London, in the garb and calling of a

and some reflections which

are very good in their way, but sadly out of place here.

The Modern Moloch is the title of the fourth paper, being an essay, not feebly executed, on the prevailing taste of the age-the rage for improvement in building, bridges, rail-roads, &c. Why did not the author add book-making? We could have informed him of an anecdote, equally authentic with some he has given,-of a churchwarden in the county of Suffolk, who actually whitewashed some splendid monumental effigies of knights and dames, because he thought the Archdeacon would like to see the church look clean! This is fact.

"The Art of Pronunciation" heads the following paper. It gives the adventures of a young sailor who fell in love with the daughter of an old commissioner, who had badgered him at his college examination, without knowing she was his daughter, and who lost her because he insulted her father in a ball-room: he did not know Miss Fanny Lagrow might be the child of Commissioner Gros. He must have been a rare French scholar if he did!

There is so much plain sense in the next Essay, "ONE WORD, GENTLEMEN!" that we give it entire :

"Orthodox! Evangelical! are we not all orthodox and evangelical?" said the regius professor of at a late clerical meeting, where the character of a clergyman recently instituted to a rectory in the neighbourhood, formed a subject of discussion. "ONE WORD, GENTLEMEN! What says Dr. Johnson, himself the most orthodox of lexicographers, upon this particular point? Where are we to look for the limits of this truly debatable land? I wish we could hear no more of orthodoxy and evangelicism as terms of party distinction."

"Most desirable indeed would such a state be, if with the name the thing ceased for ever; and that all those who held the Christian faith were bound by Christian concord. But, however devoutly the friends of true religion may wish for such a consummation, the most superficial reader, the veriest novice in the history of the Christian church, must be well aware, that parties there have been in that church from the very time it began to exist in a public, defined, and recognised manner. In the sacred college of the apostles itself we know there were parties-those who advocated or tolerated circumcision with St. Peter; or resisted and denounced it with St Paul: and from that hour to the present, there have been party opinions, party feelings, and party distinctions.

In religion as well as in politics, there are factious spirits which no laws can bind; and while the Church of England does appear to make her pale sufficiently wide to embrace all those who are sincerely desirous of union, she complains loudly and justly of two classes-those who enter upon her offices with inadequate qualifications and with secular views;--and those who continue to discharge them dead to the many weighty duties and solemn obligations which their profession entails.

The time, indeed, is not long since passed by, when the opinion was entertained-it does not yet seem to be altogether exploded-that the hopeful youth of the family who was held to be incompetent for any other pursuit, would yet "do very well for a parson." Dr., the head of -, and rector of

was applied to by one of his parishioners, a wealthy tradesman, on the subject of placing his son at the university. "What reasons have you? Is your son studiously inclined-fond of his books-disposed towards the ministry?" "No; by no means." Tom was rather outwardly given; could never, at no time, abide the sight of a book. As to bringing him up to his own business, he

had not head enough for a brewer; but he was strongly advised to get him into the Church!

What a strange anomaly it is, that a youth should be expected to discover a predilection and talents for all other professions as an earnest of future success, but in that most important of all offices upon which man can enter, talents, habits, feelings, are frequently left out of consideration! Hence the shifts to which the incapacitated are reduced in the production of a weekly sermon. Hence the different kinds of print in imitation of MS.; and the late improvement which has pressed lithography into the service of the indolent or incompetent. Hence those inconsistencies of conduct which amuse the observant and puzzle the undecided.

The evening before last, the rector of M- near Oxford, was pressed by his hostess to join the young people at the round-table. He at first resisted stoutly; but at length sat down, declaring that it was useless to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! What this divine's camel was, however, I could never discover. The gnat was Pope Joan!

A clergyman's amusements should be clerical; innocent without being ascetic, and cheerful without being boisterous. Literature and science, music and drawing, gardening and agriculture, all these may be regarded as proper and legitimate relaxations, and can be brought to bear upon his professional studies. If it be urged that some clergymen, such is the vast variety of human dispositions, may have no taste for such pursuits, the reply is short:-They who engage in so momentous an undertaking as that of the ministry, must learn to raise their habits and feelings up to its standard; and not expect that standard to come down to their inferior practice.

It admits of doubt, whether field-sports, harmless in themselves, are not objectionable as the relaxation of a minister. Angling, though held to be a meditative and quiet amusement, from the days of ancient Isaak downwards, cannot be exempt from the charge of premeditated cruelty: shooting is liable to the same objection; and although much is pleaded in favour of both these sports, on the ground that they induce healthful rambles among the beauties of nature, the man who requires a fishing-rod or a fowling-piece as a sort of sauce piquante, to make him relish the prodigal feast which Nature spreads out for her admirers, must be lamentably deficient in true taste, and is hardly worth catering for.

