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Personal Recollections. By Charlotte Elizabeth. London: Seeleys. THE little volume before us is one of the most interesting we have ever met with; not because we altogether admire its spirit -not because we altogether admire its authoress, but because it presents to us a very curious psychological phenomenon. We have here a transcript, and evidently a honest transcript, of the mind of a remarkable woman— -one who has exercised a great influence on the female society of her day. We scarcely know where to look for so strange a compound of Christian love and sectarian uncharitableness-of forced humility and uncontrollable pride of attempted reliance on the Saviour, and yet determined reliance on self, than is exhibited in the "Personal Recollections" of Charlotte Elizabeth. She is evidently a highminded and high-principled woman (she may accept our praise with the most perfect reliance on its sincerity), whose early education was good, so far as it went, but never completed. Let us see how it was carried on :

"About this time, when my sight, after a few months' privation, was fully restored, I first imbibed the strength of Protestantism as deeply as it can be imbibed apart from spiritual understanding. Norwich was infamously conspicuous in persecuting unto death the saints of the Most High, under the sanguinary despotism of Popish Mary; and the spot where they suffered, called the Lollard's Pit, lies just outside the town, over Bishop's bridge, having a circular excavation against the side of Moushold-hill. This, at least to within a year or two ago, was kept distinct, an opening by the road-side. My father often took us to walk in that direction, and pointed out the pit, and told us that there Mary burnt good people alive for refusing to worship wooden images. I was horror-stricken, and asked many questions, to which he did not always reply so fully as I wished; and one day, having to go out while I was enquiring, he said, 'I don't think you can read a word of this book, but you may look at the pictures: it is all about the martyrs.' So saying, he placed on a chair the old folio of Fox's 'Acts and Monuments,' in venerable black letter, and left me to examine it.

"Hours passed, and still found me bending over, or rather leaning against, that magic book. I could not, it is true, decypher the black letter; but I found some examinations in Roman type, and devoured them; while every wood-cut was examined with aching eyes and a palpitating heart. Assuredly I took in more of the spirit of John Fox, even by that imperfect mode of acquaintance, than many do by reading his book through; and when my father next found me at what became my darling study, I looked up at him with burning cheeks, and asked, 'Papa, may I be a martyr?'

"What do you mean, child?'

"I mean, papa, may I be burned to death for my religion, as these were? I want to be a martyr.'

"He smiled, and made me this answer, which I have never forgotten, "Why, Charlotte, if the government ever gives power to the Papists again, as they talk of doing, you may very probably live to be a martyr.'

"I remember the stern pleasure that this reply afforded me: of spiritual knowledge, not the least glimmer had ever reached me in any form; yet I knew the Bible most intimately, and loved it with all my heart, as the most sacred, the most beautiful of earthly things. Already had its sublimity caught my admiration; and when listening to the lofty language of Isaiah, as read from his stall in the cathedral by my father in Advent, and the early Sundays of the year, while his magnificent voice sent the prophetic denunciations pealing through those vaulted aisles, I had received into my mind, and I think into my heart, that scorn of idolatry which breathes so thrillingly in his inspired page. This I know, that at six years old the foundation of a truly scriptural protest was laid in my character; and to this hour it is my prayer that whenever the Lord calls me hence, or whenever the Lord himself to earth, he may find his servant not only watching, but working against the diabolical iniquity that filled the Lollard's Pit with the ashes of his saints."

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This was, indeed, a one-sided education, for Fox alone is more calculated to make a Dissenter than to form the mind of a Churchman; and we cannot be surprised that Charlotte Elizabeth has ever been far more than half a Dissenter. Yet we can forgive her her unconscious heresies-her pride of selfinterpretation-her attacks on and sneers at divines, who, though wrong, are not more wrong than she is herself, for the sake of such writing as this:

"When from scattered lands afar

Speeds the voice of rumoured war,
Nations in conflicting pride
Heaved like Ocean's stormy tide-
When the solar splendours fail
And the crescent waxeth pale,
And the powers that star-like reign
Sink dishonoured to the plain,
World, do thou the signal dread;
We exalt the drooping head,
We uplift the expectant eye-
Our redemption draweth nigh.

"When the fig-tree shoots appear,
Men proclaim their summer near;
When the hearts of rebels fail,
We the coming Saviour hail;
Bridegroom of the weeping spouse,
Listen to her longing vows-
Listen to her widow'd moan,
Listen to creation's groan !

Bid, oh bid, the trumpet sound,
Gather thine elect around;
Gird with saints thy flaming car,
Gather them from climes afar,
Call them from life's cheerless gloom,
Call them from the marble tomb,
From the grass-grown village grave,
From the deep dissolving wave,
From the whirlwind and the flame.
Mighty Head! thy members claim!

"Where are those whose fierce disdain
Scorn'd Messiah's gentle reign?
Lo, in seas of sulph'rous fire
Now they taste his tardy ire,
Prison'd till th' appointed day
When the world shall pass away.

"Quelled are all thy foes, O Lord;
Sheath again the victor sword.
Where thy cross of anguish stood,
Where thy life distilled in blood,
Where they mocked thy dying groan,
King of nations, plant thy throne.
Send the law from Zion forth,
Over all the willing earth :

Earth, whose Sabbath beauties rise
Crowned with more than paradise.

