it, 
 which are requisite to secure for it a place in the imagina- 
 tion under the form of some striking figure or scene, or to 
 make it impressive on the conscience and afiections, — what 
 can be expected from such a diminutive shred of the compo- 
 sition of ordinary performers of the sacred services ? We 
 should undoubtedly be among the most vociferous to protest 
 against a return towards the triple hour-glass discourses of 
 the Tenerable Puritan and ancient Scotch Presbyterian times ; 
 but really human creatures must be prodigiously changed 
 pinee that period, if but a tenth part of the same in- 
 
ABSElfCB OF EHETOEIOAIi OENAMBNT. 241 
 
 fitruction be now sufficient to expel their ignorance and 
 their vices. 
 
 No reader of Dr. Paley's former works will open his 
 Sermons with any expectation of what we usually call elo- 
 quence. A mind, predetermined perhaps by its original 
 structure, and therefore accustomed from early youth to 
 seek the rationale, as it used to be termed, of every subject, 
 would come to have little esteem for the lighter matters of 
 imagery and sentiment. Its attention would instantly fix 
 on the hard and supporting parts of aU doctrines and 
 systems, as the eye of John Hunter almost involuntarily 
 examined the anatomical structure of aU animal forms that 
 came in his view, often quite forgetting all the beauties of 
 complexion, colour, or gloss, and, perhaps, sometimes regard- 
 ing even the most ornamental appearances of the superficial 
 substance as but disagreeable obstructions to his desired 
 research into the conformation of the bones. Such a mind 
 views all subjects as placed in a state of controversy by 
 opposite proportions and argumentations ; and regards it 
 as the noblest, indeed, the only noble intellectual achieve- 
 ment, to carry a question through the conflict of adverse 
 arguments, and in the result to establish some one thing as 
 true, consolidating its proofs by a demolition of all that 
 opposes ; and therefore this argumentative mind makes 
 little use or account of any forces but the rigid ones of the 
 understanding, leaving every thing that relates to deco- 
 ration and attraction to the taste and fancy of orators and 
 poets. If a builder of ships of war happens to walk through 
 a forest, he will take little notice of trees recommended by 
 taper elegance on the one side of his path, or by beautiful 
 foliage aad blossoms on the other ; it is the oak that his eye 
 naturally searches for, and fixes on with the most interest ; 
 and even in looking at that, he does not care about the rich 
 mass of green shade, the fine contour of its form, or the 
 wreaths of woodbine that may be climbing and flowering 
 round its stem ; he is thinking precisely of the timber, 
 which is to brave storms and artillery. 
 
 The compositions before us are devoid of all ornament, 
 and evidently did not receive the ordinary finishing of an 
 author. The language is sometimes quite homely, some- 
 times inaccurate, and but barely anywhere attains a 
 
 s 
 
242 PALET AS A THEOLOSIAJT. 
 
 tolerable degree of neatness ; it is as free from variegated 
 colouring as the winter sky, while the author's imagination 
 is as subdued as the principle of vegetation appears just now 
 in the middle of December. The train of thought, as far as 
 it is carried, is a most simple exercise of intellect, very 
 briefly analyzing, occasionally with a slight use ef the forms 
 of logical process, and generally with admirable discrimina- 
 tion, some speculative or moral principle in the theory of 
 religion, with the intermixture of a few plain reflections of a 
 practical tendency. The passions are no further attempted 
 to be moved than as that effect may be produced by a short 
 and very cool and sober statement of what is deemed the 
 most important consideration involved ia the subject. And 
 we will acknowledge that the grave stillness of manner, and 
 the extreme simplicity of expression with which solemn 
 considerations are presented, have sometimes, on us, the 
 eSect of making them more impressive, than perhaps we 
 should have felt them as exhibited in oratorio language. 
 For instances, we should refer, among other Sermons, to 
 those on the " Neglect of "Warnings," and the " Terrors of 
 the Lord." There are certain classes of thoughts which are 
 expressed by almost all writers in language of apparent 
 emotion, and by many with strong figures, and urgent 
 appeals and inculcations ; when such momentous thoughts 
 are uttered in a perfectly calm manner, they come to us, 
 partly by contrast with their usually impassioned mode of 
 being communicated, with a certain air of novelty, which 
 more forcibly arrests and fixes our attention ; we are made 
 to look the subject more directly in the face, in consequence 
 of meeting it thus divested of its usual array of authority, 
 and yet bearing an aspect of the highest authority still. It' 
 .s useful for us now and then to be made to feel what an 
 imperative quality religious truth possesses essentially, and 
 *an therefore evince, without the aid of raised and ardent 
 ianguage. Part of this authoritative effect of serious truths 
 coolly expressed, may also be owing to the very manner of 
 the person thus expressing them. Provided he is believed 
 to be a wise and pious man, his thus refusing to come into a 
 state of sympathy with us, and gravely placing solemn truth 
 before us as a being without passions, gives us, at times, an 
 impression as if he were a monitor of a superior order tu 
 
INTAEIABLE GKATITT OF MANNEB. 243 
 
 ourselves, whose object in addressing us is to execute a 
 serious commission to which he is appointed, leaving us to 
 regard or to slight at our choice what he was sent by a 
 higher authority to say to us. And besides, when important 
 truths are declared in a manner totally unimpassioned, he 
 who utters them appears by this calm manner to place an 
 entire reliance on the force of the truth itself, feeling it of 
 too solemn and peremptory a character to need the help of 
 passion and rhetoric to enable it to command our utmost 
 attention. No writer, however, whose manner of treating 
 affecting subjects is so still and cold, can ever make this 
 kind of impression, unless that manner be also distinguished 
 by a deep and invariable gravity ; and this quality prevails 
 in the greatest degree throughout these Sermons. The 
 homeliness of phrase which we have noticed, does indeed 
 much detract from the dignity of the discourses ; but the 
 seriousness is never interrupted ; we do not recollect one 
 sentence that appears adapted or intended to amuse. The 
 single idea of an amusing nature, excited in perusing this 
 whole volume, has been that of the damp and mortification 
 which will fall on the spirits of any gay, fashionable triflers 
 that may look into these Sermons from complaisance to the 
 celebrated name of the author. Perhaps, indeed, we should 
 not talk of being amused at the mortification which indicates 
 such an unhappy state of mind ; certainly we should be glad 
 for any of them suddenly to become so altered, as to be 
 interested rather than repelled by the seriousness. 
 
 In speaking of the effect which we have felt in reading 
 parts of these Sermons, from the cool and somewhat austere 
 manner in which the most interesting subjects are presented, 
 we have described something different from the usual course 
 of our experience : from our manner of accounting for it, we 
 shall not be misunderstood to approve, in general, of so cold 
 a manner of exhibiting the subjects of supreme consequence ; 
 for popular addresses we condemn it totally. Prom the 
 causes just specified, taken with our previous respect for 
 Dr.' Paley, with the frequent proofs of the same vigorous 
 intellect in this volume, with the circumstance that we read 
 the Sermons instead of hearing them, and with the conside- 
 ration that the author is no more, we have been considerably 
 interested and moved by several passages which maintain a 
 
 R 2 
 
244 PAIBT AS A THEOLOGIAir. 
 
 singular composure of manner in referring to " the good 
 and evil of eternity ;" but the general rule for preachers 
 wU] always continue to be, that since the instructor and the 
 persons instucted have just the same momentous interest ia 
 the concerns of religion, he ought to exhibit and enforce 
 with the utmost zeal, what they ought to receive with the 
 deepest emotions of conscience and the most earnest aspira- 
 tions for the divine mercy. Notwithstanding the serious- 
 ness of these Sermons, and notwithstanding he may disap- 
 prove, on account of its formality, the method of always 
 closing religious discourses by a distinct application of the 
 subject to the conscience and the passions, every pious 
 reader wiU feel a great deficiency of the requisite zeal, on 
 the part of the preacher, in the shortened and inanimate 
 conclusions of these discourses. It will be felt as if the 
 Christian advocate cared not how soon or how tamely he 
 dismissed the subject, as if he dismissed it without having 
 become more partial to it while unfolding and recommending 
 it, as if he had no tendency to fall into a prolonged expostu- 
 lation in its favour, as if he had no expectation that 
 his discourse should produce any efiect, and as if he felt 
 but little of either sadness or indignation to think it would 
 fail. 
 
 There will be considerable curiosity, and even anxiety, 
 in the religious public, to learn the exact character of 
 Dr. Paley's religious opinions ; and each of the chief op- 
 posed classes of the believers in Christianity would be glad 
 to find cause to assume so eminent a reasoner as according 
 specifically with their views. As far as we can judge, he is 
 not to be fully appropriated by any one of these classes. It 
 is evident that his judgment was in a state of indecision 
 relative to several important questions ; and that candour 
 must suggest, as we have suggested, the magnitude of his 
 labours, in the investigation of the great basis and authority 
 of rehgion in general, in excuse for his not having devoted a 
 competent share of attention to the determination of the 
 specific principles, dictated in the inspired book which he so 
 powerfully defended. 
 
 It would be more easy perhaps to say what this most able 
 inquirer's opinions were not, than precisely what they were. 
 His ideas of the person of Christ are nowhere attempted to 
 
ON THE DEATH OF OHEIST. 245 
 
 be formally explained and are but very slightly unfolded 
 eren by passing intimations. 
 
 With regard to the death of Christ, he expresses strongly 
 his impression of the mysteriousness both of the appoint- 
 ment itself, and of the manner in which that sacrifice pro- 
 duces its appointed effect ; but he fully asserts that it was 
 really and strictly a sacrifice, that it is constituted a part of 
 the economy of human redemption, and that, though in 
 some inexplicable manner, it is efficacious towards that great 
 object. How much we regret that the sermon written to 
 assert this great doctrine, which we regard as absolutely of 
 the essence of the Christian religion, should have been con- 
 fined to ten pages ! "We could not but be much gratified to 
 find the respected author decidedly avowing this faith ; but 
 it is painful to observe his apparent reluctance to dwell on 
 it even long enough to illustrate its evidence. He says, 
 " We have before us a doctrine of a very peculiar, perhaps I 
 may say, of a very unexpected kind ;" and this its peculi- 
 arity and strangeness would seem to have caused him ari 
 irksome feeling in advancing it. He seems to have quite 
 forgotten, that exactly in proportion to the degree in which 
 it is of a peculiar and unexpected nature, the proof of its 
 truth ought to have been laboured and complete : whereas 
 he appears to have been haunted by some uncomplacent 
 feeling, which precipitated him through a scanty though 
 appropriate selection of scriptural authorities, connected by 
 short reasonings, and followed by a general conclusion, to 
 escape from the subject as soon as possible by a suggestion 
 or two concerning the moral influence which such a doctrine 
 claims, and is adapted to have, on our feelings. " It was 
 only," he says, " for a moral purpose that the thing was 
 revealed at aU ; and that purpose is a sense of gratitude and 
 obligation;" a position which we do not perfectly under- 
 stand. "We should have thought that the purpose for which 
 that sacred economy was revealed, must be exactly parallel 
 to that for which it was appointed. If it was appointed as 
 a grand expedient for saving men, the leading purpose of its 
 being revealed must be, that men may so understand itj 
 adopt it, and confide in it, as to be saved. 
 
 The Sermon which follows the one on the efficacy of the 
 death of Christ, is designed to prove, that aU need a Ke- 
 
246 PALET AS A THEOIOGIAN. 
 
 deemer ; and this is done in a plain and rather forcible 
 manner, bj displaying the imperfect state of the human 
 character, even in good men, and representing what a 
 slender claim could be founded on such deficient virtues. 
 But though it must, on the whole, be allowed, that the 
 Doctor is not very much a flatterer of his species, we think 
 that, in unfolding the culpable state of the human character, 
 he does not go to the depth and basis of the evil. He 
 seems to regard moral defect, or sin, rather as accidental to 
 individual men, tlian as radical in the nature of man ; and 
 therefore that necessity of a Redeemer, which is primarily 
 to be inferred from the inspired declarations respecting the 
 melancholy moral condition of our very nature, is inferred 
 solely from an enumeration of actual sins and sinners. 
 According to our view of the doctrine of the New Testa- 
 ment, it is not precisely and merely because men have been 
 guilty of a certain number of specific sins, of omission and 
 commission, that they need a Eedeemer (and, on this hypo- 
 thesis, some men much more than others, as having been 
 guilty of more and greater sins) ; but more comprehensively 
 and abstractedly, because they are in that radically corrupt 
 state of moral being, of which these specific evils are but 
 the indications and natural results. Nor does our author 
 appear to entertain such an estimate of the operation and 
 awards of the divine law of perfection, as to make the infe- 
 rence from this quarter as to the necessity of a Eedeemer, 
 so absolute and so avs-ful as it seems to be made in the New 
 Testament ; for though he judges that on the ground of this 
 law a man could not, by his best efibrts, have merited the 
 vast and endless felicity designated by the term Heaven, he 
 is by no means disposed to pronounce that such a man 
 might not have merited on that ground some measure of 
 happiness ; much less that the imperfect obedience would 
 have merited punishment. The necessity of a Eedeemer 
 that is here insisted on, is therefore of a very modified kind. 
 To avoid admitting tl . appointment of a Eedeemer as an 
 entirely new economy if the moral relations of men with 
 their Almighty Governor, in regard to the terms of their 
 acceptance, our author briefly proposes a theory, which 
 makes the death of Christ the cause, and virtue, holiness, at 
 " a good life," the condition of salvation. 
 
CONDITIONS or SALTATION. 247 
 
 " We nmst bear in mind, that in the business of salvation 
 there aTS naturally and properly two things, viz., the cause and 
 the condition ; and that these two things are different. We 
 should see better the propriety of this distinction, if we would 
 allow ourselves to consider well what salvation is: what the being 
 saved means. It is nothing less than after this life is ended, 
 being placed in a state of happiness exceedingly great, both iii 
 degree and duration," &c. 
 
 After displajiag the magnificence of this prospsct, he 
 proceeds: — 
 
 " Will any one then contend that salvation in this sense, and 
 to this extent ; that heaven, eternal life, glory, honour, immor- 
 tality ; that a happiness, such that there is no way of describing 
 it, but by saying that it surpasses human comprehension ; will 
 any one contend that this is no more than what virtue deserves, 
 what in its own proper nature, and by its own merit, it is 
 entitled to look forward to and to receive ? The greatest virtue 
 that man ever attained to has no such pretensions. The best 
 good action that man ever performed has no claim to this extent, 
 or any thing like it. It is out of all calculation, and comparison, 
 and proportion, above and more than any human works can 
 possibly deserve. To what then are we to ascribe it, that 
 endeavours after virtue should procure, and that they will in 
 fact procure, to those who sincerely exert them, such immense 
 blessings 1 To what but the voluntary bounty of Almighty God, 
 ■who in his inexpressible good pleasure hath appointed it so to 
 be ] The benignity of God towards man hath made him this 
 inconceivably advantageous offer. But a most kind offer may 
 still be a conditional offer. And this, though an infinitely gra- 
 cious and beneficial offer, is still a conditional offer, and the 
 performance of the conditions is as necessary as if it had been an 
 offer of mere retribution. 
 
 " Some who allow the necessity of good works to salvation 
 are not willing that they should be called conditions of salvation. 
 But this, I think, is a distinction too refined for common Chris- 
 tian apprehension. If they be necessary to salvation, they are 
 conditions of salvation, so far as I can see. 
 
 " The cause of salvation is the free will, the free gift, the love 
 and the mercy of God. That alone is the source, and fountain, 
 and cause of salvation, from which all hopes of our attaining to 
 it are derived. The cause is not in ourselves, nor in anything we 
 do, or can do, but in God, in his good will and pleasure. There- 
 fore, whatever shall have moved, and excited, and conciliated 
 that good will and pleasure, so as to have procured that offer to 
 be made, or shall have formed any part or portion of the motive 
 
248 PALET AS A THEOLOGIAS. 
 
 from which it was made, may most truly and properly be said 
 to be efficacious in human salvation. This eflScacy is in Scrip- 
 ture ascribed to the death of Christ. It is attributed in a variety 
 of ways of expression. He is a sacrifice, an offering to God, a 
 propitiation, the precious sacrifice fore-ordained, the ' Lamb slain 
 from the foundation of the world,' ' the Lamb which taketh 
 away the sin of the world :' we are ' washed in his blood,' we 
 are 'justified by his blood,' ' we are saved from wrath through 
 him,' &c., &c. 
 
 " Still it is true that a man will not obtain what is offered, 
 unless he comply with the terms ; so far his compliance is a con- 
 dition of his happiness. But the grand thing is the offer being 
 made at all. That is the ground and origin of the whole. That 
 is the cause"— Pp. 313. 316, &c. 
 
 The Doctor himself is fully aware that this view of the 
 subject, notwithstanding every precaution in the statement, 
 every admonition of unwortbiness, every representation of 
 the magnitude of the promised felicity, and every eulogium 
 of the generosity of the divine Benefactor, will yet have a 
 strong tendency, as the human mind is constituted, to 
 cherish notions of high desert after all. He has taken pains 
 and made a A^ery plausible representation of a parallel case 
 to prevent this obvious consequence. But we think it 
 would so infallibly result as to destroy that estimate of the 
 Christian economy as a system of pure absolute mercy, 
 which is so often expressed in the New Testament, and to 
 preclude that feeling of boundless obligation which ani- 
 mated the gratitude and devotion of the apostles. 
 
 In the way of showing the incorrectness of the theory, it 
 will be enough just to notice the very imperfect conception 
 and definition of salvation with which it sets out. If any 
 one thing be evident in the New Testament, it would seem 
 to be, that salvation, as there described, does not consist 
 solely in a final preservation from punishment and attain- 
 ment of the heavenly felicity, but includes essentially that 
 sanctified state of the mind and character, which forms a 
 preparation for that final happiness. This purified state, 
 we apprehend, is represented not as a mere antecedent cir- 
 cumstance of salvation, but as a part of its very essence. 
 But it would be strangely incorrect to call that a condition 
 of salvation, which is an essential part of it. 
 
 Again, the Christian Scriptures state, we should think, 
 
OTS srDDEN CONTEESIOirS. 249 
 
 with tbe utmost distinctness, that the sanctity of mind 
 which is the operating principle ia all practical Christian 
 virtue, and hut for which not one act of true Christian 
 virtue would ever be performed, is just as much a free gift 
 of the divine mercy, and just as impossible to have been 
 otherwise obtained, as that final felicity which is the com- 
 pletion of salvation ; but it would be strange to call that a 
 condition, of which the substance is to be effected by the 
 very Being who prescribes it. 
 
 There are iu the volume several sermons on the influences 
 of the Holy Spirit ; but they do not lay down a very 
 defined doctrine on the subject. In some passages the 
 preacher seems very anxious to avoid representing those 
 influences as of purely arbitrary operation on the part of 
 the divine Being, and to maintain that they are determiaed 
 towards their object by some favourable predisposition in 
 that object ; or that they are not often granted tiU. after 
 they are requested. In other passages, the theory of the 
 ■divine operations on the mind appears to us to go very nearly 
 the whole length of the doctrine denominated Calvinistici 
 particidarly when the Doctor adverts to the sudden con- 
 version of very wicked men. On this topic he speaks in 
 much stronger terms than are probably ever heard from the 
 greater number of the pulpits of our Established Church ; 
 in fiuch terms, indeed, as from any other man would be 
 deemed most methodistical and fanatical. He expresses 
 (and every page of the book bears the most perfect marks 
 of sincerity) his delight and his thankfulness to Heaven, on 
 account of those instances of a sudden change of mind and 
 character, — in consequence perhaps of hearing a sermon, oi 
 reading a passage of the Bible, or hearing some casual 
 observation, — which many ofiicial divines are attempting to 
 scout, in language of ridicule or rancour, as the freaks or 
 fancies of a pernicious enthusiasm. The Doctor had too 
 much of the spirit of a true philosopher, to reject an 
 important class of facts in forming his theory ; and too 
 little of the bigot, to be indignant that notorious sinners 
 should become devout Christians and virtuous citizens, 
 because they became so in the mode and the precincts of 
 Methodism. For this contempt of the ignorant, bigoted, 
 and irreligious rant which prevailed around him, we honour 
 
250 PALET AS A THEOLOGIAlf. 
 
 him toe much to be williug to make any of the remarta 
 which we intended on some parts of his sermon on " The 
 Doctrine of Conversion," founded on that expression of 
 oar Lord, "I am come not to call the righteous, but sinners 
 to repentance;" on which he observes, "It appears from 
 these words, that our Saviour, in his preaching, held in view 
 the character and spiritual situation of the persons whom 
 he addressed ; and the differences which existed among 
 them in these respects : and that he had a regard to these 
 considerations, more especially in the preaching of repen- 
 tance and conversion " (p. 116). "We would only just 
 ask, Who were the righteous among our Lord's hearers P 
 the Scribes, Pharisees, and Eulers ? Or were they the 
 Sadducees ? Or were they the publicans and sinners ? 
 Plainly who and where were they ? Can anything be more 
 evident, than that it was of the very essence of our Lord's 
 mission and ministry to adjudge them all unrighteous, abso- 
 lutely every one, excepting those who were become his con- 
 verts and disciples ? Could any of his hearers reject Mm 
 and be righteous ? But it is plain that the epithet was not 
 in this instance applied by him to his converts and disciples, 
 as it had been absurd to say, " It is not my object to convert 
 those whom I have already converted." If, therefore, the 
 term was applied to any class of his hearers, it must be to 
 those who rejected him. And how could it be applied to 
 them ? How, but evidently in the sense in which the text 
 has been so often explained, as a severe irony on the proud 
 self-righteous Pharisees ? Or if such a mode of expression 
 be thought inconsistent with the solemn simplicity of our 
 Lord's character, the passage may be interpreted as this 
 simple proposition — that it was because these persons, in 
 whose company he was so often found, were sinners, that he 
 frequented their company ; that to be in the society of sin- 
 ners was the sole object of his sojourning on earth, for that, 
 if men had been righteous, they would not have needed a 
 Saviour. 
 
 As the Sermons are nearly forty, we do not give all their 
 titles. A considerable proportion are entirely practical. A 
 very able one, on the " Destruction of the Canaanites,"* 
 ought to have been four times its present length. 
 
 * A good summary of the arguments on this ■subject will be 
 found in a recent number of the Fantolaula, Art. " Canaanites." 
 
AMERICA BEFOEE THE EETOLTJTIOIT. 251 
 
 It would be ridiculous in us to affect to recommend a 
 volume written by Dr. Paley. It will be extensively read ; 
 its readers will receive many useful and striking thoughts ; 
 and we earnestly wish they may study the New Testament 
 enough to be saved from any injurious impression of what 
 we cannot allow ourselves to regard as unimportant errors. 
 
 A]MEEICA BEFOEE THE EEVOLUTION. 
 
 Memoirs of an American Lady. With Sketches of Manners and 
 Scenery in America, as they existed previous to the Eevolu- 
 tion. By the Author of "Letters from the Mountains," &o. 
 12mo., 2 vols.- 1808. 
 
 In common hands, the undertaking to write an account of 
 the dame of a country squire, who lived, half a century since, 
 a couple of hundred miles more or less up the Hudson river, 
 and to do this after the writer has been forty years an entire 
 stranger to the place and the person, and notwithstanding 
 she was perhaps hardly twelve years old at the time of 
 finally quitting them, would have seemed a rather forlorn 
 literary project. The present writer, however, was advised 
 to such an undertaking by her friends ; and in executing it, 
 has produced one of the most interesting books that we have 
 seen for a good while past. A brief notice of the materials 
 composing it, will explain how such a quality could be im- 
 parted to such a book, even without any severe labour on 
 the part of the writer. The most enviable perhaps of all 
 quaGfications for making interesting books, is to have ac- 
 tually visited scenes little known, and seen with an 
 observant and reflective mind, uncommon objects and trans- 
 actions. 
 
 The author is well aware that the great distance of time 
 since she quitted America, and the very early period of life 
 at which her observations were made, will not be favourable 
 to the credit of accuracy in her narratives and delineations, 
 especially when it is added that she has not the aid of any ' 
 
252 AMERICA BEFOEE THE nETOlTTTIOlT. 
 
 written memorials. Uuder such circumstances, any moderate 
 degree of truth in the sketches, would imply an extraordi- 
 nary prematurity of thought and tenacity of memory. But 
 these advantages will be amply and confidently attributed to 
 the writer, by every one that observes the nice shades in 
 her pictures, and the minute facts in some parts of her 
 record : while her character will give the assurance of a 
 uniform concern to preserve truth of representation. After 
 saying thus much, it is fair to observe, that a certain fallacy 
 of colouring is quite inevitable in such a work. It is familiar 
 to every one's knowledge that there is a double deception 
 in recollecting, in advanced life, the scenes and events of 
 childhood ; they presented a deceptive appearance at the 
 time, to a mind opening to the delights of existence, exulting 
 in the joys of novelty, surprise, affection, and hope, and too 
 ignorant, and too eagerlywelcoming a crowd of new ideas, 
 to have learnt to compare, to discriminate, and to suspect ; 
 and again, in the recollections in later life, a second imposi- 
 tion passes on the mind, in that fond sympathy with one's 
 former self, that momentary recovery of juvenile being, by 
 which the delights and the astonishments of the early period 
 are represented as more exquisite and profound than they 
 were actually felt. This deception operates, in a still greater 
 degree, in the recollections of a person who was removed 
 from the scenes and objects of early interest at the very 
 period of the utmost prevalence and enthusiasm of that in- 
 terest, and who, having never seen them since, did not gra- 
 dually lose the emphasis of the feeling by familiarity with 
 its objects. To have grown forty years older in the habitual 
 acquaintance with things and persons that delighted or awed 
 us at the age of ten or twelve, or of similar things and per- 
 sons, would have given a vastly different character tp the 
 remembered aspects which those objects presented to us in 
 our youth, from that character with which they would be 
 recalled to our imagination as the enchanting forms of a 
 vision, which in the early morning of our life was shut up 
 from our view for ever. In this latter case, the retrospec- 
 tions of a mind like that of Mrs. Grant inevitably turn in 
 some degree into poetry ; and in the work before us it could 
 not depend on her will, or her most conscientious veracity, 
 to avoid a certain fulness of embellishment, especially in 
 
ATTTHOB'S EAKLT LITE AND FEELIirGS. 253 
 
 delineating the characters of her early friends and neigh- 
 bours, for which her pencil might not have found colours 
 quite so rich, if her residence had permanently continued, 
 and this work had been written, in the state of Vermont. 
 At the same time we must say, that there are so many liaes 
 firmly drawn, and so many things true to general nature in 
 the representation of particulars differing strangely in 
 specific modification from what we have been accustomed to 
 witness, that every reader will be satisfied of the substantial 
 fidelity of the whole of this very interesting and original 
 series of delineations. 
 
 Notwithstanding the new and striking views of nature 
 and human society unfolded in the book, one of the most 
 interesting portions of its contents is the account, inter- 
 mingled with them, of the author's early life and feelings. 
 Her father was a Scotch subaltern officer, in a regiment 
 that served many years in America, in the old times of the 
 wars between the British, settlements and the French and 
 Indians of Canada. He was accompanied by his wife and 
 daughter, at a time when the latter was too young to retain 
 any remembrance of her native country ; and he was sta- 
 tioned a good while about Albany, 170 miles north of New 
 York, and at Port Oswego, on Lake Ontario. At Albany 
 they were introduced to Mrs. Schuyler, the widow of Colonel 
 Schuyler, the son of a gentleman of that name, who induced 
 and accompanied the visit to England of those Indian chiefs, 
 mentioned in the " Spectator" as one of the principal London 
 shows of that time. Either this elder Mr. Schuyler, or his 
 immediate ancestors, had emigrated from Holland, and 
 ranked among the most wealthy and respectable settlers in 
 the Province of New York, and among the most zealously 
 loyal subjects of the British government. As his residence 
 was on the frontier of the country belonging to the Mo- 
 hawks, or Five Nations, at that time probably the most 
 powerful of all the tribes of the aborigines, he was the 
 principal medium of intercourse between that formidable 
 community and the province, and the principal preservative 
 of peace and amity. When the French in Canada became 
 powerful enough, in "conjunction with the Indian tribes in 
 their alliance, to commence a system, and to indicate the 
 most ambitious designs, of hostility and encroachment, it 
 
254 Al^EEICA BEFOEE THE EETOlimOir. 
 
 "was felt to be of tbe utmost importance to the province to 
 retain the friendship of the Mohawks ; among whom the 
 Trench intriguers, or rather we should say negotiators, had 
 already been assiduous to propagate the notion that the 
 English were a contemptible nation, a company of mere 
 traders, inhabiting an insignificant island. Mr.' Schuyler 
 judged that far the best expedient would be for a number of 
 the chiefs to visit England, in order to have immediate evi- 
 dence of its power and magnificence, and to receive the 
 respectful attentions of its government. It was found very 
 difficult to persuade them to this undertaking ; but at length 
 they consented, on the positive condition that their " bro- 
 ther Philip, who never told a lie, nor spoke vrithout think- 
 ing," should accompany them, with which he reluctantly 
 complied. The measure had the desired efiect ; the sachems 
 were kindly and respectfully treated by Queen Anne and all 
 her court ; on their return to America they called a solemn 
 council of their nation, and made such representations, that 
 the Mohawks continued the firm allies of the British state 
 and settlers, — through their intercourse v^ith whom however 
 their numbers and their independence were gradually dimi- 
 nishing, till by the time that the English power was 
 annihilated, they had sunk into comparative insignificance. 
 In describing the reception of the chiefs in England, the 
 writer makes some very just remarks on the proper mode of 
 treating observant and thoughtful barbarians, such as these 
 were, when they happen to visit a civilized country. 
 
 The understanding and the virtues of Mr. Schuyler must 
 have been of a very high order of excellence ; and these 
 qualities appear to have been inherited by his son, the 
 husband of the lady who makes so distinguished a figure in 
 this work. He became, in his turn, the chief manager and 
 conciliator between the province and the race who saw 
 their ancient empire of woods suffering an unceasing and 
 progressive invasion by the multiplying colony of strangers. 
 In these and all his other benevolent employments, he had 
 a most able coadjutor in his wife ;• who was his cousin, and 
 had in a great measure been educated by his father, whose 
 fond partiality she had early engaged by extraordinary indi- 
 cations of intelligence and worth. It was not very long 
 after this lady became a widow, and when she was past the 
 
DESCRIPTION OF AtBANT. 255 
 
 age of sixty, tbat our author was introduced into her house, 
 where her reflective disposition, her passion for reading, and 
 the interest she took in listening to the conversation of 
 elder people, soon rendered her a great favourite. She 
 attained to such a degree of intimacy and confidence, that 
 Mrs. Schuyler when not engaged in important affairs, would 
 spend hours in conversing with her and instructing her, 
 and in some of these conversations would relate to her 
 many particulars of her own history, of that of her deceased 
 relatives, and that of the colony : hence the writer became 
 qualified to relate various transactions in the family, and in 
 the province, of a period antecedent to her personal know- 
 ledge. 
 
 The first part of the work is an ample description of the 
 town of Albany and its vicinity ; the site, the siu'rounding 
 country, the romantic recesses between the hUls, the banks 
 of the great river Hudson, the manners of the inhabitants, 
 and their whole social economy, as all these things appeared 
 to the author, are exhibited in the most lively and pic-, 
 turesque manner ; and the whole forms, to us, a surprisingly 
 outlandish scene. It is impossible for us to give any just 
 idea of this most interesting description ; but the following 
 are some of its prominent features. The children and young 
 people, beginning as early as the age of six or seven were 
 formed, by themselves as it should seem (it does not appear 
 that they were allotted by their parents), into a number of 
 little classes or companies for the mere purposes of friend- 
 ship and co-operation in pursuits and amusements ; each 
 company consisting of an equal number of boys and girls, 
 acknowledging one of their number of each sex, as leaders, 
 and holding a kind of convivial meeting at particular times 
 in the year. Within these companies began very early 
 those attachments which commonly led to marriage, and it 
 was regarded as not very honourable to marry out of the 
 company. In a new and rising settlement, the marriages 
 were of course very early, often when the parties had not 
 passed the age of sixteen or seventeen. When a youth was 
 anxious to attain this object, the usual expedient for pro- 
 viding the requisite resources was to go on a trading adven- 
 ture among the Indian nations ; his father furnishing him 
 with a canoe, and money for lading it with the articles most 
 
256 AMEEICA BEFOEE THE EEVOLTJTION. 
 
 in request among those tribes. A most entertaining account 
 is given of the usual severe toils and hazards of this enter- 
 prise ; and of the strange transformation of the boy into the 
 gravity, the prudence, and the dignified deportment of the 
 man, which is often effected by the care, the foresight, the 
 self-command, and the courage which he has been compelled 
 to exert during even one expedition of this kind. When 
 the young people rashly married before any provision had 
 been made, the parents of both the parties very composedly 
 met in consultation, and the family that happened to have 
 the more property took the young pair home ; the young 
 man then commenced his trading expeditions, and the young 
 people and the old people often continued to live together 
 with mutual satisfaction many years after they had ample 
 means for a separate competency, the ancients being as 
 fond of their grandchildren as they had ever been of their 
 own. All the families had negroes, but these slaves were 
 treated with as much kindness as if they had been equals ; 
 they were bred up in the house, and their mothers had very 
 great influence, not to say authority, in the family, and over 
 their master's children. When a negro child was a few 
 years old, it was formally given to one of the children of the 
 family, who was thenceforth considered as its master or 
 mistress, and its patron and friend ; the two children grew 
 up in the most affectionate habits, and there were innumer- 
 able instances of the negro young men braving the most 
 extreme perUs to defend or assist their young masters. Tet 
 all this time there was, in the whites, an invariable perfect 
 conviction of a vast and insuperable barrier being placed 
 by nature between them and the African race ; this feeling 
 operated so powerfully, that before the arrival of British 
 troops in Albany, only one mulatto was remembered to have 
 been born there, and he was regarded as an anomalous and 
 almost a monstrous creature. Almost the whole of the in- 
 habitants are represented to have been, orderly, indus- 
 trious, friendly, and in short exceedingly pure in their 
 general morals ; the correctness of the description, as to one 
 branch of morals at least, is strongly supported by the very 
 curious account of the astonishment, the general mortifica- 
 tion, and the alarm, caused in the town by a single instance 
 of seduction in one of the middling families, and this was 
 
STATE OF SOCIETY IW AlBANT. 257 
 
 effected by a British officer who was entertained there. As 
 an odd exception to the general character of virtue and good 
 order, the writer honestly mentions a custom similar to one 
 that prevailed in Sparta, — a licensed practice of petty thefts 
 among the young men. It was requisite to tate the utmost 
 dare of pigs and poultry, while all other things might be left 
 exposed with entire safety. It was thought fair to belabour 
 the thief, if caught in the fact ; but no real criminality 
 seems to have been imputed to it ; it was considered as an 
 established privilege of the youth, and all but the gravest 
 part of the community were too willing to applaud the most 
 dexterous performer for such ingenious tricks as those of 
 which our author relates one or two. The young men were 
 not allowed to join in these frolics, as they were called, after 
 they were married, which to some of them is said to have 
 been no small mortification. 
 
 The young people, though brought up to acquire so early 
 a spirit of enterprise and independence, practised the great- 
 est deference to their parents. Law or pimishment was 
 scarcely ever heard of in the town. In the rare case of a 
 negro proving incorrigibly refractory, he was sold to Jamaica,- 
 and this transaction excited a far more melancholy emotion 
 in the whole population, than the execution of a dozen 
 criminals at -once excites in our metropolis. The descriptioJi 
 of the summer excursions of the people of Albany, leads us 
 into the most delightful scenes of wildness and simplicity, 
 and displays that romantic mixture of cultivated and unci- 
 vilised life (though with a preponderance of the former), 
 and that contrast of garden with boundless forest, which 
 must be a transient state of moral and physical nature in 
 any country. 
 
 A sufficient number of specific facts are given, to attest 
 the truth, in substance, of our author's representation of the 
 virtuous and happy condition of this community ; but there 
 are also some other facts tending to prove that their praises 
 are a little indebted to the rekindling glow of the writer's 
 primeval fancy and sensibility. For at the period to which 
 the description relates, the settlement had been a good 
 whUe infested by something beyond aU comparison more 
 pernicious than the wolves of the desert ; by the military 
 from Europe, whose officers had taken indefatigable pains to 
 
258 AMEEICA BBrOEE THE HSTOLTTTIOIT. 
 
 deprave the notions, manners, and morals of the youug 
 people, — a much more easy exploit, than to vanquish the 
 French and the Indians on the Lakes. Bj a varnish of ele- 
 gance and a froth of gaiety, by ridicule of the primitive 
 habits of the old sober-sided settlers, and an ostentation of 
 knowing the world, and at last by the introduction of balls 
 and plays, they created a mania in the young people, which 
 drove them to rush into dissipation like a torrent, in scorn 
 of the authority and remonstrances of the elder inhabitants, 
 and reduced their zealous, affectionate, but too sensitive and 
 self-important minister, to a melancholy which was believed 
 to have betrayed him to a voluntary death. All this had 
 taken place before the time of our author's residence ; and 
 though the frenzy had in a good measure subsided, it is 
 impossible to suppose it could have left a state of manners 
 altogether so unsophisticated as our author would represent., 
 
 In describing the comfortable situation of the negroes ia 
 this settlement, she by no means aims at raising any plea 
 for the slave-trade or slavery ; she means merely to state the 
 fact, that in Albany they were kindly treated and compara- 
 tively happy. — "We must notice the striking inconsistency 
 between the sentence in which she says that " two or three 
 slaves were the greatest number that each family ever pos- 
 sessed," and her mention in another place that Mrs. Schuyler 
 had eleven, and her information that each child of a family 
 had an appropriated negro. 
 
 It would be in vain for us to attempt any abstract of the 
 history of Mrs. Schuyler. She was evidently an extraordi- 
 nary and a most estimable person ; and though so few of us 
 ever heard of her before, her fame, during her time, was 
 spread over the northern provinces of America, and far 
 among the savage tribes ; nor should we have ventured to 
 gainsay, if her biographer had assserted that the queen of 
 Sheba, even after her visit to Jerusalem, was less qualified 
 to counsel or to govern than this lady. She was consulted 
 by traders, planters, governors, and generals ; she was re- 
 vered by soldiers, by Indians, by missionaries, and even by 
 the most depraved persons that ever came within the sphere 
 of her acquaintance. Perhaps the only man that ever offered 
 her an insult -sras General Lee, at that time a captain in the 
 English service, who in marching past her estates towards 
 Ticonderoga, hastily and harshly demanded certain supplies 
 
CHAEAOTEE OF MBS. SCHrTLEB. 259 
 
 for fehe troops, which she would have been of all persons the 
 readiest to furnish voluntarily ; but when he was brought 
 back wounded from the fatal attack on that fortress, and 
 kindly accommodated and attended in her house tiU his 
 recovery, " he swore, in his vehement manner, that he was 
 sure there would be a place reserved for Madame in heaven, 
 though no other woman should be there, and that he should 
 wish for nothing better than to share her final destiny." 
 Both during the colonel's life, and after she was left alone, 
 her house was the grand centre of attraction to all persons 
 in the province who were devising anything for the pubUo 
 welfare, or had even difficult private afiairs of importance 
 on their hands ; nor can we refuse to believe that it was 
 well worth their while to travel very many leagues, even 
 over snow and ice, to take the benefit of so much cool and 
 comprehensive prudence as our author (though so young an 
 observer when residing there) has given us the "means of 
 being assured they would find in that house. 
 
 A great number of pleasing details, some of them very 
 curious, are given of the domestic system, the hospitalities, 
 the young iumates entertained and educated in the family, 
 the manners of the negroes, and the agricultural arrange- 
 ments. Every thing relating to Mrs. Schuyler's personal 
 character and habits is extremely interesting ; and we do 
 not believe that any of her friends could have given a more 
 lively description of her manners, or a stronger exhibition 
 of the leading principles of her character, her eminently 
 sound judgment, her incessantly active beneficence, and it 
 is very gratifying to add, her habitual piety. Her literary 
 attainments were, for such a state of society, respectable ; 
 she could speak several of the European languages, and had 
 read the best English authors of the popular class; she 
 always continued to read as much as the very active 
 economy of her life would permit. But the wisdom which 
 commanded such general respect was chiefly the result of a 
 long exercise of a vigorous understanding on practical 
 affairs and real characters, aided too, as we must have it, 
 and as Mrs. Grant indeed represents, by the society of her 
 enlightened husband, who was considerably her senior, and 
 was also strenuously occupied, during his whole life, in pro- 
 acting the public good. They are described as having 
 
 b2 
 
260 AMEEIOA BEFOEE THE BETOITTTIOS. 
 
 been congenial in a yery uncommon degree; their long 
 union was eminently happy, and the manner in which the 
 survivor at once sTinced, and endeavoured to conceal, the 
 excesses of her grief for the loss, was more allied to poetry 
 than probably any thing that happened before or after in 
 the back settlements of New York. 
 
 Having no children of her own, this lady in effect adopted 
 a great number of children, in succession, partly those of 
 her relations ; but in directing their education she did not, 
 like divers sensible ladies that we have heard of, suffer her 
 whole time and attention to be engrossed by it, and exalt 
 the error iato a merit. She knew that a matron lessens 
 her importance in the estimate of children, by appearing to 
 be always at their service ; she felt that a constant course 
 of intellectual and religious discipline was due to her own 
 mind, and that a person of sense and property has a,lso 
 duties of a more general nature, than those relating 
 exclusively to her own immediate circle. 
 
 What we should deem perhaps the principal fault of the 
 book, is too much length of detail concerning the nume- 
 rous collateral relations of Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler. Except 
 ia the instance of the widow of that gentleman's brother, it 
 is impossible to take much interest in a long and perpleziug 
 enumeration of persons and personal histories, of no im- 
 portance in themselves, and serving only to spread out, but 
 to spread out by interrupting and dispersing the memoir of 
 the principal character ; the accident of their being related 
 to her, forming the sole claim of most of them to be so 
 much as mentioned. 
 
 Before the contest between the American States and the 
 mother country had taken a very serious turn, Mrs. S., with 
 many other intelligent colonists, felt a perfect conviction 
 that the connexion could not continue long, and would be 
 utterly useless to both countries wliUe it lasted. She re- 
 tained however much of the ancient attachment to England, 
 but was too highly respected by both parties to experience 
 any indignity, or material inconvenience, in the military 
 competition of whiph she lived to see the commencement, 
 but not the close : she died in 1788 or 1789, not much 
 short of the age of eighty. 
 
 The house of this distinguished family having been fre- 
 
THE INDIAN TETBES. 261 
 
 quented by the principal commanders in the Canadian wars, 
 short sketches are given of some of their characters, toge- 
 ther with narratives of some of the most remarkable of 
 their proceedings . especially of the fatal attempt on Ticon- 
 deroga, in which the author's father was present, and of the 
 bold and intelligent schemes executed at Port Oswego by 
 Colonel Duncan, a brother of the late Admiral Lord 
 Duncan 
 
 A very large proportion of these volumes relates to the 
 Indian tribes, and affords many most interesting descrip- 
 tions and observations. The author used often to visit 
 some detached families of the Mohawks (which denomination 
 she seems, in one or two instances, to apply to the whole 
 of the Five Nations, though the Mohawks were only one 
 tribe of that league) that encamped in the neighboiu?hood 
 of Albany during the summer, and kept up a friendly and 
 intimate intercourse with the settlers. Some of these In- 
 dians were Christiana ; and a very pleasing account is given 
 of the benevolent efforts which had long been made by 
 some of the families, espedally the female part of them, to 
 insinuate Christian knowledge and habits among these wUd 
 but not unreflecting tribes. 
 
 In the course of a journey to Lake Ontario, our author 
 was presented at the court, or at least in the palace, of the 
 most famous warrior of the Five Nations ; and she gives a 
 most amusing account of his manne^rs, and of her feelings 
 on the occasion. In addition to what she saw of the In- 
 dians herself, she eagerly listened to the innumerable 
 a,ccounts of them given by the traders and the military men 
 who had been among them. From the impression made by 
 the boldness and the wildness of the Indian character on 
 her young imagination; we do not wonder to see a strong 
 tincture of favourable partiality in her representations and 
 reasonings concerning those nations ; yet we rather wonder 
 to see, in a lady's description, the epithets " high-souled 
 and generous " applied to these heroes, just two pages after , 
 the account of the most miserable state of slavery and 
 oppression in which their wives are uniformly held. No 
 one is disposed to deny that there are certain modifications 
 of the savage character analogous to virtue in such tribes, 
 especially perhaps the Mohawks ; but it is now quite too 
 
262 AMEBIOA BErOEE THE EETOirTIOK. 
 
 late in the day for us to accept any estimate of the condition 
 of any savage people whatever, as, on the whole, otherwise 
 than profoundly depraved and miserable. 
 
 Our author gives a very striking view of the process by 
 which the American tribes have lost their independence, 
 and are very fast losing even their existence, in consequence 
 of their intercourse with their civilised neighbours. Her 
 explanation of this point is introduced by some general 
 speculations on the progress of civilisation in Europe, 
 which should rather have been reserved to be rendered 
 more simple and precise by maturer consideration. 
 
 The roguery of the American citizens, in the district now 
 called Yermont, deprived the author's father of a valuable 
 portion of land, several years previously to the period at 
 which he would have been certain to lose it as a loyalist. 
 Nothing to be sure can be much more odious and disgusting, 
 than that system of deception, chicane, and rascality, which 
 she describes as having overspread that part of the country, 
 and driven her father to desert his plantation, and return 
 to Europe, even before he had lost all hope of supporting 
 his claims. We have not much to object to, in her many 
 spirited observations on the American character and 
 government. But we cannot very well comprehend the 
 reasonableness of those animadversions on the assumption 
 of independence by the American States, which seem to 
 proceed on the principle that either they should always 
 have continued dependent, or should have waited tiU 
 England should voluntarily set them free. The former is 
 obviously absurd ; and how many thousand years must 
 they have waited to realize the latter ? Nor can we work 
 ourselves into any thing like an animated sympathy with 
 certain high-flown sentiments of patriotism, which, in 
 remonstrance against the desire to emigrate from a land of 
 taxes, would seem to go far towards telling a man who is 
 anxiously considering how his family are to live, that the 
 " proud recollection that he is in the country that has pro- 
 duced Milton and Newton," is a much better thing than to 
 have plenty of good com, bacon, cabbage, &c. &c., in such 
 a low-minded place as America. 
 
 There is one passage relative to the Puritan settlers in 
 the northern provinces, which we read with surprise : — 
 
THE FTTEITAN SETTLEES. 263 
 
 *• The people of New England left the mother country as ban- 
 ished from it by what they considered oppression ; came over 
 foaming with religious and political fury, and narrowly missed 
 having the most artful and able of demagogues, Cromwell him- 
 self, for their leader and guide. ' They might be compared to 
 lava, discharged by the fury of internal combustion, from the 
 bosom of the commonwealth, while inflamed by contending ele- 
 ments, This lava, every one acquainted with the convulsions 
 of nature must know, takes a long time to cool ; and when at 
 length it is cooled, turns to a substance hard and barren, that 
 long resists the kindly influence of the elements, before its sur- 
 feice resumes the appearance of beauty and fertility. Such were 
 the almost literal effects of political convulsions, aggravated by 
 a fiery and intolerant zeal for their own mode of worship, on 
 these self-righteous colonists." — Vol. I., p. 197. 
 
 Is it possible that some idle partiality to the House of 
 Stuart can have had the influence to prompt this strange 
 piece of absurdity ? Whatever has prompted, it does really 
 seem very foolish not to know, that the emigrants in ques- 
 tion were the most devout and virtuous part of the English 
 nation, and were glad to escape to a melancholy desert from 
 the pillories and prisons of such tutelar saints of Britain as 
 Laud. 
 
 While noticing faults, we may apprize the reader that 
 these volumes, apparently from haste, are written with much 
 carelessness and incorrectness of expression. But he will 
 find everywhere great animation, and ease, and variety ; and 
 in many places elegance and energy. The descriptions are 
 beautiful, and various, and new, in the highest degree : we 
 will for conclusion transcribe one of them ; we might tran- 
 scribe a third part of the book. 
 
 "In one place, where we were surrounded by hills, with 
 swamps lying between them, there seemed to be a general con- 
 gress of wolves, who answered each other from opposite hills, in 
 sounds the most terrific. Probably the terror which all savage 
 animals have at fire was exalted into fury, by seeing so many 
 enemies, whom they durst not attack. The bull-frogs, the 
 harmless, the hideous inhabitants of the swamps, seemed deter- 
 mined not to be out-done, and roared a tremendous bass to this 
 bravura accompaniment. This was almost too much for my love 
 of the terrible sublime : some women, who were our fellow- 
 travellers, shrieked with terror ; and finally the horrors of that 
 
264 sottthet's cheonicle or the cid. 
 
 night were ever after held in awful remembrance by eJ who 
 shared them."— Pp. 117, 118, 
 
 SOTTTHET'S CHEONICLE OF THE CID. 
 
 Chronicle of the Cid. From the Spanish. By Robert Southbt. 
 4to. 1809. 
 
 DuEiiTG the seven centuries that have elapsed since the 
 death of the Cid, there has probably never been a time, till 
 within the last seven months, when a large volume of half- 
 legendary history of his adventures would have had any 
 great chance of obtaining much attention iu England. 
 Just now is the time, or rather four or five months since was 
 the time, for calling some of the chiefs of the ancient 
 Spanish chivaby from their long slumber, in order to assist 
 us to extend backward into former ages our interest in the 
 heroic character of that nation ; a nation in which we had 
 begun to hope that almost every nobleman and every 
 peasant was going to perform such exploits as those of the 
 Cid, in a more righteous cause than almost any in which 
 that hero had the fortune to display his valour. We are 
 never content to confine our admiration to the present 
 spirit and actions of an individual, or of a people, that has 
 become a favourite with us, if we can find or fancy anything 
 deserving to be admired in the retrospect of its earlier 
 times. Besides, when a people is entering on a grand and 
 most perilous enterprise, in which it is evident that any 
 thing less than the most heroic spirit must fail, the martial 
 names and achievements of its ancestors have a certain 
 influence — a greater, indeed, than is warranted by the 
 history of national character — on our hopes of its success. 
 When summoned to vindicate the national cause, the men 
 surely wiU not hide themselves from danger among the 
 very monuments of their heroic progenitors ; they cannot 
 be content to read and recite the stories of invincible cham- 
 pions, of their own names, and, by tlieir nativity, reflecting 
 lustre on their own villages and towns, and yet see these 
 towns and villages commanded and plundered by bands of 
 
NEGLECT or EELIQIOrS CONSIDEEATIONS. 265 
 
 foreign invaders ; they cannot endure to see their country 
 and themselves in a state to make them abhor the recollec- 
 tion that such renovmed heroes were their forefathers. Is 
 it possible that the Spaniards of the present day, recalling 
 to mind the gallant hostility which once expelled the 
 Moors, can quietly sink down under the domination of the 
 modem Saracens ? It has occurred to our thoughts num- 
 berless times, while going through this volume, what an 
 intolerable place their country would soon become, to the 
 usurping enemy, if the martial spirit which blazed all over 
 it in the eleventh century could be now rekindled ; and 
 what a dreadful impression would be made on the Gallic 
 squadrons by even a very small army of such men as this 
 Eodrigo Diaz, and those that fought by his side. The very 
 same reflections have occurred, no doubt, to multitudes of the 
 Spanish nation, within the last few months; but, notwithstand- 
 ing all such reflections, and the momentary ardour they may 
 in some instances possibly have excited, it would appear that 
 one more proof remained to be given, that, in these times, 
 the tombs, the histories, and the splendid fables of vaHant 
 ancestors have lost all their power against a daring invader. 
 
 As all our readers, as well as ourselves, talk less or more 
 every day of the events in Spain, which have lately 
 awakened the strongest interest throughout the whole 
 civilized world, it will, perhaps, be permitted us to take this 
 occasion of suggesting a few considerations relative to those 
 events, and to the manner in which they have been viewed 
 and celebrated in this country. 
 
 With regard to the manner in which those eevnts have 
 been beheld and discussed, it is painful to us, as believers 
 in Christianity, to have to observe that it may be doubted 
 whether there has ever been a grand affair, involving a most 
 momentous crisis, and creating a profound and universal 
 solicitude, which was contemplated in this country with 
 any thing so much Kke a general consent to forget all reli- 
 gious considerations. The anxiety which we have fully 
 shared with all around us, for the success of the Spanish 
 people, could not prevent us from sometimes thoughtfully 
 observing in what terms anxiety, speculation, or triumph, 
 were expressed by veteran statesmen, yoimg political philo- 
 dopters, many divines, the whole tribe almost of journalists, 
 
266 sorTHHT's cheoniclb or the cid. 
 
 and a very large proportion of the mass of the peojle ; and 
 it has been exceedingly striking to perceive the general 
 willingness to exempt the G-ovemor of the world from aU 
 exercise of care or interference. We really believe we have 
 hardly met with one political or military calculation on the 
 powers and probabilities ia this great commotion, in which 
 the fact of an Almighty Providence, if any accident could 
 have suggested it to the calculator's thoughts, would have 
 been of half as much importance in his account, as one 
 regiment of soldiers more or less, or one cargo of ammuni- 
 tion. But in general, the thought seems not to have 
 occurred at all ; the plans, the reasonings, the auguries, the 
 exultation, and the fears, have all been entertained and 
 revolved under an entire failure to recoUect that an invi- 
 sible Being has ever decided the course and events of 
 human affairs. And the benefit of this exclusion of every 
 thought relating to that Being has been very great to the 
 confident class of speculators, as it has simplified their cal- 
 culations ; the interference of an invisible power is a thing 
 so independent and mysterious, that it is very difficult to 
 adjust its place and value among the elements of the calcu- 
 lation ; but let the whole matter be reduced to a plain 
 account of so many men in arms against so many, and we 
 go directly to the consequence without hesitation. 
 
 We could not deem it a favourable omen, when we 
 observed the general, and we think unequalled, prevalence 
 in this Christian country, of so light an estimate of the 
 dependence of human affairs on the Supreme Governor. 
 Another very prominent circumstance has been the appa- 
 rent renunciation of all concern about the stability or 
 subversion of the power of the Eomish church. In times 
 that are past, yet not so long past but we ourselves can 
 remember them, this most impious, tyrannic, and cruel 
 power was regarded as one of the most pernicious and 
 hateful things on the face of the whole earth ; and its 
 grand instrument, the Inquisition, was considered as pre- 
 cisely the utmost reach of diabolical contrivance and ma- 
 lignity. English Protestants could not hear the words 
 Popery and Inquisition, without instantly thinking of crowds 
 of racked, or burning, or bleeding martyrs ; of numerous 
 other pious and holy men perishing in dungeons and 
 
ANTICIPATED FALL Or POPEBT. 267 
 
 deserts ; of soldiers, stimulated by priests to merit heaven 
 hj absolutely wantoning in tbe torments and death of 
 women and children ; of midnight spies ; of domestics ex- 
 horted and threatened into informers ; of the general inter- 
 diction of divine knowledge by severe punishments for 
 reading the Bible ; of an infinite swarm of lazy, bigoted, 
 and vicious ecclesiastics ; of the worship of saints and of 
 images ; and of a train of follies and impieties, in doctrine 
 and ceremony, far too numerous to be named. Nothing 
 inspired greater delight than any symptoms of the approach- 
 ing faU of this most execrable power ; our anticipations of 
 the prosperity or decline of any of the political states of 
 Europe depended very much, perhaps more than on any 
 other thing whatever, on the degree in which they respec- 
 tively assisted or opposed that impious and cruel hierarchy ; 
 while many devout and learned writers, and a multitude of 
 their readers, rejoiced to discern any coincidence between 
 passing events and the prophecies of the faU of Antichrist. 
 In looking round on the states that support this enormous 
 usurpation on the liberty, the reason, and the conscience of 
 mankind, it was notorious that Spain and Portugal were 
 the most faithful subjects of the slavery and abettors of 
 the tyranny. "When the recent movement in Spain became 
 so extensive as apparently to promise to raise the whole 
 effective population in arms, we began to entertain a most 
 earnest sentiment, something between the desponding 
 desire and the hope, that now, at last, not only a repelling 
 boundary, much more lofty and impervious than the Py- 
 renees, would be raised against the irruptions, on one side 
 at least, of the grand tyrant of Europe, but also that in 
 some way or other, the strongest hold of Popery would be 
 eventually shaken iijto ruins. It was not to be expected 
 that any direct measures, for reducing the inveterate ascen- 
 dancy of the Popish establishment, would form a part of 
 the first revolutionary proceedings. But, as we trusted 
 that all the genius and knowledge in the country would be 
 called forth by the great occasion, and that the most able, 
 enlightened, and liberal men would soon come to occupy 
 the vacated powers of government, we flattered ourselves 
 they would be too wise, as statesmen, to be bigoted as 
 Catholics. "We presumed they could not but feel that the 
 
268 southet's chbonioie op the oib. 
 
 freedom which deserved to be sought at the expense of a 
 prolonged and direful conflict with the greatest military 
 power the world ever saw, would remain imperfect, disho- 
 noured, and in a great measure useless, unless something 
 were at least gradually effected, for reducing that despotism 
 of superstition, which would else be a fatal obstacle to aU 
 grand schemes of national improvement. "We thought that 
 the great commotion, which would excite througLout the 
 whole nation twenty times more bold thought and strong 
 passion than had prevailed in it at any one period for 
 centuries past, would give such a shock to the dominion 
 of superstition, as to loosen and crack all its impositions 
 and institutions. And why should we forbear to add that 
 we had a new ground of hope, when this liberal and Pro- 
 testant nation determined to put forth all its immense 
 strength in aid of the Spanish cause, and when it was 
 avowed in both countries that without this aid that cause 
 could not triumph. It was quite natural to conclude that 
 this Protestant nation, which had but very recently testified 
 its antipathy to Popery with an ardour of zeal almost 
 flaming into fanaticism, would accompany this assistance, if 
 not with the stipulated condition, at least with the most 
 powerful recommendation of some remission of the rigours 
 of spiritual slavery ; a recommendation which, under such 
 circumstances, could not have failed to be efiectual. 
 
 Thus, we had begun to indulge anticipations of momentous 
 changes in favour of intellect, conscience, and religion, to 
 a,rise from the great movement in assertion of national 
 liberty. When, however, in the simplicity of our hearts, we 
 began to give vent to some of these imaginations, in such 
 little humble circles of politicians as we can be supposed to 
 be admitted in, we found our notions received with a smile 
 of contempt. We were told that these are not times for 
 recalling the antiquated, trifling controversies of divines 
 about Popery and Protestantism; that enlightened politi- 
 cians are now of opinion that the iniquitous institutions of 
 the superstition of any country ought to be held sacred and 
 inviolate in that country ; that if a few Protestants have 
 sometimes got themselves into the dungeons of the Inqui- 
 sition, it was their own fault, as they might have gone 
 quietly to mass like their neighbours ; that, in short, any 
 
THE PENINSTJLAE WAS. 269 
 
 Bueh concerns as tliat of securing snch things as liberty of 
 religious profession and worship, are altogether beneath the 
 notice of states, and those who preside over them, in great 
 conjunctures of their affairs. We were rather plainly told, 
 that such grand events as those of the present time, are not 
 for the understandings of pei-sons -who can never advert to 
 any great subject without making it little by some conceit 
 about Providence, and whose first grovelling anxiety and 
 last, in political commotions and revolutions, fixes itself on 
 no greater an object than what it calls the advancement of 
 pure religion, — meaning perhaps, iu truth, nothing better 
 than the progress of Methodism. 
 
 On this, we betook ourselves for a while to the silent 
 observation of events and opinions, and soon perceived that 
 we had indeed entertained a very fantastic kind of senti- 
 ments. Except a number of religionists of the most 
 antiquated stamp, nobody seemed to recollect any harm 
 that Popish intolerance had ever done ; the Inquisition was 
 almost become venerable, as a fortress of the faith against 
 modem infidelity ; at any rate, it was a powerful support of 
 the ancient established order of things ; a most bigoted 
 tribe of priests had our cordial license to hunt heretics, and 
 keep the people in the most wretched and debasing igno- 
 rance, if they would only make sanguinary addresses (many 
 of them were in the most savage style) to rouse the popula- 
 tion to war. Let but the enemy be destroyed, and the 
 conquerors might celebrate their victory, for anything our 
 nation seemed to care, with an auto da fe. The very for- 
 tresses that Englishmen might shed their blood in recover- 
 ing from the enemy, might be allowed to become, the 
 following year or month, the prisons of those who wished 
 for liberty to profess the faith of their generous deliverers. 
 All were enthusiastic, and very justly so, for the rescue of 
 Spain and Portugal ; governors and people, debaters, news- 
 writers, reviewers, all breathed fire against Attila and his 
 barbarians ; and when these invaders were exterminated, the 
 glorious result was to be — what was it to be f what in all 
 reason ought it to be ? As far as we could understand, it 
 was to be a full restoration of that order of things under 
 which those countries had for ages invariably presented the 
 most melancholy spectacle of imprisoned mind, of tyrannic 
 
270 sotjthet's onROUiOLE of the CtD. 
 
 superstition, and of national prostration, in all Europe. 
 We say a full restoration, for there was not, that we 
 remember, a single particular of the whole wretched 
 economy specified for reformation, in the event of success, 
 or as a condition of our powerful and expensive co-operation 
 to secure it. 
 
 That great improvement of modern times, the division of 
 labour, may have extended much further than we were 
 aware. In some past periods, there have been in England 
 politicians and statesmen of very great note in their day, 
 who assumed it as part of their vocation, to promote, to the 
 utmost of their power, in their transactions with allies, the 
 security of conscientious men and reforming reasoaers, 
 against the persecuting malice of a spiritual tyranny. It 
 may be, that now the narrowed province of this class of men 
 no longer includes this concern. This may be : — but then 
 another thing also may be ; if they have excluded from theii 
 department a concern which the Divine Governor has 
 included within their duty, it may be that schemes and 
 enterprizes, in professed vindication of liberty, are, on 
 account of this indifference or contempt shown to the most 
 sacred branch of liberty, destined to fail. The division ot 
 labour might be carried so far as to be fatal ; if the officers 
 and crew of a damaged ship at sea should choose to say, 
 that their business is to navigate the vessel and defend it 
 against the enemy, and that as to the leak, which is fast 
 filling the hold, that belongs to the shipwright's business in 
 the port, the consequence would not be very doubtful. "We 
 began to fear, a good many months since, that such a fate 
 awaited our grand undertaking in favour of Spain. Eor the 
 last twenty years, it had appeared most evident, that Provi- 
 dence was hastening the fall of incomparably the most 
 dreadful tyrant that ever arrogated the dominion of Europe, 
 — the Popish superstition ; it had become the general per- 
 suasion of wise and good men, both from examining the 
 Scriptures and observing the course of events, that this 
 divine process of emancipation, which had been so ardently 
 longed and prayed for by millions of the devoutest and 
 holiest men that ever inhabited the earth, would proceed 
 rapidly to its completion ; and therefore it was impossible 
 to repel the conviction, independently of aU calculations of 
 
THE PENINSrLAE WAE. 271 
 
 comparative military forces, that the mightiest effort in the 
 power of any nation to make, if a chief object of that effort 
 was absolutely to maintain the Popish system in all its 
 ancient rigour, must fail ; and that any other nation, especi- 
 ally if a Protestant nation, lending its assistance on such 
 terms as to adopt and promote this ohject, must eventually 
 retire with disaster and humiliation. This object, in its 
 most decided form, was invariably avowed in Spain ; and as 
 far as the public are yet informed, the whole resources of 
 this country were pledged, without a stipulation or a 
 remonstrance, against a system which would doom any 
 advocate of pure religion to imprisonment, or tortures, or 
 death. Our politicians may say it was not within their 
 province, " not in their competence," to take account of any 
 such matters ; but neither, therefore, was it permitted to be 
 in their competence, with the whole vast means of this 
 country at their disposal, to accomplish any part of the 
 great political project. A most signal fatality has appeared 
 to accompany every measure and movement ; the resists are 
 before us ; Spain is overwhelmed, and our armies, after 
 months and months of inefficiency and ostentation, are 
 driven out under circumstances of the utmost afiB.iction and 
 mortification, and followed by the most bitter taunt that 
 ever stung this nation, that " in spite of the English, the 
 Inq^uisition, the overgrown monkish establishments, and the 
 oppressive privileges of the nobles, have ceased to exist in 
 Spain." What a memorable fact it will be in the history of 
 these times, that the enlightened nation, which had so long 
 been the grand champion of Protestantism, should have 
 justly incurred this poignant and triumphant reproach from 
 a conqueror, who is himself a pretended Papist ! The won- 
 der, however, wiU relate solely to the principles on which 
 the enterprise was undertaken ; there will be no w^onder at 
 the consequence : if one of the most emphatic petitions 
 which good men could have concurred to address to Heaven, 
 for the Spanish people, would have been, that such institu- 
 tions might fall, — and if the intimations of revelation 
 combined with the recent and contemporary train of events, 
 to give solemn signs that the Papal institutions were in fact 
 just ready to fall, — what was the result to be reasonably 
 apprehended, when a Protestant nation should undertake to 
 
272 sotjthet's oheonicle of the cm. 
 
 exert its utmost force, ttat, as connected with the other 
 establishments of the unhappy people, these institutions 
 might stand? Was it to be expected that out of pure 
 favour to the English, as Protestants, the Supreme Disposer 
 would suspend his operations for destroying the Popish 
 domination ? 
 
 We gladly believe there are times yet to come, when 
 politicians will be aware that the question, what monarch or 
 what dynasty is to rule any particular portion of the earth, 
 is an exceedingly trifling matter in the view of Him that 
 governs it all, compared with the promotion or the repres- 
 sion of the cause of pure Christianity. How many more 
 disastrous calculations and events are to enrich our history 
 with melancholy instruction for their benefit, remains to be 
 seen ; and it is not diificult to imagine new occasions for 
 practically trying, whether it is really a judicious principle in 
 politics, for a Christian and Protestant nation to lend its 
 force and sanction formally to maintain and consolidate the 
 most pernicious and cruel superstitions of every country 
 where it has an absolute or an influential power. This point 
 should be decided ; and if all the experiments are to be 
 made on an assumption of the affirmative, it is not too 
 much to anticipate that the series may be very short, and 
 that the result may be recorded on the monumental ruins of 
 a great empire. 
 
 Some readers may perhaps here allege, that the martial 
 despot that has been successful, is also a supporter of super- 
 stition ; that he inserted in the new constitution for Spain, 
 framed at Bayonne, an article expressing that no religion 
 but Popery should be legally tolerated, and that he carried 
 this into effect in agreeing to the first article of capitulation 
 proposed by the inhabitants of Madrid. We may answer, 
 first, it cannot reasonably surprise us, if the Divine Being 
 should manifest a much severer indignation against the 
 formal support of Popish superstition, by a nation long 
 eminent for zealous Protestantism, than against even the 
 same support by a nation long equally eminent for its 
 zealous Popery. Secondly, though Napoleon does pretend, 
 and in some degree practise, an adherence to the EiOmish 
 church, yet all Europe sees that he is, in effect, its enemy 
 and destroyer ; he treats some of its most sacred institutions 
 
A ITATIOlf IN ABMS NOT POSSIBLE. 273 
 
 with contempt, and for his own purposes is gradually abo- 
 lishing the various organs of power that made it so formid- 
 able. As far, therefore, as an able, powerful, bad man, who 
 does everything from motives of selfish policy and ambition, 
 may be a fit agent, under the divine government, for break- 
 ing up by degrees the dominion under which reason and 
 conscience have so long been reduced to suffer, the present 
 agitator of nations seems the right operator. 
 
 We have thus endeavoured to explaiu how we soon began 
 to despair, on a religious ground, of a cause, for the success 
 of which our anxiety, in a political reference, most warmly 
 sympathized with that of our countrymen in general. We 
 will now venture one or two brief observations on the political 
 grounds of hope, afforded by the first stages of the grand 
 movement. 
 
 That a nation in arms cannot be conquered, is perhaps a 
 proposition, like many others that sound very well, of but 
 little meaning. The thing cannot be realized ; there never 
 can he a nation in arms. Say that the men capable of 
 bearing arms, that is, not too young, nor too old, nor too 
 unhealthy, are as much as a sixth part of the whole popula- 
 tion ; this will indeed give a most formidable list in such a 
 country as Spain. But then how evident it is, that only a 
 slender minority of this enrolment will ever come into 
 action. A very large proportion of these competent men 
 must be employed in preparing the furniture of war for 
 those who actually take the field ; a large proportion of 
 bhem must attend to the indispensable concerns of agricul- 
 ture ; millers, and numerous manufacturers and shopkeepers, 
 must keep to their business, if the population is to be 
 regularly supplied with the most direct necessaries ; many 
 of the enumerated men must stay to take care of their sick, 
 their aged, or their infant relatives : in a Catholic country a 
 number are under ecclesiastical restriction ; a considerable 
 number of men to write and print, are as necessary, in such 
 a juncture, as men to fight ; many must be employed in 
 every district, in concerns of council and police ; a number, 
 in almost any imaginable war, will join the enemy, at any 
 point were he has been signally successful. We wiU add 
 only one other class, that is cowards, who positively will not 
 fight at all, and whom it would require more than half of 
 
274 sotjthey's cheonicle or the cid. 
 
 those that will fight, to attempt to hunt and capture and 
 X)erce into battle ; of these there naturally must be a very 
 large number in every nation of Europe ; and these, in addi- 
 tion to their timidity, will generally be sceptical enough as 
 to the necessity of the war itself; such concessions as they 
 would have made, and as they think ought to have been 
 made, rather than provoke so dreadful an extremity, would 
 have averted it. 
 
 We have heard commonly enough, of late, of five or six 
 hundred thousand warriors being ready to march, or even of 
 a " million of heroes panting to rush on the enemy, and 
 resolved to conquer or perish;" the absurdity of such 
 flourishes might be apparent, on a moment's reflection, 
 which is enough to convince us that though we may talk of 
 " rising in a mass," and of a " nation in arms," it is in fact 
 but a comparativelj'' small proportion of the inhabitants 
 physically capable of acting in arms, that can at any time, 
 in any civilized country, be brought into military operation. 
 Instead of the innumerable myriads, which many of us seemed 
 to imagine would drive on like the moving sand of the 
 Arabian desert, and absolutely overwhelm the first large 
 French army that should venture to present its front in 
 Spain; it was very doubtful whether the Spanish nation, 
 even if as generally inspired with patriotic ardour as it is 
 possible for any nation to be, and carrying to its utmost 
 practicable extent the principle of rising in a mass, could 
 have met the invader with a force numerically equal to what 
 he could without much difiSculty bring, considering the 
 immense number of his veterans at every moment in the 
 posture of war, the authority and promptitude of his decrees 
 of conscription, and the vast extent of poptdous territory 
 over which those conscriptions operate. And as to the 
 nature of this popular levy, it was to be considered what an 
 uncouth element of armies it would continue to be for 
 months, what a want there was of men of commanding mili- 
 tary talents, to throw the rude though brave masses into 
 system, and at the same time how soon their quality, and 
 the capacity of their leaders, were likely to be brought to 
 the test by the unremitting assault of their rapid and perti- 
 nacious enemy. It was also to be inquired, where were 
 arsenals and magaziues ? whence were half the requisite 
 
THE SPANISH PATRIOTS. 275 
 
 number of fire-arms to be obtained ? for as to other arms 
 there can be no greater folly than to talk of them. Possibly 
 there are, in every country, a very small number of men so 
 firm and so fierce that, without any other weapons than 
 pikes, they would resolutely advance to the encounter with 
 musketry and artillery ; but as to the generality of the men 
 that armies must be composed of, we think their defeat is 
 infallible, whatever their numbers may be, if under no other 
 protection than their pikes they are confronted with lines of 
 fire-arms. JFor, setting aside the real difference of power 
 between the two kinds of weapons, setting aside too the 
 effect of manoeuvres, the influence of imagination wiU be great 
 and fatal. To unpractised troops, at least, guns seem some- 
 thing more than mere weapons ; both by those that hold 
 them, and those that meet them, it is almost felt as if they 
 had a kind of formidable efficacy in themselves, their opera- 
 tion is so totally different from any other instrument that 
 can be wielded by human hands. The explosion, the flash,, 
 and the infliction of death, at a great distance, by a missile 
 that cannot be seen or avoided, inspire in the possessor of 
 the weapon a certain consciousness of being a much more 
 powerful agent, than he could have been by an implement, 
 which had no other force than just that which he could give 
 it by the grasp and movement of his hand, and no effect at 
 a distance. And this influence of imagination operates with 
 double force on the man who is advancing against these 
 fire-arms, while himself has only an inert piece of wood or 
 iron ; he will look with despondency and contempt on his 
 pointed stick, while the lines in his front seem to be arrayed 
 in thunder and lightning, while he is startling at the frequent 
 hiss of bullets, and seeing his companions begin to fall. 
 
 But there would be no end of enumerating the disad- 
 vantages under which the Spanish insurrection was to 
 encounter such a tremendous invasion ; and, even admitting 
 that insurrection to be as general and as enthusiastic as it 
 was represented, a sanguine expectation of its success was 
 probably entertained by very few of our countrymen, after 
 it was ascertained to the conviction of all that Bonaparte 
 had nothing to fear on the side of Germany, though the 
 earnest desire did sometimes assume the language of con 
 fident hope. StUl, however, it was not the less certain, that 
 
 I 2 
 
276 sotriHET's cheonicie of the cid, 
 
 a great and resolute nation might accomplisli wonders 
 against the largest regular armies and the most experienced 
 commanders ; as history was at hand to show, by various 
 examples, and eminently above all others, that of the war of 
 tke Prench revolution. Certainly, indeed, there was an 
 ominous difference in point of genius and system between, 
 the leaders of the war against Spain and the commanders 
 who had invaded France; the highest genius, however, 
 cannot work literally by magic ; and if the French legions 
 could have been commanded by even still greater talents 
 than those actually at their head, it was evident they must 
 receive a dreadful shock if they were to be fallen upon by 
 several hundred thousand men, impelled by the same enthu- 
 siasm of valour and obstinacy of perseverance which first 
 confounded and finally routed the grand armies of Bruns- 
 wick, Clairfait, and Saxe-Coburg; ia the varieties of the 
 conflict, besides, all the latent genius in the patriotic army 
 would flame out, and declare whom nature had appointed, 
 in contempt of all laws of rank, to the command. But then 
 there must be an adequate cause to inspire the popular 
 levies with this heroic fury, which should persist to burn 
 and to fight, in spite of aU checks and disasters, in fortress 
 and in field, whether the battalions were in order or confusion, 
 whether they found themselves separated into small bodies, 
 or thrown together in a ponderous mass. And it might 
 fairly be assumed, at the commencement of the Spanish 
 revolution, that no less cause, no other cause, than that 
 which had produced this grand effect in the French levy 
 en masse, would now produce it in that of Spain. AU 
 know that the cause which operated thus on the revolutionary 
 armies of France was the passion for liberty, continually 
 inflamed to a state of enthusiasm, by having the object 
 most simply and conspicuously placed in view. The object 
 was placed before- them, if we may so express it, "full- 
 orbed ;" it was liberty, not in the partial sense merely of 
 being freed from the power and interference of the foreign 
 monarchs who had sent the armies they were combating, 
 and whose design, they had little doubt, it was to divide 
 France among them as a conquest, and its people as slaves ; 
 but in the animating sense, also, of being no longer the 
 subjects of a despot at home. A general could circulate 
 
THE TEENCH UETOLtTTION. 277 
 
 through Ha camp an addreas like the following : " Brave 
 citizens, soldiers of liberty! prepare for battle; to drive 
 these legions of Austria and Prussia from your country, 
 which is henceforth to be the land of freedom. Your 
 ancestors, in such times as those of Louis XIV., were 
 sent to war on these very plains, at the mandate of a cruel 
 tyrant and his detestable minions ; while they fought with 
 a forlorn and melancholy valour, their countrymen were all 
 in chains, and a grand object for which they were to fight 
 and bleed was, that their master might lose none of his 
 power to keep them so. You, soldiers of liberty, are 
 called to celebrate in arms the commencement of a new 
 era. By the heroic charge that shall dash these armies of 
 insolent invaders in wrecks and fragments back on the 
 countries from which they came, you will confirm the doom 
 that has crushed the internal despotism of our country in 
 the dust. The Bastile is down, there is an end of a profli- 
 gate court and arbitrary power, of the exclusive rights and 
 the arrogance of nobles, of the rapacity of farmers-general, 
 and the domination of Papal priests. The impositions that 
 so long fixed OTir slavery, by fettering our minds, are broken 
 away ; we have exploded the notions, as well as defied the 
 power, of despotism ; we have proclaimed that all political 
 power essentially resides in the people, and that those to 
 whom its exercise is to be entrusted shall be chosen by the 
 people, and most strictly accountable to them. We are a 
 part of this emancipated and elevated people, and are 
 boldly come forth to maintain their cause and our own. Is 
 it not worthy of us to be brave in such a cause ? Does not 
 this land of new-born liberty deserve that we should fight 
 for it like Hons ? There, in our sight, are the armies that 
 are come to make us aU slaves again. Let us fall upon them 
 directly, and drive them into the Hhine." 
 
 Every mind responded to such an appeal ; though imper- 
 fectly organized at first, though in various instances unskil- 
 fully or unfaithfully commanded, and though many times 
 in a state of confusion and defeat, these half-disciplined 
 battalions were "fraught with fire unquenchable;" they 
 astonished, and after a while intimidated, their veteran 
 antagonists, by returning incessantly to the charge ; they 
 were continually re-enforced by more of their countrymen,- 
 
278 southbt's chbonicle or the cn>- 
 
 animated witt the same powerful sentiment, till at length 
 the most famous legions and generals of Europe were over- 
 powered, and driven away by an irresistible torrent. "We 
 can remember to have read, in the accounts of those times, 
 that one morning, after several days of severe conflict, and 
 very partial success, in Alsace, General Pichegru signified 
 to the army that he felt it needful to give them repose that 
 day ; on which he was informed that they testified their dis- 
 appointment, and expressed a strong and general wish to be 
 led again to battle : they were led accordingly. It would 
 be as much beside the purpose to discuss here the correct- 
 ness of that idea of liberty, which created such an almost 
 preternatural energy in the people and the armies of Prance, 
 as to notice what a wretched disappoiutment, and what a 
 hateful despotism, were in reserve to terminate all their 
 prospects. It is sufiicient for our object, that a bold, grand 
 idea of liberty, involving the annihilation of everything that 
 had oppressed and galled the people, and sent their advo- 
 cates to the Bastile, under the old despotism, and quite 
 clear of all counteractive considerations of this and the 
 other aristocratical distinction or monopoly to be held 
 sacred, and this or the other individual or family to be 
 maintained in power, — it is enough that this idea inspired 
 the energy, which flung the relics of the invading armies at 
 the palace gates of those who had sent them. It is enough 
 that everyone can imagine in an instant, what would have 
 been the effect in the camp of Jourdan or Pichegru, if 
 information had come from Paris, of the provisional govern- 
 ment, anxious to secure the rights and happiness of the 
 people, having settled that, though neither a prince of 
 Austria or Prussia, nor exactly Louis XVI., must be king, 
 yet the allegiance of the nation was inviolably due to some 
 individual of the family, the Duke of Chartres for instance, 
 on whose accession the government would go on in the 
 same wise and popular manner that it bad done a hundred 
 years past. 
 
 The reader has anticipated all we could say in the appH- 
 Gation of these hints to the recent movement of the Spanish 
 people, "We shall content ourselves with very few words, 
 as there is now probably no great difference of opinion 
 among thinking men, relative to the original and progres- 
 
TEETIOUS COTTDITION OP SPAIN. 279 
 
 sive probabilities attendant on this memorable event. One 
 single short question disposes of the whole speculation ; 
 Has liberty, in the sense in which alone it is of importance 
 to a people, ever been fairly set before the Spanish nation ? 
 It is of the essence of this question, to reflect a moment on 
 the condition of the Spanish nation previously to this event ; 
 we mean their condition as justly imputable to their own 
 sovereigns, and their own system of government, exclusively 
 o£ what evils may have accrued to them of late years from 
 the French intrigues and ascendancy in their court. And 
 according to all accounts, that condition was deplorable. 
 Taken ia a collective view, the people were ignorant, indo- 
 lent, poor, dirty, and extravagantly superstitious, fond of 
 tawdry shows and cruel sports, strangers, in a great mea- 
 sure, to ingenious and mechanic arts, stationary in almost 
 all the points of civilization in which the other countries of 
 Europe are advancing, hampered by a clumsy and perverse 
 judicature, in short, bearing the most flagrant marks of an 
 incorrigibly bad government. Thus matters had gone on 
 during the reigns of successive monarchs, and during the 
 reign of probably the last of the Bourbons in Spain, 
 Charles IV. At length, in consequence of we know not 
 what intrigues and private arrangements, the sovereignty 
 passed suddenly from him into the hands of his son, not, of 
 course, without expostulation and repugnance on the part 
 of the father, whose rights, according to all orthodox 
 notions on the subject, were grossly violated by the transfer. 
 All this whUe, however, a powerful neighbour, whose tenets 
 concerning kingly rights, saving and excepting those of 
 himself and his royal brothers, are deemed highly heretical, 
 had his schemes of transfer prepared, and his machines in 
 operation ; and lo ! in a moment both the kings vanish from 
 Spain, and " our brother Joseph " succeeds to the throne. 
 It was found that the two monarchs had been fascinated, as 
 we read of unfortunate birds sometimes being, to throw 
 themselves directly into the mouth of the great serpent. 
 At this juncture began the commotion which has so deeply 
 and justly interested all Europe. A. just indignation at the 
 base and treacherous proceedings of Napoleon, rose so high, 
 in some parts of the country, as to issue in an energetic 
 call of the whole nation to arms. This was a tremendous 
 
280 SOtTTHET's CHEONICLE OP THE CID. 
 
 crisis, and a most awful summons ; for it might be held 
 certain, that the enemy, defied and challenged in this un- 
 expected quarter, and this new manner, would discharge the 
 whole collected thunders of his martial empire, and even 
 if unsuccessful, would desperately prosecute the contest 
 with the last battalion that would adhere to his standard. 
 And if such would be his determination, what a scene the 
 patriots had before them ! If the emergency should prove 
 to require it, he would be able, at a moderate computation, 
 to bring three hundred thousand soldiers, in successive 
 armies, into Spain. It would be idle to calculate that 
 such a force, a large proportion of it veterans accus- 
 tomed to victory, and commanded by such a set of gene- 
 rals as never were combiaed in any other service, could 
 be everywhere encountered, and finally repelled, by less 
 than four or five hundred thousand of the patriots. And if 
 the war should contiuue even no more than six or eight 
 months, how many great battles would there be, besides 
 the incessant course of partial actions and bloody skir- 
 mishes ? Would it have been at all an extravagant 
 prediction that, during so many months of such a war, two 
 hundred thousand devoted Spaniards might perish ? And 
 then what miseries would be sufiered by the defenceless 
 iuhabitants, what numbers of aged and sick persons, and 
 women and children, would be exposed to terro*-, to want, 
 and in many cases even to death ; what desolation of the 
 country, what destruction of habitations, what ruin of 
 agriculture, and what famine, as the probable consummation 
 of all! This picture is inexpressibly too faint for the, 
 >rospect, which was, or ought to have been, distinctly pre- 
 sented to the minds of those who first summoned, and all 
 who seconded them in summoning, their countrymen to 
 combat with the whole power of France. Now then, we 
 may ask, solemnly, what was that object, for the attain- 
 ment of which the country was to be laid open to thia 
 most gigantic and enormous train of horrors ? "What was 
 that ultimate traneendent felicity, the thought of which waa 
 to inspire such multitudes of men with the perfectly new 
 sentiment, a contempt of wounds and death; which was to 
 animate the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of these 
 men to urge them on to battte, and -which was to 
 
ULTIMATE OBJECT OF THE WAE. 281 
 
 reconcile the whole population to have their country placed, 
 for months in a situation about parallel to that of a forest 
 infested by tigers? At the very least, that object could be 
 no less than the noblest system of national liberty that 
 ever blessed any people. 
 
 Let our readers recall to mind the manifestoes and 
 addresses to the people, issued by the provincial Juntas 
 that took the lead, and judge whether this was the object. 
 Some of those publications were strongly conceived, and 
 eloquently expressed. They powerfully expatiated on the 
 treacherous arts by which the nation and the royal family 
 had been inveigled, on the excesses committed in some 
 places by the French troops, and on the glory of revenge ; 
 on which last topic we regretted to see the patriots adopting 
 a language and endeavouring to rouse a spirit of savage 
 ferocity, fit only for the most barbarous age. But the 
 accomplishment of revenge could be only a very subordinate 
 object with the patriotic Juntas ; nor could it be expected 
 to prove an object adequate, in those parts of the country 
 which had not immediately sufiered or witnessed the out- 
 rages committed by the French, to stimulate the population 
 to turn their meadows into fields of battle and expose their 
 persons to the sword ; especially as it would be obvious that 
 as soon as Joseph should be enthroned, the excesses of 
 the French must, even for his sake, cease. What, then, it 
 must still be asked, was the grand iiltimate object to be 
 attained by so dreadful a war, even presuming it must be 
 successful ? And, as far as we have at any time been able 
 to discover, the grand, the sublime object, which was to ani- 
 mate the people to such a warfare, to compensate its infinity 
 of miseries, and to crown the final victory, was no other 
 than a retwn to the old state of things, with the mere excep- 
 tion of French influence, and the mischievous power of the 
 Prince of the Peace, at the Spanish court. None of the 
 indispensable innovations, none of the grand reforms, for 
 the want of which that people had been so long pitied or 
 despised by all the civilized world, were specifically held out, 
 as any part of the incitement or the prize ; no limitations of 
 the royal power, or the royal expenses, no reduction of the 
 privileges of the aristocracy, no restraints on ecclesiastical 
 arrogance, no political existence to be given to the people, 
 
282 sottthet's cheonicle op the cid. 
 
 no method of enabling them to participate or influence their 
 government, no abrogation of the barbarous municipal regu- 
 lations against the freedom of trade, no improvements of 
 political economy that should contribute to supply clothes 
 to those in rags, and food to those almost starving. No, 
 there was nothing of all this held out to the people ; they 
 were to draw on them, to fight, and to expel the whole 
 power of IVance at the dreadful cost that we have described, 
 and then Ferdinand and the old government were to be 
 triumphantly restored, and all would be weU ! Hundreds of 
 thousands of them were summoned to rush out gallantly to 
 perish, in order that the remainder might continue to be 
 the poor, ragged, forlorn nation that they were and are. 
 
 If a project for exciting the people to plunge into an 
 unfathomable gulf of miseries and death for such an object, 
 may be forgiven to the statesmen and prelates of Spain,' 
 whose Catholic imaginations are so stored with prodigies 
 and miracles, what, however, wiU sober judges hereafter say 
 of the politicians of England at the memorable juncture ? 
 By what reach of conjectare will it be possible to explain, 
 how they, the enlightened inhabitants of a free country, in 
 which they have so often eloquently declaimed on the gloiy 
 of having permitted no despotism here, on the energy with 
 which noble ideas of liberty wiU. inspire a people to resist the 
 armies of a tyrant, and on the wretchedness of living under 
 a government like that of Spain; in what way can it be 
 made intelligible, how these enlightened politicians should 
 conceive it possible to rouse a whole people to arms, at the 
 peril of such awful consequences, by any objects held out to 
 them by the Juntas ? or should deem it a desirable thing if 
 they could, — excepting, indeed, with the mere view of 
 diverting the danger a while longer from our own country, 
 and giving, in our stead, Spanish victims to the Prench 
 sabres. 
 