For hunting, few will contend as a clerical pastime. Some few years ago, a learned and excellent prelate was all but run down by a party of hunters (many of whom were clergymen of the neighbourhood) who came suddenly and unexpectedly upon him in one of his quiet rides near the palace. Had the venerable Bishop suffered any fatal injury, which from his extreme short-sightedness was with difficulty averted, the church would have been presented with the singular spectacle of a diocesan killed by his own clergy! But this by the way. Some few are still to be found in pepper-and-salt riding-coats, among harriers and fox-hounds; but the race is hourly diminishing; and it may be hoped in a few years, "a fox-hunting parson" will be as great a rarity in the kingdom as a wolf or an egret!

"One word, gentlemen!" To the sacred profession above all others the observation will apply, pluris est oculatus testis quam auriti decem.

It is a truth worthy the serious consideration of all serious thinkers, that the present is a period in which the Church of England requires the strenuous and unanimous support of all her zealous members, and especially of her clergy. In secular professions, exactness of discipline is held to be proper and praiseworthy. Members of the army and navy are not ashamed of regularity in obedience to the articles of war, except, I believe, that which proscribes duelling; neither do they disdain the uniform appropriate to their respective services and ranks. But some clergymen appear as if they thought a seemly conformity to the rubric a work of supererogation; and dress as if they considered the " customary black" an invidious distinction. In these times it is the part of prudence to array every legitimate auxiliary in the cause of the establishment. Let the clergy not only go back to the dress, but to the morals, and, in many respects, to the

manners of the reformers and their successors, the Cranmers, Ridleys, Jewels, Sandersons. The Church, it is true, is assailed by powerful enemies, but her worst foes are those of her own household. Amidst all the attacks of assailants without, and all the heartlessness, and cowardice, and treachery, of her unworthy sons within, she yet possesses vantage-ground. Nay, more; she will maintain it so long as she is true to herself and her high and responsible duties. Let that grand truth, so nobly advanced by one of the ablest of her bishops, be engraved on the memory of all her sons-that it is as a spiritual church she must stand or fall.

"The facts and arguments advanced by the noble Earl (Roden), could only have arisen from a mistake of the nature of the propositions before the House; or from a confusion of two things perfectly distinct in their existence, viz. the temporalities of the church and its spiritual character. He would tell their Lordships that these two things were not connected together; and that one of these might be destroyed without the principle of the other being affected. The Church might be separated from the State-its ministers might be ejected from their benefices-its revenues might be transferred to the support of other denominations, or diverted to secular purposes, but still it would continue to exist as a religious community. Its believers would meet for the purpose of performing the act of worship according to its creed; and they would perform it in a decent form, and with great scrupulousness as to its rites, although they might be deprived of their places of worship. IT MIGHT BE STRIPPED OF ITS WORLDLY WEALTH, BUT IT WOULD STILL REMAIN RICH IN SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS." -Bishop of Lincoln's Speech in the House of Lords on the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts.-Pp. 179–187.

"MY PREDECESSORS," the title of the next paper, sufficiently explains the nature of the contents. The parish clerk is made the chronicler of all the wits who preceded our author in the pulpit of the parish of Stanborough. It is a humorous and satirical sketch; but too much so to get us to honour it as we did its predecessor; firstly, because it is too long; secondly, because we believe it not drawn from the life, which it professes to be. The author gives us a sermon, said to have been preached by a Mr. Nicanor Newlight, on Ezra i. 9. "Nine and twenty knives." We quote the last sentence in the account of it for the author's particular benefit: "Can such extravagancies tend to the everlasting welfare of man, or to the honour of the Almighty?" The man who wrote the "One Word, Gentlemen!" who has also written some other equally sensible passages in this book, ought not to have been so inconsistent here.

Ashbourne, which might have recalled many delicious reveries of thought, coupled with the recollections that are ever attached in the mind of the sensitive traveller, to the Tempe* of England and its guardian hills, is made by the author the hinge on which he turns some trifling facetic of the author of "Lalla Rookh." Whatever authority there may be for such a proceeding, we much question the good taste of introducing living men and women in this way; especially as poor Tom Moore is first raved about as the inspired creator of

We do not know what Mrs. Stark says, but Dovedale is as much like the valley of Maglany, in Savoie, as possible. It is a perfect miniature of it. The Dove is only the humble representative of the Arve.

"Paradise and the Peri," and then belaboured with praise for his acquaintance with the Scriptures! If it be, as the author says, we wish Mr. Moore joy of his reformation; and though no credit is thrown on the Sacred Volume by even such testimonies as a balladwriter's, we most fervently cry "Amen" to the toad-eater's ejacu

lation.

