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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 Grod 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; in which endeavour we have often seen them but very partially successful ; and if the SUBSTITUTES TOE THE ATCXNTIMENT. 297 success has in some cases been 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 God 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 298 SYDNEY SMITH'S SERMONS. of human nature as some fashionable divines. Now and 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, till the resurrection ? The last particular in this melancholy sketch is not, that we remember, put in 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 their 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 apostle, " 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 soul, set on foot by the holy apostle," Ac. (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. For 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 efforts 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 undignified 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 SYDNEY SMITH'S SEEMONS. 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 course, 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 justification 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 : cc 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 INSULT TO THE ESTABLISHED CHUKCH. 301 in attempting to guess what class of Christians it could be that our preacher has chosen to denominate Methodists. For 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 be 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's 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 see our church treated thus by her professed sons and advocates. We seem to hear them say, " You see to what a plight the good 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 SYDNEY SMITH'S SERMONS. justification by faith, salvation 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 eflect conspirators against her life. Ad- hering in form to her communion, and possessing all 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 INTELLECTUAL ABILITY. . 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 have 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 " manly 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 than 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 " 304 SYDNEY SMITH'S SERMONS. 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 this and for every other deteriorating cause, there will be found in these sermons a large share of valuable instruction. General principles of morals are 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 will 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. Yet we find less reason to com- plain than we should have expected in moral reasonings so HIGH TONE OF MOBA.L SEKTIMENT. 305 little indebted directly to the light 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 find 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. u 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 will 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 SEBMONS. dent of human wisdom and human interference ; and man learns 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 all, 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 Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's, but God is forgotten, and Caesar 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 imbecility which is one cause of religious feeling." Vol. II. p. 302. We like the pointed, spirited cast of a paragraph in the Sermon on Repentance, 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 AND SCANDAL. 307 w 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 souls 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 ? Why is it not as difficult to lose, as to gain, the commendations of mankind ? 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 x 2 308 SYDNEY SMITH'S SERMONS. the virtue which elevates a human being above us." Vol. I- Pp. 198. While we are sincerely glad, as a kind of set-off against the theological condemnation, to bear testimony to the large 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. For example; "many a precept lays hid in the soul," &c. ; "enthusiasm has sprang up among the rich;" "when the sword has drank its full;" "it often happens that the repentance, began at a moment of sickness, vanishes," &c.; "we are thoroughly aware of having legan" &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 from 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 singularity. 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 aifectation 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 manoauvre. 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 G-od 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 God " " 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 SYDNEY SMITH'S SEEMONS. holy, everlasting godliness " " proud integrity " " human 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 with 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 chambers 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 God, 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 OF OBIGINALITY. 311 compassionate heart as an asylum for the afflicted, and to make the good an altar for the miserable, e 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. ED. 316 PALEY'S MEMOIBS. mendationg, 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 the most refined dictates of conscience, a great indifference 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 but 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, with 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, when 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 ministra- 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 RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 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 Founder, and that of the apostles, martyrs, and confessors of this religion. For 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 with 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 in riearly as high a rank of privilege as the original converts and advocates. If this be true, the Memoirs of Dr. Paley cannot be read without 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 seductive. 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 an-d 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 discipline 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 that, 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 SECULAR HABITS. 319 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 tell 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. Nor 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 suffered 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 vile 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 PALEY' s MEMOIES. 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 in 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- ness 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 of the church PALEY'S EAELT LIPE. 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, Dr. 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 m^ch 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. 7.) 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 affording him satisfactory information. In his mind he was uncommonly T 322 PALEY'S MKMOIBS. active ; in his body quite the reverse. He was a bad horseman, 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 mountebank 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 assiduously 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 in 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. We 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 PALEY 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 unprofitable. 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 Green- wich ; of his gaining an university prize by the best disserta- tion on the comparative merits of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, in which he was the advocate of the latter ; of his entering on the clerical office, and of his tutorship, of several years' duration, in his college, in which he was asso- T 2 324 FACET'S MEMOIRS. elated with Mr. Law, son 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 hilarity, and employed, with the utmost success, every 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 Religion he treated as 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 were, 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, as 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 STJBSCBIPTIOJT TO THE ABTICLES. 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 difficult 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 we 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 authorization so carefully select, express, and comprehensive, the man who should pretend to raise a question, whether the inatitutora 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 civilized society. It is something much worse than trifling 326 PALET'S MEMOIB8. 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 may, 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 uniformity 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 declining to place himself within its obligations. But it is meanly 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 taken all possible care to express that it absolutely does mean, and absolutely does enjoin. By extending this priviledge of conscience a few degrees further, a Mahometan or Pagan may subscribe the 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 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 327 I am 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 with 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 jndged 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 all 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 Reformers, 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, 328 PALEY'S MEMOIBS. 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, haviug 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 POX'S 11ISTOBY. 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 5 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 FOX'S HISTOET. Observations on the Historical Work of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox. By the Eight Honourable GEOKGE EOSE. With the Narrative of the Events which occurred in the Enterprise of Earl of Argyle, in 1685. By SIR PATKICK HUME. 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 OK FOX'S HISTOET. abilities gain an advantage, in 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 will 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. Fox write a book to be refuted by such a man as Mr. Hose. 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 still 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 all their emoluments) should have diverted so much 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 animation or confidence to their hopes, from seeing how many questions VINDICATION OF SIK PATRICK HUME. 331 of fact, within 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, unless 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 wisdom, 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. Hose, 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. Hose, and " deposited with him, as a sacred trust, all the MSS. of his family, with an injunction to make use of them, if Mr. Rose should ever find it necessary." Of course it has become absolutely necessary, in consequence of Mr. Fox'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 BO BE ON FOX'S HISTORY. 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 Spain 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 Rose. 