 What was Ferdinand, or any other individual, to the 
 unhappy people of Spain, who were to leave their families, 
 to have their cottages burnt, to famish, or to bleed for his 
 sake ? "What had he ever done for them, or attempted to 
 do ? If he had been a thousand times more their friend 
 than they had ever found him to be, by what law of justice 
 or common sense could it be, that countless multitudes 
 
HOPELESSITESS OF THE SPANISH CAUSE. 283 
 
 sliould go to be slaughtered on his account ? — not to notice 
 the absurdity of summoning a nation to fight for a person 
 who was, as to any possible connexion with them, to all 
 intents a nonentity. 
 
 !For a whUe, we still hoped that the name of Ferdinand 
 would be suffered to sink, by degrees, out of the concern ; 
 and that the project would assume, at length, the bold 
 aspect of a reaUy popular cause. In this hope, we anxiously 
 waited the assembling of the Supreme Junta. At last they 
 assembled, verified their powers, and took the oath which 
 they had solemnly framed. "We read that oath, and have 
 never since, for one instant, entertained the smallest hope of 
 the Spanish cause. There were some most vague and insig- 
 nificant expressions in that oath, about taking care of the 
 interest of the nation ; but its absolute sum and substance 
 was. Popery and Ferdinand. The first of these, avowed in 
 its utmost extent and grossness, we considered, as we have 
 already attempted to explain, as enough to ensure the fate 
 of the whole design, on account of its aspect relatively to the 
 divine government ; and the latter, as furnishing far too 
 insignificant a motive to animate a nation to battle. The 
 Junta began by declaring they had no power to assemble 
 the Cortez, in other words, that they could do nothing for 
 the people; they went on to restrict the freedom of the 
 press, and now, — the world is ceasing to inquire what they 
 are doing. 
 
 No room remains for remarks on the measures of our 
 government, relating to the vast preparations and armies 
 professedly intended for the assistance of Spain; what is 
 worse, we have no room for adding many remarks on the 
 book which has given occasion to this article. 
 
 The Cid (i. e., Lord) Eodrigo Diaz, was a most renovmed 
 hero of the eleventh century, who was sometimes in the 
 service of the Christian monarch of Spain, and sometimes 
 maintained himself independent in his conquests from the 
 Moorish part of the country. There are several ancient 
 records, and an epic poem concerning him in the Spanish 
 language; Mr. Southey has formed the present work, by 
 combining and harmonizing the several relations together, 
 faithfully translating, as he assures us, what he has selected 
 from each, and noting, in the margin of each paragraph, the 
 
284 SOUTHEX'S CHaONICLE or THE CID. 
 
 work, and the part of the wofk from wliich it is taken. The 
 translation is in the antiquated English dialect, which 
 appears to us to be, in general, pretty successfully 
 supported. 
 
 The story is something between a history and a romance; 
 and Mr. Southey has not attempted to distinguish what is 
 true from what is fabulous ; the Spanish literature evidently 
 supplied no means for doing this, nor would it have been 
 worth while, had it been practicable, as the fabulous parts 
 are probably quite as amusing as the true, and give as 
 striking a picture of the times. In this view, the work is 
 very interesting. We are transported into an age and 
 country where the gentlemen go out to work in the morn- 
 ing, with their steeds and lances, as regularly as the farmers 
 with their team and plough, and, indeed, a good deal more 
 so. The Cid surpasses all his contemporaries for diligence 
 and success in such laudable occupation. His course of 
 enterprise is so rapid, so uniformly successful, and so much ' 
 of a piece in other respects, that in some parts of the book 
 the mind is quite tired of following him. In many other 
 parts, however, the narrative is eminently striking, especially 
 in describing some of the single combats, and most of all, in 
 the long account of an extraordinary court of justice, held 
 on two young princes or noblemen, who had abused their 
 wives, the daughters of the Cid. Nothing in the whole 
 library of romantic history can exceed this narrative. The 
 Cid appears a humane warrior, according to the standard of 
 those times, and yet he could calmly be guilty of the most 
 infernal cruelties ; for instance, burning alive many Moors, 
 in the siege of Valencia. The destruction of "infidels," 
 indeed, in any and every manner, seems to have been 
 regarded as one of the noblest exercises of Christian virtue. 
 Three or four of his constant companions in arms display 
 such magnanimous bravery, and such an affectionate fidelity 
 to him, as to excite the reader's interest and partiality in no 
 small degree. A prominent feature of the story throughout, 
 is the frequent recurrence of rehgious and superstitioiis 
 ideas, in the discourse of the warriors, in all situations. 
 
285 
 
 STQNET SMITH'S SEEMONS. 
 
 Two Voh,mes of JSermovs. By the Eev. Stdset Smith, 'M..A... 
 late Fellow of New College, Oxford; Rector of Foston, in Yorh'- 
 shire ; Preacher at the Foundling, and at Berkdey and Fitzrog 
 Chapds. 8vo. 1809. 
 
 A SPECIES of infelicity, with which we do not remember 
 to have seen any adequate expressions of sympathy, is that 
 of a minister of religion who is not cordially pleased with 
 his office. The persons, claiming on this ground the bene- 
 volent sentiment, might be divided into several classes ; but 
 we do not, at present, solicit it for those, who have such a 
 disproportionate share, and such a parsimonious reward of 
 clerical duty, as to droop under the hourly sense of toU. and 
 poverty ; nor for those (if any such there be), who can but 
 lU brook the restraints of professional decorum on irregular 
 dispositions ; nor yet for those who are oppressed by a 
 desponding view of the inefficacy of their labours. There is 
 another class, to which the friendly commiseration is per- 
 haps equally due. We should probably come near the right 
 description of this class, if we were briefly to sketch any one 
 of the several instances that have fallen in our way in the 
 course of our long life. Wor should we be exhibiting any 
 thing that is not familiar to the observation of many of our 
 readers, if we were to represent the ecclesiastical condition 
 and feelings of a young man, not born to the privilege of an 
 independent fortune, but liberally educated, genteel in his 
 address, and in aU his tastes and ideas, possessed of very 
 considerable talents, accompanied with the arrogance arising 
 from his opiaion that they are quite extraordinary ones, and 
 submitting somewhat reluctantly to the circumstances which 
 fix his destiny to the clerical profession. Why reluctantly ? 
 Erom causes which have naturally a most powerful influence 
 on a spirited and proud young man. He finds that the 
 church is the most favourite topic of ridicide among the far 
 greater proportion of both the young and old men of fortune, 
 fashion, spirit, and talent. While on this topic even dulness 
 can contrive to be almost smart, he finds that no small share 
 of the real wit and humour, which kindle the glee of gay 
 
286 STDNET smith's seemons. 
 
 and genteel companies, crackles and sparkles from lucky 
 hits at the church. He is repeatedly mortified in such 
 companies, by sly inuendoes at his own destjnation, and arch 
 apologies for those inuendoes being sometimes too obvious. 
 He is not less mortified to witness the kind of respect, 
 sometimes practised in such society, towaxds the ecclesiasti- 
 cal order in the person of one of its members ; a respect 
 exhibited in occasional affectations of extra decorum (parti- 
 cularly as to the article of profane language) in. consideration 
 of his being present, followed and explained by pleasant ex- 
 periments how far he will quietly suffer this decorum to be 
 violated, and by exulting looks of challenge to rally ia its 
 defence when some gallant son of Mars puts it entirely to 
 the rout. Ifor wiU our spirited undergraduate feel the 
 situation of the reverend gentleman much more enviable, 
 when the squire or the knight, with a grin, refers to him 
 some question of moral casuistry, while the counsellor and 
 the physician make some leering compliment to the author- 
 ity which his opinion derives from his spiritual function. 
 
 It is with extreme vexation, that this iucipient divine 
 recoUects all the current malicious jests about a very ordi- 
 nary share of ability sufficing for the church ; about its 
 being the destiaation of the less mercurial branches of the 
 family who would have no chance of succeeding in any de- 
 partment demanding aeuteness or enterprise ; its being the 
 convenient receptacle for the humble third cousins of persons 
 of distinction, and the like. It mortifies him still more 
 deeply to observe, that though there is at all times a grand 
 aggregate of talent in the church, yet those brilliant exhibi- 
 tions of genius and wit, of eloquence or science, which com- 
 mand the admiration of the whole country, are chiefly made 
 on the secular field. The condition of the laymen excites 
 his envy, even by their having to claim the most distin- 
 guished of the infidel corps ; and without really approxi- 
 mating to their principles, he is tempted to like his religion 
 and his church somewhat the less, for their having been 
 held in scorn by these j/?»e spirits. In surrendering himself 
 to an institution and profession, from which so vast a host 
 of talent have at all times kept aloof with the pride of 
 choosing a freer and ampler ground for their operation, he 
 is but imperfectly consoled by recounting the names and 
 
CLEEICAl nrCONGETTITT. 287 
 
 appropriate epithets of the judicioua Hooker, the witty- 
 South, the scientific and eloquent Barrow, and the profound 
 Eutler. He murmurs at his stars, and revolts at putting on 
 the sacred hahiliments, while each journal is recalling his 
 attention and admiration to the examples of forensic and 
 parliamentary eminence, or to the brilliance of martial 
 achievements ; or if his ambition takes chiefly a literary 
 direction, he has the greatest difficulty to pacify his pride, 
 when forced to recoUect how few of the great philosophers, 
 historians, and poets, have been churchmen. Oh ! that 
 Locke, and Pope, and Gibbon (his scepticism notwithstand- 
 ing), had been rectors, deans, or bishops ; or that I bad 
 been privileged to affix to my name in the title-pages of my 
 future performances that mark of independence and secu- 
 larity, Ilsq. ! — But even if his mind could divest the clerical 
 character of these associated imgracious recollections of the 
 immense number of able men, who never thought, and many 
 of whom he is mortified to reflect would have scorned to 
 think, of assuming it, he has but little complacency in the 
 very nature of the profession. He feels as if the office and 
 character of a priest were something akin to a formality, a 
 mechanical order, exceedingly uncongenial with the varying, 
 and, as he deems it, energetic activity of the mind. Much 
 of the required service he is disposed to regard as routine, 
 and therefore he anticipates a sense of wearing and painful 
 monotony. His pride, or as he calls it, his intellectual in- 
 dependence, struggles violently against submitting to be 
 bound up by a system of complete prescription, by which he 
 is solemnly interdicted aU option or change in opinions, 
 ceremonial observances, and even personal attire. He knows 
 that the public does not regard an ecclesiastical situation as 
 anything of the nature of an arena for either proving superior 
 ability, or training it. Not a very large share is in general, 
 as in many secular offices, peremptorily demanded, or even 
 expected ; and therefore there is but a very faint degree of 
 that stimulus to excellence, which in other departments is 
 involved in the very fact of possessing the office. He fore- 
 sees a deficiency of anything tending to exhilirate his imagi- 
 nation ; as all the provision for it in ecclesiastical ornaments, 
 movements, or even music, affords but little variety, and has 
 already lost its effect through familiarity. And then as to 
 
288 STDTiBT smith's seemoits. 
 
 the cliief matter of all, the influential communication of 
 divine knowledge to an assembly of human beings, he does 
 not feel such an affecting impression of the importance of 
 this instruction and the infinite value of these rational 
 beings, as to save him from the apprehension that he shall 
 find it a very duU and tiresome task to discourse again and 
 again on what are necessarily become in a Christian country 
 some of the most trite of all topics. 
 
 JTo rich uncle bequeaths a fortune and opportunely de- 
 mises ; no fortunate casualty of introduction to persons of 
 high rank ; no intimacy with the sons of political chieftains, 
 in or out, suggests a chance of the honours and emoluments 
 of the state ; a preparation for the law would be a long 
 course of heavy toil and expense, with an exceedingly dubious 
 prospect of success ; in short, the time arrives when our 
 young genius must take upon him the indelible character, 
 which assigns him to a class that he has never admired, and 
 shuts against him for ever the highest theatre in which 
 ambitious talent aspires to figure. It is not wonderful, if he 
 accomplishes his formal and solemn dedication to the sacred 
 function with nearly such feelings, as we may have perceived 
 in an elegant and tolerably proud young man, whom the 
 parsimony of his fortune had brought to the altar with a 
 disagreeable and ancient, but wealthy dame. Thus dedi- 
 cated, it becomes a question which of the several roads to 
 distinction within the liberties of his profession he wiU 
 decide to adopt. There would be no wonder to see him 
 soon present himself as a most zealous champion of the 
 ecclesiastical institution, extending his array of defensive 
 hostility along its whole range, from its most solemn doc- 
 trines to its minutest ceremonial appointments. And in 
 this case he will apply himself assiduously to theological 
 and polemical studies, and will not fail to become furnished 
 with opinions, very definitely conceived, whether impartially 
 /ormed or not, on most of the points that have been dis- 
 cussed or controverted among the divines of the present and 
 preceding ages. But, as we have reported him a genteel 
 young man with much address and not a little assurance, a 
 very different course is within his choice ; less promising, 
 we should suppose, of ultimate preferment and prolonged 
 fame, but attended with as much more to flatter such a man 
 
THE FASHIONABLE CLEEBTMAlf. 289 
 
 fls -with less to fatigue. Some favourable juncture will be 
 afforded for his dehut in a large city, where a great number 
 of most genteel and fashionable persons understand there is 
 some obligation on them, especially as George III. is 
 on the throne, to pay a Sunday compliment to the religion 
 of their country. Under this conscience of obligation both 
 to the church and the state, they would perhaps discharge 
 the duty, rather than forfeit the repute, even in temples 
 where the officiating persons were defective in the graces 
 both of address and composition. But who would not be 
 happy to lose the irksomeness of duty, in the pleasure of 
 being religious, though this should lessen their merit in the 
 article of self-denial? And really these good Christians 
 must in their hearts, be a little heathenishly given, if they 
 should immoderately regret the concert, the opera, or even 
 the Eoyal Institution, while performing their devotions in a 
 place, where the minister, with an elegant appearance, and 
 graceful gesture, and bland delivery, and brilliant touches, 
 and philosophical elucidations, gently invites, for a very 
 short space of time, to the newest and most tasteful mode of 
 religion, the attention of an auditory shining in wealth, 
 blooming in beauty, and dazzling in fashion ; a place, where 
 the proudest need not apprehend being mixed with the 
 vulgar, where the most dashing may deem it worth while to 
 exhibit, where the most rational will be safe from Methodism, 
 and where infidels will not be ashamed to have heard a 
 sermon. 
 
 Thus to promote the Christian worship, which is so apt 
 to be regarded as a piece of very dull, though prudent, 
 routine observance, almost to the rank of an amusement ; 
 and, in effecting this, to be himself the centre of attraction 
 to a portion of the choicest taste, beauty, and fashion, in a 
 metropolis, may well cause the accomplished minister no 
 little self-complacency and elation. Tes, to have inspirited 
 the church to a competition with the theatre ! to have 
 threatened Kemble with rivals in the Apostles ! to have 
 provoked all the gods and muses, that preside over the 
 polished vanities of a great city, to envy at the name even 
 of Christ ! this far transcends the achievement of that 
 illustrious hero, who raised the despised Boeotia to a rivalry 
 with all that was most powerful in Greece. No doubt the 
 
 TJ 
 
290 STDlfET BMITU'S SEEMOWS. 
 
 fortunate preacher's imagination will greatly exaggerate the 
 effect, and magnify the extent, of his operations ; and he 
 wul be averse to reflect how much larger a share of beauty 
 and fashion, than that which confers its smiles on him, and 
 how much richer an aggregate of taste, accomplishment, 
 and rank, exists in the capital, without paying him any 
 attention, without knowing him or even thinking of him : 
 nor can he like to acknowlege to himself, how many more 
 persons would deprecate a final cessation of the exhibitions 
 of Cooke and Mrs. Jordan, than would be sorry for the 
 cessation of his. Let him be duly guarded against the 
 intrusion of such considerations, and he wUl receive the 
 most lively gratification from the attention and flatteries of 
 a numerous and elegant circle of national Christians ; who 
 wUl surely be right in bestowing their favour on a person, 
 who saves them from the oppressive dulness incident to 
 Sunday duty, and in part from the ridicule of those who 
 are too gay or free to make any conscience at all about the 
 matter. If he combines with these ecclesiastical merits 
 the talents and graces that animate the social party, he 
 will find himself in much closer contact, if we may so express 
 it, with his fame, — will enjoy a more immediate and con- 
 centrated brilliance of smiles and compliments, than if he 
 were prosecuting all the labours, with aU the vigour, of 
 Warburton. 
 
 One signal advantage attending this favourite of aus- 
 picious fortune will be, the privilege of omitting to study a 
 great many subjects which our eminent divines have 
 deemed of the essence of theology. Almost all that 
 doctrine which constitutes the peculiar character, and 
 which may at last be found to constitute also the stamina 
 and vital essence, of Christianity, must be left out of his 
 ministrations, and therefore may as well be left out of his 
 studies. It is a harder tax on ingenuity and caution, than 
 any benefit likely to arise from such an exercise of them is 
 worth, to proceed with impartial and serious thought 
 through the Scriptures, and the writings of our most 
 venerated divines in and out of the Established Church, 
 without being misled into some few of the notions now 
 called " Methodistical;" and if our favourite evangelist of 
 the polished and the fair, after having been seduced to adopt 
 
FASHIOITABLE EELiaiONlSTS. 291 
 
 any of these notions, were in evil hour betrayed to express 
 them, it is easy and curious to imagine what a look of 
 surprise, quickly followed by a sullen blackness of visage, 
 would take the place of that aspect of amenity which before so 
 gently beamed on him from his whole auditory; and how 
 vainly his accustomed wit and graces might be exerted to 
 play him back into favour in the genteel society of which he 
 bad been so regaled with the flatteries. 
 
 To be sure, it is possible for a man to be a learned theo- 
 logian without being a Methodist. Setting out with a 
 resolute and laudable prejudgment against all those inter- 
 pretations of revealed religion which are sometimes deno- 
 minated evangelical, he may investigate the whole theory 
 with the express design of advancing opposite opinions 
 systematically on every point. But, besides that some 
 questions both of decorum and prudence would be involved 
 in this regular warfare against the articles and the most 
 revered divines of our church, it would be altogether useless 
 and unacceptable in ministering to those devout Christians, 
 whose partiality we have predicted for the pink of sacerdotal 
 spruceness. They do not want to hear theological lectures 
 of any school. Even the delight of seeing Methodism 
 exploded would be bought too dear, at the price of listen- 
 ing half an hour to a discussion of the doctrine of 
 justification. AVhat they want is, to steal from the insti- 
 tutions of religion an apology for thinking very little about 
 religion itself; what they attend to must be constituted 
 religion and must constitute them sufficiently religious in 
 virtue of its being attended to in a consecrated place, under 
 the presiding wisdom and devotion of a consecrated man, 
 and amidst the paraphernalia of piety ; and the performance, 
 being thus secured to be of a perfectly religious quality, 
 may be allowed to avoid all statement of doctrines purely 
 religious, and the more carefully it does so the more 
 agreeable. It would certainly, as we remember a fashion- 
 able ecclesiastic pertinently remarking, be somewhat of a 
 "bore" to insist on such things, while there are so many 
 pleasant matters of taste and sentiment at the preacher's 
 choice. 
 
 This exemption from the duty of severe theological study, 
 will give our divine the more advantage for figuring, if he 
 
 r 2 
 
292 SYDNEY smith's seemohs. 
 
 sHould desire it, as a tnan of letters, which will be a great 
 additional recommendation. In this character, we can 
 hardly guess how he will be likely to deport himself with 
 respect to religion. But we should rather expect to find 
 him, when associating with wits, politicians, and philo- 
 sophers, painfully envious of that freedom which they have 
 not submitted to be cramped in canonicals ; and not more 
 nice than some of them in the choice of expedients to 
 shine. If, as a writer, he should feel insupportably im- 
 patient of the proprieties imposed on the language of a 
 gentleman and a member of the reverend body, he may 
 indulge his genius anonymously ; and we know not whether 
 we ought to be surprised, if we should detect him, under 
 this mask, forswearing all his factitious elegance and refi^ne- 
 ment, railing in low diction, against some of the worthiest 
 of mankind, and repeatedly betraying his implacable quarrel 
 with his destiny by ridicufing the clerical character. 
 
 This last employment will be a truly painful sport to 
 him ; and he will be sadly mistaken if he should fancy that 
 it will be a recommendation in the view of some clever, and 
 not over religious men, with whom he may be ambitious to 
 hold a literary or a convivial connexion, and by whom he 
 takes care to be recognized in the anonymous exhibition. 
 Instead of admiring what he may wish them to consider as 
 the fine free spirit far above his profession, they will despise 
 the meanness which can assert the full claims, and take all 
 the advantages of the profession, and at the same time be 
 anxious to show them, in a confidential way, that he can 
 sneer at it with as good a will as themselves. But whatever 
 he may think necessary for his credit with the initiated, he 
 will surely take every precaution that his clerical brethren 
 and the public shall not be apprised how much the bad part 
 of society are indebted to him for burlesquing serious sub- 
 jects, for fanaticism and slander against Christian zeal, and 
 for examples of a coarse and bullying language. Nor 
 surely can he let his vanity so baflle his prudence, as to 
 compel his ecclesiastical superiors to hear of him as a med- 
 dler with matters of political party, and the maker of squibs 
 against the policy of the church in points of which it is 
 inveterately tenacious. If he should be so far abandoned of 
 his discretion, we cannot choose but anticipate the melan- 
 
IHDIFrEBENCE TO THEOLOGICAL STTTBIES. 293 
 
 choly consequence; the day will come vrhen this bright 
 form of genteel spirituality, this light of the fine and of the 
 fair, after sparkling for some years about the metropolis, 
 will be smitten away by the crosier of the diocesan ; and 
 flying toward the north like a meteor, hissing but lessening 
 as it flies, will quickly vanish from every bright eye that has 
 been accustomed to reflect its lustre, and is turned to observe 
 its departure. And will not an incurable sorrow take pos- 
 session of those devout Christian souls, that are thus 
 deprived of their instructor and pattern ? Why no ; there 
 will be a new fashion, a new opera, or a new singer ; and if 
 the gentle belles must still be religious, some other elegant 
 cicerone of Zion will soon present himself to attend them 
 j ust as far in the amusements of piety as it may be modish 
 for them to go. 
 
 This slight picture has been formed, by combining our 
 recollections of several real instances that have come within 
 our observation at different times and places ; and we shall 
 not pretend to conjecture how far it may bear any resem- 
 blance to the very popular divine, to whom the public are 
 indebted for the two volumes before us. They do, however, 
 tempt us to fancy a likeness in one particular, the indifier- 
 ence to theological studies. They appear to us to give pal- 
 pable indications of a mind, rarely and reluctantly applied 
 to the investigation of either the specific doctrines, or the 
 general principles, of the theory of revealed religion. It 
 wiU be doubted by the most candid readers, whether the 
 author has ever taken the pains to ascertain the sense of the 
 articles, which, as a clergyman he has subscribed, or even to 
 impose a sense upon them ; to examine the opinions of the 
 most celebrated divines of the church, or to deduce for him- 
 self a scheme of faith from the Bible. He may by chance 
 in the library of some veteran theologian, have glanced on 
 bodies of divinity, and huge tomes of theological controversy 
 and biblical exposition ; and in disgust at such dry and end- 
 less toils, have decided that the science of religion was never 
 iiltended for men of taste. Besides, a large proportion of 
 those doctrines, which divines have very commonly main- 
 tained and expatiated on as parts of the Christian system, 
 are now convicted of " Methodism," and therefore require 
 no further examination. From whatever cause it is, the 
 
294 8TDKET smith's SEBMOITS. 
 
 inatter of these Sermons is more disconnected than we have 
 witnessed, as we think, in any other instance, with theolo- 
 gical doctrines of one school or of another. And when the 
 topic in hand essentially involves any of them, the discourse 
 often proceeds boldly forward in a complete ignorance of 
 this essential point, and now and then does worse by an 
 awkward and unknowing mode of recognizing it. There is 
 no definable system of faith inherent, if we may so express 
 it, in this large body of professedly Christian instruction. 
 We are not here taking on us to decide precisely what 
 scheme of principles a preacher ought to have fixed in his 
 mind ; but we do think, that since it is impossible for him 
 to confine himself wholly to subjects involving no point of 
 religious theory, he should take the trouble to settle his 
 judgment on the principal parts of that theory, so far at 
 least as to make him consistent and intelligible when he is 
 occasionally forced near them by stress of his subject. 
 
 Some agreeable and instructive authors of the clerical 
 profession, in whom we have observed a very serious dissent 
 from what appears to us, and has appeared to many of the 
 most eminent divines, the revealed theory of religion, have 
 been, however, very careful, that whatever they said on 
 religious subjects should be conformed to some standard of 
 opinion ; aware of the indecorum, to use no other term, of 
 flinging off at perfect random sentiments in which Christian 
 truth is necessarily implicated. The present writer, in utter 
 contempt of any such rule of propriety, will, for the sake of 
 saying a spirited thing, hazard (and indeed without seeming 
 sensible that the hazard is of any eonseqaence) an utter 
 violation of any scheme of doctrine entertained as truth by 
 any class of professed believers in Christianity. As one 
 instance from a hundred, he describes a hospital as being 
 " ample enough to call down the blessings of God on a city, 
 and vnpe out half their sins." (Vol. I. p. 127.) We should 
 think there is no class denominated Christian, that would 
 avow a creed compatible with such a doctrine as this. 
 
 There are, however, a very few points of faith, to which 
 all the carelessness of our preacher does not prevent him 
 from most steadily adhering. One of them is, of course, 
 that all hopes of the divine favour are to be founded on 
 human merit. This is everywhere assumed in the most 
 
KEEONEorS THEOLOGY, 295 
 
 broad and unceremonious manner, unaccompanied (and it 
 is so much the better) with any unmeaning pretence of 
 ascribing something to the sacrifice of Christ. Indeed, on 
 this one point of the Christian doctrine he appears to have 
 been at rather more than usual pains to form an opinion ; 
 for he asserts, precisely, that 
 
 " It is contrary to the repeated declarations of the Gospel, it 
 is derogatory to the attributes of the Deity, to suppose that 
 Jesus Christ dwelt among men for any other purpose but to 
 show them that rule of mortal life which leads them to life 
 eternal." — Vol. ii. p. 252. 
 
 If there were any portion of these volumes, or anything 
 in their general character, that could be fairly construed 
 into an opposite doctrine to that which is here avowed or 
 implied, we should be quite willing to attribute such a pas- 
 sage, either to complete carelessness of expression on theo- 
 logical points, or to that studied inaccuracy, which we can 
 remember to have seen occasionally resorted to by smart 
 ecclesiastics, as an expedient for averting the imputation of 
 having been so dull and clerical as to occupy their thoughts 
 about the articles of a creed : we should be prompt to take 
 the matter in whichever of these ways should be the most 
 complaisant to the writer. But the whole tenor of these 
 Sermons accords with the opinion so obviously avowed in 
 this passage. Now, we suppose nobody will dispute that a 
 layman, or a dissenting teacher, is perfectly at liberty, so 
 far as his accountableness to any human authority is con- 
 cerned, to avow his rejection of that economy of redemption 
 which is founded on the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ ; 
 but, even after aU we have seen, we feel some little remain- 
 ing capacity of wondering, when we find this done in a bold 
 unqualified manner, by a minister who holds his situation in 
 virtue of having subscribed, ex animo, the articles of the 
 Established Church, and who takes occasion, in one of these 
 Sermons, to insist on the necessity of articles and subscrip- 
 tion for preserving the integrity of the faith! All will 
 admit, we presume, that an opinion, which disclaims the 
 doctrine of a real atoning sacrifice in the death of Christ, 
 cannot be advanced but in direct contradiction to the sense 
 of our articles, to the judgment of those who framed them. 
 
296 SYDNEY smith's seemons. 
 
 and to the opinions of the grand body of the divines of the 
 church who have held and enforced them ever since. It is 
 plainly a rejection of what has always been of the very 
 essence of the object intended by the national mind, in 
 maintaining the religious establishment. 
 
 The principle renounced is of such magnitude, and has 
 such an effective relation with every part of the scheme of 
 faith, that its rejection does no less than pronounce that 
 the institutes of the church are substantially false and 
 absurd iu their bearing on that very concern, which alone 
 makes it of any material consequence for human beings to 
 have a religion at all, — their acceptance before the Divine 
 Justice, and their eternal salvation; and that, as to the 
 grand principle of the theory of that acceptance and sal- 
 vation, the shieks and imaums of Constantinople have a 
 doctrine incomparably more rational and more consistent 
 with the attributes of the Divine Being. What judgment 
 must we then be compelled to form of those persons who 
 can submit to purchase the privileges of the church, and 
 among them that of proclaiming from the pulpits of the 
 church itself, that these its sacred institutes are false and 
 absurd, at the price of solemnly avowing in the presence 
 of God their belief that these institutes are true ? And 
 what must we be reduced to think of the administration of 
 the church ? Must we at last be driven to confess that a 
 man has only to give a solemn pledge of adherence to one 
 form of doctrines, to be richly remunerated for preaching, 
 and with the approbation or connivance of those ecclesi- 
 astical superiors to whom he is amenable, any doctrine 
 he pleases, — except perhaps that reputed " methodism," 
 which forms the distinguishing character of the articles 
 which he has subscribed ? Is it possible to conceive a state 
 of things that should more imperiously call for reformation? 
 Is it exactly in the institutions of religion that we are to 
 sanction, as innocent and honourable, that trifling with 
 principle and obligation which in any other department 
 would be regarded with abhorrence ? We are not unaware 
 of the subterfuges under which ingenious men, and in 
 imitation of them men not ingenious, have endeavoured to 
 protect their consciences ; ir. which endeavour we have 
 often seen them but very partially successful ; and if the 
 
SUBSTITTTTES TOB THE ATOIfEMElfT. 297 
 
 success has in some cases beeu complete, we are greatly 
 afraid it has, in every such instance, been at an expense at 
 which any privileges of any institution in the world are 
 much too dear. 
 
 In these Sermons, the idea of an atonement by the death 
 of Christ being dismissed from our faith, there is a laudable 
 inquiry for any competent substitute; and a necessary 
 inquiry, since it cannot be denied that all men have sinned. 
 Substitutes are easily found ; building a hospital, as we 
 have seen, will atone for half the sins of a city ; repentance 
 is called an atonement ; it is said that restitution " eases 
 our shoulders from the burden of sin, appeases the restless 
 anger of conscience, and renders the mind cheerful and 
 serene," and is of virtue sufficient to " have pacified both 
 G-od and man." "The pleasure of forgiving," it is said, 
 " is a pleasure ever recurring, causing a man to love and 
 respect himself, breathing a satisfaction over the whole of 
 life, remembered the hour before dissolution, offered up to 
 God as an atonement for sin." (Vol. II. p. 148.) "We do 
 not anywhere find that our divine thought it necessary to 
 prove that G-od will accept these offerings as satisfactory 
 for this purpose, or to suggest any expedient for neutraliz- 
 ing the consequences of our wilful mistake, if it should too 
 late be found that He has rejected them. The chief comfort, 
 perhaps, in the contemplation of that hazard, is furnished 
 by the assurance which the hearers and readers are taught 
 to entertain, that a tolerable proportion of mankind will but 
 little need the benefit of any atonement at all: this assur- 
 ance is administered, if we rightly understand, in a passage 
 where the preacher represents it as weakness to be afraid 
 of death if the " life has not been notoriously wicked " 
 (Vol. II. p. 291.) 
 
 Though our author is no friend to that religious theory 
 which represents man, while prosecuting the great design 
 of obtaining eternal felicity, as running extravagantly in 
 debt to the divine mercy, — and is very properly of opinion, 
 that this ambitious expectant, having the means of making 
 respectable payments as he goes on in the sterling material, 
 of goodness, repentance, and the like, ought to behave 
 handsomely in the affair; yet we must do him the justice 
 to say, he is far from being such an adorer of the excellence 
 
29S STDIfET SMITH'S SEEMONS. 
 
 of human nature as some fashionable divmes. JJow nud 
 then his observant shrewd sense has a momentary lapse 
 into this superstition, and he speaks as if he descried divers 
 celestial beauties and godlike qualities in that nature ; but 
 the illusive shape and gloss soon vanish from the form and 
 features of the god, and leave our author to pourtray (and 
 he often does it in a very striking manner) the various 
 phases of a depraved being. Indeed, the whole effect of 
 the display of the human nature and condition in these 
 volumes, though contrary to the writer's intention, is 
 extremely sombre, so much so, that we have been prompted 
 to turn even to Baxter and Boston to relieve our gloomy 
 impressions. What other impression could we receive, 
 from being brought to contemplate an accountable creature 
 full of radical vicious propensities ; liable to be overgrown, 
 and generally, in fact, as much overgrown, even early in its 
 existence, with bad and tyrannical habits, as trees with 
 moss ; incessantly, and on all sides, tempted to become worse 
 and worse ; condemned, notwithstanding, to regulate by the 
 measure of its deserts its expectations beyond death ; 
 unaided, in the exertions for vanquishing evil, and attaining 
 excellence, by any special divine influence, unprotected by 
 a particular providence, and doomed to surrender itself, at 
 death, to an entire extinction of consciousness, tiU the 
 resurrection ? 
 
 The last particular in this melancholy sketch is not, that 
 we remember, put ia the explicit form of a proposition ; but 
 we must once more complain of a most unaccountable care- 
 lessness of expression, if it is not meant to be implied in 
 such expressions as these : — 
 
 " The feelings of bodily decay often lead to repentance ; it 
 happens, fortunately for man, that he is not called out of the 
 world in the vigour of health, not by a sudden annihilation, but 
 by a gradual destruction of his being. " — Vol. I. p. 24. 
 
 " This makes a parent delight in his children, and repose on 
 them, when his mind and his body are perishing away."— P. 148. 
 
 " They are gone, the grave hides them, and all that remains 
 of father and of mother, are the dust and the ashes of their 
 tombs."— P. 152. 
 
 " The happiness of the dead, however, is affected by none of 
 these things ; nor is it such circumstances that can disturb then- 
 
METHODISM. 299 
 
 profound repose ; they are slumbering in the dust, unconscious 
 of the mouldering scene around them, &c. — P. 118. 
 
 In explaining the illustration taken from the seed of 
 wheat, the preacher represents St. Paul, who undoubtedly 
 believed himself discoursing on the changes of the body, to 
 have really meant changes of the soul. " So also," says the 
 great jipostle, " it is with the soul of man ; it will be 
 changed as the seed is changed." " This comparison 
 between the outward world, and the changes of the sou), 
 set on foot by the holy apostle," &c. (Pp. 266, 267.) It is 
 but fair to notice that a few pages forward we find this 
 sentence : " these faculties show us that the soul is now 
 young and infantine, springing up into a more perfect life 
 when the body falls into the dust." 
 
 One of the longest sermons is an animated invective 
 against Methodism ; and we most cordially join in the 
 preacher's indignation, as every reader of sense will do, 
 when he sees the description of that combination of quali- 
 ties, of which this term is the substantive name. Por the 
 Methodists are distinguished by an " astonishing arrogance 
 and presumption ; they speak as if a new dispensation had 
 been accorded to the world, as if the time was at last 
 arrived when they were permitted to show to mankind the 
 true knowledge of the true God." "The gratification of 
 this spiritual pride is become in fact one of their religious 
 exercises ; it is mingled in all their religious meditations, 
 and becomes the darling and consolation of their souls." 
 Their " predominant notion of religion seems to be, that it is 
 something removed as far from common sense as possible." 
 They are actuated by a " fanaticism which it is no more 
 possible to meet with the common eflbrts of reason, than it 
 is to dispute with a burning fever, or to argue down a 
 subtle contagion." " Nothing can be more mistaken than 
 to look upon the frantic extravagance, or the imdignified 
 trifling of their teachers as innocent." Now such persons 
 there certainly are in our country ; only we think our 
 author betrays a great contempt of accuracy in calling them 
 a " sect," and speaking of them as of modern origin, unless 
 he were thinking particularly of the followers of Sweden- 
 borg. They should rather be called a class, some indi- 
 
300 STDNET smith's SEEMOlfS. 
 
 viduals belonging to which are to be found, and have at all 
 times been found, in almost all denominations. Indeed he 
 virtually acknowledges that the persons he has in view are 
 no sect, by admitting that they agree substantially with the 
 more moderate and judicious members of the church in the 
 doctrines they maintain ; the doctrines, therefore, of coiu'se, 
 which he himself, as one of those moderate and judicious 
 members, maintains. But here we are reduced to great 
 perplexity about the denomination of Methodists as applied 
 to such a class ; for we had imagined, that in the fashionable 
 dialect this was the distinctive designation for a class of 
 religionists, who insist, with peculiar earnestness, on the 
 atoning merits of Jesus Christ, on justiiication through 
 faith in him, on the operations of the Holy Spirit, and on 
 the blessings of a particular providence. 
 
 In our last number we suspended our review of these 
 volumes in a considerable degree of perplexity, caused by 
 several passages in the sermon against Methodism, and par- 
 ticularly by this : — 
 
 '' In applying the term sect, to persons of this religious per- 
 suasion (the Methodists), and in distinguishing them from the 
 Church of England, I do not found that distinction upon the 
 speculative tenets they profess, but upon the general spirit they 
 display ; it is in vain to say you belong to our ancient and 
 venerable communion, if you lose sight of that moderation for 
 which we have always been distinguished, and instead of same- 
 ness of spirit give us only sameness of belief. You are not of 
 us (whatever your belief may be), if you are not sober as we 
 are ; you are not of us, if you have our zeal without our know- 
 ledge ; you are not of us, if those tenets which we have always 
 rendered compatible with sound discretion make you drunk 
 and staggering with the new wine of enthusiasm." — Vol. I.. 
 p. 284. 
 
 Now, in this passage, the writer very clearly identifies 
 his religious belief with the tenets of the Established Church, 
 and then admits that the speculative doctrines of the 
 Methodists also are identical with those tenets ; and this is 
 plainly saying, that in point of speculative religious opinions, 
 he and the Methodists are agreed, the difference being only 
 the spirit with which these opinions are maintained and 
 applied. Here we were reduced to extreme perplexity 
 
TNSrLT TO THE ESTABLISHED CHTJKOH. 301 
 
 in attempting to guess wbat class of Christians it could be 
 that our preacher has chosen to denominate Methodists. 
 Eor we found him rejecting the doctrine of the atonement, 
 rejecting and ridiculing the doctrine of a particular provi- 
 dence, and showing, by palpable implications, his disbelief of 
 some other tenets, maintained as of the utmost importance 
 by those who lay the most emphasis on these two doctrines. 
 We were quite certain that any one of the classes usually 
 called Methodists, would just as soon acknowledge them- 
 selves to be of the faith of Japan as to coincide with our 
 preacher's notions of Christianity. And yet he has not 
 signified that it is any new class of religionists against 
 which he has felt it his duty to caution his auditors. Nor 
 ts it any new class, as far as we can by any means discover 
 from the general tenor of his sermon. 
 
 It is hard that we have no possible way out of this diffi- 
 culty but by breaking a wide gap through the preacher'? 
 sincerity. "We looked this way in a former part of our 
 observations, and we are forced towards the same point 
 again. It is a signal piece of disingenuousness in this 
 preacher to pretend to identify his opinions with the 
 standard creed of the Established church. And what does 
 excite our indignation not a little, we confess, is to see 
 this done in such a manner as to seem an intentional wanton 
 insult on that venerable establishment ; the pretence being 
 made, with an air of easy confidence, in a set of Sermons, in 
 which it is not thought worth while to take the slightest 
 trouble even to disguise the rejection and contempt of some 
 of the most essential points of the instituted faith. "We 
 cannot preserve our patience to so our church treated thus 
 by her professed sons and advocw^es. "We seem to hear 
 them say, " Ton see to what a plight the goo'3 old super- 
 annuated Establishment is reduced. She is like an old 
 decrepit lady whose servants have a few ready cant phrases 
 of deference, but laugh at her orders almost before they 
 have closed the door of her room, and go and do everything- 
 just as they like, without in the least caring for the conse- 
 quences of her being told how they are acting. The good 
 old church has appointed plenty of creeds and confessions : 
 we have set our names to a long list of articles full of the 
 demerit of human works, full of a propitiatory sacrifice, 
 
302 sTDicET smith's seemons. 
 
 justification by fe,ith, aalvatiou by pure grace, and such kind 
 of things. Tes, we have subscribed, ha! ha! ha! and 
 gravely promised to hold forth these laudable fancies. This 
 engagement having been made in all due form, and the 
 ceremonial parts of the service being discharged in the pre- 
 scribed manner, we easily find means to dupe our worthy 
 old mistress ; or if we cannot dupe her, or do not choose to 
 take so much pains, we have nothing to fear in setting at 
 nought her authority, as to what relates to her musty 
 creeds. We shape our discourses and doctrines according 
 to our own taste, or the fashion of the times ; and thus we 
 get the emoluments, and sometimes laugh and sometimes 
 rail, as it may alternately suit our amusement or our 
 interest, at those whose precious squeamish consciences will 
 not let them obtain a share of our privileges, at the trifling 
 cost of declaring their assent to what they do not believe." 
 These gentlemen, however, know when to be demure again ; 
 and then, it is so venerable an institution! so faithfully 
 supported ! so formed for perpetuity ! Then, each of them 
 devoutly crosses himself, and chants, after this reverend 
 precentor, " the church is not endangered by this denomi- 
 nation of Christians (the Methodists) ; I hope and believe 
 that its roots are too deep, its structure too admirable, its 
 defenders too able, and its followers too firm, to be shaken 
 by this or any species of attack." (Vol. I. 290.) We 
 cannot suppress our indignation at seeing this deliberate 
 systematic practice of insult to the Establishment. And we 
 would loudly warn, though we fear it will be of no avail to 
 warn the church that all such men are traitors to her 
 interests, and in effect conspirators against her life. Ad- 
 hering in form to her communion, and possessing aU its 
 temporal privileges, they are notwithstanding decided, 
 violent, super-libertine dissenters, beyond all comparison 
 more alienated from her grand principles of faith, than 
 thirty-nine in forty of those who are formally separated 
 from her communion. 
 
 We intended some remarks on our reverend author's 
 doctrine of Providence ; but shall reserve them for an occa- 
 sion which will require a brief attention to precisely the same 
 notions, exhibited in almost literally the same language, in a 
 short anonymous publication ascribed to the same author, and 
 
INTELLEOTUAL ABILITT. 303 
 
 not disavowed by him. That these notions are opposite to 
 the Bible, is the very last argument, we suppose, that any 
 reader of these sermons would think of suggesting to the 
 writer of them ; but it might have been expected he would 
 not liave been desirous to shut himself out from every 
 respected school of philosophers. 
 
 If no publication ever came with more defective claims, 
 in point of theological quality, than these sermons, we must 
 employ a different language as to what they exhibit of 
 intellectual ability and moral instruction. They display a 
 great deal of acuteness, diversified mental activity, and inde- 
 pendent thinking. Whatever else there is, there is no 
 common place. The matter is sometimes too bad, some- 
 times too good, but always too shrewd, to be dull. The 
 author is a sharp observer of mankind, and has a large 
 portion of knowledge of the world. What is more, he has 
 exercised much discriminative observation on the human 
 heart, and often unfolds a correct view of its movements, 
 especially the depraved ones. He has indicated in it so 
 many native principles of pernicious operation, that if he 
 cared about philosophical consistency he would turn 
 orthodox at once ; and be behind no "Methodist" of us all, 
 in representing the necessity of an influence from heaven to 
 purify so corrupt a source of agency. We have seen many 
 instances of men choosing to be absurd philosophers, in 
 order to avoid being sound divines. But did he not laugh 
 outright in his study, when he was making sentences about 
 " mardy resolution," " noble pride," and other such things, 
 as being the forces which were to subdue internal evil, and 
 defeat, throughout a campaign of half a century, a world of 
 temptations ? We should indeed be sorry if he could be in 
 so gay a mood when going to lead his auditors into so fatal 
 an error ; but we cannot conceive that he could avoid that 
 perception of incongruity which usually excites the risible 
 muscles. Really, notwithstanding all we have said, we think 
 the man has more a Methodistical basis thaai half his clerical 
 brethren. A man, who entertains his estimate of the 
 condition of human nature, holds a principle which, by correct 
 inference, precipitates the mind to despair on the one hand, 
 or leads it towards the reprobated doctrines on the other ; 
 and it would be an admirable proof of " manly resolution " 
 
30-1 STDNET smith's SEEMOWB 
 
 and ""noble pride," to reject them because formalists, and 
 sciolists, and profligates, and fribblers, and divers other sorts 
 of creatures, all wisely join to sneer at them, for the most 
 part without so much' as ever attempting to understand 
 them ! 
 
 The morality will often be, of course, very defective in 
 principle, in works wherein the theology is so scanty and so 
 erroneous. Making, however, the due allowance for thitr 
 and for every other deteriorating cause, there wUl be found 
 in these sermons a large share of valuable instruction. 
 Greneral principles of morals a,re sometimes developed with 
 very original illustrations. The discriminations of right 
 and wrong are often strongly marked. Moral agents are 
 represented in a great diversity of situations, and many of 
 those situations are brought forward into view very forcibly 
 by means of well-selected circumstances and strong colouring 
 The reader will observe that the moralist has the real 
 world and the present times constantly in his view ; his 
 observations have the advantage of bearing a relation to 
 facts ; they are the moral lessons of a man who knows the 
 world ; they are pictures as well as precepts. In one of 
 these discourses we are not so much listening to a formal 
 lecture, as accompanying the moralist into some scene of 
 human action, apposite to the topic he has chosen, and 
 hearing him make a series of acute and spirited comments 
 on the prominent circumstances as they present themselves. 
 This prevents regular and extended discussion, but it throws 
 peculiar force into particular passages. It casts the surface 
 of the composition in points, generally sharp, and sometimes 
 sparkling. It is to be noticed, at the same time, that his 
 moral observations, while bearing so strong an impression of 
 acquaintance with the real world, will in some instances be 
 also found rather more accommodating to the world's 
 standard of moral principles, than the moral speculations 
 and instructions of a teacher would be who should qualify 
 his knowledge of the world with an equally intimate know- 
 ledge of Christianity. It wiU easily be conjectured, that 
 our present instructor will lay down his moral rules, at 
 somewhat more than a sufficient distance from puritanical 
 spirituality and austerity. Tet we find less reason to com- 
 plain than we should have expected in moral reasonings so 
 
Hian TONE or moeal sentiment. 30S 
 
 little indebted directly to tbo ligbt of true theology. A 
 new proof is here afforded, that in a country, where Chris- 
 tianity is well known, those intelligent men who give it but 
 very little attention, and who despise some of its leading 
 principles, if they should ever have happened to hear them 
 stated, have nevertheless acquired, insensibly and involun- 
 tarily, a much higher tone of moral sentiment than we lind 
 in the heathen philosophers. Our preacher's tone is some- 
 times very high ; we were really surprised, as well as 
 gratified to find him, for instance, giving no quarter to the 
 love of praise as a motive of action. 
 
 " I mean by vanity, the excessive love of praise, and I call it 
 
 excessive whenever it becomes a motive to action The 
 
 vanity of great men, when it stimulates them to exertions useful 
 to mankind, is that species of vanity, which seems to approach 
 the nearest to virtue, and which we most readily pardon for its 
 effects ; and, indeed, so much are we inclined to view actions by 
 their splendour, or their importance, rather than by their motives, 
 that we can hardly agree to call by the name of vain, a man who 
 has exercised consummate and successful ability upon great 
 objects ; whereas, there is a vanity of great, and a vanity of little 
 minds, and the same passion regulates a ceremony, which saves, 
 or ruins a kingdom. It is better, to be sure, that good (if it 
 cannot be done for the best), should be done from any motive, 
 rather than not be done at all ; but the dignity of the fact can 
 never communicate purity to the intention. True religion con- 
 sists not only in action, but in the mind with which we act ; 
 and the highest beneficence which flows from vanity, though it 
 may exalt us in the eyes of men, abases us in the view of God." 
 —Vol, II. p. 114. 
 
 A multitude of specimens might be extracted, of just and 
 forcible thinking ; we vrill transcribe only two or three, not 
 as being preferable to many others, but as first occurring to 
 our recollection. From a very striking Sermon on the bad 
 " effect which a life passed in great cities produces on the 
 moral and religious character," we might quote much more 
 than the following passages : — 
 
 " It is not favourable to religious feeling to hear only of the 
 actions and interference of men, and to behold nothing but what 
 ingenuity has completed ...... Out of great cities, there is 
 
 everywhere around us a vast system going on, utterly indepen- 
 
 X 
 
306 SYDNEY smith's SEIllIOlfS. 
 
 dent of human wisdom and human interference ; anil man leaina 
 there the great lesson of his imbecility and dependence .... 
 But here everything is man, and man alone : kings and senates 
 command us; we talk of their decrees, and look up to their 
 pleasure ; they seem to move and govern aU, and to be the pro- 
 vidence of cities ; in this seat of government, placed under the 
 shadow of those who make the laws, we do not render unto 
 Cassar the things which are Csssar's, and unto God the things 
 which are God's, but God is forgotten, and Csesar is supreme ; 
 all is human policy, human foresight, human power; nothing 
 reminds us of invisible dominion and concealed Omnipotence ; 
 we do nothing but what man bids ; we see nothing but what 
 man creates ; we mingle with nothing but what man com- 
 mands ; it is all earth and no heaven." 
 
 " The lesson which all ought to learn from principle, is often 
 taught by poverty, sickness, and old age, and we are then most 
 willing to rest upon a superior power, when we learn from 
 experience the moral and physical evils by which we are sur- 
 rounded, and the confined powers of our nature by which those 
 evils are to be repelled, This lesson, however, is more slowly 
 learnt in great cities than elsewhere, because there the strongest 
 combination is formed against the accidents of life. It is there 
 that every evil which can harass humanity, is guarded against 
 by the most consummate experience, and rectified with the most 
 perfect skill ; whatever man has discovered to better his condi- 
 tion, is there to be found ; and the whole force of human genius, 
 called to the aid of each individual, gradually diminishes that 
 conviction of human imbecUity which is one cause of religious 
 feeling "—Vol. II. p. 302. 
 
 We lite the pointed, spirited cast of a paragraph in the 
 Sermon on Eepentance, and a similar one in the Sermon on 
 Temptation — which we will place together. 
 
 " The great mean of making repentance efficacious, is by hold- 
 ing no parley with temptation ; to hesitate is to consent ; to 
 listen is to be convinced ; to pause is to yield. The soul of a 
 penitent man should be as firm against future relapse, as it is 
 sorrowful for past iniquity. The only chance for doing well, is 
 to be stubborn in new righteousness ! to hear nothing but on 
 one side, and to be indebted for safety to prudence rather than 
 to impartiality ; above all things, to tremble for youthful virtue ; 
 not to trust ourselves, till we have walked long with God — till 
 the full measure of his grace is upon us — till long abstinence 
 has taught us to forbear — till we have gained such wide, and 
 such true knowledge of pleasure, that we comprehend salvation, 
 and eternity in the circle of our joys." — Vol. I. p. 32. 
 
OK TEMPTATION A.TSTI SCANDAL. 307 
 
 " Then there must be no treaty entered into with the Tempter; 
 no parley, no doubt, no lingering explanation ; but clear denial, 
 indicating calm and invincible resistance ; for in this way the 
 Bouls of men are lost to salvation ; it seems innocent to listen, it 
 is no crime to hear what the thing is ; I can always deny, I can 
 always retreat ; I am still master of my own actions. But this 
 is an error, for you cannot deny, or retreat, but at the first pause 
 you were lost, and sin and death marked you for their own ; it 
 is madness to combat with the eloquence of sin, or to gaze at the 
 pictures of passion ; if you dispute with pleasure, she will first 
 charm you to silence, then reason you to conviction, then lead 
 you utterly from God ; she wants you only to hear and see, she 
 requires only one moment's pause, she knows if you can balance 
 for a point of time between her present rapture and the distant 
 felicity of heaven, that you are quite gone ; you must meet 
 temptation with blind eyes, and deaf ears, and with a heart 
 which no more balances whether it shall be virtuous, than it 
 does whether it shall send the blood of life through all the 
 extremities and channels of the bodily frame." — Vol. II. p. 11. 
 
 We may cite the following passage, on the pleasure with 
 which scandal is heard and circulated, as a proof of that 
 talent of detecting human nature, which is often displayed 
 in these volumes. 
 
 " There are many I believe, who are so far from listening to 
 the means by which this satisfaction at the misconduct of others, 
 may be checked, that they are rather inclined to doubt of the 
 disorder, than to adopt the remedy. It wounds our pride as 
 much to confess the fault, as it gratifies our pride to practise it. 
 No man chooses to avow that he wants the faults of others, as a 
 foil to his own character ; no man has the desperate candour to 
 confess, that the comparison which he draws between himself 
 and his brother, upon hearing of any act of misconduct, is a 
 source of pleasure ; and that in such cases, the feelings of self 
 overcome the rules of the Gospel ; if you ask any man such a 
 question, he will say, that he depends upon his own efforts, and 
 not on the failure of others ; he will contend that the errors of 
 his fellow-creatures are to him a source of serious concern ; he 
 says so, — and he believes that he says the truth ; for no man 
 knows the secrets of his own heart ; but if it is true, why are 
 the wings of evil fame so swift and so unwearied 1 Why is it not 
 as difficult to lose, as to gain, the commendations of mankind t 
 Why does it require a whole life to gain a character which can 
 be lost, and unjustly lost, in a single moment of time ? It is this, 
 because we are reluctant to exalt and ever willing to pull down; 
 because we love the fault better which gives us an inferior, than 
 
 I 2 
 
308 RTDNEY smith's SEEMONS. 
 
 the virtue which elevates a human being above us." — VoL T' 
 Pp. 198. 
 
 "While we are sincerely glad, as a kind of set-olY aguinst 
 the theological condemnation, to bear testimony to the 
 '.arge portion of spirited and vigorous thought and just 
 morality in these volumes, we are yet compelled to tax 
 them, as literary performances, with capital faults. The 
 first that will strike every reader is, excessive affectation. 
 It appears even in the typographical structure of the page. 
 The writer seems to fancy it a merit, or an exploit, to divide 
 and point his sentences in a different manner from that of 
 any other writer in Europe, and a manner which no other 
 writer in Europe will imitate. He has had a quarrel with 
 the period ; and seems resolved to drive it out of the repub- 
 lic of letters, after all its faithful and welcome services in 
 putting an end to tedious sentences, sermons, and books. 
 The colon, or any other of the marks, is to occupy its 
 vacated place. There often appears a particular care that 
 the stops shall bear no relation to the pauses of the sense. 
 
 We know not what else to impute it to but affectation, 
 that we meet with such grammatical faults, as a scholar 
 and critic could not have fallen into inadvertently. Eor 
 example ; " many a precept lays hid in the soul," &c. ; 
 "enthusiasm has sprang u^ among the rich;" "when the 
 sword has drank its full;" "it often happens that the 
 repentance, hegan at a moment of sickness, vanishes," &c.; 
 "we are thoroughly aware of having hegan," &c. ; " after I 
 had strove by these means to teach ;" " he sets down to the 
 feast of Mammon;" "the spirit of the Gospel is evinced 
 by rising up the humble;" "as if the time was at last 
 arrived ;" "we can rarely or ever return;" "there is not a 
 feeling of wretchedness you can strike into his heart, but 
 what it is eternally recorded against you;" "the man who 
 can please for the passing hour, is better and greater than 
 him who can," &c. ; " dissimilar j^owi the fruits of the 
 spirit ;" " this discontent of present things." We have 
 transcribed these examples literally ; and surely such things 
 are among the very poorest expedients, by which an author 
 can lose his trouble in trying to persuade his readers that 
 he is too powerfully borne along by his subject to regard 
 grammatical proprieties, or can seek the repute of gratuitous 
 
FAULTS OF STYLE. 309 
 
 Bingularity. It is perhaps hardly worth while to notice his 
 fancy for always using the article an before a word begin- 
 ning with the aspirate, as, "an human being," "an happy 
 foresight," "an habit," "an higher order," "an half- 
 deception," " an heaven," &c. &c. 
 
 But the affectation is not confined to these small par* 
 ticulars ; it prevails in a most unconscionable degree 
 through the general tenor of our preacher's language. He 
 never goes on so much as two minutes in that manly 
 simplicity of expression, which is natural to a man strenu- 
 ously and solely intent on illustrating and enforcing his 
 subject. The cast of his language compels an unwilling 
 suspicion, that the purpose is not so much to enforce the 
 subject, as to parade it ; and, in doing so, to play off the 
 greatest possible number of quaint pranks of rhetorical 
 manoeuvre. We doubt whether we ever saw, within an 
 equal space, so many fantastic quiddities of diction, such a 
 perverse study to twitch our strong, honest, manful, old 
 language into uncouth postures and vain antics. "We know 
 not how so to manage our own phrases, as to give a 
 characteristic description of those which spoil these Ser- 
 mons ; but we shall do right to quote a very small sample 
 of them, and we are not aware that, as thus detached, 
 they will sustain the injustice of being made to look more 
 strange than they do in their own pages. " To him . . . 
 it is worth the pains to cultivate mankind" — "the righteous 
 man cultivates and studies all whom he approaches" — "the 
 submission paid to any human being, by the sacrifice of 
 truth, is not meekness, nor humility, but an abject unre- 
 sisting mind that barters Grod and Heaven for a moment of 
 present ease " — "life brings with it many weary, weighing 
 hours " — " a man is not saved by knowledge, and if he is 
 puffed up with it, it is laughter and lightness before Grod " 
 — "as deep as the roots of the earth" — "we have an 
 irresistible tendency to paint ourselves as conscious of 
 honour, or shame, after the outward and visible man has 
 perished away" — "education . , , gives some deep life- 
 marks, by which a human being may recover himself if he 
 does wander '' — " and when we have meditated on these 
 things, and filled our minds full of fear, and fair love, and 
 holy hope," &c. — "repentance fills the soul full of sweet, 
 
310 RTDIfEY smith's SEEMOKS. 
 
 holy, everlasting godliness " — " proud integrity " — " liumap 
 beings who bear to us the seeds of good-will ", — " the eye 
 tastes the light " — " the genuine soul of compassion is 
 swift to figure and to conceive ; it glides into the body of 
 the suffering wretch ; it writhes with his agony ; it faints 
 with his hunger ; it weeps with his tears; it bleeds vrith his 
 blood ; till, blind with the wise and heavenly delusion, it 
 ministers to its own fancied sorrows, and labours for another 
 self" — " the eternal frailty of sin at length degrades a man 
 in his own eyes," — " bring it home to the chamibers of your 
 hearts " — " this spirit will bear of no backsliding, no 
 wavering" — "it has ever been the memorable privilege of 
 this island, to stand forward as the early and eager cham- 
 pion of all the miseries of man" — "all feel the vanity of 
 human .wishes, and human designs, when they behold the 
 arts, the arms, the industry of nations, overwhelmed by an 
 Omnipotent destroyer, and their heritage tost to the chil- 
 dren of blood " — " repentance fertilized into Christian 
 righteousness " — " parent, and husband, and child, and 
 friend, may all perish away, and leave us a wreck of time in 
 the feeble solitude of age" — "he whom the dread of 
 universal infamy, the horror of being degraded from his 
 rank in society, the thought of an hereafter will not inspire 
 with the love of truth, who prefers any temporary con- 
 venience of a lie to a broad, safe and refulgent veracity, 
 that man is too far sunk in the depths of depravity for any 
 religious instructions he can receive in this place; the 
 canker of disease is gone down to the fountains of his blood, 
 and the days of his life are told " — " thus live the souls of 
 the just in the dungeons of the flesh " — " a mind beau- 
 tifully inlaid with the thoughts of angels " — " engrave upon 
 his (an infant's) printless heart, the feelings of pain" — 
 " the words . . .are irreligious, blasphemous, and bad" — 
 "his stony rock" — "you are either sacramented for life 
 to the first crude system you have adopted, or, &c." — "it 
 shall be better even for the fool that says in his heart there 
 is no Grod, than for him who looks up to a heaven that 
 disgraces him, and pins his soul upon a faith which he 
 smothers as a crime " — " the most beautiful feelings of the 
 heart" — "that breath still hangs in his nostrils" — "our 
 Saviour, .... while he endeavours to throw open every 
 
AFFECTATION OP OEIGINALITT. 311 
 
 compassionate heart as an asylum for the afi3.icted, and to 
 make the good an altar for the miserable, &c." — "repays 
 them (parents) all that fine care which has averted the perils 
 of infant life" — "it is fine to observe, that reason, &c." — 
 " the sounds which are sung out before the throne of God." 
 
 If this is really come to be the proper diction, our 
 Taylors and Barrows, our Drydens and Addisons, have had 
 their day : and the gravest subjects are now held forth in 
 a slang, compounded of all the motley whimsicalities which 
 conceited ingenuity can fabricate in imitation of the scrip- 
 tural, the classical, the poetical, the commercial, the 
 fashionable, and the vulgar dialects, and from its own sheer 
 perversity and extravagance. This fantastic style is 
 probably attributable in part, as we have already hinted, 
 to the preacher's mind being too careless about his subject ; 
 in which state its inventive activity is sufiiciently exempt 
 from the absorption of feeling to be desirous of amusing 
 itself by flourishing all sorts of vanities along the composi- 
 tion. And it is partly the result of a systematic endeavour 
 to maintain a constant appearance of thinking originally. 
 We have repeatedly observed the fact that there is no 
 expedient by which a writer or speaker may so efiectually 
 persuade himself that he always thinks originally as to get 
 a habit of expressing himself strangely. We would there- 
 fore entreat our divine to rid himself of this monstrous 
 dialect, if it were only to preserve to himself the power of 
 discriminating the comparative qualities of his own ideas 
 and compositions, and even if his present mode of expression 
 were not so ofiensive to correct taste. He does think 
 originally sometimes ; but what is likely to be the conse- 
 quence of an author's taking up a notion that he always 
 does so ? 
 
 It needs not be remarked that, in some of the sentences 
 we have transcribed, the affected cast is fully as much in the 
 form of the conception as in the mode of expression. 
 
 Our literary dissatisfaction reaches its greatest height at 
 those parts of these Sermons which are intended to be 
 pathetic and sublime. It is not that the writer does not 
 often make a judicious selection of the topics, scenes, and 
 circumstances adapted to touch the heart ; nor that he does 
 not sometimes attain considerable elevation of thought; 
 
312 8TDNEX smith's SEEMONS. 
 
 but there is an utter want of that element of sentiment, or pas- 
 sion, which is essential to pathetic and sublime eloquence. An 
 energetic, simple feeling must prevail through every sentence, 
 to the exclusion of every appearance of managing ingenuity 
 or ostentation. The effect of such compositions is just the 
 reverse of that produced by those before us, which quell, 
 and prostrate, and freeze our feelings, exactly in proportion 
 to the measure of pathos or grandeur exhibited. We have 
 an unaccountable impression, as if the author would laugh 
 at us if we were affected by the pictures he is displaying. 
 We reproach ourselves for the feeling ; but with our best 
 efforts we still fail to divest ourselves of a feeling that the 
 orator, while addressing the passions, is himself in a state of 
 the utmost composure ; and our minds perversely, or 
 perhaps complacently, prefer maintaining their tranquillity 
 too, in gentle accordance with his, to the emotions which 
 should seem to be demanded by those splendid or those 
 pitiable objects which he places before us. But still we 
 cannot like ourselves, while the most melancholy visions are 
 opened before us of destroying armies, desolated countries, 
 burning cities, murdered families, vnthout moving us to terror 
 or compassion ; while valorous and magnificent sentiments 
 of patriotism excite in us such a very moderate degree of 
 impatience to die for our country ; or while the more tender 
 images of maternal and infantine distress, or female peni- 
 tence, leave us capable of diverting so soon to indifferent 
 objects. Nor can we like the oratory, which, in displaying 
 these objects and scenes, continually reminds us, and keeps 
 us perfectly cool by reminding us of rhetorical artifice and 
 stage effect. 
 
 To regain their own good opinion, our minds wUl have it 
 that almost all the fault is in the exhibitor ; and that if he 
 had been any thing more than a mere actor or rhetorician, 
 there would have been no possibility of avoiding to melt or 
 burn while beholding him make such representations. 
 There is hardly one moment of true sympathetic beguile- 
 ment ; when there seems to be the most impassioned 
 vehemence, the very rapture of eloquence, it is all seen 
 through with perfect ease. The following rhapsody on 
 veracity, for instance, seems to dash off much in the style 
 and manner of an impetuous torrent of passion ; and reeJly 
 
■WANT or SIMPLE PATHOS. 313 
 
 It indicates much force of conception; but the quaintly 
 expressed conceit of the "heart bursting in twain," the 
 affected cast of several other expressions, and the artificial, 
 hurrying rapidity, all concur — we should not say, to prove 
 the writer, — but certainly to preserve the reader, as free 
 from real passion, as in constructing or perusing one of the 
 diurnal pieces of rhetoric on the wheel of fortune. 
 
 " I have hitherto considered the love of truth on the negative 
 side only, as it indicates what we are not to do ; but there is an 
 heroic faith, ... a courageous love of truth, the truth of the 
 Christian warrior, — an unconquerable love of justice, that would 
 burst the heart in twain if it had not vent, which makes women 
 men, — and men saints,* — and saints angels. . . . Often it has 
 published its creed from amidst the iiames ; . . . often it has 
 reasoned under the axe, and gathered firmness from a mangled 
 body ; . . . often it has rebuked the madness of the people ; . . . 
 often it has burst into the chambers of princes to tear down the 
 veil of falsehood, and to speak of guilt, of sorrow, and of death. 
 Such was the truth which went down with Shadrach to the fiery 
 furnace, and descended with Daniel to the lion's den. . . . Such 
 was the truth which made the potent Felix tremble at his elo- 
 quent captive ; such was the truth which roused the timid Peter 
 to preach Christ crucified before the Sanhedrin of the Jews ; and 
 such was the truth which enabled that Christ whom he did 
 preach to die the death upon the cross." — Vol. I. p. 45. 
 
 Two or three short passages belonging to the pathetic 
 department will show that the orator can select his images 
 with judgment and delineate them with strength ; but if any 
 reader finds also the affecting simplicity of real feeling, we 
 must submit to envy his better perceptions. The following 
 is from a Sermon for the Scotch Lying-in Hospital. 
 
 " If the image of a parent forsaken at this time of her distress 
 has aught in it which appeals to your compassion ; how awful 
 the spectacle of a mother driven by hunger and despair to the 
 destruction of her child. To see a gentle creature hurled from 
 the bosom to which it turns — grasped by the hands that should 
 have toiled for it, — mangled by her who should have washed it 
 with her tears, and warmed it with her breath, and fed it with 
 
 * In spite of the eloquent rapidity, there must here have been 
 a pause, and a soft smile, to intimate to the female part of the 
 auditory that this was only rhetoric. 
 
014 (JTDNET smith's SEEMONS. 
 
 her milk. You may enjoy a spectacle far different from this, ycra 
 may see the tranquil mother on the bed of charity, and the 
 peaceful child slumbering in her arms ; you may see her 
 ■watching the trembling of every limb, and listening to the tide 
 of the breath, and gazing through the dimness of tears, on the 
 body of her child. The man who robs and murders for hia bread 
 would give charity to this woman ; good Christians, have mercy 
 upon her, and death shall not snatch away your children ; they 
 shall live and prosper ; mankind will love them ! God will 
 defend them ! 
 
 " I am speaking to those who will understand me when I 
 remind you of the feelings of a poor, industrious man, whose 
 earnings, exhausted in the purchase of food, disable him from 
 making any provision at this season for the coa.forts of his wife. 
 "When you see him toiling from sun to sun, and still unable to 
 rise above the necessities of the present hour, will you not save 
 to such a useful, honest being, the anguish of returning to a 
 sick house ; the sight of agonies which he cannot relieve, and of 
 wants to which he cannot administer \ give me a little out of 
 your abundance, and I will lift off this weight from his heart ; 
 listen to me when I kneel before you for humble, wretched 
 creatures ; help me with some Christian offering, and I will give 
 meat to the tender mother, and a pillow for her head, and a 
 garment for the little child, and she shall bless God in the 
 fulness of her heart. I fear I have detained you too long ; but 
 the sorrows of many human beings rest upon me, and many 
 mothers are praying that I may bring back bread for their 
 children. / told them that this ancient Christian people had 
 never yet abandoned the wretched, that they had ever listened 
 to any minister of Christ who spoke for the poor ; 1 hade, them 
 be of good comfort, that God would raise them up friends, and 
 when they showed me their children, I vowed for you all, that not 
 one of them should perish for hunger ; do not send me back 
 empty-handed to these victims of sorrow ; let not the woman 
 and the suckling be driven from their comfortable home ; listen 
 to the voice of the woman in travail, and minister to the wailing 
 and spreading of hands ; if one social tie binds you to human 
 life ; if you can tell how the mother's heart is twined about her 
 child ; if you remember how women lighten the sorrows of life ; 
 if you are the disciple of the Saviour Jesus to whom they kindly 
 ministered, forsake them not this once, and God shall save you 
 in the hour of death and the day of sharp distress." 
 
 We have only one more remark on the composition. The 
 thoughts and sentences are not formed into a proper series 
 and sequence. Instead of the sense being carried on m a 
 
palet's memoies. 3.1 o 
 
 train of finislied sentences, each advancing it one distinct 
 step straight forwards, it is dispersed out into a multitiide 
 of small pieces on eitker hand. Instead of advancing, if wo 
 may so express it, in a strong, narrow column, one thought 
 treading firmly and closely after another, the composition 
 presents a number of thoughts, collateral and related, rather 
 than consequentially dependent, hurrying irregularly for- 
 wards almost parallel to one another.* 
 
 PALET'S MEMOIES. 
 
 Memoirs of William Paley, D.D. By G. W. Meadlet. To which 
 is added an Appendix, 8vo. 1809. 
 
 "We are a little reluctant to accept this work as giving a 
 true impression of the character of Dr. Paley. And yet the 
 biographer appears an intelligent, well-informed, and candid 
 man ; was personally acquainted with the Doctor during 
 the last years of his life ; and has evinced a commendable 
 diligence of inquiry respecting its former periods, of which 
 various particulars have been communicated to him by some 
 of Paley's early and surviving friends. There is no doubt 
 of the general accuracy of the book as a memorial of facts ; 
 and we have not much right to question whether a just esti- 
 mate of the character is conveyed by the whole effect of the 
 recitals and observations. Those parts of the sketch which 
 are formed from the author's opinion, seem well warranted 
 by those which consist of narration, and are quite in the 
 same spirit. But, if this le a true delineation, we cannot 
 but regret that truth had not authorized a different one. 
 
 It was not, for our complacency, a fortunate circumstance, 
 to have read these Memoirs about the same time that we 
 had occasion to read the lives of some of the most eminent 
 of the puritan divines, such as Baxter, Howe, and Philip 
 Henry. In these men we beheld, beside the talents and 
 learning which in them were but very secondary recom- 
 
 ' See Foster's Life and Correspondence, Vol. I., p. 339 — En. 
 
316 taley's MEMOiEa. 
 
 mendations, the utmost sublimity of devotional sentiment, 
 such, a zeal for the promotion of Christianity as absorbed 
 their whole being, a promptitude and a heroic perseverance 
 to make any and every sacrifice to tha most refined dictates 
 of conscience, a great indiference to considerations of 
 emolument and fame, a contempt of vain customs and 
 amusements, and therefore, in the combination and result of 
 all these qualities, a character prodigiously elevated above 
 anything that the world in general has ever consented to 
 acknowledge as its standard of morals and religion. "We 
 turned from these models of transcendent excellence, to 
 inspect the character of Dr. Paley, as drawn by a very 
 sensible friend and admirer. In high estimation of his 
 talents and writings, we yield hut in a very slight degree to 
 this or any other of his eulogists ; and in those particular 
 features of his works, which deny us the pleasure of ap- 
 proving and admiring, we are very unwilling to perceive 
 indications of qualities, which a religious observer must be 
 compelled to disapprove in his character. But in viewing 
 the character displayed in the book before us, we find every 
 tendency to that enthusiasm, vsrith which we contemplate 
 the highest order of human excellence, completely arrested. 
 We calculate with pensive wonder the width of moral space 
 through which we find we have been suddenly conveyed, 
 Vhen we contrast the affectionate veneration, and the pas- 
 sionate aspirings to resemblance, which we have just felt in 
 thinking of those men, several of whose names we have 
 mentioned, with the state of our feelings in the company of 
 the subject of these Memoirs. There is presented to us, 
 indeed, a combination of highly respectable qualities ; love 
 of truth, independence of character with respect to the rich 
 and great, orderly attention to the concerns and mioistra- 
 tions of the church, impartiality in discharging the duties of 
 a magistrate, kindness in domestic relations, and patience 
 in suffering. Now, with regard to the ordinary tribe of 
 divines, we suppose it would be thought very illiberal to 
 insist, that something more than this is desirable in a man 
 who is appointed an instructor, monitor, and pattern to 
 mankind, in relation to infinitely the most momentous of 
 their concerns : the present times are indulgent in fixing 
 the standard of clerical piety. Passing over the question, — 
 
DEFECTS OF HIS EELIGIOUS CUAHACTEB. 317 
 
 •whether, with the awful importance of religion, and the 
 nature of the consequent responsibility of its teachers, full 
 in our view, we are bound to concur in this law of indul- 
 gence, — we may at least confidently assume, that an emi- 
 nently conspicuous and powerful advocate of Christianity, 
 ought to have been distinguished by a spirit peculiarly sym- 
 pathetic with that of the Pounder, and that of the apostles, 
 martyrs, and confessors of this religion. Por surely he that 
 in modern times has a more impressive view than almost all 
 his contemporaries of its evidence and excellence, possesses 
 something strikingly in common v?ith its first promulgators. 
 His more luminous view of the truth and divine excellence 
 of the religion, places him on a ground of nearly equal pri- 
 vilege with that of those persons, who commenced its dis- 
 ciples and advocates actually amidst the prodigies that 
 attended its first introduction. But to have embraced the 
 religion under the immediate impression of those miracles, 
 which gave direct proof from heaven of its being not only 
 true, but, in the divine estimation, of inexpressible import- 
 ance, and then to have been less than ardently zealous in 
 the exercise and promotion of it, would have been deemed 
 an unpardonable inconsistency. It would have been ex- 
 pected, and even required, of that man, that he should be 
 inspired and actuated by the divine principles thus received 
 into his mind, as much almost as if a spirit had descended 
 from heaven to inhabit his person, and determine the whole 
 system of his sentiments and agency. And, therefore, 
 nearly the same result is justly required from the man in 
 later times, who, being favoured with a superlative clearness 
 of conviction, is placed lq nearly as high a rank of privilege 
 as the original converts and advocates. 
 
 If this be true, the Memoirs of Dr. Paley cannot be read 
 vrithout considerable regret. Sincerely gratified to observe 
 and applaud his excellent and amiable qualities, we yet in 
 vain endeavour to avoid perceiving a very serious deficiency 
 of what we think the spirit of primitive Christianity. Not- 
 withstanding much moral worth, there is something un- 
 saintly spread over the character. A respectable man of 
 the world seems to meet us, when we wish to see a person 
 that will remind us of the Apostles., It is not to be noted 
 as a fault, that Paley had not the great passions which, 
 
318 palet's memoirs. 
 
 when combined with great talents, can make a character 
 sublime : his constitution denied him that warmth and 
 energy which can throw the mind into fits of enthusiasm, 
 which can make good men captivating, and bad ones danger- 
 ously seductiTe. However favourable this incapability of 
 great emotions might be to purely intellectual operations, 
 its obvious tendency was to withhold the mind from being 
 completely grasped by that religion, of which the efficacy 
 depends so much on the affections ; and to deprive the 
 clearest intellectual representations made in its favour, in 
 preaching and writing, of that very powerful principle of 
 efficacy which they derive from the mingling sensibility, 
 which can give a character of sentiment and vitality to 
 every argument, without in the least injuring its logic. 
 The natural incapability of great emotions operates very 
 strongly to prevent the prevalence of the Christian spirit 
 in the man, and in the minister and vindicator of religion, 
 unless an appropriate discipline is adopted to obviate this 
 injurious effect. That discipliue would consist, in habitu- 
 ating the mind to dwell much on the most solemn and 
 affecting views of revelation, in employing a considerable 
 portion of time in exercises strictly devotional, in reading 
 those writers who have infused an irresistible pathos into 
 their Christian discussions, and in frequently seeking the 
 society of those who are distinguished by zeal and devo- 
 tional feelings as well as intelligence. In these Memoirs it 
 is not made to appear that Dr. Paley had recourse to such a 
 moral regimen. 
 
 We are not informed of any special anxiety in his early 
 instructors to make the impressions of religion deep in his 
 mind. At college he confessedly associated, during the first 
 years, with some young men of very light character. Among 
 the many friends with whom he was more or less intimate 
 during his subsequent life, there are very few names that 
 have ever been distinguished for elevated piety. We are 
 not told that, in the society of accomplished men, whom he 
 must often have found strangers or enemies to Christianity, 
 he was watchful to insinuate its claims. We are not told 
 bhat, amidst that general repute for deficient piety, and for 
 worldly motives and habits, into which he found the clerical 
 character fallen, he was earnest to display, in the person of 
 
OECrLAE HABITS. 3.19 
 
 the ablest defender of religion, a striking pattern of that 
 moral separation, that refined sanctity, and that superiority 
 even to all suspicion of acceding and adhering to the eccle- 
 siastical profession on any terms involving the sacrifice of 
 conscientious principles to worldly interests, without which 
 the clerical character never will or can be revered by the 
 people. "We lament to feel that we are not contemplating 
 a character, which we dare hold up for such a pattern, in a 
 memoir which represents Dr. Paley's habits as very much 
 assimilated to those of what may be called respectable men 
 of the world ; which condescends to teU that he " frequently 
 mixed in card-parties, and was considered a skilful player at 
 whist;" which informs us, that even when approaching near 
 to old age, " he still retained his predilection for theatrical 
 amusements, especially when any eminent performer from 
 the metropolis appeared upon a neighbouring stage," and 
 that " in a provincial theatre he always seated himself as 
 near as possible to the front of the centre box ;" none of 
 which circumstances are adapted to allay the disapproba- 
 tion and disgust with which we see him surrendering his 
 integrity, according to our judgment of the case, in the 
 affair of subscription. Ifor does it give us all the pleasing 
 images which poets, and indeed much more sober men, have 
 associated with the character of a Christian pastor, when we 
 see a clergyman, much after the manner of an exciseman, 
 removed from living to living, in a long succession of still 
 advancing emoluments, and without any mention, as far as 
 we remember, that either the minister or the people sufiered 
 much from regret in these separations. We are very far 
 from regarding him as a hunter of preferment, or as capable 
 of practising any degree of sycophancy to what are called 
 great men, either in the church or the state. He was most 
 honourably superior to those vUe arts of servility and 
 flattery which have so often been rewarded with titles and 
 emoluments ; and he signally proved his independence, by 
 publishing, at a time when he must have regarded his ad- 
 vancement in the church as depending, such opinions on 
 religious liberty and the principles of political science, as 
 could not fail to be very offensive to that class of persons, 
 whom the aspirants to preferment find it their interest, and 
 therefore their duty to please. But though his successive 
 
320 palsy's memoirs. 
 
 augmentations of emolument, obtained by means of plural- 
 ities and of changes of situation, were conferred without 
 being solicited, and conferred on eminent desert, yet the 
 whole course of these successes carries in our view, a strange 
 resemblance to a trading concern. It looks just as if cures 
 of souls were things measured and proportioned out, on an 
 ascending scale of pecuniary value, for the purpose of hand- 
 some emolument to men, who have happened to apply talents 
 to the service of the church, which might fairly have been 
 expected to make a fortune if exerted ia some other depart- 
 ment. The consideration of the spiritual welfare of these 
 successive allotments of souls, and the beneficent effect that 
 would result from that affectionate attachment which might 
 grow between the minister and his people, if he did not 
 officiate among them just as a man who is obliged to stop a 
 while in his journey toward some richer parish, appear really 
 as but very secondary matters. 
 
 In reverting to all we have said in dissatisfaction with the 
 religious character of Dr. Paley, it is right to observe that 
 we cannot know precisely how much of the blame is due to 
 his biographer. Certainly, the specific fact of his setting his 
 people the example of pushing into a theatre, which every 
 body that has been there knows to be a school of profane- 
 neas and immorality, will alone perfectly warrant a large 
 and sweeping conclusion as to the defectiveness of his reli- 
 gious feelings and habits, and as to the strange laxity of his 
 conception of the proprieties of consistency for a distin- 
 guished advocate of the religion of Christ ; yet there might, 
 at times, be better aspects of the character, and his posthu- 
 mous Sermons lead us to believe there certainly were. A 
 biographer who had felt that religion is the most important 
 thing which can prevail or be wanting in any human being, 
 would have been eager to bring these aspects fully into view. 
 But we are not permitted to know whether this writer 
 regards religion, Christianity, or whatever we may call it, as 
 anything more than one of the many uncertain and unim- 
 portant subjects of human speculation. He judges it indeed, 
 a very proper professional ground of clerical exertion : an 
 ecclesiastic should be clever in his own business ; Dr. 
 Paley proved himself eminently so in his " Evidences of 
 Christianity ;" and, therefore, he deserved well ofihe churclt 
 
PALET'S EA.ELT mjS. 321 
 
 as an institution that has honours and emoluments to confer. 
 This is about the amount of what we are enabled to collect 
 of the present biographer's estimate of religion. And there- 
 fore we regard him as totally unqualified to mark the points 
 of religious excellence or defect in any character. If to 
 those who had the privilege of acquaintance and friendship, 
 T)r. Paley did sometimes disclose a considerable degree of 
 devotional feeling, a writer like the present would probably 
 be unwilling to display the philosopher verging toward the 
 "fanatic." Or, if toward the close of his life, he had been 
 heard to express bitter regret, for not having lived more in 
 the spirit of that religion which he had defended (not that 
 we ever heard he did this), our author would have carefully 
 concealed a weakness so symptomatic of decaying under- 
 standing. 
 
 The religious character, therefore, of this eminent man, 
 remaining a subject for the discernment and justice of some 
 other biographer, we recommend the volume before us, as 
 a sensible, well-written account of the chief occurrences in 
 his life, and of the prominent distinctions of his talents and 
 social habits. It has the particular value of giving a larger 
 portion of characteristic anecdotes, than is usually afforded 
 in the memoirs of a scholar and author. These anecdotes 
 show a striking identity of character in all the stages of 
 Paley's life. In the school-boy and in the archdeacon we 
 have the same gay humour, logical shrewdness, attention to 
 matters of fact, preference of practical to theoretical prin- 
 ciples, moderate but constant regard to worldly interest, and 
 perfect exemption from the pertubations of romantic senti- 
 ment. His father early entertained a high estimate of his 
 faculties, and was much nearer the truth in his predictions 
 than usually happens in matters of parental prophecy. "My 
 son is now gone to college, — he'll turn out a great man — 
 very great indeed, — I'm certain of it : for he has by far the 
 clearest head I ever met with in my life." (P. V.) At 
 school he was — 
 
 " more attentive to things than words, and ardent in the pur- 
 suit of knowledge of every kind. He was curious in making 
 inquiries about mechanism, whenever he had an opportunity of 
 conversing with any workmen, or others capable of affordiug 
 him satisfactory information. In his mind he was uncommonly 
 
 T 
 
322 palet's memoies. 
 
 active ; in his lody quite the reverse. He was a bad hoiseman, 
 and incapable of those exertions which required adroitness in 
 the use of the hands or feet. He consequently never engaged in 
 the ordinary sports of school-boys ; but he was fond of angling — 
 an amusement in which he did not then excel, though his attach- 
 ment to it seems to have continued through life. He was much 
 esteemed by his school-fellows, as possessing many good qualities, 
 and being at all times a pleasant and lively companion. He 
 frequently amused the young circle by the successful mimicking 
 of a mouixtebank quack-doctor, in vending his powders. Having 
 one year attended the assizes at Lancaster, he was so much 
 taken with the proceedings of the criminal court, that on his 
 return to school, he used to preside there as a judge, and to have 
 the other boys brought up before him as prisoners for trial. 
 This circumstance, trifling as it may appear to the superficial 
 observer, is not unimportant, as it marks his earliest attention 
 to the practice of courts of justice, and to criminal law." — P. 3. 
 
 His mind seems to have possessed a natural conformity 
 to those rigid laws of thought, to which the greatest number 
 of thinking men can but imperfectly subject themselves by 
 the severest discipline ; and we predict the envy of nineteen 
 students in twenty, and confess our own, in reading part of 
 the following paragraph : — 
 
 " Being thus left to himself (at college) he applied, however, 
 most assidxously to those studies required by the university; in 
 the pursuit of which he had frequent opportunity -to show the 
 concentration of mind which he possessed iu an extraordinary 
 degree. His room (for he seldom locked his door by night or 
 day) used to be the common rendezvous of the idle young men 
 of his college ; yet, notwithstanding all their noise and nonsense, 
 he might be often seen in one corner, as composed and attentive 
 to what he was reading as if he had been alone. But as, besides 
 the interruption which such loungers must at times have given 
 him, he was remarkable for indulging himself in bed till a very 
 late hour in the morning, and for being much in company after 
 dinner, at tea, and at a coffee-house at nine o'clock in the evening, 
 it is probable that he was more indebted to observation and 
 reflection than to books for the general improvement of his 
 mind."— P. 9. 
 
 "VVe should not be quite so much pleased as the biographer 
 seems to be, to acknowledge that perhaps we owe Dr. Paley's 
 great works to a particular incident that decided him to a 
 
PALET AT COLLEGE. 323 
 
 more studious course ; tHough we would infinitely rather be 
 indebted for them to that, or even any meaner cause, than 
 not possess them at all. 
 
 " In the year 1795, during one of his visits to Cambridge, Dr. 
 Paley, in the course of a conversation on the subject, gave the 
 following account of the early part of his academical life ; and 
 it is here given on the authority, and in the very words, of a 
 gentleman who was present at the time, as a striking instance 
 of the peculiar frankness with which he was in the habit of 
 relating the adventures of his youth. 
 
 " I spent the first two years of my undergraduateship happily, 
 but unprofitably. I was constantly in society where we were 
 not immoral, but idle and rather expensive. At the commence- 
 ment of my third year, however, after having left the usual 
 party at rather a late hour in the evening, I was awakened at 
 five in the morning by one of my companions, who stood at my 
 
 bedside and said — ' Paley, I have been thinking what a d 'd 
 
 fool you are. I could do nothing, probably, were I to try, and 
 can afford the life I lead : you could do everything, and cannot 
 afford it. I have had no sleep during the whole night on account 
 of these reflections, and I am now come solemnly to inform you, 
 that if you persist in your indolence, I must renounce your 
 society. 
 
 " ' I was so struck,' Dr Paley continued, ' with the visit and 
 visitor, that I lay in bed great part of the day, and formed my 
 plan. I ordered my bed-maker to prepare my fire every evening, 
 in order that it might be lighted by myself. I rose at five, read 
 during the whole of the day, and just before the closing of gates 
 (nine o'clock) I went to a neighbouring coffee-house, where I 
 constantly regaled upon a mutton chop and a dose of milk- 
 punch. And thus, on taking my bachelor's degree, I became 
 senior wrangler.' 
 
 " Thus fortunately was Dr. Paley roused to a full exertion of 
 his faculties before his habits were completely formed ; and to 
 this singular adventure may, perhaps, be attributed, not only 
 his successful labours, as a college tutor, but the invaluable 
 productions of his pen." — ^P. 193. 
 
