answers. ' after her husband's death,' and from him took directions for a 6 more strict course of life in her widowhood, than she had ' hitherto pursued.'-' Her zeal in the work of self-examination, 'her strictness with herself, and fear of offending, sometimes ' produced doubts and scruples: and when troubled by them, 'she seldom trusted her own judgment, but consulted with ❝ learned divines, and when she met with any one of learning and piety, she proposed her cases of conscience, and asked for On these occasions she would dispute against herself very sharply, but when her objections had once been answered, ' and she was satisfied, she submitted cheerfully, and ordered future practice accordingly.' On her son's death, as she had done on her husband's, fearing that her sorrow is exorbitant, she goes to ask counsel of her ghostly physician.' She has relief from his counsel, but is, a short time afterwards, oppressed again by the idea of the unacceptableness of her repentance, because her sorrow for her son's death seems to her stronger than her sorrow for her own sins. In this anguish of spirit she hastens again to her adviser, and returns home with fresh courage and cheerfulness.' 6 The Notice of Lady Capel's life comes from the same source; from the pen of her 'spiritual adviser;' Lady Maynard's from the same. "I had the honour to know her near twenty years," says Bishop Ken of the latter, "and to be admitted to her most 'intimate thoughts, and I cannot but think, upon the utmost of 'my observation, that she always preserved her baptismal innocence, that she never committed any one mortal sin, which put her out of the state of grace; insomuch, that after all the frequent and severe examinations she made of her own conscience, her confessions were made up of no other than sins of infirmity, and yet even for them she had as deep an_humilia'tion, and as penitential a sorrow, as high a sense of the divine forgiveness, and loved so much, as if she had much to be for'given."' Another religious trait that we observe, has, perhaps, a connexion with the one we have been mentioning: they both seem to belong to the same religious atmosphere, and to be fruits of the same tree: we mean the directly religious conversation which seems to have been usual then among religious persons. Every one knows how rigidly the present order of things excludes this: and certainly, under present circumstances, one could not wish to see the bar removed. As things are, and with our present tone, religion could not enter directly into conversation, without a violation of our natural reserve and modesty. But it does not appear a healthy state of things, in which such a result is seen. Certainly, in the religious society in the 6 Church, two centuries ago, they seem to have been able to do this, and to do it naturally, without any revulsion, and anything to get over in the matter. We do not say that they talked in large parties in this way, but in ordinary, quiet conversation they do not seem to have been shy of the subject. "Next to the service of the temple," we hear of one, "there was no entertainment in the whole world so pleasing to her as the discourse of heavenly things, and those she spoke of with such a spiritual • relish, that at first hearing you might perceive she was in earnest, that she really tasted the Lord was good,' and felt all she spake." Of another," she delighted in the society of holy persons, and the mutual warmth and light imparted by ⚫ communion with them." We repeat, we are far from wishing persons now to talk religion.' Those who alone could ever do it naturally and in taste, could not do it now. It would be a struggle against the whole tone of things. Let them try, and they will find that the words stick in their mouths, before they get them out. But this state of extreme reserve and disguise among religious members of the same Church, is surely not a natural state. It could not be intended in the Christian dispensation, that persons should be ashamed to talk to one another about religion; and should be deprived of the support of one another's voices on the subject: and it would not be amiss if persons had a sense of this, and accustomed themselves to regard as a standard, and put as an aim before their minds, another, and a more confiding and communicative, state of things. In a certain school there is plenty of religious conversation, it is true. We do not want that style of conversation. A Catholic mind should bear any degree of reserve and restraint, rather than part with its modesty. But is that a right state of things to begin with, in which it is necessarily immodest to talk about religion? Is not religion made too much now a matter simply between the individual and God. Minds shut themselves up, and refuse to let any one know what is in them; and there is awkwardness and suspicion where there should be sympathy. No one will open out to friend, or pastor, or spiritual guide. There is no confession, no assisting, no advising, no guiding. There is nothing mutual, nothing social in religion: every one goes on by himself. This is hardly a state of things which the New Testament points to. We profess to reject all tradition, and to go simply and purely by the picture of Christianity which we have in the New Testament itself. Can any one look at that picture, and say that this is it? We individualize Christianity, and make every single mind's religious growth a cavernous, isolated history of its own, carried on by individual impulses, movements, and efforts entirely, and the work of individual will and strength. We do not make the individual one of the body, thus giving him the benefit of the love, sympathies, intercession around, and bringing all the good influences moving in the Christian society to bear upon him. Our image of Christianity wants altering: we have a wrong image in our minds. The individual's spiritual Christian growth is not a solitary internal process only as we image it-one between himself and God only: it is a social process. Even that very internal process of spiritual self-improvement, which, as distinguished from the more public sphere of religion, we make so absolutely and decidedly an individual process, is not an individual one but a social one. Carry your Christianity into the most inmost recesses, its most central workings, to its very seat and fountain-head within the soul,-to that point where the will collects itself, where the strain is made, and where it is most one's own real self acting,-even here it