"Sacred be the opposing veil !

Mortal sense and sight must fail.
Yet the day, the hour is nigh,
We shall see thee eye to eye.
Be our souls in peace possest

While we seek the promised rest,

And from every heart and home

Breathe the prayer-Lord Jesus, come!
Haste to set thy people free;

Come-creation groans for thee!"

Precedents in Causes of Office against Churchwardens and others, extracted from the Act Books of the Consistory Court of London, and the Archdeaconal Courts of St. Alban's, Essex, Middlesex, and Lewes, in Illustration of the Law of Church-rate and the Duty of Churchwardens. By W. Hale Hale, M. A., Archdeacon of Middlesex. London: Rivingtons. 1841.

THIS book needs no description, its title sufficiently explains its object; and we can only add it is both ably executed (coming from Archdeacon Hale it is unnecessary to say this), and it is peculiarly seasonable in the time of its appearing,

A Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers in the Decision of Controversies existing at this day in Religion. By John Daillé, Minister of the Gospel in the Reformed Church of Paris. Translated from the French, and revised by the Rev. T. Smith, M.A., of Christ College, Cambridge. Now re-edited and amended; with a Preface by the Rev. G. Jekyll, LL.B., Rector of West Coker, and of Hawkridge and Withypool, County of Somerset. London: White. 1841. JOHN DAILLE', or, as he is more commonly called, Dallæus, was one of the chief and ablest advocates of the doctrine and discipline of Geneva: with English Churchmen, therefore, his name is in less repute, and deservedly so, than, abstractedly considered, his talents and arguments might seem to merit. Bishop Warburton well characterizes the book before us thus

"He composed a discourse of the True Use of the Fathers;' in which, with uncommon learning and strength of argument, he showed that the fathers were incompetent deciders of the controversies now on foot-since the points in question were not formed into articles till long after the ages in which they lived. This was bringing the fathers from the bench to the table-degrading them from the rank of judges into the class of simple evidence; in which, too, they were not to speak, like Irish evidence, in every cause where they were wanted, but only to such matters as were agreed to be within their knowledge. Had this learned critic stopped here, his book had been free from blame; but at the same time his purpose had, in all likelihood, proved very ineffectual; for the obliquity of old prejudices is not to be set straight by reducing it to that line of right which barely restores it to integrity. He went much further; and by showing, occasionally, that they were absurd interpreters of Holy Writ-that they were bad reasoners in morals, and very loose evidence in facts-he seemed willing to have his reader infer, that even though they had been masters of the subject, yet these other defects would have rendered them very unqualified deciders."

Daillé requires as much caution in reading as do any of the Tractarians, or even any of the Jesuits.

Roman Fallacies and Catholic Truths. By the Rev. H. Townsend Powell, A.M., Vicar of Stretton-on-Dunsmore. London: Painter. 1841.

THE history of these Tracts (now collected in a volume) may be briefly told. They were elicited by the persevering efforts of the Roman Catholics in connexion with St. Mary's Priory, at Princethorpe, in the parish of Stretton-on-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire; and are, in fact, a continuation of a series of publications put forth to meet the various attempts at proselytism which have been resorted to in that parish. In the summer of 1835, an establishment of Roman Catholic ladies migrated from Orrel Mount, in Lancashire, and settled themselves in a

newly-erected building, which they called St. Mary's Priory. These Tracts were called the "Stretton Tracts," and as such had an extensive circulation. The volume which now contains them embraces the following subjects:-Angel Worship; Saint Worship; Canonization of Saints; Worship of the Virgin Mary ; Image Worship; Relic Worship; Adoration of the Cross; and the Adoration of the Host. An Appendix, containing an answer to all objections; and a Supplement, maintaining the Catholic the old religion, and the fallacies of Pope Pius's Creed. These subjects are all treated with great learning and judgment. It is very true that we are from time to time told, and told very truly, by pious Romanists, that they do not worship images-that, on the contrary, they worship God only-and that they should consider any idolatry a most grievous sin; but, we reply, in so far as what you say is true-and we believe that it is true-so far are you contradicting, practically, your own Church. Now as, theoretically, "Rome is unchanged and unchangeable," and as the increase or establishment of Romanism does not necessarily imply an increase or establishment of rational pious Romanists, so we have no security against all the errors of all the Roman Church's decisions.

1. Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States. London: Ward. 1841.

1841.

2. Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and held in London from Friday, June 12, to Tuesday, June 23, 1840. London: British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. THE British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society is chiefly—alas ! that it should be so-supported by Dissenters; and they, therefore, continue to make speeches, and commit themselves by corporate acts, which make it impossible for Churchmen to join with them. We should like to see the matter taken up by Churchmen, as it ought to be, and some steps taken by those whose authority will weigh with the world, to put a stop to this blot on the face of the earth.

Lectures on the Millennium, the New Heavens, and the New Earth, and the Recognition and Intercourse of Beatified Saints. By the Rev. Charles Burton, LL.D., F.L.S., Minister of All Saints', Grosvenor-square, Manchester. London: Hamilton and Adams. 1841. DR. BURTON'S discourses are highly important, and we notice them here only because we intend, on an early occasion, to enter fully into this much-disputed question. In the meantime we may observe that we take precisely the same view which Dr. Burton has done in this very excellent volume.

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