 A very entertaining account is given of his college dispu- 
 tations; of his becoming an assistant in an academy at Grreen- 
 wich ; of Ms gaining an university prize by the best disserta- 
 tion on the comparative merits of the Stoic and .Epicurean 
 philosophy, in wnieh he was the advocate of the latter ; of 
 his entering on the clerical office, and of his tutorship, of 
 several years' duration, in Hs college, in which he was asao- 
 
 T 2 
 
821 PALET'S MEM0IB8. 
 
 ciated witt Mr. Law, sou of the Bishop of Carlisle, with 
 whom, and with Dr. Jebb, and other distinguished persons, 
 he maintained a lasting friendship. There is an interesting 
 description of his manner of lecturing, on metaphysics, 
 morals, the Greek Testament, and divinity. We sincerely 
 join in the writer's regret, that some of these lectures, espe- 
 cially the illustrations of Locke, Clarke, and Butler, and of 
 the New Testament, had not been preserved. They were all 
 given without any set formality or previous arrangement of 
 words ; he adopted much of a conversational manner, asked 
 questions, and permitted and induced, by his shrewdness 
 and humour, occasional short intervals of hUarity, and 
 employed, with the utmost success, erery expedient for pre- 
 cluding the dulness and inattention usually incident to such 
 exercises. "We must transcribe the conclusion of the account 
 of the lectures on the Greek Testament. 
 
 " But he carefully avoided all sectarian disputes, taking for 
 his model, Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity, and On 
 the Epistles, works which he frequently recommended. The 
 Thirty-nine Articles of Eeligion he treated sis mere articles of 
 peace, the whole of which it was impossible the framers could 
 expect any one person to believe, as upon dissection they would 
 be found to contain about two hundred and forty distinct and 
 independent propositions, many of them inconsistent with each 
 other. They must, therefore, he said, be considered as proposi- 
 tions, which, for the sake of keeping peace among the different 
 sects of reformers, who originally united in composing the Church 
 of England, it was agreed should not be impugned or preached 
 against. The chief points insisted on by Mr. Paley to his pupils 
 \yere, that they should listen to God, and not to man ; that they 
 should exert their faculties in understanding the language of 
 holy men of old ; that they should free themselves, aa much as 
 dossible, from all prejudices of birth, education, and country ; 
 and that they should not call any one their master in religion 
 but Jesus Christ." 
 
 The last sentence the author quotes (with a reference) 
 from the Universal Magazine for 1805. The opinion advanced 
 in the above extract was afterwards matured into a short 
 and weLL-known chapter on Subscription, in the Moral and 
 Political Philosophy, where it is stated that — 
 
 ■♦ they who contend, that nothing less can justify subscription 
 
ON STJBSCElPTIOir TO THE AETICLES. 325 
 
 to the Thirty-nine Articles, than the actual belief of each and 
 every separate proposition contained in them, must suppose, that 
 the legislature expected the consent of ten thousand men, and 
 that in perpetual succession — not to one controverted proposi- 
 tion, but to many hundreds. It is difBcult to conceive how this 
 could be expected by any who observed the incurable diversity 
 of human opinion upon all subjects short of demonstration." — 
 Vol. I. p. 217. 
 
 It is not a little mortifying to see a man so superlatively 
 intelligent, and in many points so honest, as Paley, and to 
 see so vast a number of other men who declare themselves 
 moved by the Holy Grhost, descending to this renunciation 
 of the simplicity of reason and conscience. Dr. Paley knew, 
 and vi'e are confident that every individual, who after serious 
 consideration subscribes the Articles, knows, that the framers 
 and imposers of them did intend and require that every 
 proposition they contain should be believed by the persons 
 subscribing them. He knew, and they all know, that in 
 provident contemplation of the quibbles, reservations, and 
 evasions to which men might be dishonest enough to have 
 recourse, in order to obtain the benefits of the Establishment 
 without satisfying the intentions of its founders, the autho- 
 ritative instruments of sanction and prescription which 
 accompany these articles are expressed with the minute and 
 pleonastic phraseology of legal precaution. They know that 
 the assent is required precisely to " all and every of them ;" 
 and that in the " plain and full meaning thereof," and " in 
 the literal and grammatical sense," " the least difference 
 from the said articles" being strictly " prohibited." They 
 know that the terms of the imposition are as precise, and 
 comprehensive, and absolute, as language can make them ; 
 insomuch that if a series of articles, in the nature of a poli- 
 tical or commercial arrangement, or any other secular insti- 
 tution, were accompanied by the definitive sanction of the 
 institutors in forms and terms of authoriiation so carefully 
 select, express, and comprehensive, the man who should 
 pretend to raise a question, whether the institutors really 
 meant " all and every" of those articles to be strictly autho- 
 ritative on every person entering on the benefit of that 
 institution, would instantly come to be regarded as unfit for 
 civilued society. It is something much worse than trifling 
 
326 PALET'S MEMOIBS. 
 
 to allege, that the imposers could not intend to exact a full 
 assent because the articles contain several hundred proposi- 
 tions, and some of them contradictory to others. That 
 errors, and even contradictions maj, according to the opinion 
 of the examiner, be detected in a creed drawn up by fallible 
 men, is no reason for surmising that they did not them- 
 selves solemnly believe it in every part. And as to the ar- 
 gument — that to expect ten thousand men, and that in 
 perpetual succession, to believe all these propositions, is 
 so gross an absurdity, that it is impossible to suppose the 
 framers and imposers of the articles could really expect 
 such a thing, — we may observe, that it would indicate an 
 extremely slender knowledge of ecclesiastical history, to 
 question whether the heads of churches and states have 
 ever been capable of assuming it to be a possible thing to 
 effect a imiformity of faith, and a reasonable thing to 
 expect and command it. But there is no occasion for 
 argument ; the certain matter of fact is, that the framers 
 and imposers of the Thirty-nine Articles did require this 
 complete assent. Let the man, therefore, who is resolved 
 to maintain freedom of opinion, honestly take the ecclesias- 
 tical institution as what it is, and he may fairly make, if he 
 pleases, as many objections as it has articles, while he 
 preserves his consistency and integrity by decliuiag to 
 place himseK within its obligations. But it is meanlj' 
 disingenuous, nor can we comprehend how it can be other- 
 wise than utterly immoral, for this man, in order to enable 
 himself to pursue his own interests by entering the church, 
 to pretend that its grand law of doctrine must not and 
 cannot mean that, which it has notoriously talcen all possible 
 care to express that it absol/utely does mean, and absolutely 
 does enjoin. By extending this priviledge of conscience a 
 few degrees further, a Mahometan or Pagan may subscribe 
 che articles and enter the church, if he has any object to 
 gain by it. He may say, " Here is a large formulary of 
 opinions, comprising several hundred propositions, not all 
 even consistent with one another. Now it had been most 
 absurd for the imposers to require that every subscriber 
 should believe all these ; it is absurd . therefore to suppose 
 they did require it. And since this formula, which is the 
 only authoritative prescription by which I can learn what 
 
ON SrBSCEIPTION TO THE AETICXiJ^S. 327 
 
 I aa required to believe, gives me no certain information 
 on the subject, I may fairly regard the whole affair as a 
 matter of discretion." 
 
 Dr. Paley represents, that the animus imponentis must be 
 taken as the rule for the degree of assent required in sub- 
 scribing the articles. Let us then, in imagination, go back 
 for a moment to the time when the articles were solemnly 
 appointed to be perpetually imposed ; and let us suppose a 
 man like Dr. Paley to have presented himself before the 
 bishops who framed, and the legislature which imposed them, 
 to inquire concerning the animus, the real, plain meaning 
 and intention, with which these articles were composed and 
 enforced. Would not the reply have been most indignant, 
 or most contemptuous ? " You ask the intention ; why, 
 you can read the articles, can you not ? Our intention is of 
 course conveyed in what we have solemnly and deliberately 
 set forth. And we intend all that is set forth ; for would it 
 become us, and on such an occasion, to employ ourselves in 
 the construction of needless and nugatory propositions ? 
 And we conceive we have enounced our propositions with 
 sufficient clearness ; it is not possible you are come here 
 to insult us vrith an insinuation, that the result of our 
 grave, deliberate, and combined labours, is an assemblage of 
 jargon which needs an explanatory declaration to tell what 
 we mean by it all. As to what you surmise about our 
 object being to keep Papists, Anabaptists, and Puritans out 
 of the church, it would be no concern of yours, if that were 
 our principal object ; your business is with the articles as 
 we have judged it proper to set them forth ; but in fact, the 
 exclusion of these sects is only one among the several good 
 ends to be answered ; we mean to secure the purity of our 
 church by excluding all that the full and plain meaning of 
 our articles will exclude. It is, therefore, your concern, as 
 you will answer it at your peril, to maintain ail and every 
 of them inviolably, in their true and literal meaning." 
 
 As to what Dr. Paley is stated to have maintained in his 
 Lectures, that " the articles must be considered as pro- 
 positions which, for the sake of keeping peace among the 
 different sects of Eeformers, who originally united in com- 
 posing the Church of England, it was agreed should not be 
 impugned or preached against," it is sufficient to observe, 
 
828 palet's memoies. 
 
 that these propositions are, by his own account, so very 
 numerous, that it is quite impossible for any man to preach 
 on religion at all, without either impugning or directly 
 adopting a very great number of them. Tney are so minute 
 and comprehensive, that they leave but a very small space 
 for the practice of that reserve and avoidance implied in this 
 "keeping peace," if the phrase has any meaning. 
 
 In short, the national church either has a defined doc- 
 trinal basis, or it has not. If it has not, what a mockery 
 has been practising in its name on the nation and on 
 Christendom for several centuries, in representing it as, 
 next the Scriptures, the most faithful depository, and the 
 grandest luminary of the Christian religion ; while the truth 
 has been, as we are now called upon by some of its ablest 
 members to understand, that it has really, during all this 
 time, had no standard of doctrine at all, — the instrument, 
 purporting to be such, having been in fact nothing more 
 than a petty contrivance to keep out two or three disagree- 
 able sects. If the church has a defined doctrinal basis, that 
 basis can be no other than the Thirty-nine Articles. And 
 these articles, taken in their literal meaning, are essential to 
 the constitution of the church ; else, they are still nothing 
 at all ; they impose no obligation, and can preserve or pre- 
 clude no modes of opinion whatever. And their being thus 
 essential to the church, means that they are essential to be, 
 all and every of them, faithfully believed and taught by all 
 its ministers. Therefore, finally, every man who says he 
 cannot subscribe, or has not subscribed, the articles, in this 
 upright manner, says, in other words, that he has no 
 business in the church. It is not the question what the 
 articles ought to have been ; he must take them as they are ; 
 and by the same rule that he must take any one of them he 
 must take them all, as they all stand exactly on the same 
 authority. Till they are modified or changed by that 
 authority which was competent to constitute, and is com- 
 petent to alter, the ecclesiastical institution, any clergyman 
 who remains in the church disbelieving any one proposition 
 in its articles, violates the sanctity and integrity of the 
 church, and, as far as we are able to comprehend, must 
 violate his own conscience. He cannot but know, that on 
 the same principle on which he presumes to invalidate one 
 
EOSE ON rox's HISTOET. 329 
 
 article, other men may invalidate any or all of the remainder, 
 and thus the church may become a perfect anarchy, a 
 theatre of confusion and all manner of heresies. According 
 to this view of the subject, Dr. Paley had no right to enter 
 the church, or remain in it ; aud by doing so, he dishonoured 
 his principles. He is thus placed in a striking and unfortu- 
 nate contrast with such men as Jebb and Lindsey, whose 
 consciences were of too high a quality to permit such an 
 unsound and treacherous connexion with the Established 
 Church ; and in a parallel, not less striking and unfortunate, 
 with such a man as Stone ! 
 
 This ungracious subject has unexpectedly detained us so 
 long, that no room is left for other observations which had 
 occurred to us in reading these Memoirs. By means of his 
 situations in the church, and of his writings. Dr. Paley 
 appears to have made a good fortune. His biographer 
 loudly complains, notwithstanding, of the scanty patronage 
 and preferment in which he was fated to acquiesce ; and in 
 a strain that really sounds very much like saying, that these 
 things were the appropriate and grand reward for which he 
 was to prosecute all his labours. "We have no doubt, how- 
 ever, that Dr. Paley had motives of a higher order than his 
 friend seems capable of appreciating; while, with all our 
 perception of his very serious defects, we rejoice in the 
 benefit that present and future ages will derive from those 
 writings in which he has so powerfully defended religion. 
 
 EOSE ON EOX'S HISTOET. 
 
 Olservations on the Historical Worh of the Right Honowrahle Charles 
 James Fox. By the Right Honourable George Rose. With 
 the Narrative of the Events which occurred in the Enterprise of 
 Earl of Argyle, in 1686. By Sir Patrick HtruB. 4to. 1809. 
 
 It is presumed that a certain portion of mankind hate the 
 intellectual despotism which is felt to be maintained by pre- 
 eminent talents, in however liberal a spirit they are exerted ; 
 and are therefore extremely gratified to see men of ordinary 
 
330 BosE oiT fox's histoet. 
 
 abilities gain an advantage, m any instance, through industry 
 or good luck, over men of the highest genius. To the read- 
 ing part of this class of persons the present volume vciU. be 
 peculiarly acceptable ; and on the other hand, to those who 
 are tempted absolutely to worship great talents, it will not 
 be a little mortifying, though salutary as a check on idolatry, 
 to see such a man as Mr. Pox write a book to be refuted by 
 such a man as Mr. Eose. The case is made still worse, when 
 we recollect that the illustrious historian was several years 
 in preparing his work ; and find the present writer modestly 
 pleading, in extenuation of any imperfections in his own 
 performance, that he was obliged to compose it " in little 
 more than the same number of weeks," and that too " in the 
 midst of almost unremitting attention to official duties, which 
 take equally from the disembarrassment of the mind as from 
 the leisure of time." In whatever degree this examiner 
 appears to be successful in the detection of errors in the 
 historian, we are so much more confirmed in the opinion (to 
 which we could not help inclining ever since first hearing of 
 Mr. Fox's undertaking), that he might have found far better 
 employment for his incomparable talents. It was obvious, 
 and the present publication makes it stiU more obvious, what 
 loads of old records and tedious worm-eaten documents it 
 would be necessary to ransack, in order to do complete 
 historical justice to the period in question ; an employment 
 inexpressibly dull, consumptive of time, repressive of 
 eloquence, and productive of diminutive results, compared 
 with the quantity of labour. That a person like the writer 
 before us should be so occupied, under some adequate se- 
 curity _ for his impartiality in exhibiting those results, we 
 think is excellent ; and we are most sincerely sorry that 
 such a troublesome pressure of " official duties," (including 
 of course the really very onerous toil of counting aU their 
 emoluments) should havediverted somuch of his industry from 
 so proper a department. But to occupy a mind like that of 
 Fox, in such a business, would be, as Burke said, " to yoke 
 a courser of the sun to a mud-cart." 
 
 The various persons who may, in the present time, be 
 designing each to become the historian of some long period, 
 or some remote nation, will not derive much aninTation or 
 confidence to their hopes, from seeing how many questii)us 
 
TINDIOATION Or SIB PATEICK; HT7ME. 33i 
 
 of fact, ■witbin the narrow compass of a short modern period 
 of own history, may be kept in a state of interminable con- 
 troversy ; and that even the extensive and sagacious inqui- 
 sition of Mr Pox might fail to collect all the information 
 necessary for such a section of history. It will not be a very 
 gratifying consideration, that half a moderately long life will 
 hardly suffice for the mere purpose of research, imless they 
 they should prudently choose a period or country concerning 
 which there are very few documents, — that the correct and 
 decisive evidence, on this and the other doubtful point, 
 perhaps lies in some chest of mouldy papers, which they do 
 not even know to exist, — and that after they shall have 
 bequeathed a splendid performance to posterity, and perhaps 
 made their exit in the proud confidence of immortal fame, 
 somebody that shall be at once inquisitive and dull enough 
 to rummage the said chest, may come and cut up some of 
 their most refined theories, sage reflections, or eloquent 
 declamations, by producing a quotation from some manuscript 
 letter, or memoir, just barely legible, of Lord A., or Sir 
 William B., the mirrors, in their day, of ministerial or 
 diplomatic vnsdom, virtue, and intrigue. 
 
 When Fox's interesting posthumous fragment, accom- 
 panied by Lord Holland's observations on the anxious and 
 elaborate accuracy of the historian, came into the hands of 
 Mr. Eose, it was very natural that the whole resources of 
 his ample knowledge of our political history should be put 
 in requisition ; and that certain feelings respecting Fox and 
 the political principles of which he was the champion, might 
 prompt a renewed and more minute scrutiny into some par- 
 ticular points of the history. Fox's work, besides, in the 
 part which narrates the expedition of Argyle, contains some 
 accusations of Sir Patrick Hume, who was the ancestor of 
 a late Lord Marchmont, who was the particular friend of 
 Mr. Eose, and " deposited with him, as a sacred trust, all 
 the MSS. of his family, with an injunction to make use of 
 them, if Mr. Eose should ever find it necessary." Of course 
 it has become absolutely necessary, in consequence of Mr. 
 Pox's imputations, to publish some of these papers, espe- 
 cially Sir Patrick's narrative of the expedition. It was 
 impossible that any honest man in England should enjoy 
 peace of mind, till he should have it on Sir Patrick's own 
 
332 HOSE ON roi's histoet. 
 
 word that he was not a factious officer in that expedition, and 
 did not contribute to its unfortunate termination. Neither 
 was it possible to suppose that the events which were taking 
 place in Spaia at the time dated at the end of the preface to 
 this work, or the events taking place on the banks of the 
 Danube about the time of its publication, might occupy the 
 public mind too strongly for it to become deeply interested 
 in hearing of the intimate friendship which subsisted 
 between Lord Marchmont and Mr. George Eose. Every- 
 thing, therefore, relating to Sir Patrick Hume and his 
 descendants, and their friendships, is with the utmost pro- 
 priety given to the world in this costly quarto. It is one of 
 the calamities of this nation that there cannot be found 
 and published ample documents relating to every man 
 whose name has been mentioned, and whose conduct has 
 been incorrectly or questionably stated, throughout the 
 whole history of all our civil wars. This would contribute 
 to allay the apprehensions with which we are sometimes 
 visited, lest the good people of England should be impelled, 
 for the pure sake of a little stimulus to the faculties, into 
 another civil war, by the intolerable tcsdium mice, occasioned 
 by their having absolutely nothing to read and nothing 
 to do. 
 
 With respect to the observations on the other parts of 
 Eox's work, we ought to recall any surmise we have inad- 
 vertently hinted, as to motives which might be supposed to 
 have induced a staunch political opponent to ransack all 
 manner of records, printed and unprinted, for means of 
 invalidating the statements or reasonings of the historiaH. 
 It is only, however, in the case of an eminently and noto- 
 riously disinterested person, like the present writer, that 
 we can feel ourselves bound to give entire credit, when he 
 represents himself as actuated in such an undertaking by a 
 pure love of truth and the public good. Conformably with 
 so worthy a motive for entering on a work, it would seem 
 that, in this one rare instance, the execution of it has been 
 regulated by a still more conscientiously rigid impartiality, 
 than if the performance animadverted on had not been that 
 of an opponent. For, adverting to the unfavourable impres- 
 sion with which the public may receive such a work, from a 
 " man who had been very long honoured with the confidence, 
 
IITTEODTrCTOEr OBSEKTATIONS. 333 
 
 and enjoyed the affectionate friendsHp of Mr. Eox's political 
 opposer," he is pleased to add, " I am certain that from this 
 feeling I have been more scrupulous both of my authorities 
 and of my own opinions, than I might have been in com- 
 menting on the work of any other author." This public 
 spirit in the motives, and this annihilation of all party pre- 
 judices in the execution, were peculiarly necessary, and are 
 highly acceptable, in a work, which, though professing the 
 utmost admiration of Mr. Pox, and acquitting him of all 
 wilful misrepresentation, rests its chief claim to attention on 
 its engagement to prove, that he habitually contemplated 
 the characters and events of our history through the per- 
 verting medium of his favourite political principles. 
 
 After aU this disturbance given to so many dusty reposi- 
 tories of national and personal records, we will acknowledge 
 our attention and solicitudes are too much engrossed by 
 more recent events, and by prospects at present opening, to 
 comprehend how the people of these times should feel any 
 great concern about the principal matters of fact or opinion 
 which this writer contests with the historian. While stand- 
 ing amidst the ruins of Europe, — and while witnessing the 
 rapid dilapidation of that famed constitution, the supposed 
 final consolidation of which has usually been accounted the 
 greatest work of that age, to a part of which the perform- 
 ances of Mr. Pox and this author relate, — we really think 
 that now no questions can well be of more trifling conse- 
 quence, than whether the execution of Strafford or Charles I, 
 was the more illegal, — whether General Monk was the very 
 basest man in the army, or only about as bad as his neigh- 
 bours, — whether the money which Charles II and James 
 received from the French king was for the purpose of cor- 
 rupting the parliament, or of enabling them to do without 
 it, — and whether the establishment of despotism or of 
 Popery was uppermost in James's designs. 
 
 There is some matter both of information and amusement, 
 and much good humour, in Mr. Hose's long and desultory 
 introduction. But what delights us above everything, is 
 some exquisite moral reflection. After exposing the emula- 
 tion in baseness of the leaders of the "Whigs and Tories in 
 the reign of Queen Anne, our veteran patriot utters the fol- 
 lowing observation •■ " In truth, ■ the conduct of many of 
 
834 BOSE ow rox's htstobt. 
 
 the leaders of both parties affords a disgusting picture of 
 what men may be induced to do by a love of power and of 
 situation." We cannot express how much we were gratified 
 by this appropriate and Catonic reflection from Mr. Greorge 
 Eose ; and by the consideration that, notwithstanding the 
 corruption of these times, there are stUl some venerable 
 statesmen, whose independence iji the senate, and whose 
 self-denial with regard to public emolument, give them an 
 eminent right thus to condemn their corrupt predecessors. 
 The popular cry of the present times has made it a duty, 
 we think, to transcribe for our readers a valuable piece of 
 moral philosophy, by which we have been much edified our- 
 
 " Whether in another situation he (Mr. Fox) might have acted 
 according to the demonstration of his principles in his book, 
 cannot perhaps with certainty be asserted ; the difference in 
 situation in the individual gives rise to different views from 
 different opportunities of information, without supposing any 
 inconsistency in the change. Every man conversant in matters 
 of state, will be cautious of imputing a fluctuation of mind, or 
 dereliction of principle, to the conduct of a minister, because it 
 is different from that which in opposition he supposed the beat, 
 or argued as the most expedient." — P. xxxiv. 
 
 We should be ashamed to think any reader could fail to 
 be convinced, by these observations, that an enlightened 
 and upright man, — who in the month of December judges it. 
 a most flagrant treason against a free constitution, or rather 
 an abnegation of its existence, that a regular traffic of sale 
 and exchange should be carried on in seats of parliament, 
 and that to an extent, which combined with corrupt influence, 
 entirely determines the character and measures of the as- 
 sembly, — may receive, during the ensuing January, on being 
 suddenly appointed a minister, such new lights on the 
 subject, as to be rationally and honestly persuaded, that 
 this same traffic is perfectly consistent with integrity, and 
 is a pure administration of a constitution which, if all that 
 great authorities have said and written abotit it be not a 
 farce, req^uires every man in the House of Commons be 
 freely chosen by the people. "We have alluded to this par- 
 ticular point of political conversion, because the passage we 
 
CHAELES I. AND lOED STEArPOEB. 335 
 
 have quoted stands in connexion with a complacent and 
 rather proud reference to Mr. Pitt and his principles. 
 
 The Observations are distributed in five sections ; we will 
 enumerate the principal points argued in them as briefly as 
 possible, and without the smallest attempt to follow the 
 author into any part of the historical research. In the first 
 section he animadverts on Pox's proposition, that the execu- 
 tion of Charles was a less violent measure than that of Lord 
 Strafford ; and maintains a contrary opinion, on the ground 
 that the one was only " an abuse or breach of a constitutional 
 law," whereas the other was a " total departure from, or 
 overturning of, the constitution itself." Without pretend- 
 ing to hold any settled opinion on the degree of justice or 
 iniquity in the judicial proceedings against Charles, and 
 their fatal conclusion, we think nothing can be more idle 
 than thus to pretend to bring, as a bar to those proceedings, 
 that very constitution which the monarch had done everything 
 in his power, by fraud and by force, to abrogate, so as at 
 length to have driven the nation to take up arms in order 
 either to recover that constitution, or to obtain the power of 
 framing and establishing some other that should better secure 
 their rights. Our author is more successful against that 
 part of Mr. Fox's observations, which alleges the publicity 
 and solemnity of the proceedings against the king, as an ex- 
 tenuation of their injustice. If the condemnation of the 
 king was unjust in abstract morality, — that is, if he had not 
 done anything in itself deserving the punishment of death, 
 in what mode or by what tribunal soever awarded, — it could 
 then be no palliation of the injustice toward him, that his 
 destruction was effected through a public judicial process 
 rather than a plot of private assassination. Or if, on the 
 other hand, the state of the case was, that, though the king 
 did on the ground of abstract justice deserve the punishment 
 of death, yet the relative justice of that punishment (that is, 
 the justice on the part of the agents of it), depended on the 
 political character and qualification of the authority that 
 was to pronounce the doom, and if no authority less than a 
 real national tribunal was duly qualified, — then no public 
 formality and solemnity could extenuate the injustice of a 
 court, which pronounced this doom without being thus 
 qualified. That the high court, before which Charies was 
 arraigned, was not really a national tribunal, is asserted by 
 
83U EOSE ON fox'b hisiobt. 
 
 Mr. Fox, where he says, that those judges, though some of 
 them were great and respectable men, were collectively to 
 be considered as in this instance the ministers of the usurper. 
 But Mr. Eose's reasonings are not perplexed with much of 
 this casuistry. He rests his condemnation of the proceed- 
 ings against the king, neither on the king's innocence, nor 
 on the circumstance that the court which tried him was to 
 be regarded as rather an instrument of Cromwell, than an 
 assembly truly representing the nation in this instance, and 
 acting as the organ of its authority and will. He describes 
 some mysterious y^s divinum in the ghost of the departed 
 constitution ; that constitution, which, if it had not been 
 previously destroyed by the king, must necessarily have 
 perished between the meeting points of the royal and popu- 
 lar arms. It was because this deceased constitution had 
 not furnished forms and precedents for the arraignment of 
 kings, that the appointed court had no authority, to proceed 
 against the fallen despot, who had strenuously endeavoured 
 the annihilation of liberty. 
 
 The correctness of Fox's estimate of General Monk is 
 next discussed, and we have a large quantity of negative 
 testimony and pleading in his defence. It would seem 
 that his advocate regards him as having failed but by a trifle 
 of being 
 
 " That faultless monster which the world ne'er saw ;'' 
 
 but he adopts a language strangely parsimonious of eulogy, 
 when it is considered that the subject of it was the betrayer 
 and seller of his country. "The character of Monk," he 
 says, "does not appear to be so perfect as to justify 
 unqualified praise being bestowed upon his memory : but," 
 &c. Now it is certainly possible to conceive crimes which 
 Monk did not commit ; he probably did not stab his father, 
 shoot his mother, or poison his wife. And Mr. Eose has 
 taken immense pains to invalidate the assertion, repeated 
 by Mr. Fox from Burnet, that Monk, " in the trial of the 
 Marquis of Argyle, produced letters of friendship and 
 confidence to take away the life of a nobleman, the zeal and 
 cordiality of whose co-operation with him, proved by such 
 documents, was the chief ground of his execution." So far 
 as the silence of a great number of records and other con- 
 temporary writings relating or alluding to that trial, can' 
 
STATE OF THE LAWS UNDEE CHABLES II. 337 
 
 disprove the ctarge, our author has shown it to be disproved ; 
 and he has certainly made out some strong cases against 
 Burnet's general accuracy as a historian. Admit then that 
 Monk did not destroy his father, mother, wife, or friend, 
 and that it is possible to reckon up some twenty other 
 crimes he did not commit ; but he laid his country defence- 
 less at the feet of one of the most notoriously depraved 
 creatures that ever trampled on it or any other ; and this we 
 must continue to think quite enough to keep him in his 
 conspicuous place on the list of infamy, — not with Mr. 
 Eose's consent, however, for there is not wanting in these 
 pages a round quantity of arguments in justification of his 
 preventing any conditions, in precaution against despotism, 
 being imposed on the monarch at his restoration. Of these 
 arguments, the following is the most ingenious : " The resto- 
 ration of the monarchy of England, might, in his opinion, 
 have implied all the limitations of its ancient constitution." 
 
 In correction of Fox's observation, that the reign of 
 Charles II. was the most distinguished era of good laws, 
 though of bad government, and of the opinion adopted from 
 Blackstone, that the year 1679 may be fixed on as the 
 period at which our constitution had arrived at its greatest 
 theoretical perfection, our author has exhibited great know- 
 ledge in showing that, of the alleged good laws, some were 
 in effect bad, and others not first enacted in his reign ; and 
 that, of the bad ones mentioned to have been abrogated, 
 some were no more than a dead letter, and others were 
 commuted for what was only not quite so oppressive. He 
 has shown that some of the laws most important to liberty 
 were passed at a later period, and that the reign of William 
 ought rather to be regarded as the consummation of the 
 laws and constitution. 
 
 There are but few points contested with Mr. Fox in the 
 second section, which chiefly relates to that infamous clan- 
 destine commerce in which Charles II. and some of his 
 courtiers sacrificed the interests of England and its allies to 
 Louis XIV., for sums of money to support their profligacy. 
 it is shown that Eox is mistaken in supposing that Charles 
 carefully concealed his base connexion with France from his 
 ministers, and in believing Lord Clarendon quite innocent 
 of any conceyn in it. It is proved from Clarendon's own 
 
 z 
 
S38 EosB ON rox's nrsTOHy. 
 
 state papers, that, soon after the restoration, tMs nohleman, 
 '.vhose integrity has been so often vaunted, degraded himself 
 50 far as to be the confidential manager of this vile con- 
 nexion. It was a worthy employment for a man who, in 
 aegotiating that restoration could act in conjunction with 
 Buch a person as Monk ; and deprecate any conditions in 
 the nature of precaution against the probable wickedness 
 and despotism of a prince whom he knew from his own 
 painful experience to be one of the most worthless profli- 
 gates on earth. — A curious article in this section is the 
 abstract of a secret treaty entered into by Louis and Charles 
 in 1670, by one stipulation of which Charles engages to 
 make a public declaration of his adherence to the Church of 
 Eome, and Louis promises to supply him with money and 
 troops in the event of this measure exciting any dangerous 
 disturbance in the nation. In reprobating the king's money 
 transactions with France, our author gets quite into the 
 strain of a virtuous patriot. 
 
 The third section is a long, laborious, and able discussion 
 of the .question, whether the establishment of Popery or of 
 despotism was the leading purpose of the designs and 
 measures of James II. Mr. Fox asserted and argued the 
 latter; a vast accumulation of strong testimony is here 
 brought to prove the former. To collect the evidence, our 
 author reviews James's proceedings in each of the three 
 kingdoms, adduces a multitude of instances of the eagerness 
 and pertinacity of his intentions in favour of the Catholics, 
 in some of which instances he put his throne in hazard, and 
 confirms his inference by various strong passages in the 
 correspondence of Louis and BarUlon. He also remarks, 
 what Mr. Fox has in one place nearly admitted, that James 
 had no need of schemes and expedients for the establishment 
 of his despotism, for that in this point he met with no 
 opposition ; the rigours practised in England, and the 
 infernal massacre and laws of massacre in Scotland (the 
 atrocity of which Mr. Eose says Fox has " under-stated"), 
 having caused no material interruption or disturbance on 
 the loyal infatuation and base servility of his subjects. 
 
 Fox's opinion was, that the money supplied by France to 
 Charles and James was for the purpose of enabling them to 
 govern without parliaments. The fourth section of these 
 
•SUBSIDIES OF LOUIS XIV. 339 
 
 Observations is occupied in showing tiiis to be a mistake, 
 and explaining to what use the money was meant to be 
 applied, and actually was applied. A short extract or two 
 will give the result of the disquisition. 
 
 " There are unquestionably abundant proofs of Charles agree- 
 ing either to put an end to the sitting of Parliament ; to avoid 
 summoning them ; or to obtain support in them for French 
 objects, under engagements with Louis, from time to time, as he 
 wished to obtain money from him : but there is not the least 
 probability that either one or the other entertained an opinion 
 that the meeting of Parliament could be entirely dispensed with. 
 The extract of a letter from Louis to Barillon, last referred to, 
 on the subject of the Catholic religion, affords a tolerably clear 
 illustration that Louis had no such intention. The engagements 
 appear to have been entered into by Charles, that he might have 
 occasional supplies of money, that were not to be accounted for 
 in any way ; and by Louis, that he might derive all the assist- 
 ance that could be useful to him, from Charles or his brother, 
 for the attainment of his objects, without the latter being 
 restrained by their Parliaments : and we have seen that, in one 
 instance, Charles, in the end of his reign, was enabled to hold 
 out for nearly four years." — P. 128. 
 
 " From the light thrown upon it by this coiTespondence (that 
 of the French ambassadors with their king) and adverting to 
 the amount of the supplies granted by the British Parliament, 
 the most probable conjecture by far seems to be, that the aids 
 sohcited by Charles and his brother, and given by Louis, were 
 with the intention of keeping Parliaments in check, rather than 
 for the purpose of enabling the English monarchs, as Mr. Fox 
 supposed, to govern without them. Louis certainly obtained 
 objects of great importance to himself by his bounty. The war 
 between England and Holland ; the breach of the treaty between 
 England and Spain, by which Louis got the remainder of the 
 Spanish Netherlands ; and the alienation of James from the 
 Prince of Orange, who was the greatest obstacle to the ambitious 
 views of Louis, were among the fruits of the corrupt transac- 
 tions."— P. 139. 
 
 The conclusion of the section is particularly interesting, 
 as relating to the implication of even Russell and Sydney in 
 -the charge of maintaining a secret, and in the case of Sydney, 
 a pecuniary commerce, with the court of France. BariUon 
 stated to his master " that he had given two bribes of £500 
 each to Sydney ; and that with Lord Eussell he had been iji 
 
340 BosE ON fox's histoey. 
 
 a clandestine intercourse." Mr. Pox having expressed 
 himself in the strongest possible terms as to the value of 
 BarUlon's letters, as evidence of the transactions of those 
 times, Mr. Eose could not fail to hit on the wicked remark, 
 that if the Frenchman's evidence is to be taken as valid 
 against the king, it ought to be taken as valid also against 
 the patriots. But he is anxious to exculpate these great 
 and excellent men, and insists that, even if we should admit 
 the veracity of "Barillon, it is due to the very high characters 
 of these two men to believe that they could not, in this 
 intercourse, have any object dishonourable to themselves, or 
 injurious to the nation. But he next suggests considera- 
 tions, which make it, he thinks, not unreasonable to doubt 
 the truth of Barillon's statement. 
 
 " In judging on a point of high importance to his (Sydney's) 
 reputation, it will not, we hope, be thought illiberal, or bearing 
 too hard on the memory of a foreigner of considerable note, if 
 we have in our contemplation, on one hand, the high character 
 of our countryman for inflexible integrity, and the improbability 
 of his doing anything unworthy of that for two sums compara- 
 tively so paltry ; and, on the other hand, that BarUlon was 
 entrusted by his sovereign with very large sums of money ; the 
 distribution of which he was of course to give some account o^ 
 but for which no vouchers could be required of him : and if it 
 shall be thought allowable to entertain a doubt of the accuracy 
 of the accounts of the ambassador, we may then venture to sug- 
 gest that he had a two-fold inducement to place those sums to 
 the name of Mr. Sydney, as furnishing a discharge for the amount 
 stated to be given, and affording means of obtaining credit with 
 his employer, for having been able to prevail with such a man 
 to receive foreign money for any purpose." — P. 152. 
 
 To countenance this surmise, our author cites several 
 passages from Madame de Sevigne's Letters, intimating that 
 BariUon was becoming rich by means of his residence in 
 England. We presume every reader, who blends patriotism 
 with his admiration of eminent virtue, will gladly entertain 
 Mr. Eose's explanation. 
 
 The fifth section expatiates, to a great extent, on the 
 character of Sir Patrick Hume, the expedition and character 
 of the Earl of Argyle, and the conduct and fate of the Duke 
 pf Monmouth ; intermixing a great many relative and inci- 
 dental niatters of history and opinion, and including a most 
 
BIK PAtRICK StJME AND AEGS-LE. SJil 
 
 profitablebook-makingquantity of quotation from M. d'Avaux. 
 As to Sir Patrick Hume, there can be little doubt that he was 
 a man of ability and virtue, and a zealous friend of liberty. 
 But this is not enough for Mr. Eose ; -who cannot allow it 
 possible that the ancestor of his intimate friend Lord 
 Marchmont, could ever have been betrayed, amidst the most 
 perplexing and harassing circumstances, into the slightest 
 error either of judgment or temper. Sir Patrick Hume, 
 therefore, is justified and applauded in every point, and in 
 every point at the expense of Argyle — a fine specimen of 
 impartiality and good sense in an author who takes every 
 occasion of lecturing the departed historian on that bias of 
 his' judgment, which, as this commentator says, perverted 
 his estimates of character. We admire too, the judicial 
 equity or sagacity of admitting Sir Patrick's own statement, 
 as conclusive evidence of this invariable wisdom and recti- 
 tude ; just as if it were impossible that Argyle could have 
 drawn up an account, which should, with apparent probabi- 
 lity, have made all the blame rest on Sir Patrick and his 
 adherents. 
 
 Mr. Fox happened to suggest, and in a very few sentences 
 closed, a parallel between Argyle and Montrose. This was 
 like abandoning, and too soon closing up a mine, in which 
 another adventurer is sure there must be a great deal of 
 remaining treasure. Our author has opened it again, and 
 dug out, and brought to light, for the pure sake of novelty, 
 Hume's well-known elogium at the conclusion of the account 
 of his conduct at his execution. Several other substances 
 are got out, which several historians seem to have secreted 
 there for the purpose of giving them the eclat of this repro- 
 duction. 
 
 The expression, " unfortunate Argyle !" attributed to the 
 Earl, at the moment of his being taken, and as the cause of 
 his being recognised, was thought by Pox to be recorded on 
 no good authority. Mr. Eose admits it as authentic, on the 
 testimony of the London Gazette of that time, and of a 
 paper, printed at Edinburgh, in his possession. 
 
 The words in the warrant for Argyle' s execution, " That 
 you tahe all ways to know from him those things which 
 concern our government most," were interpreted by Pox 
 to direct the use of torture ; a meaning which, (though not 
 
342 EOSE ON roi's histobt. 
 
 improbable, as being most perfectly in character for that 
 execrable authority from which the warrant came,) is 
 scarcely admitted by Mr. Eose, because torture was not 
 actually applied. He states, however, that this expedient 
 of justice was in common use in Scotland in those times, 
 though never permitted by the laws in England. The 
 English crown, however, was determined to come in some 
 way or other for a share of the honour ; and among other 
 curious particulars, our commentator has given at length 
 a warrant by which King William III. commanded the 
 application of torture in the case of a criminal tried in 
 Scotland, which humane mandate was obeyed with a 
 zealous loyalty. 
 
 By a reference to many documents our author has brought 
 much in doubt two incidents related concerning Argyle — ^the 
 one by Burnet, the other by "Woodrow. The first is that of 
 his cautioning Mr. Charteris not to make any attempt to 
 convince him of the criminality of his hostile expedition 
 (a circumstance, however, which carries in itself the strongest 
 probability) ; the other is that of the anguish said to have 
 been expressed by a member of the Council that pronounced 
 his condemnation, on seeing him calmly sleeping but two 
 hours before the time appointed for his execution. There 
 is some high political orthodoxy in our author's reasoning 
 in behalf of this supposed councillor, that he could not feel, 
 and ought not to feel, any remorse for the condemnation of 
 Argyle, who, though no doubt a very amiable and estimable 
 man, " was taken in open rebellion against his lawful 
 sovereign;" which expression means, we suppose, that if 
 this sovereign had chosen to cause the assassination of all 
 the people in Scotland but one, that one would nevertheless 
 have remained religiously bound in aU the obligations of 
 allegiance. It is true, as this writer alleges, that his 
 "sovereign" had not, at the time of Argyle' s invasion, 
 unfolded the whole atrocity of his murderous disposition ; 
 but he had in his first communication to the Scottish par- 
 liament graciously promised (and, if our memory does 
 not deceive us, Mr. Eose himself somewhere says it was the 
 only promise he faithfully kept), that he would carrv on the 
 same horrible course of assassination which was perp'etrating 
 at the time of his predecessor's death. His conduct iu 
 
ON THEATBICA.L AMTTSEMENTS. 343 
 
 Scotland, while Duke of York, had given a fair pledge that 
 he was capable of fulfilling his engagements of this kind. 
 
 "We have no room left for remarks on the various parti- 
 culars collected concerning the Duke of Monmouth. In 
 this part there seems no very important contrariety between 
 Mr. Eose and the great author on whom he is animadverting. 
 Near the close of these Observations there is a reflection or 
 two on royal prerogatives, constitutional equipoises, and the 
 danger of carrying the doctrines of freedom to excess, to 
 which we might be tempted to give the denomination of 
 cant, — but for the pleasing impression which we uniformly 
 feel, in common with our countrymen, of our author's extra- 
 ordinary and inveterate political disinterestedness. 
 
 We do not pretend that we are not a good deal pleased 
 with Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative, or that we do not think 
 it proves some faults in Argyle : when, however, we see a 
 •nan like the Earl represented as wayward and humoursome, 
 and " petting" at the conduct of his associates, we are fully 
 reminded that we are reading only one side of the story. 
 As to various points of military detail, in which he is 
 charged with error, we think it almost impossible to decide 
 now on what involved so many local and temporary circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The Appendix contains several interesting articles, es- 
 pecially an account of Sir Patrick Hume's concealment in 
 Scotland, previously to his first escape to the Continent ; a 
 much clearer proof than we are gratified to see, that Burnet, 
 as a historian, is to be trusted with great caution ; and an 
 account of the last days and the death of the Duke of 
 Monmouth, published speedily after by authority. 
 
 ON THEATEICAL AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Fov/r Discowrses on Sulyjects relating to the Amitsement of the Stage. 
 Preached at Great St, Mary's Church, Cambridge, on Sunday, 
 September 25, and Sunday, October 2, 1808 ; with copious 
 Supplementary Notes. By James Plumtre, B.D., Fellow 
 of Clare HaU. 8vo. 1809. 
 
 It is not expressed in the title-page, that these discourses 
 were preached, and are published, with an intention hostile 
 
iJ44 ON THEATEICAIi AlirSEMENTS. 
 
 to the stage ; but the reader can have no doubt as to this 
 point, we presume, when informed that they are dedicated 
 to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge after 
 having received his approbation, that the author is an ad- 
 mirer of some of our most serious and orthodox divines, that 
 he appears to be actuated by a sincere wish to do good, and 
 that the discourses are founded on no other than the follow- 
 ing texts : " Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatso- 
 ever ye do, do all to the glory of God." — " Be not deceived, 
 evil communications corrupt good manners." — " Let not 
 foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient, be 
 once named among you, as becometh saints." — " To him 
 that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." 
 A selection of texts so pointedly applicable, will appear to 
 indicate the preacher's correct view of his subject ; and shall 
 we not incur the suspicion of wantonly offending against 
 the third injunction, when we state, that notwithstanding 
 all these reasons for a contrary presumption, Mr. Plumtre's 
 discourses are meant as a formal defence of the stage ? 
 
 Merely that a minister of the Christian religion should 
 have considered it as within the scope and duty of his sacred 
 function to undertake such a defence, will not be a fact of 
 sufficient novelty, in our times, to excite surprise ; for it 
 would be ungrateful to charge it on defect of reverend in- 
 struction, if we do not know that the play-house is one of 
 our best Christian institutions. But there is something 
 strikingly new in hearing a vindication of the stage from a 
 clergyman, who connects it with a serious admonition that 
 life should be employed in a preparation for eternity, vrith a 
 zealous inculcation of the apostolic rule of doing all things 
 to the glory of God, with an admission that the general 
 quality of polite literature is decidedly adverse to Christian 
 principles, and with an extended and very instructive illus- 
 tration of the prevalence of this adverse spirit in even the 
 least exceptionable part of the English drama. If the 
 reader's impression of the incompatibility of what we have 
 here reported to him as combined, should lead him to sus- 
 pect affectation in the religious parts of the compound, we 
 must assure him there are the strongest marks of sincerity. 
 This being believed, his surmises towards an explanation of 
 such a phenomenon will probably terminate in a conjecture, 
 
JIE. PLrMTEE S PASSION FOE THE DEAMA. 345 
 
 that in the preacher's youth, the drama must have inspired a 
 passion so deep as to become like one of the original principles 
 of his mind, which therefore the judgment could never eradi- 
 cate, nor ever inspect vyithout an involuntary bias operating 
 like a spell. And this is the explanation furnished by the 
 preacher's long dedication, in which he adverts to the lead- 
 ing circumstances of his life, by way of accounting for his 
 writing a book on such a subject, and with such a design. 
 
 In course of time he entered, at college, on the studies 
 preparatory to the clerical profession, and obtained a paro- 
 chial charge, in which his professional duties and studies 
 began entirely to engross his thoughts, "and yielding," he 
 says, " to the prejudices of the world, I determined to relin- 
 quish in a great measure the amusement of the stage." He 
 sold a large dramatic library in order to purchase better 
 books, among which were Mrs. More's works, including her 
 dialogue on amusements, and her most excellent preface to 
 her tragedies ; these tracts had a great influence on his mind, 
 and for some years he whoUy abstained from the amusement 
 of the theatre. "The circumstances of his parish" suggested 
 to him the possible utility of modifying to a moral purpose 
 the most popular convivial songs, of which he has subse- 
 quently printed several volumes, with the required expurga- 
 tions and additions,under the title "Vocal Eepository." This 
 occupation revived his attention to the drama, which he had 
 never been persuaded entirely to condemn, though his 
 opinion of it was somewhat altered. In an interval of pro- 
 fessional employment, he meditated a set of lectures, to be 
 delivered at the University, partly with a view to the re- 
 formation of the stage. This design was not executed ; but 
 an opportune occasion was offered for putting some of the 
 collected materials into the form of sermons, to which, when 
 printed, another portion could be appended as notes. The 
 inducement to adopt the form of sermons was, the hope that 
 they might, as public addresses, be of service to other clergy- 
 men, situated in the neighbourhood of the various theatres 
 in this country. 
 
 Toward the close of this dedicatory introduction, which 
 we have regarded it as a point of justice to notice thus par- 
 ticularly, the author distinctly meets, what he necessarily 
 anticipated, the censure which will be apt to fall on a clergy- 
 
346 ON THEATEICAL AMTTSEMKH'IS. 
 
 man for composing a volume on Buch a subject. His apology 
 is, that thia is the only way in which he may hope to redeem, 
 in some sense, the time which he regrets he has wasted in 
 former dramatic studies. He esteems his knowledge of the sub- 
 ject as very dearly purchased ; but actually having this know- 
 ledge, he thinks it his duty to put it to the use of displaying 
 the moral character of the English drama, of attempting its 
 reformation, and we may add, of correcting the opinions of 
 those austere Christians, who insist on the entire destruction 
 of what he thinks capable of being made a "powerful 
 engine to promote the cause of virtue." 
 
 The first discourse proposes to argue the question, 
 " AVhether the stage be a thing lawful in itself;" but we are 
 not quite satisfied that this question takes the subject in the 
 right point of view. What is meant by the stage "in itself," 
 or abstractedly considered ? If by the stage, described under 
 these terms of limitation, the written drama were meant, no 
 question coidd be more easily decided, than whether it be 
 lawful to write and to read useful and ingenious things in 
 a dramatic form ; no question, therefore, could be more 
 needless, and we do not see why several pages of the work 
 should have been occupied in answering it. But under- 
 standing by the stage Uterally the theatre and its per- 
 formances, we do not exactly comprehend what is meant by 
 the question whether it be lawful "in itself" The estimate 
 of the good or evil of the theatre must necessarily be 
 founded on the combined consideration of a number of 
 particulars ; as the qualities of human nature in general, 
 together with their modifications in any one age or nation, 
 — the eff'ect on the human mind of exhausting its passions 
 on fictitious objects, the character of that part of society 
 that will at all times be most addicted to amusements, and 
 will chiefly support them, — the natural attendants and con- 
 sequences of a passion for splendid amusements, — the 
 tendency and the attendant circumstances of immense noc- 
 turnal assemblages of people in great towns, — the quality of 
 the works of the great national dramatic writers, that 
 must necessarily form the main stock of the theatre (till 
 writers shall be put in requisition to dramatize and versify 
 the Homilies and the Whole Duty of Man), — the probable 
 moral character of a set of men and women employed undei 
 
LAYTPULNESS OF THE STAGE. 34'; 
 
 the circumstances inseparable from a company of players, — 
 and the vast expense, orifj-inal and permanent, of the whole 
 theatrical establishment. All these and other particulars 
 are involved in the question of the lavrfulness of the stage ; 
 and therefore we think any attempt to discuss that lawfulness 
 in the abstract, or " in itself," would too much resemble a 
 discussion of the lawfulness of war abstractedly from all 
 consideration of national enmity, of battle, wounds, and 
 slaughter, of the barbarizing effect on its agents, of the 
 misery of the countries where it prevails, and of national 
 expense and ruin. "We do not say that these two things are 
 perfectly parallel ; but we mean that the moral estimate of 
 ihe stage must be formed on a view of all those circum- 
 stances, which are naturally relative to it, which are essential 
 to its existence, or with which in point of fact it has 
 invariably been connected. 
 
 Admitting most fally (as every person must, who pos- 
 sesses ordinary moral and religious perceptions), the gross 
 depravity of the theatre in the collective character of its 
 constituents, the plays, the players, and a large portion of 
 the spectators, and deploring its widely pernicious influence, 
 our preacher yet endeavours, by distinguishing between the 
 use and abuse of a thing, to defend the theatre " in itself" 
 against those, who, from all they have seen and can antici- 
 pate, pronounce it radically and essentially a mischief. He 
 has told us, from Ecclesiasticus, that " as a naU sticketh 
 fast between the stones, so doth sin stick close between 
 buying and selling," that "strong drinks and wine" have 
 been abused by intemperance, and that even the public 
 worship of God has been perverted to wickedness ; and 
 maintains unanswerably, that we are not therefore to 
 prohibit buying and selling, and the use of wine, and the 
 worship of God. This argument from analogy ought, at its 
 weakest point, to prove that the divine providence has, in 
 the order of nature, made a specific direct provision for a 
 play-house; and as its strongest point, to prove that the 
 pernicious effects of the play-house should be calmly left to 
 the government of God, as an evil become incidental through 
 human depravity to one of his own appointments, which we 
 are not the less bound in duty to observe because it is liable 
 to such a perversion. It should also prove, that the ces- 
 
«48 OS TUilATRICAL AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 sation of acting plays would inflict an evil tantamount to 
 breaking up the regular business and intercourse of society. 
 
 But not to dwell on such an unfortunate argument, we 
 will say a word or two on the propriety of giving the deno- 
 mination of abuses to the evils uniformly attending the 
 stage. When we speak of the abuses of a thing, we cannot 
 mean less than that the thing in question is at least fitted 
 to do greatly more good than harm, even in the present 
 state of the human mind and of society ; we understand of 
 it that good is its natural general effect, and evil the inci- 
 dental, man being as he is. "We repeat this conditional 
 point ; for, if the thing in question be not calculated mainly 
 to do good till human society shall have grovni incomparably 
 more virtuous, and thus attained a state capable of neutral- 
 izing its operation, or even converting it into something 
 beneficial, it is plainly, for any present use, absolutely bad, 
 necessarily bad, in its regular operation ; and to call this 
 operation an abuse, is a disengenuous and deceptive language. 
 Now our preacher, while reprobating the obvious mischiefs 
 of the stage under the denomination of "abuses," insists 
 that it is notwithstanding adapted, and may by a very prac- 
 ticable reform be brought to be of the greatest moral utility 
 in the present condition of society. It would be going 
 very much beyond the limits of our office to enumerate the 
 principal arguments (indeed they are amply quoted by Mr. 
 Plumptre) advanced by serious and intelligent men in 
 opposition to his opinion. The best works on the subjects 
 are very well known, and we think the chief good that will 
 be eflfected by the book before us will be, to induce some 
 of its readers to examine them with more attention. The 
 most material points of the argument were hinted above, 
 in one of the preceding sentences ; and in slightly advert- 
 ing to several of them we shall employ but very few more. 
 
 It must be quite obvious for what purpose it is that 
 society chooses to have a theatre, and by what part of 
 society it must be principally supported. And Mr. 
 Plumtre knows it would be disingenuous trifling to pretend, 
 that the theatre is raised and supported, with any other 
 view on the part of the public, than that of amusement. A 
 very few individuals may occasionally, or even habitually, 
 attend it for the purpose of philosophical observation ; but 
 
WHAT OLA.SSES FEEQUENT THE THEATKH. 341) 
 
 even if these were sincerely anxious to apply the knowledge 
 of human nature there acquired to the service of virtue and 
 religion, which is rarely the case, the circumstance would be 
 inexpressibly too trivial to be mentioned against the noto- 
 rious fact, that the part of the community that require and 
 frequent a theatre, do it for no purpose even the most 
 distantly related to moral improvement. This would be 
 testified, if it needed any testimony, by every one who has 
 listened to the afternoon conversation of a party arranging 
 and preparing to go to the play, and to the retrospective 
 discussion of this party during the eleven-o'clock break- 
 fast on the following morning ; or by any one who has 
 listened to the remarks made around him in any part of the 
 boxes, pit, or galleries. The persons, who are intent on 
 moral or intellectual improvement, will be foimd occupied 
 in a very different manner, inspecting the works of the 
 great historians, philosophers, moralists, or divines ; or hold- 
 ing rational conversations with their families, or friends ; or 
 even (if they judge instruction really is to be obtained from 
 that source) reading the most celebrated dramatic works in 
 theirovm or another language, and with a far more judicious 
 and scrutinizing attention than any one exerts amidst the 
 thousand interfering and beguiling circumstances of the 
 theatre. Now if amusement is the grand object sought at 
 the play-house, the object on copiously ministering to which 
 its existence wholly depends, it must to preserve that 
 existence, adapt itself completely to the taste of that part 
 of society that is devoted to amusement, and will pay its 
 price, in time, health, and money. And what sort of 
 persons are they that compose this part of society ? It 
 really might have been accounted superfluous to say tliat 
 they are necessarily the trifling and the immoral. They are 
 such of the wealthy as have neither occupation nor benevo- 
 lence ; the devotees of fashion ; the most thoughtless part of 
 the young, together with what are called young men of 
 spirit, who want a little brisk folly as an interlude to their 
 more vicious pursuits; loungers of all sorts; tradesmen who 
 neglect their business ; persons who, in domestic relations, 
 have no notion of cultivating the highest social and 
 intellectual interests; and old debauchees, together with 
 the wretched class of beings, whose numbers, vices. Mid 
 
850 ON THEATEICAL AMTJSEMESTS. 
 
 miseries, tliey can still be proud to augment. It is by the 
 part of the community composed of these classes that the 
 theatre is mainly supported; and these it must gratify, or it 
 will perish. And if it must gratify this part of the com- 
 munity, of what moral quality must its exhibitions be ? Is 
 it possible to maintain, with a grave face, that those 
 exhibitions can be lessons of pure morality, and even piety, 
 — according to our author's injunction and professed hope 
 that "the stage shall go hand in hand with the pulpit?" 
 The stage will have a beneficial influence, he says, when the 
 writers, actors, and frequenters compose, and act, and attend 
 plays, " with a view to the glory of God," (a most original 
 association of ideas) — and when they preserve amidst these 
 occupations a deep concern for the " salvation of their 
 souls." Now, can he believe that there are twenty fre- 
 quenters of the play-house in aU England, who could hear 
 such a state of mind insisted on as necessary even in the 
 common course of Ufe, without sneering at such notions as 
 rank Methodism ; or who would fail to mutter a charge of 
 stark madness, if seriously told it was a necessary state of 
 mind in attending the theatre ? Is it not fuUy settled in 
 the minds of all classes of its frequenters, that it is a place 
 of perfect immunity from grave thought and converse with 
 conscience, and from aU puritanism, cant, sermonizing, 
 saintship, godliness, sober representations of life and duty, 
 and squeamish modesty, — excepting so far as some or all of 
 these may be introduced for ridicule, in which mode of 
 introduction, indeed, they are probably greater favourites 
 with an English theatrical audience than all other subjects ? 
 In short, are not the entertainments of the theatre resorted 
 to and delighted in as something confessedly, avowedly, and 
 systematically opposite, to what is understood by its fre- 
 quenters to have formed the chief concern, the prominent 
 and unpopular distinction, of the most devout and holy 
 men, of dying penitents, of Christian apostles, of all the 
 persons most deeply solicitous for the "glory of God," and 
 the " salvation of their souls ?" Mr. Plumptre will fully 
 agree with us, for he has himself very forcibly shown, that, 
 with certain fluctuations, and some degree of modern 
 amendment, in the article of decorum, this has always been 
 the character of the stage, and is the character of the great 
 
IMMOEAIITT OF THE BEAMA, 351 
 
 body of our written drama. And -why has this been 
 uniformly the character ? Are we to believe that the 
 writers and actors, with an unparalleled contempt of self- 
 interest, have been for several hundred years forcing on 
 their grand and sole patron, the public, a species of dramatic 
 exhibitions disapproved by that patron ? On the contrary, 
 these writers and players have always been to the full as 
 sagacious with respect to their own interest, as any other 
 class of persons who are to prosper or famish according to 
 the acceptance or disapproval of what they furnish to the 
 public market ; and quite as obsequious in accommodating 
 to the public taste. In a few instances, indeed, it may have 
 been attempted to make the stage a pure Christian moralist, 
 and a sort of half-Christian divine ; and the attempt has 
 failed. It deserved to fail ; for, if a manufacturer in any 
 department absolutely will make his goods of a quality and 
 form quite different from what he knows the public have 
 vmiformly required in that sort of article, nobody com- 
 passionates him for the consequences. And we would ask 
 Mr. Plumptre, where is the reasonableness and humanity of 
 requiring the writers and actors of plays to commit a pro- 
 fessional suicide by provoking the disgust and indignation 
 of their supporters ? The present time shows what an 
 imperious aspect the public, that is, the play-going public, 
 can assume when they are not pleased ; and if, instead of 
 the trifling alteration of a little advance in price, there were 
 to be introduced a moral change to one half the extent 
 demanded by our preacher, a change which would instantly 
 give the denomination of " Methodist Theatre," can any 
 one believe this genteel and vulgar rabble would not bellow 
 to a still nobler tune if possible, and fairly baf&e at last the 
 utmost rhetoric of the journalists in attempting, even with 
 the aid of the MUtonic diction, to describe the "confusion" 
 stiU "worse confounded?" Parson Kemble, or Saint 
 Cooke, after having once appeared, seriously, in the Gospel 
 Scene, would prefer taking the second turn in the piUory at 
 Charing Cross. 
 
 In thus predicting the treatment awaiting the stage when 
 turned Methodist, we have not misrepresented our preacher 
 as to the extent of the conversion which he demands. He 
 insists, with respect to the drama, as it ought to be insisted 
 
S52 ON THEATEICAL AMUSEilENTS. 
 
 ■with respect to every institution which is to be retained in 
 society, that its entire spirit and tendency must be made 
 strictly coincident with the Christian religion; and he 
 perfectly agrees with Mrs. More and several other writers, 
 that, besides all the more gross and tangible immorality 
 adhering to our drama, there is a decidedly anti-Christian 
 quality prevailing through almost its whole mass, so that 
 even most of its greatest beauties please with a noxious 
 lustre. Consistently, therefore, he requires the stage to be 
 purified from its many modes of heathenism, from its 
 erroneous conceptions of divine justice and the atonement 
 of guilt, from its profane language, from its pernicious 
 notions of honour, from its encouragement and extenuations 
 of suicide and duelling, from its extravagant and often 
 corrupt representations of love, and from its indecorum. 
 And all these things, we are to believe, may be swept away 
 in the very face of the persons who are paying expressly for 
 their continuance ; and by whom the pure Christian con- 
 traries of all these things will be received with abhorrence, 
 unless, while the transmutation is taking place on the stage, 
 a sudden conversion also visits the minds of the audience, 
 as when Peter was preaching. But no, says our author, the 
 change is to be gradual ; something is already effected, and 
 "we must go on to perfection." It is true that a very 
 slight, superficial amendment has taken place, in avoiding 
 the excessive, undisguised grossness which prevailed on the 
 stage in a former century ; and this is because the age is 
 grown more delicate, not, probably, because the audience 
 are much more moral ; for, does Mr. Plumptre really believe 
 that the theatre now contains a less proportion of profligate 
 men and women than in former times ? But, taking this 
 slight, superinduced refinement at whatever he can seriously 
 think it worth, we have his own testimony that the per- 
 vading heathenism and profaneness, the detestable moral 
 principles and the romantic extravagance, remain nearly 
 undiminished ; and we would therefore ask him how many 
 ages, at this rate of improvement, we are to be waiting for 
 the stage to attain even the point of neutrality between 
 good and evil of moral and religious influence. And should 
 not the melancholy thought of so many tens of thousands, 
 ■^hose principles, with respect to the most important 
 
PEOPOSBD EErOEM OP THE STAGE. 353 
 
 subjects and concerns, are to be acted upon by a powerfully 
 pernicious influence in the course of this long period, have 
 impelled him to exhort his auditors and readers to an instant 
 withdrawment of all countenance and support from one of 
 the worst enemies of human virtue and happiness ? Instead 
 of which, we lament to find a minister of the Christian 
 religion advising the respectable inhabitants of places where 
 plays are acted to attend them, in order to influence the 
 selection of the pieces and the manners of the company. 
 
 Against those who assert the radical evil of the stage, and 
 instead of devising remedies, urge the duty of entirely 
 i-elinquishing it, he raises a strange, and what he seems to 
 think conclusive argument, from the simple fact that the 
 stage is still in existence : as if he would say. It must be a 
 good thing, or capable of being made so, and claims that we 
 should all join hand and heart to support and improve it, 
 because — all efforts to put it down have been unavailing. 
 
 It may be hardly worth while to notice, that there seems 
 here an admission that the people are not good enough to 
 reform, any more than they are to give up, a corrupt stage ; 
 or to observe, that it is unfair to complicate the question, 
 whether individuals ought to abandon the theatre, with the 
 question whether the state ought to suppress it. But as to 
 the fact which he makes into an argument, namely, that the 
 stage still exists, we may properly say to Mr. Plumptre, 
 What is that to you, or to us ? There exist also dens of 
 gamblers, and gangs of thieves, and brothels, and clubs for 
 gluttony, drunkenness, and ribaldry ; but you or we are not 
 therefore called upon to study the letter regulation of these 
 associations, and sometimes to go among them as a " check 
 on their improprieties." The complaint that the adversaries 
 of the stage have not employed "conciliating" measures is 
 passing strange as coming from a Christian divine, who tells 
 us that one of those adversaries (Bedford), has cited in his 
 book "nearly seven thousand instances of impiety and 
 immorality from the plays in use at that time, and some of 
 which (though in rather an amended state), stiU keep a 
 place upon the stage." (P. 36.) If such a hideous monster 
 was a thing capable of being "vilified," or deserving to be 
 " conciliated," what is it on this side the infernal pit that 
 we can lawfully make relentless war upon ? 
 
 A A 
 
35i ON THBATEICAL AMTJSEMElfTS. 
 
 Our argument above has beeu, that it is impossible for 
 the stage to become good, in any such Christian sense as 
 Mr. Plumptre requires ; because its character must be faith- 
 fully congenial with that of its supporters, and they chiefly 
 consist of the more trifling, irreligious, and immoral part of 
 the community. But perhaps our author thinks that if the 
 stage, by a resolute efi'ort of its directors, were quite to 
 change its character, and become the mirror of Christian 
 sentiments and morals, it might obtain a better class of 
 supporters, and thus aiford to lose the frivolous and the dis- 
 solute. Ajid if this were possible, is it desirable ? We are 
 not convinced it would be any great advantage gained to the 
 happiness of society, if we were to see the great temple of 
 wisdom and virtue in Covent Garden lined with an auditory 
 of right reverend bishops, zealous ministers, and the 
 worthiest part of their flocks, dressed in sober faces and 
 decent apparel, rank above rank, up to the region of what 
 used to be called "the gods;" if we were to see the pit 
 occupied by a battalion of quakers ; if worthy, domestic men, 
 who have been accustomed to pass their evenings in reading 
 with their wives and sisters, after half an hour's sport with 
 their children, were to commence the practice of either 
 sliding off alone, or taking their families along with them, 
 to the new rendezvous of saints and philosophers ; or if 
 virtuous young men, qualifying by diligent study for 
 important professions, and young women qualifying for 
 their wives, were seen flocking to the dramatic oracle to 
 inquire how to combine wisdom and love. But if all this 
 were ever so much " a consummation devoutly to be 
 wished," it would never be attained ; and the mansion of 
 the christened Apollo might be surrendered to the bats, 
 unless he would forswear his newly adopted and unprofitable 
 faith, and again invite the profane and profligate. The 
 orderly, industrious, studious, benevolent, and devout, would 
 never, in any state of the theatre, frequent it in sufficient 
 numbers to defray the cost of dresses and wax candles. 
 And besides, what becomes during this hopeful experiment 
 of that worse part of the community which the stage, 
 according to our author, was to have helped the gospel to 
 reform ? They are the while wandering away, perverse and 
 hapless beings ! from the most precious school ever opened 
 
aEPOEM OP THE STAGE IMPBACTICABLE. 355 
 
 for the corrective discipline of sinners. But tlie place, 
 originally intended to please them, will not long he occupied 
 by the usurping morality that would assume to mend them. 
 Like the unclean spirit, they wiU soon re-enter the swept 
 and garnished house, and even, like him, bring auxiliary 
 companions, the more effectually to assert whose house it is. 
 We wiU not waste more words. Mr. Plumptre knows that 
 no theatre could support itself under the odium of main- 
 taining an explicit hostility against not only direct grossness 
 and vice, but all anti-Christian principles of morality. It 
 is a ruined thiug if not only the women of the town, and the 
 vile gangs of journeymen and gentlemen blades that fre- 
 quent the place to joke with them, purchase them, or insult 
 them, but also the more decorous holders of a fashionable 
 moral creed, are to be dosed there with Christian mendica- 
 ments, and fumigated off with an effluvium a hundred times 
 more nauseous to them than the smell of the burning fish 
 was to the goblin that haunted Tobias's bride. As long as 
 there is a play-house, it will and must be assumed, as their 
 legitimate place of resort, by the least serious and the most 
 irreligious and profligate class of the nation. Where else, 
 indeed, should they resort? — to the evening lecture at 
 church or at the conventicle ? Thus the stage, so far from 
 contributing to promote the ascendancy of good over evil in 
 society, wiU be the faithful attendant and ally of the evil, 
 at once living on it and ministering to it, just so long as a 
 sufficient measure of it shall exist in the shape of vain and 
 profligate persons to support the amusement, and perishing 
 at length when Christianity shall have left too few of these 
 persons for this purpose. Or shall we suppose it will then 
 arise and flourish afresh under a renovated. Christianized 
 character ? That is to say, shall we suppose, that at such a 
 happy period it wiU be deemed one of the worthiest efforts 
 of virtue and religion to raise and furnish edifices at the 
 expense of £150,000 a-piece, and maintain in each of them, 
 at a cost equal to that of several hospitals, or of some fifty 
 or a hundred of Lancaster's schools, an establishment just 
 for the purpose of employing a number of persons to sham 
 the name and dress of certain fictitious foreigners, or, if you 
 please, good home-bred Christians, and recite a course of 
 lines •from b book which the audience could have quietly 
 
 A a2 
 
850 ON THBATEICAi AMTTSEMENTS. 
 
 read at home ; and, if they are tragic lines, read, according 
 to the opinion of Br. Johnson, with a deeper impression ? 
 
 This view of the necessary character of the stage forms 
 but a narrow section of the argument against it ; and we 
 have dwelt on it, not with the design of anything so absurd 
 as debating the general subject in an article of a journal, 
 but for the particular purpose of exposing Mr. Plumptre's 
 doctrine that " the evil attached to the stage is no part of 
 its inherent quality, but arises merely from the abuse of it." 
 (P. 7.) "With regard to many of the specific evils attendant 
 on the theatre, he has himself done ample justice to the 
 subject, partly by quoting, with a candour not to be sur- 
 passed, and deserving of the highest applause, a number of 
 the strongest passages from the adversaries of the stage. 
 Collier, Law, Witherspoon, Styles, &c., and partly by an 
 indictment drawn up by himself, of which the several counts 
 are excellently illustrated and sustained by passages fur- 
 nished by his extensive acquaintance with the English 
 drama. These lEustratious are placed in the mass of notes 
 at the end of the book, which form a very entertaining and 
 instructive miscellany. One portion of these notes is a 
 kind of marshalling of great names against Mr. Styles, 
 who had ventured to boast that the most venerable autho- 
 rities, the most illustrious moralists and philosophers of all 
 ages, have been enemies of the stage ; too rash a boast as it 
 should seem ; for Mr. Plumptre has proved that Bishop 
 Bundle of most pious celebrity, that Mr. Cumberland, and 
 Mr. Dibdin, and a Mrs. Douglas, which last person teUs 
 " the theologians and philosophers" they have no business 
 to say a word about a subject so much above their faculties 
 as the merits of the drama, — that these illustrious authorities 
 are in favour of the stage. Not, however, that these are 
 the only names in array ; for he cites, on the same side, 
 opinions or implications variously modified and limited, 
 from Addison, Blackmore, TUlotson, Seed, Hanway, Johnson, 
 GrOpin, and G-isborne. It is irksome enough to see quoted 
 from such a writer as this last, " the stage ought to recom- 
 mend itself as the nurse of virtue." In another part of 
 the hook it is quoted from him, that there is one quarter 
 from which the purification of the stage, with respect to 
 all ofi'ences against modesty, " might be effected at once,- 
 
PEOFANE LAjraiTAGE OF THE STAGE. 357 
 
 to those who act under a royal license, a single hint from 
 iloyal Authority would be sufficient." And why then, we 
 ask, has not this purification been effected ? We might 
 ask too, whether it is any part of the purification which 
 this " hint " is to accomplish, to banish from the stage 
 persons whose whole life is an offence against modesty. 
 
 We are ashamed to find a Christian minister vindicating, 
 under any circumstances, the impious practice of addressing 
 the Deity on the stage. 
 
 " Many, indeed (says Mr. Plumptre), have doubted and denied 
 the propriety of addresses to the Deity in representations, because 
 they are not realities. But, if a character be introduced as an 
 example for our imitation, in such a circumstance, as were he in 
 real life, trust in God and prayer to him would be a duty, provided 
 it be done with reverence, it does not appear to be a mockery and 
 in vain, but a highly useful lesson. Are we not too little accus- 
 tomed, too much ashamed to let ourselves be seen, or known to 
 be on our knees before God, in real life ? "We are commanded, 
 indeed, not to pray in public, for the sake of being seen of men ; 
 for the motive ought to be to please God ; but we are com- 
 manded to let our light so shine before men, that they may seb 
 our good works, and qloetft oub tathbr who is in heaven. — 
 P. 29. 
 
 We must think with Mr. Styles, that " a fictitious cha- 
 racter on the stage has nothing to do with heaven." The 
 personation of such a character in the act of prayer en- 
 deavours to pass itself for some very undefinable species of 
 reality, and claims to excite nearly the same feelings that 
 reality would do. It is intended, therefore, that the prayer 
 in question shall be regarded rather as a real act of piety, 
 than as the mere historical reading or reciting, if we may so 
 express ourselves, of a prayer supposed to have been uttered 
 by the character whom the player personates. This being 
 the case, the player does assume to make, and the audience 
 are called to witness, an actual address to the Deity, expres- 
 sive of sentiments, and relative to a situation, which are 
 totally fictitious ; and this we think the vilest impiety. 
 
 As to the benefit arising from seeing examples of mingling 
 piety with the concerns of life, the playhouse, with all its 
 mass of profaneness and ribaldry, must be a marvellous 
 proper place for making the exhibition, and receiving the 
 edification. 
 
358 
 
 CHAEACTEES OF POX. 
 
 Characters of the late Charles James Fox, selected, and in par* 
 ■written, hy Philopatris Varvicsnsis. 8vo. 2 vols. 1809. 
 
 Veey few pages of the original part of tliis work could have 
 been read by any one at all acquainted with the style of Dr. 
 Parr, without confidently guessing at the real name of 
 Philopatris Varvicensis, even if the introduction had not 
 avowed that the work is from the same hand as the noted 
 preface to Bellendenus. The avowal is made in a sing^arly 
 inartificial manner, purporting that this author has the per- 
 mission of that author to insert a part of that preface, and 
 that the authors are one. 
 
 It may be deemed an act of condescension, in one of the 
 first scholars in Europe, to take a collection of extracts from 
 newsapers, magazines, reviews, funeral sermons, and fugitive 
 poetry, for the basis of an arjple literary structure, which was 
 to display the attributes and decorations of aU the orders of 
 literary architecture. The proceeding is certainly no incon- 
 siderable proof, that an author may be very learned, intimately 
 acquainted with his subject, and an enthusiast concerning 
 it, without necessarily despising everything that has been 
 written on that subject by his contemporaries. The talents 
 and acquirements of Philopatris will be the more freely 
 applauded by every reader, from their being unaccompanied 
 with any signs of the superciliousness, jealousy, and envy 
 which have often so seriously deducted from the claims of 
 men of learning and wit. 
 
 An impartial execution of the humble office of making 
 such selection, whoever had undertaken it, would deserve 
 to be acknowledged, we think, as a service to the public. 
 Apart from any consideration of the literary qualities, 
 good or bad, of the pieces forming this miscellany, it 
 compels us to allow it some degree of importance when 
 we reflect, that if we could ascertain aU the readers of each 
 of the pieces, it is a very moderate computation that more 
 than a million of persons have read or heard read with real 
 interest, and with a decidedly approving or disapproving 
 opinion, some of the composition contained within these 
 
THE MOEALTTT Or POLITICS. 359 
 
 hundred and sixty pages. We have, therefore, Tvithin this 
 space a portion of writing, which has engaged an extent and 
 a degree of attention which may probably never be excited, 
 in the same brief space of time by any set of critical, moral, 
 and biographical essaysonone subject, thatwe shall ever again 
 see brought together. It is also reasonable to believe that, 
 under the aid of that state of national feeliag which was 
 produced by the solemnity of the occasion, these pieces may 
 nave had a greater effect on the popularmindwith regard to its 
 views of what may be termed the morality of politics, than 
 any other equal quantity of temporary productions. They 
 will, besides, when thus collected, and preserved for another 
 age, in a richer portion of classical condiment than probably 
 any other person than this editor could have furnished, 
 remaiu an amusing and instructive record of the kiud of 
 political and moral sentiments entertained, at the period when 
 they were written, by a large proportion of our nation, as well 
 as a tolerably competent memorial of the qualities of that 
 wonderful man to whom they relate : and it is agreed on all 
 hands that a very full memorial ought to be transmitted to 
 posterity, since the subject is such a person as they probably 
 may never see. 
 
 The collection contains a great deal of good writing, 
 though but few specimens of the highest order. In the 
 sum of the effect of all these delineations, the reader will 
 be in possession of a bold and substantially just idea of the 
 man, provided he is sufficiently instructed in Christianity 
 to make, from his own judgment, certain corrections in the 
 moral lights and shades, in touching which very few of these 
 numerous painters seem to have recollected or cared to 
 direct a single look towards the standard of character held 
 forth in revelation. A man like Fox, it should seem, is 
 quite beyond the cognizance of Christianity. But this point 
 we may slightly notice a page or two further on. To say 
 that the prominent lines of Fox's character are justly drawn 
 in many of these pieces, is no very high praise ; the distinc- 
 tions of that character being so strong, obvious, and simple, 
 that a very moderate degree of skill was sufficient to dis- 
 criminate and describe them. It may be easier to describe 
 the Giant's Causeway or Mount jEtna, than many of the 
 most diminutive productions of nature, or most trifling 
 
300 CHAEACTEES OF TOI. 
 
 works of art. It was said of Fox's countenance, that the 
 most ordinary artist could not well contrive to fail of pro- 
 ducing some tolerable likeness of features so marked ; and 
 in the same manner, even the least accomplished of the 
 thirty describers of his mind, here brought together, has 
 found it easy enough to tell of his vast comprehension, his 
 natural logic, his power of simplifying, his unaffected energy, 
 his candour, his bold and plain language, and his friendly, 
 plain manners. In point of dignity the subject was worthy 
 of Macintosh, whose celebrated eulogium is inserted among 
 the rest ; but at the same time its obviousness was such, 
 that aU the dulness of Messrs. and , belabour- 
 ing and contorting itself, to the pain and pity of aU be- 
 holders, to bring out something that should seem knowing 
 and philosophic, new and fine, could not miss the substan- 
 tial truth — and has not prevented their perceiving nor their 
 saying, though in the most affected and pompous idiom, just 
 the same things that have been plain to every body these 
 forty years. It could not be supposed there was any great 
 diificulty in saying such things ; yet for having said such 
 things, with a due portion of rhetoric, worked out of com- 
 monplace into conceit or bombast, many a writer, possessed 
 of less discrimination than would have been required for 
 sketching the character of his erand-boy, has taken credit 
 to himself as an eloquent and sagacious eulogist of Mr. Fox, 
 whose death supplied so excellent an occasion to all who 
 were capable of working in prose or rhyme. The occasion 
 was indeed so singularly good for a piece of fine composi- 
 tion, that we really are tempted to doubt the sincerity of 
 some of these eloquent writers, when they are professing to 
 deplore it. We apprehend that persons desperately set on 
 being fine writers, have a different mode from other men of 
 estimating the loss of heroes and patriots ; nor is there any 
 doubt on earth that we have a very considerable number of 
 persons in England, whose strongest emotion on entering 
 Westminster Abbey, and approaching the spot where Fox's 
 remains are deposited, would arise from the complacent 
 recollection of the splendid paragraphs they had been moved 
 to indite by the event that consigned him to the dust. 
 And if, on the spot, this self-gratulation should yield by 
 degrees to more gloomy sentiments, the fair probability is, 
 
EXTEiTAGANT EULOGY. 361 
 
 that one of the most prevailing of these sentiments would 
 arise from the consideration, that there is no chance of such 
 another opportunity of shining. These ohservations may 
 appear of a cynical cast, hut we are nevertheless confident 
 of the concurring judgment of every discerning person 
 who shall deliberately read through the whole of this selec- 
 tion ; for along with a considerable share of very intelligent 
 and reasonable authorship, there is a noble quantity of 
 elaborate bombastic extravagance, vain artifice of diction, 
 and affectation of philosophic development ; precisely the 
 right sort of composition to prove the writers devoid of any 
 real sorrow for the mournful event, and most specifically 
 fitted to become ridiculous when forcing itself with a singu- 
 larly unlucky perversity into a contrast with the simplicity 
 and strength of Fox's eloquence. In any place that allowed 
 room, it might be both amusing and beneficial to make a 
 formal exhibition of this contrast ; in our page it will be 
 enough to quote a few short specimens of a kind of elo- 
 quence, to which it ought to be confessed even by Mr. Fox's 
 svarmest admirers, that his genius would never have mounted 
 nor dared to aspire. It is proper to premise, that the 
 learned editor's impartiality has admitted several pieces 
 in which Fox's praises are given under the bias of hostile 
 party spirit. 
 
 The oratorical extravagance that scorns the just rules of 
 rhetoric, can seldom be contented with itself till it has 
 also offered some insult to those of religion. In the present 
 collection it is very remarkable, however, that the news- 
 paper and magazine panegyrists have in a good measure 
 avoided this sin, and left it to be committed almost exclu- 
 sively by the reverend writers. Thus we have one preacher 
 of religion calling Fox's eloquence " divine," and saying 
 that he predicted the consequences of the political measures 
 adopted at a particular crisis with a " precision little short 
 of inspiration ;" another averring that, as to presciencQ, 
 " his mind seemed to brighten with a ray of divinity ;" an- 
 other ascribing " boundless stretch of thought," and still 
 another declaring that " the comprehension of his mind was 
 almost unlimited," and apostrophizing the Deity in the 
 following terms : — 
 
362 CHAE.VCTERS OF FOX, 
 
 " Gracious God ! we bend in submission to thy will : we 
 acknowledge thine infinite wisdom, and we adore thy righteous 
 though inscrutable dispensations ; but, when the little passions 
 of the present day are extinct and forgotten, remote generations 
 shall lament that it was thy pleasure to take away from thy 
 favoured land, in the very moment when he was most required, 
 this eificient instrument of thy benevolence ; and shall reverently 
 ask of thee why thine economy has only once, in a long succes- 
 sion of ages, imparted to an individual of our species so powerful 
 a genius to design, and so ardent a desire to accomplish the 
 purposes of good." — P. 148. 
 
 This address to the Almighty does really appear to us 
 like a very broad hint to him that he must now, in assisting 
 our nation, do as well as he can with inferior means ; having 
 unaccountably deprived himself of the very best instrument 
 he ever had for the purpose. It at least strangely forgets, 
 in the divine presence, how absolutely the efficiency of all 
 means depends on the divine will. We say nothing of the 
 injudiciousness and extravagance of thus assuming, in an 
 an address to the Being who knows all men, that a particular 
 English senator was collossally superior, in genius and 
 benevolence, to the whole human race for " a long succes- 
 sion of ages;" and representing that ''remote genera- 
 tions " will be almost moved to expostulate with the 
 Supreme Governor on account of this senator having died 
 at so premature an age as fifty-nine. 
 
 The impiety of attributing without ceremony the deliver- 
 ance and safety of nations, not only in general to mere 
 human agency, but also specifically to this or the other indi- 
 vidual, prevails in this collection in about the same degree 
 as in the general course of conversation. One instance, 
 however, occurs of remonstrance against this notion in the 
 latter shaps, and we are tempted to quote it as containing a 
 wonder; for while transferring dependence for national 
 salvation from individual men to the general spirit of the 
 people, it does nevertheless actually seem to recognize in 
 passing, that there exists something greater than man. 
 
 " But, profound as our grief is, and deeply as our sensibility 
 is wounded, we must say, we were never of the number of those 
 who imagined that the ruin or the salvation of the country 
 depended on Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, or any other man, however ele- 
 rated in rank, or distinguished by talents — but, under Providence, 
 
NATIONAL SELr-IDOLATKT. 363 
 
 to the public spirit of the people themselves. Of this opinion 
 we remain ; and much as we wished for the life, and deeply aa 
 ■we deplore the death, of this transoendently great man, we fear 
 not for our country. Those on whose conduct her welfare de- 
 pends, still live, and will continue to live so long as the waves 
 shall encircle her shores. Kings, heroes, and statesmen — Edwards, 
 Henries, Marlboroughs, Nelsons, Pitts, and Foxes, from time to 
 time flourish and disappear — the people never die ! Then let 
 them know their own dignity — let them depend on their own 
 virtue — let them endeavour, let them deserve, to be free and 
 invincible — and till their sea can be dried up, and their rocks 
 crumbled, they shall never be conquered or enslaved." 
 
 Though certainly not sorry to learn that there is such a 
 thing as Providence, that is, we suppose, the government 
 of the Deity, we may be allowed to entertain some little 
 doubt and fear, whether, under that government, such 
 shouts of self-idolatry, such explosions of pride and pre- 
 sumption, are the best omens of ultimate triumph. It is 
 not so long since, but that we can remember sentiments and 
 language very much in this strain being circulated among 
 the Austrian people and armies, a little after the battle of 
 Esslingen — we should rather say, a little before the battle 
 of Wagram. 
 
 In entering on the perusal of a large assemblage of cha- 
 racters of Fox, most of them from the opening sentences, 
 avowedly encomiastic, it was inevitable to anticipate for the 
 writers a considerable degree of difficulty in combining a 
 language of almost unbroken eulogy on the character, with 
 the language of reverential respect to religious and moral 
 principles. This respect, we were to take it as a matter of 
 course, would at any rate be sacredly maintained by the 
 Christian ministers who appeared among the writers. We 
 shall bring together a few short extracts, to show, that, if it 
 is not too flattering an estimate of the religious and moral 
 sentiments of the British people, laic and ecclesiastic, to 
 take this selection as the standard, we have good reason to 
 contrast ourselves so complacently with the infidels across 
 the Channel. 
 
 Moral and religious principles are more distinctly adverted 
 to, in connexion with Pox's character, in a piece to which 
 the editor has prefixed, we suppose on sufficient authority, 
 
364 CHAEACTEES Of FOX. 
 
 the name of the " Eev. Eobert Pellowes," than in any part 
 of the collection. In a literary point of view, also, the paper 
 is remarkable, as displaying one of the most violent quarrels 
 with unkind Minerva that we have ever witnessed. Prom 
 beginning to end it is a furious effort to be grand, to be 
 profound, to be comprehensive, to be imperial, to be oracular, 
 and all so exactly in Pox's own simple manner, — as witness 
 abundance of sentences like these : " The heart of Mr. Pox 
 was tenanted by none of those squalid forms which appear to 
 have fixed their dwelling in that of Mr. Pitt;" "as the 
 opinions which Mr. Pox maintained were founded on the 
 basis of justice and of truth, they partook of the sanctity 
 and eternity of moral obligation ;" " his was an ambition of 
 a noble kind — it was never forsaken by justice, and it 
 mounted even to the heavens on the wing of humanity." 
 But it is only on account of the reverend writer's austere 
 notions of morality and religion that we notice this paper 
 more particularly than the others. 
 
 "Many who have no religion themselves, or in whom the 
 varnish of exterior decorum is employed as a substitute for 
 virtue, have often vented their slanders on the vices of Mr. Fox. 
 But, of those vices which are of the most unsocial and malignant 
 oast, we do not believe that one can fairly be laid to his charge. 
 The impetuous ardour of his temperament, and the restless ac- 
 tivity of his mind, which, in whatever was the object of pursuit, 
 never stagnated in indifference, often made him pass the limits 
 of discretion. But the frigid calculations of mercantile prudence 
 seem to be suited only to ordinary minds. The mind of Mr. Fox 
 was not of that class." — P. 169. 
 
 Does the reverend writer also preach that, provided men 
 have an " impetuous ardour of temperament," the difference 
 between virtue and vice is for their sakes reduced by the 
 Divine Lawgiver to a point of discretion ? Does he expressly 
 teach the young men who are destroying themselves in the 
 bagnio and the gambling-house, that their proper answer to 
 the admonitions of their distressed parents or other friends 
 is, " that the calculations of mercantile prudence are suited 
 only to ordinary minds ?" It is curious to think what an 
 outcry of affected horror there would have been, if any of the 
 clergymen distinguished by the term evmigelical had let such 
 a passage appear under his name. It is followed, in the 
 
tox'b EELiaioxrs tenets. 365 
 
 way of challenge to the hypocrites or the puritans, with an 
 ostentatious enumeration of the bad things of which Mr. 
 Fox was not guilty ; just as if it were the grossest illiberality 
 to censure any character tUl it is stained and loaded with 
 every vice of which human nature is capable. The passage 
 bearing a reference to religion runs thus : — 
 
 ''though Mr, Fox was no formal religionist, yet the essence of 
 religion which centres in charity was the predominant sensation 
 of his heart. If religion consists in doing to others as we would 
 they should do to us, if it have any connexion with a holy 
 endeavour to preserve peace on earth and good will among men 
 (and what Christian will deny this 1) then we wiU venture to 
 say, that Mr. Fox, who never made any show of religion, was, 
 in fact, one of the most religious men of the age. The great 
 object of his political life was to prevent the havoc of war, and 
 preserve the world in peace." — P. 171. 
 
 With respect to these sentences we have only to say, that 
 we cannot wish to reduce a reverend subscriber to the 
 thirty-nine "Articles of Eeligion" to any awkward necessity 
 of plainly declaring whether he thinks a belief of the truth, 
 that is, of the divine origin, of Christianity, is at all of the 
 " essence" of a religious character. 
 
