the danger of deterioration attaches more especially to the ecclesiastical branches of such establishments; inasmuch as the control of public opinion is still more feeble than in the case of the civil functionary. In America, our episcopal establishment was fast sinking into degradation, owing to the refuse character of the exported clergy, when the revolution took place; and even now, it is in the Episcopal church that religion is at the lowest ebb in the United States, and that, while the erection of fresh edifices is going forward, the church itself is almost in ruins.

We trust that the result of the experiment of an establishment in India, will be widely different. This will depend upon two things, zeal and toleration; the tacit countenancing of all attempts, however extra-ecclesiastical they may be deemed, to advance the propagation of the Gospel, and the endeavour to keep pace with these attempts by simultaneous exertion. Sincerely do we hope, that the spirit of enlightened policy may so far prevail, as to allow of this blessed consummation.

The remaining volume of these Memoirs, is occupied with details of Dr. Buchanan's journey, in 1806, to the coast of Malabar, and his visit to the Syrian churches; with an account of his second visit to the coast in the following year, and his return to England in 1808; and with the history of his subsequent labours. The volume is highly valuable and interesting, but Dr. Buchanan's "Christian Researches" and other publications, have already put the public in possession of much of the information it comprises. The character which Mr. Pearson has given of the subject of his memoir, is marked by candour and discrimination; no one will dispute the justness of the eulogy which he pronounces, on his distinguished worth, genuine piety, and enlarged and active philanthropy."

We need not add any thing in formal recommendation of the work. Although, as a biographical composition, it is not of the very first order of literary excellence, it is in every point of view highly respectable, and will form a most acceptable and a permanent addition to the stores of ecclesiastical biography.

Art. IX. Serious Warnings addressed to various Classes of Persons. By J. Thornton. 12mo. pp. 144. Price 2s. 6d. Baynes, 1817.

MR.

R. THORNTON anticipates that an objection will be brought against this little volume, on account of the undisguised and direct nature of its addresses to the conscience, Serious warnings! What persons in the present day would bear being approached by a work of so ominous a title? The Christian teacher, in these times of general cultivation, must

3

find a passage to the conscience, through mediums more adapted to the taste, more conciliatory to the prejudices of the heart, than so unattractive, so dry, so obsolete a method of conveying religious instruction as this. Mr. Thornton, however, contends, that different modes are suited to different classes of individuals; that after all that can be said in favour of gentle insinuation, there are many who like to be'-at any rate, he might have added, there are some who must be dealt with openly and 'faithfully.'

Those,' he remarks, who prefer the mild and circuitous methods above noticed, have no great reason in our age to complain, as thousands are continually making attempts of this kind. Religion is diffused from the press in all the varied and engaging forms, which We have essays and tales, allegories prose or poetry can assume. and anecdotes, memoirs and miscellanies, slightly or richly seasoned Even the with divine truth, so as to gratify a diversity of tastes.

complex machinery of the Novelist has been borrowed, to weave the doctrines and duties of Christianity into a texture, which shall fascinate by its splendour and beauty. We have some cause to fear, lest the imagination should be too much courted, and lest a turn for light reading should be produced by industriously spreading works of this description. p. x.

There is, certainly, room for this apprehension; but after all, every form of address, every method must be made use of We believe, experience is in favour of no exclusive mode of popular address, and that among the Tracts which have obtained the most extensive circulation, and been approved the most useful, the solemn warning, and the pathetic cottage tale, may vie with each other for the pre-eminence. It is upon the qualities of the style, upon the adaptation of the phraseology and reasoning to the understandings and habits of the lower classes, rather than upon the subject, that the probability of success depends. And who that has been accustomed to witness the effects of the distribution of such works, has not found that religious impressions of the most salutary nature, have often been produced by methods apparently the most unlikely, by efforts the most hopeless, and under circumstances which served powerfully to shew, that the efficiency of any efforts must be ascribed to other causes than the quality of the means employed?

We have no doubt that Mr. Thornton has had that experience, as a Christian minister, in the business of popular instruction, that has led him to adopt this method of appeal to the conscience, from a conviction of its practical advantages. These addresses are not particularly designed for the lower orders: they are however plain, judicious, and affectionate. They are addressed to six different classes: the lovers of vain pleasure; the profane and profligate; the worldly minded; the self-righteous; the negligent

and dilatory; and, apostates and backsliders. Each of these addresses may be had separate, in the form of a single tract.

The Author is too well known to the religious public, to render it necessary for us to give any specimen of the work; but we transcribe the following hints from the Preface, as highly deserving of attention..

