church, therefore, and all the world, have a right to appeal to this authority. In like manner, the laws of Moses were for the government of the Jews, and all associated with them in the privileges of their community. And when " W. R. D.” has proved that the instructions imparted by God to Noah were intended for any

VERSES

particular class of people, and not for the people generally, then will be the time to limit the force of these commands to the parties designated. Till then, I judge their obligation rests on all mankind. Yours sincerely,

Written on viewing the Monument of Bishop Hooper's Martyrdom in the City of Gloucester.

AND have I stood where others stood
To see a martyr die,
When Hooper's spirit, wise and good,
Ascended to the sky?

And have I seen, at length, the spot,
Where, at the awful stake,

A saint, whose name could never rot,
Was burnt for Jesus' sake?

Yet, honour'd be the zeal employ'd
In rearing up those stones;

And cursed be that which there destroy'd
A Christian's flesh and bones.

Our Hooper was a saint indeed,

And we will call him so, While some return to Rome with speed, And to her bondage go. Our Hooper was a Christian true; For he was pure in heart,

And nobly purposed to eschew An inconsistent part.

A. B. C.

For this he suffer'd, and was bound,

Though Christ had made him free; For this the fagots blazed around,

As we in pictures see.

And is Rome alter'd in her way?

Nor will such deeds renew? This let authority but say,

And we'll believe it true.

Till then we must be on our guard,
And of TAHITI think,

Lest future times should prove too hard,
When bitter draughts we drink.

Then let us take the shield of faith,
And put our armour on ;

And thus contend, as Scripture saith,
For Christ and Christ alone.

JOHN BULMER,

1, Windsor-terrace, St. Paul's, Bristol.

Small

FIRST IMPRESSIONS of ENGLAND and its PEOPLE. By HUGH MILLER. octavo. pp. xx., 405. 1847.

J. Johnstone, Edinburgh and London. A little more than a quarter of a century ago, in one of the farthest northern counties of Scotland, there lived a boy just rising up to youth, of bodily structure healthy and vigorous, and with a mind alive to observation, quick in sensibility, and prompt to action. He had enjoyed the good old Scotch education, of the cottage and the school; being taught to read and love the Bible, and to understand as well as remember the admirable compendium of Bible truth and duty in the Assembly's Catechism. A few other books his parental house sup

plied, and among them were some of the English poets. The scanty number was to him a library, and yielded richer fruits than many a lettered pile of splendid shelves does to its crowd-embarrassed owner. He read the little store, ever and anon; never tired of the repetition. His soul became imbued with scriptural sentiment and poetic feeling. The scenery of Cromarty, its solemn glens and mighty mountains, the awful precipices and the ocean-billows rolling at their base, found in him a prompt response. When his boyhood had gained sufficient strength, he had to earn his bread with mattock and hammer, in the stone-quarries. There his task largely found objects of astonishment and gratification. One might almost say that he created for himself a

body of Natural History. On the surfaces | of the slabs, at the moment of the wedge cleaving them, he discovered the ripple marks of ancient tides, and the shingle of sea-beaches. He followed out his researches; and, in the mean time, by assiduous selfcultivation, he amassed an opulence of human and divine knowledge. In particular, he brought to light many finely preserved specimens of fossil-fish, of wonderful conformation, in the general Cephalaspis, Holoptychius, Pterichthys, Coccostens, and several besides. He proceeded gradually to communicate his treasures to Sir Roderick Murchison, M. Agaveiz, and others, the first geologists of Europe. At the Glasgow meeting of the British Association, in 1840, he produced many of his fossil fishes; and Dr. Buckland declared that he "would give his left hand to possess such powers of description as HUGH MILLER; and that, if it pleased Providence to spare his useful life, he, if any one ever could, would render the science [of Palæontology] attractive and popular, and do equal service to Theology and Geology."

knowledge. August was dragging on to its close, through a moist and cloudy atmosphere; every day had its shower, and some days half a dozen : but I hope for clearer skies and fairer weather in the south; and so, taking my seat at Edinburgh on the top of the Newcastle coach, I crossed Carter Fell a little after mid-day, and found myself, for the first time, in ENGLAND."

"And this was the famous Border-line, made good by the weaker against the stronger nation,-at how vast an amount of blood and suffering!-for more than a thousand years.' "War must be intrinsically mischievous. It must be something very bad (let us personify it as proudly as we may,) that could have set on these useful, peaceable people,-cast in so nearly the same mould, speaking the same tongue, possessed of the same common nature, loveable doubtless in some points from the developement of the same genial affections,to knock one another on the head, simply because the one half of them had first seen the light on the one side of the hill, and the other half on the other side"-" a rude, straggling village:-all quiet and solitary: —And such now is Otterburn,-a name I had never associated before, save with the two noble ditties of Chevy Chase, the mag

The volume, which we now introduce to our readers, well sustains the character of the Old Red. For general readers, it will be found probably more engaging.