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 taedium vitce, occasioned by their having absolutely nothing to read and nothing to do. With respect to the observations on the other parts of Fox'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 historian. 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, INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 333 and enjoyed the affectionate friendship of Mr. Fox'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. Fox, 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 all 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. Fox 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. Rose's long and desultory introduction. But what delights us above everything, ia 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 334 EOSE ON FOX'S HISTOEY. 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. George Rose; and by the consideration that, notwithstanding the corruption of these times, there are still some venerable statesmen, whose independence in 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- selves. " 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 best, 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 about it be not a farce, requires 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 STEAFFOED. 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. Pox'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 Charles was arraigned, was not really a national tribunal, is asserted by 336 EOSE OK FOX'S HISTORY. 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 jus 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 Pox'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 TJKDEE CHABLES II. 337 disprove the charge, 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. Hose'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 Fox 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 concern in it. It ia proved from Clarendon's own 8 338 EOSE ON FOX'S HISTOBY. state papers, that, soon after the restoration, this nobleman, whose integrity has been so often vaunted, degraded himself so far as to be the confidential manager of this vile con- nexion. It was a worthy employment for a man who, in negotiating that restoration could act in conjunction with euch 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 Home, 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 Barillon. 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. Rose 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 XOUIS XIY. 339 Observations is occupied in showing this 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 Barillou, 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 correspondence (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 solicited 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 ambitions 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. Barillon stated to his master " that he had given two bribes of 500 each to Sydney ; and that with Lord Eussell he had been in 2 z 340 EOSE ON FOX'S HISTOET. a clandestine intercourse." Mr. Fox having expressed himself in the strongest possible terms as to the value of Barillon'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 Barillon was entrusted by his sovereign with very large sums of money ; the distribution of which he was of course to give some account of, 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 indxicement 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 Barillon 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. Hose'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 of Monmouth ; intermixing a great many relative and inci- dental matters of history and opinion, and including a most SIS PATRICK HUME AND ABGYLE. 341 profitablebook-making quantity 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. Rose ; who cannot allow it possible that the ancestor of his intimate friend Lord March mont, 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. AVe 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 Fox to be recorded on no good authority. Mr. Rose 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 take all ways to know from him those things which concern our government most," were interpreted by Fox to direct the use of torture ; a meaning which, (though not 342 BOSE ON FOX'S HISTOET. improbable, as being most perfectly in character for that execrable authority from which the warrant came,) is scarcely admitted by Mr. Rose, 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 all 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. Rose himself somewhere says it was the only promise he faithfully kept), that he would carry on the same horrible course of assassination which was perpetrating at the time of his predecessor's death. His conduct in CK THEATBICAL AMUSEMENTS. 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. Rose 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 man 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 THEATRICAL AMUSEMENTS. Pour Discourses on Subjects relating to the Amusement 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 PLUMTRB, B.D., Fellow of Clare Hall. 8vo. 1809. IT is not expressed in the title-page, that these discourses were preached, and are published, with an intention hostile 344 OK THEATBICAL AMUSEMENTS. 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, with 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, ME. PLTJMTBE'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 without 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. M ore'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 wholly 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 AMUSEMENTS- man for composing a volume on such a subject. His apology is, that this 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, " "Whether 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 could 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 literally 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 effect 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 under LAWFULNESS OF THE STAGE. 347 the circumstances inseparable from a company of players, and the vast expense, original and permanent, of the whole theatrical establishment. All these and other particulars are involved in the question of the lawfulness 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 the 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 fully (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 nail 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- 348 ON THEATBIOAL 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 grown 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 effected 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 CLASSES FEEQTTENT THE THEATEE. 349 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 found 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 ther own 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, and 350 ON THEATRICAL AMUSEMENTS. miseries, they 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 all England, who could hear such a state of mind insisted on as necessary even in the common course of life, 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 fully 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 all 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 ua, 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 IMMOIIALITT OF THE DEA51A. 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 unparal]eled 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 uniformly 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 baffle at last the utmost rhetoric of the journalists in attempting, even with the aid of the Miltonic diction, to describe the "confusion" still "worse confounded?" Parson Kemble, or Saint Cooke, after having once appeared, seriously, in the Gospel Scene, would prefer taking the second turn in the pillory 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 352 OW THEATEICAL AMUSEMENTS. 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, whose principles, with respect to the most important PBOPOSED BEFOBM OF 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 relinquishing 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), still 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 354 OX THEATEICAL AMUSEMENTS. Our argument above has been, 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 effort 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 afford to lose the frivolous and the dis- solute. And 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 EEFOEM OP THE STAGE IMPBACTICABLE. 355 for the corrective discipline of sinners. But the place, originally intended to please them, will not long be occupied by the usurping morality that would assume to mend them. Like the unclean spirit, they will soon re-enter the swept and garnished house, and even, like him, bring auxiliary companions, the more eifectually to assert whose house it is. "We will 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 thing 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, will 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 will 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 a book which the audience could have quietly A A2 356 ON THEATBICAL AMUSEMENTS. read at home ; and, if they are tragic lines, read, according to the opinion of Dr. Johnson, with a deeper impression ? This ^iew of the necessary character of the stage forms hut a narrow section of the argument against it ; and we have dwelt on it, not with the design of anything so ahsurd 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 illustrations 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 tells " 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, Tillotson, Seed, Hanway, Johnson, GKlpin, and GHsborne. 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 book it is quoted from him, that there is one quarter from which the purification of the stage, with respect to all offences against modesty, " might be effected at once ; PBOFANE LANGUAGE OF THE STAGE. 357 to those who act under a royal license, a single hint from Royal 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 SEI our good works, and QLOEIFT OUR FATHER 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 FOX. Characters of the late Charles James Fox, selected, and in part written, by PHILOPATRIS VARVICENSIS. 8vo. 2 vols. 1809. VEET few pages of the original part of this 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 singularly 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 ample literary structure, which was to display the attributes and decorations of all 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 applauded by every reader, from their being unaccompanied and acquirements of Philopatris will be the more freely 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 all 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 MOEALITT OF POLITICS. 359 hundred and sixty pages. We have, therefore, within 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 feeling which was produced by the solemnity of the occasion, these pieces may have had a greater effect on the popularmind with 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, remain an amusing and instructive record of the kind 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 ^tna, than many of the most diminutive productions of nature, or most trifling 360 CHA.EACTEE8 OF FOX. works of art. It was said of Fox's countenance, that *he 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, Ms 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 all the dulness of Messrs. and , belabour- ing and contorting itself, to the pain and pity of all 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 difficulty 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, EXTRAVAGANT 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 observations may appear of a cynical cast, but 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 Pox'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 warmest 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 Pox'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 Pox'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 prescience, " 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 CHAttAOTEKS 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 efficient 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 shapa, 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- vated in rank, or distinguished by talents but, under Providence, NATIONAL SELF-IDOLATEY. 