that we have lost some portion of the manly virtues by which our ancestors were characterised; that in our daily intercourse we have swerved from the road of honesty and truthfulness into the paths of expediency and conventionalism; that in our individual strivings after riches and position, the feeling of patriotism has been deadened, until our whole existence has become so tainted by selfishness that we suffer ourselves to view the interests of our country only as they may affect our individual ease or progress. It would be foreign to the object of these pages to pursue the subject in this direction, but it would occasion deep regret if, in exhibiting the favourable side of the picture, and in giving utterance to hopes for the future, grounded upon the efforts for moral and intellectual improvements which now are happily in action around us, it could be held that there were implied any approval of national crime, or any feelings save those of shame and humiliation, at our departure from that course of rectitude which was wont to make this favoured land more honoured for its justice than it was respected for its power. The demoralizing tendency of riches has ever been a favourite theme for declamation with poets and moralists :— "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, is a sentiment which has been repeated until it has gained at least the nominal assent of many seriously-disposed but imperfectly-informed persons among us. They have not stopped to consider how far the evils which they deplore have their origin in, or any connection with, increasing wealth, but have taken it for granted that, as the evils and the wealth have increased together, they must necessarily be considered as cause and effect. It must be owned that our multiplied abodes of want, of wretchedness, and of crime; our town populations huddled together in ill-ventilated and undrained courts and cellars; our numerous workhouses, filled to overflowing with the children of want; and our prisons (scarcely less numerous) overloaded with the votaries of crime, do, indeed, but too sadly and too strongly attest that all is not as it should be with us as regards this most important branch of human progress. If we refer to our criminal returns, it will be found that in England and Wales, the number of persons committed for trial is now more than five times as great as it was at the beginning of the century; while in Ireland the proportionate increase has been even more appalling, there having been in 1849 twelvefold the number of committals that were made in 1805; the earliest year for which our records are avail able. There are not any accounts of so early a date by which we are able to make a similar comparison for Scotland; but comparing the number of committals in 1815 with those in 1849, we find that in those thirty-four years they have augmented nearly sevenfold. We have here primâ fucie evidence that the increase of crime has far outstripped the increase of our population, and without doubt of our wealth also, great as their increase has been; and it behoves us to inquire seriously, honestly, and fearlessly, how far those frightful appearances are founded in truth; and, if they be so founded, whether the two conditions are necessarily connected, or whether their simultaneous occurrence be not rather attributable to ill-considered interference, or to some deficiency or neglect on the part of those whose duty should have prompted them to the adoption of measures more effectual than have been used for the correction of the evil. It would indeed be a heartsickening prospect if, in looking forward to the continued progress of our country in its economical relations, we must also contemplate the still greater multiplication of its criminals. The nature of the case does not indeed admit of our realizing such a future as is here supposed, for, ere it could be reached, the whole physical framework of society must be broken up. Neither should we be willing to admit, notwithstanding the experience of the last forty years, the moral possibility of such a result. The growing attention that is bestowed upon this subject in England, and not in England only, but in every country where the like result had been experienced, is beginning to produce its legitimate fruit. Governments are, at last, awakened to the necessity of counteracting the evil tendencies that have made such fearful progress. It is seen, and is beginning to be practically acknowledged, that a great part of the moral evil under which societies are suffering is the offspring of ignorance, and that without insisting upon any very high degree of perfectibility in human nature, we may reasonably hope that the removal of that ignorance will do much towards restoring moral health to communities, and thus fit them for the rational enjoyment of blessings so increasingly offered for their acceptance. That this hope is not a mere vision of the philanthropist, but is founded upon the knowledge of what is daily passing around us, will be seen when we come to consider the intellectual condition of those who have been made to appear at the bar of justice, and find how small a proportion among them have received any beyond the first elements of instruction. When we are thus convinced of the powerful influence of instruction, even as hitherto communicated, in restraining from the open violation of laws, what may we not reasonably hope will be the power of that moral training which it is now felt must be employed to stamp its proper value upon knowledge? To suppose that blessings must necessarily be accompanied by countervailing curses, is to impute a capital deficiency to the intentions of Providence, and amounts to a practical denial of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Almighty.