 AH this is suffered to pass by the reverend Philopatris 
 Varvicensis, who, by the fact of selecting the pieces, is to 
 be understood, as he observes in the preface, as giving " a 
 proof that his own mind was not unfavourably impressed 
 with the propriety of the matter or the graces of the style." 
 
 The reader will naturally inquire how the reverend Editor 
 has acquitted himself, on the same subjects, in his own 
 person. In the extract from the preface to Bellendenus, 
 very properly placed at the head of this series of " characters,' ' 
 Philopatris has purchased a kiad of license to exert his 
 ingenuity in the character of apologist, by first pronouncing 
 a decided censure in the character of moralist. 
 
 In his letter of nearly a hundred and forty pages, which 
 follows the " selection " he adverts to Mr. Pox's religious 
 principles in one interesting paragraph which we shall 
 transcribe. 
 
 " Of Mr. Fox's religious tenets, I cannot speak so fully as, 
 from motives not of impertinent curiosity, but of friendly anxiety 
 you may be disposed to wish. But I have often remarked that, 
 
366 CHABACTEES OF FOX. 
 
 upon religious subjects he did not talk irreverently, and generally 
 appeared unwilling to talk at all before strangers or friends. 
 When we look back to the studies, and indeed the frailties of his 
 youth, it were idle to suppose that he was deeply versed in 
 theological lore. Yet, from conversations which have insiden- 
 tally passed between him and myself, I am induced to think 
 that, according to the views he had taken of Christianity, he did 
 not find any decisive evidence for several doctrines which many 
 of the wisest of the sons of men have believed with the utmost 
 sincerity, and defended with the most powerful aids of criticism 
 history, and philosophy. But he occasionally professed, and 
 from his known veracity, we may be sure that he inwardly felt, 
 the highest approbation of its pure and benevolent precepts. 
 Upon these, as upon many other topics, he was too delicate to 
 wound the feelings of good men, whose conviction might be 
 firmer and more distinct than his own. He was too wise 
 to insult with impious mockery the received opinions of mankind, 
 when they were favourable to morality. He preserved the same 
 regard to propriety, the same readiness to attend to information, 
 when it was offered to him without sly circumvention, or pert 
 defiance, the same respect to the virtues and attainments of 
 those who differed from him, and the same solicitude for the 
 happiness of his fellow creatures. Thus much may be said with 
 propriety, because it can be said with truth ; and glad should I 
 be if it were in my power to say more upon a point of character, 
 which, in such a man, could not escape the observation of the 
 serious, the misconceptions of the ignorant, and the censures of 
 the uncharitable."— P. 219. 
 
 Ought we to pretend to be at a loss as to the real meaning 
 of this statement ? and when we find it followed by what 
 we sincerely wish we could call by any other denomination, 
 than an apology for religious scepticism ? The apology is 
 indeed conditional, the benefit of it being restricted to those 
 who " are too discreet to proclaim their speculative scruples, 
 and too decorous to disseminate them." This propriety 
 being preserved inviolate, " perhaps," says our learned 
 divine, " in many cases it is for the Searcher of all hearts 
 alone to determine either the merit of assent, or the demerit 
 of suspense;" the import of which observation the reader 
 had better not examine, if he is resolved that a Christian 
 minister shall not be understood to insinuate, that we may 
 disregard those parts of divine revelation which declare 
 positively that no man to whom that revelation is presented 
 
APOLOGY rOR EELIGIOTJS SCEPTICISM. 367 
 
 can with ianocence and impunity witlihold his acceptance. 
 This reference to the "Searcher of hearts" in behalf of 
 scepticism, in contempt of his own unequivocal denuncia- 
 tions of the guilt and punishment of unbelief, is with con- 
 sistency enough, and without much further dereliction of 
 Christian principles, followed, towards the close of this elo- 
 quent essay, by a direct invasion of that awful secret oifice 
 of judgment which had just been pretended to be left to his 
 own sovereign authority ; for that sovereign secret judgment 
 is invaded, when the decision is here boldly assumed ; and 
 tftie decision is here boldly assumed in the case of the 
 deceased statesman, the " demerits," and therefore the con- 
 sequences, of whose scepticism were, as we understood, to 
 have been left to the sole judgment of the " Searcher of 
 hearts." There is no sign of the trembling awe which 
 would naturally accompany such a reference and the uncer- 
 tainty respecting the result, when our author says, " In the 
 bosoms of those who attended him ta his last moments, it 
 (the complacent character of his death) must excite the 
 most serious wishes, that their own end ' may be like his,' 
 and to himself, we trust, it was, in the language of Milton, 
 'a gentle wafting to immortal life.'" But as if doubtful, 
 nevertheless, of the propriety of ezpressing the confidence 
 in a form liable to be brought to the test of revelation, our 
 divine adopts the words of Tacitus concerning Agricola, 
 " Si quis piorum manibus locus, si, ut sapientibus placet, 
 non cum corpore -extinguuntur magnae animse ; placide 
 quiescat," &c. 
 
 No religious reader of the series of extracts given in the 
 last few pages, can fail to be struck with the reflection to 
 what an unknown extent the mischief may be too reason- 
 ably apprehended to reach, which is done by a character in 
 which superlative talents and some unquestionable virtues 
 are combined with vice and the absence of religious priaci- 
 ples, when it is seen that even the teachers of religion are 
 by such a character seduced to betray it. It is obvious how 
 powerful the depraving influence is likely to be on othe 
 men, who have not the information, the convictions, or the 
 responsibility, implied and involved in the sacred profession, 
 and who are perhaps half vicious and half sceptical already, 
 if that influence is so strong as to make one most learned 
 
368 CHAEACTEES OP FOX. 
 
 Christian divine, in a work intended and expejted to go 
 down to a future age, confidently dismiss to those abodes of 
 the blessed* which Christianity only assures its disciples, 
 the person whom he has just confessed (we cannot honestly 
 interpret the passage in any other sense) to be not a believer 
 m the truth of that religion; — if the influence is so strong 
 as to make another divine proclaim with triumph that " He 
 died with the blessed hope of a Christian ; ' ' — if it is so strong 
 as to make a third divine declare his exaltation " above yon 
 azure vault of blazing stars ;" — and so strong as to make a 
 fourth pronounce him " one of the most religious men of 
 the age," and scout, in highly laboured sentences of con- 
 tempt, the ill-natured moralists, or the hypocrites, who 
 would describe some of the most pernicious vices in any 
 other terms than, " passing the limits of discretion." There 
 was evidently no need of the assistance of these reverend 
 gentlemen, to make the influence sufficiently extensive and 
 mischievous ; and how it may comport with the sacred pro- 
 fession, the grand object of which is to urge the infinite 
 importance of the religion of Christ, to act as auxiliaries of 
 that influence, must be left to their own consciences. 
 
 "We must also remark how ungenerous it is to the memory 
 of the great statesman, thus to force his character before 
 the public in the precise form, and as if for the precise pur- 
 pose, of a palliative of vice and religious indifiierenee or 
 unbelief. His pretended friends, when they might have 
 maintained the continuity of their encomium by avoiding to 
 advert to these points, choose formally to recognize them as 
 parts of a character, which, notwithstanding these very 
 serious evUs, having still many excellences, and being great 
 and imposing, they can hold up with an air of malicious 
 triumph that seems to say, " Now brand these vices, and 
 denounce, with your godly illiberality, this disregard of 
 Christianity, if you dare ; for in so doing you vrill attack 
 one of the greatest geniuses and sincerest patriots of the 
 age ; you will insult the revered memory of the illustrious 
 
 * Unless indeed our divine believes, according to Tacitus and 
 his " sapientes," in the existence of some elysium, some other 
 happy state of spirits, distinct from that revealed in the New 
 Testament, in the existence of which he also believes. 
 
rOX's MOBAL DEFECTS. 309 
 
 Fox." It is the old military stratagem of protecting the 
 front from attack, by covering it with persons accounted 
 privileged or sacred. The religious critic is reduced to the 
 alternative, of either letting these reverend gentlemen have 
 everything their ovm way with respect to the slightness of 
 the harm and final danger of gaming, libertinism, and scep- 
 ticism, — or incurring the imputation of Uliberality, perhaps 
 malignity, towards the splendid qualities of Fox ; which, in 
 these eulogiums, are artfuUy disposed for throwing their 
 rays across the deep moral and religious shades of the 
 character, and thus giving them a deceptive appearance of 
 extenuated evU. This imputation can be averted by no 
 professions of admiration of his stupendous talents, of his 
 zeal and labours in the cause of freedom and peace, and of 
 his kind and ingenuous disposition ; professions which, if 
 they were not a most needless tribute to a character so pre- 
 eminently rich in fame, we should make with a sentiment 
 rather more cordially emphatic, we think, than the most 
 pompous and sonorous of these congregated rhetoricians. 
 They are many of them too fine, and too much occupied 
 with themselves as being so fine, to reach the pitch of our 
 regret that the nation has now no such man to place at the 
 head of its affairs ; and we perceive such momentous inte- 
 rests, as scarcely ever occurred to the thoughts of thfese 
 panegyrists, involved in those doctrines of freedom of which 
 Fox was so noble an advocate. But all this will avail us 
 nothing with a certain class of people, unless we accede to a 
 suspension in his favour of the obligations of Christian 
 morality and Christian faith. We must, however, take the 
 consequences of venturing to assume, against such persons 
 in general, and against some of these reverend gentlemen in 
 particular, that, if the Christian religion be true, the vicious 
 squandering of great pecuniary means of doing good, and 
 the revels of almost boundless libertinism, followed by an 
 illicit connexion protracted to a late period of life, are great 
 crimes in any man ; and that they acquire an aggravation, 
 instead of a diminution, of their turpitude, by being con- 
 nected with an exalted intellect; and we must endure as 
 well as we can the contempt of the Eev, PhUopatris, the 
 Rev. Mr. Fellowes, &c., for the fanaticism of doubting 
 whether a sceptical indifference to Christianity is exactly 
 
370 CHAUACTJiUS or FOX. 
 
 the proper slate of mind to constitute a man " one of the 
 most religious men of the age," or to authorize the confi- 
 dence which, after he is departed, assigns him to the com- 
 pany of the spirits of the just. 
 
 If the junta of panegyrists had carefully abstained from 
 whatever would interfere with the laws of religion, and con- 
 fined themselves to a display of Fox's character as a states- 
 man, an orator, a scholar, and a gentleman, it might have 
 been no compulsory duty of serious critics to remind the 
 reader, that the possession of the specific excellences appro- 
 priate to these characters caimot transfer the individual 
 into a distinct economy from that in which the Divine 
 Being has placed the rest of the species, with regard to 
 religious obligations and the pre-requisites to future happi- 
 ness ; and if duty permitted them to be silent on this head, 
 assuredly policy, in these times, would enjoin them to be 
 so. But when, instead of this abstinence, the writers before 
 us have expressly and optionally pointed at religion in order 
 virtually to explode it by means of Mr. Fox's character, we 
 are compelled to ofiend some readers perhaps once more, by 
 asserting (notwithstanding our ardent love of liberty and 
 admiration of Mr. Fox), that it is necessary for a man to be 
 a Christian, even though he be an excellent statesman and 
 consummate orator. 
 
 The letter of Philopatris completes the first volume. It 
 combines sketches of Mr. Fox's character, with a desultory 
 discussion of the political principles on which he acted, and 
 a great number of incidental topics, moral, philosophical, and 
 literary. The writer's mind is teeming over with aU manner 
 of knowledge, and unfettered from all manner of method. 
 Hot however that he cannot when he pleases show himself a 
 most perfect master of every art of arrangement, and every 
 dexterity of logic. But he is too sprightly to carry on this 
 arrangement and logic with a protracted regularity. The 
 composition runs, jumps, and darts along a mazy and endless 
 series of luckinesses, smartnesses, quaintnesses, artifices, 
 acutenesses, and brilliances. At every inch the irregular 
 track is beset with subtilties, discriminations, and antitheses. 
 Between vivid fancy and intellectual sharpness, aU the 
 paragraphs are just like chevaux de Jrize ; throw them in 
 any way you please, they still present a point. And for 
 
DE. PAEB's TABIED ATTAINMENTS. 371 
 
 passing witli perfect ease from one department of literature 
 and knowledge to another, Philopatris is' the very Mercury. 
 Nay, we will acknowledge our suspicions that we have got 
 an avatar of the Hindoo god Crishna, of whom it is recorded 
 that, at one particular season in ancient times, he would 
 present himself, all at his ease, in whichsoever of a vast 
 variety of apartments the amazed beholder might succes- 
 sively look into. Within the space of a dozen pages, our 
 author shall be found in the ancient classics and the modern 
 reviews ; in politics and in particles ; in antiquities and inci- 
 dents of the day ; in theology, morals, history, poetry, and 
 contemporary biography; in the company of Solon and 
 Thales, and that of Sir Samuel EomUly. And yet, from his 
 mind being so full of analogies, which approach to a contact 
 at so many points, his transitions do not appear awkward or 
 abrupt. But the transition in which he shows the most 
 amazing facility, is that from aU things and languages into 
 Greek. By some inconceivable law of juxta-position, he 
 seems on the very edge of this at all times and places. 
 
 In this slight description, we refer fully as much to the 
 volume of notes as to the letter concerning Pox, in which 
 letter the strong interest of friendship has kept the writer 
 more constant to his subject. In many points, this letter 
 does eminent justice to the subject, as it abounds with acute 
 discriminations. 
 
 The volume of notes is absolutely a Hercynian forest, on 
 which, after the undue length of time already expended on 
 the work, we must not enter. The mass is not the less 
 multifarious, from its being almost all comprised in two 
 NOTES, each of them about two hundred pages long. The 
 one is on the subject of the penal laws, the other on Pox's 
 historical work. In the former, the author proposes to 
 abrogate the whole penal code, and replace it by a more 
 mUd and philosophical system, in a great measure declining 
 the aid of capital punishment. The several species of crime 
 are ingeniously discussed, with a view to the proof that some 
 other form of punishment would better correct or avenge. 
 In the miscellaneous discourse, put in the form of a note on 
 the subject of Mr. Fox's work, there is a great deal of 
 research into the ecclesiastical history of our country. 
 Philopatris is the ardent friend of the principles of civil 
 
 B B 2 
 
872 EDUCATION IH EELATION TO EELIGION. 
 
 liberty and of religious liberty — as far as concerns tlie 
 Eoman Catholics; but it seems there has of late years 
 arisen a most pestilent set of fanatics, under the assumed 
 name of evangelical Christians, the outcasts of reason, the 
 disgrace of our country, and the danger of our Established 
 Church. "Well then, shall we persecute them, shall we 
 coerce them ? Oh, no ! says he, I am the enthusiastic friend 
 of freedom ; we must only " by well-considered and well- 
 applied regulations restrain them." And this is all that has 
 been learned from all the argument and eloquence of Fox ! 
 "We have never so impressively felt the superiority of that 
 great patriot's mind, and the irreparable loss the nation has 
 suflfered in his removal, as since we have seen how little of 
 his principles and of his illumination have been left among 
 his professed friends and disciples. This most learned work, 
 after soaring and glittering a length of eight hundred pages, 
 ends in the completest bathos that ever learned performance 
 merged in — it actually falls and splashes in praises of the 
 " Barrister." 
 
 EDUCATION IN EELATION TO EELIGION. 
 
 Essays on Professional Echication. By E. L. Edsewoeth, Esq., 
 r.B.S., M.R.I.A., &c. 4to. 1810. 
 
 In literary partnership with a female relative, tnis author 
 has become sufiiciently well known to the public, to enable 
 it to prejudge with tolerable confidence the general qualities 
 of anj vork he might write, especially on the subject of 
 education. His book wiU be opened with the expectation 
 of a very good share of valuable instruction, the result of a 
 long and careful exercise of sound sense on the habits of 
 society, on the experience of education, and on a great 
 multitude of books. There wUlbe no hope of convicting the 
 author of enthusiasm for a system, or servility to any 
 distinguished authority. It will be expected that good usf 
 will be made of the opinions of the most opposite speculatists, 
 and that most of the ooinions that are approved wiU be sup 
 
PEINCIPLES AND PLANS OF EDUCATIOlf. 373 
 
 ported by some reference to experiments by which they have 
 been verified. It will be expected that, while a philosophic 
 manner and diction are avoided, and all speculations are 
 constantly applied to a practical purpose, full advantage will 
 yet be taken of those explanations which the laws of our 
 nature have received from the best modern philosophers. 
 The reader will reckon onfinding it constantly maintained, that 
 the influence of facts has fully as efficient an operation as in- 
 struction by words, in forming the human character ; and 
 he will not be surprised at a tone of somewhat more 
 positive confidence than himself is happy enough to entertain, 
 of the complete and necessary success of the process when 
 it unites the proper facts and the proper instructions. As 
 a moralist, it will perhaps raise no wonder if the author 
 should be found so much a man of the world, as to admit 
 various convenient compromises between the pure principles 
 of virtue, and the customs and prejudices of society; and as 
 to religion, no man will expect bigotry, or ascetic and in- 
 commodious piety, or any sort of doctrinal theology. There 
 will be an agreeable and confident expectation of a great 
 variety of pertinent anecdotes, supplied from history and 
 observation, at once to relieve and illustrate the reasonings. 
 The reader wUl be prepared to accept this mode of infusing 
 both vivacity and instructive force into the composition, 
 instead of brilliance of imagination ; comprehensive know- 
 ledge instead of argumentative subtlety ; and perspicuity of 
 language instead of elegance. 
 
 The first essay, or chapter, proposes principles and plans 
 for those stages of education, which, preceding the direct 
 training for a particular profession, admit of a discipline in 
 many points common to the children destined to all the pro- 
 fessions. And yet, as parents are urged to fix fit a very 
 early period the future profession of each of theii s ^ns, they 
 are properly recommended to introduce at an early stage of 
 this general discipline a specific modification of it, prospective 
 to the profession selected. In advising parents to this early 
 choice, the author explodes, in a great measure, the popular 
 notion of a natural inherent determination towards some one 
 pursuit more than another, commonly called " peculiar 
 genius," "impulse of genius," "bent of mind," "natural 
 turn," &c.. In attacking this notion, he calls in the power- 
 
374 EDTJCATIOlf IS BEIATION TO EIIIGIOK. 
 
 fill a.i of Johnson, who always manifested an extreme anti- 
 pathy to it. " I hate," said he, " to hear people ask children 
 whether they will be bishops, or chancellors, or generals, or 
 what profession their genius leads them to : do not they 
 know, that a boy of seyen years old has a genius for nothing 
 but spinning a top and eating apple-pie ?" Mr Edgeworth 
 condemns the folly of waiting in expectation that the sup- 
 posed natural aenius wiU. disclose itself, or be drawn forth 
 by some accideni, ; during all which time the general disci- 
 pline of education will probably be very remiss, the specific 
 training preparatory to professional studies wiU be systemati- 
 cally avoided, and the youth is either growing up to be 
 fit for nothing, or is perhaps determined at last by a casual 
 event, or unfortunate acquaintance, to the very worst selec- 
 tion that he could have made in the whole catalogue of em- 
 ployments. It is insisted, that methods which will generally 
 prove effectual, may be adopted by parents, to give the 
 child a preference for any department of learning or action 
 they choose, and to make him sedulous to acquire the 
 requisite qualifications. The author notices some of the 
 most remarkable instances recorded of persons being deter- 
 mined by a particular accident to the pursuits in which they 
 afterwards excelled; as Cowley's passion for poetry origin- 
 ated from his meeting with the "Eairy Queen" in his mother's 
 window ; and Sir Joshua Eeynolds's for painting, from his 
 chancing to open a book by Eichardson, on that subject, at a 
 friend's house. Mr. Edgeworth observes, that the effect 
 produced by reading these books would not have been less if 
 fhey had been laid in the way by design ; and that, besides, 
 when an impression is to be made by design, the effect is not 
 left to depend on a single impression, since by a judicious 
 management the child may be subjected to a combination 
 and a series of impressions all tending to the same point. 
 The manner of conducting this process is sketched with a 
 great deal of knowledge and judgment in these Essays. If 
 the magnitude and certainty of the effect to be thus pro- 
 duced are assumed in terms rather too little qualified, it is an 
 error on the right side ; since it wiU invigorate the motive 
 by which parents and friends are to be prompted to design 
 and perseverance, and since nothing can be practically more 
 mischievous, than the fancy that all is to be done by some 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OP EAELT IMPEESSIOJfS. 375 
 
 inrate predisposition and adaptation, aided by fortuitous 
 occurrences. At the same time, our author does not need 
 to be reminded, that, as a thousand boys of tbe same ages as 
 Cowley and Reynolds migbt have met with, and partly read, 
 tbe "Fairy Queen,'* and the book on painting, without receiv- 
 ing from them any strong determination to poetry or paint- 
 ing ; so, from the same cause, — the same intrinsic mental 
 difference, whatever be the ultimate principle of that dif- 
 ference, — the proposed discipline of multiplied and successive 
 impressions, passing just an equal length of time on a 
 thousand youthful minds, will eventually leave, notwithstand- 
 ing, all imaginable varieties in their dispositions and 
 qualifications. Nevertheless, there will be many more 
 heroes, or orators, or engineers, than if no such process had 
 been employed ; and those who fail to become heroic, 
 or eloquent, or scientific, will yet be less absolutely the 
 reverse of those characters, than they would otherwise have 
 been. Our author touches but briefly on the nature of that 
 undeniable original distinction which constitutes what is 
 denominated genius ; and maintains, very reasonably, that 
 whatever might have been the nature, the cause, or the 
 amount, of the inherent original difference between such 
 men as Newton, Milton, and Locke, and ordinary men, that 
 original difference was probably far less than the actual 
 difference after the full effect of impressions, cultivation, and 
 exertion. He suggests some very useful cautions to parents, 
 against treating their children according to the mysterious 
 and invidious distinction of " genius " and " no genius." 
 
 The defects and the cultivation of memory are shortly 
 noticed ; and it is maintained, that any memory may be so 
 disciplined, as to be quite competent to the most important 
 matters of business and science. In proof of this, and as a 
 lesson on the best mode of cultivation, the example of Le 
 Sage, the philosopher of Geneva, is introduced, and would 
 have been very instructive if his method of retaining his 
 knowledge by connecting it with a set of general principles 
 (a sort of corks to keep it in buoyancy), had been more 
 precisely explained by means of two or three exemplifications. 
 There are some very useful observations on the several rela- 
 tions of ideas which are the instruments of recollection ; aa 
 resemblance, contrariety, contiguity, and cause and effect ; 
 
876 EDirOATIOlf IN EELATION TO EELiaiOW. 
 
 it is strongly and justly insisted, that the memory which 
 operates most by means of the last of these relations is by 
 far the most useful, and therefore that the best mode of 
 cultivating it is a severe attention to this relation. 
 
 Mr. Edgeworth censures, but not in illiberal language, 
 the system which prevails in our public schools, and our 
 colleges, in which so disproportionate a measure of time is 
 devoted to classical studies, and in the former of which the 
 Course of instruction is the same for all the youth, though 
 they are intended for all the different professions. He 
 advises not to force any violent reforms on these ancient 
 institutions, but to induce their gradual and voluntary 
 amelioration, or, if that be possible, to superannuate them^ 
 by means of new though smaller seminaries, in which a much 
 greater share of attention shall be given to science, to studies 
 of direct moral and political utility, and to the peculiar pre- 
 paration for professions. He adverts to the system of edu- 
 cation adopted by the Jesuits ; and the plana devised by 
 Frederic " the Great," as he is here designated ; and 
 reviews at some length the succession of magnificent schemes 
 projected by the French philosophers before and in the 
 course of the Revolution. Some of these schemes were prac- 
 tically attempted, and they failed, partly from being on too 
 vast a scale, and beginning with too high a species of instruc- 
 tion, and partly from that state of national tumult which 
 withdrew both the attention and the pecuniary support 
 indispensable to these great undertakings. At length, a 
 party of philosophers obtained the complete establishment 
 of a more limited, but as far it extends, more effective insti- 
 tution, under the denomination of Ecole Polytechnique. In 
 the general course of education in France, however, our 
 author observes, classical literature has of late years been 
 regarded with such indifference or contempt, as to have 
 threatened a depravation of taste and of language ; the 
 studies of the youth having been directed with incompara- 
 bly the most emulation and ardour to the branches of 
 knowledge related or capable of being applied to the art of 
 War. He relates how the men of science rose to the highest 
 importance at the very period at which it might have been 
 previously imagined they must have sunk into utter obscurity 
 in the hour of revolutionarv violence and terror. 
 
CLERICAL EDrOATION. 377 
 
 Our auttor's sclieme for the formation of an improved 
 order of elementary and superior schools in this country, is 
 laid down with much good sense, and without visionary extra- 
 vagance, particularly without the extravagance of expecting 
 any assistance from the legislature. He would create and 
 support them simply by the conviction, in the minds of 
 parents in each town and village, of the usefulness and even 
 necessity of such a mode of instruction as he advises ; a 
 mode which should include, without any ostentation, an 
 attention to more branches of knowledge than are usually 
 acquired in schools. Or, if it were desirable there should 
 be any expedient more formal, for promoting such schools, 
 than merely the wish of parents to obtain such instruction, 
 he recommends there shoidd be an association of gentlemen 
 in London to patronize their formation in any part of the 
 country to which they can extend their influence and aid. 
 But the only efficacious power to create competent semi- 
 naries, is the concurrent will of a tolerable proportion of the 
 parents, in any place, to have their children instructed in 
 the rational manner proposed. 
 
 The second essay is on Clerical Education. Considering 
 the expensiveness of a residence at coUegOj and the very 
 inadequate salaries of curates, the author dissuades parents 
 who have not such connexions as may assist their son's 
 success in the church, from choosing this profession for 
 him ; unless they have fortune sufficient to contribute to 
 his support for perhaps many years after his entrance on it, 
 or he has already acquired a very strong determination of 
 mind towards it, accompanied by such proofs of application 
 and unusual talent as may warrant a presumption that he 
 will make his way through all difficulties by the force of 
 conspicuous merit. By making his way, is meant, of course, 
 his attaining the emoluments and honours of the church ; 
 and it is obvious enough, that a young man who has no 
 means of doing this but his personal qualities and conduct; 
 has little ground for such a presumption, when it is consi- 
 dered how much the disposal of the ecclesiastical good things 
 is regulated by parliamentary interest, and the favour of 
 persons of rank. The parliamentary interest confessedly so 
 powerful in making dignitaries and rich incumbents, our 
 ^.uthor decides to be partly beneficial and partly injurious to 
 the church aad to national morality. 
 
378 LDUCAT^ON IN EELATION TO EELIOIOK. 
 
 " That which is exerted by rich commoners or noble fiimilies 
 to obtain livings for men of learning and virtue who have been 
 tutors to their children, is highly advantageous ; it insures good 
 education to our young nobility, and it encourages men of 
 learning and talents in the middle or lower orders of life to 
 instruct themselves and become fit for such employments, and 
 worthy of such rewards. Parliamentary interest, influencing 
 the distribution of clerical honours and emoluments, is also 
 beneficial, as it tempts parents of good families and fortunes to 
 educate younger sons for the church : they give, as it were, a 
 family pledge for the good conduct of their children, who at the 
 same time may, by their manners and rank, raise the whole 
 profession in the esteem and respect of the public. Church 
 benefices may thus be considered as a fund for the provision of 
 the younger sons of our gentry and nobles ; and in this point of 
 view it cannot surely be a matter of complaint to any of the 
 higher and middle classes of the community that the clergy 
 enjoy a large portion of the riches of the state." — P. 59. 
 
 No reader, ib is presumed, caa permit himself for one 
 moment to doubt whether all these arrangements can fail to 
 keep in view, as their grand object, the promotion of primi- 
 tive Christianity among the people, or to prove the best 
 possible means of teaching and exemplifying it ; whether the 
 men from the inferior classes, thus seeking and attaining the 
 preferments of the church through the medium of tutorships 
 in noble families, be secure against all possibility of 
 becoming sycophants in the course of their progress, and 
 political tools at its conclusion ; or whether zealous piety, 
 and a dereliction of the spirit and fashions of the world, be 
 the necessary inheritance of the younger sons of the nobility 
 and gentry. On these points there can be no doubt ; and 
 therefore it is clear that thus far the parliamentary interest 
 in question is highly beneficial to the Christian cause. But 
 the subject has a dark side as well as a bright one ; and 
 every reader wiU be at once grieved and astonished on 
 reading the next paragraph, in which our author says, in so 
 many words : " But parliamentary interest is not always 
 employed in this manner ; it is sometimes exerted to obtaia 
 livings for the mean hanger-on of one lord, or the drinking, 
 or the profligate companion of another." These are litera- 
 tim the words, as they stand in the book before us ; but how 
 is it possible they can be true ? How is it possible that any 
 
CLEEIOAIi EDTJOATIOlf. 379 
 
 bishop will suffer sueh a man to declare before him that he 
 is moved by the Holy Ghost to enter the sacred function ? 
 Or, if it is after his entrance into the church that he 
 becomes such a character, how is it possible an institution 
 framed purely in aid of Christianity should fail to have the 
 niost peremptory regulations, not only for interdicting such 
 a man from preferment to larger emoluments and more 
 extensive cure of souls, but for expellii^ him from the 
 ministry altogether ? 
 
 If parents have resolved to devote a son to the church, a 
 judicious education will, according to the essayist, infallibly 
 make him a person to do honour to the sacred vocation. 
 In order to determine the right method of education for this 
 specific purpose, our author delineates at length the required 
 character, in the successive official stages of curate, rector, 
 and prelate. He informs us that " a good curate is not the 
 man who boasts of being the boon companion of the jolly 
 squire, who is seen following him and his hounds at full cry, 
 leaping five-barred gates, the admiration of the hallooing 
 heroes of the chace, or floundering in the mud, their sport 
 and derision : he is not the man set officially, at the foot of 
 his patron's table, " to smack his wine and rule his roast :" 
 he neither drinks nor swears ; he scorns to become the 
 buffoon, and never can become the butt of the company- 
 Indeed, he does not feel it absolutely necessary to be 
 continually in company." The character which our author 
 proposes to create, is extremely amiable in all the situations 
 and offices in which it is represented. The reader will be 
 prepared not to expect any very strong emphasis to be laid 
 on religion, in the strict sense of the word ; he may supply 
 that desideratum from his own mind, to a sketch of exem- 
 plary prudence, dignity, kindness to the poor and sick, 
 diligence, propriety in the performance of the public offices 
 of the church, and moderation on advancement to superior 
 station. There seems a material omission in the description 
 of a good rector. After the melancholy picture given of 
 the misery and degradation suffered by many curates from 
 extreme poverty, we confidently expected to find it made an 
 essential point in the good character of the rector, never to 
 suffer his curate to be in this situation from the parsimony 
 of the stipend. As the legislature has declined to interfere 
 
380 EDUCATION IN BEI-ATION TO EELIGION. 
 
 in th.B concern, it lies with the holders of livings to give 
 their curates that complacency in their of&ce which accom- 
 panies a respectable competence, or to gall them with the 
 mortification, impatience, and disgust inflicted by a long, 
 toUsome, and hunger-bitten apprenticeship to some better 
 station, towards which they will be continually looking with 
 a loathing and abhorrence of the present condition, and 
 which they will be tempted to practise the grossest servility 
 in order to obtain. What must be the natural effect on the 
 state of the church, of perhaps several thousands of its 
 ministers having their characters and exertions subjected 
 for many years, if not for life, to the operation of such feel- 
 ings as these ? And what are all the gentlemanly qualities 
 of a rector worth, if he can be content to see a fellow-clergy- 
 man and his family half starving on the five per cent, which 
 the said rector affords him from his ecclesiastical income, for 
 taking the work of the parish off his hands ? 
 
 Having exhibited the model of excellence in the different 
 clerical ranks, in all of which he says it is the very same 
 character that is required, and the highest of which none 
 should attain without having commenced with the lowest, 
 the writer proceeds to the proper training for making the 
 good curate, rector, and bishop. And the plan includes 
 something extremely specific and peculiar, for it proceeds 
 on the principle that " the virtues of a clergyman should be 
 founded on religion;" a foundation which we cannot, from 
 this work, ascertain to be necessary to the virtue of other 
 professional characters, or necessary to man in general as a 
 moral agent. "We are not distinctly informed whether 
 religion, that is of course Christianity, is to be considered 
 as any thing more than a convenient basis for a profession, 
 with its appropriate set of peculiar decorums ; or whether it 
 is really a system of truth communicated by divine revela- 
 tion. Nor are we taught to comprehend how, if Christianity 
 is to be regarded as such a system, education in general, 
 and education for the other particular professions, can be 
 safely and innocently conducted under the exclusion of this 
 divine system of doctrine and moral principles ; and not only 
 an exclusion, but in some of the departments of education, a 
 most pointed and acknowledged opposition. Possibly the 
 light in which the subject is regarded is this, — that it is a 
 
PEITATE EDTrCATIOJr. '^Sl 
 
 very trifling question whether Christianity be true or false ; 
 but that it teaches some principles and modes of action, the 
 preTalence of which, to a certain extent, would be useful iu 
 society, and therefore it is desirable they should be incul- 
 cated ; whUe, on the other hand, the condition of society 
 requires the prevalence also, to a certain extent, of directly 
 opposite principles, and therefore the same regard to utility 
 requires that other professions should support, and be 
 supported by, those opposite principles. With entire 
 gravity, our author takes quite the Christian ground, in 
 settling the moral principles of the youth destined to the 
 church. It is while deciding whether his education should- 
 be in a great measure private or at a public school. 
 
 The private education recommended is not to be a recluse- 
 education : the youth is to see the friends and acquaintance 
 of the family, and mix in general conversation. He is to be 
 led gradually, and not with too much haste, into a compre- 
 hension of the principal truths,— perhaps we should rather 
 say, propositions or notions, — of religion, and into a firm- 
 faith in them, founded on the "broad basis of evidence." 
 A devotional taste is to be created by " letting a child have 
 opportunities of observing the sublime and beautiful appear- 
 ances of nature, the rising and the setting sun, the storm of 
 winter, and the opening flowers of spring," to all which, 
 however, compared with the "top and apple pie," most 
 children will probably manifest the utmost indifference. 
 The impressions are to be reinforced by Mrs. Barbauld's 
 beautiful hymns, by good descriptions of the striking objects' 
 in nature, and by good church music. The most simple and 
 afiecting narrative parts of the Bible are to be added as soon 
 as they can be clearly understood ; but the author strongly 
 disapproves of children at an early age beiug set to read the 
 Bible at large, when a great portion of it must be unin- 
 telligible to them, when the irksomeness of having it for a. 
 sort of task-book, and the carelessness resulting from con- 
 stant familiarity with it, may predispose the pupil to regard, 
 it with dislike, and disqualify him for feeling the full 
 impression of its sanctity and grandeur in subsequent life.- 
 Instructors are admonished to be cautious of giving the 
 child erroneous and mean ideas of the Divine Being by. 
 minute illustrations or trivial and deceptive analogies ; of 
 
382 EDrCATION IN EEIATION TO EELIGION. 
 
 habitually threatening his vengeance on their faults, in the 
 form either of immediate judgments or future retribution ; 
 and of describing the future state with the particularity 
 which must divest the idea of all its sublimity. Considering 
 it as impossible, by the nature of the youthful mind, that 
 very young children can be effectually governed by ideas of 
 a remote futurity, our author advises not to make use of 
 these ideas in governing them, " till reiterated experience 
 shall have given them the habit of believing that what was 
 future has become present." "With regard to attempting to 
 connect, in the minds of the children, ideas of the divine 
 anger, and the punishments of a future state, with their 
 faults and vices, we think there are pious parents and 
 teachers that need some admonition. To resort, with a 
 promptitude which has at least the effect of profaneness, to 
 these awful ideas, on every recurrence of carelessness or 
 perversity, is the way both to bring those ideas into con- 
 tempt, and to make all faults appear equal. It is also 
 obvious, that, by trying this expedient on all occasions, 
 parents will bring their authority into contempt. If they 
 would not have that authority set at defiance, they must be 
 able to point to immediate consequences, within their power 
 to inflict on delinquency. Perhaps one of the most prudential 
 rules respecting the enforcement on the minds of children of 
 the conviction that they are accountable to an all-seeing 
 though unseen Governor, and liable to the punishment of 
 obstinate guilt in a future state, is, to take opportunities of 
 impressing this idea the most cogently, at seasons when the 
 childreu are not lying under any blame or displeasure, at 
 moments of serious kindness on the part of the parents, and 
 serious inquisitiveness on the part of the children, leaving in 
 some degree the conviction to have its own effect, greater or 
 less, in each particular instance of guUt, according to the 
 greater or less degree of aggravation which the child's own 
 conscience can be made secretly to acknowledge in that 
 guilt. And another obvious rule will be, that when he is to 
 be solemnly reminded of these religious sanctions and 
 dangers in immediate connexion with an actual instance of 
 criminality in his conduct, the instance should be one of the 
 most serious of his faults, that will bear the utmost serious- 
 ness of such an admonition. As to how early in life this 
 
PKOFESSIONAL EDTTCATIOIT. 383 
 
 doctrine may be commtmicated, there needs no more precise' 
 rule than this ; that it may be as early as well-instructed 
 children are found to show any signs of prolonged or return- 
 ing inquisitiveness concerning the supreme Cause of all that 
 they behold, and concerning what becomes of persons known 
 to them in their neighbourhood, whom they find passing, 
 one after another, through the change called death, about 
 which their curiosity will not be at aU satisfied by merely 
 learning its name. These inquiries will often begin to 
 interest them, and therefore these doctrines and sanctions 
 of religion may be beneficially introduced into their minds, 
 sooner a great deal than our author seems willing they 
 should hear any thing about God as a Judge, or a future 
 state of retribution. Besides, we do not know what the 
 economy may be at Edgeworth's Town, but in a family 
 where there is any avowed attention to religion, where the 
 children are made acquainted with even only select portions 
 of the Scriptures, where there are any visible acts of 
 devotion, and where it is a practice to attend pubhe 
 worship, it is quite impossible to prevent them from 
 acquiring the ideas in question in some form ; and, therefore, 
 unless parents will adopt systematically, and maintain with 
 the most vigilant care, the practical habits of atheists, in 
 order to keep the children's minds clear of these ideas, 
 there is an absolute necessity of presenting these ideas in a 
 correct though inadequate form as early as possible to the 
 mind, to prevent their being fixed there in a form that shall 
 be absurd and injurious. 
 
 The Essay proceeds to indicate the practical discipline for 
 cultivating, or rather creating, the virtues of economy, 
 charity, tolerance, and firmness of mind.. Here we meet 
 with one of the many instances of compromise between 
 absolute principle and convenience. 
 
 "In making the difference between education for different 
 professions, we may observe that a clergyman's should essentially 
 differ from a lawyer's in one respect. A boy intended for the 
 bar may be, in some degree, indulged in that pertinacious temper, 
 which glories in supporting an opinion by all the arguments 
 that can be adduced in its favour ; but a boy designed for the 
 church, should never be encouraged to argue for victory; ha 
 should never be applauded for pleading his cause well, for sup- 
 
384' EDrcATiON iir kela.tion to eehgion. 
 
 porting his own opinion, or for decrying or exposing to ridicule 
 that of his opponent." — P. S8. 
 
 It seems quite a settled principle of our author's morality, 
 thus to make the character of the man not only secondary 
 to the professional character, but a sacrifice to it. Nor can 
 we know where the operation of this principle is to be 
 limited, nor whether it has any limits. If, as in the case 
 before us, the love of truth, and, by infallible consequence, 
 the practical love of justice may thus be exploded, by a 
 formal sanction to the love of victory, and to a pertinacity 
 regardless of right and wrong, for the sake of producing 
 professional expertness — what other virtue should we hesi- 
 tate to sacrifice to the same object ? Thus explicitly, 
 tolerate and encourage in the pupil the contempt of one 
 essential part of moral rectitude, and he may very justly 
 laugh at his parents and tutors, when they are gravely 
 enjoining him not to violate any of the rest. He may tell 
 them he apprehends it may be of service in prosecuting 
 some of his designs to throw aside one or two more of 
 the articles commonly put by moralists among the es- 
 sentials of virtue, and, that therefore, if they please, he 
 had rather be excused listening to any canting lectures 
 about integrity. And if the pure laws of moral excellence 
 are to be deposed from their authority at all, we presume 
 the benefit of the exemption ought not to be confined to the 
 persons intended to figure at the bar. Some other employ- 
 ments, to which the bar professes to be in deadly hostility, 
 have also their pupils and their adepts, to whom the abro- 
 gation of the rigid standard of morality will be exceedingly 
 welcome and convenient ; and more professions than these 
 Essays extend to, might have been treated of in a bookj 
 much to the edification of many acute and active young 
 persons who are at all times training to them. Let it be 
 also considered in what a ludicrous predicament the theory 
 of morals would be placed in a family in which there were 
 several sons, educating for difterent professions, under the 
 immediate care of their parents ; a case which our author 
 regards as very desirable. One son, let it be supposed, is . 
 to be a lawyer, another a clergyman. The young clergyman 
 receives in the sight and hearing of his brother, daily lessons 
 on the indispensable duty of maintaining an ardent love of 
 truth and an honest, candid simplicity that admits everv 
 
OLEEICAL EDrCATION. 385 
 
 argument in its proper force, and would feel it a violation of 
 principle — not of reason or decorum only, but of conscien- 
 tious principle — to defend error througli obstinacy or the 
 desire of yictory. But the very spirit and conduct whicb 
 tbe young clergyman is taught to regard as immoral, is by 
 the same instructors, on the same day, in the same room, 
 encouraged in the young lawyer by a tolerance, which, if he 
 acquits himself cleverly, will approach to applause. "What 
 are these virtuous instructors to do, or say, when the young 
 lawyer laughs aloud at his brother while undergoing their 
 moral lecture, and at them for making it ; or ' when their 
 clerical pupil asks them, with ingenuous distress, what they 
 really mean by the terms duty, morality, virtuous principle, 
 and the like, seeing the pretended moral principle and its 
 direct reverse are thus to be regarded as equally right ? We 
 ca,ii conceive no expedient for these worthy parents to adopt 
 in such a case, but to dismiss at once the hypocrisy of an 
 illusory diction, and frankly avow, that, as to the point of 
 virtue and matter of conscience involved in the honesty 
 enjoined on the clergyman, that is all a joke ; but that the 
 plain thing is, there is a professional propriety in the cler- 
 gyman's cultivating the quality in question, and a profes- 
 sional convenience in the lawyer's despising it. 
 
 The remainder of the essay briefly traces, without efiecting 
 any novelty of system, the proper course of a young clergy- 
 man's studies, previously to his going to college, at college, 
 and in his subsequent years. The French and English 
 modes of eloquence are contrasted, and the latter, for very 
 good reasons, preferred. There are some plain and useful 
 suggestions of methods of discipline, by which the preacher 
 should accomplish himself as a good speaker. He is 
 advised to study the pulpit manners of living preachers, 
 not for so poor and absurd an object as the imitation of 
 even the best of them, but to perfect his abstract idea of 
 excellence by means of a consideration of various examples, 
 better and worse, — for he recommends the student to hear 
 some of the worst specimens as well as the best. Among 
 the vilest sort, he says, " should be classed all those clerical 
 coxcombs, who show that they are more intent on the nice 
 management of a cambric handkerchief, or the display of 
 
 c c 
 
886 EDt70ATI0K TS EELATION TO EELIGIOK. 
 
 a brilliant ring on their white hands, than upon the truths 
 of the gospel, or the salvation of their auditors." 
 
 He concludes by recommending the clergyman to acquaint 
 himself accurately with the various modes of faith, worship, 
 and religious establishment, in our own and other countries, 
 in order to keep himself clear of bigotry and party violence, 
 and to become qualified to act the part of a wise and bene- 
 volent moderator among others. 
 
 On taking leave of the clerical profession, the author 
 appears to take a final and willing leave of religion. The 
 word is admitted, indeed, two or three times, in enumerating 
 the requisite instructions for the other professions ; it is 
 introduced just as a notice that the subject has been duly 
 disposed of already ; and the writer appears glad to be 
 thus left at full liberty to sketch the whole scheme of the 
 education of the soldier, physician, lawyer, and statesman, 
 without formally including this ungracious article. Such a 
 thing as a solemn regard to the Governor of the world, and 
 a rigorous adherence to his revealed laws, was deemed too 
 trifling or too fanatical to be brought forward in each of 
 the delineations of professional excellence, as a purifier of 
 motives, as a prescriber of ends, and a regulator in the 
 choice of means in every department of human action. It 
 was not that the author was anxious to avoid repetition ; 
 for most of the other requisite branches of instruction and 
 qualities of character which have been illustrated and 
 enforced as indispensable or highly useful for one profession, 
 are again fully insisted on with reference to another, and 
 still another. Nor do we complain of this repetition. The 
 value of what may be called a philosophical memory, of a 
 most carefully cultivated reasoning faculty, of intellectual 
 and moral self-command, of a certain portion of learning and 
 science, and of extensive knowledge of mankind, is obviously 
 so great to all persons employed in important concerns, that 
 the reader is willing and pleased to have them brought again 
 in view, in order to its being shown in what manner they 
 are indispensable in the education of the physician, or the 
 lawyer, or the statesman. But while such ample liberty is 
 taken of enlarging again, in the successive divisions of the 
 work, on several qualifications which are not merely profes- 
 sional, but are indispensable to professional men, Just 
 
MILITARY AND NAVAL EDUCATIOS. 387 
 
 because they are indispensblae to all enlightened and useful 
 men, we own we cannot help receiving an unfavourable 
 impression of the moral quality of a work, from seeing so 
 careful an omission (except in the part where it was unavoid- 
 ably to be noticed as professionally necessary) of that one 
 qualification of human character, which is the only secure 
 basis of any virtue, and gives the purest lustre to every 
 talent. 
 
 The third essay is on Military and Naval Education ? In 
 undertaking to sketch the proper education for the several 
 professions, Mr. Edgeworth has omitted, apparently by 
 design, to premise any observations tending to fix the moral 
 estimate of each, for the assistance of those persons who 
 are compelled to consult a delicate conscience in choosing 
 the professions of their children. A few observations of this 
 kind might not have been out of place, at the beginning of 
 an essay on the method of making a soldier ; for such a 
 conscience may perversely raise a very strong question, 
 whether it be right to destine a child to the occupation of 
 slaying men ; and, happily, for our country (or unhappily, 
 as we believe it will be more according to the current moral 
 principles of the times to say), there are a certain proportion 
 of people who cannot dismiss in practice their convictions of 
 right, even though flattered by a presumption that their 
 names, in their sons, might attain the splendour of military 
 fame. W e cannot be unaware how much offence there are 
 persons capable of taking, at a plain description of war in 
 the terms expressive of its chief operation. And it is, to be 
 sure, very hard that what has been bedizened with the most 
 magnificent epithets of every language, what has procured 
 for so many men the idolatry of the world, what has crowned 
 them with royal, imperial, and, according to the usual slang 
 on the subject, "immortal" honours, what has obtained 
 their apotheosis in history and poetry, — it is hard and 
 vexatious that this same adored maker of emperors and 
 demi-gods, should be reducible in literal truih of description 
 to "the occupation of slaying men," and should therefore 
 hold its honours at the mercy of the first gleam of sober 
 sense that shall break upon mankind. But, however 
 whimsical it may appear to recollect that the great business 
 of war is slaughter, however deplorably low-minded it may 
 
 c o2 
 
388 EDrCATION IN EELATION TO EELIOION. 
 
 appear to regard all the splendour of fame with which war 
 has been blazoned, much in the same light as the gilding .cf 
 that hideous idol to which the Mexicans sacrificed their 
 human hecatombs, however foolish it may be thought to 
 make a difficulty of consenting to merge the eternal laws of 
 morality m the policy of states, and however presumptuous 
 it may seem to condemn so many privileged, and eloquent, 
 and learned, and reverend personages, as any and every war 
 is sure to find its advocates, — it remains an obstinate fact, 
 that there are some men of such perverted perceptions as 
 to apprehend that revenge, rage, and cruelty, blood and fire, 
 wounds, shrieks, groans, and death, with an infinite accom- 
 paniment of collateral crimes and miseries, are the elements 
 of what so many besotted mortals have worshipped in every 
 age under the title of " glorious war." To be told that this 
 is just the commonplace vrith which dull and envious 
 moralists have always raUed against martial glory, wiU not 
 in the slightest degree modify their apprehension of a plain 
 matter of fact. What signifies it whether moralists are dull, 
 envious, and dealers in commonplace, or not ? No matter 
 who says it, nor from what motive ; the fact is, that war 
 consists of the components here enumerated, and is therefore 
 an infernal abomination, when maintained for any object, 
 and according to any measures, not honestly within the 
 absolute necessities of defence. In these justifying neces- 
 sities, we include the peril to which another nation with 
 perfect innocence on its part may be exposed, from the 
 injustice of a third power ; as in the instance of the Dutch 
 people, saved by Elizabeth from being destroyed by Spain. 
 Now it needs not be said that wars, justifiable, on either 
 side, on the pure principles of lawful defence, are the rarest 
 things in history. Whole centuries, all over darkened with 
 the horrors of war, may be explored from beginning to end, 
 without perhaps finding two instances in which any one 
 belligerent power can be pronounced to have adopted every 
 precaution, and made every effort, concession, and sacrifice, 
 required by Christian morality, in order to avoid war ; to 
 have entered into it with extreme reluctance ; to have 
 entertained while prosecuting it, an ardent desire for peace, 
 promptly seizing every occasion and expedient of conci- 
 liation ; to have sincerely forsworn all ambitious objects. 
 
THE MOEALITT 01' WAE. 389 
 
 to have spurned the foolish pride of not being the first to 
 offer peace, and to have ended the war the very first hour 
 that it was found that candid negotiation and moderate 
 terms, would be acceded to by the enemy. It is certain, at 
 least, that the military history of this country is not the 
 record where such examples are to be sought. But it may 
 be presumed, we suppose, that those' parents whose moral 
 principles are to be of any use to their children, will abhor 
 the idea to their sons being employed in any war that has 
 not the grounds of justification here enumerated. But then, 
 in order to their feeling themselves warranted to educate 
 those sons for the business of war, they must have a firm 
 assurance that the moral principles of their nation, or its 
 government, are about to become so transformed, that there 
 shall be, during the lives of their children, no war which 
 shall not, on the part of their country, stand within the 
 justifying conditions that we have specified. And let a con- 
 scientious parent seriously reflect, whether there be any 
 good cause for entertaining such an assurance. But, unless 
 he has such an assurance, he gives his son to be shaped and 
 finished, like a sword or a bayonet in a Birmingham manu- 
 factory, to be employed in deeds of slaughter, righteous or 
 iniquitous, just as may be determined by the persons in 
 power, to whom he must sell his services unconditionally, 
 and whose determinations may probably enough be guided by 
 the most depraved principles ; while there is this unfortunate 
 difiference between the youth and the sword, that the youth 
 who is thus becoming an instrument of slaughter, cannot 
 still be divested of the accountableness of a moral agent. 
 A melancholy case ! that the father should have cause to 
 deplore the impossibility of his son's being at once an accom- 
 plished soldier and an idiot. If a time shall come when tha 
 nation and its government shall manifest, with any thing 
 like a sufficient security for permanently manifesting, half 
 as much moderation as they have shown pride and ambition, 
 and half as decided an attachment to peace as they have 
 shown violent passion for war, during the last half-century, 
 then the parent's conscientious scruples may be turned 
 from the general question of the morality of the military 
 employment, to the particular considerations of its probable 
 influence on his son's character, and its dangers to his life ; 
 
390 EDUCATION IN EELATION TO KEIIGION. 
 
 that is to say, if all sucli considerations, and the profession 
 itself, are not by that time set aside by the final cessation ol 
 war. In the mean time, conscientious parents may do well 
 to resign the ambition of training sons to martial glory, to 
 those fathers — a plentiful complement — who will laugh at 
 the sickly conscience which scruples to devote a youth to 
 the profession of war, on the ground that the wars in which 
 he shall be employcid may be iniquitous. 
 
 We are not sure that Mr. Edgeworth would not join in 
 this laugh, as he makes very light of whatever morality has 
 to do in the concern. He contemplates with the utmost 
 coolness, not only the possibility that his young hero may 
 be employed in an unjust cause (in which case he is here 
 recommended to take no responsibility on his conscience, 
 but mind his proper business of killing and slaying), but the 
 certainty that the prescribed education for a military life 
 will powerfully tend to promote and perpetuate a state of 
 war. He says, — 
 
 " After quitting his academy, it is scarcely possible that a 
 young man, who has acquired all the knowledge, and caught all 
 the enthusiasm necessary for his profession, should not ardently 
 wish for war, that he may have opportunities of distinguishing 
 himself. Martial enthusiasm and a humane philosophical love 
 of peace are incompatible ; therefore, military pupils should not 
 be made philosophers, or they cease to be soldiers, and how then 
 can we expect to be defended.": — P. 194. 
 
 Thus it is plainly asserted, that a rightly conducted 
 military education will inspire its subjects with an ardent 
 passion against the nation's being at peace. Now let it be 
 considered, that of the numerous youths to be thus educated, 
 and therefore inspired with this passion, a considerable pro- 
 portion will be sons of the nobility, who form a branch of 
 the legislature, a kind of permanent council to the king ; 
 that another large proportion are from the families of the 
 prodigious number of executive functionaries of the state, 
 through all their gradations ; and that a very numerous 
 supply is from the families of wealth and influence through- 
 out the country, whose direct or collateral relations have 
 seats in the House of Commons : let all this be reflected on 
 but five minutes ; let it be considered that the younger sona 
 
THE MOEALTXT Or WAE. 391 
 
 of the nobility, when thus educated, must be provided for at 
 all events, even if they were not burning for martial enter- 
 prise ; that in the descending ranks of family and wealth, 
 who send their representatives to the House of Commons, 
 the modern habits of living have created certain necessities 
 very powerfully tending to influence the fathers of these 
 young heroes to promote in that house, in person, or by 
 their friends, such national schemes as will furnish employ- 
 ment for their sons ; and that the generous ambition, as it 
 wUl be called, of these high-spirited young men, always 
 therefore the favourites and idols of their families and con- 
 nexions, will probably have no little direct influence on the 
 volitions of their parliamentary relatives. Let any man 
 think of all this influence, acting in reinforcement of that 
 horror of peace which may prevail as much in the govern- 
 ment and a great part of the nation another half century, 
 as it has prevailed during the last, and say whether there 
 can be any better security for a constant national disposition 
 to a state of war. The nation is to stand, therefore, in this 
 desirable predicament ; that the grand expedient for defend- 
 ing it against enemies, is to be most exactly calculated to 
 set it continually on finding and making enemies. 
 
 Such are the natural effects of our author's scheme of 
 military education, according to his own statement of its 
 tendency, on which statement he appears not to have the 
 slightest idea that any one can be so wrong-headed as to 
 found an objection to such an education. It is no business of 
 ours, in this place, to enter into a duU and useless discussion 
 whether it be practicable to devise aschemeof education which 
 should qualify young men to be efficient soldiers, whenever 
 duty should appesr to summon them to act in that capacity, 
 and should equally, at the same time, cultivate all the moral 
 principles that would inspire a detestation of war. But it is 
 our business, as Christian censors and monitor to say, that, 
 if this is not practicable, no parent can educate his son for 
 war, without a complete virtual abjuration of Christianity ; 
 as it is obviously impossible for him at once to be faithful 
 to the laws of an institution which commands every thing 
 gentle, pacific, preventive of strife and suffering, and repres- 
 sive of ambition, and deliberately to excite in his son an 
 ardent passion for that employment, of which the grand 
 elements are fury, anguish, and destruction. The laws of 
 
392 EBrCATION IN EELATION TO EEMGION. 
 
 this institution are fundamental and absolute, forming the 
 primary obligation on all its believers, and reducing all other 
 rules of action to find their place as they can, in due sub- 
 ordination, — or to find no place at all. No arguments in 
 favour of this military passion are to be allowed from such 
 topics as national glory, unless it is to be maintained, that 
 Christianity has provided for a suspension of its own princi- 
 ples, in favour of that pride and ambition generally implied 
 in this phrase. And if it has made an exception in favour 
 of these, why should it not be equally indulgent to any other 
 depraved feelings connected with other kinds of corrupt 
 interest ? that is, why has it an existence as a moral autho- 
 rity? It had better not exist at all, if it were an insti- 
 tution which enforced gentleness and quietness on mankind, 
 just as if to give the more destructive efiect to an exception 
 sanctioning martial madness to harass and consume them. 
 Truly it would deserve all the contempt which such persona 
 as our author feel for it, if it were a system maintaining 
 itself rigidly obligatory on those whose refined moral sensi- 
 bility yields to admit the obligation, but not obligatory on 
 those whose fierce passions disdain its control ; that is, a 
 thing of whieh the obligation depends on whether men are 
 willing to acknowledge it or not. 
 
 "We have mentioned what is called national glory, as this 
 is one of the chief idols which men of war are always required 
 to worship, and to which there is hardly anything in the 
 whole moral system which they wiU not be justified, by the 
 generality of politicians and moralists in these times, for 
 sacrificing. But national defence is Mr. Edgeworth's imme- 
 diate plea, in justification of a mode of training which must 
 deprave the moral sentiments of a considerable portion of 
 our youth : "How <!an we otherwise," he asks, " expect to 
 be defended?" "We have already said, in reply to this. 
 How can we, at this rate, be ever free from perils, created 
 by our own foolish disposition to seize or make occasions 
 for war ? But we add another question of still graver 
 import, — On the supposition that there is a righteous 
 Governor of the world, how can we expect to be defended, 
 if we industriously promote, in the minds of a large and the 
 moat active proportion of our youth, a spirit which he 
 abominates, and the national conduct naturally resulting 
 from which he has threatened to visit with punishment? 
 
ON NATIONAL DErENCES. 398 
 
 This question, indeed, it must be acknowledged, can per- 
 tinently be addressed only to the ''fanatics ;" as we have 
 had extensive opportunity of observing, that the persons so 
 reputed alone show any real practical recognition of a divine 
 government in speculating on the policy of states. It is to 
 be hoped that all these fanatics will, in consistency with 
 their faith in such a govemiiient, beware of soliciting the 
 demon of martial ambition into the minds of their sons ; 
 convinced that no possible combination of circumstances 
 under heaven can sanctify a spirit the reverse of their 
 religion, and that, as a general law, a state in danger, has 
 just so much the greater cause to despair of being defended, 
 as it prepares its defence in a spirit careless of divine 
 injunctions, and scornful of a reliance on Providence. Till 
 the right spirit shall find its way into nations and govern- 
 ments, it remains to be seen what that Providence will 
 suffer to be effected among them by that valorous ambition 
 which Mr. Edgeworth wishes to inflame, and all the glory 
 of which — except its success, and its efficacy to annihilate 
 national danger — has richly crowned this country during 
 the last half-century. 
 
 If the question were still urged. But how can a nation be 
 defended ? it may be answered at once, that a nation whose 
 piety and justice are approved by heaven (and how is a 
 nation of an opposite character to have any security of 
 being defended, whatever be its ostensible means ?) such a 
 nation may be defended by the divine agency giving efficacy 
 to the operation of such numbers, such military apparatus, 
 and such resources of science, as the purely defensive spirit 
 would always keep partly prepared, and would soon make 
 ready for action, in an enlightened nation, conscious of 
 having the most valuable possessions to lose. 
 
 Our author's morality appears on the same level, in the 
 doctrine that it is not for military men, except those of the 
 very highest rank, to form any judgment of their own on 
 the right or wrong of the cause in which they are to be 
 employed. That is, in the one employment which is the 
 most awful on earth, that of inflicting death on human 
 beings in the mass, men are not to consider their actions aa 
 of consequence enough for the cognizance of conscience ; 
 they may divest themselves of the inconvenience of moral 
 
391 EDTTCATION IS EELATION TO EELIGION. 
 
 accountableness, till they return to the solemn functions of 
 buying and selling, and the ordinary proprieties of life. In 
 the civil economy of society, the life of an individual is 
 regarded as of such importance, that it must not be touched 
 without a most grave and punctilious process ; witnesses 
 are attested and rigorously examined, juries are sworn and 
 charged, laws are explained, learned judges preside, and are 
 even allowed by their office to assume in a certain degree 
 the character of advocates for the accused ; and should any 
 one of all these persons concerned, be proved to have acted 
 in the process as a man divested of moral responsibility, his 
 character is blasted for ever. But let an ambitious despot, 
 or a profligate ministry, only give out the word that we 
 must be at war with this or the other nation, — and then a 
 man who has no personal complaint against any living thing 
 of that nation, who may not be certain that it has com- 
 mitted any real injury against his own nation or govern- 
 ment, nay, who possibly may be convinced by facts against 
 which he cannot shut his eyes, that his own nation or 
 government is substantially in the wrong, then this man, 
 under the sanction of the word war, may, with a conscience 
 entirely unconcerned, immediately go and cut down human ' 
 beings as he would cut down a copse. It is nothing to him 
 if the people he is to co-operate in attacking are peaceful, 
 free, and happy, and that this very freedom and happiness 
 may have been the cause of the war, by exciting the maHg- 
 nity of the aggressor. The peaceful valleys and hiUs of 
 Switzerland can be no more sacred in his view, than the 
 borders of the most arrogant and malicious rival. The 
 officers who invaded and subdued that country were, all but 
 the commander-in-chief, as virtuously employed as those 
 who fell in attempting to defend it. And, admitting that 
 the popular resistance in Spain is really an effort of a long- 
 degraded people to obtain liberty, the invaders, excepting 
 perhaps the marshal-dukes, are as honourably occupied as 
 their opponents ; for they are destroying men and desolating 
 the country, under the modest forbearance, enjoined by our 
 moralist, to arrogate to themselves a right of judging of the 
 merits of the cause. And should they receive orders from 
 their superiors to perpetrate the barbarities of Herod, they 
 have only to obey, and exult in their exemption from moral 
 
ON DtTEIiLlKS. 395 
 
 responsibility. The exemption goes this length, and every 
 length, or it cannot be proved to exist at all ; for if an 
 accountableneas is to take place at some point, and the 
 man's own judgment is to decide ■where, he will be com- 
 pelled to begin his examination, and therefore to acknow- 
 ledge his accountableness, at the very first moral question 
 that can be put concerning his employment. 
 
 The young soldier from Mr. Edgeworth's school is not to 
 be eagerly set on duelling, but neither is he in all cases to 
 decline that honourable practice. " The best character," he 
 says, " a young man can establish on going into the army, 
 is that of being determined to fight in a proper cause, but 
 averse to quarrel for trifles." He strongly recommends 
 fencing as a part of an officer's education. 
 
 " It might again revive the custom among gentlemen, of fight- 
 ing duels with swords instead of pistols : a custom, which would 
 at least diminish the number of duellists, by confining them to 
 a certain class in society. Gentlemen would then be in some 
 measure protected from the insolence of uneducated temerity, 
 and every ill-bred upstarb would not find himself upon a footing 
 with his superior because he can fire a pistol, or dares to stand 
 a shot. If any distinction of ranks is to be supported, if any 
 idea of subordination is to be maintained in a country, and 
 what nation can exist without these, education must mark the 
 boundaries, and maintain the privileges of the different orders. 
 The honour and the life of an officer and a senator, and that of 
 a mere idle man of the town, ought not to be put on the same 
 level, nor should their differences be adjusted by one and the 
 same appeal to the trigger." — P. 152. 
 
 This expedient for preserving so valuable a privilege to 
 the better sort, for keeping duels a strictly genteel amuse- 
 ment, would prove ineffectual ; for these " idle men of the 
 town" would, in spite of their description, be soon stimu- 
 lated to qualify themselves in the art, on which they found 
 their equality with the "officers and senators" was to 
 depend ; and some of them, of the true bravo species, would 
 soon acquire the power to overawe their pretended supe- 
 riors. Mr. Edgeworth might know that some of these men 
 of the town practise shooting at a mark, expressly in prepa- 
 ration for " affairs of honour," with as much assiduity as 
 would finish them in the use of the sword. Tinder the 
 
396 EDUCATION IN BELATION TO EELIGIOIT. 
 
 appearance of idle men of the town, there will always, m 
 the metropolis, be a class of keen desperate adventurers by 
 profession, who regard what Mr. Edgeworth may call " their 
 superiors," as their game ; and so long as gentlemen of the 
 senatorian, or whatever other dignified sort, choose, in defi- 
 ance of morality and law, to maintain the practice of 
 " appeal" to either the " trigger" or the sword, they wiU 
 deservedly be at the mercy of the more unerring pistols or 
 swords of these formidable men. As to the supposed higher 
 value of the " honour and the life of the officer or senator," 
 surely the man is the best judge himself what the one or 
 the other is worth ; he is not obliged to appraise them m a 
 pistolling match vrith " every iU-bred upstart, or idle man 
 of the town," and, if he chooses to do it, it is of course 
 because he judges they are things fit for such a traffic. 
 And truly, whatever price they might have borne before, he 
 cannot well estimate them too meanly by the time that he 
 has measured his ground with his worthless antagonist, 
 since community in crime is the grand equalizer in degrada- 
 tion. By the time be has consented to place himself in 
 that situation, his " honour," at any rate, is hardly worth 
 the trouble of a preference of one weapon to another, and 
 his " life" is worth — mentioniag ia to-morrow's newspaper 
 as a thing that went out in a gentlemanly style. In the 
 name, then, of that liberty, so much favoured by the govern- 
 ment and tribunals of this Christian country, of violating in 
 this point morality and law, let not the man be forced to 
 take the pains of learning an additional art in order to dis- 
 pose of his couple of trifles, " honour and life," which can 
 be disposed of with less trouble in the mode now in fashion. 
 The reader wiU be somewhat surprised to find that this 
 determination to fight duels on all proper occasions, is to 
 coalesce, in the young soldier's mind, with a religion which 
 it shall be worth his while to maintain with an equal 
 constancy of determination. We are not certain, even, 
 whether the same weapons are not, in the last resort, to be 
 employed ; since " all interference with his religious senti- 
 ments, whether by ridicule or remonstrance," is represented 
 as such " an infringement of his rights and his inde- 
 pendence," as we should suppose he will be bound to resent 
 with lead or steel. 
 
MlIilTAET KEHGIOir. 397 
 
 " As a young officer will early mix -with varieties of dissipated 
 company, his religious principles should not trust for their 
 defence to any of those outworks which wit can demolish ; he 
 should not be early taught to be scrupulous or strict in the 
 observance of trifling forms ; his important duties, and his belief 
 in the essential tenets of his religion, should not rest upon these 
 slight fouudations, lest, if they be overthrown, the whole super- 
 structure should fall. When his young companions perceive 
 that he is not precise or punctilious, but sincere and firm in his 
 belief ; when they see that he avoids all controversy with others, 
 and considers all interference with his own religious sentiments, 
 whether by ridicule or remonstrance, as an infringement of his 
 right sand his independence, he will not only be left unmolested 
 in his tenets, but he will command general respect. It is of the 
 utmost importance that the early religious impressions made on 
 the mind of a soldier should not be of a gloomy or dispiriting 
 sort ; they should be connected with hope, not with fear, or they 
 win tend to make him cowardly instead of brave. Those who 
 believe that they are secure of happiness hereafter if to the best 
 of their power they live and die doing their duty, will certainly 
 meet danger, and if necessary death, with more courage than 
 they can ever do who are oppressed and intimidated by super- 
 stitious doubts and horrors, terrors which degrade man, and 
 which are inconsistent with all ideas of the goodness and 
 beneficence of God."— P. 143. 
 
 It should seem to be conveyed in this piece of instruction, 
 that it is in some certain degree at the option of religious 
 teachers wlmt they shall inculcate as religion; and that, 
 therefore, in their religious instructions to their military 
 pupils, they can considerably accommodate to the purpose 
 of producing bravery. We may also learn, that a religion 
 which involves " terrors," needs not be believed by any of 
 us, soldiers, authors, or critics, any testimony to the con- 
 trary in the Bible notwithstanding. As to the phrase, " if 
 they live and die doing their duty," nothing can be more 
 indefinite, or even equivocal ; for, according to our author, 
 a military man may die doing his duty though he dies in a 
 duel, or, as far as we see, if he dies in the act of sacking a 
 harmless town, which some atrocious tyrant, or tyrant's 
 tool, has sworn to annihilate. 
 
 After so much more than enough on the moral complexion 
 of this long essay on military education, there needs but 
 very few words on its other qualities. In common with the 
 
398 EDTJCATIO>f IN EELATION TO EELIOION. 
 
 others, it has a certain defect, very sensibly felt by a reader 
 of indifferent memory ; that of not prominently marking the 
 several stages and topics in the scheme. But this perhaps 
 could not have been remedied by any other means than a 
 formal division into a number of sections with distinct titles 
 and arguments. The multifarious assemblage of precepts 
 and illustrations includes, we should suppose, almost all the 
 expedients most conducive to excite the spirit and finish the 
 accomplishments of a soldier. Many directions are given 
 for preparing the young hero from his infancy for the toils 
 and privations of his future service. 
 
 The discipline of stripes must never be applied to him, of 
 whatever perversity or mischief he may be guilty. Every 
 thing must be done by an appeal to his pride, which passion 
 is to be promoted and stimulated in every possible way, as 
 the sovereign virtue of the military character ; nor is any 
 prescription given for transmuting it into the opposite 
 Christian virtue just at the extreme moment when he is 
 finally laying down his arms, if he should then be apprehen- 
 sive that this military character may be an uncouth garb in 
 which to appear in the other world. The proper discipline 
 for creating courage is pointed out ; amusements bearing • 
 some relation to the operation of war are suggested ; it is 
 advised that the boy be induced to employ himself sometimes 
 in familiar practical mechanics ; be early made master of the 
 terms and elements of mathematics ; be carefully trained to 
 an accurate use of his eyes, in order to judge of distances 
 and relative magnitudes ; be taught drawing ; learn some of 
 the modern languages, but not expend much of his time on 
 Latin and Greek. He is to be made conversant with the 
 lives of warriors, and even the stories of chivalry. But the 
 book of mightiest inspiration is the Iliad, of which it was 
 indispensably necessary to mention yet once more, that it 
 sent " Macedonia's madman and the Swede," to draw 
 glorious lines of blood and devastation across certain 
 portions of the surface of the earth, beckoned on by the 
 Homeric ghost of Achilles. The character of this amiable 
 hero has been "fated," it seems, like those of the Christian 
 apostles and martyrs, to meet with detractors among the 
 base-minded moderns. 
 " Some modern writers have been nleased to call Achillea a 
 
MEDICAL AND LEGAL EDUCATION, ETC. 399 
 
 mad butcher, wading in carnage ; but all our love for tlie arts of 
 peace, and all our respect for that humane philosophy wliich 
 proscribes war, cannot induce us to join in such brutal abuse, 
 such unseemly degradation of the greatest military hero upon 
 poetic record ;" 
 
 and there follows a portion of useful composition on the 
 "heroic beauties in his character;" in answer to all which 
 it is sufficient to ask, But was he not, after all, " a mad 
 butcher wading in carnage?" There are many excellent 
 observations on an officer's conduct in war, on the proper 
 3ombination, while he is a subaltern, of subordination with 
 independence of character, on presence of mind, on the 
 mode of attaching soldiers and inspiring them with confi- 
 dence, and on that vigour of good sense which, disdaining to 
 be confined to the principles of any school of war, can 
 adapt every operation pointedly to the immediate state of 
 the circumstances. The whole Essay is enlivened by 
 numerous historical examples, selected in general with 
 great judgment and felicity. 
 
 The remaining Essays are on the education for the 
 Medical Profession, for the duties of Country Gentlemen, 
 for the profession of the Law, and for Public Life, with a 
 short concluding chapter on the education of a Prince. 
 They involve such a multiplicity of particulars, as to be 
 beyond the power of analysis, had we any room left to 
 attempt it. Nor is there any bold novelty of general 
 principles that can be stated as" pervading the whole mass , 
 unless, indeed, we may cite as a novelty the author's detes- 
 tation of the political profligacy and low intrigues of what 
 are called public men. This appears in many parts of the 
 book, and is conspicuously displayed in the Essay on the 
 education of men intended for Public Life. And it is quite 
 time it should be displayed by every honest man, since the 
 public mind habitually leans to a forgetfulness or a toler- 
 ance of those vices of public men to which the public 
 interests are made a sacrifice. Thus far is well ; but when 
 our author proceeds confidently to remedy all these evils by 
 means of the inculcation of pride, honour, and magnanimily 
 (which is only another name for pride, when it is found in 
 such company), we cannot help wondering through what 
 preternatural splitting of his faculties into a very intelligent 
 
400 SANSCRIT LITEEATrEE. 
 
 part and a very whimsical one, it has happened that the 
 same individual has been in many directions an excellent 
 observer and thinker, but in others a deplorable visionary. 
 
 SANSCRIT LITEEATUEE. 
 
 The Bamayuna of ValmeeM, translated from the Sunc/sirit, with 
 explanatory Notes. By William Caret and Joshua Marsh- 
 MAJf. Vol. I. containing the first Book. 8vo. 1810. 
 
 SoAECELT so much as a third part of a century has passed 
 away, since a large proportion of the wise men of us here 
 in Europe were found looking, with a devout and almost 
 trembling reverence, towards the awful mysteries of Sanscrit 
 literature. The idea which had taken possession of our 
 imagination, was that of a most solemn temple, placed far 
 within the shades of a grove of unmeasured extent and 
 unknown antiquity, in the solitude and twilight of which 
 now and then a daring adventurer had descried at a dis- 
 tance, and contemplated with religious emotion, though but 
 obscurely and partially disclosed to his view, some of its 
 stupendous proportions and columns : while it was doubt- 
 fully reported that some one or two stiU more hardy intruders 
 into those shades had ventured into the immediate precincts, 
 had even presumed within the threshold, and glanced into 
 the awful gloom of the interior. It was not pretended to 
 be known how long this one or more pretended aspirants 
 had dared to continue there, nor what they had been per- 
 mitted with impunity to behold ; and it may for ever remain 
 equally unknown whether it was from what they had the 
 temerity to reveal, or whether it was by any other commu- 
 nication that it had come to be understood among us, that 
 the presence of something divine was perceptible in that 
 dread mansion ; and that oracles of a deeper philosophy 
 and a sublimer theology than had ever been vouchsafed in 
 explanation of matter and spirit, of creatures and creators, 
 in our part of the world, there disclosed the very last 
 abstraction of truth ; that there were heard such strains of 
 celestial poetry as would put our inspired or uninspired 
 
EEBONBOUS ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE. 401 
 
 bards to silence ; and that a tablet of authentic history 
 might there be seen which would unfold to us a retrospect 
 of enormous periods of human existence and agency, 
 anterior to the little modern story about Adam and Eve, 
 and satisfy us that our eras Domini and Mundi measure 
 time on a scale fit enough, perhaps, for the chronicling of 
 wine and strong beer. As to the infinity of idols, not denied 
 to be the occupants of that awful fane, the language of 
 contrast and solemnity but very slightly modified its tone. 
 It was assumed that the measure of our liberality in religion 
 ought to be estimated according to our willingness to admit 
 a variety of claims to divine honours, especially in favour of 
 gods who had splendid religious establishments among an 
 enlightened and happy people (as they were asserted to have 
 been), in an age when we were little better than naked 
 wild beasts, roaming in the woods. The persons making 
 this representation did, besides, very justly guess, that in 
 proportion to our disregard of the one exclusive object of 
 religious homage would be our capacity of admitting and 
 worshipping a million. Our liberality proved not to have 
 been overrated ; we were found capable of entertaining the 
 representations which demanded its exercise towards the 
 countless legion of oriental gods ; philosophers and scholars 
 conceded to their claims, poets began the direct formalities 
 of worship by writing hymns to them ; even ministers of 
 " our" religion spoke of them in reverential terms ; and our 
 Christian government has given a most marked attention t o 
 the encouragement of their worship in the East. 
 
 Some of the earlier of these religious demonstrations 
 were at least premature ; as being made previously to the 
 authenticated disclosure of any part of what was enshrined 
 within the holy language, and even while it seemed yet 
 doubtful whether we were not doomed all to die without the 
 benefit of that revelation. We had heard of Vedas and 
 Puranas, and perhaps of Menu, and Vyasa, and Valmic ; 
 and there was no form of reverential sentiment within the 
 "reaches of our souls" which we had not associated with 
 these terms and names ; but it had been preferable not to 
 have heard of them at all, and not to have associated these 
 sentiments with them, than to be continually reminded by 
 them of the impenetrable darkness which veiled from us 
 
402 SANSCEIT LITEEATFEE. 
 
 those treasures of wisdom, the possession of wliich, could 
 they be imparted to us, would deliver us from that painful 
 sense of limited faculties and scanty knowledge, under 
 which we have hitherto been left to suffer by the feeble 
 light of the Bible, of all moral science and literature, and of 
 the Grecian and Eoman philosophy and poetry, even not- 
 withstanding the advantageous circumstance of their being 
 pagan. 
 
 When at length some hope began to arise that in part 
 the disclosure would soon be made, the eagerness and the 
 seriousness of expectation were not less than would be felt 
 by a man that should have been brought up and confined 
 from his infancy in an apartment which admitted no direct 
 light from the sky, and should at last be assured that 
 to-morrow morning he should be taken out to see the sun 
 rise. 
 
 At length the appointed and auspicious hour arrived; 
 and the' Geeta appeared on our horizon as the morning-star. 
 In a moment, and in the act of awkwardly imitating Brah- 
 minical gestures, we fell prostrate. But, retaining some 
 small remainder of the curiosity and courage characteristic 
 of Englishmen, we presumed, even in this devout posture, 
 to gaze. The effect was very rueful and very comical. For, 
 after gazing a short time, many of the worshippers began to 
 suspect that, if we may be permitted to use a very low word 
 in connexion with what should have been a very high subject, 
 they had been humbugged; and that what had been 
 announced to them as the celestial precursor of a grand 
 luminary, might perchance prove to be no other than the 
 fire of a sort of sacred brick-kUn, kindled for the piu-pose of 
 giving an apotheosis to divers lumps and shapes of clay, 
 which would soon demand a still more prostrate obeisance 
 of these devotees. In plain terms, when those pretenders 
 to superior reason and intellectual freedom, — who had with 
 notable prudence given out that there was cause to believe a 
 more refineji wisdom. and a more enchanting eloquence are 
 inscribed in the ancient volumes of the Brahminical 
 sanctuary, than any thing that ever emanated from the 
 strongest minds of Europe, or has been displayed in the 
 Jewish and Christian revelations, — obtained at last a trans- 
 latioc, by a scholar whose ability and accuracy no one could 
 
THE &EETA. 403 
 
 venture to question, of what was confessedly the most 
 revered part of one of the most revered works in that sanc- 
 tuary, they were grievously confounded. And not small was 
 the mortification of those who had suffered themselves to 
 admit in any degree the possihle truth of such a representa- 
 tion ; while those who had always despised the fiction, had 
 now the opportunity of kindly soothing the vexation of its 
 propagators and believers, by requesting their assistance for 
 the more devout and profitable contemplation of the new 
 light, the vision of the true theology and philosophy, the 
 thunder and lightnings of ardent and sublime poetry. 
 Perhaps a very few attempted to protect themselves by a 
 manful effort of effrontery, stoutly asserting that there was 
 a profound philosophy^ and what not, discoverable in the 
 production. But the half-dozen (if there were so many, 
 fools or hypocrites for Crishna's sake), could hardly obtain 
 notice enough to be even despised, amidst the general and 
 ~ irresistible conviction, that, however thick the darkness in 
 which we may have been left, by the writings of prophets 
 and apostles, or ("still more unaccountably and haplessly) by 
 the greatest efforts of uninspired genius, it is not to the 
 Sanscrit literature we are any longer to look for the intel- 
 lectual day-spring, — if the poor, tenebrious glimmer of the 
 Greeta be a fair specimen of the Indian lights. For, readers 
 of the most ordinary sense, and even had they been so 
 devoutly prepossessed with the sanctity of the book as to 
 perform ablutions and chant a litany in plain grammatical 
 English to the Hindoo Triad, before presuming to open it, 
 were soon forced to perceive that it bore no one trace of 
 what we in Europe can acknowledge as a strong philosophic 
 mind ; that the writer was incapable of elucidating any one 
 thing in heaven or earth ; that moon-light in a November 
 fog is too flattering a comparison ; that what purports to be 
 of the nature of philosophy and theology is for the most 
 part an utterly inane mysticism, where the reader, while 
 trying hard to make it palpable to his thinking faculty, finds 
 every moment the dim incipient shapes of thought, which 
 seem attempting to rise in his mind, dissipated in perfect 
 vacancy, except where sometimes this mysticism comes to an 
 intelligible notion, in the form of a bouncing absurdity or 
 despicable puerUitv ; that the whole exhibition seems to bo 
 
 DD 2 
 
404 8ANSCEIT UTEitATDKB. 
 
 an attempt to amalgamate the lowest fooleries of supsrstition 
 with certain abstract principles of what is called natural 
 iheologj', most feebly and remittingly apprehended ; that the 
 supreme rule of morality is to annihilate the motives to 
 notion ; and finally, that what is to be taken for the poetical 
 beauty of the work, consists in exactly those qualities which 
 could not have entered into the composition, but through 
 the writers being destitute of a firm and disciplined 
 intellect. 
 
 But lest there should have remained a possibility, after 
 the importation of this sample, that the distressed philoso- 
 phic inquirers of Europe should still indulge some lingering 
 hope of obtaining, from the sacred literature of India, the 
 theological and moral illumination vainly sought from the 
 Bible — and so should be losing the precious time in which 
 deputations might be sent to try to acquire it from the 
 sages of Caffraria, New Zealand, or the Copper Mine Eiver 
 —further translations soon were to be made from the ctcIo- 
 "psedia of the gods. It was impossible for Sir WiUiam Jones 
 to be long in India without contriving to get into their 
 library, by means natural or magical, by an entrance terrene, 
 aerial, or subterraneous. He got in accordingly, and through 
 connivance of one of their priests, who " requested most 
 earnestly that his name might be concealed," stole nothing 
 less than the JDherma Sasfra, the Institutes of Menu; which 
 not long after, in an English shape, arrived on our shores. 
 And now or never was the chance of ascending into the sky 
 of wisdom, by means of the Brahminical Jacob's-ladder. 
 I'or here we might learn about the divine egg, which Brahma 
 came out of, splitting it in halves, the one of which became 
 the heavens, and the other the earth ; how the said Brahma 
 alternately works and takes a nap, the one in what is 
 accounted his day, and the other in his night, each of them 
 comprising the space of several thousand millions of our 
 years ; how men, of four distinct orders, sprang from four 
 localities of his person; and how he contrived a much more 
 singular mode of origination for a superior and second-rate 
 divine sort of beings, one of the foremost of whom was 
 Menu, who pretends to have taken on himself no little of 
 the business of the creation. In this sacred volume might 
 be seen the full evidence of the more than half divine 
 
INSTITUTES OP MENU. 405 
 
 qualities, powers, and prerogatives, innate in one class of 
 human creatures, and of the essential, unchangeable vileness 
 of another ; together with the thousands of divinely autho- 
 rized regulations, according to which the former are even 
 bound in duty to trample on the latter. This venerable 
 document might help to purify our standard of excellence, 
 by celebrating, as of the highest reHgioua merit, a multitude 
 of things compatible with the greatest moral depravity. 
 There the benefit and delight of worshipping an innumera- 
 ble crew of gods, might be seen, in a ritual inexpressibly 
 silly except where filthy or cruel, and not to be matched for 
 complex multiplicity by aU the tracks of noxious and loath- 
 some reptiles at this hour crawling and wriggling in the 
 purlieus of all the pagodas in Hindostan. It could not but 
 be a very dignified and philosophic thing, to prefer the 
 thousand-fold ceremonial about eating rice, to the Christian 
 morality ; and to wish the commutation of rational repent- 
 ance, for propitiatory exercises in cow-dung. And our 
 inquisitiveness concerning a future state, which could find 
 so little for rational belief or sublime and awful speculation 
 in the Christian views of another life, might satisfy its 
 utmost demands for evidence and magnificence now at last, 
 on obtaining a revelation which promises to the eminently 
 good (that is, those that have been the most obstinate in 
 useless austerities), a final beatific absorption amounting to 
 an extinction of individual consciousness : and predicting to 
 the rest a long succession of births, in the course of which 
 the souls of the wicked have a chance of finding themselves 
 lodged in the forms of all sorts of reptiles and vermin, and 
 even of sprouting in weeds from the dung-hill. 
 
 The admirable translator seemed to labour under a consi- 
 derable, and, in some degree, ludicrous perplexity, where- 
 abouts, on the scale of wisdom and sanctity, to fix the place 
 of the Indian demi-god, prophet, and lawgiver. He had 
 gone to the East with an imagination on fire at the idea of 
 those intellectual wonders, which even he, surpassingly illu- 
 minated as he was, hnd to a certain extent suffered himself 
 to believe the Sanscrit had guarded within its mysterious 
 recesses for so many cenlTiries, to be revealed to a happier 
 age. As soon as he dared to hope those recesses might not 
 be impregnable to his own literary ardour, he felt much of 
 
406 SANSCEIT LITEEATUKE. 
 
 tlie spirit of the kniglit-errant, going to rescue the fail 
 princess, Truth, from the durance of an unknown language, 
 In the very reasonable exultation of finding himself at last 
 the master of this language, and thus admitted at once into 
 a world combining perfect novelty with extreme antiquity ; 
 thus introduced into a region peopled with sages, to whoa 
 so many delusive associations of thought had conspired to 
 give an appearance of almost superhuman venerableness ; 
 and thus finding a perfectly new track for ascending far 
 towards the primeval periods of the world — it is not, per- 
 haps, to be accounted strange, that he could not view with 
 altogether undazzled eyes the work which suddenly unfolded 
 to himself, and by which he was suddenly unfolding to the 
 European world, the whole frame of a system which had 
 been the object of ineffectual curiosity and vain conjecture 
 and fable ever since the time of Alexander. And, therefore, 
 while it was impossible for his dignified understanding not 
 to see that he had got into his hands the very quintessence 
 of all manner of absurdity, and impossible for his ingenuous- 
 ness not to avow this perception in very pointed terms, he 
 yet appeared somewhat reluctant to acknowledge, even to 
 himself, that the system celebrated for thousands of years, 
 as something almost too awful to be profaned by investiga^ 
 tion, was absolutely nothing but a compost of whatever was 
 most despicable, and whatever was most hateful, in pagan- 
 ism. It might well be supposed, therefore, that his honest 
 acknowledgment of the futility of the metaphysical conceits, 
 of the monstrous priestcraft, of the ceremonial silliness, of 
 the partially bad morality, and of several other reprobate 
 qualities manifest in the work, was not made without some 
 reluctance and mortification. And this presumption is 
 verified by his evident anxiety to show, as a set-ofi!, certain 
 other qualities alleged to be prominently distinguishable in 
 the Institutes, and which nothing but an imagination, not 
 yet efiectually cured of the oriental fever, could have allowed 
 to be described in such terms as the following : " never- 
 theless, a spirit of sublime devotion," (devotion to what ?) 
 " of benevolence to mankind,"' (when a very large propor- 
 tion of the work, probably much more than half, is 'employed, 
 directly or indirectly, in adjusting and fixing, in a complete 
 system, tlie unearalleled iniquity of the distinctiDn of 
 
THE INSTITUTEa OF MEUC. 407 
 
 castes, and the most arrogant and oppressive claims of the 
 Brahmins !) " and of amiable tenderness to all sentient 
 creatures, pervades the vsrhole work : the style of it has a 
 certain austere majesty, that sounds like the language of 
 legislation, and extorts a respectful avre ; the sentiments of 
 independence on all beings but God, and the harsh admoni- 
 tions, even to kings, are truly noble." (Preface, p. xv.) Per- 
 haps it had been as well for this incomparable scholar and 
 estimable man, to have imitated, on this occasion, the pru- 
 dence of the first invader of Sanscrit, Mr. Wilkins, who, in 
 his preface to the Greeta, stated, with demure and exemplary 
 gravity, that in the estimation of the Brahmins it is the 
 sacred repository of the sublimest doctrines and mysteries, 
 and ventured a conjecture at the design of its author ; but 
 avoided committing himself in any estimate of its merits, 
 and slyly threw on the collective Christian wise-men of 
 Europe the responsibility of deciding for or against the 
 divine Brahminical revelation. 
 
