of the wise and virtuous; but we condemn the manner in which they are now indecorously and prematurely obtruded on the world.

66

Some other parts of the volume will be read with interest, perhaps with pleasure, though much that it contains is already well known. Indeed we were disappointed in not finding more original information, especially after what occurs in the preface on the subject. Fortyeight years'" acquaintance, with "a variety of valuable items" from "several friends," induced expectations in this respect which were certainly not fulfilled. The acquaintance, we apprehend, could not have been very intimate, nor the intercourse to which it led frequent or unreserved. One of the most interesting passages is that which describes the interview between Mr. Hall and Dr. Mason, of New York.

Considerable use is made in compiling the volume of Mr. Hall's published works, from which somewhat copious extracts are inserted. Of most of them Mr. Morris gives either an analysis or a kind of review. In the author's life of Fuller this is done with much cleverness and effect. But whether it be that the polemical character of most of his writings afforded a better opportunity for the display of critical skill, or whether the reason must be sought in other causes-as, for example, in the fact that

-years steal

Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb

we cannot tell, but these portions of the present volume are much inferior to Mr. Morris's previous efforts of this nature.

To complain that the style of the work is, throughout, too eulogistic, might seem to infer that we did not sufficiently appreciate the character or the unrivalled talents of Mr. Hall. But there is a common-place mode of panegyrising which neither exalts its subject in the estimation of the reader, nor impresses him with a high opinion of the taste of the writer. The commendation bestowed on such a man should re

semble, in its conception and language, the chaste and dignified simplicity of his own incomparable mind, and be as remote from the cheap praise of plebeian superlatives as the beauty of his own compositions exceeds all the ordinary models of eloquence.

The author nowhere in the course of his work attempts philosophically to investigate the component elements of Mr. Hall's intellectual greatness; nor at its conclusion does he present us with a masterly and comprehensive sketch of his character. Yet, in the biography of an individual distinguished by genius, and not by adventure, it is not "the mere facts and events of life" which we are anxious to know, but "the successive states of the mind"

the gradual acquisition and developement of principles-the influence of time and circumstances in the formation of character-aud whatever relates rather to the interior economy of thought, and sentiment, and feeling, than to the occurrences which take place in external life. Not that these are to pass unmentioned, but that they are to be treated as the inferior portion of the work, the materials only from which, as in a brilliant chemical experiment, the hidden principle of fire must be elicited.

The biography of Mr. Hall cannot yet be considered as written. Neither the present publication nor Dr. Gregory's Brief Memoir supersedes the necessity of something further and we sincerely hope that the latter gentleman, of all others the best qualified for the undertaking, will give himself more time and opportunity to re-consider, in all its stages, the life of his departed friend than he could have had when he composed what he has already published. It is due to Mr. Hall that certain parts of his history should be set in a different light from that in which they now stand; and, though the present may not be the time for the disclosure of facts, that time will come; and, whenever it may arrive, we are anxious that his narrative should show the world that what are now deemed imprudent eccentricities of genius exhi

bited features of character which entitle him, more than is at present understood, to admiration and respect.

Domestic Portraiture, or the successful application of Religious Principle in the Education of a Family, exemplified in the Memoirs of three of the Deceased Children of the Rev. Legh Richmond.-Seeley and W. Burnside. London.

Of this delightful volume more need not be said, and less ought not, than that it is every way worthy to form an appendix to the memoirs of Mr. Richmond; and those of our readers, who closed that work with regret, may here review again those beautiful and attractive scenes of graceful and consistent piety, paternal wisdom, and domestic felicity, which, combined, perhaps, in the parsonage at Turvey, as much of the bliss of Paradise as has "survived the fall." It is calculated to be almost equally instructive and interesting to parents and children, exhibiting to the former, in detail, Mr. Richmond's admirable views and plan of education; and, to the latter, examples of youthful excellence as well as warnings of youthful folly, which will, we trust, deeply impress their hearts, and lead them to consecrate the fair morning of their days to Him whose service "hath the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come.' The following pious and beautiful letter, almost the last written by Wilberforce Richmond, will present a fair specimen of these interesting biographies, and justify the commendations we have expressed.

DEAR

* *

*

You

*

I am afraid you will conclude that our trip to the north has cooled our affections, and frozen them into indifference to former friendships. must think so no longer. I am now in that dear home which has sometimes been rendered still dearer by your presence. I reflect on those hours with much pleasure; but the remembrance is mingled with a feeling of melancholy. It is possible they may return : I mean hours of the same delight yet I must not forget my gradual decline for the last six months.