363 to the public spirit of the people themselves. Of this opinion we remain ; and much as we wished for the life, and deeply as we deplore the death, of this transcendently 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 Fox's character, in a piece to which the editor has prefixed, we suppose on sufficient authority, 364 CHAEACTEES OF FOX. the name of the " Rev. Robert Fellowes," 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. From 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 Fox's own simple manner, as witness abundance of sentences like these : " The heart of Mr. Fox 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. Fox 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. u 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 cast, 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 evangelical had let such a passage appear under his name. It is followed, in the POX'S BELIGIOTTS 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 till 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 ?) then we will 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 Religion" 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. All 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 kind 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. Fox'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 CHABACTEBS OF FOX. upon religious subjects he did not talk irreverently, and generally appeai-ed 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 inciden- 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 FOR EELIGTOTJS SCEPTICISM. 367 can with innocence and impunity withhold 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 office 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 the 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 in 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 expressing 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 inagnae animaB ; 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 princi- ples, when it is seen that even the teachers of religion are ty such a character seduced to betray it. It is obvious how powerful the depraving influence is likely to be on other 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 CHAKACTEES OF FOX. Christian divine, in a work intended and expected 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 in 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 indifference 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 evils, 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 will 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. FOX'S MOEAL DEFECTS. 369 Pox." 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 own way with respect to the slightness of the harm and final danger of gaming, libertinism, and scep- ticism, or incurring the imputation of illiberality, perhaps malignity, towards the splendid qualities of Fox ; which, in these eulogiums, are artfully disposed for throwing their rays across the deep moral and religious shades of the character, and thus giving them a deceptive appearance of extenuated evil. This imputation can be averted by no professions of admiration of his stupendoxis 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 these 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. Philopatris, the Eev. Mr. Fellowes, &c., for the fanaticism of doubting whether a sceptical indifference to Christianity is exactly 13 B 370 CHABACTEES OF FOX. the proper state 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 cannot 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 ab religion in order virtually to explode it by means of Mr. Fox's character, we are compelled to offend 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 all manner of knowledge, and unfettered from all manner of method. Not 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, all the paragraphs are just like chevaux de frize ; throw them in any way you please, they still present a point. And for DB. PABB'S VABIED ATTAINMENTS. 371 passing with 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 heholder 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 Romilly. 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 all 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 Fox's historical work. In the former, the author proposes to abrogate the whole penal code, and replace it by a more mild 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 2 372 EDUCATION IN RELATION TO BELIGION. liberty and of religious liberty as far as concerns the 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 suffered 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 Education. By R. L. EDGEWORTH, Esq., F.E.S., M.R.I.A., &c. 4to. 1810. IN literary partnership with a female relative, this author has become sufficiently well known to the public, to enable it to prejudge with tolerable confidence the general qualities of any work he might write, especially on the subject of education. His book will 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 will be no hope of convicting the author of enthusiasm for a system, or servility to any distinguished authority. It will be expected that good use will be made of the opinions of the most opposite speculatists, and that most of the opinions that are approved will be sup- PBINCIPLES AND PLANS OF EDUCATION. 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 on finding 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 will 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 at a very early period the future profession of each of their sons, 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 EDUCATION IN BELATION TO EELIGION. ful aid 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 seven 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 genius will disclose itself, or be drawn forth by some accident ; during all which time the general disci- pline of education will probably be very remiss, the specific training preparatory to professional studies will 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 " Fairy Queen' ' in his mother's window ; and Sir Joshua Reynolds' s for painting, from his chancing to open a book by Richardson, 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 *hey 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 will invigorate the motive by which parents and friends are to be prompted to design and perseverance, and since nothing can be practically more mishievous, than the fancy that all is to be done by some THE DISCIPLINE OF EABLT IMPttESSIONS. 375 innate 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 the same ages as Cowley and Beynolds might have met with, and partly read, the "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 ; as resemblance, contrariety, contiguity, and cause and effect ; 376 EDUCATION IN BELA.TION TO BELIGION. 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 plans 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. CLEEICAL EDUCATION. 377 Our author's scheme 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 should 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 college, 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 author decides to be partly beneficial and partly injurious to the church and to national morality. 378 EDUCATION IN BELATION TO BELICHON. " That which is exerted by rich commoners or noble families 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, it is presumed, can 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 will 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 obtain 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 CLEEICAL EDUCATION. 379 bishop will suffer such 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 most peremptory regulations, not only for interdicting such a man from preferment to larger emoluments and more extensive cure of souls, but for expelling 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 EBLATION TO EELIGION. in this concern, it lies with the holders of livings to give their curates that complacency in their office which accom- panies a respectable competence, or to gall them with the mortification, impatience, and disgust inflicted by a long, toilsome, 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 be 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 PBIYATE EDUCATION. 381 very trifling question whether Christianity be true or false ; but that it teaches some principles and modes of action, the prevalence of which, to a certain extent, would be useful in society, and therefore it is desirable they should be incul- cated ; while, 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 affecting 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 being 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 EDUCATION IN RELATION 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 children 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 guilt, 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 PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 383 doctrine may be communicated, 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 all 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 public 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 ; he should never be applauded for pleading his cause well, for sup- 384 EDUCATION IN RELATION TO EELIGION. porting his own opinion, or for decrying or exposing to ridicule that of his opponent." P. 88. It seems quite a settled principle of our author' a 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 book, 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 different 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 every CLEEICA.L EDUCATION. 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 through obstinacy or the desire of victory. But the very spirit and conduct which the 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 can 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 effecting 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 386 EDUCATION IN BELATION TO RELIGION. 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 AST) NAVAL EDUCATION. 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. "We 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 truth 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 EDUCATION IN RELATION TO BELIGION. appear to regard all the splendour of fame with which war has been blazoned, much in the same light as the gilding of 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 in 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 with which dull and envious moralists have always railed against martial glory, will 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 MOEALITY OP WAS. 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 difference 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 the 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 BELATION TO RELIGION. that is to say, if all such considerations, and the profession itself, are not by that time set aside by the final cessation of 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 employed 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 sons THE MOBAXITT OF WAS. 