 The hopes which the appearance of the G-eeta had but 
 too desperately blighted, were utterly death-smitten and 
 shrivelled up by the Institutes ; since this latter greater 
 work not only had its own due proportion of all that is 
 abhorrent to reason and disgusting to taste, but, as con- 
 stituting or illustrating the grand basis of the religious 
 economy, it necessarily certified us of what must be, sub- 
 stantially, the quality of the whole mass of sacred rubbish 
 in the repository of Benares. Such then was the end and 
 the reward of the pious faith and hope, with which our 
 benighted spirits had so long been looking towards the 
 expected Brahminical revelations. We were now, for the 
 most part, quite content to forego the privilege of reading 
 any more of their law and their prophets. But our Eastern 
 scholars, — whether it is in order to convince us that our 
 despondency has been premature ; or to avenge the rejected 
 gods by plaguing us ; or whether a latent zeal for Christi- 
 anity (how little suspected !), was seeking to drive us into 
 it by an aggravated impetus of recoil ; or whether, more 
 probably, it was considered that, as our government has 
 taken the heathen worship under direct and special patron- 
 age, it was but a point of consistency to promote the study 
 of the books which give the pattern and celebrate the 
 
408 SAH'SCBIT LITEBATrEZ. 
 
 objects of that worship ; — whatever has been the design, 
 those scholars have, in spite of all our chagrin, and our 
 mutters and murmurs of " Ohe! jam satis est" continued, 
 through the " Asiatic Eesearches," and other channels, an 
 unremitted and merciless persecution of our galled and 
 mortified feelings, by their successive abstracts and transla- 
 tions from the "holy scriptures" of the Brahmins; and 
 we that, not very long since, had been so confidently anti- 
 cipating from those sacred works all the delights of the 
 richest poetry, and all the elevating sentiments of a most 
 sublime religion, are feeling and looking just as any person 
 would do, that, having eagerly fallen to devour some sup- 
 posed choice dainty which proved on trial to be liberally 
 mixed with sand, cinders, and even still less delectable sub- 
 stances, should be forced to prolong the repast, while some 
 of these ingredients were constantly crashing between his 
 teeth. It is perfectly right, however, that this persecution 
 should go on to a yet considerably greater length. Let our 
 infidels, who could have the assurance and the stupidity to 
 afiect an air of Ughtly-dispatching contempt for the autho- 
 rity of the Bible and the reason of its believers, while they 
 were prompt with a manner and language of reverence and 
 affiance at any mention of the Indian Sastras, — let them be 
 glutted and gorged to loathing and strangulation with this 
 Amrita, this their extolled Hindoo elixir of life. Let them 
 enjoy such a regale as Moses gave to the idolatrous Israel- 
 ites, and be made to drink, in the vehicle of translations 
 from the Sanscrit, the pounded substance of aU the Indian 
 gods. The Baptist missionaries, who have now begun to 
 lend a hand in the preparation of this luxury, have a pecu- 
 liar right to administer it, and to witness the repugnant 
 grimaces of the recipients. For they have been traduced, 
 and hooted, and almost cursed, by all sorts of people, civil 
 and military, lay and ecclesiastical, for their bigotry and 
 fanaticism, in protesting in a Pagan land against the Pagan 
 superstitions. Some refuse substances, put in human shape, 
 have raved and bullied about the flagrant injustice com- 
 mitted against the heathens, in suffering these men to offer 
 to them the Bible aa a book worthy to supplant their piles 
 of mythological legends. And persons wishing to carry not 
 only some appearance of decorum, but even somewhat of 
 
TRANSLATIONS BY THE MISSIOITAEIES. 409 
 
 the dignity of philosophy, have professed to wish that the 
 narrow-minded zealots for one religion had understauding 
 enough to learn the proper respect for the religious institu- 
 tions and scriptures of other nations, especially those of an 
 immense people, who can point back to a splendid state of 
 their hierarchy and sacred literature in the remotest ages. 
 The most ingenious malice, had that been the actuating 
 principle of the missionaries, could not have fallen on a 
 more effectual expedient of revenge, than that of opening 
 in this manner to the English public those " religions" and 
 " scriptures," to which these judicious persons have taken 
 credit to themselves for extending their liberality. And 
 that they may accomplish in the most decisive manner 
 whatever good is to be effected by this expedient, we 
 earnestly hope their plan will be to translate a moderate 
 portion of several of the most celebrated works, rather than 
 the whole of any one of them. It would be a most deplor- 
 able waste of their labour and time to translate the whole, 
 for instance, of the present work, which would probably 
 extend to ten such volumes as that before us. "We are per- 
 suaded they will be convinced it would be a seriously 
 immoral consumption of time also in the readers, sur- 
 rounded with such a multitude of better things claiming to 
 be read or to be done, to traverse the whole breadth of 
 such a continent of absurdity. But indeed it is probable 
 no mortal would be found capable of so much perseverance, 
 — except, perhaps, Mr. Twining, and the noted Major, and 
 two or three other personages, the remission of whose 
 pamphleteering labours against the propagation of Chris- 
 tianity in India, may have now left them leisure for so 
 congenial an occupation. And in the daily expectation of 
 the fulfilment of their predictions, that the permitted con- 
 tinuance of the missionaries in India would infallibly cause 
 the speedy and total expulsion of the English from that 
 country, we think these gentlemen should be peculiarly 
 thankful for whatever translated portions of the " holy 
 scriptures" can be obtained, before the catastrophe that 
 will put an end to the translating. 
 
 In a much too brief advertisement, the translators state 
 the occdsion and nature of their undertaking. The religion 
 and literature, the manners and customs of the Hindooa 
 
410 SANSCKIT J/ITEEATFBE 
 
 have become the objects of a more general curiosity than in 
 any former time, and of these, they observe, " a clear idea 
 can be obtained only from a connected perusal of their 
 writings." Under this impression. Sir J. Anstruther, the 
 late president of the Asiatic Society, had — 
 
 " Indicated a wish to the Society of Missionaries at Seram- 
 pore, that they would undertake the work of translating such 
 of the Sunskrit writings as a committee, formed from the 
 Asiatic Society and the College of Port> William, should deem 
 worthy of the public notice ; and, in consideration of the great 
 expense necessarily attending an undertaking of this nature, 
 these learned bodies generously came forward with a monthly 
 indemnification of 300 rupees. In addition to this, the late 
 President of the Asiatic Sociuty, anxious for the advancement 
 of Eastern literature, addressed a letter to the different learned 
 institutions in Europe soliciting their patronage to this under- 
 taking." 
 
 It was proposed to print in the original, accompanied 
 by a translation as nearly literal as the genius of the two 
 languages would admit, the principal works found in the 
 Sanscrit, " particularly those that are held sacred by the 
 Hindoos, or those which may be most illustrative of their 
 manners, their history, or their religion, including also the 
 principal works of science." The committee "made choice 
 of the Eamayuna of Valmeeki to be the first in the series 
 of translations." " The reverence in which it is held, the 
 extent of country through which it is circulated, and the 
 interesting view which it exhibits of the religion, the doc- 
 trines, the mythology, the current ideas, and the manners 
 and customs of the Hindoos, combine to justify their selec- 
 tion." 
 
 " The translators have only to observe, that a strict conformity 
 to the original has been the object constantly kept in view. To 
 this has been sacrificed, not only elegance of expression, but in 
 some places perspicuity. A free translation would have been 
 an easier task ; but esteeming it their duty to lay before the 
 public, not merely the story and machinery, but the imagery, 
 the sentiment, and the very idiom of the poem, they have 
 attempted this as far as the difference of the two languages 
 would permit. And they trust a candid public will excuse 
 every defect of phraseology, when it is understood that the 
 
THE KAMA.TTJNA. 411 
 
 object has been to present the original pcem in its native sim- 
 plicity." 
 
 It may seem a duty of our office to try at something like 
 an abstract of this epic story, or rather farrago ; but it is 
 such a formless jumble, that we would gladly be excused 
 from attempting more than a slight notice of the principal 
 matters. There can be no obligation on even the humblest 
 critic, to expend much time on what no intelligent creature 
 in England above the age of ten (unless the epithet intelli- 
 gent could be appUed to a certain half-dozen of heathen 
 pamphleteers), wiU read without the utmost contempt. 
 Any little value attributable to it, is purely of that inci- 
 dental kind which is possessed by all literary relics that, 
 however worthless on the score of wisdom or genius, afford 
 illustrations of the state of understanding, of the notions 
 and the manners, of an ancient and remote people. This 
 one claim being admitted and disposed of, there scarcely 
 can be found, within the ample scope of our language, any 
 terms capable of adequately expressing the despicableness 
 of this Indian epic, which has been and continues to be 
 regarded as a divine performance by so many millions of 
 thfe people of Asia ; and on the value of even the first little 
 section of which its author, at the close of that section, 
 makes this solemn deposition : — 
 
 " This relation imparts life, and fame, and strength, to those 
 who hear it. "Whoever reads the story of Eama, will be deli- 
 vered from all sin. He who constantly peruses this section, in the 
 hearing and repetition of which consists holiness, shall, together 
 with his whole progeny, be for ever delivered from all pain, 
 distress, and sorrow. He who in faith reads this (section) 
 amidst a circle of wise men,* will thereby obtain the fruit which 
 arises from perusing the whole Eamayuna, secure to himself 
 the blessings connected with all the states of men, and dying be 
 absorbed into the deity. A brahman, reading this, becomes 
 mighty in learning and eloquence. The descendant of a 
 Kshutriya reading it would become a monarch ; a Vishya read- 
 ing, will obtain a most prosperous degree of trade ; and a 
 Shoodra hearingt it, will become great." — P. 18. 
 
 * " This is one mode in which, with much solemnity, the 
 Kamayuna is constantly read." 
 t " A Shoodra is not permitted to read it ' 
 
112 SANSCEIT HTEEATt'EE. 
 
 This gives a very tolerable anfcepast of the general quality 
 of the work, in point of what, in our part of the world, ia 
 called sense. And, indeed, the grand characteristic distinc- 
 tion of this performance, so far as it proceeds in this 
 volume, and of the other great works, as they are termed, 
 of Hindoo genius, so far as may be judged from short 
 portions of them translated, is the negation of reason. 
 Imagine a tribe of human beings in whom the intellectual 
 faculty, strictly so called, should suddenly become extinct 
 while imagination remained, and on being thus rid of its 
 master, should instantly spring abroad into all the possibili- 
 ties of wild and casual excursion ; the geniuses of such a 
 tribe, that is, the individuals possessed of a more lively 
 imagination than the rest, would write just such poetry as the 
 Ramayuna. It shows, throughout, we do not say a violation, 
 or rejection, but rather a clear absence, a total non-percep- 
 tion, of the principles of proportion and analogy, of the laws 
 of consistency and probability. There is a full abrogation 
 of all the rules, definitive of the relation between cause and 
 efiect. Consequently any cause may produce any effect; 
 the mouse may eat the mountain, Jonah may swallow the 
 whale ; and the author appears to rate his success in the 
 effort at grandeur very much in proportion to the 
 aggravated excess of the absurdity — the superlative degree, 
 if we might so express it, of the impossibility. Probability 
 is assumed for every proposition or image that may be put 
 in words, though by its essential iuconsistency it defy the 
 power of conception. And if, for a few moments, the poet 
 happens to keep clear of things impossible in the strict sense, 
 that is, things of which the definition would involve a con- 
 tradiction, he can hardly fail to be found in what is, doubt- 
 less, according to whoever is the Hindoo Longinus, the next 
 lower degree of sublimity, the creating of monstrosities ; 
 describing beings and actions which, though not metaphysi- 
 cally impossible, are out of all analogy with what we see or 
 can otherwise know of the order of the creation. Thus a 
 creature with an elephant's body and fifty human heads, 
 siaging a grand chorus, is not an impossible thing in the 
 strict sense, however desperate an undertaking it might be 
 to go in search of it to any part of the mundane system ; 
 and the only objection a Hindoo poet would have to 
 
MONSTROSITIES OF HINDOO POETBT. 413 
 
 Buch a fiction, would arise from its being too diminutive and 
 tame an effort of absurdity, — unless he might be allowed to 
 say that the body was of the bulk of a vast mountain, and 
 that each of the heads roared a tempest. 
 
 It is but very rarely, that for a moment the absurdity of 
 this poetry is confined to anything so near the neighbour- 
 hood of rationality, as what we may denominate simple 
 enormousness, — that is, the swelling of agents and actions 
 to a magnitude, which we know to be far beyond any thing 
 in reality, but still ia conformity to a certain scale, by which 
 these extraordinary beings are kept in some assignable pro- 
 portion to the ordinary ones of their genus, and by which a 
 due proportion is kept between the agents and the things 
 they accomplish ; as Homer, a manufacturer of giants in a 
 very small way, contrives to avoid disgusting us when he 
 makes some of his combatants easily toss such stones as ten 
 men of the common sort could not lift. Even in the 
 description of the people of Brobdignag ( to say nothing of 
 the strong satirical sense which is the substratum of 
 all the Grulliver fictions), a strict law of consistency and pro- 
 portion is observed throughout all the prodigious giantisms, 
 evincing the constant intervention of intellect. Iq the 
 Eamayuna, all is pure measureless raving. An imagination 
 which seems to combine the advantages of mania, supersti- 
 tion, and drunkenness, is put a-going, makes a set of what it 
 names worlds, of its own, and fills them with all sorts of 
 agents — gods, sages, demi-god-monkeys, and a numberless 
 diversity of fantastic entities, at once magnified and dis- 
 torted to the last transcendent madness of extravagance, — 
 some additional monster still striding and bellowing into the 
 hurly-burly, whenever the poet thinks it not sufficiently 
 turbulent and chaotic. None of these agents are exhibited 
 with any defined nature, or ascertained measure of power, or 
 regular mode of action. They any of them can do, and are 
 made to do, just whatever happens to dash into the fancy of 
 the poetic raver. A sage is represented as frightening all 
 the gods ; and if the idea of his ordering and forcing them 
 aU into his snuff-box had happened to come into the poet's 
 head, they had undoubtedly been made to hold their court 
 there some ten thousand years, at the least. And thus the 
 narration, if so slightly connected a course of. stories can bo 
 
414 SANSOEIT LITEEATUEK. 
 
 80 called, is made up of a set of achievements which confound 
 all attempts to form a steady notion of the nature and capa- 
 cities, positive or relative, of any of the beings that accom- 
 plish them ; while the stories are so perfectly matchless in 
 silly extravagance, that the very utmost absurdity and fool- 
 ery of the most desperate European rant and mock-heroic, 
 creep and toil, aS if under the weight of comparative ration- 
 ality, at an infinite distance behind the enormous vapour- 
 composed giant of Hindoo poetry. The more the writer 
 displays of his sort of grandeur, the more contempt the 
 reader feels ; the measureless vastness of all the personages 
 and operations, which was sublimity in his account, and 
 which almost overpowers all the Brahmins of Hindostan 
 with religious awe, is to us exactly imbecUity seen through 
 an immensely magnifying medium : and the mind laboiu's 
 for a greater ability of despising, than it has ever, in the 
 ordinary course of its exercise, been excited to acquire. 
 
 It is as a reputed great work of genius that the £ama- 
 yuna will encounter utter contempt in Europe, separately 
 from, as far as we can separate and make allowances for its 
 character, as a teacher of a monstrous and puerile mythology. 
 When this kind of allowance has been made for Homer, 
 Virgil, and Ovid, what remains is, that they are very great 
 poets. Even the advantage usually and reasonably proposed 
 to be communicated by making better knovm the ancient 
 writings of a people, that of our obtaining a knowledge of 
 their manners from pictures drawn by themselves, will be 
 sought in vain from a performance like this, in which all 
 things are ambitiously, though childishly, preternatural. 
 It was, for instance, probably no part of the ancient 
 manners and customs of India, for an individual to perform 
 sacred austerities, as they are called, in a particular place 
 for a thousand, or ten thousand years together. 
 
 As to what form the beautiful spangles of our western 
 poetry and eloquence, the original and apposite metaphors 
 and comparisons, we should think there is nothing of the 
 kind to be found in this grand oriental performance. There 
 are indeed metaphors and comparisons ; but, as far as we 
 can judge, they are a mere common place of the country 
 where the poet lived. Tbe moon and stars, a number of 
 animals and vegetables, some particular gods and heroes, 
 
AlfALTSIS OF THE EAMATtTKA. 419 
 
 &c. &c., wer3 become a common stock for the use of all that 
 wanted tropes in speech or writing ; so that there was no 
 more novelty or ingenuity in introducing them, than there 
 is among us in repeating those rare similes, as rotten as a 
 pear, as sound as a bell, as obstinate as a swine, as valiant 
 as Alexander, and so forth. It is not to be pointedly 
 objected to this, or any other eastern performance in par- 
 ticular, that the analogy in the simile or metaphor is usually 
 very slight and general, as this is a characteristic of almost 
 all oriental composition. 
 
 The quantity of general remark we have been betrayed 
 into, leaves no room for any attempt at displaying in detail 
 the qualities or parts of this first book of the Eamayuna. 
 And we repeat, we cannot acknowledge any duty of wasting 
 so much labour on what forms a more egregious mass of 
 folly than would be produced by any one of our readers that 
 should keep a month's diary (or rather nocfuary, since they 
 undoubtedly all rise early in a morning) of his dreams. In 
 the descriptive remarks we have made, we have been able to 
 give but an extremely feeble idea of the surpassing excess of 
 absurdity which prevails throughout the production, which 
 is really worth any one's reading that cares to see the 
 maximum of that quality. The basis of the story is the 
 birth, life, and adventures of Eama, who is an incarnation of 
 the god Vishnu, a god evidently of the foremost rank, but of 
 what power or excellence, as contradistinguished from his 
 brother magnates, we may safely defy all the Brahmins in 
 India, and their disciples in England, to show, from this or 
 their other sacred books ; for aU these deities seem jumbled, 
 as by purely accidental evolutions, into bigness and little- 
 ness by turns. The king, whose son Vishnu consented to 
 become at the persuasion of all the gods, who were terrified 
 by Eavuna, a demon whose pernicious designs could be 
 frustrated by no celestial being but one in human shape, 
 had been long childless, and had been performing a course 
 of religious austerities to obtain from Brahma (or whether 
 in spite of him, is not clear), the happiness of an heir. The 
 favour was granted, and Eama was the prince. He of 
 course gave, in early years, amazing signs of the power that 
 was in due time to perform achievements which were to 
 astonish and shake the universe. Many adventures, how 
 
41G SAJfSCEIT LITEEATUEE. 
 
 ever, are related before his career of action commences ; and 
 after he does come into play, the narration is loaded with 
 many bulky episodes about the adventures of other heroes. 
 Of one of these personages it is stated that, like Eama'a 
 father, he was childless, and that he had been engaged, if we 
 mistake not, several thousand years in religious austerities, 
 to induce the gods, or the king of them, to confer a similar 
 favour. It was granted to some purpose ; for he had two 
 consorts, and it was promised that the one should bring him 
 one son of transcendent merit and prowess, and the other — 
 sixty thousand, inferior to that one, but yet all of great 
 talents and expectations ; and it was offered to the choice of 
 the two ladies which would be the mother of the one, and 
 which of the sixty thousand. The latter undertaking may 
 seem to involve very considerable difficulties ; — but nothing 
 is difficult in the hands of a Hindoo poet. This daring 
 matron was in due time happily delivered of a tree, a shrub, 
 or whatever it may be called, — a gourd we think it is in the 
 book, — on which the sixty thousand grew, as it might have 
 been nuts or currants, and fell off iato the form of so many 
 mighty heroes ; who at their father's command, and in pur- 
 suit of a god or demon who had stolen a horse which he had 
 appointed for a sacrifice, dug through the earth from side to 
 side, in various directions, reducing it to the condition of a 
 worm-eaten cork ; and that in a very short time, and in. spite 
 of its being of thousands of times greater bulk, than orr 
 mathematicians have, in the true spirit of European Kttle- 
 ness, mistakenly computed. Another history is to this 
 effect : A royal sage had a cow named Shubula When 
 another monarch sage, iu marching through the country, 
 stopped on the former sage's farm a little while with a vast 
 army, this cow gave all sorts of liquors, and all sorts of 
 meat, bated, boiled, fried, and in short cooked to the taste 
 of every individual in the army, insomuch that every man 
 was delighted and surprisingly fattened. On going away, it 
 is not wonderful that his majesty at the head of the army, 
 should, if it had only been to rid himself of his peculating 
 commissariat, request to have this cow, offering, however, a 
 handsome equivalent, as he might very well afford. The 
 request not being complied with, force was had recourse tc 
 to take her away. She, however, made her escape, and came 
 
THE MOEALITT OF WOEKS Or ITCTIOIT. 417 
 
 weeping and expostulating to the feet of her owner. He 
 was afraid to interfere, but she was advised to do the best 
 she could for herself. On which she forthwith, rained out an 
 almost innumerable army of terrific warriors, who drove, cut, 
 and slashed at such a rate, that the host of the royal cow- 
 stealer was quickly annihilated. These are tolerably 
 moderate specimens of the general substance of this epic 
 performance. The lingo in which these feats are narrated, 
 defies all imitation. 
 
 We cannot fail to be somewhat the wiser for having a few 
 such thiags brought into our language ; but we think the 
 moral rule relative to the use of time and paper should with- 
 stand any very large importations. But, indeed, taste will 
 do what morality probably would not ; for it will be impos- 
 sible to find in England any considerable number of readers 
 who win not soon sicken at such entertainment. If there 
 are any ingenuous men, who, not content to rest religion on 
 plain reason and revelation, must needs seek its primitive 
 elements in an analysis of this branch of ancient mythology, 
 they had much the best go and learn Sanscrit at once. 
 
 An insurmountable obstacle to the popularity of this sort 
 of reading in Europe, if the works were attended by no 
 other deterring circumstance, would be the vast number of 
 names by which each of the gods or heroes is designated, 
 this being, as it should seem, hardly fewer than the whole 
 catalogue of descriptive epithets deemed most appropriate to 
 them. "We should observe that the learned translators 
 would not have done amiss, to assign their reason for an 
 orthography so widely different from that commonly adopted 
 by our oriental scholars. 
 
 THE MOEALITT OE WOEKS OF FICTION. 
 
 Tdes of Fashionable Life. By Miss Edgeworth, Author of 
 Practical Education, Belinda, &c. 12mo. 1810. 
 
 Ok the supposition, or the chance, that any small number 
 of our readers may not have taken the trouble to acquaint 
 
418 THE MOEALIir Of WORKS OF rlCTIOlf. 
 
 themselves with the distinguishing qualities of the produc- 
 tions of a writer, who has already contributed the amount 
 of more than twenty volumes to the otherwise scanty stock 
 of our literature, — and, if we may judge from the short 
 interval between the works in the latter part of the series, 
 is likely at the very least, to double the number, — it may 
 not be amiss to set down a very few observations, suggested 
 chiefly by the perusal of one portion of her performances, 
 though it belongs by its form to a department over which 
 we do not pretend any right of habitual censorship. 
 
 It is evident this writer has a much higher object than 
 merely to amuse. Being very seriously of opinion that 
 mankind want mending, and that she is in possession of 
 one of the most efficacious arts for such a purpose, she has 
 set about the operation in good earnest. But when any 
 machine, material or moral, is wrong, there are a few very 
 obvious prerequisites to the attempt to set it right. The 
 person that undertakes it should know what the machine 
 was designed for ; should perceive exactly what part of its 
 present action is defective or mischievous ; should discern 
 the cause of this disordered effect ; and, for the choice of 
 the implements and method of correction, should have the 
 certainty of the adept, instead of the guesses of the tamper- 
 ing experimenter, or the downright hardihood of ignorant 
 presumption. When the disordered subject to be operated 
 on is a thing of no less importance than human nature, it 
 should seem that these prerequisites are peculiarly indis- 
 pensable ; and the existence ought to be inferable from the 
 operator's boldness, if we see him putting to the work so 
 confident a hand as that of our author. A hand more con- 
 fident, apparently, has very seldom been applied to the 
 business of moral correction ; and that business is prose- 
 cuted in a manner so little implying, on the part of oiir 
 author, any acknowledgment that she is working on a sub- 
 ordinate ground, and according to the lowest class of the 
 principles of moral discipline, — and therefore so little hint- 
 ing even the existence of any more elevated and authori- 
 tative principles, — that she is placed within the cognizance 
 of a much graver sort of criticism than would at first view, 
 appear applicable to a writer of tales. She virtually takes 
 the rank among the teachers who profess to exhibit the 
 
IGNOBAIfCE 01' MAK's MOEAL DESTINT. 419 
 
 comprehensive theory of duty and happiness. She wouiid 
 be considered as undertaking the treatment of what is the 
 most serious and lamentable, as well as what is most light 
 and ridiculous, in human perversity; and according to a 
 method which at all events cannot be exceeded in soundnes^^ 
 however it may prove in point of efficacy, 
 
 Now when we advert to the prerequisites for such an un- 
 dertaking, we cannot repress the suspicion that our author 
 is unqualified for it. It is a grand point of incompetency 
 if she is totally ignorant what the human race exists for. 
 And there appears nothing in the present, or such other of 
 her works as we have happened to look into, to prevent the 
 surmise, that this question would completely baffle her. 
 Eeduce her to say what human creatures were made for, 
 and there would be an end of her volubility. Whether our 
 species were intended as an exhibition for the amusement 
 of some superior, invisible, and malignant intelligences ; or 
 were sent here to expiate the crimes of some pre-existent 
 state ; or were made for the purpose, as some philosophers 
 will have it and phrase it, of developing the faculties of the 
 earth, that is to say, managing its vegetable produce, ex- 
 tracting the wealth of its mines, and the like ; or were 
 merely a contrivance for giving to a certain number of 
 atoms the privilege of being, for a few years, the constituent 
 particles of warm upright liviag figures ; — whether they are 
 appointed to any future state of sentiment, or rational 
 existence ; — whether, if so, it is to be one fixed state, or a 
 series of transmigrations ; a higher or lower state than the 
 present ; a state of retribution, or bearing no relation to 
 moral qualities ; — whether there be any Supreme Power, 
 that presides over the succession and condition of the race, 
 and wiU see to their ultimate destination, — or, in short, 
 whether there be any design, contrivance, or intelligent 
 destination in the whole affair, or the fact be not rather, 
 that the species, with all its present circumstances, and 
 whatever is to become of it hereafter, is the production and 
 sport of chance, — aU these questions are probably undecided 
 ui the mind of our ingenious moralist. And bow can she 
 be qualified to conduct the discipline of a kiud of beings of 
 the nature and relations of which she is so profoundly 
 ignorant ? If it were not a serious thing on account of its 
 
 BE 2 
 
420 THE MORALITT OF WOEKS OF FIOTIOTf. 
 
 presumption, would it not be an incomparably ludicrous 
 one on account of its absurdity, that a popular instructor 
 should be most busily enforcing a set of principles of action 
 — not as confessedly superficial and occasional, and merely 
 subservient to a specific purpose, but as fundamental and 
 comprehensive — while that instructor does not know whe- 
 ther the creatures, whose characters are attempted to be 
 formed on those principles, are bound or not by the laws of 
 a Supreme Governor, nor whether they, are to be affected 
 by the right or wrong of moral principles for only a few 
 times twelve months, or to all eternity ? Here an admirer 
 of Miss Bdgeworth's moral philosophy might be expected 
 to say, " But why may not our professor be allowed to set 
 these considerations out of the question ; since many things 
 in the theory of morals are very clear and very important 
 independently of them? Integrity, prudence, industry, 
 generosity, and good manners, can be shown to be vitally 
 connected with our immediate raterests, and powerfully 
 enforced on that ground, whether there be or be not a 
 Supreme Governor and Judge, and a future life ; and why 
 may not our instructor hold this ground, exempt from the 
 interference of theology ? What we see we know : we can 
 actually survey the whole scope of what you call the present 
 life of human creatures, and can discern how its happiness 
 is affected by the virtues and vices which our professor so 
 forcibly illustrates : and why may it not be a very useful 
 employment to teach the art of happiness fhusfa/r, whatever 
 may liltimately be found to be the truth or error of the 
 speculations on invisible beings and future existences ?" 
 
 To this the obvious reply would be, first — ^iu terms of 
 identical import with those we have already used — that the 
 ingenious preceptress does not give her pupils the slightest 
 word of warning, that it is possible their moral interests may 
 be of an extent infinitely beyond anything she takes into 
 account : that if the case is so, her philosophy however use- 
 ful to a certain length, in a particular way, cannot but be 
 infinitely iuadequate as a disciplinary provision for their 
 entire interests ; and that, therefore, in consideration of 
 such a possibility, it is their serious duty to inquire how 
 much more it may be indispensable to learn, than she ever 
 professes to teach them. She does not tell them, and would 
 
DEFICIEITT MOEAL SYSTEM. 421 
 
 deem it excessively officious and fanatical in any onfe that 
 sbould do it for her, tbat if there be any truth — nay, if there 
 be the bare possibility of truth — in what religionists believe 
 and teach — a philosopher like her cannot be admitted as 
 competent to contribute to the happiness of mankind, in a 
 much higher capacity than the persons that make clothes 
 and furnish houses. She may not, in so many vcords, assert 
 it would be idle or delusive to think of proposing any 
 superior and more remotely prospective system of moral 
 principles : but all appearances are carefully kept up to the 
 point of implying as much ; and we apprehend she would be 
 diverted, or would be fretted, just as the mood of her mind 
 happened at the moment to be, to hear a sensible person, 
 after reading her volumes, say : " Very just, very instructive, 
 on a narrow and vulgar ground of moral calculation ; it ia 
 weU, fitted to make me a reputable sort of a man, and not 
 altogether useless, during a few changes of the moon : if I 
 were sure of ending after a few of those changes, in nothiag 
 but a clod, I do not know that I should want anything 
 beyond the lessons of this philosopher's school : but whUe 
 I believe there is even a chance of a higher destiny, it is an 
 obvious dictate of common, sense, that it cannot be safe, and 
 that it would be degrading, to attempt to satisfy myself 
 with a little low scheme of morality, adapted to nothing in 
 existence beyond the mere convenience of some score or two 
 of years, more or less." Onv first censure is, then, that 
 setting up for a moral guide, our author does not pointedly 
 state to her followers, that as it is but a very short stage 
 she can pretend to conduct them, they had need — if they 
 suspect they shall be obliged to go farther — to be looking 
 out, even in the very beginning of this short stage in which 
 she accompanies them, for other guides to undertake for 
 their safety in the remoter region. She presents herself 
 with the air and tone of a person, who would sneer or spurn 
 at the apprehensive insinuated inquiry, whether any change 
 or addition of guides might eventually become necessary. 
 
 But, secondly, our author's moral system — on the hypo- 
 thesis of the truth, or possible truth, of revelation — is not 
 only iniinitely deficient, as being calculated to subserve the 
 interests of the human creatures only to so very short a 
 distance, while yet it carefully keeps out of sight all that 
 
422 THE MOEAIITT OF WOBES OP FICTIOir. 
 
 may be beyond ; it is also — still on the same hypothesis— 
 perniciously erroneous as far as it goes. Por it teaches 
 Virtue on principles on which virtue itself will not he 
 approved by the Supreme Governor ; and it avowedly 
 encourages some dispositions, and directly or by implica- 
 tion tolerates others, which in the judgment of that 
 Governor are absolutely vicious. As to the unsound 
 quality of the virtue here taught, it would be quite enough 
 to observe, that it bears no reference whatever to the wiU 
 and laws of a superior Being. It is careless whether there 
 is such a Being, — whether, if there be, men are accountable 
 to him, or not, — whether he has appointed laws, — whether 
 he can enforce them, — whether he can punish the refusal to 
 obey them. In short it is a virtue that would not be 
 practised for his sake ; which is to be practised solely under 
 the influence of other considerations ; and which would he, 
 at the dictate of these considerations, varied to any extent 
 from any standard alleged to bear his authority. It is 
 really superfluous to say that, on the religious hypothesis, 
 such a virtue is utterly spurious, and partakes radically of 
 the worst principles of vice. It is, besides, unstable in all 
 its laws, as being founded on a combinatiom of principles 
 undefined, arbitrary, capricious, and sometimes incom- 
 patible. Pride, honour, generous impulse, calculation ot 
 temporal advantage and custom of the country, are con- 
 vened along with we know not how many other grave 
 authorities, as the components of Miss Edgeworth's mora, 
 government — the Amphictyons of her legislative assembly. 
 These authorities being themselves subject, singly or 
 collectively, to no one paramount authority, may vary with- 
 out end iu their compromise with one another, and in their 
 enactment of laws ; so that by the time Miss Edgeworth 
 comes to write her last volume in the concluding year ot 
 her life, she may chance to find it necessary — in maiataia- 
 ing a faithful adherence to them through aU their caprices 
 — to give the name of virtues to sundry things she now 
 calls vices, and vice versa. There can be no decisive 
 casuistry on the ground of such a system ; and it would be 
 easy to imagine situations in which the question of duty 
 would, even under the present state of that moral legislation 
 which she enjoins us to revere, put her to as complete » 
 
NOT COinOBMED TO THE CHEISTIAN STANDAED. 423 
 
 nonplus as the question, "What was man made for?" 
 She is, however, dexterous enough, in general, to avoid such 
 situations. It must be acknowledged, too, that perhaps the 
 greater part of the moral practice which she sanctions, is, 
 taken merely as practice, disconnected from all consideration 
 of motives and opinions, substantially the same that the 
 soundest moralist must inculcate, — unless his lectures could 
 be allowed to be silent on the topics of justice in the tran- 
 sactions of business, the advantages of cultivating a habit 
 of general kindness and liberality, exertions for amending 
 the condition of the poor, patient firmness in the pro- 
 secution of good designs, with various other things of a 
 character equally unequivocal. But there are some parts of 
 ner practical exhibitions unmarked with any note of dis- 
 approbation, where a Christian moralist would apply the 
 most decided censure. She shows, for instance, a very 
 great degree of tolerance for the dissipation of the wealthy 
 classes, if it only stop short of utter frivolity or profligacy, 
 and of ruinous expense. All the virtue she demands of 
 them may easily comport with a prodigious quantity of 
 fashion, and folly, and splendour, and profuseness. They 
 may be allowed to whirl in amusements till they are dead 
 sick, and then have recourse to a little sober useful goodness 
 to recover themselves. They are indeed advised to cultivate 
 their minds ; but, as it should seem, for the purpose, 
 mainly, of giving dignity to their rank, and zest and sparkle 
 to the conversations of their idle and elegant parties. 
 They are recommended to become the promoters of useful 
 schemes in their neighbourhoods, and the patrons of the 
 poor ; but it does not appear that this philanthropy is 
 required to be carried the length of costing any serious per- 
 centage on their incomes. The grand and ultimate object 
 of aU. the intellectual and moral exertions to which our 
 author is trying to coax and prompt them, is confessedly, — 
 self-complacency ; and it is evident that, while surrounded 
 incessantly with frivolous and selfish society to compare 
 themselves with, they may assume this self-complacency on 
 the strength of very middling attainments in wisdom and 
 beneficence. 
 
 Another gross fault (on the supposition, still, that religion 
 may chance to be more than an idle fancy) is our author's 
 
424 THE MOBALITT Or ■WOEKS OF FICTIOIT. 
 
 tolerance of profaneness. As to some of the instances of 
 what every pious man would regard as profane expressions, 
 either absolutely or by the connexion in which they are put, 
 she will Say, perhaps, that they are introduced merely as a 
 language appropriate to the characters ; and that those 
 characters were never meant for patterns of excellence. 
 This plea is of little validity for any narrator but the histo- 
 rian of real facts, who has but a partial option as to what he 
 shall relate. In a merely literary court indeed it might go 
 some length in defence of a fictitious wri*;er ; but let religion 
 be introduced among the judges in such a court, and the deci- 
 sion would be, that minute truth of fictitious representation 
 involves no moral benefit adequate to compensate the mis- 
 chief of familiarizing the reader's mind to language which 
 associates the most solemn ideas with the most trifling or 
 detestable. But this happens, in the present instance, to be 
 a needless argument ; for the broadest and vilest piece of 
 profaneness comes out in one of what are intended as the 
 finest moments, of one of what are intended as the finest 
 characters, in all these volumes. The character, — a spirited, 
 generous, clever fellow, evidently a high favourite of our 
 author, — is young Beaumont, in the tale entitled " Manoeu- 
 vring," in the third volume ; the moment is when he is 
 exulting (p. 78) at the news of a great naval victory, in 
 which his most esteemed friend is supposed to have had a 
 share. 
 
 "We will only add, in order to get to the end of this 
 homily of criticism, that our author's estimate of the evil of 
 vice in general, excepting such vices as are glaringly marked 
 with meanness or cruelty, appears to be exceedingly light 
 in comparison with that which is taught in the school of 
 revelation. And, consistently with this, the sentiments of 
 penitential grief which slie attributes to one of her principal 
 characters. Lord Grlenthorn, whom she reforms from a very 
 great degree of profligacy, ai- wonderfully superficial and 
 transient : nay, he is even made, in the commencement of 
 his reformation, to reckon up the virtues of his past worth- 
 less and vicious life, with a self-complacency which far 
 over-balanced his self-reproaches. And, indeed, those self- 
 reproaches when they were felt, had but extremely little of 
 the quality of what in Christian language is meant by 
 
PBIDE THE CWl-KF MOTIVE TO TIliTITE. 425 
 
 repentance: ttey are made to have expressed themselves 
 much more in the manner of mortified pride. And this, 
 again, is in perfect consistency with the motives to virtue 
 on which the chief reliance appears to be placed throughout 
 these volumes • for the most powerful of those motives is 
 pride. To manceuvre this passion in every mode which 
 ingenuity can suggest; to ply it with every variety of 
 stimulus, and contrive that at each step of vice something 
 shall happen to mortify it, — if possible, according to the 
 regular and natural course of cause and effect ; if not, by 
 some extraordinary occurrence, taking place at the wUl of 
 the writer, — and that each step of virtue shall be attended 
 by some circumstance signally gratifying to it, — this is the 
 grand moral machinery of our moralist and reformer. And, 
 indeed, what else could she do, or what better, after she had 
 resolved that no part of her apparatus should be put in 
 action by "the powers of the world to come ?" For as to 
 that intrinsic beauty of virtue which philosophers have pre- 
 tended to descry and adore, this philosopher knew right well 
 how likely it was that such a visioti should disclose itself, 
 with all its mystical fascinations, to the frequenters of ball- 
 rooms and card-tables, of galas and operas, of gambling- 
 houses and brothels. 
 
 Thus denied, by the quality of the subjects she has to 
 work upon, the assistance of all that has been boasted by 
 sages as the most refined and elevated in philosophy, — and 
 by the limits of her creed, probably, as well as the disposition 
 of her taste, the assistance of those principles professing to 
 come from heaven, and which, whencesoever they have come, 
 have formed the best and sublimest human characters that 
 ever appeared on earth, — our moralist would be an object of 
 much commiseration, if she did not manifest the most entire 
 self-complacency. Yet it is but justice to say that she does 
 not attribute any miraculous power to those sordid, moral 
 principles, on the sole operation of which she is content to 
 rest her hopes of human improvement. Por on Lord Glen- 
 thorn, the hero of the longest and most interesting of these 
 tales, she represents this operation as totally inefficacious 
 tiU aided by the discovery that he is no Lord ; having been 
 substituted in his infancy for the true infant peer by 
 EUinor O'Donoghoe, the inhabitant of a dirty mud cabin, 
 
426 THE MOEALITT OP W0EK8 or FICTIOIT. 
 
 his mother, and that peer's nurse. And the subject whieh 
 is thus made to illustrate the ineflS.cacy, is notwithstanding 
 represented as naturally endowed with very favourable dis- 
 positions and very good talents. In the stories of 
 "Almeria" and " Manceuvring," the utmost powers of the 
 reforming discipline are honestly represented as fairly 
 baffled, from beginning to end, the culprits adhering to 
 their faults and fellies with inviolable fidelity, — leaving our 
 moral legislator no means of vindicating the merits of her 
 system, but to show that the pride, and other inglorious 
 principles, by the operation of which a reform of conduct 
 was to have been effected, if they cannot amend the subjects 
 of her discipline, can at least make them wretched. And so 
 she leaves them, with as much indifference apparently as 
 that with which a veteran sexton comes away from filling up 
 the grave of one of his neighbours. She does not even, as 
 far as appears, wish to turn them over to Methodism, not- 
 withstandiug that this has the repute of sometimes working 
 very strange transformations, and might as well have beei 
 mentioned as a last expedient worth the trying, in some of 
 those obstinate desperate cases in which all the preparations 
 from the great laboratory at Edgeworthstown, have been 
 employed in vain. Perhaps, however, our author would 
 think such a remedy, even in its utmost success, worse than 
 the disease. Tet it would be a little curious to observe 
 what she really vjould think and say at witnessing an 
 instance in which a person, who had long pursued a foolish 
 or profiigate course in easy defiance of all such correctives 
 as constitute her boasted discipline, being, at length, power- 
 fully arrested by the thought of a judgment to come, — 
 should forswear at once all his inveterate trifling or deeper 
 immoralities, and adopt, and prosecute to his last hour, and 
 with the highest delight, a far more arduous plan of virtue 
 than any that she has dared to recommend or delineate. 
 There have been very many such instances ; and it would be 
 extremely amusing — if some ideas too serious for amuse- 
 ment were not involved, — on citing to her some indubitable 
 example of this kind, to compel her to answer the plain 
 question : " Is this a good thing — yea or no ?" 
 
 It was almost solely for the purpose of making a few 
 remarks on the moral tendency of our author's voluminous 
 
CHAEACTEEISTICS OF MISS EDGEWOETH's TALES. 427 
 
 productions, that we liave noticed the work of which we 
 have transcribed the title ; and we need say very few words 
 respectino; the other qualities of her books. For pre- 
 dominant good sense, knowledge of the world, discrimination 
 of character, truth in the delineation of manners, and 
 spirited dialogue, it is hardly possible to praise them too 
 much. Most of her characters are formed from the most 
 genuine and ordinary materials of human nature, — with very 
 little admixture of anything derived from heaven, or the 
 garden of Eden, or the magnificent part of the regions of 
 poetry. There is rarely anything to awaken for one 
 moment the enthusiasm of an aspiring spirit, delighted to 
 contemplate, and ardent to resemble, a model of ideal excel- 
 lence. Indeed, a higher order of characters woidd in a 
 great measure have precluded an exercise of her talents, in 
 which she evidently delights, and in which she very highly 
 excels — ^that is, the analyzing of the mixed motives by which 
 persons are often governed, while they are giving themselves 
 credit for being actuated by one simple and perfectly laud- 
 able motive; the detecting of all the artifices of dissimulation; 
 and the illustration of aE the modes in which selfishness 
 pervades human society. Scarcely has Swift himself evinced 
 a keener scent in pursuit of this sort of game ; a sort of 
 game which, we readily acknowledge it is, with certain 
 benevo.lent limitations, very fair and useful to hunt. And 
 we must acknowledge, too, that our author, while passing 
 shrewd, is by no means cynical. She is very expert at 
 contriving situations for bringing out all the qualities of 
 her personages, for contrasting those personages with one 
 another, for creating excellent amusement by their mutual 
 reaction, and for rewarding or punishing their merits or 
 faults. She appears intimately acquainted with the pre- 
 vailing notions, prejudices, and habits of the different ranks 
 and classes of society. She can imitate very satirically the 
 peculiar diction and slang of each ; and has contrived (but 
 indeed it needed very little contrivance) to make the 
 fashionable dialect of the upper ranks sound exceedingly 
 siUy. As far as she has had opportunities for observation, 
 she has caught a very discriminative idea of natioual 
 characters : that of the Irish is delineated with incomparable 
 accuracy and spirit. It may be added, that our author, 
 
428 ON CEUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 possessing a great deal of general knowledge, finds many 
 lucky opportunities for producing it, in short arguments and 
 happy allusions. Unless we had some room for a distinct 
 notice of each of the tales in these volumes, it will be no use 
 to mention that their titles are the following—" Ennui," 
 "Almeria," " Madame dePleury," "TheDuii,"and "Manoeuv- 
 ring ; " the first and the last each filling an entire volume. 
 
 ON CEUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 Speech of the Eight Hon. "W. 'WiinDHAM in the House of Commons, 
 June 13, 1809, on Lord ErsUn^s Bill for the more effectual 
 Prevention of Cruelty towards Animals. 8vo. 1810. 
 
 The proposal of this BiU to the House of Commons, and 
 the prompt and unceremonious dismissal, are sufficiently 
 fresh in recollection. "Its fate would doubtless have been 
 the same in that Imperial assembly, though the author of 
 this Speech had been summoned from his seat there before 
 the subject came into discussion. Had it, however, been 
 possible that a great, enlightened, and humane legislature 
 could have felt any slight degree of hesitation to reject a 
 motion for a law to abridge the license of cruelty ; it may 
 well be believed that a speech like this would materially 
 contribute to rid them of the sentimental weakness of 
 entertaining such a scruple. It would have been a truly 
 girlish and laughable thing in a venerable Council — before 
 which an enormous mass of cruelty was incontrovertibly 
 alleged to be habitually perpetrated among the people over 
 whom that Council presided — to have given themselves any 
 trouble about the matter, after witnessing this capital dis- 
 play of that acuteness, that talent for representing a serious 
 subject in a ludicrous light, that power of securing tolerance 
 for a large quantity of fallacy, under protection of a certain 
 portion of important truth, which so remarkably charac- 
 terized this statesman ; we suppose we ought to say lamented 
 statesman : for we observe it is the fashion among aU sorts 
 of people — Christian or infidel — high political party or low 
 — ins or outs — as soon as a man whose talents have made a 
 
MB. Windham's tiews. 429 
 
 ^gure is gone, to extol him in the topmost epic and elegiac 
 phrases ; even though the general operation of his talents 
 had been through life what these very persons had a thou- 
 sand times execrated as pernicious. 
 
 The Speech begins with asserting, that the treatment of 
 brute animals by men, is not a fit subject for legislative 
 enactments ; and by citing, as a strong sanction of the rule 
 of exclusion, the conduct of all nations and legislators, none 
 of whom, according to our senator, ever appointed any laws 
 for the protection of animals, on the pure principle of 
 humane guardianship, — an assertion which he makes in the 
 most unqualified manner, and which his extensive learning 
 would make it rash in us to call in question ; since it could 
 not have escaped his knowledge if any national code of laws 
 had ever contained such a sentence as this — "thou shalt 
 not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." 
 
 From this universal avoidance to enact laws for the pro- 
 tection of brute animals, Mr. Windham argues, that what 
 Lord Erskine mentions, in somewhat exulting terms as a 
 recommendation of his bill, " that it would form a new era 
 of legislation," is rather a ground for suspicion and rejec- 
 tion ; since it is not unfair to presume that what all legis- 
 lators have avoided to do, is something not proper to be 
 done. "With plenty of cold shrewdness he adds, — 
 
 " We ought to have a reasonable distrust of the founders of 
 such eras, lest they should be a little led away by an object of 
 such splendid ambition, and be thinking more of themselves 
 than of the credit of the laws or the interests of the community. 
 To have done that which no one yet had ever thought of doing ; 
 to have introduced into legislation, at this period of the world, 
 what had never yet been found in the laws of any country, and 
 that too for a purpose of professed humanity (or rather of some- 
 thing more than humanity, as commonly understood and prac- 
 tised) ; to be the first who had stood up as the champion of the 
 rights 'of brutes, was as marked a distinction, even though it 
 should not turn out upon examination to be as proud a one, ai 
 man could well aspire to." — P. 4. 
 
 The sentence which immediately follows is this : " The 
 Legislature, however, must not be carried away with these 
 impulses, of whatever nature they might be," &c. Those 
 who heard and saw Mr. Windham whUe uttering this, could 
 
430 ON CEXJELTT TO ANIMALS, 
 
 probably judge whether it was said sarcastically, or in 
 simple honest gravity. The only thing that can make this 
 a question in the minds of those who can merely read the 
 speech, is the recollection of Mr. "Windham's notorious 
 propensity to sarcasm ; for that there was a propriety in 
 uttering the sentence gravely, is sufficiently obvious. There 
 was the greatest need of a caution against the too precipi- 
 tate impulses of humanity in a Legislature which had, 
 through twenty years of most ample discussion and expo- 
 sure, maintained the slave-trade, with its infinite combina- 
 tion of horrors, in easy and sometimes jocular contempt of 
 the appeals to feeling, in a thousand affecting forms ; in 
 contempt of the demonstrations of impolicy, and of the 
 references to an Almighty Avenger ; and which, when 
 approaching at last, under the ascendancy of administration 
 for the time being, to the long-desired abolition, had still 
 such a character in the public opinion that, even when the 
 vast influence of the ministry was taken into the account, 
 the friends of humanity were nevertheless, according to 
 Mr. Clarkson's relation, in a perfect agony of fear tiU the 
 decision was past. It had been a neglect of duty not to 
 have cautioned, against too hasty and undigested measures 
 for the repression of cruelty, a Legislature which had 
 scouted, during the greatest part of a long series of years, 
 every suggestion of an effort for the termination of war. 
 And (to descend to an inferior circumstance) the manner in 
 which the Legislature had entertained Mr. Windham's own 
 assertion of the moral and political benefits of bull-bait- 
 ing, with all its inseparable blackguardism and profaneness, 
 as contrasted with the mischievous effects of going to the 
 conventicle, to hear about the worth of the soul, preparation 
 for a future state, and such like matters ^had fully shown 
 him the propriety of admonishing that Legislature not to 
 be rashly impetuous in their enactments even against bar- 
 barous practices. There was no lesson so becoming in the 
 veteran senator, so near the end of his labours, to give, nor 
 half so needful to the assembly which he addressed — as that 
 which virtuous and ardent minds so reluctantly learn, the 
 wisdom of being sometimes a little more slow and deliberate 
 even in doing good, than the first generous "impulses" 
 would be willing to permit. There is no knowing to what 
 
HtmAIfITT IN THE ABSTBACT. 431 
 
 dangerous lengths such impulses may lead, if unrestrained 
 by such wisdom. Had this bill, for instance, for the pre- 
 vention of cruelty to animals been suffered to pass, who was 
 to insure the country against being brought, at the next 
 parliamentary movement of these " impulses," to the brink 
 of irretrievable ruin, by an act to abrogate, in spite ot 
 Mr. Windham's cool approbation of its existence (p. 9), 
 that power under the poor-laws, by the exercise of which, 
 he says, " paupers at the point of death, and women expect- 
 ing at every moment to be seized with the pangs of labour, 
 are turned out into the streets or roads, sooner than by the 
 death in one case, or the birth in the other, a burden should 
 be brought upon the parish ?" 
 
 Next comes the customary cant, proper always to be 
 canted, when a practical attempt at doing some good is to 
 be opposed, about the " desirableness of the object, speaking 
 abstractedly." " As far," says he, " as mere uninstructed 
 ■wishes went, every man must wish that the sufferings of all 
 animated nature were less than they are." That this sort 
 of language fully deserves, in this place, the name we have 
 given it, we shall have occasion to show. The speaker does 
 however, it must be confessed, go on to say, that we must 
 not in so good a cause be content with mere wishes ; and, 
 defining morality itself " a desire rationally conducted to 
 promote general happiness," he exhorts all, in their private 
 individual capacity, to do all they can to lessen the measure 
 of suffering, as well among the brute as the rational animals. 
 Excuse him from any dufy of promoting the good design in 
 his high capacity of legislator, in which he has so much 
 more than the power of a mere private person, — and he will 
 lecture the whole nation on the duty of every man as a 
 private person, to exert the utmost of his inferior power in 
 the prevention of cruelty ; and on the absurdity of a people's 
 expecting their governors to be virtue as in substitution for 
 them. It is thus that moral obligations are bandied from 
 class to class in society: the people alleging that some 
 important reform cannot be effected without the interposing 
 power of their governors, and the governors declaring that 
 the concern is not within the proper sphere of legislation — 
 nay, it may be, professing that they cannot so far interfere 
 with the " liberty of the subject /" Anything in the strain 
 
432 OS OEUELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 of this last profession coming from such a man as Mr. Wind- 
 ham is, to be sure, incomparably ludicrous. 
 
 In the desultory manner that prevails throughout this 
 Speech, which is quite as disorderly as it is acute, the orator 
 proceeds to animadvert on Lord Erskine's preamble to his 
 biU, framed in the following terms : " Whereas it has 
 pleased Almighty God to subdue to the dominion, use, and 
 comfort of man, the strength and faculties of many useful 
 animals, and to provide others for his food ; and whereas 
 the abuse of that dominion, by cruel and oppressive treat- 
 ment of such animals is not only highly unjust and immoral, 
 but most pernicious in its example, having an evident ten- 
 dency to harden the heart against the natural feelings of 
 humanity." " A preamble," says Mr. Windham, " contain- 
 ing a lofty maxim of morality or theology, too grand to be 
 correct, too sublime to be seen distinctly, and most ludi- 
 crously disproportioned to the enactments that foUow." 
 Prom which observation it should be evident that the less a 
 legislator adverts to the Supreme Lawgiver the better, and 
 that no sublime conceptions can be correct or distinct 
 Why the disproportion is inevitably so great between the 
 " lofty maxim" and the enactments of the bUl, is in part 
 most forcibly shown by Mr. Windham himself, where he 
 represents the impossibility of making effectual laws against 
 the cruelties practised by the rich. 
 
 It was also very unfair, in remarking this disparity, to 
 take no notice of Lord Erskine's avowed object in setting 
 out with the declaration of such a comprehensive mord 
 principle, while fully aware that the specific enactments 
 must be far more limited than such a principle would seem 
 to authorize, and even to require. The object was, as he 
 represented much at large, to give the utmost solemnity 
 and sanction of legislative promulgation to a moral principle, 
 in order to enforce it on the attention and the conscience of 
 the people ; and thus to carry its efficacy, by a purely moral 
 operation, to an extent far beyond the reach of laws, which 
 unavoidably must, from the peculiar nature of the subject, 
 be constructed on a very narrow scale, and leave incom- 
 parably more of what belongs to that subject without, than 
 they could take within, their cognizance. 
 
 Affecting again to acknowledge the claims of humanity in 
 
EIDICTTLE, HIS rAVOUEITE WEAPON. 433 
 
 behalf of brutes, Mr. Windham, instead of lending the 
 assistance of his discriminating understanding to ascertain 
 the extent of those claims, and to discuss, seriously, the 
 question whether some of them might not be made effective 
 in the shape of a law, — attempts to turn them into ridicule 
 by a sort of sneer at Lord Erskine's biU. for not going the 
 length of prohibiting animal food. He then suddenly turns 
 round on the remonstrants against cruelty with the question 
 ^-" What is humanity ?" as much as to say, that a little 
 consideration would convict them of extreme silliness in 
 having so precipitately declared against the " very general 
 practice of buying up horses stiU alive, but not capable of 
 being ever further abused by any kind of labour ; and taking 
 them in great numbers to slaughter-houses, not to be killed 
 at once, but left without sustenance, and some of them 
 literally starved to death, that the market might be gra- 
 dually supplied ; the poor animals in the meantime being 
 reduced to eat their own dung, and frequently gnawing one 
 another's manes in the agonies of hunger." In the view of 
 such facts he, in the most pleasant humour imaginable, 
 spirts such a question, as is enough of itself, without more 
 ado, to make an end of the business. It was not that he 
 did not know well that there exist many atrocious practices 
 of which the one here described is but a fair specimen : but 
 he knew also in what society he might, without being 
 esteemed ever the worse, employ a mixture of jocularity and 
 quibble to explode aU such deliberation on such matters. 
 The question " Wliat is humanity ?" is triumphantly re- 
 peated ; and all the intellectual dexterity, which a mind 
 really desirous of promoting it would have anxiously exerted 
 in trying to fix a few plain practical distinctions and rules, 
 is employed not in merely exposing, but aggravating the 
 legislative difficulties of the subject. The orator's reasoning 
 is, that humanity is not a thing capable of being defined by 
 precise limits : that no regulations could be enacted, on any 
 wide scale, which would not leave the generality of occurring 
 cases very much to the discretion and arbitrary decision of 
 some living tribunal : that this would be to " require men to 
 live by an unknown rule," and to " make the condition of 
 life uncertain, by exposing men to the operation of a law 
 which they cannot know till it visits them in the shape of 
 
 I V 
 
434 OS CEUELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 punishment :" and that -while such a plan of govemnent is 
 extremely undesirable and dangerous in all cases, though 
 in some few perhaps unavoidable ; in the department of 
 public regulation now in question, it would be peculiarly 
 mischievous, — in consequence of the variable and capricious 
 feelings by which the appointed authorities would be liable 
 to be actuated in their estimates of humanity and cruelty, 
 — in consequence of the impunity which would be enjoyed 
 by the rich, and therefore by the judges themselves, gene- 
 rally of course persons of that class (" as few," our senator 
 says, " would inform against his worsldp the 'squire, because 
 he had ridden his hunter to death, or unmercifully whipped, 
 or in a fit of passion shot, his pointer,") — and in conse- 
 quence of the prodigious opening that would be given, 
 under such a discretionary administration of justice, for the 
 operation of all the selfish and malicious passions ; for 
 hypocrisy and the love of power. He expatiates with gleeful 
 shrewdness on a passion which, he says, though not often 
 adverted to, is at aU times operating throughout the com- 
 munity with mighty force, — the love of tormenting. This 
 passion most eagerly seizes on any thing that can give it a 
 colour of concern for the public good. 
 
 " It is not to be told how eager it ia when animated and sanc- 
 tioned by the auxiliary motive of supposed zeal for the public 
 service. It is childish for people to ask, what pleasure can auy 
 one have in tormenting others 1 None in the mere pain inflicted, 
 but the greatest possible in the various effects which may accom- 
 pany it, — in the parade of virtue and in the exercise of power. 
 A man cannot torment another without a considerable exercise 
 of power,— in itself a pretty strong and general passion. But if 
 he can at once exercise his power and make a parade of his 
 virtue (which will eminently be the case in the powers to be 
 exercised under this law), the combination of the two forms a 
 motive which we might fairly say, flesh and blood could not 
 withstand. In what a state then should we put the lowest 
 orders of people (for they were the only persons who would be 
 affected), when we should let loose upon them such a principle 
 of action, armed with such a weapon as this biU would put into 
 its hands ? All the fanatical views and feelings, all the little 
 bustling spirit of regulation, all the private enmities and quarrels 
 would be at work, in addition to those more general passions 
 before stated, and men would be daily punished by summary 
 turisdiction, or left to wait in gaol for the meeting of a more 
 
MANY MODES OF OHUELTY DEriNAELE. 435 
 
 regular tribunal, for offences which are incapable of beinc 
 defined, and which must be left therefore, to the arbitrary and 
 fluctuating standard which the judge in either case might happen 
 to carry in his breast." — P. 16. 
 
 Now, in the first place, it is not a little ludicrous, nor a 
 litjile disgusting, to hear this gentleman affecting all this 
 solicitude not to harass the people by a vague and sweeping 
 mode of legislation, and extra-legal exertions of authority : 
 this personage who, when another class of the faults of the 
 community were in discussion, could so zealously abet the 
 suspension of the Habeas Corpus — ^that is, virtually, a sus- 
 pension of the whole benefits of law, both as to instruction 
 and protection ; who could so cheerfully co-operate to enact 
 laws of the most inquisitorial and summary nature ; and 
 who could so self-complacently, when in power, avow that 
 
 he and his associates were ready to " exert a vigour beyond 
 the law." 
 
 In the next place, though there is a considerable portion 
 of important truth in his representation, it is obviously 
 truth stated all on one side, and stated with all possible, 
 exaggeration. It is the argument of an advocate defending 
 the cause of a person accused, and with undeniable justice 
 accused, of some of the cruel practices in question. Por 
 had he argued the subject in the impartial spirit required in 
 a legislator, he would have admitted, or rather insisted, that 
 many modes of cruelty to animals are sufficiently definable 
 for specific enactment. Where for instance, should be the 
 difficulty of defining the practice of which we have quoted 
 the above description from Lord Erskine's speech? It 
 would be easy to define many of the modes and degrees of 
 cruelty so notorious in the system, as it has been called, of 
 our coach travelling ; modes and degrees in judging of which 
 both the maker and the executor of the law would receive 
 so much assistance from the very tangible circumstances of 
 weigtt of vehicle and loading, and length of stage. There 
 would be no very desperate perplexity in adjusting legal 
 cognizance of what are called races against time, of the 
 amusement of cock-fighting, or that of destroying cocks by 
 tying them to a post and throwing sticks at them, of skin- 
 ing eels alive, and several other very definable modes of 
 cruelty. 
 
 1^2 
 
i3G ON CEtTELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 The greater number, however, of the cruelties to which 
 it is desirable to extend the power of the law, are probably 
 such as the law could designate only in very general terms ; 
 many of them consisting in an excessive degree of an 
 infliction, or of a compulsion to labour, of which a smaller 
 degree would not have been a cruelty — and many consisting 
 in such combinations of circumstances as no law can specifi- 
 cally provide against. With respect, therefore, to the 
 larger part of its intended operation, the law must be 
 content to set forth, with the greatest possible publicity, a 
 few general rules ; and entrust the penal application of 
 these principles in the particular instances, to a magistracy 
 or court appointed for the purpose. Now there is no deny- 
 ing that to such an adminstration of the proposed law, the 
 STils so urgently objected by our senator would in some 
 degree be incident. There would be some opportunities 
 afforded for the indulgence of a petty, consequential, inter- 
 fering disposition, and for atttempting to wreak, under a 
 semblance of virtuous feeling, some of the resentments 
 which are always existing, less or more, among neighbours, 
 in every part of the country. The judges would, from their 
 rank, be less liable to receive any deserved share of the 
 vindictive application of the law than the class of persons 
 most ordinanly arraigned before them. They would not, 
 in deliberating and pronouncing, be able to divest them-, 
 selves entirely of passion : and the adjudgments might in 
 some very rare instances carry a greater degree of severity 
 than the culprits had been aware they were exposing them- 
 selves to incur. 
 
 If the evil sought to be remedied were very slight ; if it 
 but consisted in some trifling injury to property, or if tho 
 alleged offences against humanity yrent no greater length 
 than to hurt the affected sensibility which Mr. Windham 
 ridicules so sarcastically in the fine ladies — a legislature 
 might very properly hesitate to constitute such a jurisdic- 
 tion. But the appeal may be made to aU persons of real 
 and sober sensibility, whether the evU in question be of sa 
 trifling an amount. Let any man who has been trained to 
 habits of reflection and kindness, and has spent a consider- 
 able portion of his time in travelling or in great towns, try 
 to recollect all the instances of cruelty he has witnessed, ci 
 
INJrET TO THE MOEAL FEELINGS. 437 
 
 heard related in places where they had recently occurred, 
 during the last five or ten years : let him then consider 
 how many thousand other persons in England have been 
 witnessing each a different series of instances, during the 
 same period : let the whole, if it were possible, be brought 
 in imagination into one view: — all that has been perpetrated 
 on animals in momentary fury ; ia deliberate, ingenious 
 revenge ; in the pnre unprovoked love of tormenting ; in the 
 barbarous carelessness oi all feelings of want and pain with 
 which animals are peculiarly regarded, after they are com- 
 mitted to those (generally hardened miscreants), whose 
 business is to reserve or convey them for slaughter ; in the 
 slow death of a compulsory labour far beyond any reason- 
 able exertion of the animal's strength ; in the ]deficiency of 
 needful sustenance, in some instances combined with this 
 excess of labour ; and finally, in sanguinary sports, both 
 vulgar and genteel. What an enormous mass of crime this 
 collective view charges on the community, to stand to the 
 final account of the iudividuals according to their degrees of 
 participation ! 
 
 This, however, is viewing only one part of the evil ; and 
 so maeh crime, considered simply as against the suffering 
 animals, is a sufficiently black account for a civilized and 
 Christian country. But let one moment's thought be 
 directed to the other part of the subject, — the effect of this 
 mass of cruelty on the moral feelings of the people. No 
 one worth consulting, it may be presiuned, will make any 
 question whether the feelings of a mind in z, 'proper state, in 
 beholding or thinking of these cruelties, would be pity and 
 indignation, not unmingled with horror, in some cases of 
 peculiar atrocity. But a great majority of the people of 
 our nation, the poor and the rich, the vulgar and the 
 polished, the insignificant and — excepting the House of 
 Commons — the powerful, can observe and can hear of these 
 things without any such feeliiigs whatever. ISTow, what can 
 be the cause of this insensibility, but our having been 
 familiarized to the sight aiid perpetration of these cruelties, 
 and our having always seen them under the sanction of legal 
 impunity ? — since, probably, there is cultivation enough in 
 this country to dMTuse a tolerably general conviction of the 
 odiousness of any one sorb of flagrant wickedness, unless out 
 
438 ON CEXTELTT TO ANIMAM. 
 
 moral feelings have been depraved by its frequent per- 
 petration, beheld or participated, and by its being suffered, 
 as a thing too trifling for so serious a cognizance as that of 
 the law of the land. It is clear, then, that the cruelty so 
 prevalent in our country, and so very lightly thought of by 
 the departed statesman, actually his a most hateful influence 
 on our moral feelings ; and it is a truth as obvious as it is 
 serious, and as it is by governments disregarded, that, 
 according to Lord Erskine's preamble, cruel and oppressive 
 treatment of animals, is not only " highly _ unjust and 
 immoral," as towards them, "but most pernicious in its 
 example, having an evident tendency to harden the heart 
 against the natural feelings of humanity." Doubtless the 
 evident native propensity of the human mind to cruelty 
 leaves but half the existing hard-heartedness with respect to 
 the sufferings of animals to the credit of example. But stiU, 
 in order to avoid being compelled to consider human nature 
 as essentially quite demoniac, we must ascribe much to this 
 depraving source, when we see even persons of condition 
 and cultivation — and who are obseiyant of many of the pro- 
 prieties of conduct — manifesting the most perfect insensi- 
 bility at the sight, for many hours successively, of the 
 shattered, feeble condition, the exhausting toU, and the 
 pains of direct infliction, of the most generous, patient, and 
 useful animals, thus suffering for the convenience, or perhaps 
 by the direct order of these very persons : when we see a 
 long succession of sets of post-horses, on the road to a 
 fashionable watering-place, bathed in sweat and foam, 
 panting and almost dying, before a massy carriage, that 
 bears the most disgraceful decoration, as in such a case it is, 
 of the splendidly emblazoned family arms, surmounted 
 possibly with a coronet or even a mitre ; when we hear of 
 the horses aU dropping down in the yard of the hotel, after 
 bringing to the rendezvous of dissipation an individual of 
 the first rank in the land ; when we hear, as it has happened 
 to us to hear, persons of the sacred profession ridiculing, as 
 an extravagant sort of affectation of sensibility, a very 
 soberly expressed commiseration of the habitual sufferings 
 of our stage and hackney-coach horses ; when we see that 
 papas and mammas, with the precious addition of aunts, 
 cousins, and friends, will suffer children vrithin their sight 
 
IirSTAlfCES OF TIfHTTMASriTT. 439 
 
 to glut the native cruelty so justly ascribed to children by 
 Dr. Johnson, with the sufferings of insects, young birds, or 
 any little animals they dare torment, and wiU make you 
 understand that you are rather impertinent to hint the 
 impropriety of such a permission, or to rescue one of the 
 victims; and when we hear — to add but one count to an 
 indictment that might with perfect justice be made twenty 
 times as long — ^when we hear persons of aU imaginable 
 respectability, refinement, good breeding, and so forth, and 
 who yesterday went over their prayer-book at church with 
 the most edifying decorum — alleging perhaps some slight 
 pretended difference in the delicacy of the appearance of the 
 meat on their tables, as a quite sufficient argument against 
 any method of causing the instantaneous death of the animal 
 to be killed, by shooting through the head or otherwise : and 
 this too in London — where the certain knowledge that on 
 an average thousands of animals are slaughtered for food 
 daily within a very few miles of any one of the habitations, 
 might assist to aggravate in a reflective mind the idea of the 
 comparatively protracted anguish suffered in the usual mode 
 of slaughter; in London — of which good city, however, 
 nearly all the people would at last suspect the legislature of 
 insanity if it were possible it could be caught deliberating 
 on an enactment to lessen, to reduce almost to nothing, this 
 collective, enormous measure of anguish, by enforcing the 
 most expeditious mode of causing death. We cannot con- 
 template this general barbarity of mind, showing itself in so 
 'many ways in this civilized land, without being constrained 
 to attribute a considerable portion of it to the influence of 
 that prevalent example which tends to destroy or rather 
 preclude sensibility, not simply by making us familiar with 
 the sight and practice of cruelty, but by also forming and 
 fixing imperceptibly in our minds, a contemptuous estimate 
 of the pains and pleasnres of the brute animals ; an estimate 
 to which the law very powerfully contributes by its silence : 
 it being almost impossible to make the popular mind connect 
 any idea of very aggravated guilt with things of which, even 
 in their greatest excess, the law takes no notice, if those 
 things are of the substantial, tangible nature of actions. We 
 are thus practically taught from our very infancy, that the 
 pleasurable and painful sensations of animals are not worth 
 
i40 ON CEUELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 our care ; that it is not of the smallest consequence what 
 fchey are made to suffer, so that they are not rendered less 
 serviceable to us by the suffering ; that if we can even draw 
 amusement from inflicting pain on them it is all very wellj 
 that in short they have no rights as sentient beings, existing 
 for their own sakes as well as for ours. "With respect then 
 to one whole department of morality — and that too extend- 
 ing in contact with a very large part of the economy of life 
 • —the mind of the greater proportion of the people of this 
 country is kept by a continual process in a state of extreme 
 depravation, deficient by one whole class of indispensable 
 moral sentiments. This depravation would constitute a 
 dreadful amount of evil, even if the brute tribes were 
 exclusively the objects of its operation. But how foolish it 
 would be to imagine that this insensibility to the sufferings 
 of brutes can fail to lessen the sympathy due to human 
 beings. It will be sure to make its effect on the mind per- 
 ceptible, in the little reluctance with which pain will be 
 inflicted on them, and in a very light account of the evils to 
 which they may be doomed. So long as Mr. Windham is 
 remembered, it will not be forgotten with what easy cool- 
 ness he could talk in the senate of our troops on the 
 Continent, being "hilled off." If instances were pretended 
 to be cited of persons who are habitually unfeeling or 
 actively cruel towards animals, being notwithstanding kind 
 to their relatives, neighbours, and friends, we should ask 
 very confidently whether whim and caprice be not visibly 
 Drevalent amidst that kindness — whether it may not be 
 perceived to be uniformly subordinate to a decided selfish- 
 ness — and whether slight causes are not enough to convert 
 it into resentment and violence. "We have not the smallest 
 faith in the benevolence or friendship of a man who, in a 
 journey to see his friends or nearest relatives (if they are 
 not dangerously iU or in any other extremity), wiLl have a 
 pair of jaded post-horses forced to their utmost speed, or will 
 "whip and spur to the same painful exertion a poor hired 
 hack, or a hard-worked animal of his own, just to reach his 
 friends, as he calls them, an hour or two the sooner. 
 
 Unless a somewhat comprehensive view is taken of the 
 evil as it is actually existing under these several forms, — a 
 TSBt and diversified portion of suffering needlessly and often 
 
BISCEETIONABT jrEISDICTION. 441 
 
 wantonly inflicted — a dreadful measure of crime in some 
 sense sanctioned — and a hardening operation on the moral 
 feelings — a man can have no just idea of the strength of the 
 reasons for which the friends of humanity wish for some such 
 interposition of authority as this speech was made to pre- 
 vent ; and he may let Mr. Windham persuade him that the 
 evil, existing indeed in no very serious degree in this country 
 (for so the orator had the hardihood to represent), is not of 
 a kind to make it worth while to encounter the difficulties 
 incident to the execution of a law for its repression. But 
 those difficulties will probably appear to form very insuffi- 
 cient arguments against making at least a trial of such a 
 law, to a man of enlarged benevolence even, though of less 
 than poetic sensibility, if he takes an extensive view of the 
 cruelties of which he will easily verify the existence. 
 
 One of the chief of those arguments is, from the excep-i 
 tionable character of a discretionary jurisdiction. It is, 
 however, observed expressly by himself^ that " such juris- 
 dictions must of necessity perhaps exist in many cases, and, 
 where the necessity can be shown, must be submitted to," 
 — though, as he justly adds, " they are not on that account 
 the less to be deprecated, or more fit to be adopted where 
 their establishment must be matter of choice," (p. 14). 
 IJtow, a very humane man may be allowed to think that if 
 the class of crimes in question cannot be brought under the 
 coercion requisite to prevent or punish without such a juris- 
 diction, there cannot be "many cases" in which a stronger 
 necessity can be proved. And let it be considered that the 
 magistracy appointed for the purpose would have a province 
 which, taken in the whole, would be far more defined than 
 that of almost any other constituted authority ; its peculiar 
 nature marking it ofiT so distinctly from all other depart- 
 ipents and subjects of jurisdiction. While, therefore, there 
 might be mthin this department various difficulties of dis- 
 crimination, and consequently some errors committed, those 
 difficulties and errors would inconveniently afiect the 
 community only to a certain very limited length : the 
 tribunal for cruelty to animals would have nothing to do, for 
 instance, with Jacobinism — with charges or questions about 
 which Mr. Windhari was peculiarly anxious that the good 
 people of England should never be harassed. Thesa 
 
4,42 
 
 ON CEUELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 tribunals would in their commencement, it may be pre. 
 sumed, proceed with solicitous deliberation ; and thus a 
 number of weU-judged decisions would become at once a 
 useful precedent to themselves, and a promulgation to the 
 people of the rules intended to be observed in such cases as 
 the law could not have specifically provided for : so that a 
 little time would do away with a considerable part of the evil 
 represented by Mr. Windham as an inseparable attendant, 
 and justly deprecated so far as it is an inseparable attendant, 
 on the discretionary application of a general law — that is, 
 its "requiring men to live by an unknown rule," and 
 "inflicting pains and penalties upon conditions which no 
 man is able previously to ascertain." A short series of the 
 proclaimed and compared adjudgments of a few of the 
 tribunals, might easily give the people at the very least as 
 settled a standard of the degrees and penalties of this class 
 of offences, as that with which they are furnished respecting 
 the various other classes by our criminal code; a code of 
 which so vast a proportion of the enactments are considered 
 by the authorities administering the law, as totally unfit to 
 be enforced — and which therefore leaves so very large a part 
 of the general administration of justice to be purely an 
 exercise of that very discretion which the orator affects so 
 much to dread. It is obvious, too, that the danger which in 
 relation to this one subject he insists on so much, — of the 
 judges being influenced by passion, may just as properly be 
 urged against that exceedingly wide and unquestioned dis- 
 cretion in our criminal courts. But the danger of the 
 judges being impelled by passion to decisions of excessive 
 severity, wiU appear exceedingly small when the very low 
 general state of our moral sentiments regarding the suffer- 
 ings of animals is taken into account ; even cultivated men, 
 as we have seen, often betraying a strange want of sensi- 
 bility on this point. Indeed Mr. Windham himself, in 
 another part of the speech, represents that if it were not so, 
 the desired reform might be effected without the interference 
 of the legislature. Unless it were to be expected that our 
 English gentlemen, as soon as they felt themselves invested 
 with their new o£S.ce should melt into a most unwonted kind 
 of sympathy, the probability would be that the offenders 
 cited before them might escape somewhat too easily ; and 
 
IMAGlNAar DIFFICULTIES OF LEGISLATIOIT. 44.3 
 
 that, speaking generally, the judges would only become 
 adequately severe through an enlargement of their virtuous 
 feelings, which would at the same time make them anxious 
 to be just in that severity. 
 
 It is not to be denied that the appointed courts or magis- 
 trates would have occasion for their utmost discrimination 
 to ascertain the true nature of the acts charged before them 
 — to distinguish wanton cruelty from impositions, or inflic- 
 tions necessitated by unavoidable circumstances — to obtain 
 ■proof who is the real or chief offender — and to discern when 
 an accuser may be guilty of malicious misrepresentation. 
 But Lord Erskine has shown that all this is perfectly 
 analogous to what forms a very large share of the ordinary 
 business of the courts of law, in which the prosecutions for 
 cruel treatment of apprentices, for assaults, for slander, for 
 trespasses, &c. &c., involve exactly the same sort of difficul- 
 ties. He vni^ not, indeed, allow them to be called 
 difficulties ; declaring for himself, with an appeal to the 
 experience also of his learned brethren, that he has known 
 hardly any causes of this nature in which the truth did not 
 Yeiy soon make itself palpable to the court. And, since in 
 the course of so many causes, perplexity, fallacy, and malice, 
 under all their imaginable modes, have generally failed to 
 embarrass the court for any long time, it is very reasonably 
 inferred that in cases of alleged cruelty to animals it cannot 
 generally be impossible to ascertain the truth. To be sure, 
 the keenness of Westminster Hall cannot be spread all over 
 the country, and conferred on each magistrate along with 
 his patent of office : but it must not be conceded to Mr. 
 Windham's implied judgment of the faculties of our English 
 gentlemen, that they would not be able, with the accuser, 
 the accused, and the witnesses before them in open daylight 
 — and very often before dinner — to make a tolerable estimate 
 of the characters and the statements ; when they had looks, 
 tones, narratives, replies to all the questions they chose to 
 put, sometimes the injured animals, and often the known 
 characters of the persons, all placed fairly in their view. A 
 very few exposed and stigmatized instances of malicious 
 accusation, or purely impertinent, consequential inter- 
 ference, would go far towards putting an end to that kind 
 of injustice ; as none but the most worthless persons in a 
 
414 ON CEUELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 neignbourhood, persons who may be easily knoton for such, 
 would be willing to expose themselves to be convicted of it. 
 "With Lord Brskine, therefore, we think that on the whole 
 the proposed law is " more open to the charge of inefficacy 
 than of vexation." 
 
 But the objection on which the most zealous part of Mr. 
 "Windham's oratory is employed, is the iniquitous distinc- 
 tion which, he asserts, any law of the kind would practically 
 make, and which the law, as laid down in the proposed bill, 
 does formally make, between the rich and the poor. It was 
 perfectly in character that on this topic our statesman should 
 take fire ; and on the present occasion it bums so fiercely as 
 to threaten the whole constitution of parliament : for his 
 Speech declares, that though he had been, from conviction, 
 a steady opponent of parliamentary reform, the passing of 
 the proposed law would be enough to reverse all his opinions, 
 and decide him for a grand change in the constitution of the 
 House of Commons. Part of this inequality which he 
 predicts in the operation of the law, is the failure of its 
 execution against the rich in cases strictly analogous to those 
 in which it would be executed ageinst the lower orders. 
 Now though it is truly an odious thing in, a community, 
 that the rich should be tolerated in vices which are punished 
 in the poor, yet a moralist may be allowed to wish that the 
 atrocious vices may be extirpated from among the poor, even 
 though the rich should resolve, as their own peculiar privilege, 
 to retain them. And, since jurisdiction must always be 
 substantially in the hands of the more wealthy class, we 
 would rather, upon the whole, that the very '"squire," who 
 last week, "rode his hunter to death" in a fox-chaee, and 
 on whom, notwithstanding, the law against cruelty would, 
 according to Mr. Windham, fail to be executed, should be 
 the magistrate to punish a man of the "lower orders" for 
 forcing a poor debilitated horse along with a cart-load of 
 stones of double the reasonable weight, till it falls down 
 and can rise no more, — than that this and other similar bar- 
 barians should be allowed to do this again. "What would 
 become of law and justice in general, if we were to be nice 
 about the characters of thief-takers and executioners ? It 
 might, indeed, be hoped, one should think, that some few 
 .'"fiquires" might be found in the different parts of England, 
 
DISTINCTIOlf BETWIiEN EICH AND POOE. 415 
 
 who do not ride their hunters to death, and who, if iu office, 
 would be found to have the temerity to execute the law 
 against those 'squires that do. It might also be thought not 
 totally romantic, especially in humble innocents like us, 
 unacquainted with the wealthy and the genteel people of 
 the land, to hope that the 'squire, who has probably been 
 educated at the university, and has the clergyman to dine 
 with him every week, would, when invested with a commis- 
 sion to enforce authoritatively among his neighbours, both 
 a specific rule and a general principle against cruelty — 
 bethink himself of the propriety of not perpetrating noto- 
 rious cruelties himself, in the form of either riding his 
 hunter, or causing a pair of post-horses to be driven to 
 death. But still, if such surmises and hopes are founded in 
 a perfect ignorance of the character of the wealthy, polished, 
 coUege-bred gentlemen of this country ; if we mitst be 
 compelled to accept Mr. Windham's implied estimate of 
 them ; and if, therefore, it would be in vain to seek for any 
 of them to be constituted magistrates to take cognizance of 
 cruelty who would not perpetrate the grossest cruelties 
 themselves, — still even though all this were so, we would 
 rather that only one cruelty should be committed than that 
 ten shoidd ; and would allow the wealthy and cultivated 
 men to commit one, as a reward for the exercise of their 
 humanity in preventing the other nine. 
 
 It is at the same time extremely mortifying to patriotic 
 feelings of a better kind than those of mere English pride, 
 to have from so acute an observer, and so indulgent a 
 moralist as Mr, Windham, such a testimony against the 
 humanity of the more cultivated class of our countrymen 
 and countrywomen, as is conveyed in the substance of this 
 Speech. The orator most pointedly insists that if they really 
 had any tolerable share of the humanity to which it is pre- 
 tended this law is designed to give efficacy, they might give 
 it efficacy without the assistance of such a law. And in 
 exculpation of the immediate agents of cruelty, such post- 
 boys, and even the proprietors of post-horses, he drives 
 home the charge — a charge of much severer quality, in fact, 
 than there are any expressions to indicate it was in hia 
 opinion — to the superior agent and criminal, "his honour," 
 for whose sake the cruelty is committed. 
 
440 ON CEUELTT TO AKIMALS. 
 
 " Whose feult is it, in nineteen cases out of twenty, that these 
 sufferings are incurred 1 The traveller drives up in haste, hia 
 servantliaving half-killed one post-horse in riding forward to 
 announce his approach. The horses are brought out ; they are 
 weak, spavined, galled, hardly dry from their last stage. What 
 is the dialogue that ensues ? Does the traveller offer to stop on 
 his journey, or even to wait till the horses can be refreshed ? 
 Such a thought never enters his head ; he swears at the landlorc' 
 and threatens never to come again to his house, because he 
 expects to go only seven miles an hour, when he had hoped to go 
 nine. But when the landlord has assured him that the horses, 
 however bad in their appearance, will carry his honour very well, 
 and has directed the 'lads' to 'make the best of their way,' the 
 traveller's humanity is satisfied, and he hears with perfect com- 
 posure and complacency the cracking whips of the postillions 
 only intimating to them, by-the-bye, that if they do not bring 
 him in in time, they shall not receive a farthing." — ^P. 21. 
 
 This supposed instance was undoubtedly meant and con- 
 sidered by Mr. Windham as a fair sample of the humane 
 feelings prevaling in that part of society of which the indi- 
 viduals are of consequence enough to be preceded and 
 announced in their movements, by servants on horses " half- 
 killed " to execute the important office ; and it is mortifying 
 to be compelled to acknowledge that whatever else be as- 
 cribed or denied to Mr. "Windham, it would be ridiculous to 
 question his knowledge of the world. But it is really very 
 curious that such a description should form part of a serious 
 argument against a law for the prevention of cruelty. How 
 does he apply such a fact to such a purpose ? It is thus. 
 He is representing that " those persons of the lower orders" 
 who would most commonly be found the immediate perpetra- 
 tors of cruelty, especially of the kind here described, are very 
 much at the wiU of their betters, such as " his honour," and 
 actually commit much of the alleged cruelty at their authori- 
 tative dictate ; and that, therefore, if " his honour," and such 
 as "his honour," chose to alter their will and dictates in this 
 matter, they could, without any interference of the law, pre- 
 vent that cruelty. Why yes ; and, with submission, it may 
 perhaps be questioned whether the necessity of a law in any 
 case whatever is not owing precisely to the circumstance that 
 people have not the wiU to do right without it. " His honour " 
 is evidently not disposed to save the legislature the odium 
 
SUPPOSED CASE OP CKUELTT. ,447 
 
 and the pain of exerting their power — a power so rarely and 
 reluctantly exerted — of enacting one more restrictive and 
 penal statute. " But then," says Mr. "Windham " since 'his 
 honour, ' is in this case the real came of the cruelty (while 
 yet, not being the direct perpetrator, he cannot be touched 
 by the law) , you will commit a flagrant injustice in making a 
 law to punish the landlord and the post-boy." To this it 
 must be replied, that without a law directed against the land- 
 lord and post-boy, we cannot, according to Mr. Windham's 
 own statement of the case, reach " his honour," to put a re- 
 straint on his detestable barbarity ; and that by means of such 
 a law we can put that restraint. Por if the landlord has just 
 received an authenticated copy of a heavy penal statute 
 against cruelties like those here described, he will be very 
 certain not to suffer the poor horses under such circum- 
 stances, to be goaded out of his stable, however " his honour" 
 may storm and " swear." And if this important gentleman, 
 baronet, or lord, as the case may be, should threaten to go to 
 another inn," the landlord wiQ laugh, and teU him that the 
 statute is probably in equal force at the other inn. And also 
 when the " lads " set off, the landlord will warn them that it 
 is at their peril they take their consequential luggage at any 
 such rate as " nine miles an hour," in whatever style the said 
 luggage may command, growl, or threaten. As to his threat- 
 ening them with " not a farthing," it is obvious that one 
 point to be provided for in the proposed legal regulation 
 would be that, at any rate the whole of their reward should 
 not depend on the choice of the traveller who would propor- 
 tion its degree upward exactly to the degree of cruelty. "We 
 should think the proprietor of the horses would be exceedingly 
 glad of this statute, as the best protection of himself and his 
 horses against the imperative insolence of such persons as " his 
 honour." If he has retained the very slightest sentiment of 
 what we, by courtesy to our nature, are pleased to call 
 humanity, or if he has any reasonable care of the animals, 
 even as mere working machines, which it cannot be good 
 policy, as to his own pecuniary interest, to work down and 
 destroy so fast, he will be happy to plead the inhibition of 
 this statute ; if he can be so perverse a wretch as to be 
 indifferent at once to the sufferings of the animals and the 
 calculation of his ovm advantage, he will deserve to stand th» 
 
4Ji8 OK CETJELTT TO ANIMALS. 
 
 solie respondent, for all the cruelty committed between the 
 traveller and the post-boy, and to suffer the utmost punish- 
 ment awarded by the law. To notice again that one landlord 
 would have no inducement to comply with the unreasonable 
 demands of travellers on the ground of competition of 
 interests with other landlords, whom our orator's argument 
 supposes ready to give the barbarous accommodation which 
 this one might refuse, would be very superfluous but for 
 the gross unfairness, as to this point, of the passage we have 
 quoted — and of another (p. 18), in which the traveller is 
 represented as " hinting to the post-boy that he means to 
 dine at the next stage, and that if he does not bring him in 
 in time, he will never go to his master's house agaia." The 
 acute maker of this speech saw clearly, that his threatened 
 transfer of custom from one proprietor of post-horses to 
 another, was the essential basis of his argument against the 
 application of a penal law to that proprietor. His interest, 
 our orator argues, necessitates him to be servile and cruel, 
 since by disobliging the traveller he would lose employment 
 — the traveller instantly and ever after going to another inn, 
 where no such humane regulation will retard him. Now 
 what words can do justice to the mockery of maintaining an 
 apparently serious argument on a groxmd so palpably taken 
 from under the reasoner by the nature of the ease ? It being 
 unavoidably present to his thoughts at the time, and it 
 having been put in the most pointed form of vrords in Lord 
 Erskine's printed speech, that such competition and transfers 
 must be precluded by a law known to be equally restrictive 
 on all the owners of post-horses. Can there be two places 
 in England where a man could talk in this way vrithout 
 laughing out at his audience for gravely listening to him. 
 