I am now in a state in which a slight increase cf disease might prove fatal; but I am hoping, always hoping; for hope is a symptom of my disorder; so I must hope. I am no longer what you once knew me. The glow of health and spirits does not now enliven my countenance, which looks, I believe, rather sad; yet I know not why it should do so, for I have lost only that which endureth for a moment, and if I obtain that which endureth for everthe love and mercy of Christ-surely I have reason to rejoice in the exchange. In Christ, and Christ alone, I find peace. He will not cast me away. I have thrown myself, as an unworthy sinner, at the foot of the cross, and there in peace will I lay my head, and, I trust, cheerfully resign my breath to him who gave it. I used once to love the rose of all the flowers the best; but now it has left me, and I turn to the lily, for it seems to be token my approach to a world of purity-nor have I any wish for life, if Christ will receive one so unworthy. From how much sin and temptation shall I make my escape, by an early death, and quitting these, enter into a heaven of joy, where there is no more curse! I know that in very faithfulness God has afflicted me; my chief sins were pride and ambition, and these have been the very means, at least the chief causes, of my disease. Proud of my talents, and seeking the admiration of men, I neglected my health till it was too late to correct the error, and here my dreams of future happiness in this world, and all my ambitious hopes, are fled. But I would not exchange the humility of a Christian for the phantom at which I formerly grasped. People tell me I shall recover. There may be hope, but my own impression is to the contrary. Pray for me dear, and let a tear fall for the sins of

Your affectionate

W."

The disappointment of Mr. Richmond in the character of his eldest son Nugent has been, no doubt, a subject of painful interest to many Christian parents, whose confidence in the connexion between judicious parental discipline, and the formation of a docile and correct moral character, may be unduly shaken by this failure. The unhappy tendencies of this young man's character are chiefly attributed to a connexion formed at school with an unprincipled companion. Whe

ther the head of this academy were a pious character we are not informed, though we can scarcely imagine Mr. Richmond would have trusted the entire direction of his son to an individual who was destitute of this important qualification. There are surely very few cases which would justify religious parents in confiding the whole formation of their children's character, not only mental but moral-which is done when the latter are placed for five or six years at a boarding-schoolto persons who are themselves strangers to those principles of evangelical piety, without which there can be no religious education. We earnestly recommend to the serious consideration of every Christian parent the admirable observations in the preliminary chapter on education bearing on this point, though we regret that we cannot bestow on every one of the opinions expressed in this well-written essay unqualified approbation, as we conceive the author has pushed some of them to that extreme which is error. The opinions to which we refer are found in the two following extracts, the former of which may be regarded as the text, and the latter as a commentary upon it.

"I would observe that to train and prepare the soul to its eternal destiny is the proper business and end of education." "I am not the advocate of superstition or eccentricity; but I contend that the chief end of education is to train for eternity."-p. 5. "While discussing the merits of school education, I cannot refrain from adverting to a modern system which discards the aid of religion in the hours of instruction I view this novel experiment with extreme alarm. The reduction of expense, and a plausible pretence to liberality of sentiment, has prevailed on men of real piety to give their sanction to it, and they have been seduced, in their simplicity, to approve a plan more worthy of the enemies of religion than its friends."-p. 12.

Now, while trusting that we have not a less deep and solemn impression than our author, that to prepare for an eternal destiny is the chief end of existence; yet we can by no means perceive that it is the chief

object of a parent in placing his child at school that he may be instructed in religion, any more than this is his chief design in placing him as an apprentice to learn a profession or trade. Grammar, mathematics, and languages are as purely secular in their intention as the acquirement of a mechanic art; and it is no more the duty of a religious parent to require that a schoolmaster should every day give a lecture on religion, than to demand the same thing from a lawyer or physician with whom he placed his son to learn the profession. His primary and legitimate object in both cases is the same, that his child may be qualified for the present life, while it is his duty, as far as possible, to make his intellectual education and his professional studies subservient to the great end of existence-a preparation for heaven. He will, therefore, never permit his child to be placed in a situation where his religious principles are endangered, and he will obtain for him, if possible, a pious instructor and a pious master; but if this is not attainable, he violates no duty by getting him indispensable secular knowledge without this advantage. The "novel experiment" to which the excellent author alludes, is, we suppose, the London University, to which we should assuredly send a son with no more "alarm," than to Oxford or Cambridge, of the high morality and eminent piety of whose sonsblessed as they are with the "forms of religion,' and with such a superabundance of clerical instructors-we have not yet seen sufficient examples to convince us that we are in more danger of "unsanctified knowledge" from the new than the old institutions. Our friends of the established church cling with such tenacity to old prejudices that they appear scarcely able to separate the external form from the internal spirit. A clerical instructor, the church catechism, and a form of prayer, are too generally considered

religious education," and they do not perceive that all this is a mere tinkling cymbal, if the teacher be not himself a pious man. Just in proportion as schoolmasters and