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 will 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 dull and useless discussion whether it be practicable to devise a scheme of 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 EDUCATION IN BELATION TO BELIGION. 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 eifect to an exception sanctioning martial madness to harass and consume them. Truly it would deserve all the contempt which such persons 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 which 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 will 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 can 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 most 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 DEFENCES. 393 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 iu speculating on the policy of states. It is to e hoped that all these fanatics will, in consistency with their faith in such a government, 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 as of consequence enough for the cognizance of conscience ; they may divest themselves of the inconvenience of moral 394 EDUCATION IIS* BELA.TION TO EELIGI01". 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 malig- nity of the aggressor. The peaceful valleys and hills 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 DTTELIIKG. 395 responsibility. The exemption goes this length, and every length, or it cannot be proved to exist at all ; for if an accountableness 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 upstart 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. Under the 396 EDUCATION IK RELATION TO RELIGION. appearance of idle men of the town, there will always, in 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 will 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 in a pistolling match with " every ill-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 he 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 mentioning in 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 will 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. MILITAET KELIQION. 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 foundations, 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 will 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 what 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 EDUCATION IN BELATION TO BELI&ION. 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 pleased to call Achilles a MEDICAL AXD LEGAL EDUCATION, ETC. 399 mad butcher, wading in carnage ; but all our love for the arts of peace, and all our respect for that humane philosophy which 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 combination, 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 magnanimity (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 SANSCEIT LITEEATUEE. 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. SANSCEIT LITEEATUEE. The Samayuna of Valmeeki, translated from the Sungskrit, with explanatory Notes. By WILLIAM CAREY and JOSHUA MARSH- MAN. Vol. I. containing the first Book. 8vo. 1810. SCAECELT 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 still 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 EBBONEOUS 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 to 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 D D 402 SAWSCKIT LITERATURE. those treasures of wisdom, the possession of which, 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 Roman 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 G-eeta 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-kiln, kindled for the purpose 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 refined 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- lation, by a scholar whose ability and accuracy no one could THE GEETA. 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 possible 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 Geeta 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 puerility ; that the whole exhibition seems to be 3>D 2 404 SANSCRIT LITEEA.TTJEB. an attempt to amalgamate the lowest fooleries of superstition with certain abstract principles of what is called natural theology, most feebly and remittingly apprehended ; that the supreme rule of morality is to annihilate the motives to action ; 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 Caflraria, New Zealand, or the Copper Mine Eiver 'further translations soon were to be made from the cyclo- paedia of the gods. It was impossible for Sir William 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 iheDherma Sastra, 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. For 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 OF MElTtT. 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 religious 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 all 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, had to a certain extent suffered himself to believe the Sanscrit had guarded within its mysterious recesses for so many centuries, 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 SANSCRIT LITEBATUBE. the spirit of the knight-errant, going to rescue the fair 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 whom 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-off, certain other qualities alleged to be prominently distinguishable in the Institutes, and which nothing but an imagination, not yet effectually 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, the unparalleled iniquity of the distinction of THE INSTITUTES OF MENU. 407 castes, and the most arrogant and oppressive claims of the Brahmins !) " and of amiable tenderness to all sentient creatures, pervades the whole work : the style of it has a certain austere majesty, that sounds like the language of legislation, and extorts a respectful awe ; 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 Geeta, 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 Geeta 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 SANSCRIT LITEBATFBE. objects of that worship ; whatever has been the design, those scholars have, in spite of all our chagrin, and our mutters and murmurs of " OJie ! jam satis est," continued, through the " Asiatic Researches," 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 affect an air of lightly-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, led 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 all 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 as 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 MISSIONARIES. 409 the dignity of philosophy, have professed to wish that the narrow-minded zealots for one religion had understanding 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 occasion and nature of their undertaking. The religion and literature, the manners and customs of the Hindoos 410 SANSCEIT LITEEATUEE. 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 Fort- 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 Society, 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 BA.MA.YUNA. 411 object has been to present the original poem 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 applied to a certain half-dozen of heathen pamphleteers), will 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 the 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 Rama, 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 Ramayuna, 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 hearing f it, will become great." P. 18. * " This is one mode in which, with much solemnity, the Bamayuna is constantly read." t " A Shoodra is not permitted to read it" 412 SANSCRIT LITERATURE. This gives a very tolerable antepast of the general quality of the work, in point of what, in our part of the world, is 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 effect. 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 inconsistency 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, singing 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 POETET. 413 such 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 in 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 G-ulliver fictions), a strict law of consistency and pro- portion is observed throughout all the prodigious giantisms, evincing the constant intervention of intellect. lu 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 all 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 be 414 SANSCRIT LITEEATUEH. so 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 Ms 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 imbecility seen through an immensely magnifying medium : and the mind labours 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 Rama- 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 known 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. The moon and stars, a number of animals and vegetables, some particular gods and heroes, ANALYSIS OF THE EAMATTTNA. 415 &c. &c., were 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 Ramayuna. And we repeat, we cannot acknowledge any duty of wasting so much labour on what forms a more egregious mass oil folly than would be produced by any one of our readers that should keep a month's diary (or rather noctuary, 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 Rama, 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 all 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 E-avuna, 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 Kama 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- 416 SANSCRIT LITERATURE. 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 llama's 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 into 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 our mathematicians have, in the true spirit of European little- ness, mistakenly computed. Another history is to this effect : A royal sage had a cow named Shubula. "When another monarch sage, in marching through the country, stopped on the former sage's fjarm a little while with a vast army, this cow gave all sorts of liquors, and all sorts of meat, baked, 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 to to take her away. She, however, made her escape, and came THE MOBILITY OF WOBKS OF FICTIOK. 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 things 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 will 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 OF "WOEKS OP FICTION. Tales of Fashionable Life. By Miss EDGEWORTH, Author of Practical Education, Belinda, &c. 12mo. 1810. OH the supposition, or the chance, that any small number of our readers may not have taken the trouble to acquaint E E 418 THE MOEALITT OF WORKS OF FICTIOS". 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 eflfect ; 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 our 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 IGNOBANCE OF MAN'S MOEAL DESTINY. 419 comprehensive theory of duty and happiness. She would 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 soundness, 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. Reduce 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 living 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 will 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, all these questions are probably undecided in the mind of our ingenious moralist. And bow can she be qualified to conduct the discipline of a kind of beings of the nature and relations of which she is BO profoundly ignorant ? If it were not a serious thing on account of its E E 2 420 THE MOEALITY OF WOBKS OF FICTION. 