 In prosecuting his argument, that people of wealth and 
 rank might, if they pleased, do much without the assistance 
 of law, for the prevention of cruelty, the orator bestows 
 some poignant sarcasms on hypocritical pretensions to sensi- 
 bility ; and he will be cheered with animation by those who 
 are in earnest for that prevention, at each vindictive sentence 
 applied to such personages as those described in the fol- 
 lowing passages : — 
 
 " One of the favourite instances [in exemplification of cruelty] 
 in the fashionable female circles, as they are called, of this town, 
 
CErELTT or TASHIONABLE PEOM.E. 449 
 
 (and who appear, by-the-bye, to have been very diligently can- 
 vassed), are the cases with which the members of these societies 
 have been continually shocked, of coachmen whipping their 
 horses in public places ; one instance, by the way, by no means 
 of magnitude enough to call for the interference of the legis- 
 lature. But be its magnitude what it will, why must the legis- 
 lature be called in ? Are there no means (sufficient probably 
 for punishing the offence adequately in each instance, but cer- 
 tainly for preventing the practice) in the power possessed by 
 masters and mistresses ? But apply to any of these ladies, and 
 satisfy them, after much difficulty, that their coachman was the 
 most active and the most in the wrong, in the struggle which 
 caused so much disturbance at the last Opera, and the answer 
 probably would be : ' Oh ! to be sure it is very shocking ; but 
 then John is so clever in a crowd ! the other night at Lady 
 Such-arone's, when all the world were perishing in the passage, 
 waiting for their carriages, ours was up in an instant, and we 
 were at Mrs. Such-a-one's half an hour before any one else. 
 We should not know what to do if we were to part with him.' 
 Was it the coachman here who most deserved pimishment, or 
 was it for the parties here described to call for a law ?"— P. 19. 
 
 In an assembly of confessedly unequalled rank in point of 
 integrity, there evidently could not be a more effectual 
 way for putting a question in a train for speedy deci- 
 sion, than by stating it so that the decision as on the 
 one side or on the other, shall appear to be identical 
 with the honesty or the hypocrisy of that assembly. Our 
 orator therefore has put his grand objection aigainst the 
 law as proposed by Lord Erskine, — its making an invidious 
 and iniquitous distinction between the higher and lower 
 orders, into this a/rgvmientum ad hominem form. The bill, 
 he represents to the assembly, not merely proposes certain 
 specific laws against certain specified modes of cruelty, but 
 promulgates a grand abstract principle against cruelty to 
 animals in general. Well : what are usually called sports, 
 such as hunting, shooting, and fishing, are as decidedly of 
 the nature of cruelty as anything in the world can be, and 
 therefore " cannot, one should think (we are using his own 
 words) be allowed an instant ; as being, more than any 
 others, in the very line and point-blank aim of the statute, 
 and having nothing to 'protect them but that which ought 
 in justice and decency to be the strongest reason against 
 them ; namely, that they are the mere sports of the rich." 
 
 G 6 
 
450 OW CBTJELTT TO ANIKALB. 
 
 But, beliold ! this bill, founding itself, and taking to itself 
 the highest credit for being founded, on this grand general 
 principle, leaves and sanctions the rich in the most perfect 
 possession of all these cruel sports. And who is it that 
 is to pass this bill into a law ? " Why," says he, " a 
 house of hunters and shooters :" and after suggesting to 
 them what a fine figure their legislation would make in the 
 world, when the newspapers should come to record in one 
 column a string of commitments under the " Cruelty BUI," 
 and in another, all the savage incidents of a desperate 
 chace, under the head of " Sporting Intelligence," he 
 exclaims : — 
 
 " Was it possible that men could stand the shame of such 
 statements, — ^that this house which tolerated such sports, nay, 
 which claimed them, as the pecular privilege of the class to 
 which it belonged, a house of hunters and shooters, should, 
 while they left these untouched, be affecting to take the brute 
 creation imder their protection ; and be passing bOls for the 
 punishment of every carter or driver whom an angry passenger 
 should accuse of chastising his horses with over- severity." " It 
 was in vain to attempt to disguise the fact, that if, with such a 
 preamble (as Lord Erskine's; on our statutes, and with acts 
 passed in consequence to punish the lower classes for any cruelty 
 inflicted upon animals, we continued to practice and to reserve 
 in a great measure to ourselves the sports of hunting, shooting, 
 and fishing, we must exhibit ourselves as the most hardened and 
 unblushing hypocrites that ever shocked the feelings of mankind." 
 Pp. 25, 26. 
 
 "With great dexterity and success this assailant of the 
 -new scheme of legislation cuts away the line of distinction 
 by which Lord Erskine had endeavoured to save the decorum 
 of the legislature, while it should be excluding a large 
 proportion of the animal tribes from the protection of a 
 biU professing to proceed on a general principle of humanity, 
 by calling those excluded animals the "unreclaimed," or 
 ferce naturm. " Why," says Mr. Windham, " because they 
 did not ask man's protection, were they to be liable in 
 consequence to be persecuted and tormented by him ? 
 On the contrary, if he did nothing for their good, he ought 
 the rather to be required to do nothing for their harm." 
 It was, in truth, a matter of no small perplexity, in pro- 
 posing a solemn legislative recognition of a principle 
 
IHCONSISTENCT Or LOED EESKINe's BIUy, 451 
 
 condemning cruelty to animals in general, to explain to the 
 persons who were to make this recognition, how they might 
 do it in perfect consistency with the retention of a legal 
 right to seek sport in the infliction of pain. Perhaps on 
 this part of the subject the mover of the bill was less fully 
 prepared than on the other parts, to meet that extreme 
 moral scrupulosity which he could not be unaware he should 
 find awake to every point of consistency. "We really do not 
 see how the proposition could be better introduced than in 
 some such manner as the following : " There is a great 
 deal of cruelty exercised on brute animals in this country, 
 which we certainly have the power in some degree to 
 prevent ; and I will endeavour to show that it is therefore 
 our duty to do so. If, however, we adopt a formal measure 
 on the subject, the assertion of something in the form of a 
 general principle condemnatory of cruelty, seems highly 
 proper as the basis of any particular enactments, and may 
 also be useful by exciting thought and impTessing the moral 
 sense. Then, as to the particular enactments, let us try 
 how many we can agree upon. You and I know very well 
 that the pursuits of the sportsman are extremely cruel ; 
 but you and I also know very well that it would be utterly 
 in vain for me to propose to this assembly any restrictions on 
 those sports. I am sorry for the appearance of inconsis- 
 tency that will arise from this exception, especially as it is 
 an exception made so insidiously in your own favour. But 
 in a matter so urgent, it is better that something should be 
 done, with whatever defects or inconsistency, than that 
 nothing should. I think the enormous sum of pain that 
 may be prevented by such regulations as we probably might 
 concur to make, a far more important consideration, than 
 the uniformity of the character of our legislation. Eetaia, 
 if it must be so, your asserted right and your practice of 
 hunting, shooting, and fishing ; but pray do not go to fancy 
 it an indispensable point of Ijeneficence to the people, to 
 secure to them also an inviolable unlimited privilege to be 
 cruel, in another way." 
 
 It remains only to make one slight observation on the 
 sort of consistency so carefully maintained in this Speech 
 between the professions of regret for the sufferings of 
 animals, and certain other professions. Near the beginning 
 
 Q o 2 
 
452 ON cnrEiTT to animals. 
 
 of tliis article, we called these compassionate professions 
 cant — whether justly or not, will appear immediately. Aftei . 
 adverting to Lord Erskine's melancholy exhibition of 
 cruelties and victims, (an exhibition in a great measure 
 confined to horses, asses, and cattle, appointed for slaugh- 
 ter,) our orator, as we have seen, most strenuously insists, 
 that the cruelties perpetrated by the vulgar on these 
 nnimals are equalled, if not exceeded, by those that take 
 place ia the aristocratic amusements of hunting, &c. &c. 
 Of course the senator expects it to be understood that he 
 regrets also the sufierings of the victims of these amuse- 
 ments. But lest there should be the possibility of a doubt 
 as to his feelings in this case, he takes care to say that, — 
 
 " He legged not to be understood as condemning the sports to 
 which he had been alluding, and mvxh less as charging with 
 cruelty all those who took delight in them, cruel as the acts 
 themselves undoubtedly were." " Though no sportsman him- 
 self, he should lament the day, should it ever arrive, when from 
 false refinement and mistaken humanity, what are called field- 
 sports (or sports indeed of almost any kind) should be abolished 
 in this country, or fall into disuse. So far from arraigning 
 those who followed them, his doctrine had ever been, that strange 
 as it might seem, cruel sports did not make cruel people" — P. 27. 
 
 We are, if possible, more pleased than even any of our 
 readers will be, to have reached the end of these obser- 
 vations. Nothing could have made us feel it pardonable to 
 extend them so disproportionately, and so very far beyond 
 the first intention, but the notorious fact, that the important 
 branch of morality to which they relate, is not only dis- 
 regarded in practice, by numberless reputable sort of mem- 
 bers of the community, but also very criminally neglected 
 in the instruction of parents, tutors, and preachers. It 
 seemed worth while to examine a little, how far the 
 persons so practising, and so neglecting, woidd do wisely to 
 seek to draw anything like sanction or extenuation from 
 the opinions of the departed senator, or the decisions of 
 the assembly in which this speech purports to have beeri 
 lielivered. 
 
453 
 
 SOUTHEY'S CURSE OP KEHA]\rA. 
 
 The Curse of Kekama. By Egbert Southbt. 4to. 181 1. 
 
 In endeavouring to come as near as we can to a right 
 judgment on this performance, it will perhaps be best to 
 let a brief abstract of the story precede the substance of the 
 remarks we may venture to make. If they should happen 
 to intermingle with this analysis more than we at present 
 intend, we shall only be so much the less tedious in the 
 latter part of the article. 
 
 It may first be noticed, thafthe time in which the events 
 forming the action of the poem took place, is not brought 
 within the reach of conjecture, by any circumstances bearing 
 a relation to any known period of history. The action 
 bursts on us without introduction or preparation, proceeds 
 in perfect disconnexion from all contemporary agency, and 
 in a moment shuts up, in a manner that not only does not 
 leave a possibility of guessiag at a sequel, but gives the 
 impression that there can he no sequel. The magnificent 
 and monstrous fable comes up to our view and goes down. 
 9.gain, just after the manner of one of those temporary 
 islands, which have been sometimes thrown up by submarine 
 volcanoes, and having risen with tremendous violence and 
 fulmination, and exhibited a fiery and portentous appearance 
 for a short time, have sunk at once, and left all the space 
 mere sea, as it was before. Indeed the story, though con- 
 sistiag, for perhaps the greater part, in a representation of 
 human action and feelings, is so perfectly foreign to any 
 thing actually and simply human, that there would have 
 been absurdity in affecting to connect it with real events, 
 and to give it a place in chronology. It is enough for the 
 reader to be certain as to the two extreme dates of the 
 period, somewhere ia which these matters happened. The 
 crimes and miseries here described, are evidence that the 
 transactions related must have taken place within the Cali- 
 yuga, the fourth or iron age of the Hindoos, which com- 
 menced about five thousand years ago; and it should be 
 equally evident, we think, that they cannot have taken place 
 so lately as the middle of the last«>entury; certainly not since 
 
45 1 aorTHEx's cuese of kehama. 
 
 tlie battle of Plassey ; because it is impossible that sucli a 
 person as Kehama should have been in India at that time, 
 without coming in collision with Colonel Clive, who would 
 have saved Seeva the trouble of iaterfering to put him 
 down. 
 
 The poem opens with a grand funeral procession through 
 the streets of the " imperial city," supposed to be in some 
 part of Hindostan, and the capital of the dominions of 
 Kehama, who bears the apparently inadequate denomination 
 of " Eajah." It was the funeral of Arvalan, his son, who, 
 in attempting violence to the beautiful and virtuous 
 daughter of a peasant, had been struck dead at one blow, 
 inflicted in the agony of desperation by her father. The 
 procession which conveys and attends the dead miscreant to 
 the pile prepared without the city, is very long, is in the 
 night, has the gloomy splendour of an almost infinite num- 
 ber of torches, roars and clatters with a dreadful noise of all 
 manner of vociferation, from the whole vast multitude com- 
 bined with all big-sounding instruments, and is described 
 with eminent vigour of conception and language ; an 
 effectual hint of which may be given, by citing the lines 
 descriptive of the appearance of the dead prince. 
 
 " In vain ye thunder on his ear the name ! 
 
 Would ye awake the dead ? 
 Borne upright in his palankeen, 
 
 There Arvalan is seen ! 
 A glow is on his face, — a lively red ; 
 
 It is the crimson canopy 
 Which o'er his cheek the reddening shade hath shed. 
 
 He moves, — he nods his head, — 
 But the motion comes from the bearers' tread. 
 
 As the body, borne aloft in state, 
 Sways with the impulse of its own dead weight."— P. 4. 
 
 Kehama comes in view, for the first time, following im- 
 mediately his dead son, but not calling his name, nor joining 
 the funeral song. With great propriety he is made to be 
 silent, abstracted from the tumult, pomp, and thundering 
 clamour, and grimly occupied with his own thoughts ; while 
 the beholders were secretly gratified to see their tyrant a 
 sufferer, and not one person in all the prodigious multitude 
 really lamented the fate of his son. After him come the 
 
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM. 4o5 
 
 two wives of Arvalan, "young Azla," and "young Nealliny," 
 prepared, the one voluntarily, the other by constraint, to 
 share with him the burning pile. They are attended by 
 their relations, and followed by a train of richly decorated 
 slaves, the appoiuted victims of the same fire. The two 
 persons that come next, guarded by bowmen, are the objects 
 of most extreme curiosity, and the only objects of sympathy, 
 to the spectators. These are the peasant and his daughter, 
 named, in a taste snfiiciently odd, Ladurlad and Kailyal. 
 The procession, reaches the bank of the river ; the bier is 
 set down near the funeral pile, which is built of sandal- 
 wood, and bestrewed with myrrh and ambergris ; the music 
 dud outcry cease ; a ceremony is performed in the way of 
 ascertaining that the body is really dead ; it is absolutely 
 dead ; then 
 
 " With a doubling peal and deeper blast 
 
 The tambours and the trumpets sound on high. 
 And with a last and loudest cry 
 They call on Arvalan. " 
 
 Azla calmly takes her seat on the funeral pile, and sustains 
 the head of Arvalan in her lap : Nealliny, who has not yet 
 been one month a bride, is forced to the fatal situation, and 
 bound to the dead man, in spite of her struggles, the desperate 
 agony of which is described with a frightful vividness. 
 Kehama's torch, followed by those of the Brahmins, sets 
 fire to the pile, which is built in a kind of pit, so as to be 
 belo^ the level of the ground ; the band of victims join in a 
 frantic dance round it, and one by one fall into the devour- 
 ing flames. The clamour and instruments of the furious 
 rout at length sink into silence, and leaving the roaring of 
 the fire alone to be heard. 
 
 Amidst this stillness, more hideous than even thepreceding 
 tempest of noise and madness, Kehama performs alone, 
 some funeral rights, and calls on his son. Unexpectedly 
 Arvalan answers and appears to him, but in such a manner 
 as to be unheard and unseen by any one else. They hold a 
 mournful and infernal dialogue. The son expostulates 
 upbraidingly with his father, whom the poet makes him call 
 " Almighty," for not having performed something of more 
 value to his expelled and unhappy spirit, than this vain 
 
456 southey's ctjusb of kehama. 
 
 funeral pomp. Kehama retorts in anger, reproaching him 
 for the folly of contriving to lose, by means of a stake and a 
 peasant's arm, a life which had been " spell-secured" against 
 disease, fire, and sword. The son answers in deep com- 
 plaints of misery, and implores his father to exert his irre- 
 sistible influence to invest his sensitive spirit with a security 
 against the malignant impressions of the elements, to fix 
 him in a favourable condition in defiance of the gods, to 
 endow him with power, and to give him the gratification of 
 witnessing a fearful revenge — of which delight Kehama 
 promises him he shall have his fill. 
 
 " So as he spake, a glow of dreadful pride 
 Inflamed his cheek, — with quick and angry stride 
 
 He moved toward the pile. 
 And raised his hand to hush the crowd, and cried, 
 Bring forth the murderer ! " — P. 15. 
 
 Ladurlad comes forward obedient to the call. But Kailyal 
 seizes and clings to a wooden image of Marriataly, the 
 favourite Hindoo goddess of the poor, grappling with such 
 almost preternatural force, that the guards cannot drag her 
 from it. And here comes a piece of gross impiety. The 
 Christian poet (unless the appellation is really meant to be 
 disclaimed) formally and seriously puts himself in the atti- 
 tude of a devout Pagan, and in his own person apostrophizes 
 this member of the Indian pantheon, in language of rever- 
 ence and kindness. 
 
 " Didst thou, O Marriataly, see their strife ? 
 
 In pity didst thou see the sufiering maid ? 
 Or was thine anger kindled, that rude hands 
 
 Assailed thy holy image ? — for behold 
 
 The holy image shakes ! " — P. 16. 
 
 The bank of the river, where this deadly struggle is main- 
 tained, gives way ; and the idol, and its ■protegee, and her 
 savage assailants, are all flung into the deep stream. Ladur- 
 lad remains to receive the concentrated wrath of the " Man- 
 Almighty," as Kehama. is gravely styled — not now by 
 Aryalan, who might be supposed thus to apply the title of 
 divinity consistently with his Pagan principles, but by the 
 poet himself, with a scandalous acceptance of those prin 
 
TUE CUESE. 457 
 
 ciples. Having stood fixed for some time, in silence, and 
 with total disregard to the few pathetic expressions by which 
 the victim implores lenity, the tyrant pronounces a curse, in 
 the following terms : — 
 
 " I charm thy life 
 From the weapons of strife, 
 From stone and from wood, 
 From fire and from flood. 
 From the serpent's tooth. 
 And the beasts of blood : 
 From Sickness I charm thee, 
 And Time shall not harm thee ; 
 But Earth which is mine 
 Its fruits shall deny thee ; 
 And "Water shall hear me. 
 And know thee and fly thee ; 
 And the Winds shall not touch thee 
 When they pass by thee. 
 And the dews shall not wet thee, 
 When they fall nigh thee : 
 And thou shalt seek Death 
 To release thee in vain ; 
 Thou slialt live in thy pain. 
 While Kehama shall reign 
 With a fire in thy heart, 
 And a fire in- thy brain ; 
 And Sleep shall obey me. 
 
 And visit thee never. 
 And the Curse shall be on thee 
 For ever and ever." — Pp. 18, 19. 
 
 The incongruity between the cantering, jingling versifica- 
 tion of this anathema, and its formidable import, and still 
 more the portentous aspect and dreadful attributed power 
 of the personage who utters it, is too obvious to require 
 remark. 
 
 An instantaneous shock through the frame and soul of 
 Ladurlad evinces the efficacy of the curse. He remains 
 awhile fixed to the spot, in a state of mind partaking both 
 of stupefaction and dreadful consciousness ; but the spectacle 
 will be best exhibited in the poet's own exquisitely descrip- 
 tive lines : — 
 
 " There, where the Curse had stricken him, 
 There stood the miserable man, 
 
458 sorTHEx's ctjese of kehasta. 
 
 There stood Ladurlad, with loose-hanging arms, 
 And eyes of idiot wandering. 
 Was it a dream 1 alas ! 
 He heard the river flow, 
 He heard the crumbling of the pile, 
 He heard the wind which showered 
 The thin white ashes round. 
 There motionless he stood, 
 As if he hoped it were a dream, 
 And feared to move, lest he should prove 
 The actual misery ; 
 And still at times he met Kehama's eye, 
 Kehama's eye that fastened on him still." — P. 19. 
 
 We have made this quotation, partly in order to take an 
 occasiou (which, however, there are a great number of pas- 
 sages in the work that would equally, and some of them 
 still more pointedly, have afforded), of noticing two things 
 in which no poet surpasses Mr. Southey. One is, the intro- 
 duction of circumstances which, while slight in themselves, 
 are adapted to give the reader a lively impression of reality 
 in the situations created by the poet — marking even the 
 less obvious of the perceptions by which that reality is 
 evinced to the persons represented as in those situations. 
 This is happily done, in the present instance, by the sound 
 of " the crumbling of the pile," and the " showering round 
 of the white ashes." This kind of beauty, recurring fre- 
 quently, as it does throughout Mr. Southey's poetry, shows 
 an imagination in which all the ideas that are nearly related 
 are strongly associnted. The other excellence is, that he 
 conceives in its most specific form, and perfectly expresses 
 in few words, the state of feeling appropriate to any ima- 
 gined situation. We are content to cite as an instance, 
 though the poem contains many more perfect ones, the 
 passage near the end of the above extract — 
 
 " And feared to move, lest he should prove 
 The actual misery." 
 
 Prom this state Ladurlad is roused, by the recommencing 
 noise of the funeral orgies. He moves away from the spot, 
 unobstructed, for the crowd everywhere shrinks from aroimd 
 him "with horror ; and as he recovers from his amazement, 
 his consciousness the more perfectly verifies the full reality 
 
POWEErrL CONCEPTION 01' rEELINSS. 459 
 
 and weight of tLe curse Bat it is time to notice, that the 
 poet gives ns the hint, even by a motto in the title-page, 
 that Kehama has rather taken himself in by pronouncing 
 this curse ; and in the course of the narrative it is made to 
 confer many unthought-of advantages on the victim, amidst 
 his misery, and recoils with vindictive operation on its 
 author. Its first effect in Ladurlad's favour is, that, water 
 being harmless to him, he easily rescues his daughter, whom 
 he decries floating down the river, clinging, in a state of 
 insensibility, to the wooden idol. The scene that follows, 
 displaying the wild exultation that for a few moments be- 
 guiles his misery, the appearance of his insensible daughter, 
 his efforts to recover her, her gradual restoration to con- 
 sciousness, her expressions of surprise and congratulation 
 at finding her father alive and free, his hasty movement of 
 impatience and anguish at hearing them, and the manner in 
 which she is affected by the speedy and unquestionable 
 proof of his dreadful calamity — is in all respects eminently 
 beautiful. Its exquisite tenderness, and its most accurate 
 and lively painting, make the reader almost insensible, for 
 the time, to the anti-pathetic influence, if we may so call it, 
 of the absurd leading principle of the fable. The same 
 powerful conception of an uncommon state of feeling, and 
 the same rich delineation of the visible circumstances of the 
 scene, prevail through the next portion of the narrative, 
 which describes the two sufferers lying on the ground almost 
 aU the day, absorbed and almost immoveable in misery. As 
 a piece of evening devotion, Kailyal erects and worships the 
 idol goddess ; and the poet appears to help her in this ser- 
 vice with all imaginable cordiality, expatiating for her in 
 grateful and pathetic terms on the benignity of this heathen 
 deity. Kailyal's devotion, however, does not amount to a 
 persuasion that it will be of any use to remain in the neigh- 
 bourhood of her idol; and, though it is night, she leads her 
 father to wander away, at the direction of chance, hopeless 
 of all relief, and careless of the danger indicated by well- 
 understood signs of the recent ravages of tigers. His torment 
 becomes more intense as he recovers the perfect possession 
 of his thoughts and consciousness, and as the experimental 
 proofs accumulate, which verify, progressively, the reality 
 and extent of the curse. At length they recline against the 
 
460 sottthet's ctjese of kehama. 
 
 root of a tree, Ladurlad making a most resolute eflfort, for 
 his daughter's sake, to repress the outward signs of his 
 misery ; and she fondly but fearfully wishing to attribute 
 his stillness to a mitigation of his sufferings, permitting the 
 short oblivion of sleep. Through complete exhaustion, she 
 sinks into an uneasy slumber, which her father perceives ; 
 and, anxious not to oppress her with the sight of his hope- 
 less misery, and aggravate it to himself by seeing her made 
 a constant sharer, by being a witness of it, gently with- 
 draws from her, and, on gaining a little distance, runs impe- 
 tuously away. She awakes — vainly calls after him — and 
 with the impulse of agony rushes forward in the direction 
 in which she believes him gone ; but a temporary cloud of 
 extraordinary density, sometimes experienced in the East, 
 has made the night so utterly dark that she cannot see the 
 ground, and is stopped violently by the bough of a tree : 
 she leans on it in a state of overwhelming misery. All this 
 is told and described in a manner so exquisitely pathetic, 
 with so deep a knowledge of the human passions, and with 
 such a striking prominence of all the images, as still com- 
 pletely to overpower the effect of the reader's sense of the 
 absurdity of a representation of sufferings from an impos- 
 sible cause. The scene that immediately follows, in vigour 
 of conception, and the power of giving by words such fea- 
 tures and aspects to imaginary objects, as almost to make 
 us expect we shall immediately have them glaring on our 
 eyes, surpasses our previous estimate of the force of even 
 Mr. Southey's genius. Kailyal is leaning against the tree 
 in anguish, and in perfect darkness. 
 
 " 'Twas like a dream of horror, and she stood 
 Half doubting whether all indeed were true. 
 A tiger's howl, loud echoing through the wood, 
 Eoused her ; the dreadful sound she knew, 
 And turned instinctively to what she feared. 
 Far off the tiger's hungry howl was heard ; 
 
 A nearer horror met the maiden's view, 
 For right before her a dim form appeared, 
 
 A human form in that black night. 
 Distinctly shaped by its own lurid light. 
 Such light as the sickly moon is seen to shed 
 Through spell-rais'd fogs, a bloody baleful red. 
 
ITS BOLDKESS OF IMAGEBT. ■Itil 
 
 •" riiat Speotre fixed his eyes upon her full, 
 The light which shone in their accursed orbs 
 Was like a light from heU, 
 And it grew deeper, kindling with the view, 
 
 She could not turn her sight 
 From that infernal gaze, which like a spell 
 Bound her, and held her rooted to the ground. 
 It palsied every power ! 
 Her limbs availed her not in that dread hour. 
 There was no moving thence ; 
 Thought, memory, sense, were gone ; 
 She heard not now the tiger's nearer cry. 
 She thought not on her father now. 
 Her cold heart's blood ran back. 
 Her hand lay senseless on the bough it clasped. 
 Her feet were motionless ; 
 Her fascinated eyes 
 Like the stone eyeballs of a statue fixed, 
 Yet conscious of the sight that blasted them. 
 
 " The wind is abroad, 
 It opens the clouds ; 
 Scattered before the gale. 
 They skurry through the sky, 
 And the darkness retiring rolls over the vale. 
 The stars in their beauty come forth on high. 
 And through the dark-blue night 
 The moon rides on triumphant, broad and bright 
 Distinct and darkening in her light 
 Appears that spectre foul. 
 The moonbeam gives his form and face to sight, 
 
 The shape of man, 
 The living form and face of Arvalan ! 
 His hands are spread to clasp her. 
 
 " But at that sight of dread the maid awoke ; 
 As if a lightning-stroke 
 Had burst the spell of fear. 
 Away she broke all frantically and fled." 
 
 There is no pretending to assign a ne plus ultra to the 
 j.iowers of poetry, that is, of tuman genius, witli respect 
 to greatness and originality of conception, nor to say that 
 even Milton can absolutely never be exceeded ; nor is it as 
 an example in this kind that \re tave transcribed this 
 passage ; but we are confident that in the power of aggra- 
 
4l]2 SOTJTHBT'S CUEBE OP KEHAMA. 
 
 vatiiig a bold conception, by concentrating in it all tlie ideas, 
 and none but the ideas, that can give it an intenser 
 force, each of these ideas at once being perfect in itself, and 
 perfectly combining to give augmented vigour to the prin- 
 cipal one, and also in the felicity of expression, poetry has 
 no possibility beyond it. A reader who has any power of 
 imagination, returning, after a quick glance over the whole 
 scene, to a more pointed attention to each of the lines by 
 which it is presented, or rather created, will be struck and 
 arrested by several of them, as by some touch of fascination. 
 He will feel that he has never seen more perfect instances 
 of images starting alive through the diction, if we might so 
 express it, than in the lines: " Distinctly shaped by its own 
 lurid light" — "And it grew deeper, kindling with the 
 view" — and the two lines suggesting the simile of the 
 eyes of a statue. If the poem contains hardly another 
 passage of such superlative excellence, there yet are many 
 that are but little inferior ; and the critic cannot well find 
 any language that would be extravagant in the expression 
 of admiration of the genius displayed in them. 
 
 In this extremity the Pagan providence fails not to 
 interpose again for Kailyal ; and this time it is in the form 
 of " Pollear, gentle god," into whose fane, fortunately just 
 at hand, the maid had run to take sanctuary, close pursued 
 by Arvalan, who was in the very act of seizing her, in the 
 temple, when "the insulted god," that is, absolutely the 
 image, shaped with an elephant's head, — 
 
 " Caught him aloft, and from his sinuous grasp. 
 As if from some tort catapult let loose, 
 Over the forest hurled him all abroad." 
 
 If it is asked, how the " spectre " of a dead man could be 
 the subject of this mechanical feat, the poet signifies that it 
 had, at this time, assumed by some means a substantial 
 " fleshly " form. Now as there are in our own and the 
 neighbouring countries spirits as vile as Arvalan, also inha- 
 biting and actuating bodies, the moral of this part of the 
 fiction is, plainly, that the part of ±he world where there 
 are temples to Pollear is, for that reason, a much preferable 
 country for uuprotected maidens than this where Chris- 
 tianity forbids any such sanctuaries. It would have been 
 
FASCINATION OF ITS POETET. 4iC3 
 
 in perfect eonsistency if the poet had here, as in a former 
 instance, called forth his own sensibility to perform, in 
 Kailyal's name, an act of adoring gratitude to the heathen 
 god : bat the maiden's terror is made to overpower her 
 piety. " She tarried not to see what heavenly power had 
 saved her in that hour." She hastened away, and stumbled 
 and fell senseless under the shade of a manchineel. 
 
 Thus far we have witnessed a remarkable triumph of 
 powerful genius. The curse of the " Almighty Eajah " is a 
 fancy, to which no force of poetry, ever displayed by mortal 
 man, could give any, even the faintest shade of semblance 
 of serious reality or possibility — or excite for one instant, 
 in any cultivated English reader of mature age, any other 
 sentiment than what is naturally awakened at a pure, per- 
 fect absurdity, especially when fabricated and gravely 
 offered to us by a European writer of our own times ; 
 and yet, in following the effects, consistently imagined, of 
 this malediction, we are compelled, by main force of 
 admirable poetry, to take, thus far, an odd sort of concern 
 in the fate of its supposed victims. This compulsory spell 
 falls on us again in its original force, for a while, at several 
 stages in the progress of the story. Its power is com- 
 pletely broken on our coming up to the manchineel tree 
 above-mentioned. For Kailyal,'when nearly dead under it 
 pernicious shade, is taken away by a benevolent deveta or 
 genius, whimsically denominated a Glendoveer, and borne 
 up to the abode of Casyapa, the " Sire of Gods," on Mount 
 "Himakoot," which, 
 
 " From mid-earth rising in mid-heaven. 
 Shines in its glory like the throne of Even.'' 
 
 It is a place of semi-celestial beauty and salubrity ; and the 
 maiden, laid near a sacred fountain, which testifies more 
 than a lover's joy at touching her hand, gradually revives, 
 and thinks herself passed by death into heaven, while 
 Ereenia, the deveta, holds an explanatory conversation 
 about her with his father Casyapa, After much is said on 
 both sides, Ereenia resolves, and as soon as he notifies thfe 
 design has the sanction of the " Father of the Immortals," 
 to convey her to the Swerga, the heaven of Indra. He 
 instantly calls a " ship of heaven," a vessel " instinct with 
 
41!! li BOrTHEl's CURSE 01? KEHA3IA. 
 
 thouglifc," self-moTing, and having at its prow the living 
 head of an angel. The maiden is placed in it : Ereenia, ou 
 wing, accompanies the voyage ; and they soon reach the 
 Swerga, the strange and beautiful scenery of which explains 
 the whole object of the poet in sending Kailyal on this 
 adventure. In her hearing, Ereenia has a dialogue with 
 Indra, whose appearance announces a mingled kindness and 
 austerity. They discuss the measures that ought to be 
 adopted' to avert the danger threatened to the Swerga itself 
 by the dreadful power and designs of Kehama ; the deveta 
 venturing to reproach the god for want of decision and 
 exertion, and expressing his determination to represent the 
 state of the universe to Seeva himself, the highest of the 
 gods. Indra has no objection to this, but signifies in 
 manner gentle yet peremptory, that the maid, as being a 
 mere mortal, though a most virtuous and amiable one, 
 cannot be a permitted inhabitant of the Swerga; and she 
 herself most earnestly entreats to be sent back to the earth, 
 to be the companion, and if possible the consoler, of her 
 miserable father. But Indra directs that she be conveyed 
 to Mount Meru, a place, he says, — 
 
 " Below our sphere, and yet above the earth ;" 
 
 to which her father also shall be brought to meet her, enjoy- 
 ing, for a short interval, a full exemption from his sufferings. 
 Our author has made a strenuous and xmrelaxing effort 
 to spread all the colours of poetry oyer all this portion of 
 the fiction ; and it is very mortifying to think how much 
 instructive pleasure might have been given by a rational 
 application of about half as much beauty of images and ver- 
 sffication, as he has here succeeded in throwing away on 
 this mythological inanity. Not only is this beauty wasted 
 lamentably in being expended on such a futile and most 
 ridiculous piece of heathenism ; it is also injured, as beauty, 
 by the nature of the subject considered merely as matter of 
 poetical exhibition. The subject being made up of gods, 
 devetas, super-terrestrial mountains, sky voyages, Swerga 
 gales, groves, and lakes, has a showy uniformity which pre- 
 iludes all relief of poetical light and shade. All is fine, and 
 gaudy, and splendid, in every direction. The whole vision 
 is presented in one richly-coloured glare. The mind is dis- 
 
ITS WAJSTT or VAHIETT. 465 
 
 Batisfied, and soon tired, with ttis sort of beauty ; in tlie 
 same manner as the eye of a person who at noon-day in 
 summer stands on a bare eminence, without any kind of 
 recesses or shades, and looks round on a landscape all bur- 
 nished with a perfectly unclouded sunshine. There is one 
 very spirited and ingenious attempt to break the tameness 
 of this magnificence, by forcing or bewitching the elements 
 into such a kind of combination and harmony, in the Swerga, 
 as they have never been induced to consent to in the world 
 allotted to Adam's people — where water and fire were less 
 intended, as it should seem, for a playful self-construction 
 into palaces, than for the uses of mills, steam-engines and 
 kettles, cookery and washing. 
 
 " On that ethereal Lake whose waters lie 
 Blue and transpicuous, like another sky. 
 The Elements had reared their King's abode. 
 A strong controlling power their strife suspended. 
 And there their hostile essences they blended, 
 
 To form a palace worthy of the God. 
 Built on the Lake the waters were its floor ; 
 And here its walls were water arched with fire, 
 And here were fire with water vaulted o'er : 
 And spires and pinnacles of fire 
 Bound watery cupolas aspire. 
 And domes of rainbow rest on fiery towers, 
 And roofs of flame are turretted aroimd 
 With cloud, and shafts of cloud with fiame are bound. 
 Here, too, the Elements for ever veer. 
 Ranging around with endless interchanging ; 
 Pursued in love, and so in love pursuing. 
 In endless revolutions here they roll ; 
 For ever their mysterious work renewing : 
 The parts all shifting, still unchanged the whole. 
 
 Even we on earth, at intervals descry 
 Gleams of the glory, streaks of flowing light, 
 Openings of heaven, and streams that flash at night 
 In fitful splendour, through the northern sky." 
 
 —Pp. 65, 66. 
 
 It wiU. be acknowledged that, as to all that belongs to 
 diction and numbers, nothing can exceed the. felicity of this 
 passage ; and that in point of elegance of architecture, 
 there is probably no other living professor of the art of 
 
 H H 
 
466 southet's ctTESE or eehama. 
 
 poetical building that could have framed, of the same mat6> 
 rial, so beautiful a phantasy of a structure, for Absurdity 
 to hold its residence in, and laugh through the ethereal 
 windows at dull Philosophy. But since it is presumable 
 that the poem was meant for reading here in this world, 
 even on this earth, we cannot but hold it an injudicious 
 license of genius, thus to represent water and fire as absolved 
 from all the laws which we see them invariably observing, 
 positively, and with relation to each other, in this world, 
 where neither poets nor heathen gods have prescribed their 
 mode of action. Admitting readily, and even adding our 
 testimony, that in the Swerga, the temper and conduct of 
 water and fire are exactly such as here described, we cannot 
 see any good use of an attempt to make the people of this 
 world discontent with the less playful, more obstinate, but 
 perhaps, after all, more serviceable spirit and deportment 
 of our own fire and water. 
 
 As the scenes and persons of the Swerga cannot enchant 
 any reader for one instant into a dreaming visionary mood, 
 there would be no finding patience to stay there till the end 
 of the adventure but for the sake of seeing what is to 
 become of Kailyal, who is always and everywhere so lovely 
 and magnanimous, that some very small degree of interest 
 survives to linger about her, even in the Swerga — notwith- 
 standing our perfect faith in an averment that falls from 
 Indra, in one of his speeches, that no mortal has any busi- 
 ness there. The character of Ereenia, the good genius, is 
 formed of a certain measure of absolute goodness, without 
 any complexity of moral constitution, or any very marked 
 peculiarities. It is, if we may so express it, just so much 
 pure light defined into a shape by a single outline. His 
 personal form, his wings, and his movements, have every 
 grace they could receive from a poet who can write such 
 lines as the following : — 
 
 " Of human form divine was he ; 
 The immortal youth of Heaven who floated by, 
 Even such as that divinest form shall be 
 In those blest stages of our onward race, 
 When no infirmity, 
 Low thought, nor base desire, nor wasting care. 
 Debase the semblance of our heavenly sire." 
 
TEITIMPH OF THE POETBY OTEa THE SUBJECT. 467 
 
 "While Kailyal is being conTeyed to the paradise of Mount 
 Meru, we are suddenly set down m the presence of Kehama, 
 who having already sacrificed ninety-nine consecrated horses, 
 at so many successive periods, is approaching the moment 
 for offering tlie hundredth, as a sacrifice, of which the effect 
 is to be nothing less than to wrest the Swerga from the pos- 
 session of Indra. In this curious coupling of causes and 
 effects, the Hindoo poets fully authorize their European 
 rival, who begins his preface by adverting to this point. 
 
 The preparations for the sacrifice are managed with great 
 address to stimulate expectation, and yet prevent the 
 smallest surmise of what is really to happen. There is a 
 very fine description of Kehama's waiting for the moment, 
 rising, going to the altar, and taking the axe, while the wild 
 horse is made to approach by two vast lines of archers, who 
 gradually close in and contract the area in order to impel 
 him on. He must not have been profaned by the touch of 
 any human hand ; for that would destroy the merit of the 
 sacrifice. Just before the fatal moment, a man darts into 
 the area, through the lines of archers, unhurt by a shower 
 of their arrows, seizes the horse's mane, leaps on his back, 
 and with frantic cry and gestures gallops roimd the area, 
 whUe the tyrant clasps his hands in agony. Here the poet 
 again triumphs imperially over, at once, the unfortunate 
 quality of his subject, and the repugnance of his coldest 
 reader, who is surprised into exultation by this sudden 
 intervention of Ladurlad, empowered for this vengeance on 
 the tyrant, solely through the effect of the tyrant's curse. 
 Ladurlad, however, is disappointed in his hope that the 
 Eajah's anger would inflict death. In his utmost fury 
 Kehama is not betrayed to forget that this would be a 
 favour. As the greatest possible revenge, he dismisses the 
 offender under the continuance of his curse ; but makes a 
 horrible massacre of the archers for not having prevented 
 him from forcing through their ranks. 
 
 The sufferer, wandering away, goes unconsciously in the 
 direction to his own former habitation. Entering its melan^- 
 choly solitude, looking at the flowers in the garden, and at 
 the marriage-bower, finding the domestic fowls that Kailyal 
 used to feed flocking around him, and hearing the sounds of 
 thoughtless mirth from a distant crowd of people, he is 
 
 hh2 
 
468 sotjthet's cvjese op kehama. 
 
 made to feel a succession of afflictive emotions, excellently 
 conceived and discriminated, and intermingled with images, 
 most happily painted, of the various objects which excite 
 them. Being powerfully reminded of Kailyal, he pours out 
 a fervent prayer for her to Marriataly; and our worthy 
 venerators of the Hindoo gods will be excessively affected 
 and grieved that it should be precisely in this act of " reli- 
 gion" that he is broken in upon by the " fiendish" visage 
 and laugh of Arvalan, scoffing at his prayer. He glances 
 round for some instrument of offence, and happens to find 
 the very stake with which he had disembodied that fiend ; 
 but it is ineffective against the "impassive shade," which 
 reaews its laugh, and concentrates, without the aid of a 
 lens or mirror, a quantity of sun-beams, making the focus 
 fall on Ladurlad with such a power as to reduce the stake 
 instantly to ashes ; the man himself, however, being by the 
 " fire in his heart and brain," rendered invulnerable to all 
 other fire. But Arvalan next raises a storm of sand which 
 overwhelms and almost suffocates him wherevei- he turns. 
 Down in a moment comes Ereenia with his hanger drawB^ 
 sends the fiend, who is represented as not impassive to this 
 attack, howling away ; then calls the " Ship of Heaven," 
 and Ladurlad is instantly in the delicious gardens of Mount 
 Meru, where he finds his daughter and his vyife. 
 
 It may be worth while to notice, in passing, that Mr. 
 Southey, in adopting some of the Hindoo fictions, neither 
 regards himself as under any obligation to keep in view the 
 general scheme of the mythology, nor acknowledges the 
 duty of strictly conforming to the orthodox standard in his 
 manner of exhibiting these detached parts. He takes out 
 any piece of fiction that he can most advantageously turn 
 into English poetry, leaves out of it whatever he dislikes, 
 adds whatever he pleases, and, for the convenience of versi- 
 fication, transforms the most venerable and established 
 names. Thus aL. the bearings of these fantastic scenes and 
 objects, as relative to the Brahminical system, are con- 
 founded, and, indeed, totally lost. When, in imitation of a 
 much greater genius, he takes Christians to the top of an 
 exceeding high mountain, Himakoot, for instetnce, or Meru, 
 he not only fails to show, in regular perspective, all the 
 kingdoms of the Hindoo mythological world, and the glory 
 
WAlfT OF CONSISTElfCT. 469 
 
 of tliem ; he also fails to enable the tempted spectator to 
 form any judgment, or probable guess, as to the boundary 
 and the cardinal points of the wide scene, and as to the real 
 locality, relatively to these points and to one another, of 
 those objects which are made visible above the mist that 
 covers all but so much of the immense region, and gives a 
 dubious colour to what it does not conceal. Here we are, 
 as we are told, on the top of Himakoot, or Hemacuta, and 
 yonder appears what we are told is the more elevated top of 
 Meru, and somewhere beyond the clouds is the Swerga ; but 
 we are made never the wiser as to what parts of the Purana 
 universe these lofty and magnificent positions occupy or 
 constitute — as to what there is contiguous to them or be- 
 tween them — or as to the degree of excellence of one above 
 another. Now, though, in so far as the tempter's object, 
 the captivating of the spectator's mind by the beauties and 
 wonders of the heathen scenery, is defeated by this exhi- 
 bition of broken and misrepresented pieces, which no human 
 imagination can combine into a picture, we are sincerely 
 glad ; yet we think the said tempter has herein flagrantly 
 violated the just laws of poetry. It is surely required, of 
 a European poet at least, that when he undertakes to figure 
 forth scenes and personages, he should have in his mind 
 some defined economy of existence, to which they may 
 belong ; that the circumscription and principal lines of this 
 economy should be clearly brought and kept within the 
 view of his readers ; and that the fictions should be in strict 
 conformity with the laws of this economy, and capable of 
 being so referred to their proper place in it, as that the 
 reader's mind can glance from one to another, and from 
 each of them over the whole breadth of the system, with a 
 ready apprehension of whereabouts he is, if we may so 
 express it, in this poetical world, at each successive stage of 
 the fictitious relation. It may be a matter of perfect indif- 
 ference whether the ideal economy, within which the poet 
 chooses to place the scene of his action, be one of the 
 heathen mythologies, or be drawn from parts formed from 
 several of them, and so modified as to combine into one 
 consistent scheme, or be formed of a combination of some 
 parts of them with creations of the poet's own fancy ; or be 
 purely and entirely a creation of that fancy. All this may 
 
470 SOTITnEY's CUBSE or KEHAMA. 
 
 be left to his choice or caprice, the only grand indispensable 
 rale being, (we are here setting aside aU moral and reh- 
 gious considerations) that whichever of these he chooses, he 
 must make it an intelligible and orderly economy — a world 
 of which the reader's mind can comprehend the general 
 constitution, the disposition and relation of the parts, and 
 aU the chief arrangements. This rule Las been so little 
 regarded in the present work, that, in trying to follow out 
 the fiction, the reader often finds himself in no world at all. 
 His imagination labours and despairs amidst a chaos of 
 large crude fragments of Hindoo mythology (exhibiting 
 indeed in this broken state not a more complete disorder 
 than they would if put together), intermixed with pieces of 
 this real world of earth, and not brought in the least degree 
 nearer to a congruous or intelligible scheme by being, many 
 of them transformed from the genuine Hindoo absurdity 
 into a spurious absurdity of the poet's own. In short, 
 there will not be one person among aU the readers of this 
 work, that, on coming to the close of it, after having most 
 attentively followed the poet to Himakoot, to Meru, to the 
 Swerga, to the ""World's End," and to Padalon, will find 
 his imagination possessed of anything like a comprehensive 
 view of these scenes, with what they respectively contain, 
 disposed in their relative order, and forming one grand 
 scheme. This would be fatal, infalUbly, to the interest of 
 any work of the greatest possible genius. There may be 
 the greatest admiration of beautiful parts, there may be 
 also the strongest perception of the richness of imagery 
 spread over the whole chaotic assemblage ; but, in spite of 
 all this, the mind will revolt irrecoverably from a work 
 which confounds its best exertions to form within itself the 
 order of the scenes which the work calls it to contemplate. 
 It is barely worth while to observe that all the great epic 
 poets (of Europe, we mean) of ancient and modern times, 
 have maintained, in their representations of ideal worlds, 
 that principle of order which requires even the boldest and 
 wildest creation of fancy, to be shaped according to a sys- 
 tematic and comprehensible scheme. "Were it possible that 
 any reader, whUe displeased at a formless exhibition of 
 unjoined pieces of mythology, should yet be so captivated 
 with the quality of the material, as to resolve that he abso- 
 
THE SWEEGA AND MOTJTTT MEEU. 471 
 
 iutely will know something about the system from which 
 these precious but here adulterated fictions have been 
 obtained, it will be fair to suggest the question to him, 
 whether he is sure of fifty future years of life, and health, 
 and leisure ; whether, being sure of that, he can be confi- 
 dent of his unconquerable perseverance so long in daily 
 laborious research ; and whether, this also being • out of 
 doubt, he is certain that no worthier use could be made of 
 his life. Even if he were content to live without a know- 
 ledge of the system, and his curiosity aspired no further 
 than to a clear and full understanding about the Swerga 
 and Mount Meru, it is right he should be apprised of the 
 previous necessity of securing himself a long vacation from 
 business and all other studies ; as he will find that all our 
 erudite orientalists are exceedingly reserved in their com- 
 munication about the Swerga, and will be convinced, on 
 looking into a most learned essay in the eighth volume of 
 the " Asiatic Researches," that the questions respecting the 
 locality, the shape, the occupants, and the precincts, of 
 Mount Meru, will demand an investigation several years 
 long at the least. The ordinary doctrine, given out in a 
 very vague way, calls the Swerga the heaven of Indra, and 
 makes Meru the north pole and polar regions, where this 
 same Indra has a delightful paradise, a splendid palace, a 
 junta of gods, a stupendous elephant, and a car which the 
 poet professes to have taken as the model for his " Ship of 
 Heaven." Whether there be any ices there, but what are 
 prepared in cellars to regale the gods in hot weather, and 
 whether the Swerga is to be found anywhere else than in 
 the park and gardens round the palace, is not deposed with 
 anything like the precision which is desirable in such im- 
 portant questions. 
 
 It is probable enough, however, that Ladurlad cared as 
 little as we do where this Mount Meru should be, so long as 
 he there felt himself comfortably out of the reach of Kehama. 
 We find him rid of his sufierings, and with delightful sensa- 
 tions rushing in upon him on all sides. One of the first of 
 them is from his hand being in the water of a " blessed lake," 
 on the bank of which the Glendoveer lays him down. This 
 lake is formed by the Ganges, at a middle stage of its 
 descent from heaven. The whole course of the descent is 
 
472 southey's cuese of kehama. 
 
 traced in meanders and cascades of most elegant verse ; and 
 the poet relates, in his own person, and with a religious 
 gravity, the origination of this river from the sweat which 
 started on the face of Seeva, in the moment of his fright at 
 the dreadful effect produced on the universe in consequence; 
 of the shutting of one of his eyes by the finger of his spousf- 
 Parvati, in her wanton playfulness. We will transcribe the 
 lines to show what progress Mr. Southey judges the people 
 of this island to have made in good sense and good taste, by 
 the aid of all their schools, colleges, churches, and libraries. 
 
 " A Stream descends on Meru mountain ; 
 None hath seen its secret fountain ; 
 It had its birth, so sages say, 
 Upon the memorable day 
 When Parvati presumed to lay, 
 
 In wanton play. 
 Her hands, too venturous goddess, in her mirth, 
 On Seeva's eyes, the light and life of Earth. 
 Thereat the heart of the Universe stood still ; 
 The Elements ceased their influence ; the Hours 
 Stopped on the eternal round ; Motion and Breath, 
 
 Time, Change, and Life, and Death, 
 In sudden trance oppressed, forgot their powers. 
 A moment, and the dread eclipse was ended ; 
 But, at the thought of Nature thus suspended, 
 
 The sweat on Seeva's forehead stood. 
 And Ganges thence upon the world descended, 
 
 The Holy Eiver, the Eedeeming Flood."— P. 94. 
 
 A blooming bower appears to spring up of a sudden (the 
 poet says the "earth builds it up") round Ladurlad, his 
 daughter, and the G-lendoveer. Yedillian, the beloved wife 
 whom Ladurlad had long since lost by death, is added to 
 the happy company, with circumstances of extreme tender- 
 ness ; the description of which is followed by a declamation, 
 in a somewhat inferior style, on the continuance, perfection, 
 and perpetuity of love after death. Kehama's victim, in this 
 happy sojourn in a region beyond the power of the curse, 
 does not forget that he is soon to feel again its malignant 
 force. But Ereenia enlarges splendidly on the power and 
 goodn3ss of the gods, the Avatars of Vishnoo, and the cer- 
 tainty of a final triumph and recompense to invincible 
 
IiADUSLAJ)'s FAITH. 473 
 
 rirtue. And, notwithstanding that it is declared expressly, 
 at the distance of only two pages, that " all in Heaven and 
 Earth" but this very Ladurlad, had "stood mute in dolorous 
 expectation" on the occasion of the sacrifice which Kehama 
 had so nearly completed, — notwithstanding this, Ladurlad, 
 in contemplating the power and justice of the gods, becomes 
 wonderfully strong in " Faith ;" a quality or virtue which, 
 as we can recollect, appears with grand distinction in a 
 Book which was sent to drive pagan gods and their worship 
 from the earth, and which, therefore, we submit, will give 
 little tolerance to a language like the following, as applied 
 by a poet, instructed in Christianity, to a supposed confi- 
 dence in Vishnoo and Seeva. 
 
 " So to Ladurlad now was given 
 New strength and confidence in Heaven, 
 
 And hope and faith invincible." — P. 102. 
 
 " Thus was Ladurlad's soul imbued 
 With hope and holy fortitude." 
 
 " Faith was their comfort, faith their stay." — P. 103. 
 
 While Ladurlad is thus edified by contemplating the gods 
 as to be his deliverers from Kehama, the gods are edified 
 and comforted marvellously in contemplating him as having 
 been their deliverer from the identical Kehama. Sundry of 
 them approach, in the air, the happy bower, to look at this 
 saviour of the divine immortals from a Eajah of flesh and 
 blood. As might be supposed, however, their attention is 
 almost as much attracted by the charms of their deliverer's 
 pretty daughter ; and having learnt a little of the characters 
 of those gentry, by means of translations of parts of the 
 Hindoo " Sacred Scriptures," we are warranted in attri- 
 buting her safety to anything rather than their gratitude 
 or their honour. Perhaps they were looking forward appre- 
 hensively to the next hundredth horse of Kehama ; the 
 accomplishment of which sacrifice indeed it would hardly be 
 worth Ladurlad's while to defeat by another opportune in- 
 tervention in favour of such a set of villains. Prom what- 
 ever cause, they forbear all injury or insult in the present 
 instance ; except that it is fairly impossible for Carndeo, the 
 god of love, to deny himself the sport of aiming just one 
 
471 sorTHEx's CURSE or kehama. 
 
 couple of shafts at Ereenia and Kailyal. The former .g 
 struck with the arrow, but calmly and sincerely derides the 
 archer. At the instant that the other shaft is pointed 
 at Kailyal, the string breaks, fortunately for her, it is 
 meant to be intimated, but rather unaccountably, as it is 
 made of hees linked together by the legs. The pieces of 
 this broken bow-string dart away instead of the shaft, to 
 Kailyal, and delighted play and " buzz about her." 
 
 Mischief is aimed at the inhabitants of this delightful 
 abode from another quarter. Arvalan, after being sent off 
 hacked and howling by Ereenia, had recourse, not for the 
 first time, to Lorrinite, a dreadful enchantress, demanding 
 to be informed where he might find his escaped prey, and 
 to he furnished with arms and armour of proof against her 
 celestial guardian. It may weU be believed he can hardly 
 make a demand which she cannot satisfy, when it is seen by 
 what means she discovers to him Kailyal's asylum. 
 
 " At this the Witch, through shrivelled lips and thin, 
 Sent forth a sound half-whistle and half-hiss. 
 Two winged Hands came in, 
 Armless and bodyless. 
 Bearing a globe of liquid crystal, set 
 In frame as diamond bright, yet black as jet. 
 A thousand eyes were quenched in endless night. 
 
 To form that magic globe ; for Lorrinite 
 Had, from their sockets, drawn the liquid sight. 
 And kneaded it, with re-creating skUl 
 Into this organ of her mighty wiU. 
 Look in yonder orb, she cried, 
 Tell me what is there descried." — P. ] 16. 
 
 What he descries, is, of course, a picture of the top of 
 Meru, with its bower, and the happy inhabitants, each of 
 whom he instantly recognizes. He takes the arms and 
 armour of infernal fabric brought by Lorrinite, and eagerly 
 ascends her car of adamant, fixed over the backs of two 
 mighty dragons, which, directed by him, dart upward with 
 inconceivable force. He is in sight of the palace and bowers 
 of Indra, and exulting in demoniac anticipation, when 
 coming to a level with the zone of adamantine rocks round 
 Mount Meru, the ear is seized and drawn by an irresistible 
 attraction : the dragons cannot take it upward another inch: 
 
ITS MONBTKOUS INCIDEKTS. 473 
 
 they, and it, and the demoniac, drive, and whirl, and rage 
 away, till they dash against the rocks ; and the miscreant 
 falls ten thousand thousand fathoms, pitching into " an ice- 
 rift, 'mid the eternal snow." "There," as the poet says, 
 " let him howl," 
 
 " Groan there, — and there, with unavailing moan 
 For aid on his Almighty Father call." 
 
 We think this catastrophe is a little emblematical of the 
 fate of genius, when exerting its vigour on such subjects as 
 this. Can the poet imagine a possibility of pleasing any 
 one mortal by all this idle devilment ? He cannot know so 
 little of the intellectual taste of the times, as to suppose 
 that, because there are some cultivated readers who are dis- 
 posed to look into the romance and poetry of the darker 
 ages of Europe, and are considerably interested in observing 
 what sUly monstrosities, in the way of magic, apprenticeship 
 of devils to witches, and a hundred various modes of infer- 
 nality, were capable of being made popular amidst the 
 wretched barbarism and superstition of those times, there- 
 fore a new story of the same sort, made up and told, with 
 the same earnest gravity, in the year 1810, can excite any 
 other sensations than the most intense disgust and contempt. 
 It is in a poet's power, as we are certified by the present 
 instance, to effect his own transmigration back into a monk 
 or minstrel of the rudest age, or even into an ancient 
 Brahmin poet-laureate to the thirty-three millions of gods. 
 But really in that case he must be contented to sing to his 
 adopted contemporaries. He will not be able to take back 
 with him his actual contemporaries of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury — excepting, perhaps, Messrs. Twining and Scott- War- 
 ing. Assuredly, the generality of the people of these times 
 will peremptorily decline putting themselves into a condition 
 to be delighted with the story of a woman, plainly a real 
 human female, who, at the price of delivering herself up to a 
 legion of " fiends," was empowered to command their ser- 
 vices for all malicious operations ; who, by her connexion 
 with them, became a kind of living embodied " hell," shoot- 
 ing from her eyes a quintessence of " venomous" spirit 
 which blasted all animal and ail vegetable life ; whose ap- 
 proach made the " dry and mouldering bones in the grave 
 
476 SOtTTHEX'S CUBSE OF KEHAMA. 
 
 sweat witli fear;" who formed, for the purpose of human 
 destruction, a league with the Calis, the " Demon Queens," 
 presiding over the Hindoo cities, and a partnership with 
 " Sani, the dreadful god, who rides abroad upon the king of 
 the ravens," to relieve him in the toils of killing; who 
 directed with her finger or her word the operation of earth- 
 quakes, plagues, locusts, fl.oods, and drought ; who could 
 make a magic oracle-glass of the extracted " liquid sight of 
 a thousand human eyes ;" whose stable was a den of yoked 
 dragons ; and who had and did many other most prodigious 
 things, according to the evidence given in this volume. To 
 think that amidst the beams of the sun and moon, the light 
 of the Christian religion, and the sense and philosophy of 
 modern Europe, a genius like Mr. Southey's shoiild be 
 solemnly employed in business like this ! 
 
 We wiU try to make better haste towards the conclusion 
 of our analysis. " Old Casyapa" arrives, in the " Ship of 
 Heaven," on Meru, to announce that the day is come for 
 completing Kehama's sacrifice, which it is declared that 
 nobody in earth or heaven can prevent this time ; that Indra 
 and his suite are preparing to quit the Swerga, taking with 
 them, as it should appear by what is said afterwards, the 
 famous palace itself; that the consummating stroke of the 
 sacrifice will presently be felt like an earthquake through 
 Mount Meru (between which and the Swerga, the distinction 
 is still made out in but a very faint and confused way) ; 
 that Casyapa himself is going to be ejected from Himakoot, 
 in his lease of which, indeed, we wonder that Kehama 
 (whose estate must long have included that district of 
 merely terrestrial highland), had not long since taken occa- 
 sion to find a flaw; and that Ladurlad and his daughter 
 must instantly return to the earth. The heroic victim 
 hears this with a simple dignity of manner which the poet is 
 always eminently successful in giving him ; places his 
 daughter in the '■' ethereal bark;" and himself beside her, 
 feels the sudden return of the curse in his descent, and 
 reaches the earth about the moment that Kehama begins 
 his triumphant ascent to take possession of the Swerga — an 
 event accompanied with the most dreadful commotion 
 through heaven and earth, and of which the following lines 
 conclude the celebration : — 
 
APPBOrniATION OF BIBLICAI, IMAGES. 477 
 
 " F^ ™®® *^® Eajah through the conquered sky, 
 To seize the Swerga for his proud abode ; 
 
 Myriads of evil genii round him fly, 
 As royally, on wings of winds, he rode, 
 And sealed high Heaven, triumphant like a God."— P. 130. 
 
 Here an exceedingly remarkable image, applied in the 
 Bible to the agency of the Almighty, and not made common 
 by any other application, is transferred to a personage at 
 once fictitious, connected with Paganism, and horribly 
 wicked. The natural tendency of this is to associate in the 
 reader's mind, by a community in so very remarkable, so 
 very peculiar a descriptive representation, the idea of that 
 Being and of this personage ; and no language of reprobation 
 can be too strong for the occasion. 
 
 Kailyal tenderly insinuates to her father, the request that 
 he will not again separate from her, and he with equal ten- 
 derness promises, that by choice he never will. They are 
 placed in a glade amidst a wood ; and on their looking round 
 to consider which way they shall wander, she suggests, that 
 certain, alike in every situation, to be pursued by their 
 destiny, they shall in vain seek any more eligible place than 
 the one where they are, which has various recommendations 
 — but in making her so directly specify among them 
 
 " A brook that winds through this sequestered glade. 
 And yonder woods, to yield us fruit and shade," 
 
 the poet has not duly preserved that perceptive watchful- 
 ness of affection, in which she is generally made so perfect ; 
 as water, fruit, and shade, would be of no use to her father. 
 The features of the scene, the great banyan tree, and the 
 small lake, with lotus fl^owers : the brute inhabitants, the 
 leopards, elephants, monkeys, and birds, are presented in a 
 picture in which the more steady phenomena of their natural 
 history, are combined with many of those fine and variable 
 circumstances, which scarcely appear to any but a poet's eye, 
 and leave, but on a poet's imagination, no trace that can be 
 reduced into language. And, what could not have been 
 expected, these sketches do not lose the distinctness of their 
 beauty, as true delineations, by being combined with a great 
 deal of extraruatural intelligence, obsequiousness, admira- 
 tion, and afiection, displayed by all sorts of animals towards 
 
478 souTHEr's ctrESE or kehama. 
 
 Kailyal. The fortitude of tlie two sufferers becomes more 
 and more consolidated ; and is so finely represented, that it 
 would have furnished a noble spectacle, if the fable had 
 allowed of its being rested on any basis that truth did not 
 require the reader to contemn. The reader, however, that 
 is aggrieved by this vrretched obligation on the poet, of 
 fidelity to his fable, wiU not obtain much sympathy from 
 that poet — if we may judge from the appearance of free and 
 complacent effusion of soul in reciting Kailyal's renewed 
 emotions to Marriataly, and Ladurlad's to a " higher power," 
 as it is here pronounced to be — 
 
 " To her, who on her secret throne reclined. 
 Amid the milky sea, by Veeshnoo's side. 
 Looks with an eye of mercy on mankind. 
 By the Preserver, with his power endued. 
 There Voomdavee beholds this lower clime, 
 And marks the silent suffering of the good, 
 To recompense them in her own good time." — P. 137, 
 
 — if we may judge by his so formally adopting, as appropriate 
 to the case, the peculiar phrases of Christian theology : 
 
 " Such strength the will revealed had given 
 This holy pair, such influxes of grace. 
 That to their solitary resting-place 
 
 They brought the peace of Heaven." — P. 138. 
 
 Thus a writer who displays, on so many subjects, an exqui- 
 sitely refined perception of discriminations and congruities, 
 and highly excels in preserving, amidst a diversified multi- 
 plicity of things, the purity and integrity of any quality or 
 sentiment, which he regards as of sufficient dignity to be 
 kept thus inviolate, is willing to confound the true religion 
 with a detestable superstition, by very carefoUy making 
 their devotional sentiments identical, and the language 
 descriptive of them interchangeable. 
 
 Kailyal's mingled despondency and hope, respecting any 
 further care or intervention of Ereenia, are very delicately 
 characterized by some of the symptoms of personal ten- 
 derness. While pensively afraid that he has withdravm his 
 guardianship, and unaware that she is unceasingly followed 
 by the keenest attention of Lorrinite, Arvalan, and Kehama, 
 
KAILTAL IN JAGGEENATJt's TEMPLE. 47D 
 
 wMch asfc, it is iatimated, perceives her destiny to be 
 mysteriously connected with his owb, one more preparatory 
 portion of that destiny is accomplished, by her being 
 suddenly seized and carried oif, by a band of Toguees, as a 
 fit bride for Jaggernaut. A thousand frantic pilgrims draw 
 forth, in the night, that hideous idol, with Kailyal placed 
 beside him, amidst the glare of torches, and a terriblo 
 hubbub of shouts, gongs, and trumpets, which overpowers 
 the groans of the self-devoted wretches perishing under the 
 wheels of the enormous carriage that 
 
 " EoUs on, and crushes all. 
 
 Through blood and bones it, ploughs its dreadful path. 
 Groans rise unheard ; the dying cry, 
 And death and agony, 
 Are trodden under foot by yon mad throng 
 Who foUow close and thrust the deadly wheels along." 
 
 —P. 147. 
 
 Pilled with dread and amazement at this scene, which the 
 poet describes with congenial fury of verse, she is yet soon 
 to be placed in one of more intense horror. She is conveyed 
 back to the temple ; hailed with soft music by a band, of 
 female ministers to its abomination, as the happy bride of 
 the god ; conducted into a retired apartment ; and there left 
 alone : but not long. The chief priest of this infernal fane 
 makes his appearance in the apartment, and approaches her, 
 as the god. Suddenly he is obstructed by some unseen 
 power, and with a horrid cry falls dead on the floor. But 
 just as Kailyal looks up, expecting to see Ereenia as the 
 inflictor of this just vengeance, the body becomes re-animated 
 with another soul, 
 
 " And in the fiendish joy within his eyes, 
 She knew the hateful spirit who looked through 
 Their specular orbs, clothed in the flesh of man, 
 
 She knew the acursed soul of Arvalan." 
 
 She calls on Ereenia, who instantly appears, catches Arvalan 
 up to the roof of the temple, and dashes him in pieces on 
 the floor. At this instant appears Lorrinite with her " host 
 of demons," whom she commands to seize Ereenia, carry 
 him off, and confine him in the ancient submarine, " sepul- 
 chres of Baly ;" which is all done in a minute, while she 
 
480 SOrTHET's CUE3E 0¥ KEHAMA. 
 
 makes up the smashed corpse again for the use of Arvalan, 
 whom she incites and leaves to seize the prey, thrown at 
 last so completely into his power. But Kailyal, in cool 
 and desperate self-possession, puatches a torch, (it is not 
 explained how such a thing CG ..,. ^e within her reach,) and 
 sets the furniture of the bed in a blaze, which catches, in a 
 moment, all that is combustible in the temple, except in the 
 precise spot where she is placed, and drives away the 
 scorched and bellowing miscreant. She is resigning herself 
 to perish by this infinitely preferable mode of sacrifice, when, 
 as another felicitous consequence of the curse, Ladurlad 
 rushes in and bears away his daughter through the flames, — 
 which Kehama had made harmless to him, but which the 
 poet alone could make harmless to her. 
 
 They then make a long journey to the ruins of the city of 
 Baly, to rescue Ereenia ; the maiden, for her now almost 
 adored Glendoveer's sake, exulting, and even Ladurlad at 
 intervals heroically exulting in the power, conferred by the 
 dreadful charm, of entering the vaults under the ocean. 
 During their journey, he gives her the history of Baly, 
 whose ambition, in making a similar attempt to that in 
 which Kehama had recently succeeded, had consigned him 
 to Padalon, or Hell, but whose many eminent virtues had 
 obtaiaed him there the high situation of judge of the dead. 
 They reach at length the shore, where they see the pinnacles 
 af the ancient structures, extending to a distance in the sea, 
 Ladurlad commences the enterprise with great alacrity and 
 elation : advancing into the sea, which starts and separates 
 before him, rises above him, as his way descends, and soon 
 closes in an arch over him, preserving, wherever he ad- 
 vances or turns, a vacancy of little greater extent than the 
 dimensions of his person. This adventure furnishes, by what 
 he sees, and the spirit in which he sees and acts, some of the 
 finest poetry in the work. Nothing, for example, can be 
 more exquisitely described, than the varying lights and shades 
 on the sand. 
 
 " With steady tread he held his way 
 Adown the sloping shore. 
 The dark green waves, with emerald hue, 
 Imbue the beams of day, 
 And on the wrinkled sand below, 
 
AN ADMIRABLE BESCEIPTIOIf. 481 
 
 Rolling their mazy network to and fro, 
 Light shadows shift and play." — P. 168. 
 
 Sea monsters impetuously dart towards him, but as hastily 
 dart away. He reaches the gate of the ancient city, but 
 pauses awhile in admiration before he enters it. It is 
 open, just as it had been left by the multitude rushing out 
 to escape, when the sea was rising to overwhelm the city^ 
 All the structures are represented as remaining unimpaired, 
 after an unknown series of ages, which have only given, 
 through the medium of an affection of the spectator's mind, 
 a more awful aspect to the temples and palaces, a more 
 mysterious and yet impressive significance to the statues, 
 emblems, and inscriptions. And the effect is prodigiously 
 heightened by the profound solitude, " the everlasting still- 
 ness of the deep." The whole most admirable description 
 has a tone of solemnity perfectly harmonious with the mag- 
 nificence, the antiquity, the submarine retirement and 
 obscurity, and the total and endless solitude of the scene. 
 And it greatly heightens our interest in Ladurlad's cha- 
 racter that the manner in which he contemplates and 
 explores these wonders, withdrawn for ever from all other 
 human sight, sho-ws him worthy to tread 
 
 " Those streets which never, since the days of yore, 
 By human footstep had been visited ; 
 Those streets which never more 
 A human foot shall tread." 
 
 He takes the broad mighty impression of so strange a 
 scene ; gazing with such an absorption of solemn delight 
 that he forgets, for a little while, the curse, the immediate 
 object of his adventure, and even his daughter. He ac- 
 quires dignity by being thus made to possess so much 
 mental faculty as to be, in defiance of all circumstances and 
 distractions, powerfully arrested, by what is grand, awful, 
 and beautiful. It might be doubted, perhaps, whether an 
 Indian "peasant " would be likely to have had his imagina- 
 tion and taste sufficiently cultivated to be susceptible of so 
 strong a eaptivation ; but there is no saying how much he 
 may have profited in the studies conducive to fine taste, 
 during his residence on Mount Meru, in the society of 
 Ereenia, and in reach of India's fine library. 
 
 I I 
 
482 southet'b ctrRaE op kehama, 
 
 Eecollecting, after this short and happy entrancement 
 the purpose he came upon, he finds and enters the way to 
 the sepulchral chambers of the kings ; losing, as he goes 
 down, " the sea-green light of day," which is supposed to 
 have been thus far transmitted to him, and meeting in the 
 passage another light, " of red and fiery hue." This proves 
 to proceed from carbuncles set in the sceptres held in the 
 hands of the dead kings, sitting in this great vault each on 
 a throne, in a separate " alcove," and all in the condition of 
 perfect, fresh-looking, and supple flesh and limb, with eyes 
 open, "large, glazed, fixed, and meaningless," and "ray- 
 less," except that they "dimly reflected to that gem-bom 
 light." There was another alcove, which had been intended 
 for the sepulchral residence of Baly, if he had not given 
 himself a difierent destiny; and there Ladurlad descries 
 Ereenia, bound to the rock with a pondrous chain of ada- 
 mant, and guarded by a most hideous sea monster, fixed to 
 that station by Lorrinite. There ensues a furious uninter- 
 mitted combat of six days and nights between this monster 
 and our hero, who, being charmed against both fatigue and 
 wounds, literally tires to death his strong and fell antago- 
 nist, by the evening of the seventh day. He then cuta 
 with a scimitar the fetters of the Grlendoveer, and they 
 most joyfully ascend in quest of Kailyal, who has been 
 waiting so many days with a fearful impatience, that had 
 grown at last almost to anguish, but has become the impa- 
 tience of confident hope, from the sight of the dead 
 monster, which has previously risen and drifted to the 
 shore. They meet ; when, in the very moment of their 
 rapture, who should appear but Arvalan again, and Lorri- 
 nite with her demons, ready to make once more their 
 respective captions. 
 
 But it so happens that, unseen, Baly also was come to 
 the identical spot. He suddenly shines out " among them 
 in the midnight air," seizes with a hundred hands the whole 
 crew ; stamps and splits the earth ; and in an instant 
 plunges down with them into Padalon — where the reader 
 is for their sakes heartily content there should be a per- 
 manent suspension of the Habeas Corpus. A violent shriek 
 of invocation to Kehama brings him from the Swerga, with 
 the velocity ai^d fury of a thunderbolt, but too late to 
 
EEEENIa's Al'l'EAL TO SEETA. 483 
 
 rescue his son. But he also nan stamp, make the earth 
 cleave again, and hurl down a challenge to Baly and Tamen, 
 assuring them it shall not be long before he makes ingress 
 on their territory, and gives them some warm employment. 
 The earth has his permission to close up the rent ; and he 
 then fixes his eyes on Kuilyal, with a somewhat less than 
 usual severity of aspect, and signifies to her, that as she 
 now perceives it to be among the appointments of fate that 
 he and she alone, of all mortals, are to drink the Amreeta, 
 or drink of immortality, it necessarily follows that she is his 
 destined bride. He invites her to the accomplishment of 
 that glorious destiny ; and to prove himself quite serious in 
 the affair, he at a word neutralizes the deadly curse, and 
 observes to Ladurlad, in a condescending and almost pen- 
 sive tone, that they both have been, thus far, but fulfilling, 
 unconsciously, the decrees of fate. The lady declines, in 
 terms of, perhaps, deficient politeness, to become queen of 
 the Swerga, " and of whatever worlds beside infinity may 
 hide." His brow darkens, and the sentence that begins 
 with a kind of plea that she ought to be gratefully proud to 
 comply, ends in a threatening that she shall be compelled. 
 A violent fulmination of his anger explodes him back into 
 the sky. Ladurlad has the curse again, and his daughter a 
 leprosy. She is magnanimous enough to rejoice in the pro- 
 tection which this will afford her, against the dangers to 
 which her beauty would have exposed her. The only dis- 
 tress is, to think what its effect may be on the complacency 
 of Ereenia. 
 
 That Glendoveer, the while, is gone ou an " emprize " 
 which the whole magazine of pompous epithets is emptied 
 to blazon out as most daring and awful. It is to repres^nt 
 his wrongs to Seeva himself, the uppermost of all the gods. 
 Though the said Seeva is declared omnipresent, yet the 
 appellant must make his petition on a certain silver Mount 
 Calasay, the outermost point, or somewhere beyond the 
 outermost point, of all worlds. The difficulty of the 
 achievement, in point of time and flying merely, is formid- 
 ably intimated by a serious and authentic relation — how 
 that once on a time, when Brahma and Teeshnoo were 
 quarrelling most furiously for the pre-eminence, Seeva (there 
 being most likely no officer of police at hand) determined 
 
 1 I 2 
 
484 SOTTTHET's CUEflE OF KEHAMA. 
 
 to put an end to the rivalry, by showing them who was tha 
 master of them both. For this purpose he presented him- . 
 self to them in the form of a fiery column, the longitude of 
 which they were to explore ; but a thousand years of ascent, 
 and " ten myriads years " of descent, did not bring Brahma 
 to the upper end, nor Veeshnoo to the lower. A consider- 
 able number of pages, in this part, exhibit another most 
 earnest, though unavailing effort to give a power of grand 
 and religious impression to some of the silliest phantasms 
 of mythology. The sanctities of the true temple are rifled 
 for the profane service ; the attributes of the Deity are with 
 most religious formality given to Seeva ; and the poet is 
 pertinaciously resolute that " intensity of faith and holiest 
 love " shall be no distinctive qualities of Christian devotion. 
 As an auspicious termination of the adventure, it is signified 
 from Seeva to Ereenia, that he and his complainant friends 
 must carry their suit to the throne of Tamen, where " all 
 odds will be made even." 
 
 The sections ensuing, therefore, are intitled " The 
 Embarkation " and " The "World's End;" and relate, with 
 extraordinary force of imagination, a voyage of the three 
 friends across a dark stormy sea, which separates this world 
 from the next — the emotions of the two human adventurers 
 — the landing on an " icy belt" — and the appearances of the 
 various classes of ghosts, there waiting to be carried 
 down by demons, through a dark lake to the place of 
 judgment. Miich of this gloomy vision is presented with 
 little less pointed specificality, if we may so express it, 
 of circumstance, and little less intensity of colousing, than 
 the following description: — 
 
 " Then might be seen who went in hope, and who 
 Trembled to meet the meed 
 Of many a foul misdeed, as wild they threw 
 Their arms retorted from the demon's grasp 
 
 And looked around, all eagerly, to seek 
 For help, where help was none ; and strove for aid 
 To clasp the nearest shade ; 
 Yea, with imploring looks and horrent shriek. 
 Even from one demon to another bending, 
 With hands extending. 
 Their mercy they essayed. 
 BLlU from the verge they strain. 
 
PADALON. 485 
 
 And from the dreadful gulph avert their eyes, 
 In vain ; down plunge the demons, and their cries 
 Feebl/, as down they sink, from that profound arise." 
 
 —P. 125. 
 
 Breenia takes Kailyal first, and afterwards her father, down 
 through the lake to the southern gate of Padalon. In the 
 moment of preparing for this formidable plunge with the first, 
 he addresses her in language containing a parody which 
 cannot be lost on the readers of the gospels : — 
 
 " Be of good heart, beloved ! it is I 
 Who bear thee." 
 
 Arrived at the gate, they are assailed by terrific sounds, 
 and receive, from the giant god that guards it, a most appal- 
 ling description of the essential, and of the present occasional 
 state of Padalon ; for, it seems, the confidant expectation of 
 Kehama's acquiring the dominion of hell as well as heaven, 
 has excited among the wicked spirits, throughout the whole 
 infernal dominion, such a dreadful insurrectional fury, that 
 even Tamen trembles on his throne ; while they are invoking, 
 with thundering clamours, the Eajah to set tbem free with 
 his "irresistible right hand," — a hand, be it remembered, 
 constructed of a few ounces of bone and flesh. The warden 
 god furnishes the two mortals with incombustible robes, as a 
 protection in passing through the region of fire, and a one- 
 wheeled chariot, which, self-directed, carries the adventurers 
 over a vast bridge, as sharp as the edge of a scimitar, which 
 spans the sea of fire that encircles Padalon. 
 
 They pass through a horrible scene of torment, and rage, 
 and tumult, tUl they come to the metropolis of Tamen, who 
 is found seated on a marble sepulchre, with Baly on a judg- 
 ment-seat, at his feet : and 
 
 "A golden throne before them vacant stood ; 
 
 Three human forms sustained its ponderous weight, 
 With lifted hands outspread, and shoulders bowed, 
 Bending beneath their load : 
 A fourth was wanting. They were of the hue 
 
 Of walls of fire ; yet were were they flesh and blood, 
 And living breath they drew : 
 And their red eye-balls rolled with ghastly stare. 
 As th'is, for their misdeeds they stood tormented there." — 
 
 P. 251. 
 
486 sorTHET's ctiese of kehama. 
 
 Tamen bids them wait with patience the awful hour 
 appointed to decide the fate of Padalon and the universe, 
 which hour, he says, is fast approaching. And so it proves; 
 for even while he is speaking, the hideous uproar sinks in a 
 silence much more portentous and terrible. Shortly this 
 silence gives place to a distant sound, which is soon 
 perceived to be advancing and deepening. It is nothing less 
 than the approach of Kehama ; who, multiplying or dividing 
 himself into eight distinct persons, has invaded Padalon by 
 its eight different gates, all at one moment ; comes driving 
 on furiously in eigW; chariots ; invests the infernal god ; and, 
 after a dreadful but short conflict, places his foot trium- 
 phantly on his neck. He dallies awhile with his new power, 
 to feel the triumph more exquisitely ; but soon imperiously 
 demands the Amreeta, for himself and Kailyal. A " huge 
 Anatomy " rises from the marble tomb, and presents the cup. 
 He drinks, and becomes the fourth tormented and immortal 
 statue, under the "golden throne." Then Kailyal drinks, 
 is transformed into a perfectly ethereal being, and is rapttu-- 
 ously welcomed by Ereenia as now his equal and immortal 
 companion. Ladurlad is dismissed by a gentle death to 
 meet them, and the happy spirit of his wife, in the Swerga. 
 
 The preceding abstract has so far exceeded all reasonable 
 bounds, and has so often digressed into comments, that the 
 observations we may wish to add must be allowed to occupy 
 but a very small space. They can indeed do little else than 
 assert, in a somewhat more general form, several of the 
 principles which we have ventured to apply here and there 
 to the work, in passing along. 
 
 "We must repeat then, in the first place, our censure of 
 the adoption or creation of so absurd a fable. It is little 
 enough, to be sure, that we know of the order of the uni- 
 verse. But yet human reason, after earnest and inde- 
 fatigable efforts of inquiry, through several thousands of ' 
 years (during a great part of which period the inquiry has 
 been prosecuted under the advantage of a revelation), finds 
 itself in possession of a few general principles which may, 
 without presumption, be deemed to inhere in, and regulate 
 the universal system : — insomuch that these principles would 
 be very confidently assigned, by thinking men, as reasons 
 for disbelieving a great many propositions that might be 
 
ABSTJEDITT Or THE riCTION. 487 
 
 advanced, relative to the moral or the physical order of the 
 creation, or any of its parts, — relative to the economy of 
 any supposed class of intelligent beings. And in proportion 
 as we withdraw from the immensity of this subject, and 
 bring our thoughts near this world of our own, we find our- 
 selves authorized to apply still more principles, and to reject 
 or to affirm still more propositions relative to beings that, 
 if they exist at all, must exist according to an order in 
 many points analogous to our own economy. Let it be 
 assumed, for instance, that there are inhabitants in the 
 moon, and we shall be warranted on the ground of the 
 various circumstances of the analogy between their place of 
 abode and ours, to advance a great deal more in the way of 
 probable conjecture respecting their economy, than we could 
 respecting an order of beings, our only datum concerning 
 which should be, that whatever and wherever it is, its 
 condition has less resemblance to our own than that of any 
 other race of intelligent creatures. But when we come 
 actually to this world, and men are the subjects of our 
 thoughts, we know our ground completely ; and can compare 
 the descriptions and fictitious representations of the nature 
 and condition of man, with the plain standard fact. It 
 should be added, that our knowledge of what are called the 
 laws of matter, reaches far further into the universe than our 
 knowledge of the economy of intelligent existences : and 
 therefore we may be allowed to make very confident asser- 
 tions respecting, for instance, the qualities and powers of 
 fire and water, in the remotest and most singular world in 
 which those elements exist, while we might be exceedingly 
 diffident and limited in our guesses concerning the sup-" 
 posed intelligeiit inhabitants of that world. 
 
 Now this degree of knowledge which we have acquired of 
 the physical and moral order of the creation, has become a 
 standard of probability for the works of imagination. If 
 those fictions conform to the arrangements of this order, as 
 far as they are ascertained, or reasonably inferred from 
 general principles, they are pronounced probable ; but if in 
 contrariety to these arrangements, they must be pronounced 
 — not improbable merely, but absurd : — except, indeed, when 
 they are legitimately representing what we call miracles ; and 
 
488 bouthet's cubse of kehama. 
 
 as miracles are the works of Grod only — the true Grod — they 
 can never be legitimately represented as operations of 
 fictitious and Pagan divine powers. Improbable fictions, 
 we repeat, should be held absurd : for, surely, the actual 
 economy of the creation, as arranged by its Author, must be 
 the grand prototype of wise and beautiful design — of all the 
 adaptation, proportions, and congruities constituting or 
 conducing to the perfection of the whole system of existence. 
 Indeed there could be no other model from which to draw 
 our ideas of proportion, adaptation, harmony, and whatever 
 else is meant by the term order, than this created system, 
 unless the Creator had revealed another model, an ideal 
 model, existing in hia infinite mind, widely difierent from the 
 actual creation. We, therefore, cannot represent material 
 and intellectual existences of a nature, or in relations and 
 combinations, inconsistent with the known laws of the 
 creation, without violating the only true principles of order 
 which it is possible for us to conceive. This we are forced 
 practically to acknowledge in all our judgments on the pro- 
 priety or absurdity of the creations of fancy ; for it is to 
 these laws that we necessarily advert in pronouncing the 
 representations made by the imagination in dreaming, deli- 
 lium, and insanity, to be absurd ; and it is only on their 
 authority that we can pronounce anything absurd, except 
 what involves a metaphysical contradiction. Unless the 
 absolute authority of these laws are acknowledged, it shall 
 be perfectly reasonable for a poet to represent a race of 
 people made of steel, or half steel half flesh — or humaa 
 heads, as in the illuminations of old manuscripts, growing 
 on twigs of trees — or one man making himself into eight, 
 like Kehama, and then returning into one again — or firo ^ 
 and water in perfect amity. It is, in short, only in deference/ 
 to these laws of the creation, that we can be excused fcr 
 refusing our respect and admiration to the infinite puerihfy 
 and monstrosity of the Hindoo poets as they are called. Ifow 
 a very considerable portion of the fictions, constituting the 
 present poem, is constructed in utter defiance of this 
 standard. The whole afiair of the operation of the curse, 
 the story of Lorrinite, the origination of the Ganges, the 
 fire and water palace of Indra, the adventures of Mount 
 
ABSTJEDITT or THE TICTION. : 489 
 
 Calasay, tlie transactions and creatures of Padalon, with 
 much more that has been noticed in the analysis, are thinga 
 of a nature not only in perfect contrariety to the state and 
 laws of the actual creation, but incompatible with any 
 economy of which we can conceive the possible existence. A 
 strong, an irresistible impression of flagrant absurdity will, 
 therefore, be the predominant perception of every reader 
 incapable of a temporary abolition of his reason. The dis- 
 gust at this absurdity will be so very active a feeling, and" 
 will be so seldom suffered by the poet to subside, that it 
 wOl, at many parts of the work, almost wholly preclude the 
 pleasure that would else be imparted by the splendid 
 scenery and eloquent diction by which even the grossest 
 of the absurdities are attempted to be made imposing. 
 We may wonder, in very simplicity, why the poet should 
 choose deliberately to labour to excite at once the two oppo- 
 site sentiments of pleasure and disgust, with the knowledge, 
 too, that any attempt to 'prolong them both is infallibly 
 certain to end in the ascendancy of the latter. Or does he 
 really think the beauties of his composition are so tran- 
 scendent, that they will banish all recollection about proba- 
 bility and improbability, or fairly vanquish the repugnance of 
 cultivated minds to gross absurdity ? And if he could do this, 
 what would be the value of the achievement ? ' What has 
 been the grand object and utility of observing, of investi- 
 gating, of philosophizing through all ages, but to put 
 mankind in possession of teuth, and to discipline their 
 minds to love truth, to think according to the just laws of 
 thinking, and to hate all fallacy and absurdity ; in short, to 
 advance the human race at last, if it be possible, to something 
 like the manhood of reason ? And would it, then, be a meri- 
 torious employment of a genius that really should be powerful 
 enough to counteract these exertions, and retard this progress 
 to reduce the human mind, or any one mind, back to a state in 
 which it could love or tolerate puerile or raving absurdity — to 
 that very state which the generality of the orientals are in at 
 this day, and for being in which they have (till lately their 
 Paganism has recommended them to our favour) been the 
 objects of our sovereign contempt ? But if all our influ- 
 ential poetry were to be of the same character as that of 
 
490 boijthet's cttksb op kehama. 
 
 a large portion of the present work, we might justly regard 
 the poetic tribe as a conspiracy to seduce men into a com- 
 placency with what involves a total abjuration of sense, and 
 so to defeat the labours for maturing the human under- 
 standing, — labours, verily, of which the toil is great enough, 
 and the success little enough, even unobstructed by such 
 intervention. 
 