The acute observer had projected a geological exploring of the Orkney Islands; but nature's admonitions checked him. "I found," says he, that "I had scarce health and strength enough left me.-I could no longer undertake long journies a-foot in a wild country; nor scramble, with sure step and head that never failed, along the faces of tall precipices washed by the sea.-I shall cross the border, I said, and get into England. I know the humbler Scotch better than most men; I have at least enjoyed better opportunities of knowing them: but the humbler English I know only from hearsay. I shall go and live among them for a few weeks somewhere in the midland districts. I shall lodge in humble cottages, wear an humble dress, and see what is to be seen by humble men only, SOCIETY without its mask. I shall explore too, for myself, the formations wanting in the Geologic scale of Scotland, the Silurian, the Chalk, and the Tertiary: and so, should there be future years in store for me, I shall be enabled to resume my survey of our Scottish deposit, with a more practised eye than at present, and with more extended

mon subject of both ballads and narrative, however various their description of it,— that one stern night's slaughter, four hundred years ago,

When the dead Douglas won the field.'

It was well for the poor victors that they had a Froissart to celebrate them. For, though it was the Scotch that gained the battle, it was the English who had the writing of the songs; and had not the victors found so impartial a chronicler in the generous Frenchman, the two songs, each a model in its own department, would have proved greatly an overmatch for them in the end."-" Everything seemed as Scottish as ever; the people, the dwelling houses, the country. I could scarce realize the fact, that the little grey parish church with the square tower-was a church in which a curate read the Prayer Book every Sunday, and that I had left behind me the Scottish law, under which I had been living all lifelong until now, on the top of the hill. I had proof, however, at our first English stage, that such was actually the case. Is all right?' asked the coachman, of a tall lanky Northumbrian, who had busied himself in changing the horses. 'Yez, all roit,' was the reply, 'roit as the Church of England.' I was, it was evident, on Presby. terian ground no longer."

We must take off our hand. Every page of this delightful book might furnish an

extract. Had we time and space, and if it it were not dishonest to plunder literary jewels, we would detail some of the descriptions and reflections of this sagacious author on scenery and agriculture, mining and manufacture, science (especially Geology) and art, the surface and the bowels of our land; men, women, and children, religious and irreligious, believers and infidels, Churchmen, Evangelical Churchmen, and Dissenters, Papists, Puseyites, Quakers, Presbyterians, Independents, &c.;-towns and cities;-seats, parks, and forests;cathedrals and castles and other objects of antiquarian interest; local history and well-chosen sketches of remarkable men, among whom we especially signalize the good Lord Lyttleton, who died brokenhearted by his infidel and infamous son, the second lord; whose dreadful history also is given, and the indubitable manner of his death is discussed with a philosophical and Christian judgment.

In a word, we may say that the fascinations of such novels as Walter Scott's, (to indulge in which is of very questionable moral propriety,) are, in this volume, equalled, without fiction, without exaggeration, and in the words of truth and soberness.

We had resolved to indulge no more in citation but our resolution is overthrown, and we must copy, from near the close of the book, a portion of the shrewd author's comparative view of the English and the Scotch character.

But the broader foundations of the existing difference seem to lie rather in moral than in natural causes. They are to be found, I am strongly of opinion, in the very dissimilar religious history of the two countries. Religion in its character as serious intellectual exercise, was never brought down to the common English mind, in the way in which it once pervaded, and to a certain degree, still saturates, the common mind of Scotland. Nor is the peculiar form of religion, best known in England, so well suited as that of the Scotch, to awaken the popular intellect. Liturgies and ceremonies may constitute the vehicles of a sincere devotion; but they have no tendency to exercise the thinking faculties. Their tendency bears rather the other way. They constitute the ready-made channels, through which abstract, unideal sentiment flows without effort. The Arminianism, too, se common in the English Church, and so largely developed in at least one of the most influential and numerous bodies of English Dissenters," [probably Mr. Miller means the Wesleyan Methodists, and he may not be aware that they do not, as a body, regard themselves as Dissenters :] "is a greatly less awakening system of doctrine than the Calvinism of Scotland. It

does not lead the earnest mind into those abstruse recesses of thought, to which the peculiar Calvinistic doctrines form so inevitable a vestibule.-Calvinism proves the best possible of all schoolmasters for teaching a religious people to think. I have found no such peasant metaphysicians in England as those I have so often met in my own country; men, who, under the influence of earnest belief, had wrought their way, all unassisted by the philosopher, into some of the abstrusest questions of the schools. And yet, were I asked to illustrate by example the grand principle of the intellectual development of Scotland, it would be to the history of one of the self-taught geniuses of England-John Bunyan, the inimitable Shakespeare of Theological literature-that I would refer. Had the tinker of Elstow continued to be throughout life, what he was in his early youth,-a profane, irreligious man, he would have lived and died an obscure and illiterate one. It was the wild turmoil of his religious convictions, that awakened his mental faculties. Had his convictions slept, his whole mind would have remained intellectually what the great bulk of the common English still are. But, as the case happened, the tremendous blow dealt by revealed truth at the door of his conscience aroused the whole inner man; and the deep slumber of the faculties, reasoning and imagination, was broken for

DISCOURSES by the late ARCHIBALD BENNIE, D.D., F.R.S.E., Minister of Lady Yester's Church, Edinburgh, and one of the Deans of the Chapel Royal. To which is prefixed, A Memoir of the Author. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London.