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 Edgeworth'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 interests, 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 thus far, whatever may ultimately 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 in 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 inadequate 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 DEFICIENT MOEAL SYSTEM. 421 deem it excessively officious and fanatical in any one that should do it for her, that 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 words, 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 Soint of implying as much ; and we apprehend she would be iverted, 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 is well 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 nothing but a clod, I do not know that I should want anything beyond the lessons of this philosopher's school : but while 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." Our 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 infinitely 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 MOEALITT OF WOBKS OF FICTION. may be beyond ; it is also still on the same hypothesis perniciously erroneous as far as it goes. For it teaches virtue on principles on which virtue itself will not be 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 will 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 be, 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 combination! of principles undefined, arbitrary, capricious, and sometimes incom- patible. Pride, honour, generous impulse, calculation of 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 moral 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 in 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 of her life, she may chance to find it necessary in maintain- ing a faithful adherence to them through all 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 a NOT CONFOBMED TO THE CHBISTIAN STANDABD. 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 her 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 all 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 MOEALITT OF WOBKS OF PICTIOIT. 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 writer ; 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 " Mancen- 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 she attributes to one of her principal characters, Lord Glenthorn, whom she reforms from a very great degree of profligacy, are 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 PEIDE THE CHIEF MOTIVE TO VIBTTnB. 425 repentance : they 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 manoeuvre 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 will 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 vision 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. For on Lord Glen- thorn, the hero of the longest and most interesting of these tales, she represents this operation as totally inefficacious till aided by the discovery that he is no Lord ; having been substituted in his infancy for the true infant peer by Ellinor O'Donoghoe, the inhabitant of a dirty mud cabin, 426 THE MOBILITY OF WOBKS OF his mother, and that peer's nurse. And the subject which is thus made to illustrate the inefficacy, is notwithstanding represented as naturally endowed with very favourable dis- positions and very good talents. In the stories of "Almeria" and "Manoeuvring," the utmost powers of the reforming discipline are honestly represented as fairly baffled, from beginning to end, the culprits adhering to their faults and follies 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- withstanding that this has the repute of sometimes working very strange transformations, and might as well have been 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. Yet it would be a little curious to observe what she really would think and say at witnessing an instance in which a person, who had long pursued a foolish or profligate 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 CHABACTEBISTICS OF MISS EDGEWORTH's TALES. 427 productions, that we have noticed the work of which we nave transcribed the title ; and we need say very few words respecting 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 would 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 all 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 benevolent 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 silly. As far as she has had opportunities for observation, she has caught a very discriminative idea of national characters : that of the Irish is delineated with incomparable accuracy and spirit. It may be added, that our author, 428 ON CEUELTT 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 deFleury," "TheDun,"and "Manoeuv- ring ;" the first and the last each filling an entire volume. ON CEUELTY TO ANIMALS. Speech of the RIGHT HON. W. WINDHAM in the House of Commons, June 13, 1809, on Lord Erskine's BUI for the more effectual Prevention of Cruelty towards Animals. 8vo. 1810. THE proposal of this Bill 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 legislator 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 all sorts of people Christian or infidel high political party or low ins or outs as soon as a man whose talents have made a ME. WTNDHAM'S VIEWS. 429 figure 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, as 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 while uttering this, could 430 ON CRUELTY 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 till 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 HUMANITY IN THE ABSTRACT. 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 of Mr. "VVindham'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 duty 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 virtuous 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 ON CETJELTT 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 bill, 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 mos A - ludi- crously disproportioned to the enactments that follow." From which observation it should be evident that the less a legislator adverts to the Supreme Lawgivei 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 bill, 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 moral 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 BIDICULE, HIS FAVOURITE 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 bill 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 still 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 all such deliberation on such matters. The question " What 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 r P 434 ON CBTJELTY TO ANIMALS. punishment :" and that while such a plan of .government 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 worship 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 all 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 is 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 any one have in tormenting others ? None in the mere pain inflicted, but the greatest possible in Jthe 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 exercine 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 bill 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 jurisdiction, or left to wait in gaol for the meeting of a more MANY MODES OP CEUELTY DEFINABLE. 435 regular tribunal, for offences which are incapable of being denned, 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 little 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. For 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 weight 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. FF2 433 Off CBUELTT 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 evils 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 ordinarily 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 the alleged offences against humanity went 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 all persons of real and sober sensibility, whether the evil in question be of so 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, or INJTJET 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 ; in deliberate, ingenious revenge ; in the pnre unprovoked love of tormenting ; in the barbarous carelessness of 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 individuals according to their degrees of participation ! This, however, is viewing only one part of the evil ; and so much 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 presumed, will make any question whether the feelings of a mind in a, 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 feelings whatever. Now, what can be the cause of this insensibility, but our having been familiarized to the sight and 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 diffuse a tolerably general conviction of the odiousness of any one sorb of flagrant wickedness, unless our 438 OX CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 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 has 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 still, 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 observant 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 toil, 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 all 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 within their sight INSTANCES OF INHUMANITY. 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 will 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 all 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 pleasures 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 440 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. our care ; that it is not of the smallest consequence what they 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 well ; 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 tho 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 "killed 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 prevalent 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 ill 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 vast and diversified portion of suffering needlessly and often DISCEETIONAET JUEISDICTION. 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- 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). Now, 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 off" so distinctly from all other depart- ments and subjects of jurisdiction. "While, therefore, there might be within this department various difficulties of dis- crimination, and consequently some errors committed, those difficulties and errors would inconveniently affect 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. Windham was peculiarly anxious that the good people of England should never be harassed. These 442 ON CllUELTY TO ANIMALS. tribunals would in their commencement, it may be pre- sumed, proceed with solicitous deliberation; and thus a number of well-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, will 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 oflice 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 IMAGIJfAET DIFFICULTIES OF LEGISLATION.' 443 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 will 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 rery 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 444 ON CEUELTT TO AKIMALS. neighbourhood, persons who may be easily known for such, would be willing to expose themselves to be convicted of it. "With Lord Erskine, 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 burns 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-chace, 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 "'squires" might be found in the different parts of England, DISTINCTION BETWEEN BICH AND POOE. 415 who do not ride their hunters to death, and who, if in 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, college-bred gentlemen of this country ; if we must 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 should ; 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 his opinion to the superior agent and criminal, "his honour," for whose sake the cruelty is committed. 