 There can be no danger, we suppose, of hearing pleaded 
 in maintenance of the privilege of poetry to be absurd, that 
 the scope of probability is too confined to afford sufficient 
 variety of materials. That scope includes nothing less than 
 all that is known of this whole world, — all that may, in 
 strict analogy with what is known, b6 conjectured or fancied 
 of it, in times past, present, and to come, — and all that can 
 be imagined of all other worlds, without violating what we 
 have reason to believe the principles of the order of the 
 creation, and without contradicting any doctrine of revela- 
 tion. This scope is, therefore, in the popular sense of the 
 word, infinite ; and to seek for materials which it does not 
 include, will generally be found an indication of a feeble 
 mind. It is quite needless to say, this remark can have no 
 application to Mr. Southey : but it is a remark applicable 
 to him, that such feeble minds wiU be glad to find and plead 
 a warrant for their folly in the example of a strong one. 
 
 After all, it would be foolish to affect any great degree of 
 apprehension for the public taste, from the perverting ope- 
 ration of one, or any number of works, attempting to recon- 
 cile it to the kind and excess of absurdity exhibited in this 
 poem, even if all such works had all the poetical excellence 
 80 conspicuous in this. There is a point in the improve- 
 ment both of individuals and communities, after which they 
 cannot be even amused to more than a certain latitude, u 
 we may so express it, from the line of their reason. 
 
 The next chief point of censure would be, that this 
 absurdity is also Paganism ; but this has been noticed so 
 pointedly and repeatedly in our analysis, that a very few 
 words here will suffice. There are Marriataly, PoUear, 
 Tama, Indra, Veeshnoo, Seeva, Padalon, the Swerga, &c., 
 celebrated in the most Christianized country of Europe, 
 bv a native poet. Now if these had been merely the fictions 
 
PAGANISM or THE POEM. 491 
 
 of his own mind, and not parts of a heatben mythology; 
 even then they would have been, as they are here managed, 
 an unpardonable violation of religious rectitude. For (the 
 truth of the religion of the Bible being assumed) the poet 
 has no right to frame, with a view to engage our compla^ 
 cency in, such a fictitious economy of divine and human 
 beings as, if it could be real, would constitute the negation 
 or extinction of that religion. But the present fiction, so 
 far and so long as the force of poetry (which the poet would 
 have augmented iadefinitely if he could) can render the 
 illusion prevalent on the mind, is not only the making void 
 of the true religion, and the substitution of another and a 
 vile theology in its place : it is no less than the substitution 
 of a positive and notorious system of Paganism. It vacates 
 the eternal throne, not only in order to raise thither an 
 imaginary divinity, but absolutely to elevate Seeva, the 
 adored abomination of the Hindoos. He is as much and 
 as gravely attempted to be represented as a reality, as he 
 could be by the poets of those heathens themselves. And, 
 as if on purpose to preclude the officiousness of any friend 
 that might wish to palliate or justify this proceeding, by 
 the old pretendedly philosophical allegation, that this id 
 only accommodating so far to another division of the human 
 race, as to apply the name under which they worship a 
 supreme being, to the Supreme Being that w.-e somewhat 
 more intelligently worship, — as if expressly to forbid any 
 such apology, and to give proof that what he is endeavour- 
 ing to gain a place for in our minds is genuine and formal 
 heathenism, he has given an equally grave semblance of 
 reality to a variety of other gods as well as Seeva, and to 
 the Pagan heaven and hell. These, at any rate, are dis^ 
 claimed even by that irreligious philosophy that insults 
 revelation with the pretence that it may be, in truth, the 
 same divine Essence that is worshipped " by saint, by 
 savage, or by sage" under the varied denominations of 
 " Jehovah, Jove, Lord," or Seeva. These systematic ap- 
 pendages and connexions, therefore, verify the Paganism of 
 the whole theology of this poem. And to this paganism, 
 the poet has most earnestly laboured, as we have before 
 observed and shown, to transfer what is peculiar to the true 
 theology. Expressions of awful reverence, and ascriptions 
 
492 soothet's crBSE of kehama. 
 
 of diyine attributes to Seeva, are uttered by tbe poet in liia 
 own person ; he studies most solicitously to give every 
 appearance and every epithet of dignity to the worship 
 represented as rendered to the gods by Ladurlad, Kailyal, 
 and Ereenia; and the fidelity to this devotion at length 
 attains an eternal reward. Now we have only to ask, 
 "What was the impression which the poet wished all these 
 combined and co-operating representations to make on the 
 reader's mind ? He will not say, nor any one for him, that 
 he was unaware that a certain moral efiect necessarily 
 accompanies all striking representations of moral agents, 
 and that all he reckoned on, in a work of great and pro- 
 tracted effort, was to present simply a series of images,- 
 chasing one another away, like those in a magic lanthorn,, 
 or like the succession of clouds in the sky, making no 
 impression on the mind but merely that of their splendour, 
 beauty, or monstrousness. Aware then of a moral effect, 
 and intending it, did he design that effect should be hostile 
 in the severest manner to heathenism ? Throughout this 
 exhibition of gods, providences, devotions, heavens, and 
 hells, was it a leading purpose to make the reader detest 
 the fancies about Indra and Seeva, and the Swerga and 
 Padalon, and pray that such execrable delusions might be 
 banished from those millions of minds in which they are 
 entertained as something more than poetry ? For any pur- 
 pose of this kind, the means, evidently, would not be at all 
 of the nature of those he has employed. He most clearly 
 had no intention that his Seeva, his Indra, his Yama, his 
 Baly, and so forth, should appear to the reader in the full 
 odiousness, or any degree of the odiousness, of the character 
 of false gods ; and that the reader should recoil with abhor- 
 rence at all his devotional sentiments towards these divi- 
 nities. But it is then to be believed, that he was content 
 or desirous that his bold conceptions, his fine painting, his 
 rich language, should lend the whole of that powerful assist- 
 ance which he knows such things contribute, by necessary 
 association, in behalf of whatever they are employed to 
 exhibit and embellish — to render false gods and their 
 worship, and so much more of a most execrable system of 
 Paganism as the poem allowed room for admitting, agret:able 
 objects to the reader's impjiination, and as far as possible 
 
WANT OP EEVEEENCB TOE CnBlSTIANITY. 493 
 
 interesting to his affections ? "We do not see Bow the poet 
 is to be acquitted of this, unless, as we observed before, we 
 could suppose so absurd a thing, as that he should regard 
 his work as a mere piece of scenery, displaying fine colours 
 and strange shapes, without any moral tendency at all. It 
 is possible our author may have in his own mind some mode 
 of explaining and justifying such a conduct, and that with- 
 out a rejection of rational theism or revealed religion ; with 
 either of which degrees of disbelief we are very far from 
 thinking he is chargeable. But the very least that a Christian 
 critic can say in such a case is, that no man, riglitly impressed 
 with the transcendent idea of a Supreme Being, and with 
 the unspeakable folly and clanger of trifling with the purity 
 and integrity, and sporting away, in any the smallest degree, 
 the awfulness of that idea, could have written this work, or 
 can read it without displeasure and regret. 
 
 It was to be foreseen that sooner or later, one of the many 
 enterprises of genius would be a very formal and strenuous 
 attempt to confer English popularity on the Hindoo gods; 
 It was a thing not to be endured, that, while we are as proud 
 as Kehama of possessing India, we should not be able to 
 bring to the augmentation of our national splendour that 
 which India itself deems its highest glory, its mythology. 
 And since the attempt was to be made, we should be very 
 glad it has been made by a poet, whose failure wiU be a per- 
 manent proof and monument of the utter desperateness of 
 the undertaking — if we did not regret that so much genius 
 should have been sacrificed to such a contemptible purpose. 
 The grave part of the regret is of the same kind with that 
 which affects us at seeing Sir Thomas More surrender his 
 life in devout assertion of the infallibility and universal 
 spiritual dominion of an impious impostor, called the Pope. 
 But there mingles with this regret the same strong percep- 
 tion of the ludicrous, as we should feel in seeing a fine 
 British fleet, in full equipment and appointment, sent out to 
 India just for the purpose of bringing back, each ship, a 
 basket of the gods of crockery, or some portions of that 
 material with which the Lama of Thibet is reported to enrich 
 the craving hands of his devotees, and at length coming into 
 the Channel with flags flying, and their cannon thundering, 
 in celebration of the cargo. Or if the reader has not enough 
 
494 sotjthet's cusse op kehama. 
 
 of similes, we would compare the poet to an artist who, if 
 such a thing were possible in any other art than poetry, 
 should make choice of the most offensive substances, to be 
 moulded with the utmost delicacy and beauty of workman- 
 ship, into forms which should excite a violent contest between 
 the visual and olfactory senses, in which, however, the latter 
 would be sure to be victorious. 
 
 After these observations on what we think the two mortal 
 sins of this performance, absurdity and irreverence, sub- 
 ordinate remarks cannot claim room for an extension of this 
 overgrown article. There is not anything that can properly 
 be called character in the work. Kehama is a personage so 
 monstrous that nothing extravagant could be said to be out 
 of character in him. There is much ability evinced in 
 giving Ladurlad more of what we can sympathize with, 
 more of purely human dignity, amiableness, and distress 
 than would have been supposed practicable in a representa- 
 tion of human beings under such strange and impossible 
 circumstances. We need not say one word more of the 
 ■wonderful power of description displayed in every part of 
 the poem. It appears with unabated vigour in the concluding 
 canto or section, which exhibits Padalon, the Hindoo hell. 
 This exhibition, however, has a kind of coarse hideousness, 
 which would be very remote from anything awful or sublime, 
 even if it included much less of the clumsy, uncouth mon- 
 strosity of the Hindoo fables ; and if the measureless power 
 and terrors of Kehama, and his making himself into eight 
 terrible gods, did not appear so insipidly and irksomely 
 foolish. There is too much sameness of fire, steel, and 
 adamant ; and there is in the whole scene a certain flaring 
 nearness, which allows no retirement of the imagination 
 into wide, and dubious, and mysterious terrors. This puts 
 it in unfortunate contrast with the infernal world of 
 Milton, and the difierence is somewhat like that between 
 walking amidst a burning town, and in a region of volcanoes. 
 "We must not bring, even into thought, any sort of com- 
 parison between the display of mind in Milton's infernal 
 personages and those of Padalon. 
 
 The general diction of the work is admirably strong, and 
 vai'ious, and free ; and, in going through it, we have 
 repeatedly exulted in tlie capabilities of the English Ian- 
 
as TEESiriCATIOW. 495 
 
 guage. The author seems to have in a great measure 
 grown oat of that affected simplicity of expression, of which 
 lie has generally been accused. The versification, as to 
 measure and rhyme, is a complete defiance of all rule and 
 all example ; the lines are of any length, from four syllables 
 to fourteen ; there are sometimes rhymes and sometimes 
 none ; and they have no settled order of recurrence. This 
 is objectionable, chiefly, as it allows the poet to riot away in 
 a wild wantonness of amplification, and at the very same 
 time imposes on him the petty care of having the lines so 
 printed as to put the letter-press in the form of a well- 
 adjusted picture. 
 
 The notes comprise a large assortment of curious par- 
 ticulars, relating to the Eastern mythology and manners, 
 and to natural history. 
 
 VINDICATION OF TOX'S HISTOET. 
 
 A Vindication of Mr. Fox's History of the Early Part of the 
 Reign of James II. By Samuel Hetwood, Sergeant-at-Law. 
 4to. 1811. 
 
 Supposing this work to be effectually what the title 
 professes, there are several good reasons why it should be 
 published. In the fixst place, it is necessary to the intel- 
 lectual good order of the community that minds of pre- 
 eminent superiority should be, by a general and established 
 law, the objects of a respect, partaking in a certain degree 
 of homage, and shown in a somewhat ceremonious deference. 
 They are the natural nobility and magistracy in what may 
 be called the economy of sense ; and it is easy to foresee 
 what will be the consequence, if they are to be subjected to 
 such a levelling system, as that all sorts of people may 
 venture on whatever impertinent freedoms they please, — as 
 that every smatterer in knowledge and pretender to ability 
 may beard them, rudely question them, contradict them, and 
 proclaim them as ignorant or incapable. Mind itself, the 
 noblest thing we have among us, would be insulted, and be 
 
496 TiNDiCATioif or rox's histoet. 
 
 liable to become degraded, by this indecorons treatment of 
 its higher specimens and exhibitions : the just rules of 
 thinking, which can be kept in force only by a deference for 
 the dictates and exemplifications of these superior minds, 
 would be swept aside, the self-importance of little spirits 
 would grow arrogant, and a general anarchy of intellect 
 would lead to its general prostration. The prescriptive 
 rights, therefore, of this privileged order, ought to be care- 
 fully maintained. 
 
 Doubtless this reverence for superior minds may, in some 
 circumstances, degenerate into servility and superstition. 
 It will be recollected, what a despotic empire over the 
 thinking world was acquired by Aristotle. Other powerful 
 spirits have, in different ages, established upon this venera- 
 tion tyrannies, less extended and durable indeed .than his, 
 yet greatly obstructive of the free exercise and the progress 
 of the human understanding ; though it may, at the same 
 time, be doubted whether it was not, in many instances, 
 better to entertain those systems of notions, admitted 
 through submission to these ascendant minds, than to be in 
 that state of utter mental stagnation which, but for their 
 ascendancy, would have been the condition of many of their 
 believing devotees. But this superstitipus deference to high 
 mental powers has so far declined, from whatever causes, 
 that nothing is now more common than to see persons of very 
 ordinary endowments assuming with all possible assurancf 
 and self-complacency, to put themselves forward in even a 
 contemptuous hostility to the strongest minds of the present 
 or past times. It will be salutary, therefore, as tending to 
 repress this arrogance, and enforce due subordination, to 
 Lave now and then a signal example made of one of the 
 offenders. And it is peculiarly equitable that the instance 
 selected for this purpose should be that in which the great 
 person assailed and exulted over is recently dead, and the 
 comparatively small one assailing, enjoys immense benefits 
 connected with his capacity of partisan. 
 
 Another good reason for the publication, if the work 
 justifies the title, is, that it must necessarily form, by its 
 proofs and illustrations, a valuable historical supplement to 
 Mr. Fox's work. It must be, in effect, partly the same 
 thing as if Mr. Fox himself had investigated each question 
 
TALT7E OF THE . TINDICATION. 497 
 
 to its utmost minutiw, had produced more authorities, aud 
 trebly fortified every assertion. The Vindicator may have 
 fortified the statements, even more completely than the 
 historian himself could, — having had the advantage of being 
 directed, by the attempts of an earnest enemy, where to 
 accumulate the means of defence. The evidence which 
 efiectuaUy defends a work against a long laborious attack 
 in detail, must be of an extremely specific nature ; and the 
 corroboration thus obtained is therefore of very great value. 
 If, then, Mr. Heywood is successful, Mr. Pox's wort both 
 acquires a more decisive authority than it could be held to 
 possess before it had sustained the attack, and annihilated 
 the assailant, and is made, by Mr. Heywood' s defensive 
 accessions, a much ampler history of the events to which it 
 relates. And as Mr. Pox's book is sure to be among the 
 very first of those that will be consulted in future times, by 
 such as shall in those times carry their retrospect so far as 
 to the events in question, much of Mr. Heywood's auxiliary 
 assemblage of evidence wiU justly claim to go down with the 
 principal work, to confirm and to amplify its representations. 
 Thus the work, in point of value, takes a higher and more 
 general ground than that of being merely a defence of a 
 particular book against the exceptions of a Mr. Eose. 
 
 Another good reason for such a pablication, may perhaps 
 be found in the necessity of checking the assumption of 
 official men, and exciting in the nation a salutary suspicion 
 of them. It is not seldom seen, with what an air of conse- 
 quence the general claims of a minor public functionary 
 shall be put forth ; but he is apt to take a tone peculiarly 
 authoritative and oracular, whenever he is pleased to pro- 
 nounce upon questions demanding the kind of knowledge 
 and of judgment supposed to be acquired among exact 
 details and minute records. He assumes, asi 6, thing admit- 
 ting no dispute, that, in his official capacity, he is the 
 perfection of accuracy ; and, on the strength of this assump- 
 tion, confidently claims credit for the same virtue in any 
 extra-official application of his knowledge. And there is 
 among mankind an extreme willingness to yield to such 
 men this credit for accuracy, both in matters within their 
 office and in matters without it. This facility of confiding 
 arises partly from indolence, partly from want of the means 
 
 E E 
 
498 VINDICATION OF FOl'S HIBTOET 
 
 of judging, and partly from that reverence of government, 
 through all its branches, which has always been one of the 
 most prominent features of the human character. Now, if 
 it be really true, as many shrewd observers of human 
 nature and of men in place, have asserted, that there is, 
 after all, no security against many and great errors in the 
 arrangements, reckonings, and statements of these men, 
 without the constant interference of a suspicious vigilance 
 on the part of those whose affairs they administer, — it may 
 be very useful, as tending both to recover the people from 
 this blind confidence, and to check the assurance that 
 demands it, that, when any one of these official men 
 ventures out from the shaded and the guarded sanctuary of 
 state, where he is but very imperfectly within reach of 
 scrutuiy, and takes a ground where he can be subjected to a 
 fall and public examination, — ^it may be very useful for 
 some keen inquisitor to seize upon him, and put to a severe 
 test this public, ostentatious, and challenging display of his 
 virtue of exquisite accuracy ; which he himself cannot dis- 
 own to be a very fair specimen of his general accuracy, and 
 an illustration of his official accuracy, when he professes 
 that it is from the official cultivation of this virtue, that so 
 much of it comes to appear in the extra-official performance. 
 We will name only one more of the good effects likely to 
 attend such a work, and making it desirable. It may serve 
 as a warning that no man, in or out of office, who is not 
 very sure he is a superior man to Mr. Eose, should write 
 (or at least should publish if he has written), a polemical 
 quarto in the spare hours of a very few weeks ; or that, at 
 any rate, if he is under the compvdsion of fate to perform 
 such an oJ)eration withia such a time, it should not be 
 against another book of little more than the same bulk, on 
 which one of the strongest minds in the world has expended 
 about the same number of years that the said assailant can 
 afford weeks. Or, if any man should ever again be under 
 the power and malice of fate even to this whole melancholy 
 extent, the warning may, at the very least of all, be of 
 service so far as to raise him from that last worst spite of 
 his evil fortune, that would make him go through this task 
 with an air of the most honest and lively self-congratulatioii 
 on performing a victorious exploit ! 
 
ME. EOSE's complete DEFEAT. 499 
 
 These, we should think, will be admitted to be very good 
 and sober reasons (and others might be added), why the 
 book should come before the public, if it be what it pro- 
 fesses to be. With this admission, the reader must begin 
 the perusal ; — and by the time he comes to the conclusion 
 it may be difficult for him to refuse admitting also that the 
 book does fulfil, with extraordinary fidelity, the promise or 
 threat in the title. He will probably be of opinion, that he 
 never witnessed an attack more cool, comprehensive and 
 effectual, nor a defeat involving a more hopeless and com- 
 plete humiliation; — complete, unless it be an alleviating 
 circumstance that it wUl not be insulted with pity. Mr. 
 Eose came forward a good deal in the manner of a person 
 called upon by duty to stop the progress of a public mis- 
 chief, and remove a public nuisance. The leisure fragments 
 of a very few weeks were all that could be spared for the 
 purpose from his valuable time ; but quite enough for the 
 easy task of deposing Mr. Fox from the dignified rank of 
 historian, and proving his deeply pondered judgments and 
 carefully conducted narration, to be little better than a 
 series of mis-statements in point of fact, applied to party 
 purposes by prejudiced and erroneous comments. The 
 right honourable censor, in addition to that disinterested 
 rectitude of judgment, the want of which in Mr. Fox is 
 condescendingly apologized for, whUe condemned, holds 
 himself forth as possessing a great . advantage, in having 
 been accustomed to "official accuracy ;" — and also he has 
 the privilege of perusing sundry valuable manuscript docu- 
 ments. One inducement to his interference, indeed, is the 
 wish to rescue the character of a friend's ancestor from mis- 
 representation; but he also entertains the more ambitious 
 hope, and meritorious purpose, of rendering " service to his 
 country." The achievement is finished. The performer 
 has constructed for himself a proud station among the 
 ruined labours of Mr. Pox. He receives there, and proba- 
 bly deems himself not much the worse for, several transient 
 attacks. But, all this while, there is a sober, indefatigable 
 engineer, of the name of Heywood, who has silently carried 
 a mine under this triumphal structure, and lodged his gun- 
 powder ; and while the redoubted occupant is regaling him- 
 self with the self-applause, and all the rich rewards of this 
 
 K K 2 
 
TiOO TINDICATION OJ TOX'S HISTOBY. 
 
 and so many other "services to his country," up in a 
 moment goes he into the air, frisking among the fragments 
 of his pile, the companions of his jacnlation. We think no 
 one who has a right notion of the virtue and duty of 
 modesty in self-estimation, and considers the arrogance and 
 contemptuous temerity of this proceeding, wiU feel any 
 compassion at the catastrophe. 
 
 It will be enough to notice a few of the more remarkable 
 points in this long course of refutation ; in which every 
 animadversion and contradiction, so confidently ventured by 
 Mr. Eose, is distinctly brought to the test, and the critical 
 cognizance is extended even to some of those smaller 
 blunders and inaccuracies, which would not have been worth 
 fixing on in a work which had not rested its pretensions on 
 the superlative accuracy of the writer, and which had not 
 deserved, by the arrogant manner of its hostility, to be ex- 
 posed all round in the completeness of its character. There 
 is, however, no great degree of asperity in any part of the 
 Vindication, notwithstanding that the author enjoyed the 
 personal friendship of Mr. Fox. He seems to have felt too 
 certain of the effect of his evidence and his argfuments, to 
 need to call his temper to his assistance. 
 
 In a very long preface, he disposes of some matters 
 touching the general qualifications of the two writers. He 
 could not fail to be struck with the charity and innocence 
 of the right honourable observer's excuse for Mr. Pox's 
 inaccurate statements and erroneous reflections — " that with 
 perfect rectitude and impartiality of 'intention, a man in a 
 particular political situation can hardly form impartial 
 opinions, because he breathes an atmosphere of party, with 
 which the constitution and temperament of his own mind 
 can hardly fail to be affected." As this judicious remark 
 was doubtless uttered to be reflected back on his own self- 
 complacency, Mr. Eose wiU have the benefit of possessing 
 in the Serjeant's book, something analogous, in effect, to 
 those remarkable walls and rocks, that are said to echo a 
 man's words to him ten or twenty times. The reflection is 
 sure to be repeated to him, with the most gracious and 
 flattering effect, whenever Mr. Pox has on another, and still 
 another instance, been proved to be equally accurate in his 
 facts, and impartial in his observations. It serves as an 
 
MB. boss's cabelesskess. 501 
 
 interlude, by tte enchanting melodies of which Mr. Heywood 
 soothes and dulcifies his man when he has in one instance 
 shown him he has written just in the style of a partisan and 
 placeman, and is going to do it in another. And sometimes 
 in addition, he warbles Mm a finale of surpassing sweetness ; 
 — as when it is observed, that "the subordinate men of a 
 party are more completely under the perverting influence in 
 question than even the chiefs, since they are attached not 
 only to the party by common principle, but to its leader by 
 the stiU stronger ties of personal interest, gratitude, and 
 affection." To this perverting influence, together with that 
 extreme inattention, either learnt, or at least not corrected, 
 in official employment, the Vindicator is willing, on second 
 thoughts, to ascribe the errors of Mr. Hose's book, — for 
 at first he could not help suspecting a less pardonable 
 cause. 
 
 Among the first exemplifications of the excessive careless- 
 ness of that writer, are two quotations formally given in his 
 Introduction as from the work of Mr. Fox — while the 
 passages so quoted for animadversion do not exist in that 
 work ; the one being a sentence contained in a private letter 
 of Mr. Fox, inserted in Lord Holland's preface, and the 
 other a sentence written by Lord Holland himself. And 
 these instances of accuracy occur in that very same Intro- 
 duction in which the writer, aware, he says, of the imputa- 
 tions his work would be liable to, on account of his political 
 connexions, professes to be " certain that he has been more 
 scrupulous both of his authorities and his own opinions than 
 he might have been in commenting on the work of any other 
 author." Mr. Heywood then remarks on the dubious 
 explanation of the right honourable observer's motives for 
 writing ; and seems to have some difficulty in maintaining 
 his gravity at the highly sentimental and pathetic emotions 
 and professions relative to the memory of Sir Patrick Hume, 
 — who had been dead eighty-five years, and who, during his 
 own very protracted Ufe, had not deemed it necessary, or, as 
 the Sergeant is rather inclined to surmise, had feared it 
 would be unavaUing to his justification, to publish the 
 Narrative which Mr. Hose was now in such earnest haste to 
 produce in vindication of Sir Patrick against a charge- 
 incorrectly represented as made by Mr. Pox, but which, 
 
502 TINDICATION OF TOX'S HISTOEX. 
 
 ■whoever had made it, Mr. Heywood maintains — that Sir 
 Patrick's own Narrative, thus produced in his exculpation, 
 proves to be just. Spirited notice is taken of the under- 
 valuing terms iu which Mr. Hose very confidently dehvera 
 himself respecting the worth and utility of the whole of the 
 Historical Work, and the trifling result of its author's 
 researches for new information. 
 
 Mr. Eose having made an absolutely rectangular devia- 
 tion from his road to applaud Vertot, as an historian, the 
 Serjeant cuts across and meets him with one of the most 
 pleasant anecdotes in Hterary history. 
 
 " This recommendation of Mr. Vertot by a person accustomed 
 to official accuracy is rather extraordinary ; for it is a well- 
 known anecdote, that when his History of Malta was preparing 
 for the press, notes of the transactions at the siege, taken by an 
 eye-witness, being sent to him, he declined to use them, saying, 
 ' Mon liege est fait.' " 
 
 The beginning of the first section asserts, argumentatively, 
 the just discrimination with which Mr. Pox divides the 
 periods of our history at which the mind is disposed to pause 
 for reflection. Among the marks or efiects of national 
 improvement, in the period comprised between 1588 and 
 1640, the historian has noted "the additional value that 
 came to be set on a seat in the House of Commons." The 
 observer has taken the word " value " here to mean " the 
 money it would bring;" and to prove that the value set on 
 the thing, in the period in question, was pitifuUy low, has 
 cited an instance of five pounds being given for a seat in 
 1571. Mr. Heywood observes that Mr. Pox certainly was 
 not thinking of a market-price of a thing that cannot legally 
 be sold, but of the more honourable estimation in which the 
 House was beginning to be held ; but that even if he had 
 meant a pecuniary price, the low rate of the article in 1571, 
 could be no proof it might not have come to bear a very 
 good price, by or before the end of the period, in 1640. 
 The point, however, in which this argument bears the 
 special characteristic of its author is, that, whereas the sum 
 stated is five pounds, and the record cited is the fifth 
 volume of' the Journals, the sum was actually ybtw pounds, 
 and'the record is in the first volume. 
 
 The judgment pronounced by Mr. Fox on the condem< 
 
EXECUTION OE OHAELES I. 503 
 
 nation and execution of Charles I., that it was both 
 unjust and impolitic, was accompanied by some qualifying 
 observations. He said this proceeding was " a far less 
 violent measure" than that against Lord Strafford, — that 
 there was a certain magnanimity in the publicity of it, 
 which contrasted favourably for Cromwell and his adherents 
 with the private assassinations by which deposed princes 
 have generally been taken off, — and that, " notwithstanding 
 what the more reasonable part of mankind many think upon 
 the question," " this singular proceeding has served to raise 
 the character of the English nation in the opinion of Europe 
 in general :" the impression made by it on the minds of 
 foreigners, even those that condemn the act, having been 
 " far more that of respect and admiration than that of 
 disgust and horror." In these observations, Mr. Eose found 
 great cause for censure, and even for "astonishment." 
 That which is to be condemned in the proceedings against 
 Strafford, he says, consisted only in a " breach or abuse of 
 a constitutional law ;" while those against Charles involved 
 " a total departure from, or overturning of, the constitution 
 itself." The publicity and solemnity of the proceedings 
 against the king, he says, could not be any alleviation of his 
 misery, nor could on any conceivable groimd, inspire 
 foreigners with respect. And he asks. If the publicity of 
 the proceeding in the case of Charles deserves so much 
 applause for magnanimity, " how would Mr. Fox have found 
 language sufficiently commendatory to express his admira- 
 tion of the magnanimity of those who brought Louis 5VI. 
 to an open trial ?" 
 
 With respect to the comparison between the cases of the 
 King and Strafford, the Vindicator insists, in the first place, 
 (not, we think, with his usual simplicity and evidence) that 
 the historian meant a comparison, not between the respec- 
 tive degrees or essential injustice in the two cases, but 
 between the cases viewed in that light, in which the wrong 
 in the mode of 'proceeding against delinquents is distin- 
 guished from the excess of the punishment over the de- 
 merit. It may well be doubted whether this distinction 
 was in Mr. Eox's contemplation. But in the next place, 
 the Vindicator observes, unanswerably, that as to " over- 
 turning the constitution," there was no such thing to over- 
 
504 TINDICATION OF FOX's HISTOEY. 
 
 turn, the state of things having previously dissolved it : he 
 might have said the king himself had abolished it, unless it 
 was such a kind of thing as could consist with the monarch's 
 systematic measures for rendering himself absolute. To 
 the charge of extenuating the injustice by ascribing magna- 
 nimity to the publicity of the proceeding, it is replied, that 
 it was with this fact of the publicity before him that Mr. 
 Fox did, notwithstanding, condemn the prosecution and 
 execution of the king, and clearly did not, in adverting to 
 it, intend to represent the proceeding as less unjust : that, 
 however, there is, from the principles of our nature, and 
 without our leave, something more horrid in the dark 
 management of a secret assassination than in a public sen- 
 tence and execution, even when unjust, — and that Charles 
 did himself express an extreme apprehension and horror of 
 the former : that, as contrasted with this treacherous and 
 silent expedient usually resorted to by the deposers of 
 monarchs, there was a degree of magnanimity in conducting 
 the whole proceedings in view of the whole world; that 
 even Hume has expressed himself in still stronger terms to 
 the same eiFect ; and that as to the admiration of foreigners, 
 Mr. Fox asserts it simply as a matter of fact, which no 
 man had ampler means of knovring, but as to which he also 
 appeals to all who have read their books and extensively 
 conversed with them. 
 
 The allusion to Louis XYI. calls forth a zealous and pro- 
 longed exertion of the Vindicator, giving him at the same 
 time aU the advantage of an assailant. He considers the 
 expressions as not only equivalent to an assertion that, on 
 the principles implied in the Observations on the case of 
 Charles, Mr. Fox might consistently express the utmost 
 admiration of the proceedings against the King of France, 
 but as directly importing that he actually would have 
 expressed such a sentiment had he spoken on the subject. 
 Mr. Heywood suggests several groimds on which the injus- 
 tice against Charles might admit of an extenuation, of which 
 that against Louis did not. But not resting anything on 
 this mode of defence, he goes to the plain fact — that 
 Mr. Fox did repeatedly, in the most explicit and feeUng 
 manner, express abhorrence of the injustice and inhumanity 
 committed in the trial and death of the French king ; and 
 
CHABACTEE OF MONK. 505 
 
 formal citations, emphatically expressing this judgment on 
 the case, are brought from several of his speeches in par- 
 liament, some or all of which Mr. Rose must actually have 
 heard. The defence in this part has a tone of indignation 
 to which the Vindicator is very rarely excited. 
 
 The character of Monk, in the estimate of which Mr. Fox 
 is charged with having exercised a " severity neither sup- 
 ported by popular belief, nor by the authority of history," 
 is nest brought under discussion. It is prosecuted to a 
 very great length, with eminent proofs of research and 
 acuteness, and will put an end, we should think, to aU 
 serious dispute on the subject. He begins with a pointed 
 reproof to the writer of the Observations, for invidiously 
 seeking and making occasions of fixing on Mr. Pox the 
 imputation of such a partiality to republicanism, as incapa- 
 citated him for a just representation of the events and 
 characters of the period he had chosen. Mr. Fox's plainest 
 expressions are shown to be grossly misquoted for this pur- 
 pose. Nor can he do the mere historical justice of placing 
 Cromwell's character in a fairer light than that of Monk, 
 without drawing on himself such a comment as this : " It 
 wiU require a great partiality for a republican form of 
 government, to account for this predilection in favour of 
 the destroyer of monarchy, and this prejudice against the 
 restorer of it ;" — an imputation the convenient operation of 
 which, as affecting the character of an author and his book, 
 in these times, so far as it is believed, Mr. Hose understood 
 perfectly well. Commend him, however, to the Sergeant. 
 
 "Mr. Eose here exhibits the same childish partiality for kings 
 which had been reprobated by Mr. Pox in the writings of 
 Mr. Hume. According to him, the meanest of mankind, if a 
 restorer of monarchy, is to be preferred to the possessor of the 
 greatest mind and talents, if a destroyer of it. Mr. Fox thought 
 more philosophically ; he felt neither predilection for the one, 
 nor prejudice against the other, but, according to the best of 
 his judgment, gave an impartial character of both. If Monk 
 was a base and worthless character, it was giving no opinion of 
 the cause in which he was engaged, to say so ; and if Cromwell 
 was a man of a superior class, it was the duty of an historian 
 not to withhold his proper meed of praise." 
 
 The charges made by Mr. Fox against Monk are three :— 
 
506 TINDICATION or FOX B HISTOET. 
 
 " In the first place, he reproaches him with having restored 
 the monarch without a single provision in favour of the cause 
 which he and others had called the cause of liberty. Mr. Rose 
 at first endeavours to defend this omission by a series of hypo- 
 thetical arguments, which, by their extreme weakness, afi'ord a 
 convincing proof of the truth of the observation he is combating. 
 He argues first, that though this conduct might be regretted, 
 yet it must be recollected that there could hardly have been 
 time to settle the boundaries of the regal power ; and secondly, 
 that Monk might have been of opinion that the restoration of 
 the monarchy would have implied all the limitations of its 
 ancient constitution ; but what these limitations were, or where 
 to be sought for, Mr. Eose has not informed us. Certainly not 
 in the history of the reigns of the two preceding princes of the 
 house of Stuart ; and surely Monk cannot be supposed by 
 Mr. Hose, who has lived the greatest part of his life among 
 records, to have formed any opinion of the limitations which 
 existed during the time of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Thirdly, 
 that Monk might have thought any delay would have been 
 dangerous. Fourthly, that he might have been less anxious in 
 this respect, from his having been witness of the abuse of liberty. 
 And afterwards Mr. Eose gives what he supposes to be two 
 additional reasons, but which are in fact included in the fore- 
 going ones, viz., that Monk might have been so disgusted with 
 the scenes he had been witness to, as to be willing to give his 
 assistance to bring about any change likely to restore order ; 
 and that he might have been alarmed lest the army should not 
 have co-operated in his designs." " That Monk might have 
 defended himself by these arguments is certainly within the 
 sphere of possibility, but is highly improbable. He had com- 
 plete power over the army ; it was governed by his creatures, 
 and was subservient to his will. If he had proposed that the 
 crown, under certain i-estrictions, should be offered to the king, 
 there was no existing power to oppose it." 
 
 The infamy of Monk is consummated by the last charge, 
 if just, which the historian makes against him, of having, at 
 the trial of the Marquis of Argyle, " produced letters of 
 friendship and confidence to take away the life of a noble- 
 man, the zeal and cordiality of whose co-operation with him, 
 proved by such documents, was the chief ground of his exe- 
 cution." Mr. Eose observes, that this charge rests on the 
 authority of Bishop Burnet ; and then relates the history of 
 a most prodigious research made by himself into all manner 
 of documents and memorials, the result of which is, he says, 
 
monk's base conduct. 507 
 
 that, " it is hardly possible to conceiTe that stronger evi- 
 dence could be found in any case to establish a negative 
 than is here produced to prove the falsehood of the Bishop's 
 charge." In a very long and argumentative examination of 
 the question, Mr. Hey wood has shown that other authorities 
 support the Bishop in this charge, though it is insisted that 
 his testimony alone would be of great weight. But a coin- 
 ciding deposition is made by two good evidences, Baillie 
 and Cunningham, the former of whom was contemporary 
 with the event, and writes in a manner that proves him to 
 have been very attentive to its circumstances, and interested 
 in it ; the other, though he lived after it, was intimate with 
 the Argyle famUy, and in a situation to obtain the best 
 information on the subject. Baillie says, " When his (the 
 Marquis's) libelled crimes appeared not unpardonable, and 
 his son Lord Neil went up to see his brother Lome at 
 London, and spake somewhat liberally of his father's satis- 
 factory answers. Monk was moved to send down fowr or five 
 ofMs letters to himself, and others proving his full compliance 
 with them, that the king should not reprieve him." Cun- 
 ningham says, " Argyle, conceiving hopes of safety, set out 
 for London, and came to court to cast himself upon the 
 king's clemency. But, through the interference of Monk, 
 with whom he had held a long and intimate friendship in 
 the time of Oliver, he was presently committed to custody, 
 and sent back for his trial in Scotland. He endeavoured to 
 make his defence, but chiefly ly the discoveries of Monk, was 
 condemned of high treason and lost his head." It is an 
 extremely curious circumstance that Mr. Eose did not take 
 the trouble to look into these authors, even after he had 
 read Mr. Laing's reference to them as corroborating the 
 testimony of Burnet. To complete the force of this com- 
 bination of testimony, the Vindicator proves, by a copious 
 and clear induction, that the situations and employments of 
 Monk and Argyle, in Cromwell's timi, were such that it 
 was almost impossible but there must have been confidential 
 epistolary communications between them ; and then brings 
 such evidence of baseness in Monk's conduct, after the 
 Restoration, towards other of his recent friends and coad- 
 iutors, as to authorize a belief, even on much lighter proof 
 than that aaduced, of the particular instance of viUany 
 
508 TiNDiCATioir OF rox's histoet. 
 
 imputed by Mr. Fox. It is proper to notice, that an addi- 
 tional and absolutely decisive proof,* has been supplied by 
 a periodical work in commenting on Mr. Heywood's book. 
 
 The Sergeant next traverses, very minutely, Mr. Eose's 
 statements and reasonings relative to the point of time pro- 
 per to be fixed on, as that at which our constitution had 
 attained its " greatest theoretical perfection." Such a point 
 (and it was the year 1679), had been named by Judge Black- 
 stone. Mr. Pox named it after him ; accepting this precise 
 selection, for the purpose of making a reflection on the 
 inefficacy of good laws in the hands of bad administrators, 
 rather than adopting it as any expression of his own deUhe- 
 rate opinion as to the period of " theoretical perfection." 
 Our author, however, takes one by one, those several laws 
 which the judge and Mr. Eox had specified as constituting 
 the excellence to which the constitution had attained at the 
 period mentioned, and defends, quite succesafiilly in some of 
 the instances, the approbation with which the historian had 
 marked them. 
 
 Mr. Eose contends, also, that the blame of restoring the 
 king without restrictions on his power is not to rest on 
 Monk alone : — for, that the king was thus unconditionally 
 called by a parliament freely chosen by the people of Eng- 
 land; — that the nation was eager for this event, even on 
 these terms, — insomuch that the interest which might be 
 supposed to be created against any restoration by the pos- 
 session, among no less than four hundred thousand families, 
 of the Crown and Bishops' lands, which had been sold dur- 
 ing the Civil "War, had no perceptible operation ; that who- 
 ever had proposed limitations would have been in hazard of 
 being considered an enemy to royalty : and that there was 
 not in this juncture time for deliberation, as there was, 
 happily at the Revolution. 
 
 In answer to aE. these allegations, the Sergeant shows that 
 the whole afiair was absolutely at the sovereign disposal of 
 the army, which was at the sovereign disposal of Monk. He 
 
 * From " Mackenzie's Criminals." This proof is also to be 
 found adduced with a reference to Mr. Bose's Observations, 
 in a note of M. Howell's, in a recent volume of " Cobbett's State 
 Trials." 
 
ME. Kobe's blxtkbees. 509 
 
 shows that this general had the irresistible control over the 
 composition, the proceedings, and the duration, of this same 
 imbiased assembly, which so perfectly and independently 
 represented the collective will of the nation. He shows that 
 the conscious impotence and the despondency of the people, 
 will fully account for their making no active display of 
 opinion on the subject ; and that it is utterly absurd to pre- 
 tend to believe, that he would have incurred their disappro- 
 bation by proposing to insist on conditions in favour of their 
 liberties. He shows, however, that there were persons (some 
 of them of high rank), bold enough to agitate it — among 
 whom was Mr. (afterwards Sir Matthew) Hale, who made, 
 even in this miserable parliament, a proposition for discuss- 
 ing the desirable limitations, which proposition was instantly 
 quashed by the immediate personal interference of Monk, 
 who had been for some time in a negotiation with the exiled 
 monarch to restore him unfettered by stipulations. As to 
 the difference between the Eestoration and the Bevolution, 
 with regard to the time allowed for deliberation and adjust- 
 ment, we wiU quote Mr. Heywood's statement : — 
 
 " At the Eevolution, James fled on the 11th of December, and 
 William and Mary accepted the crown on the 13th of Tebruary 
 following, so that thirty-three days only could be employed in 
 settling the constitution, and consulting the wishes of those to 
 whom the regal power was to be committed. At the Restora- 
 tion, a much longer time elapsed, from the period when Monk is 
 supposed, by some, to have entertained sentiments favourable to 
 monarchy, and the time when the king was in fact restored ; but 
 at all events, twenty-eight days elapsed between the open declara- 
 tion of his sentiments, made on the 1st of May, 1660, and the 
 king's return to the seat of government." 
 
 Extreme credulity, and several blunders in the statement 
 of particular facts, are exposed, in the remarks on Mr.Eose's 
 argument from the number of families possessed of the 
 ecclesiastical and crown lands. It is proved, that, according 
 to that very authority on which alone Mr. Eose can rest his 
 assertion (an anonymous party pamphlet), he ought to have 
 made the number much greater, even so great as must prove 
 that authority to be utterly worthless. And Mr. Heywood 
 quotes the precise words of a letter of Lord Clarendon, as 
 follows : — 
 
510 TUfDICATION OP I'Ox's HISTOET. 
 
 " I am not so much frighted with the fear of those persons 
 who being possessed of church, crown, and delinquents' lands, 
 will be thereby withheld from returning to their duty, except 
 they might be assured to retain the same. First, I do not think 
 the number so considerable of all those who are entangled in 
 that guilt, that their interests can continue or support the war, 
 when the nation shall discern that there is nothing else keeps off 
 peace." Afterwards he again says expressly, " the number of 
 those is not great." 
 
 And in a letter to his lordship, from Mr. Barwick, it is 
 asserted, " by computation, less than a year's tax would now 
 redeem all the land that hath been sold of all sorts, which, 
 upon the refreshment the kingdom wiU be sensible of at first 
 upon his majesty's return, may possibly be granted." 
 
 The Vindicator has taken, by the way, a dexterous advantage 
 of the right honourable observer's indiscretion, in defending 
 Charles's assumption of the throne without restrictions on 
 his power, on the ground that he was thus placed on it by 
 the wiU of the people, as declared by a representative con- 
 vention, " elected," as he asserts, "by the unbiassed voice." 
 It is hinted to him, somewhat irrisively, that a strenuous 
 anti-republican should here have taken very particular care 
 what he was about. 
 
 Among the proofs of the baseness of Monk's character, it 
 was asserted by Mr. Fox that he " acquiesced in the insults 
 so meanly put upon the illustrious corpse of Blake, under 
 whose auspices and command he had performed the most 
 creditable services of his life." Nothing will be easier to 
 the histor an's assailant than to dispose of this accusation. 
 " The story rests," says he, " on the authority of Neal'a 
 History of the Puritans ; and is refuted by Grey in his im- 
 partial examination of that history, and by clear evidence 
 adduced by Bishop Kennet." He wiLL have it that the 
 corpse of Blake " was with great decency re-interred in St. 
 Margaret's church-yard," though those of Cromwell, Ireton, 
 and some others, were ignominously treated. Mr. Hey- 
 wood has shown, first, that Mr. B.ose appears to be en- 
 tirely ignorant of the fact that the body of Blake was not 
 dug up till many months after those of Cromwell, Ireton, 
 Bradshaw, and Pride : and next, that the " story," as believed 
 by Mr. Fox, does not rest on the authority of Neal alone, 
 
ME. hose's ELrNDEES. 5il 
 
 for that Anthony "Wood, an evidence beyond all exceptiou 
 in this case, thus relates the fact, in his Fasti Oxonienses : 
 " His body (that of Blake), I say, was then (September 
 12th) taken up, and, with others htoried in a pit in St. Mar- 
 garet'' s church-yard adjoining, near to the back-door of one 
 of the prebendaries of "Westminster, in which place it now 
 remaineth, enjoying no other monument but what it reared 
 by his valour, which time itself can hardly efface." "Wood 
 naturally chose the smoothest terms . he could, in relating 
 such an act done under the authority of the restored 
 monarchy; but his words convey, in effect, just the very 
 same fact described by Neal in the terms " thrown, along 
 with others, into one pit." Besides, as Mr. Heywood justly 
 observes, the circumstance of the body being dug up was, 
 in itself, a gross and mean insult, and enough to justify Mr. 
 Eox's expressions. 
 
 But whatever be the fortunes of historian or judge, it is 
 sure always to be bad times with Mr. Eose ; and the worse, 
 the more he enters into details and records, in rash confi- 
 dence of the accuracy so boastfully pretended to have been 
 acquired in official employments. He could not well have 
 been safer, than in legal and parliamentary history. "While 
 working about there, he was as secure against any ordinary 
 power of sight, and search, and seizure, as those active mo- 
 lesters of our granaries which have their retreats and walks 
 within the walls and under the iioors — where nothing less 
 keen and adi'oit than a ferret can find them, fight them, and 
 bring them out. But even there this cruel and relentless 
 investigator reaches him. For instance, if Mr. Eose is 
 resolved to claim the merit of having detected two errors in 
 Lord Coke, the Serjeant is very quickly upon him with an 
 admonition to thank Mr. Prynne for the detection of one of 
 these errors, if it was an error, a hundred and fifty years 
 ago, ia a book which Mr. Eose had before him. As to the 
 other instance of detection, in which a proposition of Lord 
 Coke was to be proved by Mr. Eose to be erroneous by 
 means of the language of a statute of Edward VI., Mr. 
 Heywood shows him that he does not understand, in this 
 case at least, the legal parliamentary language ; that Coke 
 was perfectly accurate ; and that, as the Sergeant tells him, 
 " a little learning is a dangerous thing." 
 
618 viNDicATioir or tox's histoby. 
 
 Yet again. The abolition of the Court of "Wards, an 
 institution erected in the reign of Henry VIII., by 
 virtue of which, according to Mr. Hose's statement, "the 
 king had the wardship of all infant heirs male, with the 
 benefit of their estates, till they arrived at the age of twenty, 
 one years ; and of female heirs till they were sixteen years 
 of age, if they so long remained unmarried ; and the power 
 of marrying both the one and the other to whom he pleased, 
 or of granting the same to any favourite, together with a 
 year's or half-a-y ear's rent, on their coming of age, for their 
 relief" — the abolition of this court being mentioned by Mr. 
 Por among the things contributing to make the reign of 
 Charles II., "the era of good laws," — Mr. Eose, allow- 
 ing it was a great relief to the upper classes, says it was 
 obtained, however, at no small price ; the commutation being 
 a grant to the king of a perpetual excise, " which was so far 
 from being generally approved of, that the question in favour 
 of it was carried by the friends of government by a majority 
 of only two." Now it was appointed for Mi. Eose and his 
 readers to learn, from the Sergeant, that it was the " moiety 
 only of a perpetual excise, on certain articles," that was 
 granted, and that this was granted "without a division." 
 " An attempt was made to settle the other moiety on the 
 king for life, and negatived by the opponents of government 
 by a majority of two, 151 to 149, which must be the division 
 to which. Mr. Eose has alluded." "Well may the Sergeant 
 ask, " With the Journal before him, how can such a mistake 
 be accounted for ? He takes the proper pains to inform 
 himself ; the entry is a short one, yet in the attempt to trans- 
 fer its substance to another piece of paper, something totally 
 dissimilar to the original is produced." 
 
 Sometimes the Sergeant amuses himself — ^for it is no more 
 than pleasantry — with making out plausible appearances 
 that Mr. Erose is more republican in his notions than the 
 historian, notwithstanding aU. his pains taken to make invidi- 
 ous imputations of this nature to that writer. He is 
 brought into ludicrous contrast with himself on this point, 
 by Mr. Heywood's remarks on his strong dissent from Mr, 
 Pox's and Judge Blackstone's opinion, in numbering among 
 the things conducing to the perfection of the constitution 
 at the period aUuded to, the bill wHch repealed an enactment 
 
COTfTEOTEllTEB QUESTIONS. 513 
 
 of the Long Parliament for empowering parliament to con- 
 voke themselves independently of the will of the king ; an 
 enactment which Mr. Fox. thought an injurious infringement 
 of the royal prerogative. 
 
 The observer has contested the Historian's assertion, 
 when speaking of Charles II. 's ministry, notorious by 
 the denomination of the Cabal, that " the kiag kept from 
 them the real state of his connexion with France ; and from 
 some of them, at least, the secret of what he was pleased to 
 call his religion." The Vindicator soon confirms this asser- 
 tion by good evidence. But, seldom content merely to 
 defend Mr. Pox, he is apt to find some means of taking a 
 signal revenge. In the present instance he is immoderately 
 barbarous. For Mr. Eose having cited, somewhat in the 
 tone of triumph, a letter of Banllon to Louis, in proof that 
 this Cabal ministry were fuUy apprized of Charles's money 
 transactions with the French king, the Sergeant comes in, 
 much like a Cherokee with his tomahawk, with this efiective 
 segment of chronology — that Barillon did not come to 
 England, to write his letters, till seven years after 1676, the 
 period of which Mr. Fox was speaking, and that they were 
 written, concerning the contemporary ministers, a number of 
 years, as their dates show, after the Gdbal ministry had ceased 
 to exist. 
 
 The imputed agency of Clarendon in the base money 
 transactions between Charles and Louis was alluded to in 
 terms of reserve and uncertainty by Mr. Fox. The charge 
 was made in the most full and positive form by the ob- 
 server. What evidence there is on the subject has been 
 carefully examined, and is clearly stated by Mr. Heywood ; 
 and the effect of it is, not, perhaps, wholly to exculpate the 
 minister, but materially to modify the charge, though it 
 leaves still in doubt what was the fuU extent of his parti- 
 cipation. 
 
 The next controverted question which occupied so con- 
 siderable a portion of Mr. Eose's book, and occupies a much 
 larger space in Mr. Heywood's, is, whether or not James 
 intended the substitution of Popery to Protestantism, as the 
 established national religion. The author has pursued tho 
 argument round the widest extent of evidence, from docu- 
 ments and from circumstances, and does appear to have 
 
r>l4l TIITDICATION OF FOX's HI8T0ET. 
 
 come to the conclusion, witli a very preponderating proba* 
 bilitj, that James was not in the earlier part of his reign, 
 projecting anything more, in favour of the Catholic reU- 
 gion, than its complete toleration. The letters of BarUlon, 
 which have been considered and cited by Mr. Rose aa 
 affording decisive proof that this monarch designed the 
 establishment of popery, become, under the more accurate 
 examination of Mr. Heywood, very strong evidence of the 
 exact contrary ; since it is the_^ee exercise only, — the esta- 
 blished toleration, — of that religion, that they precisely and 
 repeatedly mention as James's object — and, so far as religion 
 was concerned, the king of Prance's object in affording him 
 pecuniary aids. This long argument, and the topic con- 
 nected with it, the invariable and predominant design of 
 Charles the Second and James to establish themselves in a 
 complete despotic power, lead Mr. Heywood into a series 
 of extremely curious investigations and disclosures of the 
 base characters and intrigues of these two sovereign per- 
 sonages. It is a most melancholy reflection, and it haunts 
 a thoughtful reader throughout the exhibition, that great 
 nations, the assemblage of millions of beings with minds, 
 may be prostrate under, and even worship, the authority of 
 the meanest, vilest refuse of their own nature. 
 
 But we are reminded it is time to end this article, already 
 become, we fear, tedious and tiresome, though we have 
 scarcely proceeded through half the Sergeant's performance, 
 and have hardly even alluded to one principal section, in 
 which Mr. Fox is most completely and unanswerably vin- 
 dicated against the observer's imputation of injustice to 
 Sir Patrick Hume, whose defence the right honourable 
 author alleges as the principal object in making his book. 
 Indeed the Vindicator's task is, throughout, accomplished 
 with a completeness almost beyond example ; and Mr. Pox 
 now takes his rank decidedly among the most accurate of 
 historians. We are glad of it ; and may well give ourselves 
 credit that the pleasure arises from considerations inde- 
 pendent of all pofitical partialities. A man in the observer's 
 circumstances should have perceived it to be a matter of 
 extreme delicacy to censure a work, especially a posthu- 
 mous and unfinished work, of Mr. Pox. The very least 
 that might justly be claimed in such a case was, that time 
 should be taken for the most careful examiaation of the 
 
COMPLETENESS OF THE TUfDICATION. 615 
 
 points intended to be disputed ; that some moderate degree 
 of that solicitous balanciug of evidence should be practised, 
 for which Mr. Fox himself was represented as so remark- 
 able ; that there should be a most exemplary modesty, a 
 cautious resistance of every temptation to boast and parade 
 about official accuracy ; and that whenever any advantage 
 was deemed to be gained against so strong a man, it should 
 be recollected how difficult it was to keep an advantage 
 against him when he was alive. How much the reverse of 
 this has been the observer's conduct we need not again 
 remark ; but never did presumption precipitate itself to a 
 deeper fall. 
 
 We ought not to have omitted, in the preceding para- 
 graphs, one of the most remarkable of Mr. Heywood's suc- 
 cesses. In noticing the famous bill for the preservation of 
 the person of king James, Mr. Fox suggests that there has 
 been something much resembling it in later years. Mr. 
 Eose win not allow that any such instance can be found ; 
 and yet, amidst this denial, cannot help adverting to the 
 Act of the 18th of December, 1795. Mr. Hey wood prints 
 the two Acts beside each other ; and their substance, and in 
 the most material parts the very expressions are the same. 
 
 JESSE'S SEEMONS. 
 
 Sermons on the Person amd Office of the Sedeemer, and on the Faith 
 and Practice of the Redeemed. By William Jesse, M. A. 8vo. 
 1812. 
 No literary class can be named, in which the present 
 acting persons have less respect for their predecessors, and, 
 we might say, for one another, than in that of sermon 
 writers. They are perfectly aware that — without going so 
 far back as the puritan divines, and the learned and eloquent 
 churchmen of the latter part of the seventeenth century — a 
 prodigious number of books of sermons have been published 
 within the lifetime and the memory of the elder portion of 
 readers now living. By a glance over the catalogues of two 
 or three of the London booksellers, it might probably be seen 
 that the shelves of nearly a whole room, of competent 
 dimensions for a study, might be filled by the assemblage of 
 
516 jesse'b SEBMOirS. 
 
 volumes which would be formed by single copies of all the 
 books of sermons that have been published in English, 
 within less than a hundred years past. Now with what 
 estimate do the present numerous writers of sermons regard 
 this Tast accumulation of kindred performances ? It is 
 obvious, that their own multitude of volumes cannot engage 
 so much as they wish them to do of the public attention, 
 without an almost entire dismissal, from that attention, of 
 these preceding labours. And why are they to be thus 
 consigned to neglect ? Is it deemed that books of this class 
 are necessarily transitory, through some peculiar fatality, 
 which destroys them without regard to the qualities which 
 they may possess or want ; and that therefore the reading of 
 sermons will cease, if there be not a continued supply from 
 authors who are, of course, resigned to the destiny under 
 which their works also, in their turn, are soon to perish ? 
 Or is it, that this accumulation affords really so very few 
 books that deserve to live, — so diminutive a portion of sound 
 doctrine and good writing, that absolutely the relief of an 
 insupportable destitution of religious truth and eloquence is 
 the object of the present very rapid issue of volumes of 
 sermons ? Unless the works of the very numerous former 
 contributors to this part of our literature, are regarded as 
 thus necessarily fugitive, or thus indigent of the qualities 
 indispensable to render them instructive and impressive, it 
 may be difficult to find a plausible reason for that eagerness 
 to publish volumes of sermons so manifest of late years. 
 And even then, it will remain somewhat wonderful, how so 
 very many persons have been freed from all doubt as to 
 their own competency to carry on the course of this written 
 instruction, in the best and ablest manner of those who have 
 had their day, or to furnish such reasoning and eloquence, 
 as those who have had their day are to sink into oblivion for 
 having failed to exhibit. Some of these writers have such 
 an estimate of themselves, and their predecessors, and even 
 their contemporaries, in the same department, that they will 
 confess they have not taken all the pains they might to 
 perfect their compositions. They could not in conscience 
 stay to do it, so affected were they at the view of the 
 afflictive public want of such a book as theirs. The com- 
 munity had among them only some few millions of volumes 
 of serious sermons, and were constantly receiving only a 
 
STYLE OB SEBMONS FOB THE PEOPLE. 517 
 
 few thousands more each month : and therefore who could 
 be sure that souls might not " perish for lack" of the means 
 of " knowledge," if these latest sermon writers delayed the 
 publication of their books, in order to labour them to the 
 greatest attainable fitness for conveying instruction ? 
 
 The author of the present volume has not offended in the 
 way of violent haste from the pulpit to the printing-office, 
 for these Sermons are a selection from those which " he has 
 been in the habit of writing and preaching to his parish- 
 ioners during the last twenty years;" but we question 
 whether the case wiU be found in every point so unexcep- 
 tionable. 
 
 " He wishes the reader to understand and remember, that 
 these Sermons were not written with any design to publish 
 them ; and, that they are presented to him as they were deli- 
 vered from the pulpit. If, as compositions, they are not below 
 what any one may expect to hear in a country church, and in a 
 mixed congregation of people of various ranks, it may not be 
 thought presumption in him to hope that these Sermons may be 
 more useful to the generality of readers, than compositions 
 intended for the critical eye of the learned." — P. 16. 
 
 This sounds like the language of apology, and, in some 
 degree, of humility ; but what does it virtually say ? It, 
 says, that, while there are before the public, partly in the 
 form of sermons, and partly of treatises, an immense number 
 of theological books, of which number a proportion, com-' 
 prising, in point of quantity, more than most men will ever 
 have time to read, are of excellent tendency, and were 
 matured with deliberate study, by able men, who made a 
 patient and earnest exertion to display the subjects with the 
 utmost possible clearness and force — it says that Mr. Jesse, 
 quite aware of all this, thinks there is nothing like arrogance 
 in calling on readers to employ a share of the time due to 
 such works, in perusing a volume of such sermons as he is 
 in the habit of preparing for the weekly services of his 
 parish ; — strict care being taken that, having been intended 
 only for this use, they do not undergo any improvement 
 when selected for a higher. 
 
 Not is this all. He thinks that printed instructions, 
 brought out in this manner, may even be " more useful tci 
 the generality of readers" than compositions intended for 
 Jearned and critical ones ; — not meaning, we presume, mora 
 
613 JXSSJTS SEBMOIfS. 
 
 useful tLan they would have beeu if they had contained 
 direct matters of learning and criticism ; that is too flatly 
 evident to be worth saying ; but more useful to them than 
 they would have been if the general tenor of the composition 
 had been intended to satisfy the " critical eye." Here we 
 shall be allowed to ask, what is it that the " critical eye of 
 the learned" demands in a theological composition, when 
 direct learning and criticism are out of the question? What 
 is it, but a definite general statement of the subject? "What, 
 but a lucid natural order in the series of explanations? 
 What, but perfect conception in each of the thoughts, and 
 clear expression in each of the sentences, together with such 
 a connexion in the succession of thoughts and sentences, as 
 to make them aU intelligibly and forcibly lead to the intended 
 point ? And are not these properties of a composition which 
 the critical reader requires, the very things which the "gene- 
 rality of readers" need? Is it not the first object, and a 
 most difficult one, to give those readers a clear understand- 
 ing of the subject ? And the way to do this is, to treat it 
 in such a mode of composition as a truly " critical eye" 
 would perceive to have the primary qualities of good com- 
 J)Osition. We have met with not a few occasions of indulging 
 some degree of wonder at a notion, that less careful labour 
 is necessary in writing, in proportion as the expected readers 
 are less disciplined by learning and criticism ! As if their 
 not having been accustomed to accurate thinking, rendered 
 them just so much the more capable of deriving clear ideas 
 from negligent writing. 
 
 On the whole of this matter, we think it is not easy, in 
 the present circumstances of literature, to be guilty of an 
 excess, in censuring that presumptuous contempt of higher 
 examples, ths t low valuation of people's time, and that indif- 
 ference, in part at least, to the purpose professed — their 
 instruction — which are manifested in coming on the public 
 with compositions, executed in a hasty and imperfect 
 manner, and accompanied by an avowal, in effect, that the 
 instruction of the readers was not deemed an object to make 
 it worth while to attempt any improvement in those compo- 
 sitions. It is really quite time for the writers of sermons 
 to be admonished, that when they are resolving on publica- 
 tion, they should condescend to admit such a sense of the 
 extent of their duty, as would be impressed by reflecting a 
 
MBDIATOEIAl ECOTTOMT. 519 
 
 few moments, what other sermons in tte language the pep- 
 Bons to be instructed might be reading, during the time they 
 are expected to employ in reading the volumes now to be 
 presented to them : and we cannot think a very lenient lan- 
 guage is due to writers who have never made this reflection, 
 or have evidently disdained to profit by it. 
 
 The unusual length of the preface to this volume seemed 
 to intimate that there must be something peculiar, and 
 requiring preparatory explanation, in the design or execu- 
 tion ; and we presumed that an attentive perusal of it would 
 qualify us to go forward. "We must confess, however, that 
 in more than one attentive reading, we failed to reach the 
 meaning. It is a most confused attempt to distinguish 
 between "essential truths" and " subordinate truths," in 
 the Christian religion, and to instruct ■ contemporary 
 preachers to dwell mucb more, than it is believed they do, 
 on tbe former class. These " essential truths " are limited, 
 in some undefined or ill-defined way, to " the doctrines con- 
 cerning the Person and Office of the Redeemer," those 
 doctrines being, as far as we are enabled to conjecture, so 
 Understood as to exclude, and consign to the subordinate 
 class, tbe greatest number of the truths declared in the 
 scriptures ; — so understood as to exclude doctrines which 
 must constitute much of the practical meaning of the term 
 office, as applied to the Messiah. For instance, the doc- 
 trine of justification by faith is specified as not being one 
 of the " essential truths ;" and we find in the " subordinate" 
 class the doctrine of "that great defect in our common 
 nature, as destitute of the spirit of holiness, and prone in 
 all its tendencies to earthly things," and of " our utter 
 insufficiency, without the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 to will and do anything which is spiritually good." And 
 though such " subordinate truths " are allowed to have their 
 importance, it is represented that what is essentially the 
 gospel may be eflfectually apprehended without them. 
 
 "He that rightly apprehends the personal character and 
 office of the Eedeemer, may be wise unto salvation, though he 
 be ignorant of everything else ; or, though he knew little or 
 nothing distinctly of the subordinate truths, or mistakes theii 
 meaning." — P. 6. 
 
 As if the office of the Eedeemer were something substantive 
 and absolute, instead of a relation which he has assumed to 
 
620 JESSE'S SESMOirS. 
 
 bhe human race, the nature and effect of which relation are 
 defined or explained by a combination of those doctrines 
 which would here be denominated subordinate. It is very 
 much at hazard, however, that we make any attempt at 
 stating the import of this long preface. 
 
 The reader will be freed in a good measure from this 
 difficulty of understanding, when he advances into the 
 Sermons themselves, which are on the following subjects :— 
 The Antiquity, Importance, and Truth of the Doctrine of 
 Salvation — Isaiah's Prophecy of the Saviour's Advent — 
 the Birth of Jesus Christ — Calling his name Jesus — the 
 Humility of Christ — Christ our great High Priest — the 
 scriptural Doctrine of Eedemption — a Kesurrection of the 
 Dead, the Doctrine of both the Testaments — the Eesur- 
 rection of Christ and ours equally certain — Our Saviour's 
 Ascension into Heaven — preaching Christ crucified — the 
 unchangeable Friend — the Author of eternal Salvation to 
 them that obey Him — the True Vine — the Divine Mercy, 
 and the Christian Temper and Conduct — Christian Practice 
 — Christian Charity — Doing the Will of God — the Gospel 
 hid to them that are lost. 
 
 It will be perceived, that, though there is not much spe- 
 ciality in the subjects, they are chiefly of one general cha- 
 racter ; and the selection of the Sermons, we are informed, 
 was determined by the subjects, " and not at aU by any 
 conceit of excellence in their composition." Though there 
 is a slight peculiarity in the author's view of Christianity, 
 these subjects are presented, substantially, in the same light 
 as in the ordinary ministrations of evangelical preachers. The 
 doctrines are not stated with any remarkable precision, nor 
 maintained vrith any steady process of argument. The 
 composition is indeed, for the most part, quite loose and 
 immethodical ; a succession of thoughts, connected or not 
 connected, as the case may happen — easily occurrino' to a 
 mind not accustomed to any severity of intellectual disci- 
 pline — and hastily thrown on paper just as they occurred. 
 A large proportion of them are perfectly commonplace. 
 Here and there they carry a degree of point and discrimi- 
 nation. A few of them are considerably raised and bold ; 
 and now and then they are extravagant, from carelessness 
 or from system. 
 
 The whole strain of the Sermons indicates, we think, much 
 
THEIE TA&rENESS AND INSTjmCIEITCT. 521 
 
 genuine piety and zeal, great familiarity with the scriptures 
 (quoted, however, too much in masses), and very little per- 
 sonal ostentation. The exhortations are serious and earnest, 
 and the whole language runs on in a free, inartificial manner. 
 Our great complaint is, that there is but little^ accurate, 
 sterling, useful thinking ; but little to make any reader feel 
 that he better comprehends any part of religion. There is 
 also a great sameness of sentiment through the volumei 
 And this is a natural consequence of that peculiarity we 
 have alluded to, in the mode in which he contemplates 
 revealed truth, and zealously insists that every Christian 
 instructor should apprehend and display it. The peculiarity 
 consists in a frequent express repetition, and a habitual 
 systematical observance of a principle formed on a strained 
 inference from the apostle's determination, expressed to 
 the Corinthians, " not to know anything among them save 
 Jesus Christ, and him crucified." It may be presumed 
 that all enlightened and devout readers of the Bible must 
 clearly perceive the grand pre-eminence of the doctrine of 
 a Mediator among the doctrines of that revelation ; must 
 perceive that this great truth, or rather combination of 
 truths (for it comprises in its very essence several truths 
 in detail) throws a peculiar light over the whole system of 
 moral and religious truths, and places them all in a certain 
 relation to itself; and that therefore a Christian speculator 
 must contemplate them, reason on them, and inculcate 
 them, in that light and that relation, from a conviction 
 that otherwise his view of them will be incomplete or 
 deceptive. But what Mr. Jesse insists on, is something 
 different from this. Nothing, to be sure, could well be 
 stated with less precision than his view of the subject, 
 though it is so often reverted to ; and we cannot hope to 
 make it intelligible by saying — that his principle is, that all 
 religious and moral truth, at least aU that a Christian can 
 consistently regard or teach, is in some manner formally 
 contained in, and absolutely of a piece with, the doctrine of 
 a suffering Saviour ; insomuch that no point of morals and 
 religion can with propriety be argued or enforced, otherwise 
 than as a constituent part of this comprehensive doctrine. 
 Whatever may be the precise nature and extent of the 
 principle, it aims to assert something much more than that 
 the doctrine on all moral and theological subjects should be 
 
 M M 
 
622 Ji:ssi:'g bebmoks. 
 
 BO taught, as to be strictly in coincidence with the chief 
 points in the theory of the mediatorship of Christ, so as to 
 form consistent adjuncts to that theory, and compose, 
 together with it, and in conformity to it, one wide and 
 complicated, but harmonious system. It is obvious, even 
 to Mr. Jesse, that all the vast assemblage of important 
 propositions which constitute the grand whole of moral and 
 religious truth, cannot be identical with those distinct pro- 
 positions, which enounce specifically the mediatorship of 
 Christ, or the several parts or views of that mediatorship ; 
 tut he will have all those numerous propositions so comvh- 
 stantial (if we may so express it) with these particular and 
 comparatively few propositions, that all the diversified 
 truths they express, or seem to express, shall be but modi- 
 fications or parts of the doctrine enounced in these propo- 
 sitions respecting the mediatorship. Or, at last, aU the 
 truths that are fit for Christian use must so be consubstan- 
 tial with that doctrine ; and thus all right statement of reli- 
 gious and moral truth will strictly be, in substance, preach- 
 ing Christ " crucified." We are aware that these lines of 
 ours wiU appear extremely obscure, though we may think 
 them sunbeams of light and precision compared with those 
 of our author. If they do not convey something like his 
 doctrine (we really cannot be certain of the identity), we 
 wish that either it had been better explained, or all printed 
 enlargement on it forborne. 
 
 The efiect of such a principle, in its practical observance 
 in teaching religion, wiU be, either the exclusion from 
 notice cf a great number of important truths and moral 
 maxims held forth in the comprehensive instructions of the 
 Bible, and deducible from just reasoning on its declarations; 
 or a most laborious systematic endeavour — not to exhibit 
 all the truths in harmony, on the grand basis of the 
 mediatorial economy, but — ^to force them all into one form, 
 of course to constrain some of them to seem to be different 
 truths from what they really are — if there be not too much 
 absurdity in such an expression. In either of these ways, 
 the system of religion and morals will be rendered vastly 
 narrower than the Bible, and presented to inquiring minds 
 in a form which they must abjure their most established 
 rules of right thinking in order even to understand. 
 
 LONDON: rKIKTED.BX WILUAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAilFOED STBEET 
 AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
CATALOGUE OF 
 
 BONN'S LIBRARIES, 
 
 740 Volumes, ^^158 19J. 6d. 
 
The Publishers are now issuing the Libraries in a NE W AND 
 MORE ATTRACTIVE STYLE OF BINDING. The original 
 bindings endeared to many hook-lovers by association will still be 
 kept in stock, but henceforth all orders will be executed in the New 
 binding, unless the contrary is expressly stated. 
 
 New Volumes of Standard Works in the various branches of 
 Literature are constantly being added to this Series, which is 
 already unsurpassed in respect to the number, variety, and cheapness 
 of the Works contained in it. The Publishers beg to announce the 
 following Volumes as recently issued or now in preparation : — 
 
 Goethe's Fauat. Part I. The Original Text, with Hayward's Translation 
 and Notes, carefully revised, with an Introduction and Bibliography, by C. A. Bucb- 
 heim, Ph.D., Professor of German Language and Literature at King's CpUege, 
 London. { In the Press. 
 
 Arthur Yotmg's Tour in Ireland. Edited by A. W. Hutton, Librarian, 
 National Liberal Club. iPrefaring. 
 
 Rioardo on the Priuciplea of Political Eoonomy and Taxation. Edited 
 
 with Notes by E. C. K. Conner, M.A., Lecturer, University College, LiverpooL 
 
 [Seef. ig. 
 
 Schopenhauer's Essays. Selected and Translated. By E. Belfort Bax. 
 
 [Seep.g. 
 
 Voltaire's Tales. Translated by R. B. Boswell. Vol. I. y. 6d. {Seef. 8. 
 
 Count Qrammont's Memoirs of the Court of Charles II. With the 
 
 Boscobel Tracts, &c. New Edition. 31. 6d. \Seef. 5. 
 
 Gray's Letters. New Edition. Edited by the Rev. D. C. Tovey, M.A. 
 
 [/« the press. 
 
 Schools and Masters of Pence. By C. Egerton Castle. New Edition. 
 
 With numerous Illustrations. [/« the press. 
 
 Montaigne's Essays. Cotton's Translation, revised by W. C. Ilazlitt. New 
 
 Edition. 3 Vols. [In the press. 
 
 Descartes' Principal Works. Edited by Professor G. Croom Robertson 
 
 and Thomas Whittaker. 2 V0I5. 
 Hartley Coleridge's Essays and Marginalia. Edited by the Lord Chief 
 Justice. [Preparing. 
 
 Hoffmann's Works. Translated by Lieut.-Colonel Ewing. Vol. II. 
 
 [/» the press. 
 
 Bohn's Handbooks of Games. New enlarged edition. In 2 vols. 
 
 [Sup. 21. 
 
 Vol. I.— Table Games, by Major-General Drayson, R.A., R. F. Green, and 'Berkeley.' 
 II.— Card Games, by Dr. W. Pole, F.R.S., R. F. Green, 'Berkeley, and Baxter- 
 Wray. 
 
 Bohn's Handbooks of Athletic Sports. 8 Vols. [See f. 21. 
 
 For BOHNS SELECT LIBRARY, seep. 23. 
 
November, 1891. 
 
 BOHN'S LIBRARIES. 
 
 STANDARD LIBRARY. 
 
 338 Vols, at 3j. 6d, eacht excepting those marked otherwise, (59/, i*js. 6d.) 
 
 ADDISON'S Works. Notes of Bishop 
 Hurd. Short Memoir, Portrait, and 8 
 Plates of Medals. 6 vols. 
 
 This is the most complete edition of 
 Addison's Works issued. 
 
 AI-FIERI'S Tragediea. la English 
 Verse. With Notes, Argnments, and In- 
 troduction, by E. A. Bowring, C.B, 2 vols. 
 
 AMERICAN POETRY. — See Poetry 
 0/ America, 
 
 BACON'S Moral and Historical 
 
 Works, including Essays, Apophthegms, 
 Wisdom of the Ancients, New Atlantis, 
 Henry VIl., Henry VIII,, Elizabeth, 
 Hemy Prince of Wales, History of Great 
 Britam, Julius Caesar^ and Augustus Csesar. 
 With Critical and Biographical Introduc- 
 tion and Notes by J. Devey, M.A. Por- 
 trait. 
 
 — See also Philosophical Library, 
 
 BAXI.ADS AND SONOS of the Pea- 
 santry of England, from Oral Recitation, 
 private MSS., Broadsides, &c. Edit, by 
 R. Bell. 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 Selections. With Notes and Introduction 
 by Leigh Hunt. 
 
 BECKMANN (J.) History of Inven- 
 tions, ^ Discoveries, and Origins. With 
 Portraits of Beckmann and James Watt. 
 2 vols. 
 
 BELL (Robert).— .fM Ballads^ Chaucer^ 
 Green. 
 
 BOSWELL'S Life of Johnson, with 
 the TOUR in the HEBRIDES and 
 JOHNSONIANA. New Edition, with 
 Notes and Appendices, by the Rev. A. 
 Napier, M.A., Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, Vicar of Holkham, Editor of the 
 Cambridge Edition of the ' Theological 
 Works of Barrow.' With Frontispiece to 
 each voL 6 vols. 
 
 BREMER'S (FrederUca) Work&. 
 
 Trans, by M. Howitt. Portrait. 4 vc's. 
 
 BRINE (B. ten) . Early English 
 
 Literature (to Wiclif). By Bernhard ten 
 Brink. Trans, by Prof. H. M. Kennedy. 
 
 BROWNE'S (Sir Thomas) Works. 
 
 Edit, by S. Wilkin, with Dr. Johnson's 
 Life of Browne. Portrait. 3 vols. 
 
 BURKE'S Works. 6 vols. 
 
 Speeches on the Impeachment 
 
 ofWarren Hastings ; and Letters. 2 vols. 
 
 Life, By Sir J. Prior. Portrait. 
 
 BURNS (Robert). Life of. By J. G. 
 
 Lockhart, D.C.L. A new and enlarged 
 edition. With Notes and Appendices by 
 W. Scott Douglas. Portrait. 
 
 BUTLER'S (Bp.) Analogy of Reli- 
 gion, Natural and Revealed, to the Con- 
 stitution and Course of Nature ; with Two 
 Dissertations on Identity and Virtue, and 
 Fifteen Sermons. With Introductions, 
 Notes, and Memoir. Portrait. 
 
 CAMOEN'S Luslad, or the Discovery 
 of India. An Epic Poem. Trans, from 
 the Portuguese, with Dissertation, His- 
 torical Sketch, and Life, by W. J. Mickle* 
 5th edition. 
 
 CARAFAS (The) of MaddalonL 
 
 Naples under Spanish Dominion. Trans, 
 from the German of Alfred de Reumont. 
 Portrait of Massaniello. 
 
 CARREL. The Connter-Re volution 
 
 in England for the Re-establishment of 
 Popery under Charles^ II. and James II., 
 by Armand Carrel ; with Fox's History (H 
 James II. and Lord Lonsdale's Memoir of 
 James II. Portrait of Carrel. 
 
 CARRUTHERS. — .?<?« Po^tt in lllut- 
 
 trated Library, 
 
 CART'S Dante. The Vision of Hell, 
 Purgatory, and Paiadise. Trans, by Rev. 
 H. F. CaiVi M:.A. With Life, Chronolo- 
 gical View of his Ag^ Notes, and Index 
 of Proper Names. Portrait. 
 
 This is the authentic edition, containing 
 Mr. Cary*s last corrections, with additions 
 notes. 
 
BOHirS LIBRARIES. 
 
 CELUm (Benvenato). Memoirs of| 
 
 by himself. With Notes of G. P. Carpani. 
 Trans, by T. Roscoe. Portrait. 
 
 CERVANTES' Galatea. A Pastoral 
 Romance. Trans, by G. W. J. Gyll. 
 
 Exemplary Novels. Trans, by 
 
 W. K. Kelly. 
 
 Don Quixote de la Manclia. 
 
 Motteux's Translation revised. With Lock- 
 hart's Life and Notes. 2 vols. 
 
 CHAUCER'S Poetical 'Works. With 
 Poems formerly attributed to him. With a 
 Memoir, Introductionj Notes, and a GIos- 
 saryj by R. Bell. Inproved edition, with 
 Preliminary Essay by Rev. W. W. Skeat, 
 M.A Portrait. 4 vols. 
 
 CLASSIC TALES, containing Rasselas, 
 Vicar of Wakefield, Gulliver's Travels, and 
 The Sentimental Journey. 
 
 COLERIDGE'S (S. T.} Friend. A Series 
 of Kssays on Morals, Politics, and Reli- 
 gion, Portrait. 
 
 - Aids to Reflection. Confessions 
 
 of an Inquiring Spirit ; and Essays on 
 Faith and the Common Prayer-book. New 
 Edition, revised. 
 
 Table-TaUc and Omnlana. By 
 
 T. Ashe, B.A. 
 
 Lectnres on Shakespeare and 
 
 other Poets. Edit, by T. Ashe, B.A. 
 
 Containing the lectnres taken down in 
 1811-12 by J. P. Collier, and those de- 
 livered at Bristol in 1813. 
 
 Blogrraphla Literarla; or, Bio- 
 graphical Sketches of my Literary Life 
 and Opinions ; with Two Lay Sermons. 
 
 Miscellanies, Esthetic and 
 
 Literary ; to which is added, The Thkory 
 OP Life. Collected and arranged by 
 T. Ashe, B.A. 
 
 COMMINES.— i'w Philip. 
 
 CONDE'S History of the Dominion 
 
 of the Arabs in _ Spain. Trans, by Mis. 
 Foster. Portrait of Abderahmen ben 
 Moavia, 3 vols. 
 
 CCWPER'SCompIeteWorks, Poems, 
 
 Correspondence, and Translations. Edit, 
 with Memoir by R. Seuthey, 45 En- 
 gravings. 8 vols. 
 
 COXE'S Memoirs of the Dnke at 
 
 Marlborough. With his original Corre- 
 spondence, ^ from family records at Blen- 
 heim. Revised edition. Portraits. 3 vols, 
 •»* An Atlas of the plans of Marl- 
 b(»rough's campaigns, 4to. xof. &/. 
 
 COXE'S History of the House of 
 
 Austria. From the Foundation of the 
 Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburgh to 
 the Death of Leopold II., 1218-1702 Bv 
 Archdn. Coxe. With Continuation from 
 the Accession of Francis I. to the Revolu- 
 tion of 1848. 4 Porlraite. 4 vols. 
 
 CUNNINGHAM'S Lives of the most 
 Eminent British Painters. With Notes 
 and 16 fresh Lives by Mrs. Heaton. 3 vols. 
 
 DEFOE'S Novels and MlsceUaneons 
 Works. With Prefaces and Notes, in- 
 eluding those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 
 Portrait. 7 vols, 
 
 DE LOLME'S Constitution of Eng. 
 
 land, in which it is compared both with the 
 Republican form of Government and the 
 other Monarchies of Europe. Edit., with 
 Life and Notes, by J. Macgregor. 
 
 DUNLOP'S History of Fiction. New 
 
 Edition, revised. By Henry Wilson. 
 2 vols., 5J. each. 
 
 EDGEWORTH'S Stories for Chil- 
 
 dren. With 8 Illustrations by L. Speed. 
 
 ELZE'S Shakespeare.— .?« Shakespeare 
 EMERSON'S Works. 3 vols. 
 
 Vol. I. —Essays, Lectnres, and Poems. 
 
 Vol. II.— English Traits, Nature, and 
 Conduct of Life. 
 
 Vol. III.— Society and Solitude— Letters 
 and Social Aims — Miscellaneous Papers 
 (hitherto uncollected)— May-Day, &c 
 
 FOSTER'S (John) Life and Corre- 
 spondence. Edit, by J. E. Ryland. Por- 
 trait. 2 vols. 
 
 Lectures at Broadmead Chapel. 
 
 Edit, by J. E. Ryland. 2 vols. 
 
 Critical Essays contributed to 
 
 the ' Eclectic Review,' Edit, by J. E, 
 Ryland. 2 vols. 
 
 Essays : On Decision of Charac- 
 ter ; on a Man's writing Memoirs of Him- 
 self; ^on the epithet Romantic; on the 
 aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical 
 Religion. 
 
 Essays on the Evils of Popular 
 
 Ignorance, and a Discourse on the Propa- 
 gation of Christianity in India. 
 
 Essay on the Improvemen of 
 
 Time, with Notes of Sermons and other 
 Pieces. 
 
 Fosteriana : selected from periodical 
 
 papers, edit, by H. G. Bohn. 
 
 FOX (Rt. Hon. C. J.)—Sa Caml. 
 
STANDARD LIBRARY, 
 
 aiBBON*S Decline and Fall of the 
 
 Roman Empire. Complete and unabridged, 
 with variorum Notes ; including those of 
 Guizot, Wenck, Niebuhr, Hugo, Neander, 
 and others. 7 vols. 2 Maps and Portrait. 
 
 GOETHE'S Worka. Trans, into English 
 by E. A. Bowring, C.B., Anna Swanwick, 
 Sir Walter Scott, &c. &c. 14 vols. 
 
 Vols. I. and II. — Autobiography and An- 
 nals. Portrait. 
 
 Vol. JII.— Faust. Complete. 
 
 Vol. IV. — Novels and Tales : containing 
 Elective Affinities, Sorrows of Werther, 
 The German Emigrants, The Good Wo- 
 men, and a Nouvelette. 
 
 Vol. V. — Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice- 
 ship. 
 
 vol. VI. — Conversations with Eckerman 
 and Soret. 
 
 Vol. VII. — Poems and Ballads in the ori- 
 ginal Metres, including Hermann and 
 Dorothea. 
 
 Vol. VIII.— G5tz von Berlichingen, Tor- 
 quato Tasso, Egmpnt, Iphigenia, Clavigo, 
 Wayward Lover, and Fellow Culprits, 
 
 Vol. IX. — Wilhelm Meister's Travels. 
 Complete Edition. 
 
 Vol. X. — Tour in Italy. Two Parts. 
 And Second Residence in Rome. 
 
 Vol. XI, — Miscellaneous Travels, Letters 
 from Switzerland^ Campaign in France, 
 Siege of Mainz, and Rhine Tour. 
 
 Vol. XII. — Early and Miscellaneous 
 Letters, including Letters to his Mother, 
 with Biography and Notes, 
 
 Vol. XIII. — Correspondence with Zelter, 
 
 Vol. XIV.- Reineke Fox, West-Eastern 
 Divan and Achilleid. Translated in 
 original metres by A. Rogers. 
 
 Correspondence with SchlUer. 
 
 2 vols. — See Schiller, 
 
 — Faxisti — See Collegiate Series. 
 
 GOLDSMITH'S Works, 5 vols. 
 
 Vol. I. — Life, Vicar of Wakefield, Essays, 
 and Letters. 
 
 Vol. II. — Poems, Plays, Bee, Cock Lane 
 Ghost. 
 
 Vol. III.— The Citizen of the World, 
 Polite Learning in Europe. 
 
 Vol. IV. — Biographies, Criticisms, Later 
 
 Vol. v.— Prefaces, Natural History, 
 Letters, Goody Two-Shoes, Index, 
 
 GRAMMONT (Count). Memoirs of 
 
 the Court of Charles II. With the Bos- 
 cobel Tracts, &c. New Edition. 
 
 GREENE, MARLOWE, and BEN 
 
 JONSON (Poems oO- With Notes and 
 Memoirs by R, Bell. 
 
 GREGORY'S (Dr.) The Evidences^ 
 
 Doctrines, and Duties of the Christian Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 GRIMM'S Household Tales. With the 
 Original Notes. Trans, by Mrs. A. Hunt. 
 Introduction by Andrew Lang, M.A, z 
 vols. 
 
 GUIZOT'S History of Representative 
 
 Government in Europe, Trans, by A. R. 
 Scoble. 
 
 English Revolution of 1640. From 
 
 the Accession of Charles I. to his Death. 
 Trans, by W. Hazlitt. Portrait. 
 
 History of Civilisation. From the 
 
 Roman Empire to the French Revolution* 
 Trans, by W. Hazlitt. Portraits. 3 vols, 
 
 HALL'S (Rev. Robert) Works and 
 
 Remains. Memoir by Dr. Gregory and 
 Essay by J. Foster, Portrait. 
 
 HAUFF'S Tales. The Caravan— The 
 Sheikh of Alexandria — The Inn in the 
 Spessart. Translated by Prof. S. Mendel. 
 
 HAWTHORNE'S Tales. 3 vols. 
 
 Vol. I.— Twice-told Tales, and the Snow 
 Image. 
 
 Vol. II. — Scarlet Letter, and the House 
 with Seven Gables. 
 
 Vol.-III. — Transformation, and Blithe- 
 dale Romance. 
 
 HAZLITT'S (W.) W^orks, 7 vols. 
 
 Table-Talk. 
 
 The Literature of the Age of 
 
 Elizabeth and Characters of Shakespeare's 
 Plays. 
 
 English Poets and English Comle 
 
 Writers. 
 
 The Plain Speaker. Opinions on 
 
 Books, Men, and Things. 
 
 Ronnd Table. Conversations _ of 
 
 James Northcote, R.A. ; Characteristics. 
 
 Sketches and Essays, an^ Winter- 
 slow. 
 
 Spirit of the Age: or, Contem- 
 porary Portraits. New Edifion, by W. 
 Carew Hazlitt. 
 
 HEINE'S Poems. Translated in the 
 original Metres, with Life by E. A. Bow^ 
 ring, C.B. 
 
 Travel-Pictures. The Tour in the 
 
 Harz, Norderney, and Book of Ideas, to- 
 gether with the Romantic School. Trans, 
 by F. Storr. With Maps and Appendices. 
 
 HOFFMANN'S Works. The Serapion 
 Brethren, Vol. I. Trans, by Lt.-Col. 
 Ewing. Wol. II, in the Press, 
 
 HOOFER'S (G.) Waterloo : Thp 
 
 Downfall of the First Napoleon : a His- 
 tory of the Campaign of 1815. By CSeorge 
 Hooper. With Maps and Plans. New 
 Edition, revised. 
 