professors are so, (and should not Christians, who have influence in public institutions endeavour to select such men?) we shall have education religiously conducted; all sentiments drawn from classical sources will be purified by the refining fire of scriptural truth, though religion may forbid that itself be made an indispensable subject of tuition; for if, by insisting on the introduction of certain forms of religion into our universities, we exclude any class of our fellowcitizens from necessary secular knowledge, we violate the essential spirit of charity, which is above all forms and all creeds, in which it has so long lain entombed. To prevent our own children, or the children of others, from acquiring literary instruction, because it was not accompanied with religious lectures, would be as imprudent, as uncharitable, and just as absurd, as to forbid their studying a treatise on mathematics, or astronomy, because it contained no pious reflections. The author proceeds to say, while adverting to this "modern system which discards the aid of religion in the hours of instruction," "The feeblest recognition of a Deity and the admission only of the forms of religion-nay, even superstition itself, is preferable to the entire exclusion of all reference to a Divine power." Never having heard of any institution in this country in which there is an "entire exclusion of all reference to a Divine power," we infer that an exclusion of theological instruction is all that is intended, and that if the author were pressed with the alternative of sending his son to the London university, or to a Roman Catholic college, he would prefer the latter, and in order to insure the inexpressible benefit of having him instructed in religion, in a particular place and at certain hours of the day, he would incur the hazard of his imbibing the grossest errors and superstitions, and even of being fatally prejudiced against essential truths. Now this appears to us an error of sufficient magnitude to deserve the time and space we have occupied in endeavouring

to expose it. It should always be remembered that God himself has appointed the means of "religious education" in the public ministry and in parental instruction; and when children are separated from the domestic circle, in order to se cure education, it appears to us an imperative duty to place them under the care of pious persons who will supply this last-mentioned means of instruction. Having secured these objects, it is assuredly infinitely better that they should imbibe science without any admixture, than derive it from a stream which, though it has received a form of consecration, is rendered turbid by error, and therefore most injurious to the mental constitution. None will rejoice more than ourselves in the arrival of the period when the general prevalence of piety and harmony of religious sentiment will render it possible to have theological professors in every college, without endangering religion by the choice of persons destitute of piety, and public prayer in every school, without offending the prejudices of any; but to refuse to receive ourselves, or communicate to others, mental culture, because we cannot force upon our fellow-citizens religious instruction in connexion with it, is not certainly the dictate of true wisdom or genuine charity.

guage with sweet and oily phrases, to gratify a vitiated taste; yet we can hardly believe that he who was so eloquently eulogised by the Rev. H. Melville, could allow himself such licenses as we find in some of these extracts. If they be correctly reported, we should say there was sometimes an unbecoming freedom with the awful sublimities of revealed truth. It may, indeed, have resulted from the power and boldness of a heart kindled, though not always governed, by the love of Christ; or from an earnest and illdirected desire strongly and nakedly to pourtray the truth as it is in Jesus.

That charity which hopeth all things, and never faileth, is unhappily not often exemplified in any sect, and therefore we are not surprised to find as much of its breach as its observance among that to which Mr. Howels belonged. Charity stoops not to mingle the ungentle expressions of party-feeling with the glad tidings which she publishes in love to all. The heavenly and dovelike Comforter shrinks from the fierce turbulence of sinful anger, and diffuses the sanctifying knowledge of Jesus, with tenderness and mercy, like the benevolent light of heaven, to illumine and cheer; not like the lightnings of Sinai, to terrify, repulse, and confound. "He convinces not of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come," by employing the vehemence of man's over-heated imagination, which sometimes rudely claims the awful mysteries of hell, and Satan, as familiar images by which to express natural and conceited abhorrence. Mr. Howels knew this; but his weakness was the abuse of his strength. The internal energy that nerved him to noble combat was sometimes wasted in passionately beating the air. He sometimes mistook a strong thought for a good reason, and occasionally argued, not so much to remove difficulties, and convince gainsayers, as for the sake of boldly hurrying to the conclusion which he loved: notwithstanding which, we rejoice to acknowledge an abundant prevalence of beautiful strength in much that we have read in his remains.

Memorials of the late Rev. Richard Watsom. By JABEZ BUNTING.-London: Mason, 14, City Road.

The good man, apparently selfsustained in his calm struggle with adversity, presents a sublime object to the contemplative mind; and at least equally sublime is the intrepid bearing of the unarmed stripling as he goes forth, with firm step and undaunted eye, to meet the deriding giant in his brasen panoply, and exclaims, "I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied." Such was young Watson, when he first sallied forth to give the enemy battle, by preaching the gospel in the villages and fields. Thus was he trained by Providence in his early youth, amid trials and temptations, that he might become a noble champion of the truth among his brethren. greatness of his youthful promise was well fulfilled by his after career; but he is gone, like a bright planet, lost to our vision amid the effulgence of that sun whose light he long reflected, and in whose glory he lives for ever.

The

We heard his last sermon, and shall not speedily lose the impression of its unadorned majesty. About it there was none of that airspun tissue of finery which is so often mistaken for becoming ornament, though, at best, it serves but to conceal the deformity of error, or to disguise the loveliness of truth. There was naked grandeur in itself too beautiful for ornament, and too vast to be girt in its completeness by man's embellishment; for it was the gospel of God displayed with scriptural simplicity. Such, we believe, was his preaching generally. The easy effort of a mind enabled by Omnipotence to unveil the face of truth, and constrain even the resisting spirit to gaze, and acknowledge the palpable might of her beauty. Mr. Watson was evidently and eminently gifted to hold meek dominion over the faculties of intellect, and thereby to arouse and direct the impulses of affection.

If our style partakes of faulty praise, we certainly caught the sin from Mr. Bunting's pamphlet. Mr.