which the writings of Shakspeare are exempt; and with this equity it will be content. May the life of this distinguished servant of the crown be longer than were those

of his illustrious predecessors! May Britain, through him, be made a greater blessing than she has yet been to the millions of Hindustan ! December 14th, 1863.

THE following passages from Signor Massari's Report to the Italian Parliament illustrate the spiritual relations between the Romish priesthood and the brigands, and fix on the Romish Church the guilt of the desolations which have marked the course of Neapolitan brigandage :

We have been assured, and the assurance has been repeated in all the districts which we have visited, that from the confessional proceed the incitements and the encouragements to the crimes of brigandage. In last December, in the pulpit of one of the most crowded churches of Naples, a preacher said, "Our brethren the brigands are obtaining victories in different provinces of Italy, and will always obtain them, because they are fighting against a usurping king; the Virgin cannot but perform the miracle of driving the usurpers from the kingdom." And another priest, when preaching in another church of the same city in honour of the Immaculate Conception, broke out into the following apostrophe :-"O immaculate Virgin, I will cease to believe that thou art a virgin, if thou dost not immediately restore to us our adored sovereigns, Francis and Maria Sophia!" Sergente Romano, the chief of the brigand band of Gioia, in the province of Bari, was in the habit of celebrating by priests (whom he paid for the same) a mass in the chapel of the Masseria del Monaci, which was commonly known as "the brigand's mass;" and he always

VOL. X.-FIFTH SERIES.

found priests who, by imploring the Divine blessing on that crew of ruffians, attempted to make Heaven the accomplice of their crimes. But at Minervino, in the very same province, a corporal of our army was lying on his deathbed, and the priest, when called to administer the consolations and sacraments of religion to the brave man who had fought against the brigands, heartlessly refused them. At Viesti, in the Gargano district, merely because a priest after performing mass before the troops had chanted Domine salvum fac regem, the church was laid under an interdict. In another locality, on the contrary, a brigand entered the church on horseback, and in that fashion heard mass; nor, so far as we are aware, was any interdict ever pronounced. The brigands are extremely superstitious. They wear under their clothes amulets and scapularies in great abundance. On certain given days their devotion to the Virgin prevents them from eating flesh, although they never stop short from murdering and robbing. "The brigands," we were told by the prefect of the province of Capitanata, "give way to every license, to every crime; but they always have masses said by the priests, whom they pay very liberally." A colonel of our army, who spent several months in this same province of the Capitanata, informed us of a custom of the brigands in which the priests take a direct part. In order to make themselves invulnerable, to be secured against dangers,

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to brave death with courage, the brigands, when about to enter upon their bloody and guilty enterprises, get themselves consecrated by a priest, who delivers to them the wafer of the holy sacrament, which, by means of an incision in the flesh, is inserted into the root of the thumb. Several brigands, who not long ago fell into the hands of justice, deposed to having received from the priests little figures of saints, which they were told to keep in their mouths, and which, the priest promised them, would protect them from all harm in their encounters. Other brigands, captured in the neighbourhood of Zungoli, in the district of Ariano, wore on their breasts the Papal star. "The brigands," we were told by General Villarey, "have all a religion after their own fashion. Whenever they can, they have litanies chanted in the woods; and they wear on their persons little images of the Virgin and horns to protect them against the influence of the evil eye." When Sergente Romano was out on his raids, he used to write sentences full of pious ejaculations; and he called the assassins who depended on his orders "the sworn soldiers of the Catholic faith."

A copy of the brigand's oath is then given. It binds the swearers to defend, "even with the shedding of

our blood," God, the Pope, Francis II., and the commander of their column; and to destroy the followers of the tri-coloured flags. The report next gives the confessions of a brigand chief, Pasquale Forgione. Here is a short extract :

Judge.-But what were the contents of the paper?

Brigand.-It said, that whoever fights for the holy cause of the Pope, and of Francis II., does not commit sin.

Judge. Do you recollect anything else in the paper?

Brigand.-It said, that the real brigands are the Piedmontese, who have taken away from Francis II. his kingdom; that they were excommunicated; and that we are blessed by the Pope.

Passing over the remainder of the examination, we give another passage in the Report :

We are compelled to add that the priests and monks have not recoiled from the crime of aiding and abetting the brigands, even in the strictest and most literal sense of the words. In the province of Salerno, for example, five Capuchin monks were arrested in March, 1862, because they gave every kind of assistance to the brigands. In order to convict them, some of our soldiers disguised themselves as brigands, and in that disguise received from the unworthy monks the kindest reception, and a quantity of provisions, with the assurance that the convent was victualled for four hundred brigands. The convent of the Liguorine Fathers at Pagani, in the province of Salerno, was a regular recruiting-station for the brigands. In the city of Andria, in Terre de Bari, many placards were circulated last August, with the following words:-" The brigands are blessed by the Pope; and as often as they fight they charge in the name of God, and are sure of victory. deputation, therefore, must be formed to go out and meet them with a white flag, and bring them into the town, and then everything will be finished." In this town of Andria, having a population of more than twenty thousand souls, there are some three hundred priests and