BONN'S LIBRARIES. 
 
 HUGO'S (Victor) Dramatic Works; 
 
 Hemani — RuyBI^ — TheKine's Diversion. 
 Translated by Mrs. Newton Crosl^id and 
 F. L. Slous. 
 
 Foems, cliiefly Lyrical. Collected by 
 
 H. L. Willims. 
 
 HUNGARY: Its History and Revo- 
 lution, with Memoir of Kossuth. Portrait. 
 
 HUTCHINSON (Colonel), memoirs 
 of. By his Widow, with her Autobio- 
 graphy, and the Siege of Lathom House. 
 Portrait. 
 
 IRVING'S (Washington) Complete 
 
 Works. 15 vols. 
 — Life and Letters, By his Nephew, 
 Pierre E. Irving. With Index and a 
 Portrait, s vols. 
 
 JAMES'S (Q. F. R.) Lifb of Richard 
 
 Cceur de Lion. Portraits of Richard and 
 Philip Augustus. 2 vols. 
 LoTils XrV. Portraits. 3 vols. 
 
 JAMESON (Mrs.) Shakespeare's 
 Heroines. Characteristics of Women. By 
 Mrs. Jameson. 
 
 JEAN PAUL.— .S« Richter. 
 
 JOHNSON'S Lives of the Poets. 
 
 Edited, with Notes, by Mrs. Alexander 
 Napier. And an Introduction by Pro- 
 fessor J. W. Hales, M.A. 3 vols. 
 
 JONSON (Ben). Tooms ot^—See Greene. 
 
 JOSEPHUS (Flavius), The Works of. 
 
 Whiston's Translation. Revised by Rev. 
 A. R. Shilleto, M.A. With Topographical 
 and Geographical Notes by Colonel Sir 
 C. W. Wilson, K.C.B. 5 vols. 
 
 JUNIUS'S Letters. With Woodfall's 
 Notes. An Essay on the Authorship. Fac- 
 similes of Handwriting. 3 vols. 
 
 LA FONTAINE'S Fables. In English 
 Verse, with Essay on the Fabulists. Bv 
 Elizur Wright. 
 
 LAMARTINE'S The Girondists, or 
 
 Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the 
 French Revolution. Trans, by H. T. 
 Ryde. Portraits of Robespierre, Madame 
 Roland, and Charlotte Corday. 3 vols. 
 — ;- The Restoration of Monarchy 
 in France (a Sequel to The Girondists). 
 5 Portraits. 4 vols. 
 
 The French Revolution of 1848. 
 
 - Portraits. 
 
 I.AMB'S (Charles) EUa and Ellana. 
 
 Complete Edition. Portrait. 
 
 LAMB'S (Charles) Speclmena of 
 English Dramatic Poets of the time of 
 Elizabeth. With Notes and the Extracts 
 from the Garrick Plays. 
 
 Talfonrd's Letters of Charles 
 
 Lamb. New Edition, by W. Carew 
 Hazlitt. 3 vols. 
 
 LANZI'S History of Fainting in 
 
 Italy, from the Period of the Revival of 
 the Fine Arts to the End of the iSth 
 Century. With Memoir and Portraits, 
 Trans, by T. Roscoe. 3 vols. 
 
 LAPFENBERG'S England nnder the 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Kings. Trans, by B, Thorpe, 
 F.S.A, 2 vols. 
 
 LESSING'S Dramatic Works. Com- 
 plete. By E. Bell, M.A. With Memoir 
 by H. Zimmem. Portrait. 2 vols. 
 
 Laokoon, Dramatic Notes, and 
 
 Representation of Death by the Ancients. 
 Trans, by E. C. Beasley and Helen 
 Zimmem. Frontispiece. 
 
 LOCEE'S Philosophical Works, con- 
 taining Human Understanding.Controversy 
 with Bishop of Worcester, Malebranche's 
 Opinions, Natural Philosophy, Reading 
 and Study. With Introduction, Analysis, 
 and Notes, by J. A. St. John, Portrait. 
 2 vols. 
 
 — ; Life and Letters, with Extracts from 
 his Common-place Books. By Lord King. 
 
 LOCKHART (J. Qi.)—See Bums. 
 
 LUTHER'S Table-Talk. Trans, by W. 
 Hazlitt. With Life by A. Chalmers, and 
 Luther's Catechism. Portrait after 
 Cranach. 
 
 Antobiography.^» Michelet. 
 
 MACHIAVELLI'S History of Flo- 
 rence, The Prince, Savonarola, Historical 
 Tracts, and Memoir. Portrait. 
 
 MARLOWE, Foems at.—Set Greent. 
 
 MARTINEAU'S (Harriet) History 
 
 of England (including History of the Peace) 
 from 1800-1846, 5 vols, 
 
 MEN Z EL'S History of (Germany, 
 
 from the Earliest Period to the Crimean 
 War, Portraits, 3 vols. 
 
 MICHELET'S Antoblography of 
 
 Luther. Trans, by W, Hazhtt. With 
 Notes, 
 
 The French Revolution to the 
 
 Fhght of the King in 1791, Frontispiece, 
 
 MIGNET'S The French Revolution, 
 
 from 1789 to 1814. Portrait of Napoleon! 
 
STANDARD LIBRARY. 
 
 nULTOITS Prose Works. With Pre- 
 face, Frelinunary Remarks by J._ A. St. 
 John, and Index, 5 vols. Portraits. 
 
 — Poetical Works. With 120 Wood 
 Engravings. 2 vols. 
 
 MITFORD'S (Miss) Our Tillage. 
 
 Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery. 
 
 2 Engravings. 2 vols. 
 
 MOUERE'S Dramatic Works. In 
 English Prose, hy C. H. Wall. With a 
 Life and a Portrait. 3 vols. 
 
 ' It is not too much to say that we have 
 here probably as good a translation cX 
 Motive as can be given.* — Academy, 
 
 MONTAGrU. Letters and Works of 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lord 
 Whamcliffe's Third Edition. Edited by 
 W. Moy Thomas. New and revised 
 edition. With steel plates. 2 vols. 51. 
 each. 
 
 MONTESQXnEU'S Spirit of Laws. 
 
 Revised Edition, with D'Alembert's Analy'- 
 sis, Notes, and Memoir. 2 vols. 
 
 NEANDER ^Br. A.) History of the 
 
 Christian Religion and Church. Trans, by 
 J. Torrey. With Short Memoir. 10 vols. 
 
 Life of Jesus Christ, In its His- 
 torical Connexion and Development. 
 
 The Planting and Training of 
 
 the Christian Church by the Apostlcfs. 
 With the Antignosticus, or Spirit of Ter- 
 tullian. Trans, by J. E. Ryland. 2 vols. 
 
 Lectures on the History of 
 
 Christian Dogmas. Trans, by J. £. Ry- 
 land. 2 vols. 
 
 Memorials of Christian Life In 
 
 the Early and Middle Ages; including 
 Light in Dark Places. Trans, by J. E. 
 Ryland. 
 
 NORTH'S Lives of the Right Hon. 
 Francis North, Baron Guildford, the Hon. 
 Sir Dudley North, and the Hon. and Rev. 
 Dr. John North. By the Hon. Roger 
 North, EditedbyA. Jessopp,D.D. With 
 
 3 Portraits. 3 vols. 3J. 6d. each. 
 'Lovers of good literature will rejoice at 
 
 the appearance of a new, handy, and com- 
 plete edition of so justly famous a book, 
 and will congratulate themselves that it 
 has found so competent and skilful an 
 editor as Dr. Jessopp.' — Times. 
 
 OCKLET (S.) History of the Sara- 
 cens and their Conquests in Syria^ Persia, 
 and Egypt. Comprising the Lives of 
 Mohammed and his Successors to the 
 Death of Abdalmelik, the Eleventh Caliph. 
 By Simon Ockley, B.D., Portrait of Mo- 
 hammed. 
 
 PASCAL'S Thoughts. Translated from 
 the Text of M, Auguste Molinier by 
 C. Kegan Paul. 3rd edition. 
 
 PERCY'S Rellques of Ancient Eng- 
 lish Poetry, consisting of Ballads, Songs, 
 and other Pieces of our earlier Poets, with 
 some few of later date. With Essay on 
 Ancient Minstrels, and Glossary. 2 vols. 
 
 PHILIP DE COMMINES. Memoirs 
 
 of. Containing the Histories of Louis XI. 
 and Charles VIII., and Charies the Bold, 
 Duke of Burgundy. With the History 01 
 Louis XI., by Jean de Troyes. Trans- 
 lated, with a Life and Notes, by A. R. 
 Scoble. Portraits. 2 vols. 
 
 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. Translated, with 
 Notes and Life^ by A, Stewart, M.A., 
 late Fellow of Tnnity College, Cambridge, 
 and G. Long, M.A. 4 vols. 
 
 POETRY OF AIOERICA. Selections 
 from One Hundred Poets, from 1776 to 
 1876. With Introductory Review, anci 
 Specimens of Negro Melody, by W. J. 
 Linton. Portrait of W. Whitman. 
 
 RACINE'S (Jean) Dramatic Works. 
 
 A metrical English version, with Bio- 
 graphical notice. By R. Brace Boswell,, 
 M.A. Oxon. 2 vols. 
 
 RANEE (L.) History of the Fopetr^ 
 
 their Church and State, and their Conflicts 
 with Protestantism in the i6th and i^th 
 Centuries. Trans, by E. Foster. Portraits.- 
 3 vols. 
 '— History of Servia. Trans, by Mrs. 
 Kerr. To which is added, The Slave Pro- 
 vinces of Turkey, by Cyprien Robert, 
 
 History of the Latin and Teu- 
 tonic Nations. 1494-15x4. Trans, bjl 
 P. A. Ashworth, translator of Dr. Gneist S" 
 'History of the English Constitution.' 
 
 REUMONT (Alfred de).^^^; Carafas, 
 
 REYNOLDS' (Sir J.) Literary Works. 
 
 With Memoir and Remarks by H. W« 
 Beechy. a vols. 
 
 RICHTER (Jean Panl). Levana, 
 
 a Treatise on Education ; together with the 
 Autobiography, and a short Memoir. 
 
 — Flower. Fmlt, and Thorn Fiecesy 
 
 or the Wedded Life, Death, and Marriage 
 
 of Siebenkaes. Translated by Alex. Ewing. 
 
 The only complete English translation. 
 
 ROSCOE'S (W.) Life of Leo X^ with 
 Notes, Historical Documents, and Disser^ 
 tation on Lucretia Borgia. 3 Portraits. 
 2 vols. 
 
 Lorenzo de' Medici, called 'The 
 
 Magnificent,' with Cbpjnight Notes, 
 Poems, Letters, &c. With Memoir of 
 Roscoe and Portrait of Lorenzo. 
 
 RUSSIA, History of, from the 
 
 earliest Period to the Crimean War. By 
 W. K. Kelly. 3 Portraits. 2 vols. 
 
BONN'S LIBRARIES, 
 
 SCHILLER'S WorkB. 7 vols. 
 
 Vol. I.— History of the Thirty Years'War, 
 Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A. Portr^t. 
 
 Vol. II.— History of the Revolt in the 
 Netherlands, the Trials of Counts Egmont 
 and Horn, the Siege of Antwerp, and the 
 Disturbance of France preceding the Reign 
 of Henry IV. Translated by Rev. A. J. W. 
 Morrison and L. Dora Schmitz. 
 
 Vol. III.— Don Carlos. R. D. Boylan 
 —Mary Stuart. Mellish — Maid of Or- 
 leans. Anna Swanwick — Eride of Mes- 
 sina. A. Lodge, M.A. Together with the 
 Use of the Chorus in Tragedy (a short 
 Essay). Engravings. 
 
 These Dramas are all translated in metre. 
 
 Vol. IV. — Robbers — Fiesco — Love and 
 Intri^e — Demetrius — Ghost Seer — Sport 
 of Divinity. 
 
 The Dramas in this volume are in prose. 
 
 Vol. v.— Poems. E. A. Bowring, C.B. 
 
 Vol. VI.— Essays, iEsthetical and Philo- 
 sophical, including the Dissertation on the 
 Connexion between the Animal and Spiri- 
 tual in Man. 
 
 Vol. VII. — Wallenstein's Camp. J. 
 Churchill. — Piccolomini and Death of 
 Wallenstein. S. T. Coleridge.— William 
 Tell. Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., LL.D. 
 
 SCHILLER and GOETHE. Corre- 
 spondence between, from A.D. X794-Z805. 
 Trans, by L. Dora Schmitz. z vols. 
 
 SCHLEGEL (F.) Lectures on the 
 
 Philosophy of Life and the Philosophy of 
 Language. Trans, by A. J. W. Morrison, 
 
 The History of Literature, Ancient 
 
 and Modem. 
 
 The Philosophy of History. With 
 
 Memoir and Portrait. Trans, by J. B. 
 Robertson. 
 
 '—— Modern History, with the Lectures 
 entitled Ceesar and_ Alexander, and The 
 Beginning of our History. Translated by 
 L. Purcell and R. H. Whitelock. 
 
 •^— Esthetic and MiBcellaneon« 
 Works, containing Letters on Christian 
 Art, Essay on Gothic Architecture, Re- 
 marks on the Romance Poetry of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, on Shakspeare, the Limits of the 
 Beautiful, and on the Language and Wis- 
 dom of the Indians. By E. J. MUlington. 
 
 BCHLEGEL (A. W.) Dramatic Art 
 
 and Literature. By J. Black. With Me- 
 moir by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison. Portrait. 
 
 SCHUMANN (Robert), His Life and 
 Works. By A. Reissmann. Trans, by 
 A. L. Alger. 
 
 •~— Early Letters. Translated by May 
 Herbert. With Preface by Sir G. Grove. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S Dramatic Art. 
 
 The Hibtory and Character of Shakspeare's 
 Plays. By Dr. H. Ulrici. Trans, by L. 
 Dora Schmitz. s vols. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE (William). A 
 Literary Biography by Karl Elze, Ph.D., 
 LL.D. Translated by L. Dora Schmitz. sj. 
 
 SHERIDAN'S Dramatic WorkB. With 
 
 Memoir- Portrait (after Reynolds). 
 
 SISMOITDI'S History of the Litera- 
 ture of the South of Europe. Trans, by 
 T. Roscoe. Portraits. 2 vols. 
 
 SMITH'S (Adam) Theory of Moral 
 
 Sentiments ; with Essay on the First For- 
 mation of Languages, and Critical Memoir 
 by Dugald Stewart. 
 See Economic Library, 
 
 SMYTH'S (Professor) Lectnres on 
 Modem History; from the Irruption of tlie 
 Northern Nations to the close c^ the Ameri- 
 can Revolution. 2 vols. 
 
 Lectures on the French Revolu- 
 tion. With Index. 2 vols. 
 
 SOUTHEY.— ^^^ Cmvper^ Wesley^ and 
 
 {Jllustrated Library) Nelson, 
 
 STURM'S Morning Commnnlngs 
 with CJod, or Devotional Meditations for 
 Every Day. Trans, by W.Johnstone, M.A. 
 
 SULLY. Memoirs of the Doke of, 
 
 Prime Minister to Henry the Great. With 
 Notes and Historical Introduction. 4 Por- 
 traits. 4 vols. 
 
 TAYLOR'S (Bishop Jeremy) Holy 
 Living and Dying, with Prayers, contmn- 
 ing the Whole Duty of a Christian and the 
 ^irts of Devotion fitted to all Occasions. 
 Portrait. 
 
 TEN BRINK.— 5^^* Brink, 
 
 THIERRY'S Conquest of England by 
 
 the Normans ; its Causes, and its Conse- 
 quences in England and the Continent. 
 By W. Hazlitt. With short Memoir. 2 Por- 
 traits. 2 vols. 
 
 ULRICI (Dr.)^^« Shakespeare, 
 
 VASARI. Livesof the most Eminent 
 
 Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. By 
 Mrs. J. Foster, with selected Notes. Por- 
 trait. 6 vols., Vol. VI. being an additional 
 Volume of Notes by Dr, J. P. Richter. 
 
 VOLTAIRE'S Tales. Translated by 
 R. B. Boswell. Vol. L, containing *Ba- 
 bouc,' Memnon, Candide, L'Ingenu, and 
 otVer Tales. 
 
 WERNER'S Templars in Cyprus. 
 
 Trans, by E. A. M. Lewis. 
 
 WESLEY, the Life of, and the Rise 
 
 and Progress of Methodism. By Robert 
 Southey. Portrait, ^s. 
 
 WHEATLEY. A Rational ninstra- 
 
 tion of the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 YOUNG (Arthur) Travels in France. 
 
 Edited by Miss Betham Edwards, With 
 a Portrait. 
 
HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARIES. 
 
 HISTORICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 22 Volumes at Jj. each, (5I. loj. per set.) 
 
 EVELYN'S Diary and Correapond- 
 
 dence, with the Private Correspondence of 
 Charles I. and Sir Edward Nicholas, and 
 between Sir Edward Hyde (Earl of Claren- 
 don) and Sir Richard Browne. Edited from 
 the Original MSS. by W. Bray, F.A.S. 
 4 vols. 4S Engravings (after Vandyke, 
 Lely, Kneller, and Jamieson, &c.). 
 
 N.B. — This edition contains 130 letters 
 from Evelyn and his wife, printed by per- 
 misiiion, and contained in no other edition. 
 
 PEPYS' Diary and Correspondence. 
 
 With Life and Notes, by Lord Braybrooke. 
 With Appendix containing additional 
 Letters and Index. 4 vols., with 31 En- 
 
 f ravings (after Vandyke, Sir P. Lely, 
 [olbein, Kneller, &c.). 
 N.B. — This is a reprint of Lord Bray- 
 brooke's fourth and last edition, containing 
 all his' latest notes and corrections, the 
 copyright of the publishers. 
 
 JESSE'S Memoirs of tbc Court of 
 
 England under the Stuarts, including the 
 Protectorate. 3 vols. With Index and 42 
 Portraits (after Vandyke, Lely, &c.), 
 
 Memoirs of the Pretenders and 
 
 their Adherents. 6 Portraits. 
 
 NU GENT'S (Lord) Memorials of 
 
 Hampden, his Party and Times. With 
 Memoir. 12 Portraits (after Vandyke 
 and others). 
 
 STRICKLAND'S (A^nes) Lives of the 
 Queens of England from the Norman 
 Conc^uest. From authentic Documents, 
 public and private. 6 Portraits. 6 vols. 
 
 Life of Mary Queen of Scots. 
 
 2 Portraits, 2 vols. 
 
 Lives of the Tudor and Stuart 
 
 Princesses, With 2 Portraits. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 17 Vols, at ^s, each^ excepting those marked otherwise, (3/. i^s.perset,) 
 
 BACON'S Novum Organum and Ad- 
 vancement of Learning. With Notes by 
 J. Devey, M.A. 
 
 BAX. A Handbook of the History 
 
 of Philosophy, for the use of Students. 
 By E. Belfort Bax, Editor of Kant's 
 ' Prolegomena.' 
 COMTE'S Philosophy of the Sciences. 
 An Exposition -of the Principles of the 
 Cours de Philosophie Positive, By G. H. 
 Lewes, Author of ' The Life of Goethe.' 
 
 DRAPER (Dr. J. W.) A History of 
 
 the Intellectual Development of Europe. 
 2 vols. 
 
 HEGEL'S Philosophy of History. By 
 
 J. Sibree, M.A. 
 
 KANT'S Critique of Pure Reason. 
 
 By J. M. D. Meiklejohn. 
 Prolegomena and Metaphysical 
 
 Foundations of Natural Science, with Bio- 
 graphy and Memoir by E. Belfort Bax. 
 Portrait. 
 
 LOGIC, or the Science of Inference. 
 
 A Popular Manual. By J. Devey. 
 
 MILLER (Professor). History Philo- 
 sophically Illustrated, from the Fall of the 
 Roman Empire to the French Revolution. 
 With Memoir. 4 vols. 3;. ^d. each. 
 
 SCHOPENHAITER on the Fourfold 
 
 Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, 
 and on the Will in Nature. Trans, from 
 the German. 
 
 Essays. Selected and Translated by 
 
 E. Belfort Bax. 
 
 SPINOZA'S Chief Works. Trans, with 
 Introduction by R. H. M. Elwes. 2 vols. 
 
 Vol. I. — Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 
 —Political Treatise. 
 
 Vol. II.— Improvement of the Under* 
 
 standing — E thics — Letters. 
 
BOHtrS LIBRARIES. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 IS Vols, at t,s. each {except ChilUngworth, y. 6d.). (3/. 13^. 6d. per set.) 
 
 „.....„., Introdnctlon to the Old 
 
 Testament. By Friedrich Bleek. Trans, 
 under the supervision of Rev. E. Venables, 
 Residentiary Canon of Lincoln. 2 vols. 
 
 CHILLINGWORTH'S ReUglon of 
 
 Protestants. 3J. 6d. 
 
 EUSEBIUS. Eccleslaetical History 
 of Ensebius Famphilus, Bishop of Csesarea. 
 Trans, by Rev. C. F. Cruse, M.A. With 
 Notes, Life, and Chronological Tables. 
 
 EVAQRIUS. Hlatory of the ChTircIi. 
 
 — See Theodoret. 
 
 HARDWICK. History of the Arttcles 
 of Religion ; to which is added a Series of 
 Documents from a.d. 1536 to a.i>. 1615. 
 Ed. by Rev. F. Proctor. 
 
 HENRY'S (Matthew) Exposition of 
 
 the Book of Psalms. Numerous Woodcuts. 
 
 PEARSON (John, D.D.) Exposition 
 
 of the Creed. Edit, by E. Walford, M.A. 
 With Notes, Analysis, and Indexes. 
 
 FHILO-JTrDiCnS, Trorks of. The 
 
 Contemporary of Josephas. Trans, by 
 C. D. Yonge. 4 vols. 
 
 PHILOSTORGinS. Ecclesiastical 
 
 History of.— -See Sozomen. 
 
 SOCRATES' Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 Comprising a History of the Church from 
 Constantine, A.D. 305, to the 38th year of 
 Theodosius II, With Short Account of 
 the Author, and selected Notes. 
 
 SOZOMEN'S Ecclesiastical History. 
 A.D. 324-440. With Notes, Prefatory Re> 
 marks by Valesius, and Short Memoir. 
 Together with the Ecclesiastical. His- 
 tory OF PHlLOSTORGlus^as epitomised by 
 Photius. Trans, by Rev. E. Walford, M.A. 
 With Notes and brief Life. 
 
 THEODORET and EVAGRIUS. His- 
 tories of the Church from A.D. 332 to the 
 Death of Theodore of Mopsuestia, A.D. 
 427 ; and from A.D. 431 to A.l>. 544. With 
 Memoirs. 
 
 WIESELER'S (Karl) Chronological 
 
 Synopsis of the Foot Gospels. Trans, by 
 Rev. Canon Venables. 
 
 ANTIQUARIAN LIBRARY. 
 
 35 Vols, ai 5j, each, (8/. i^^s, per set^ 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON CHROinCLE. — ^/^ 
 
 Bede. 
 ASSER'S Life of Alfred.— 6"^* Six O. E. 
 
 CkronicUs. 
 BEDE'S (Venerable) Ecclesiastical 
 
 History of England. Together with the 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. With Notes, 
 Short Life, Analysis, and Map. Edit, by 
 J. A. Giles, D.C.L. 
 
 BOETHICrS'S Consolation of Philo- 
 sophy, King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Ver- 
 sion of. With an English Translation on 
 opposite pages. Notes, Introduction, and 
 GlossMy, by Rev. S. Fox, M.A. To 
 which is added the Anglo-Saxon Version of 
 the Metres of Boethius, with a free 
 Translation by Martin F. Tapper, D.C.L. 
 
 BRAND'S Popular Antiquities of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland. Illus- 
 trating the Origin of our Vulgar and Pro- 
 vincial Customs, Ceremonies, and Super- 
 stitions. By Sir Henry Ellis, K.H.jF.R.S. 
 Frontispiece. 3 vols. 
 
 CHRONICLES of the CRUSADES. 
 
 Contemporary Narratives of Richard Cosnr 
 de IJon, b^ Richard of Devizes and Geof* 
 frey de Vinsauf ; and of the Crusade at 
 Samt Louis, by Lord John de Joinville. 
 With Short Notes. Illuminated Frontis- 
 piece from an old MS. 
 
 DTER'S (T. F- T.) British Popnlar 
 Customs, Present and Past. An Account 
 of the various Games and Customs asso- 
 ciated with different Days of the Year in 
 the British Isles, arranged according to the 
 Calendar. By the Rev. T. F. Thiselton 
 Dyer, M.A 
 
 EARLY TRAVELS IN PALESTINE. 
 
 Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, 
 Wilhbald, Bernard, Ssewulf, Sigurd, Ben- 
 jamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, 
 De la Brocqui^e, and Maundrell ; all un- 
 abridged. With Introduction and Notes 
 by Thomas Wright. Map of Jerusalem. 
 
MjLy j.£\^\jAJ\j.Ai\ j^im^JiKYt 
 
 ELIJS (O.) Specimens of Early En- 
 glish Metrical Romances, relatins^ to 
 Arthur, Merlin, Guy of Warwick, Richard 
 Cceur de Lion, Charlemagne, Roland, &c. 
 &c. With Historical Introduction by J. O. 
 Halliwell, F.R.S. Illuminated Frontis- 
 piece from an old MS. 
 
 ETHELWERD, Chronicle ot,—See 
 
 Six O. E. Chronicles, 
 
 FI.OKENCE OF WORCESTER'S 
 
 Chronicle, with the Two Continuations : 
 comprising Annals of English History 
 from the Departure of the Romans to the 
 Reign of Edward I. Trans., with Notes, 
 by Thomas Forester, M.A. 
 
 GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. 
 
 Chronicle of. — See Six O. E. Chronicles. 
 
 GESTA HOMANORUM, or Enter. 
 
 taining Moral Stories invented by the 
 Monks. Trans, with Notes by the Rev. 
 Charles Swan. Edit, by W. Hooper, M.A. 
 
 GILDAS. Chronicle of.— See Six O. M. 
 
 Chronicles. 
 
 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS' Histori- 
 cal Works. Containing Topography of 
 Ireland, and History of the Conquest of 
 Ireland, by Th. Forester, M.A. Itinerary 
 through Wales, and Description of Wales, 
 by Sir R. Colt Hoare. 
 
 HENUT of HUNTINGDON'S His- 
 tory of the English, from the Roman In- 
 ^^ion to the Accession of Henry II. ; 
 with the Acts of King Stephen, and the 
 Letter to Walter. By T. Forester, M.A. 
 Frontispiece from an old MS. 
 
 INGULPH'S Chronicles of the Abbey 
 
 of Croyland, with the Continuation by 
 Peter of Blois and others. Trans, with 
 Notes by H. T. Riley, B.A. 
 
 KEIGHTLEY'S (Thomas) Fairy My- 
 thology, illustrative of the' Romance and 
 Superstition of Various Countries. Frontis- 
 piece bv Cruikshank. 
 
 LEFSIUS'S Letters fVom Egypt, 
 
 Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai ; to 
 which are added, Extracts from his 
 Chronology of the Egyptians, with refer- 
 ence to the Exodus of the Israelites. By 
 L. and J. B. Homer. Maps and Coloured 
 View of Mount Barkal. 
 
 MALLET'S Northern Antiquities, or 
 
 . an Historical Account of the Manners, 
 Customs, Relip^ons, and Literature of the 
 Ancient Scandinavians. Trans, by Bishop 
 Percy. With Translation of the Prose 
 EcDA, and Notes by J. A. Blackwell. 
 Also an Abstract of the ' Eyrbyggia Saga ' 
 by Sir Walter Scott. With Glossary 
 and Coloured Frontispiece. 
 
 MARCO POLO'S Travels ; with Notes 
 and Introduction. Edit, by T, Wright. 
 
 MATTHEW PARIS'S English His- 
 tory, from 123s to 1273. By Rev. J. A. 
 Giles, D.C.L. With Frontispiece. 3 vols.— 
 See also Roger of Wendover. 
 
 MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER'S 
 
 Flowers of History, especially such as re- 
 late tQ the affairs of Britain, from the be- 
 ginning of the World to a.d. 1307. By 
 C. D. Yonge. 2 vols. 
 
 NENNIUS. Chronicle of.— See Six 
 
 O. E. Chronicles, 
 
 ORDERICUS VITALIS' Ecclesiastical 
 
 History of England and Normandy. With 
 Notes, Introduction of Guizot, and the 
 Critical Notice of M. Delille, by T. 
 Forester, M.A. To which is added the 
 Chronicle of SlEvroult. With Gene- 
 ral and Chronological Indexes, 4 vols. 
 
 PAULPS (Dr. R.) Life of Alfred the 
 
 Great. To which is appended Alfred's 
 Anglo-Saxon Version of Orqsius. With 
 literal Translation interpaged, Notes, and 
 an Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Glossary, 
 by B. Thorpe. FroHtispiece. 
 
 RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER. 
 
 Chronicle of. — See Six O. E. Chronicles. 
 
 ROGER DE HOVEDEN'S Annals of 
 
 English History, comprising the History 
 of England and of other Countries of Eu- 
 rope from A.D. 732 to A.D. 1201. With 
 Notes by H. T. Riley, B.A. 2 vols. 
 
 ROGER OF WENDOVER'S Flowers 
 
 of History, comprising the History of 
 England from the Descent of the SaJtons to 
 A.D. 1235, formerly ascribed to Matthew 
 Paris. With Notes and Index by J. A. 
 Giles, D.C.L. 2 vols. 
 
 SIX OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLES : 
 
 viz., Asser's Life of Alfred and the Chroni- 
 cles of Ethelwerd, Gildas, Nennius, Geof- 
 frey of Monmouth, and Richard of Ciren- 
 cester. Edit., with Notes, by J. A. Giles, 
 D.C.L. Portrait of Alfred. 
 
 WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY'S 
 
 Chronicle of the Kings of England, firom 
 the Earliest Period to King Stephen. By 
 Rev. J. Sharpe. With Notes by J. A. „ 
 Giles, D.C.L. Frontispiece. 
 
 YULE-TIDE STORIES, A Collection 
 of Scandinavian and North-German Popu- 
 lar Tales and Traditions, from the Swedish, 
 Danish, and German. Edit, by B. Thorpe. 
 
12 
 
 BONN'S LIBRARIES, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY. 
 
 78 Vols, at ^s.eacki excepting those marked otherwise. (19/. 7j. 6d. per set.) 
 
 ALLEN'S (Joseph, R.N.) Battles of 
 the British Navy. Revised edition, with 
 Indexes of Names and Events, and 57 Por- 
 traits and Flans. 2 vols. 
 
 ANDERSEN'S Danish Fairy Tales. 
 
 By Caroline Peachey. With Short Life 
 and I20 Wood Engravings. 
 
 ARIOSTO'S Orlando Fnrloso. In 
 
 English Verse by W. S. Rose. With Notes 
 and Short Memoir. Portrait after Titian, 
 and 24 Steel Engravings. 2 vols. 
 
 BECHSTEnrs Cagre and Chamber 
 
 Birds : their Natural History, Habits, &c. 
 Together with Sweet's British War- 
 blers. 43 Coloured Plates and Woodcuts. 
 
 BONOMI'S Nlaeveh and Its Palaces, 
 
 The Discoveries of Botta and Layard 
 applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ. 
 7 Plates and 294 Woodcuts. 
 
 BUTLER'S HudibraB, with Variorum 
 Notes and Biography. Portrait and 28 
 
 Illustrations. 
 
 CATTERHOLE'S ETeuings at Had- 
 
 don Hall. Romantic Tales of the Olden 
 Times. With 24 Steel Engravings after 
 Cattermole. 
 
 CHINA, Pictorial, Descriptive, and 
 
 Historical, with some account of Ava and 
 the Burmese, Siam^ and Anam. Map, and 
 nearly 100 Illustrations. 
 
 CRAIK'S (G. L.) Pursuit of Kuo-W- 
 
 ledge under Difficulties. Illustrated by 
 Anecdotes and Memoirs. Numerous Wood- 
 cut Portraits. 
 
 CRUIKSHANK'S Three Courses and 
 
 a Dessert ; comprising three Sets of Tales, 
 West Country, Irish, and Legal ; and a 
 Mdange. With 50 Illustrations by Cruik- 
 shank. 
 
 Punch and Judy. The Dialogue of 
 
 the Puppet Show ; an Account of its Origin, 
 &c. 24 Illustrations and Coloured Plates 
 by Cruikshank, 
 
 DANTE, in English Verse, by I. C.Wright, 
 M.A. ^ With Introduction and Memoir. 
 Portrait and 34 Steel Engravings afto: 
 Flaxman, 
 
 DIDRON'S Chrifltian Iconography; 
 
 a History of Christian Art in the Middle 
 Ages. By the late A. N. Didron. Trans, 
 by E. J. Millington, and completed, with 
 Additions /and Appendices, by Margaret 
 Stokes. 2 vols. Withnumerous Illustrations. 
 
 Vol. I. The History of the Nimbus, the 
 Aureole, and the Glorjr; Representations 
 of the Persons of the Trinity. 
 
 Vol. II. The Trinity; Angels; Devils; 
 The Soul ; The Christian Scheme. Appen- 
 dices. 
 
 DYER (Dr. T. H.) Pompeii : its Build- 
 ings and Antiquities. An Account of the 
 City, with full Description of the Remains 
 and Recent Excavations, and an Itinerary 
 for Visitors. By T. H. Dyer, LL.D. 
 Nearly 300 Wood Engravings, Map, and 
 Plan. 7* . 6d. 
 
 Rome : History of the City, wth 
 
 Introduction on recent Excavations. 8 
 Engravings, Frontispiece, and 2 Maps. 
 
 GIL BLAS. The Adventures of. 
 
 From the French of Lesage by Smollett. 
 24 Engravings after Smirke, and 10 Etch- 
 ings by Cruikshank. 612 pages, dr. 
 
 GRIMM'S Gammer Grethel; or, Ger- 
 man Fairy Tales and Popular Stories, 
 containing 42 Fairy Tales. By Edgar 
 Taylor. Numerous Woodcuts after Crmk- 
 shank and Ludwig Grinun, 3^ . 6d. 
 
 HOLBEIN'S Dance of Death and 
 
 Bible Cuts. Upwards of 150 Subjects, en- 
 graved in facsimile, with Introduction and 
 Descriptions by the late Francis Deuce 
 and Dr. Dibdin. 
 
 INDIA, Pictorial, De^riptive, and 
 
 Historical, from the Earliest Times. 100 
 Engravings on Wood and Map. 
 
 JESSE'S Anecdotes of Doga. With 
 40 Woodcuts after Harvey, Bewick, and 
 others ; and 34 Steel Engravings after 
 Cooper and liandseer. 
 
 EINGJS (C. W.) Natural History of 
 Precious Stones and Metals. Illustra- 
 tions. 6f. 
 
ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY, 
 
 13 
 
 LODGE'S Portraits of ZUnstrlous 
 
 Personages of Great Britain, with Bio- 
 graphic^ and Historical Memoirs. 240 
 Portraits engraved on Steel, with the 
 respective Biographies unabridged. Com- 
 plete in 8 vols. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S Poetical Works, 
 
 including his Translations and Notes. 24 
 full-page Woodcuts by Birket Foster and 
 others, and a Portrait. 
 
 Without the Illustrations, 3J. td. 
 
 • Prose Works. With 16 full-page 
 
 Woodcuts by Birket Foster and others. 
 
 LOUDON'S (Mrs.) Entertaining Na- 
 turalist. Popular Descriptions, Tales, and 
 Anecdotes, of more than 500 Animals. 
 Numerous Woodcuts. 
 
 IVIARRYAT'S (Capt,, R.N.) Master- 
 
 man Ready ; or, the Wreck of the Pacific, 
 (Written for Young People.) With 93 
 Woodcuts, 3J. ^d. 
 
 Mission; or, Scenes In Africa. 
 
 (Written for Youn^ People.) Illustrated 
 by Gilbert and Dalziel. 3J. td. 
 
 Pirate and Three Cutters. (Writ- 
 ten for Young People.) With a Memoir. 
 8 Steel Engravings after Clarkson Stan- 
 field, R.A. 3*. (id. 
 
 —— Privateersman. Adventures by Sea 
 and Land One Hundred Years Ago. 
 (Written for Young People.) 8 Steel En- 
 gravings. 3 J. td. 
 
 Settlers l'^ Cfinada. (Written for 
 
 Young People 10 Engravings by Gilbert 
 and Dalziel. 3^-. ^d, 
 
 Poor Jack. (Written for Young 
 
 People.) With 16 Illustrations after Clark- 
 son Stanfield, R.A. 3^. td. 
 
 Midshipman Easy. With 8 full- 
 page Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 3*. td. 
 
 Peter Simple. With 8 full-page Illus- 
 trations. Small post 8vo. 3*. 6rf. 
 
 MAXWELL'S Victories of Welling- 
 ton and the British Armies. Frontispiece 
 and 4 Portraits. 
 
 MICHAEL ANGELO and RAPHAEL, 
 
 Their Lives and Works. By Du^pa and 
 Quatremere de Quincy. Portraits and 
 Engravings, including rfie Last Judgment, 
 and Cartoons. 
 
 MUDIE'S History of British Birds. 
 
 Revised by W. C. L. Martin. 52 Figures of 
 Birds and 7 coloured Plates of Eggs. 
 2 vols. 
 
 NAVAL and MILITARY HEROES 
 
 of Great Britain ; a Record of British 
 Valour on every Day in the year, from 
 William the Conqueror to the Battle of 
 Inkermann. By Major Johns, R.M., and 
 Lieut. P. H. Nicolas, R.M, Indexes, 24 
 Portraits after Holbein, Reynolds, &c. ts, 
 
 NICpLINI'S History of the Jesnits : 
 
 their Origin, Progress, Doctrines, and De- 
 signs. 8 Portraits, 
 
 PETRARCH'S Sonnets, Trlniuphs, 
 
 and other Poems, in English Verse, With 
 Life by Thomas Campbell. Portrait and 
 IS Steel Engravings. 
 
 PICKERING'S History of the Races 
 
 of Man, and their Geographical Distribu- 
 tion ; with An Analytical Synopsis of 
 THE Natural History of Man. By Dr. 
 Hall. Map of the World and 12 coloured 
 Plates. 
 
 PICTORIAL HANDBOOK OF 
 
 Modem (teography on a Popular Flan, 
 Compiled from the best Authorities, English 
 and Foreign, by H. G. Bohn. 150 Wood- 
 cuts and 51 coloured Maps. 
 Without the Maps, 3* . td. 
 
 POPE'S Poetical Works, including 
 Translations. Edit., with Notes, by R. 
 Carruthers. 2 vols. With numerous Illus- 
 trations. 
 
 Homer's Iliad, with Introduction 
 
 and Notes by Rev. ,J. S. Watson, M.A. 
 With Flaxman's Designs. 
 
 Homer's Odyssey, with the Battlb 
 
 OF Frogs and Mick, Hymns, &c., by 
 other translators including Chapman, In- 
 ti-oduction and Notes by j[. S. Watson, 
 M.A, With Flaxman's Designs. 
 
 Life, including many of his Letters. 
 
 By R. Carruthers. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 POTTERY AND PORCELAIN, and 
 
 other objects of Vertu. Comprising an 
 Illustrated Catalogue of the Bemal Col- 
 lection, with the prices and names of the 
 Possessors. Also an Introductory Lecture 
 on Pottery and Porcelain, and an Engraved 
 List of all Marks and Monograms. By 
 H. G. Bohn, Numerous Woodcuts, 
 With coloured Illustrations, lo* . 6<f. 
 
 PROUT'S (Father) Reliques. Edited 
 by Rev. F. Mahony. Copyright edition, 
 with the Author's last corrections and 
 additions. 21 Etchings by D. Maclise, 
 R.A. Nearly 600 pages. 
 
 RECREATIONS IN SHOOTING. With 
 some Account of the Game found in the 
 British Isles, and Directionsfor the Manage- 
 ment of Dog and Gun. By ' Craven.' 6* 
 Woodcuts and 9 Steel Engravings after 
 A. Cooper, R.A. 
 
14 
 
 BOHJSrS LIBRARIES. 
 
 REZmiE. Insect ArcMtectnre. Re- 
 vised by Rev. J- G. Wood, M.A. 186 
 
 Woodcuts. 
 
 ROBINSON CRUSOE. With Memoir of 
 Defoe, 12 Steel Engravings and 74 Wood- 
 cuts after Stothard and Harvey. 
 
 Without the Engravings, 3*. 6rf. 
 
 ROME IN THE NINETEENTH CEN- 
 tury. An Account in 1817 of the Ruins zi 
 the Ancient City, and Monuments of Modem 
 Times. By C. A. Eaton. 34 Steel En- 
 gravings. 2 vols. 
 
 SHARFE (S.) The History t>fE?ypt, 
 from the Earliest Times till the Conquest 
 by the Arabs, a.d. 640, 2 Maps and up- 
 wards of 400 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 
 
 SOUTHEY'S Life of Nelson. With 
 Additional Notes, Facsimiles of Nelson's 
 Writing, Portraits, Flans, and 50 Engrav- 
 ings, after Birket Foster, &c. 
 
 STARLING'S (Miss) Noble Deeds of 
 Women ; or, Examples of Female Courage, 
 Fortitude, and Virtue. With 14 Steel Por- 
 traits. 
 
 STUART and REVETT'S Antiquities 
 
 of Athens, and other Monuments of Greece ; 
 with Glossary of Terms used in Grecian 
 Architecture. 71 Steel Plates and numerous 
 Woodcuts. 
 
 SWEET'S British Warblers. ^s.—Set 
 
 Beckstein. 
 
 TALES OF THE QENH ; or, the 
 
 Delightful Lessons of Horam, the Son of 
 Asmar. Trans, by Sir C. Morrell, Numer- 
 ous Woodcuts. 
 
 TASSO'S Jerusalem Delivered. In 
 
 English Spenserian Verse, with Life, by 
 J. H. Wiffen. With 8 Engravings and 24 
 Woodcuts. 
 
 WALKER'S Manly Exercises; con- 
 taining Skating, Riding, Driving, Hunting, 
 Shooting, Sailmg, Rowmg, Swimming, &c. 
 44 Engravings and nimierous Woodcuts. 
 
 WALTON'S Complete Angler* or the 
 
 Contemplative Man's Recreation, by Izaak 
 Walton and Charles Cotton. With Me- 
 moirs and Notes by E, Jesse. Also an 
 Account of Fishing Stations, Tackle, &c., 
 by H. G. Bohn. Portrait and 203 Wood- 
 cuts, and 26 Engravings on Steel. 
 
 Lives Of Donne, Wotton^ Hooker, 
 
 &c., widi Notes. A New Edition, re- 
 vised by A. H. Bullen, with a Memoir 
 of Izaak Walton by William Bowling. 6 
 Portraits, 6 Autograph Sie:natures, &c. 
 
 WELLINQTON, Life of. From the 
 Materials of Maxwell. z8 Steel En- 
 gravings. 
 
 Victories of,— See Mascwell. 
 
 WESTROPF (H. M.) A Handbook ot 
 
 Archaeology, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, 
 Roman. By H. M. Westropp. Numerous 
 Illustrations. 
 
 WHITE'S Nattiral History of Sel- 
 bome, with Observations on various Parts 
 of Nature, and the Naturalists' Calendar. 
 Sir W. Jardine. Edit, with Notes and 
 Memoir, by E. Jesse. 40 Portraits and 
 coloured FlateSi 
 
 CLASSICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 Translations from the Greek and Latin. 
 103 Vols, at SJ. each, excepting those marked otherwise, (25/. y. per set.) 
 
 ACHILLES TATroS. — See Greek 
 
 Romances, 
 SSCHYLirS, The Dramas of. In 
 
 English Verse by Anna Swanwick. 4th 
 edition. 
 
 The Tragedies of. In Prose, with 
 
 Notes and Introduction, by T. A. Buckley, 
 B.A. Portrait. 3J. 6d. 
 
 AMMIANUS IVIASCELLINtTS. His- 
 tory of Rome during the Reigns of Con- 
 stantius, Julian, Jovianus,Valentinian, and 
 Valens, by C. D. Yonge, B.A. Double 
 volume. 7J. 6d. 
 
 ANTONINTrs (M, AiireUtiB), The 
 
 Thoughts of. Translated, with Notes. 
 Biographical Sketch, and Essay on the 
 Philosophy, by George Long, M.A. 
 3J. 6d. Fine Paper edition on hand-made 
 paper. 6s. 
 
 APOLLONItTS RHODIDS. ' The Ar- 
 
 gonautica.' Translated by E. P. Coleridge. 
 
 APTJLEIDS, The 'WorkB of. Com- 
 
 ? rising the Golden Ass, God of Socrates, 
 'lorida, and Discourse of Magic, &c. 
 Frontispiece. 
 
CLASSICAL LIBRARY, 
 
 15 
 
 A^STOFHANES' Comedlos. Trans., 
 with, Notes and Extracts from Frere's and 
 other Metrical Versions, by W. J. Hickie. 
 Foitrait. 2 vols. 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S Nicomachean Etlilcs. 
 
 Trans., with Kotes, Analytical Introduc- 
 tion, and Questions for Students, by Ven. 
 Archdn. Browne. 
 
 " — ; FoliticB and Economics. Trans., 
 with Notes, Analyses, and Index, by E, 
 Walford, M.A., and an Essay and Life by 
 Dr. Gillies. 
 
 Metaphysics. Trans., with Notes, 
 
 Analysis, and Examination Questions, by 
 Rev, John H. M*Mahon, M.A, 
 
 History Of Animals. In Ten Books. 
 
 Trans., with Notes and Index, by R. 
 Cresswell, M.A. 
 
 — Orsranon ; or, Logical Treatises, and 
 the Introduction of Porphyry. With Notes, 
 Analysis, and Introduction, by Rev. O. 
 ' F. Owen, M.A 2 vols. 3;. 6d. each. 
 
 Rhetoric and Poetics. Trans., with 
 
 Hobbes' Analysis, Exam. Questions, and 
 Notes, by T. Buckley, B.A. Portrait. 
 
 ATHEN^US. The Delpnosophlsts. 
 
 Trans, by C. D. Yonge, B.A. With an 
 Appendix of Poetical Fragments. 3 vols. 
 
 ATLAS of Classical 6eograph7> 22 
 
 large Coloiu^d Maps. With a complete 
 Index. Imp. 8vo. js, 6d, 
 
 BION.— ^^e Tluocritus, 
 
 C £ S A R . Commentaries on the 
 
 Gallic and Civil Wars, with the Supple- 
 mentary Books attributed to Hutius, in- 
 cluding the complete Alexandrian, African, 
 and Spanish Wars. Portrait. 
 
 CATULLUS, Tihnllus, and the VI5U 
 of Venus. Trans, with Notes and Bio- 
 graphical Introduction. To which are 
 added. Metrical Versions ^ by Lamb, 
 Grainger, and others. Frontispiece- 
 
 CICERO'S Orations, Trans, by C. D. 
 Yonge, B. A, 4 vols. 
 
 On Oratory cmd Orators. With 
 
 Letters to Quintus and Brutus. Trans., 
 with Notes, by Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. 
 
 — On the Nature of the Gods, Divi- 
 nation, Fate, Laws, a Republic, Consul- 
 ship. Trans, by C. D. Yonge, B.A. 
 
 — Academies, De Finibus, and Tuscn- 
 lan Questions. By C. D. Yonge, B.A. 
 With Sketch of the Greek Philosophers 
 mentioned by Cicero. 
 
 CICERO'S Works.— Ct7»A'Mwtf^. 
 
 Offices; or, Moral Duties. _ Cato 
 
 Major, an Essay on Old A^e ; Lselius, an 
 Essay on Friendship; Scipio's Dream; 
 Paradoxes; Letter to Quintus on Mams 
 trates. Trans., with Notes, by C. R. Ed- 
 monds. Portrait. 3s. 6^. 
 
 DEMOSTHENES' Orations. Trans., 
 with Notes, Arguments, a Chronological 
 Abstract, and Appendices, by C. Rann 
 Kennedy, s vols. (One, 35. ^d- ; four, 55.) 
 
 DICTIONARY of LATIN and GREEK 
 
 Quotations ; including Proverbs, Maxims, 
 Mottoes, Law Terms and Phrases. With 
 the Quantities marked, ahd English Trans- 
 lations. With Index Verborum (622 pages). 
 
 — Index Verborum to the above, with the 
 Quantities and Accents marked (56 pages), 
 Ump cloth, xs. 
 
 DIOGENES LAERTinS. Lives and 
 Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers. 
 Trans., with Notes, by C. D. Yonge, B.A. 
 
 EFICTETUS. The Discourses of. 
 
 With the Encheiridion and Fragments. 
 With Notes, Life, and View of his Philo- 
 sophy, by George Long, M.A. 
 
 EURIPIDES. Trans, by T. A. Buckley, 
 B.A. Portrait. 2 vols. 
 
 GREEK ANTHOLOGY. In English 
 Prose by G. Burges, M.A. With Metrical 
 Versions by Bland, Merivale, and others* 
 
 GHEES ROMANCES of Hellodornsgi 
 
 Longus, and AchUles Tatius; viz., The 
 Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea ; 
 Amours of Daphnis and Chloe ; and Loves 
 of Clitopho and Leucippe. Trans., with 
 Notes, by Rev. R. Smith, M.A. 
 
 HELIODORUS.— 6'^f Greek Romances, 
 
 HERODOTUS. Literally trans, by Rev. 
 Henry Cary, M.A. Portrait. 3J. 6^, 
 
 HESIOD, CALLIMACHUS, and 
 
 Theognis. In Prose, with Notes and 
 Biographical Notices by Rev. J. Banks, 
 M.A. Together with the Metrical Ver- 
 sions of Hesiod, by Elton ; CalHmachus, 
 by Tytler ; and Theognis, by Frere. 
 
 HOMER'S niad. In English Prose^ with 
 Notes by T. A. Buckley, B.A. Portrait. 
 
 —— Odysseyj Hymns, Epigrams, and 
 Battle of the Frogs and Mice. In English 
 Prose, with Notes and Memoir by T. A. 
 Buckley, B.A. 
 
 HORACE. In Prose by Smart, with Notes 
 selected by T. A. Buckley, B.A. Por- 
 trait. 3J. 6^. 
 
 JULIAN THE EMPEROR. Containing 
 Gregory Mazianzea's Two Invectives and 
 Libanus* Monody, with Julian's Theosophi- 
 cal Works. By the Rev. C. W. King, M.A. 
 
i6 
 
 BONN'S LIBRARIES. 
 
 JUSTm, CORITELinS NEPOS, and 
 
 Eutxopius. Trans., with Notes, by Rev. 
 J. S. Watson, M.A. 
 
 JUVENAL; PERSIUS, STTLFIGIA, 
 
 and Lucihus. In Prose, with Notes, 
 Chronological Tables^ Arguments, by L. 
 Evans, ]V1. A. To which is added the Me- 
 trical Version of Juvenal and Fersius by 
 Gififord. Frontispiece. 
 
 I.IVY. The History of Rome. Trans, 
 by Dr. Spillan and others; 4 vols. Portrait. 
 
 X.ONGUS. Daphnis and Chloe.— ^w Greek 
 Romances. 
 
 IiUCAN'S Fharsalla. In Prose, with 
 Notes by H. T. Riley. 
 
 IiUCIAN'S DlalogTieB of the Gods, 
 
 of the Sea Gods, and of the Dead. Trans, 
 by Howard Williams, M. A. 
 
 LtrCRETIUS. In Prose, with Notes and 
 Biographical Introduction by Rev. J. S. 
 Watson, M.A. To which is added the 
 Metrical Version by J. M. Good. 
 
 MARTIAL'S EpigramSj complete. In 
 
 Prose, with Verse Translations selected 
 from English Poets, and other sources. 
 Dble. vol. (670 pages), ^s, 6d. 
 
 MOSCHUS.— iTw Theocritus. 
 
 OVID'S Worts, complete. In Prose, 
 with Notes and Introduction, 3 vols. 
 
 FAUSANIAS' Description of Greece. 
 
 Trans., with Notes and Index, by Rev. 
 A. R. Shiileto, M.A., sometime Scholar of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. 
 PHALARIS. Bentley's DisBertatlons 
 upon the Epistles of Phalaris, Themisto- 
 cles, Socrates, Euripides, and the Fables 
 of ^sop. With Introduction and Notes 
 by Prof. W. Wagner, Ph.D. 
 
 PINDAR. In Prose, with Introduction 
 and Notes by Dawson W. Turner. To- 
 gether with the Metrical Version by Abra- 
 ham Moore. Portrait. 
 
 PLATO'S "Works. Trans, by Rev. H. 
 Gary, H. Davis, and G. Burges. 6 vols. 
 
 Dialogues. A Sunmiary and Analysis 
 
 of. With Analytical Index to the Greek 
 text of modern editions and to the above 
 translations, by A. Day, LL.D. 
 
 PLAUTUS'S Comedies. In Prose, with 
 Notes by H. T. Riley, B.A. 2 vols, 
 
 PLINY'S Natural History, Trans., 
 
 with Notes, by J. Bostock, M.D., F.R,S., 
 and H. T. Riley, B.A. 6 vols. 
 FLINT. The Letters of Pliny the 
 
 Younger. Melmoth's Translation, revised, 
 with Notes and short Life, by Rev, F. C. 
 T. Bosanquet, M.A. 
 
 PLUTARCH'S Morals. Theosophical 
 Essays. Trans, by Rev, C, W. King, M.A. 
 
 — Ethical Essays. Trans, by Rev. 
 
 A. R. Shilleto, M.A. 
 Lives. Seepage 7. 
 
 PROPERTIUS, The Elegies of. With 
 Notes, translated by Rev-_ P. J. , F. 
 Gantiflon, M.A., with metrical versions 
 of Select Elegies by Nott and Elton. 
 3f . 6d. 
 
 QTTINTILIAN'S Institutes of Oratory. 
 Trans,, by Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. 
 2 vols. 
 
 SALLUST, FLORUS, and VELLEIU8 
 
 Paterculus. Trans., with Notes and Bio- 
 graphical Notices, by J. S. Watson, M.A. 
 
 SENECA D£ BENEFICHS. Trans- 
 lated by Aubrey Stewart, M.A. 3;. 6d, 
 
 SENECA'S Minor Essays. Translated 
 by A. Stewart, M.A. 
 
 SOPHOCLES. The Tragedies of. In 
 
 Prose, with Notes, Arguments, and Intro- 
 duction. Portrait. 
 
 STRABO'S Geography. Trans., with 
 Notes, by W. Falconer, M.A., and H. C. 
 Hamilton. Copious Index, giving Ancient 
 and Modem Names. 3 vols. 
 
 SUETONIUS' Lives of the Twelve 
 
 Caesars and Lives of the Grammarians. 
 The Translation of Thomson, revised, with 
 Notes, by T. Forester. 
 
 TACITUS, The Works of. Trans., 
 with Notes. 2 vols. 
 
 TERENCE and PHSDRUS, In Eng- 
 lish Prose, with Notes and Arguments, by 
 H, T. Riley, B.A. To which is added 
 Smart's Metrical Version of Phiedrus. 
 With Frontispiece. 
 
 THEOCRITUS, BION, MOSCHUS, 
 
 and Tyrtseus. In Prose, with Notes and 
 Arguments, by Rev. J. Banks, M.A. To 
 which are appended the Metrical Ver- 
 sions of Chapman. Portrait of Theocritus. 
 
 THUCTDIDES. The Peloponnesicm 
 
 War. Trans., with Notes, by Rev. H. 
 Dale. Portrait. 2 vols. 3J. 6d. each. 
 
 TYRT^US.^« Theocritus. 
 
 VIRGIL. The Works of. In Piose, 
 with Notes by Davidson. Revised, with 
 additional Notes and Biographical Notice, 
 by T. A. Buckley, B.A. Portrait. 3*. 6rf. 
 
 XENOFHON'S Works. Trans., with 
 Notes, by J. S. Watson, M.A., and Rev. 
 H. Dale. Portrait. In 3 vols. 
 
COLLEGIATE SERIES AND SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY. 
 
 17 
 
 COLLEGIATE SERIES. 
 
 II Vols, at 5 J. each. (2/. 1 5 J, ^er set.) 
 
 DAXTE. The luferuo. Prose Trans., 
 with the Text of the Original on the same 
 page, and Explanatory Notes, by John 
 A. Carlyle, M.D. Portrait. 
 
 — The Purgatorio. Prose Trans., with 
 the Original on the same page, and Ex- 
 planatory Notes, by W. S. Dugdale. 
 
 DOBREE'S Adversaria. (Notes on the 
 Greek and Latin Classics.) Edited by the 
 late Prof. Wagner. 2 vols. 
 
 DONALDSON ^r.) The Theatre of 
 
 the Greeks. With Supplementary Treatise 
 on the Language, Metres, and Prosody of 
 the Greek Dramatists. Numerous Illus- 
 trations and 3 Plans. By J. W. Donald- 
 son, D.D. 
 
 GOETHE'S Faust. PartL GermanText, 
 with Hayward's Prose Translation and 
 Notes. Revised, with Introduction and 
 Bibliography, by Dr. C A. Buchheim. 5^ . 
 
 KEIGHTLEY'S (Thomas) Mythologry 
 
 of Ancient Greece and Italy. Revised by 
 Dr. Leonhard Schmitz. 13 Plates. 
 
 HERODOTUS, Notes on. Original 
 
 and Selected from the best Commentators, 
 By D. W. Turner, M.A. Coloured Map. 
 
 Analysis and Summary ofy with 
 
 a Synchronistical Table of Events — Tables 
 of Weights, Measures, Moneys and Dis- 
 tances — an Outline of the History abd 
 (Jeography— and the Dates completed from 
 Gaisford, Baehr, &c. By J. T. Wheeler. 
 
 NEW TESTAMENT (The) In Greek. 
 Griesbach's Text, with the Readings of 
 
 Mill and Scholz, and Parallel References. 
 Also a Critical Introduction and Chrono- 
 logical Tables. Two Fac-similes of Greek 
 Manuscripts. 650 pages. 3^ . 6ii. 
 
 or bound up with a Greek and English 
 
 Lexicon to the New Testament (250 pages 
 additional, making in all 900/ 5;. 
 
 The Lexicon separately, zs. 
 
 THUCTDIDES. An Analysis an«l 
 
 Summary of. With Chronological Table 
 of Events, &c., by J. T. Wheeler, 
 
 SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY. 
 
 48 Vo/s. at 5j. each, excepting those marked otherwise. (12/. igs. per set,) 
 
 AGASSIZ and GOUI.D. Outline of 
 
 Comparative Physiology. Enlarged by 
 Dr. Wright, With Index and 300 Illus- 
 trative Woodcuts. 
 
 BOLLET'S Manual of Technical 
 
 Analysis; a Guide for the Testing and 
 Valuation of the various Natural and 
 Artificial Substances employed in the Arts 
 and Domestic Economy, founded on the 
 work of Dr, Bolley. Edit, by Dr. Paul. 
 100 Woodcuts. 
 
 BRH^GEWATER TREATISES. 
 
 —^ Bell (Sir Charles) on the Hand ; 
 its Mechanism and Vital Endowments, as 
 evincing Design. Preceded by an Account 
 of the Author s Discoveries in the Nervous 
 System by A. Shaw. Numerous Woodcuts. 
 
 — Klrby on the History^ Habits, 
 
 and Instincts of Animals. With Notes by 
 T. Rymer Jones. 100 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 
 
 Bucklfuid's Geology and Miner- 
 alogy. With Additions by Prof. Owen, 
 Prof. Phillips, and R. Brown. Memoir of 
 Buckland. Portrait. 2 vols. 15;. Vol. I. 
 Text, Vol. II. 90 large plates withletter< 
 press. 
 
 BRIDGEWATER TREATISES. 
 
 Coniinued. 
 •~— Chalmers on the Adaptation of 
 External Nature to the Moral and Intel- 
 lectual Constitution of Man. With Memoir 
 by Rev. Dr. Gumming. Portrait, 
 
 — Front's Treatise on Chemlstryi 
 
 Meteorology, and the Function of Diges- 
 tion, with reference to Natural Theologj*. 
 Edit, by Dr. J. W. Griffith, 2 Maps. 
 
 Roget's Animal and Vefi^etahle 
 
 Physiology, 463 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 6s. 
 each. 
 
 Kidd on the Adaptation of Ex- 
 ternal Nature to the Physical Condition of 
 
 Man. 3^^. 6d, 
 
 CARPENTER'S (Dr. W. B.) Zoology, 
 
 A Systematic View of the Structure, Ha- 
 bits, Instincts, and Uses of the principal 
 Families of the Animal Kingdom, and of 
 the chief Forms of Fossil Remains. Re- 
 vised by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. Numerous 
 Woodcuts. 2 vols. 6s. each. 
 
 Mechanical Philosophy, Astro- 
 nomy, and Horology, A Popular Expo- 
 sition, iSi Woodcuts, 
 
i8 
 
 BOHirS LIBRARIES, 
 
 CARPENTER'S '^ox^a,— Continued. 
 
 Vegetable Fhyelology and S:rs- 
 
 tematic Botany. A complete Introduction 
 to the Knowledge of Plants. Revised by 
 E. I^ankester, M.D., &c Numerous 
 Woodcuts. 6j. 
 
 — Animal Fliyslologry. Revised Edi- 
 tion. 300 Woodcuts. 6f. 
 
 CHEVREHL on Colonr. Containing 
 the Principles of Harmony and Contrast 
 of Colours, and their Application to the 
 Arts ; including Painting, Decoration, 
 Tapestries, Carpets, Mosaics, Glazing, 
 Staining, CsJico Printing, Letterpress 
 Printing, Map Colouring, Dress, I^d- 
 scape and Flower Gardening, &c. Trans. 
 by C. Martel. Several Plates. 
 
 With an additional series of 16 Plates 
 
 in Colours, 7^ . 6(/. 
 
 ENNEMOSER'S History of Magrlc. 
 Trans, by W. Howitt. With an Appendix 
 of the most remarkable and best authenti- 
 cated Stones of Apparitions, Dreams, 
 Second Sight, Table-Tuming, and Spitit- 
 Rapping, &c. 2 vols. 
 
 HOGG^S (Jabez) Elements of Experi- 
 mental and Natural Philosophy. Being 
 an Easy Introduction to the Study of 
 Mechanics, Pneumatics, Hydrostatics, 
 Hydraulics, Acoustics, Optics, Caloric, 
 Electricity, Voltaism, and Magnetism. 
 400 Woodcuts. 
 
 HUMBOLDT'S Cosmos; or, Sketch 
 of a Physical Description of the Universe. 
 Trans, by E. C Ott6, B. H. Paul, and 
 W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. Portrait. 5 vols. 
 3f. 6(f. each, excepting vol. v., 5J. 
 
 -^ FerBonalNarrativeofhisTravels 
 
 in America during the years 1799-1804. 
 Trans., with Notes, by T. Ross. 3 vols. 
 
 — Vievrs of Nature ; or, Contem- 
 plations of the Sublime Phenomena of 
 Creation, with Scientific Illustrations. 
 Trans, by E. C. Ott6. 
 
 HUNT'S (Robert) Poetry of Science ; 
 
 or. Studies of the Physical Phenomena of 
 Nature. By Robert Hunt, Professor at 
 the School of Mines. 
 
 JOYCE'S Scientific Dialogues. A 
 
 Familiar Introduction to the Arts and 
 Sciences. For Schools and Young People. 
 Numerous Woodcuts. 
 
 JUKES-BRO^VNE'S Student's Hand- 
 book of Physical Geology. By A. J. 
 Jukes-Browne, of the Geological Survey of 
 England. With numerous Diagrams and 
 XUufitrations^ ^^ 
 
 JUKES-BROWNE'S "Works.— C<»«^. 
 
 The Student's Handbook of 
 
 Historical Geology. By A. J. Jukes- 
 Brown, B.A., F.G.S., of the Geological 
 Survey of. England and Wales. With 
 numerous Diagrams and Illustrations. 6f , 
 
 The Bnilding of the British 
 
 Islands. A Study in Geographical Evolu- 
 tion. By A. J. Jukes-Browne, F.G.S. 
 ^s. 6d. 
 
 KNIGHT'S (Charles) Knowledge Is 
 
 Power. A Popular Manual of Political 
 Economy. 
 
 ULLT. Introdnctlon to Astrology. 
 
 With a Grammar of Astrology and Tables 
 for calculating Nativities, by ZadkieL 
 
 MANTELL'S (Dr.) Geological Ex- 
 cursions through the Isle of Wight and 
 along the Dorset Coast. Numerous Wood- 
 cuts and Geological Map. 
 
 — ^ Petrifactions and their Teach- 
 ings. Handbook to the Organic Remains 
 in the British Museum. Nxunerous Wood- 
 cuts. 6s. 
 
 — Wonders of Geology; or, a 
 Familiar Exposition of Geological Pheno- 
 mena. A coloured Geologiral Map of 
 England, -Plates^ and 200 Woodcuts, a 
 vols. js. 6d. each. 
 
 SCHOUW'S Earth, Plants, and Man. 
 Popular Pictures of Nature. And Ko- 
 bell's Sketch^ from the Mineral Kingdom. 
 Trans, by A. Hen&ey, F.R.S. Oalonred 
 Map of the Geography of Plants. 
 
 SMITH'S (Pye) Geology and Scrip- 
 ture ; or, the Relation between the Scriptures 
 and Geological Science. With Memoir. 
 
 STANLEY'S Classified Synopsis of 
 
 the Principal Painters of the Dutch and 
 Flemish Schools, including an Account of 
 some of the early (merman ' Masters. By 
 George Stanley. 
 
 STAUNTON'S Chess Works. — See 
 page 21. 
 
 STOGKHARDT'S Experimental 
 
 Chemistry. A Handbook for the Study 
 of the Science by simple Experiments. 
 Edit, by C. W. Heaton, F.C.S. Nu- 
 merous Woodcuts. 
 
 URE'S (Dr. A.). Cotton Mannfactnre 
 of (jreat Britain, systematically invest!- 
 ^ted ; with an Introductory View of its 
 Comparative State in Foreign Countries. 
 Revised by P. L. Simmonc^ 150 Illus- 
 trations. 2 vols. 
 
 — Philosophy of MannfactnreOf 
 or an Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, 
 and Commerdal Economy of the Factoiy 
 System of Great Britain. Revised by 
 P. L. Smunonds. Numerous Figures. 
 800 pages. 7;. &^ 
 
REFERENCE LIBRARY. 
 
 »9 
 
 ECONOMICS AND FINANCE. 
 
 QILBART'S History, Principles, and Practice of Banking. Revised to tSSi by 
 A. S. Michie, of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Portrait of Gilbart. 2 vols. lor. 
 
 RICARDO on the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Edited 
 by E. C. K. Conner, M.A., Lecturer, University College, Liverpool. 5J. 
 
 SMITH (Adam). The Wealth of Nations. An Inquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of. Edited by E. Belfort Bax. 2 vols. 7J. 
 
 REFERENCE LIBRARY. 
 
 32 Volumes at Various Prices. {SI. ^s- per set.) 
 
 BLAIR'S Chronological Tables. 
 
 Comprehending the Chronology and His- 
 tory of the World, from the Earliest Times 
 to the Russian Treaty of Peace, April 1856. 
 By J. W. Rosse. 800 pages. loj . 
 
 Index of Dates. Comprehending 
 
 the principal Facts in the Chronolo^ and 
 History of the World, from the Earliest to 
 the Present, alphabetically arranged; being 
 a complete Index to the foregoing. By 
 J. W. Rosse. 2 vols. SJ. each. 
 
 BOHN'S Dictionary of Quotations 
 
 from the English Poets. 4th and cheaper 
 Edition. 6s. 
 
 BOmi'S Handy-hook of Rules and 
 
 Tables for Verifying Dates with the Chris- 
 tian Era. 4th Edition. SJ. 
 
 BUCHANAX'S Dictionary of Science 
 
 and Technical Terms used in Philosophy, 
 Literature, Professions, Commerce, Arts, 
 and Trades. By W. H. Buchanan, with 
 Supplement. Edited by Jas. A. Smith. 6s. 
 
 CHROinCLES OF THE TOMBS. A 
 
 Select Collection of Epitaphs, with Essay 
 on Epitaijhs and Observations on Sepul- 
 chral Antiquities. By T. J. Pettigrew, 
 F.R.S., F.S.A. 5f. 
 
 CLARE'S (Hugh) Introduction to 
 Heraldry. Revised by J. R. Planch£. 51. 
 950 Illustrations. 
 
 — — With tht Ilbatratvms coloured, 15J. 
 COHTS, Manual ot.—See Humphreys. 
 
 COOPER'S Biographical Dictionary, 
 
 Containing concise notice^ of upwards of 
 15,000 eminent persons of all ages and 
 countries. 2 vols. sr. each. 
 
 DATES, Index at.— See Blair' 
 
 DICTIONARY of Obsolete and Pro- 
 vincial English. Containing Words from 
 English Writers previous to the 19th 
 Century. By Thomas Wright, M.A., 
 F.S.A., &c. 2 vols. is. each. 
 
 EPIGRAMMATISTS (The). A Selec- 
 tion from the Epigrammatic Literature af 
 Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modem Times. 
 With Introduction, Notes, Observations^ 
 Illustrations, an Aj>pendix on Works coup 
 nected with Epigrammatic Literature. 
 by Rev. H. Dodd, M.A. 6s. 
 
 GAMES, Handbook of. Edited by 
 Henry G. Bohn, Numerous Diagrams. 
 5J. {See also page 21.) 
 
 HENFRET'S Gtdde to English 
 Coins. Revised Edition, by C. F. Keary 
 M.A., F.S.A. With an Historical Intro- 
 duction. 6s. 
 
 HUMPHREYS' Coin Collectorf^ 
 
 Manual. An Historical Account of the 
 Progress of Coinage from the Earliest 
 Time, by H. N. Humplireys. 140 Illus- 
 trations. 2 vols. 5J. each. 
 
 £OWNDES' Bibliographer's Manual 
 
 of English Literature. Containing an Ac- 
 count of Rare and Curious Bo(»cs pub- 
 lished in or relating to Great Britain and 
 Ireland, from the Invention of Printing, 
 with Biographical Notices and Prices, 
 by W. T. Lowndes. Revised Edition by 
 H. G. Bohn. 6 vols, cloth, 55. each, or in 
 4 vols., half morocco, 2/. 2s. 
 
 MEDICINE, Handbook of Domestic, 
 
 Popularly Arranged. By Dr. H. Davies. 
 700 pages. 5i. 
 
 NOTED NAMES OF FICTION. 
 
 Dictionary of. Including also Familiar 
 Pseudonyms, Surnames bestowed on Emi- 
 nent Men, &c. ByW. A. Wheeler, M.A. 5J. 
 
 POLITICAL CYCLOPiEDIA. A 
 
 Dictionary of Political, Constitutional, 
 Statistical, and Forensic Knowledge ; 
 forming a Work of ^Reference on subjects^ 
 of Civil Administration, Political Economy,' 
 Finance, Commerce, Laws, and Social 
 Relations. 4 vols. 31. 6d. each. 
 
BOHN'S LIBRARIES. 
 
 PROVERBS, Handbook of. Con- 
 taining an entire Republication of Ra^s 
 Collection, with Additions from Foreign 
 Languages and Sayings, Sentences, 
 Maxims, and Phrases. 55. 
 
 A Polyglot of Foreign- Com- 
 prising French, Italian, German, Dutch, 
 Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish. With 
 English Translations. 5s. 
 
 SYNONYMS and ANTOITYMS ; or, 
 
 Kindred Words and their Opposites, Col- 
 lected and Contrasted by Ven. C. J. 
 Smith, M.A. ss. 
 
 ■WRIGHT (Th.)— 5« Dictionary. 
 
 NOVELISTS' LIBRARY. 
 
 13 Volumes at 3^. 6^. each, excepting those marked otherwise. (2/. 8j. ^d. per set ^ 
 
 BJORNSON'S Arne and the Fisher 
 Lassie. Translated from the Norse with 
 an Introduction by W. H. I./OW, M.A. 
 
 BURNET'S Evelina ; or, a Young 
 Lady's Entrance into the World. By F. 
 Burney (Mme. D'Arblay). With Intro- 
 duction and Notes by A. R. Ellis, Author 
 of * Sylvestra,' &c. 
 
 Cecilia. With Introduction and 
 
 Notes by A. R. Ellis. 2 vols. 
 
 DE STAEL. Corinne or Italy. 
 
 By Madame de Stael. Translated by 
 Emily Baldwin and Paulina Driver. 
 
 EBERS' Egyptian Princess. Trans, 
 by Emma Buchheim. 
 
 FIELDINGrs Joseph Andrews and 
 
 his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. With 
 Roscoe's Biography. Cruikskank's JllttS' 
 trations. 
 
 —— Amelia. Roscoe's Edition, revised. 
 Cruikskank's Illustrations. ^. 
 
 '— History of Tom Jones, a Found- 
 ling. Roscoe's Edition. Cruikskan^s 
 Illustrations. 2 vols. 
 
 GROSSI'S Marco VlscontL Trans, 
 by A. F. D. 
 
 MANZONI. The Betrothed : beinz 
 a Translation of ' I Promessi Sposi? 
 Numerous Woodcuts, i vol. sj. 
 
 STOWE (Mrs. H. B.) Uncle Tom*B 
 Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly. 8 fiill- 
 page Illustrations. 
 
 ARTISTS' LIBRARY. 
 
 Volumes at Various Prices. (2/. %s. (td. per set.) 
 
 BELL rsir Charles). The Anatomy 
 and Philosophy of Expression, as Con- 
 nected with the Fine Arts. 5J. Illustrated. 
 
 DEMMIN. History of Arms and 
 Armour from the Earliest Period. By 
 Auguste Demmin. Trans, by C. C. 
 Black, M.A., Assistant Keeper, S. K. 
 Museum. 1900 Illustrations, yj. 6d. 
 
 FATRHOLT'S Costume In England. 
 Third Edition. Enlarged and Revised by 
 the Hon. H. A. Dillon, F.S.A. With 
 more than 700 Engravings. 2 vols. 5J. 
 each. 
 Vol. 1. History. Vol. H. Glossary. 
 
 FLAXMAN, Lectures on Sculptnre. 
 
 With Three Addresses to the R.A. by Sir 
 R. Westmacott, R.A., and Memoir of 
 f laxman. Portrait and 53 Plates. 61. 
 
 HE A TON'S Concise History of 
 
 Faintine;. New Edition, revised by 
 W, Cosmo Monkhouse. 5J. 
 
 I.ECTURES ON FAINTINa by the 
 
 Royal Academicians, Barry, Opie, Foseli. 
 With Introductory Essay and Notes by 
 R. Womum. Portrait of Fuseli. 5s. 
 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI'S Treatise 
 on Painting. Trans, by J. F. Rigaud, R.A. 
 With a Life and an Account of his Worla 
 by J. W. Brown. Numerous Plates. 51. 
 
 FLANCHE'S History of British 
 
 Costume, from the Earliest Time to the 
 roth Century. By J. R. Planchi. 400 
 Illostrations. Sf. 
 
LIBRARY OF SPORTS AND GAMES. 
 
 14 Volumes at y. dd. and 5^. each. (zl. i8j. fer set.) 
 
 BOHN'S Handbooks of Athletic 
 
 Sports. With numerous Illustrations. In 
 8 vols. 3^. 6d. each. 
 
 Vol. I.— Cricket, by Hon. and Rev. E. 
 Lyttelton; Lawn Tennis, by H. W. W. 
 Wilberforce ; Tennis, Rackets, and Fives, 
 by Julian Marshall, Major Spens, and J. A. 
 Tait ; Golf, by W. T. Linskill ; Hockey, 
 by F. S. Creswell. 
 
 Vol. II.— Rowing and Sculling, by W. 
 B. Woodgate ; Sailing, by E. F. Knight ; 
 Swimming, by M. and J. R. Cobbett. 
 
 Vol. III.— Boxing, by R. G. AUanson- 
 Winn ; Single Stick and Sword Exercise, 
 by R. G. Allanson-Winn and C. Phillipps- 
 Wolley : Wrestling, by Walter Armstrong ; 
 Fencing, by H. A. Colmore Dunn. 
 
 Vol. IV.— Rugby Football, by Harry 
 Vassall ; Association Football, by C. W. 
 Alcock : Baseball, by Newton Crane ; 
 Rounders, Field Ball, Bowls, Quoits, Curl- 
 ing, Skittles, &c., by J. M. Walker, M.A., 
 and C. C. Mott. 
 
 Vol. v.— Cycling and Athletics, by H. H. 
 Griffin ; Skating, by Douglas Adams. 
 
 Vol. VI. — Practical Horsemanship, in- 
 cluding Riding for Ladies. By W. A. 
 Kerr, V.C. 
 
 Vol. VII. — Driving, and Stable Manage- 
 ment. By W. A. Kerr, V.C. {Preparing. 
 
 Vol. VIII. —Gymnastics, by A. F. Jenkin; 
 Clubs and Dumb-bells, by G. T. B. Cobbett 
 and A. F. Jenkin. [/« the press. 
 
 DOHN'S Handbooks ot Oames. New 
 
 Edition, entirely rewritten. « volumes. 
 3;. td. each. 
 
 Vol. I. Table Games. 
 Contents :— Billiards, with Pool, Pyra- 
 mids, and Snooker, by Major-Gen. A. W. 
 Drayson, F.R.A.S., with a preface by 
 W. J. Peall— Bagatelle, by ' Berkeley '— 
 
 Chess, by R. F. Green— Draughts, Back- 
 gammon, Dominoes, Solitaire, Reversi,. 
 Go Bang, Rouge et noir. Roulette, E.O., 
 Hazard, Faro, by * Berkeley.' 
 Vol. II. Card Games. 
 Contents :— Whist, by Dr. William Pole, 
 F.R.S., Author of 'The Philosophy of 
 Whist, &c.'— Solo Whist, by R. F. Green ; 
 Piquet, Ecart^, Euchre, Bizique, and 
 Cribba^e, by * Berkeley ; ' Poker, Loo, 
 Vingt-fct-un, Napoleon, Newmarket, Rouge 
 et Noir, Pope Joan, Speculation, &c. &c.. 
 by Baxter- Wray. 
 
 CHESS CONGRESS of 1862. A col- 
 lection of the games played. Edited by 
 J. LSwenthal. New edition, 55. 
 
 MORFHT'S Games of Chess, belngr 
 
 the Matches and best Games played by the 
 American Champion, with explanatory and 
 analytical Notes by J. Lowenthal. With 
 short Memoir and Portrait of Morphy. SJ. 
 
 STAUNTON'S Chess-Player's Hand- 
 book. A Popular and Scientific Intro- 
 duction to the Game, with numerous Dia- 
 grams. 5^. 
 
 Chess Praxis. A Supplement to the 
 
 Chess-player's Handbook. Containing the 
 most important modem Improvements in 
 the Openings ; Code of Chess Laws ; and 
 a Selection of Morphy's Games. Annotated. 
 636 pages. Diagrams. 5^. 
 
 Chess-Flayer's Companion, 
 
 Comprising a Treatise on Odds, Collection 
 of Match Games, including the French 
 Match with M. St. Amant, and a Selection 
 of Original Problems. Diagrams and Co- 
 loured Frontispiece. 5^. 
 
 Chess Tonrnament of 1851. 
 
 A Collection of Games played at this cele- 
 brated assemblage. With Introductioa 
 and Notes. Numerous Diagrams. 5>s- 
 
{ 
 
 ) 
 
 BOHN'S CHEAP SERIES. 
 
 Price IS. each. 
 
 A Series of Complete Stories or Essays, mostly reprinted from Vols, in 
 
 Bohn's Libraries, and neatly bound in sti^ paper carver, with 
 
 cut edges, suitable for Railway Reading. 
 
 ASCHAM (Roger). Scbolemaster. 
 By Professor Mayor. 
 
 CARPENTER , (Dr. W. B.). Physi- 
 ology of Temperance and Total Abstinence. 
 
 EiyiERSON, England and English 
 
 Characteristics. .Lectures on the Race, 
 Ability, Manners, Truth, Character, 
 Wealth, Religion. &c. &c. 
 
 — Nature : An Essay. To which are 
 added Orations, Lectures, and Addresses. 
 
 Representative Men : Seven Lec- 
 tures on Plato, Swedenborg, Mon- 
 taigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and 
 Goethe. 
 
 — Twenty Essays on Various Sub- 
 jects. 
 
 The Conduct of Life, 
 
 FRANKLIN (Benjamin). Autobio- 
 graphy. Edited by J. Sparks. 
 
 HAWTHORNE (Nathaniel). Twice- 
 told Tales. Two Vols. 
 
 Snow Image, and Other Tales. 
 
 Scarlet Letter, 
 
 House with the Seven Gables, 
 
 Transformation ; or the Marble 
 
 Fawn. Two Parts. 
 
 HAZLITT fW.). Table-talk 
 on Men and Manners. Three Parts. 
 
 .—— Plain Speaker : Opinions on Books, 
 Men, and Things. Three Parts. 
 
 Lectures on the English Comic 
 
 Writers. 
 
 Lectures on the English Poets, 
 
 .— Lectures on the Characters of 
 
 Shakespeare's Plays. 
 
 Lectures on the Literature of 
 
 the Age of Elizabeth, chiefly Dramatic. 
 
 IRVING fWashingtoD). Lives of 
 
 Successors of Mohammed. 
 
 Life of Goldsmith. 
 
 Sketch-book. 
 
 Tales of a Traveller. 
 
 Tour on the Prairies. 
 
 Conquests of Granada and 
 
 Spain. Two Parts. 
 Life and Voyages of Columbus. 
 
 Two Parts. 
 
 Companions of Columbus : Their 
 
 Voyages and Discoveries. 
 
 Adventures of Captain Bonne- 
 ville in the Rocky Mountains and the Far 
 West. 
 
 Knickerbocker's History of New^ 
 
 York, from the beginning of the World to 
 the End of the Dutch Dynasty. 
 
 Tales of the Alhambra, 
 
 Conquest of Florida under Her- 
 nando de Soto. 
 
 Abbotsford & Newstead Abbey. 
 
 Salmagundi ; or, The Whim- Whams 
 
 and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, 
 Esq. 
 
 Bracebridge Hall; or, The Hu- 
 mourists. 
 
 Astoria ; or, Anecdotes of an Enter- 
 prise beyond the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Wolfert's Roost, and other Tales. 
 
 LAMB (Charles). 
 With a Portrait. 
 
 Essays of Elia, 
 
 Last Essays of Elia, 
 
 Eliana, With Memoir. 
 
 MARRTAT (Captain). Pirate and 
 
 the Three Cutters. With a Memoir of 
 the Author. 
 
Bohn's Select Library of Standard Works. 
 
 Price IS. in paper covers, and is. 6d. in cloth. 
 
 1. Bacon's Essays. With Introduction and Notes. 
 
 2. Lessing'S Laokoon. Beasley's Translation, revised, with Intro- 
 
 duction, Notes, &c., by Edward Bell, M.A. With Frontispiece. 
 
 3. Dante's Inferno. Translated, with Notes, by Rev. H. F. Gary. 
 
 4. Goethe's Faust. Part I. Translated, with Introduction, by 
 
 Anna Swanwick. 
 
 5. Goethe's Boyhood. Being Part I. of the Autobiography 
 
 Translated by J. Oxenford. 
 
 6. Schiller's Mary Stuart and The Maid of Orleans. Trans- 
 
 lated by J. Hellish and Anna Swanwick. 
 
 7. The Queen's English. By the late Dean Alford. 
 
 8. Life and Labours of the late Thomas Brassey. By Sir 
 
 A. Helps, K.C.B. 
 
 9. Plato's Dialogues: The Apology— Crito—Phaedo— Protagoras. 
 
 With Introductions. 
 
 10. MoLiiRE's Plays : The Miser— Tartuffe— The Shopkeeper turned 
 
 Gentleman. Translated by C. H. Walt, M.A. With brief Memoir. 
 
 11. Goethe's Reineke Fox, in English Hexameters. By A. Rogers- 
 
 12. Oliver Goldsmith's Plays. 
 
 13. Lessing'S Plays : Nathan the Wise — Minna von Bamhelm. 
 
 14. Plautus'S Comedies: Trinummus — Menaechmi — Aulularia — 
 
 Captivi. 
 
 i;. Waterloo Days. By C. A. Eaton. With Preface and Notes by 
 
 Edward Bell. 
 
 16. Demosthenes— On the Crown. Translated by C. Rann 
 
 Kennedy. 
 
 17. The Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 18. Oliver Cromwell. By Dr. Reinhold Pauli. 
 
 19. The Perfect Life. By Dr. Channing. Edited by his nephew, 
 
 Rev. W. H. Channing. 
 
 20. Ladies in Parliament, Horace at Athens, and other pieces, 
 
 by Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Bart. 
 
 21. Defoe's The Plague in London. 
 
 22. Irving's Life of Mahomet. 
 
 23. Horace's Odes, by various hands. [Ouf of Print. 
 
 24. Burke's Essay on 'The Sublime and Beautiful.' With 
 
 Short Memoir, 
 
 25. Hauff's Caravan. 
 
 26. Sheridan's Plays. 
 
 27. Dante's Purgatorio. Translated by Gary. 
 
 28. Harvey's Treatise on the Circulathon of the Blood 
 
 29. Cicero's Friendship and Old Age. 
 
 30. Dante's Paradiso. Translated by Gary. 
 
 31. Chronicle of Henry VIII." Translated by Major M. A. S. 
 
 Hume. 
 
WEBSTER'S INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY. 
 
 An entirely New Edition of Webster's Dictionary, thoroughly 
 Revised, considerably Enlarged, and reset in New Type from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 Demy ifo. 2i\Z pages, 3500 illustrations. 
 
 Prices: Cloth, £1 iis. 6d. ; half-calf, £2 2S.; half-russia, £2 5s.; 
 calf, £2 8s. Also in 2 vols, cloth, £1 14s. 
 
 In addition to tlie Dictionary of Words, with their pronunciation, ety- 
 mology, alternative spellings, and various meanings, illustrated by quotations 
 and numerous woodcuts, there are several valuable appendices, comprising a 
 Pronouncing Gazetteer of the World; Vocabularies of Scripture, Greek, Latin, 
 and English Proper Names ; a Dictionary of the noted Names of Fiction ; a 
 Briet History of the English Language ; a Dictionary of Foreign Quotations, 
 Words, Phrases, Proverbs, &c. ; a Biographical Dictionary with io,oo3 
 Names, &c. 
 
 This last revision, comprising and superseding the issues of 1847, 1864, 
 and 1880, is by far the most complete that the Work has undergone during 
 the sixty-two years that it has been before the public. Every page has been 
 treated as if the book were now published for the first time. 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS ON THE NEW EDITION. 
 
 ' We believe that, all things considered, this will be fovmd to be the best 
 existing English dictionary in one volume. We do not know of any work 
 similar in size and price which can approach it in completeness of vocabulary, 
 variety of information, and general usefulness.' — Guardian. 
 
 ' The most comprehensive and the most useful of its kind.' — National 
 Observer, 
 
 'A magnificent edition of Webster's immortal Dictionary.' — Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 ' A thoroughly practical and useful dictionary.' — Standard. 
 
 'A special feature of the present book is the lavish use of engravings, 
 which at once illustrate the verbal explanations of technical and scientific 
 terms, and permit them to remain readably brief. It may be enough to refer 
 to the article on " Cross." By the use of the little numbered diagrams we are 
 spared what would have become a treatise, and not a very clear one. . . . 
 We recommend the new Webster to every man of business, every father of a 
 family, evety teacher, and almost every student — to everybody, in fact, who is 
 likely to be posed at an unfamiliar or half- understood word or phrase.' — • 
 Si. James's Gazette. 
 
 Prospectuses, with Specimen Pages, on application. 
 
 London : GEORGE BELL & SONS, York Street, Covent Garden.