The sketch of Dr. Hawker is, as far as we know, tolerably accurate; that he lived better than he preached we agree; his life, a beautiful exhibition of all the Christian graces, gave the direct lie to his narrow-minded and narrow-hearted doctrines from the pulpit. It is a sorrowful exhibition of the weakness of human nature to find a person so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of universal benevolence, limiting the mercy of the bountiful Creator, whom he followed, by a withering and profane assumption of the Redeemer's partiality. The least that can be said of the Calvinism which Dr. Hawker proclaimed, is, that it was too contradictory to the imperfect charity even of human nature, to be lived up to by the greatest advocate for total depravity in man. There is so much common sense in the following extracts, that we scruple not to print them :

It is far more easy for a minister to soothe his hearers into a false security, to bewilder them among intricate disquisitions, to amuse them with novel and uncommon doctrines; and it is far more agreeable to the auditory to be amused, to be soothed, nay even to be puzzled, than it is to be humbled, to be instructed, to be reformed. To the unthinking and the ignorant, that is, to the great mass of hearers, such addresses as Dr. Hawker's cannot fail to be acceptable; since, instead of being taught to hold crime in abhorrence, and to watch and ward against its commission, they are instructed to consider the condition of a sinner as the most advantageous in a spiritual point of view. Nothing can be more palatable! The greater the sinner, the greater the saint. No wonder then that many "of the fold" hold themselves altogether exempt from the demands of that law which revelation came "not to destroy, but to fulfil!"

It may be urged, indeed, that neither Dr. Hawker nor any other minister can be responsible for the construction that may be put upon his statements. Granted. Yet that minister surely is culpable, and must also be responsible to the most awful of all tribunals, if through his want of plainness of speech the grace of God is perverted, and made a cause for continuance in sin.

In the spirit which would forbid him to cross his threshold, although thereby he could convert the whole world, Dr. Hawker withdrew his support and sanction from the Bible Society. One of his objections was unassailable. He deprecated the eagerness, the avidity evinced by the conductors of that society to obtain persons of title and rank as their patrons and presidents. He regarded it, and justly, as hypocritical in the extreme, when men whose laxity of conduct and disregard for real religion were matters of public notoriety, were solicited to preside over what were properly designated-spiritual societies. If persons of this description feel disposed to aid such institutions, let that aid be afforded without solicitation; at least without any thing more than public and general solicitation. But when such solicitations are made as lead to exhibitions so inconsistent and so offensive, as the same nobleman presiding in the morning at a Bible meeting, in the afternoon at a cockpit; eulogizing on the platform one evening the efforts made to evangelize the heathen, patronising the benefit of a histrionic courtesan the next; in the morning at Freemasons' Hall, at night at Crockford's; "Sirs," said the Doctor, "it is an abomination, and shall be preached down, and put down!"-Pp. 275–277.

The sketch I have drawn of a divine who has been long known to the public as a preacher of great eminence, and an author of some bulk, will, I doubt not, be alike unsatisfactory to two parties. His opponents may deem the outline too favourable; his friends will scarcely regard it as commonly faithful. One may think the sentiments it contains savour too much of encomium; the other may even stigmatize them as deficient in the respect due to his character, years, and station. Of a man whose private life was unimpeachable, whose disposition was in most respects truly amiable, whose talents were great, whose attainments were extraordinary, I can never speak but with unfeigned respect. But that respectful feeling must always be mingled with regret that such talents and acknowledged ministerial qualifications should ever have been employed in advocating tenets, which, in many minds at least, must be subversive of the PLAINEST principles of true religion and virtue.—Pp. 283, 284.

Of" the Retrospects and Prospects of the Universities," our author has written well, though sentimentally; and we think his reasons for preferring Cambridge or Oxford to the University of London sufficiently good to demand our assent: but when he tells us about his feelings, in finding himself amongst "the groves, the cloisters, the towers" of Alma Mater, we are inclined to cry "Hold! enough!"

We neither believe, that "crowds" who enter as pensioners or commoners on the banks of the Cam or Isis, repair thither “with no other feeling than would possess them were they called by their avocations or their pleasures to Brighton or Birmingham;" nor do we think they would be such arrant geese as "to claim a fellow-ship and a kindred with Newton and with Gray, with Erasmus and with Bacon." But we will hear this kin of Newton and Bacon in his soliloquy :

I traversed the same cloisters; sauntering along the same groves; frequented the very same libraries; and what more could I do? It was the next thing to living and conversing with them. It was, as Charles Lamb would say, the next step to being admitted ad eundem into their society. And I did feel ennobled proportionably.

I walked under their respective mulberry-trees in the gardens of Christ's and of Jesus Colleges with Cranmer and Milton. At Pembroke I visited Gray, and was willing to believe that the sweet little churchyard of Maddingley had just claims to the honour of suggesting the topics of his immortal elegy. I paced the noble cloisters of Trinity, and the floor of its splendid library; and seemed to be honoured by the companionship of Newton, and Bentley, and Barrow, while under the wondrous vault of King's, and amidst

"The dim religious light

Of storied windows richly dight,"

I was carried back to the times of the devotion, the inagnificence, the errors, and the misfortunes of its royal founder, Henry of Windsor.-Pp. 294, 295.

Capital! And does the "Country Curate" take his readers for such "Country Cousins" as to credit all this? We felt as much of enthusiasm as most boys feel on putting on the toga virilis; but our enthusiasm was not 66 to sit under their respective mulberry-trees in the gardens of Christ's and Jesus Colleges with Cranmer and Milton," but to strut up Jesus Lane in the quadrilateral adornment of our empty head, and to parade Sidney Street in the velvet-bordered emblem of our freshman-ship. As to Cranmer's mulberry-tree, we never heard