446 ON CEUELTT TO ANIMALS. " Whose fault is it, in nineteen cases out of twenty, that these sufferings are incurred ? The traveller drives up in haste, his servant having 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 1 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 landlord 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 will 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 will to do right without it. "His honour ' ' is evidently not disposed to save the legislature the odium SUPPOSED CASE OF CliUOiLTY. 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 cause 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. For 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 will laugh, and tell 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 own advantage, he will deserve to stand the 418 OJf CEUELTT TO ANIMALS. sole 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 again." 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 ground so palpably taken from under the reasoner by the nature of the case ? It being unavoidably present to his thoughts at the time, and it having been put in the most pointed form of words 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 without 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, CBTJELTY OF FASHIONABLE PEOPLE. 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-a-one'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 punishment, 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 against the law as proposed by Lord Erskine, its making an invidious and iniquitous distinction between the higher and lower orders, into this argumentum 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." O G 450 OK CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. But, behold ! 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 Bill," 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 under their protection ; and be passing bills 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 bill professing to proceed on a general principle of humanity, by calling those excluded animals the "unreclaimed," or ferce naturae. " 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 INCONSISTENCY OF LOBD EBSKINE's BILL. 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 impressing 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. Retain, 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 beneficence 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 G G 2 452 ON CBUELTY TO ANIMALS. of this article, we called these compassionate professions cant whether justly or not, will appear immediately. After 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 animals are equalled, if not exceeded, by those that take place in the aristocratic amusements of hunting, &c. &c. Of course the senator expects it to be understood that he regrets also the suiferings 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 beffffed not to be understood as condemning the sports to which he had been alluding, and much 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, would 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 been delivered. i 453 SOTJTHET'S CTJESE OF KEHAMA. The Curse of Kehama. By EOBEET SOUTHET. 4to. 1811. IN endeavouring to come as near as we can to a right judgment on this performance, it will perhaps be best to ~.et 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, that the 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 guessing at a sequel, but gives the impression that there can be no sequel. The magnificent and monstrous fable comes up to our view and goes down again, 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- sisting, 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 in 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 century ; certainly not since 454 SOUTHEY'S CURSE OF KEHAMA. the battle of Plassey ; because it is impossible that such 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 interfering 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 "Rajah." 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. 455 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 appointed 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 sufficiently 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 and outcry cease ; a ceremony is performed in the way of ascertaining that the body is really dead ; it is absolutely dead ; then u With a doubling peal and deeper blast The tambours and the trumpets sound on high, And with a last arid 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 below 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 the preceding 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 CUKSE or KEHASIA. 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, Marriataly, see their strife ? In pity didst thou see the suffering maid ? Or was thine anger kindled, that rude hands Assailed thy holy image 1 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 Arvalan, 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- THE CFBSE. 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 shalt live hi 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 SOTTTHEY'S CURSE OP KEHAMA. 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 occasion (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 associated. 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 around him with horror ; and as he recovers from his amazement, his consciousness the more perfectly verifies the full reality POWERFUL CONCEPTION OF FEELINGS. 459 and weight of the curse. But it is time to notice, that the poet gives us 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 all 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 SOUTHET'S CUBSE OF KEHAMA. root of a tree, Ladurlad making a most resolute effort, 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 BOLDNESS OF IMAGEBY. 461 " That Spectre fixed his eyes upon her full, The light which shone in their accursed orbs Was like a light from hell, 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 powers of poetry, that is, of human genius, with 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 we have transcribed this passage ; but we are confident that in the power of aggra- 462 SOUTHET'S CUBSE OF KEHAHA. vating a bold conceptiou, by concentrating in it all the 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 ma 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 the world where there are temples to Pollear is, for that reason, a much preferable country for unprotected maidens than this where Chris- tianity forbids any such sanctuaries. It would have been FASCINATION OF ITS POETET. 463 in perfect consistency 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: but 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 Rajah " 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 the 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 4G1 SOTTTHEY'S CTJESE OF KEHAMA. thought," self-moving, and having at its prow the living head of an angel. The maiden is placed in it : Ereerda, on 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 unrelaxing effort to spread all the colours of poetry over 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- sification, 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- cludes 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 WANT OF VAEIETT. 465 satisfied, and soon tired, with this sort of beauty ; in the 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 Hound watery cupolas aspire. And domes of rainbow rest on fiery towers, And roofs of flame are turretted around With cloud, and shafts of cloud with flame are bound. Here, too, the Elements for ever veer, Banging 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 will 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 CUBSE OP KEHAMA. poetical building that could have framed, of the same mate- 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 ihis 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." TBITTMPH OF THE POETET OYEE THE SUBJECT. 467 While Kailyal is being conveyed to the paradise of Mount Meru, we are suddenly set down in the presence of Kehama, who having already sacrificed ninety-nine consecrated horses, at so many successive periods, is approaching the moment for offering the 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 round the area, while 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 Rajah'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 n ii 2 468 SOUTHEY'S CUBSE OF 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 renews 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 wherever he turns. Down in a moment comes Ereenia with his hanger drawn, 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 wife. 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 all 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 instance, or Meru, he not only fails to show, in regular perspective, all the kingdoms of the Hindoo mythological world, and the glory WANT OF CONSISTENCY. 469 of them ; 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 Tie 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 SOUTHEY'S CTTBSE or KEHAMA. be left to his choice or caprice, the only grand indispensable rule being, (we are here setting aside all moral and reli- 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 all the chief arrangements. This rule has been so little regarded in the present work, that, in trying to follow out the fiction, the reader often finds himself in no loorld 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 all 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, infalliblv, 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, while 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 SWEBO1 AND MOUNT MEBTJ. 471 lutely 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 Tague 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 sufferings, 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 SOUTHET'S CTJBSE 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 spouse Parvati, in her wanton playfulness. We will transcribe the liues 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 Q-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 goodness of the gods, the Avatars of Vishnoo, and the cer- tainty of a final triumph and recompense to invincible LADTJBLA_D'S FAITH. 473 virtue. 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. u 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 kis 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 Rajah 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. From what- ever cause, they forbear all injury or insult in the present instance ; except that it is fairly impossible for Camdeo, the god of love, to deny himself the sport of aiming just one 474 SOTJTHET'S CTJESE or KEHAMA. couple of shafts at Ereema and Kailyal. The former is struck with the arrow, but calmly aiid 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 lees linked together by the legs. The pieces of this broken bow-string darb 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 be furnished with arms and armour of proof against her celestial guardian. It may well 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 skill Into this organ of her mighty will. Look in yonder orb, she cried, Tell me what is there descried." P. 116. 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 car is seized and drawn by an irresistible attraction : the dragons cannot take it up ward another inch: ITS MONSTKOTTS INCIDENTS. 