The author of these Discourses is not unknown to many of our readers in the southern part of the kingdom. He was a minister of the Church of Scotland; and yet although a decided and zealous advocate of the cause of religious establishments, he was, at the same time, a man of an eminently catholic spirit. During the controversial warfare that was waged a few years ago, with considerable keeness, about the voluntary principle, and in consequence of which many pious and excellent Churchmen showed, if not a total estrangement, at least a great degree of coolness, to those of their Dissenting brethren, who came forward to espouse that cause, Dr. Bennie continued, as he had done all along, to maintain the same footing of friendly intercourse with many leading men in his own country, from whom he differed toto cœlo in their views of ecclesiastical polity; and we distinctly remember an admirable proof he

We have read this valuable production with surpassing interest. It is no commonplace performance; but the effort of a wellinformed and highly-accomplished mind—a man of learning, acute observation, and original thought, who takes you along with him in his travels, and enhances all his descriptions of men and things by those vast stores of literature and knowledge, with which his mind is so peculiarly enriched. We should like all clergymen of the Anglican church, who contend for the miserable dogma of Apostolic Succession, to read his account of the lately-established bishopric at Jerusalem. It is distinguished by masculine sense, which might bring the blush of conscious shame over the brow of many an ecclesiastical dreamer.

The NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. No. XIII. Containing: 1. Irons on the Doctrine of Final Causes; 2. Natural History and Origin of Dogs; 3. State of Scottish Towns; 4. Lives of Simon Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes, of Culloden; 5. Popular Serial Literature; 6. Madagascar, Madeira, and Tahiti; 7. Painless Operations in Surgery; 8. Mr. Adams and M. Le Verrier's Researches respecting the new Planet Neptune; 9. Political Economy of a Famine; 10. Notices of recent Publications.

Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

We gladly welcome this admirable number of the North British. The articles on science are most valuable productions, indicating, on the part of the writers, attainments of the highest order. Indeed, there is not an inferior review in the volume. We are glad to find so interesting a document on the subject of Missions. It cannot fail to benefit the cause.

FREE THOUGHTS on PROTESTANT MATTERS. In one volume. By the Rev. T. D. GREGG, M.A., Chaplain to St. Nicholas-within, Dublin. Second edition. 12mo. pp. 462.

Richard Groombridge and Sons.

This is an amusing, and, in many respects, an instructive volume. It will convince all thoughtful men who may read it, how much even pious and evangelical Churchmen are hampered and perplexed by the present aspect of the Church-and-State question. Assuredly with the views they have hitherto contended for, they must be ill at ease, when they look at the course which statesmen of all political creeds are beginning to pursue. We think it ought to teach them a great lesson, that they have been too long leaning on an arm of flesh.

There is much valuable matter in Mr.

Gregg's remarks on Protestantism, though we cannot identify the stability or ultimate security of Protestantism either with Anglicanism or State patronage.

MEMOIR of the REV. THOMAS S. M'KEAN, M.A., Missionary at Tahiti, who was killed by a musket-shot, during an engagement between the French and the Natives, on the 30th of June, 1844. By the Rev. JOSEPH A. MILLER, of Newcourt chapel, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. With an Introduction, by the Rev. ARTHUR TIDMAN, Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society. 8vo.

John Snow.

Missionary biography is every day becoming more an object of interest to the Christian church, partly by reason of the hold which missionary objects have taken of the public mind, and partly by reason of the high character attaching to the memoirs of many of our deceased missionary brethren. A new literature, in fact, has sprung up, in our day, in connection with missionary undertakings, which promises to enlarge the sphere of our know. ledge, and to increase the exercise of our benevolence. The biographical sketch of the late lamented Mr. M'Kean, from the pen of our friend Mr. Miller, will not tend to diminish the interest felt by the public in missionary memoirs. Irrespective of the sudden and painful removal of Mr. M'Kean, he was a man of pre-eminent qualification for the work to which he had devoted himself; and, had his life been spared, would doubtless have proved himself "a burning and shining light." He deserved an honour. able record; and we are happy to say that Mr. Miller has done full justice to his fragrant memory. Few friends of missions