-PORTER'S ‘Progress of the Nation.' DOUBTLESS there seem many physical causes of distress, of disease, of poverty, and of desolation-tempests, earthquakes, volcanoes, wild or venemous animals, barren soils, uncertain or tyrannous climates, pestilential swamps, and death in the very air we breathe. Yet when do we hear the general wretchedness of mankind attributed to these? Even in the most awful of the Icelandic and Sicilian eruptions, when the earth has opened and sent forth vast rivers of fire, and the smoke and vapour have dimmed the light of heaven for months, how small has been the comparative injury to the human race; and how much even of this injury might be fairly attributed to combined imprudence and superstition! Natural calamities that do indeed spread devastation wide (for instance, the marsh fever), are almost without exception voices of nature in her all-intelligible language— do this! or cease to do that! By the mere absence of one superstition, and of the sloth engendered by it, the plague would probably cease to exist throughout Asia and Africa. Pronounce meditatively the name of Jenner, and ask what might we not hope, what need we deem unattainable, if all the time, the effort, the skill, which we waste in making ourselves miserable through vice, and vicious through misery, were embodied and marshalled to a systematic war against the existing evils of nature! No, it is a wicked world! This is so generally the solution, that this very wickedness is assigned by selfish men as their excuse for doing nothing to render it better, and for opposing those who would make the attempt. What have not Clarkson, Granville, Sharp, Wilberforce, and the Society of the Friends, effected for the honour, and if we believe in a retributive providence, for the continuance of the prosperity of the English nation, imperfectly as the intel lectual and moral faculties of the people at large are developed at present! What may not be effected, if the recent discovery of the means of educating nations (freed, however, from the vile sophistications and mutilations of ignorant mountebanks) shall have been applied to its full extent! Would I frame to myself the most inspiriting representation of future bliss, which my mind is capable of comprehending, it would be embodied to me in the idea of Bell receiving, at some distant period, the appropriate reward of his earthly labours, when thousands and ten thousands of glorified spirits, whose reason and conscience had, through his efforts, been unfolded, shall sing the song of their own redemption, and pouring forth praises to God and to their Saviour, shall repeat his new name in heaven, give thanks for his earthly virtues, as the chosen instruments of Divine mercy to themselves, and not seldom perhaps turn their eyes toward him, as from the sun to its image in the fountain, with secondary gratitude and the permitted utterance of a human love! Were but a hundred men to combine a deep conviction that virtuous habits may be formed by the very means by which knowledge is communicated, that men may be made better, not only in consequence, but by the mode and in the process of instruction; were but a hundred men to combine that clear conviction of this, which I myself at this moment feel, even as I feel the certainty of my being, with the perseverance of a Clarkson or a Bell, the promises of ancient prophecy would disclose themselves to our faith, even as when a noble castle hidden from us by an intervening mist, discovers itself by its reflection in the tranquil lake, on the opposite shore of which we stand gazing. What an awful duty, what a nurse of all other, the fairest virtues, does not hope become! We are bad ourselves, because we despair of the goodness of others. *. * * Virtue would not be virtue, could it be given by one fellowcreature to another. To make use of all the means and appliances in our power to the actual attainment of rectitude, is the abstract of the duty which we owe to ourselves: to supply those means as far as we can, comprises our duty to others. The question then is, what are these means? Can they be any other than the communication of knowledge, and the removal of those evils and impediments which prevent its reception? It may not be in our power to combine both, but it is in the power of every man to contribute to the former, who is sufficiently informed to feel that it is his duty. If it be said, that we should endeavour not so much to remove ignorance, as to make the ignorant religious; Religion herself, through her sacred oracles, answers for me, that all effective faith presupposes knowledge and individual conviction. If the mere acquiescence in truth, uncomprehended and unfathomed, were sufficient, few indeed would be the vicious and the miserable, in this country at least, where speculative infidelity is, God be praised! confined to a small number. Like bodily deformity, there is one instance here and another there; but three in one place are already an undue proportion. It is highly worthy of observation, that the inspired writings received by Christians are distinguishable from all other books pretending to inspiration, from the Scriptures of the Brahmins, and even from the Koran, in their strong and frequent recommendations of truth. I do not here mean veracity, which cannot but be enforced in every code which appeals to the religious principle of man; but knowledge. This is not only extolled as the crown and honour of a man, but to seek after it is again and again commanded us as one of our most sacred duties. Yea, the very perfection and final bliss of the glorified spirit is represented by the Apostle as a plain aspect, or intuitive beholding of truth in its eternal and immutable source! Not that knowledge can of itself do all. The light of religion is not that of the moon, light without heat; but neither is its warmth that of the stove, warmth without light. Religion is the sun, the warmth of which indeed swells and stirs and actuates the life of nature, but who at the same time beholds all the growth of life with a master-eye, makes all objects glorious on which he looks, and by that glory visible to all others.-COLERIDGE, The Friend.' 6 THE ignorance of the Neapolitans, from the highest to the lowest, is very eminent; and excites the admiration of all the rest of Italy. In the great building containing all the Works of Art, and a library of 150,000 volumes, I asked for the best existing book (a German one published ten years ago) on the Statues in that very collection; and, after a rabble of clerks and custodes, got up to a dirty priest, who bowing to the ground regretted they did not possess it," but at last remembered that "they had entered into negotiations on the subject which as yet had been unsuccessful." The favourite device on the walls at Naples 66 |