475 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 savs, " 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 i* 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 silly 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 SOUTHET'S CTJESE OF KEHAMA. sweat with 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, floods, 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 should be solemnly employed in business like this ! We will 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 : APPBOPBIATION OF BIBLICAL IMAGES. 477 " Up rose the Rajah 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 scaled 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 u 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 flowers : 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 extra-natural intelligence, obsequiousness, admira- tion, and affection, displayed by all sorts of animals towards 478 SOUTHEY'S CUBSE OE KEHAMA. Kailyal. The fortitude of the 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 wretched obligation on the poet, of fidelity to his fable, will 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 carefully making their devotional sentiments identical, and the language descriptive of them interchangeable. Kauyal'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 withdrawn his guardianship, and unaware that she is unceasingly followed by the keenest attention of Lorrinite, Arvalan, and Kehama, KAILYAL IN JAGGEBNATJT's TEMPLE. 479 which last, it is intimated, perceives her destiny to be mysteriously connected with his own, one more preparatory portion of that destiny is accomplished, by her being suddenly seized and carried off, by a band of Yoguees, 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 terrible hubbub of shouts, gongs, and trumpets, which overpowers the groans of the self-devoted wretches perishing under the wheels of the enormous carriage that " Rolls 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 follow close and thrust the deadly wheels along." P. 147. Filled 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 SOTJTHEY'S CTJRSE OP 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, snatches a torch, (it is not explained how such a thing could be 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 obtained him there the high situation of judge of the dead. They reach at length the shore, where they see the pinnacles of 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 DESCRIPTION. 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, shows 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 captivation ; 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 Indra's fine library. i i 482 SOTJTHEY'S CCTRSE OF KEHAMA. Recollecting, after this short and happy enhancement 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-born light." There was another alcove, which had been intended for the sepulchral residence of Baly, if he had not given himself a different 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 cuts with a scimitar the fetters of the Glendoveer, 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 and fury of a thunderbolt, but too late to EBEENIA'S APPEAL TO SEETA. 483 rescue his son. But he also can 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 Kailyal, 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 Grlendoveer, the while, is gone on an " emprize " which the whole magazine of pompous epithets is emptied to blazon out as most daring and awful. It is to represent 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 Veeshnoo were quarrelling most furiously for the pre-eminence, Seeva (there being most likely no officer of police at hand) determined i i 2 484 SOTJTHEY'S CTTBSE OF KEHAMA. to put an end to the rivalry, by showing them who was the 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. Much of this gloomy vision is presented with little less pointed specificality, if we may so express it, of circumstance, and little less intensity of colouring, 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. Still from the verge they strain, PADAtON. And from the dreadful gulph avert their eyes, In vain ; down plunge the demons, and their cries Feebly, as down they sink, from that profound arise." P. 125. Ereenia 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 Yamen trembles on his throne ; while they are invoking, with thundering clamours, the Rajah to set them 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, till 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 thus, for their misdeeds they stood tormented there." P. 231, 486 SOTJTHET'S CUBSE or 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 eight 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 raptur- 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 ABSURDITY OF THE FICTION. 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 intelligent 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 SOUTHET'S CURSE OF KEHAMA. as miracles are the works of God only the true God 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 his infinite mind, widely different 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- rium, 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 fire and water in perfect amity. It is, in short, only in deference to these laws of the creation, that we can be excused for refusing our respect and admiration to the infinite puerility and monstrosity of the Hindoo poets as they are called. Now a very considerable portion of the fictions, constituting the present poem, is constructed in utter defiance of this standard. The whole affair 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 ABSURDITY Or THE FICTION. 489 Calasay, the transactions and creatures of Padalon, with much more that has been noticed in the analysis, are things 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 hia 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 will, 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 SOUTHET'S CUESE OF 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, be 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 will 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 so 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, if 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, Pollear, Yama, Indra, Veeshnoo, Seeva, Padalon, the Swerga, &c., celebrated in the most Christianized country of Europe, by a native poet. Now if these had been merely the fictions PAGANISM OF THE POEM. 491 of his own mind, and not parts of a heathen 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 indefinitely 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 is 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 we 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 SOUTHET'S CTJBSE OP KEHAMA. of divine attributes to Seeva, are uttered by the poet in his 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 lie was unaware that a certain moral effect 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 Tama, 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, hia 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, agreeable objects to the reader's imagination, and aa far as possible WANT OF REVERENCE FOE CHBISTIANITY. 493 interesting to his affections ? "We do not see how 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, rightly impressed with the transcendent idea of a Supreme Being, and with the unspeakable folly and danger 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 will 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 SOUTHET'S CUBSE OF KEHA.MA. 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 difference 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 displav of mind in Milton's infernal personages and those of Padalon. The general diction of the work is admirably strong, and various, and free ; and, in going through it, we have repeatedly exulted in the capabilities of the English Ian- ITS YEBSIFICATION. 49o guage. The author seems to have in a great measure grown out of that affected simplicity of expression, of which he 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 FOX'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 first 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 VINDICATION OF FOX'S HISTORY. liable to become degraded, by this indecorous 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 superstitious 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 assurance 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 have 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 VALUE OF THE VINDICATION. 497 to its utmost minutiae, had produced more authorities, and 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 effectually 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 work 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. Hey wood's defensive accessions, a much ampler history of the events to which it relates. And as Mr. Fox'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. Hey wood's auxiliary assemblage of evidence will 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. Bose. Another good reason for such a publication, 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, as a 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 FOX'S HISTOEY. 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 scrutiny, and takes a ground where he can be subjected to a full 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. Hose, 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 compulsion of fate to perform such an operation within 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-congratulation on performing a victorious exploit ! ME. HOSE'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 will 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, while 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. Fox. 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 Hey wood, 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 E 2 500 VINDICATION Or FOX'S HISTOET. 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 jaculation. "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, will 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. Hose, 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. Pox. He seems to have felt too certain of the effect of his evidence and his arguments, 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. Hose will 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. Fox 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 MR. ROSE'S CARELESSNESS. 501 interlude, by the 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 him & 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 still 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. Eose'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 life, had not deemed it necessary, or, as the Sergeant is rather inclined to surmise, had feared it would be unavailing to his justification, to publish the Narrative which Mr. Eose was now in such earnest haste to produce in vindication of Sir Patrick against a charge incorrectly represented as made by Mr. Fox, but which, 502 VINDICATION OF FOX'S HISTOET. 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 in which Mr. Eose very confidently delivers 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 literary 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 siege estfait." 1 " The beginning of the first section asserts, argumentatively, the just discrimination with which Mr. Fox divides the periods of our history at which the mind is disposed to pause for reflection. Among the marks or effects 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 pitifully low, has cited an instance of five pounds being given for a seat in 1571. Mr. Heywood observes that Mr. Fox certainly waa 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 fowr pounds, and* the record is in the first volume. The judgment pronounced by Mr. Fox on the condem- EXECUTION OF CHAEIE8 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. Hose 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 ground, 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 XVI. 