is not individual, but social. There are proper degrees, shapes, modifications of sociality, but still Christianity is essentially social. Not an arithmetical crowd of stiff erect individualities, not a host of straight strokes that do not touch each other, but one great mingling of hearts, one overflowing unity, wave embracing wave; an ocean of the spiritual life, filling every corner, and allowing no separations and isolations within its bosom, is the living Church. The individual is not a spiritual world within himself: he belongs to the spiritual world universal. He is a connected relative being: he depends for his growth on this connexion and these relations being used and developed. In the career of one human soul are involved the influences, seen and unseen, of the whole spiritual world it is in. • Whether one 'member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.' There is no ' schism in the body;' and its members have 'care one for another.' This whole idea wants being impressed upon us. The idea of communion, participation, fellowship is not embraced, and should be. Religion wants unbending and expanding: souls should be brought together; Christians should understand each other; hearts should respond to each other; there should be places for openness and confidence within the bosom of the Church. 61 ART. III.-1. Diary of Travels in France and Spain, chiefly in the Year 1844. By the Rev. FRANCIS TRENCH. 2 vols. London: Bentley. 1845. 2. Rome and the Reformation; or, a Tour in the South of France. A Letter to the Rev. R. Burgess. By I. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNÉ. London: Seeleys. 1844. 3. Letters from the Pyrenees. By T. CLIFTON PARIS, B. A. Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. London: Murray. 1843. 4. Vacation Rambles and Thoughts. By T. N. TALFOURD, D. C. L. 2 vols. London: E. Moxon. 1845. 5. A Pilgrimage to Auvergne, from Picardy to Le Velay. By LOUISA S. COSTELLO. 2 vols. London: Bentley. 1842. THE steady and unfailing issue of voyages and travels, though as familiar and long-established an affair as that of cottons, or any other article of general consumption, is yet not a little curious, if we reflect on it. That the stream of poetry, metaphysics, or novels, should flow on, ever fresh and fresh, is natural; for invention and imagination are inexhaustible sources; but, when the business is simply description of a country and people, an account of manners and scenes, even that wonderful richness and variety which the face of nature, and the condition of humanity, present, must at last be exhausted, and transferred to paper, by the innumerable hands and pens employed in the task. For a tourist to find untrodden ground is quite impossible. To say nothing of Europe, every corner of which is as well known to us, or better, than the county of Kent; is there a square yard of ground in all the five continents which the restless curiosity of English travellers has not raked up? a building, a rock, or a tree, which they have not catalogued? In the most obscure and latent island in the South Sea, would one not, reversing the case of Robinson Crusoe, be alarmed if one did not see the print of a foot? There has, indeed, almost ceased to be any such thing as a foreign country; we are at home everywhere, and all the world is a home to us. Sporting M.P.s have their Chateau in Provence, or their Schloss in Hungary, instead of a shooting-box on the moors; and Oxford and Cambridge students go for fly-fishing, in the long vacation, to Norway, instead of to Wales. But, the truth is, that novelty of scene is now no longer the chief recommendation in a book of travels. It is true that much interest must always attach to such revelations of hidden things as Stephens' of the cities of central America; and those who seek for the more stimulating class of excitement will be attracted by the exploits of Captain Forbes, who bags his twenty brace of tigers per diem in the jungles of Ceylon; or of Major Harris, who thinks nothing of his three rhinoceroses before breakfast, in the Highlands of Ethiopia. These desperate efforts to find, in the age of railways, the field of the wild and marvellous adventure of a by-gone time, are, like Don Quixote's quest of chivalry, a day too late. A much truer and wider interest is obtained by a very different class of travels. In these, the more at our own doors the scene, the more ordinary the incident, and, in keeping with this, a style plain and homely, the better; the more beaten the track chosen by the traveller, the more likely he is to find readers; and 'Talking of the Alps and Apennines, is more attractive than a six months' campaign in Ashantee, or a survey of Tehuantepec, Among many other causes which might be assigned for this, the following is, perhaps, the principal:-In former times the great readers of travels were those who never travelled. Not to go back to the days of Bruce and Dr. Clarke, when Englishmen, except of the highest ranks, hardly ever quitted their own country, the continental war retarded the natural progress of the habit of promiscuous travelling. Thus, at the peace, when the adventurous spirits had nothing to do, or to detain them from roaming through the earth at will, there was a rich harvest of new countries, and new nations, and tribes, civilized and savage, to visit and describe, and novelty was thus the chief recommendation of a book of travels. The bulk of readers were then the tarry-at-home travellers, who read of places they had never seen, nor formed the desire to see, with the greater interest on that very account; but now a new generation of readers has arisen-of those who have travelled, or hope to travel, and whose interest in a volume of travels arises from its going over the very ground themselves have lately visited, or are looking to with pleasant anticipation. We derive the same sort of pleasure from reading a tour under these circumstances that we do from comparing notes, in the public room of the inn, with the traveller whom chance throws in our way in the evening. As in this viva voce communication, intelligence and observation are desirable, yet not so indispensable but that one can learn something from the most ordinary and common-place persons, so it is with the written tour, the most meagre diary, even a bare record of dates and distances, will be gone through with interest during that process of conning of maps and guide-books which precedes 'a tour.' To this class belong Nos. I and 3 of the books whose |