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decide whether they were satisfied with the sufficiency of the means for saving life from shipwreck now in use on our coasts. During the past year 4,081 lives had been saved from shipwrecks on our coast. As usual, ships, ships' boats, and smacks had saved more lives in that period, than the life-boats, and the rocket and mortar apparatus. That apparent discrepancy was capable of easy explanation. When a disaster took place in British waters, it generally happened that either a ship or smack was fortunately at hand to render assistance to the crews of the distressed vessels. Such help was seldom attended with any very great danger, (although sometimes it was so,) and the men were frequently brought ashore before any tidings at all had reached a life-boat station. But the great value of the services rendered by life-boats could only be appreciated by considering that they were mostly performed on occasions when no other craft could be launched from the shore with safety. The total number of persons saved from shipwreck, from the establishment of the Institution in 1824 to the end of the year 1862, either by its life-boats, or

by special exertions for which it has granted rewards, is 12,854. How inadequately words expressed the aggregate amount of misery which the saving of so many thousands of lives must have prevented! The total receipts of the Institution during the year 1862 amounted to £14,825. 5s. 1d.; of that sum no less than £2,715 was given by benevolent individuals to defray the cost of ten life-boats. The Committee gratefully acknowledged the receipt of the following special contributions from foreign countries:-£100 from the President of the United States of America, "in testimony of his sense of the important labours of the Institution to American shipwrecked seamen;" £50 from the Maritime Insurance Company of Finland, an expression of their gratitude on becoming acquainted with the blessed results which had attended the efforts of the Life-boat Society, the Company being convinced that the Institution had been the means of saving many a Finnish life from certain death;" £251. 15s. from China, collected at Hong-Kong and Shanghai. -The expenditure during the same period was £14,247.

as

Memoirs of the Life and Philanthropic Labours of Andrew Reed, D.D.; with Selections from his Journals. Edited by his Sons, Andrew Reed, B.A., and Charles Reed, F.S.A. Strahan and Co.-If readers own to a liking for biography, (as the rapid multiplication of volumes belonging to this class would indicate,) it is easy to justify their taste. Philosophy does well, and nobly too,

when, descending from her empyrean, she walks among men, and teaches by familiar examples. Nor is this the highest authority to be quoted on the side of memoirs : Holy Scripture itself is condescendingly moulded, to a large extent, in the form of personal and historic narrative. A nice calculation gives the result, that nearly three-sevenths of the entire Bible fall within this

definition. Herein also we reverently trace proof of the wisdom and goodness of Him who speaks from heaven to all ranks of His great family on earth;-who, having "fashioned their hearts alike," remembers their need of sacred lessons, and knows better than we do how to teach the wisest, and at the same time to captivate the attention of babes and sucklings.

The subject of the volume now announced is worthy of much honour. Filial hands have inscribed this monument,-yet, as we think, both gracefully and justly. There is nothing brilliant or profound; but all is respectable, and there is less of irrelevant matter than we find in most memoirs of the same size. The outline of the story is not long, though the detail might be considerably expanded.-Andrew Reed was the child of godly parents, in humble life; and was, during his boyhood, thoughtful and studious. It is mentioned, in evidence, that he gave his watch, a favourite one, in exchange for a few books which he longed to have in possession. As years rolled on, he became pastor of the very church, in the east of London, with which he had been connected from the first of his religious profession. From sixty, the number of members at the time of his ordination, the conmunion advanced to many hundreds; and, doubtless, it shall be said, when the Lord "writeth up the people," that multitudes were "born there." The preaching of Dr. Reed was intellectual, and growingly spiritual; his talents for business were far above the average. Dissenter and Calvinist as he was, he held his opinions, generally, with moderation; although, it must be frankly acknowledged, he did not make Wesleyan Methodism his debtor to any oppressive amount. Occasions there were, when he was involved in controversy with his closer friends; but of these it does not become us

to speak. The best of all is, that his later years witnessed a blessed growth in grace, and a more ardent panting after holiness. This he expresses, strongly, though in novel phrase, when he tells of his desire for "a supplemental conversion."

Chapter iv., headed "Early Literature," revives our memory of "No Fiction,"-o -one of the oldest among the publications known as religious novels. It is fair to give the author of that work credit for the best intentions, as well as for no mean powers of description; yet it is hard to frame a successful apology. The tale was, undoubtedly, "founded on fact;" its teachings were all on the side of virtue; and instances are alleged, in which it was rendered useful. But-apart from the unhappy affair of "Lefevre," who came to light again, and saw himself too plainly mirrored in pages which had been written on the supposition that he was dead-these defensive pleas do not meet the objections to fictitious literature. There is danger in anything that abates our love of the true and the real; in anything that deludes by an unnatural brilliancy, so as to make history look dull, and the duties of life distasteful; in anything that inspires a passion for a class of writing in which the exceptions are the things that do not contaminate. Will you, then, (it is not unfrequently asked,) apply your censure to fable, parable, allegory?-By no means. All these, in their highest style, convey truth in emblem, with no liability to mistake. But if fable, parable, allegory, were so drawn as to mislead the judgment, or unduly excite the passions, or (in a word) to do that which fiction too commonly does, they would justly incur the same sentence.

But enough on this part of the volume.-Dr. Reed was greatest in schemes of philanthropy; exceedingly generous in his personal gifts