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. Fox'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 VINDICATION or FOX'S HISTOBT. 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 effect ; 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 knowing, but as to which he also appeals to all who have read their books and extensively conversed with them. The allusion to Louis XVI. calls forth a zealous and pro- longed exertion of the Yindicator, giving him at the same time all 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 grounds on which the iujuS' 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 feeling manner, express abhorrence of the injustice and inhumanity committed in the trial and death of the French king ; and CHARACTER OF MOXK. &Uo 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 next 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, lo all 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. Fox 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 will 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. Rose understood perfectly well. Commend him, however, to the Sergeant. " Mr. Rose here exhibits the same childish partiality for kings which had been reprobated by Mr. Fox 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 VINDICATION OF FOX'S HISTORY. " 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, afford 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. Rose 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. Rose, 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. A.nd afterwards Mr. Rose 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 restrictions, 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. Rose 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 conceive 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 family, 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 four or Jive of Ms 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 by the discoveries of Monk, was condemned of high treason and lost his head." It is an extremely curious circumstance that Mr. Rose 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 tinm, 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 Eestoration, towards other of his recent friends and coad- jutors, as to authorize a belief, even on much lighter proof than that adduced, of the particular instance of villany 508 VINDICATION OF FOX.'s HISTORY. 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. Rose'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. Fox 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 delibe- rate opinion as to the period of " theoretical perfection." Our author, however, takes one by one, those several laws which the judge and Mr. Fox had specified as constituting the excellence to which the constitution had attained at the period mentioned, and defends, quite successfully in some of the instances, the approbation with which the historian had marked them. Mr. Rose 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 againsb 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 all these allegations, the Sergeant shows that the whole affair 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. Rose's Observations, in a note of M. Howell's, in a recent volume of " Cobbett's State Trials." ME. EOSE'S BLUNDEES. 509 shows that this general had the irresistible control over the composition, the proceedings, and the duration, of this same unbiased 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 Restoration and the Revolution, with regard to the time allowed for deliberation and adjust- ment, we will quote Mr. Hey wood's statement : " At the Eevolution, James fled on the llth of December, and William and Mary accepted the crown on the 13th of February 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. Rose'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. Rose 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 Y1NDICATION OF FOx'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 will 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 will 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 historan's assailant than to dispose of this accusation. " The story rests," says he, " on the authority of Neal's 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. Eose 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, Treton, Bradshaw, and Pride : and next, that the " story," as believed by Mr. Fox, does not rest on the authority of Neal alone, MR. ROSE'S BLUNDERS. 511 for that Anthony "Wood, an evidence beyond all exception 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 luried in a pit in St. Mar- gar efs 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. Hey wood justly observes, the circumstance of the body being dug up was, in itself, a gross and mean insult, and enough to justify Mr. Pox's expressions. But whatever be the fortunes of historian or judge, it ia sure always to be bad times with Mr. Rose ; 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 floors where nothing less keen and adroit 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. Rose 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, in a book which Mr. Rose had before him. As to the other instance of detection, in which a proposition of Lord Coke was to be proved by Mr. Rose 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." 512 VINDICATION OF FOX'S HTSTOBY. Tet again. The abolition of the Court of Wards, an institution erected in the reign of Henry VIII., by- virtue of which, according to Mr. Rose'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. Fox among the things contributing to make the reign of Charles II., "the era of good laws," Mr. Rose, 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 Mr. Rose 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. Rose 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. Rose is more republican in his notions than the historian, notwithstanding all 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. Hey wood'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 alluded to, the bill which repealed an enactment CONTROVERTED 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 king 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. Fox, he is apt to find some means of taking a signal revenge. In the present instance he is immoderately barbarous. For Mr. Rose having cited, somewhat in the tone of triumph, a letter of Barillon to Louis, in proof that this Cabal ministry were fully apprized of Charles's money transactions with the French king, the Sergeant comes in, much like a Cherokee with his tomahawk, with this effective 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 Cabal 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 eifect 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 full extent of his parti- cipation. The next controverted question which occupied so con- siderable a portion of Mr. Hose's book, and occupies a much larger space in Mr. Hey wood's, is, whether or not James intended the substitution of Popery to Protestantism, as the established national religion. The author has pursued the argument round the widest extent of evidence, from docu- ments and from circumstances, and does appear to have LL 514 VINDICATION OF FOX'S HISTOET. come to the conclusion, with a very preponderating proba- bility, that James was not in the earlier part of his reign, projecting anything more, in favour of the Catholic reli- gion, than its complete toleration. The letters of Barillon, which have been considered and cited by Mr. Hose as 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 ihefree 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 France'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. Fox 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 political 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. Fox. The very least that might justly be claimed in such a case was, that time should be taken for the most careful examination of the COMPLETENESS OF THE VINDICATION. 515 points intended to be disputed ; that some moderate degree of that solicitous balancing 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. Rose will 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, 1 795. Mr. Heywood prints the two Acts beside each other ; and their substance, and in the mo s t material parts the very expressions are the same. JESSE'S SERMONS. Sermons on the Person and Office of the Redeemer, 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'S SEBMONS. 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 vast 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 BO 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 aifected Mere 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 OF SERMONS FOE 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 oft'ended 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 raid preaching to his parish- ioners during the last twenty years;" but we question whether the case will 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. JS"or is this all. He thinks that printed instructions, brought out in this manner, may even be " more useful to the generality of readers" than compositions intended for learned and critical ones ; not meaning, we presume, more 518 JESSE'S SEBMONS. useful than they would have been if they had contained direct matters of learning and criticism ; that is too flatly evident to be worth saying; but more useful to them tban 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 all 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- position. 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, that 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 MEDIATOKIAL ECONOMY. 519 few moments, what other sermons in the language the per- sons 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 much more, than it is believed they do, on the 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, the 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 effectually apprehended without them. "He that rightly apprehends the personal character and office of the Redeemer, 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 their meaning." P. 6. As if the office of the Redeemer were something substantive and absolute, instead of a relation which he has assumed to 520 JESSE'S SEBMOSS. the human race, the nature aud effect of which relation are denned 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 Redemption a Resurrection of the Dead, the Doctrine of both the Testaments the Resur- rection of Christ and ours equally certain Our Saviour' 5 * Ascension into Heaven preaching Christ crucified tha 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 all 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 with 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 occurring 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 THEIB VAGUENESS AND INSUFFICIENCY. 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 volume. 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 jthe 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 all 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 H M 522 JESSE'S SEBMONS. so 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 ; but he will have all those numerous propositions so consub- 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, all 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 will 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 effect of such a principle, in its practical observance in teaching religion, will be, either the exclusion from notice of 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. 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