May I be allowed in this place, to say a few words on the practice of giving away religious books? It is certainly an easy and compendious way of doing good. It is, to use the prophet's language. sowing beside all waters, and if only some of the grain spring up and bear thirty, sixty, or an hundred fold, the harvest will be crowned with joy. I have repeatedly seen the happy effects attending the liberal distribution of pious books. I would advise those who expend part of their property in this manner, always to read themselves what they design to give to others, thus they will be satisfied as to the choice they make. Should you after perusing these warnings with such a view, think them unsuitable, you may find many small books which will answer your purpose. Were a fire to break out in the neighbourhood, would you not promptly carry water to queneh it; or if you wanted ability, cheerfully lend a bucket to some more active and vigorous hand? Now sin has kindled a fire which must either be extinguished, or it will burn to the lowest hell. Doubtless it will be admitted, that we all ought to use every possible means to rescue men from ruin. He who converteth a sinner from the error of his way, saves a soul from death. How many will have cause to bless God through eternity, that some such work as Allein's Alarm, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Beveridge's Private Thoughts, Doddridge's Rise and Progress, or the Life of Colonel Gardiner, was put into their hands by a kind friend or a pious neighbour. Indeed those who are disposed to do good in this way, may readily procure at a cheap price a vast variety of suitable books. Burder's Village Sermons, Scott's Essays, and Force of Truth, and the interesting productions of many other living writers, have not only gained a wide circulation, but have also proved remarkably useful. I shall take this opportunity of going a step lower, and warmly recommend the distribution of religious tracts; a method of diffusing knowledge and promoting piety, never understood or adopted till of late, and yet its importance is neither fully known, nor duly appreciated. A worthy and zealous minister, who wrote about one hundred and fifty years since, after earnestly exhorting the rich to give away good books, says, "for the price of one luxurious meal, you may bestow a book upon a poor man, which will prove a treasure to him, and when he dies, be left as a valuable legacy to the family."" pp. xiii–xv.

Art. X. The House of Mourning, a Poem: With some smaller Pieces. By John Scott. 8vo. pp. xi, 75. Price 5s. 6d. Taylor and Hessey. 1817.

WE

E are sometimes led to wonder, what pleasure persons of real sensibility can take, in making the public the confidant of their most secret and sacred emotions, and in inviting the cold eye of the world to gaze upon the long-drawn procession of their griefs. Is sorrow necessarily an egotist? Is there really so much vanity blended with the purest affections of the heart, that it is soothing to indulge, even amid the pangs of bereavement, in proclaiming the value, and magnitude, and excellence of that which once was ours, and in the very loss of which we feel; to have the prerogative of a possessor? What is the meaning of the funereal pageant, and the pompous cenotaph, with which we please ourselves in honouring the memory of those who were dear to us? We cannot bear, it should seem, the idea, that the objects of our affection should live and pass away, our enjoyments and our losses should go forward, and transactions so all-important to our particular selves, silently take place, without exciting any notice from the world, without leaving any record. We can ill sustain, under the engrossing agitation of painful emotions, the consciousness which is sometimes forced upon us, of the utter insignificance of individual man with all his private interests,―of the exceedingly contracted circle to which self can communicate the effect, or the remotest intimations, of what it thinks, and feels, and acts, and suffers. It is then, that the indifference of the world presents itself in the harshest contrast to the intensity of our own emotions; when rendered the most keenly sensible of the insufficiency of ourselves, when staggering under the weakness of our nature, as that on which we were leaning is withdrawn, we find we must stand alone, and bear the whole weight of our feelings, denied even the homage of sympathy from the busy multitude, who see nothing peculiar in what has befallen us; so that all our sufferings cannot obtain for us the poor consolation of distinction. Kirke White has said, in one of the most beautiful of his Poems,

I would not be a leaf to die

Without recording Sorrow's sigh.'

Nor is it without apang superadded to that which the loss occasions, that we are doomed to witness by our selves, the otherwise unnoticed disappearance of any thing we valued. Who has not experienced an inexpressible emotion of pensiveness, as, in the utter stillness of solitude, he has seemed to hear leaf after leaf descend and mingle with the layers of leaves of former years spread through the forest, and thought that his single eye

alone recorded their fall, and, as he transferred for the moment human consciousness to the leaf, applied its fate to his own?

Perhaps, there is something better than vanity in this effort to call attention to our individual interests and sorrows. It is because we wish to rescue from utter annihilation that which has become a shadow, and because so long as the object survives in the regrets and the remembrance of those around us, in the emblematic pageant or the more lasting memorials of grief, in the monument or the monody, its existence seems still a reality, that we thus imploringly call in the aid of the world that cannot feel for us, to countenance the fond deception. We are willing that the agony of separation should be perpetuated, rather than that the impression which causes it should fade from the mind, and, with that impression, all that is left to us of the object we are called to resign. Compared with the horrors of that forgetfulness which rests upon the past, all the pain of endurance is pleasureable. This makes us love to brood upon the thought that wounds us, and give to that thought a bodily expression in stone or marble, or, as we flatter ourselves, more lasting monumental verse. It is not possible, perhaps, to separate altogether vanity from this operation of the mind, but it is that natural, inoffensive, pleading vanity, which it would be cruelty to look coldly upon. The world, however, to which the appeal is made, is niggard of its sympathy, and will not be charmed to bestow on individual feelings and sufferings a disproportionate attention, unless those feelings are made eloquent by genius; unless the intellectual rank of the sufferer, as conspicuous in the splendour and power which imagination brings to deck out the scene, confers a species of consequence and distinction upon his personal character.

Mr. Scott is assuredly possessed of genius, although his genius has evidently not been trained, by the habit of poetical composition, to correctness or facility. He has more force of thought than skill in expression. The principal poem in this publication, bears internal marks of its having originated, as the Author describes, in the strong inspiration of emotion, which both produced the effort of mind, and gave it this unaccustomed direction. It was the picture, it seems, of his deceased boy, that gave birth to the resolve' to sing of it,' and which

Set the spirit seeking-not to find.'

The child died at Paris, in his way with his parents to Italy, and has a foreign grave. Under this circumstance, they have felt inclined to venture the present publication, as a monument of the dead, sufficient to preserve them from experiencing the cold and wounding idea of total estrangement.' The poem is the more natural, as it is wholly desultory: the thoughts follow each other by the mere association of feel