involuntary conviction which seizes the mind under the influence of vast and unlooked-for discoveries. The strict logician may hold in contempt our groundless impressions, our unproven and our undemonstrable notions. Yet these impressions, and these notions, spring, we tell him, from the very ground of our moral nature; they are products of the rudiments of the intellectual life.

always off from taking that next step, beyond which lie the regions of atheism and despair! But it is impossible to watch the development of these ominous feelings, and to observe their parallelism with another class of feelings of similar aspect, without being convinced that a causal connection ran on from the one to the other.

Foster's prime years of manhood were contemHenceforward, whatever is held to be true, on poraneous (as we have already observed) with well ascertained scriptural testimony-that is to those dire events which turned many of the best say-true as law and principle-when brought to formed brains in Europe. His intellectual and bear upon the human family, will be held to be moral temperament was ill-fitted to resist those true also, as law and principle, bearing upon the maddening influences; his early habits, his relibreadth of that realm which astronomy describes,gious connections, his position in society, everyand taking effect throughout those eras of which thing about him lent its aid to carry him forward in geology is the chronicle! the one direction of democratic enthusiasm, and to In what manner then will expanded conceptions, breathe into his soul the frenzy of political and of this kind, come in, and operate upon, that ecclesiastical demolition. "Overturn-overturnfuture, and much enhanced moral consciousness-overturn"—these were the notes ringing in his upon that refined sensitiveness, upon that reflec-ears, day and night. But the course of events, at tive mode, which, on no very uncertain grounds, home and abroad, soon brought in upon such we assume as likely to attend the suffusion of a minds, and upon his, a crushing disappointment! diluted Christianity? We retreat from the ground Foster lived to see even his latest hope diswe have here reached, nor will we dare to conjec-appointed-that of the happy revolutions which ture, with any definitiveness or specification of were to ensue upon parliamentary reform! particulars, what these results may be. The prac- Unfortunately for me," he says, "from a tical end we had proposed is attained, if we have temperament somewhat sanguine and ardent in shown a probability that—under all the actual cir-youth, I am dried and cooled down to that of old cumstances of the present times, the wide diffusion age. The course of the world's events since that of such a Christianity, refining more and more, but not deeply moving, the minds of men, would be likely to bring about a religious revolution not less extensive in its consequences than any which Christianized communities have hitherto under

gone.

46

season of prime,' has been a grievous disappointment. No one who is not toward twice your age can have any adequate conception of the commotion there was in susceptible and inflammable spirits. The proclamation went forth, 'overturn, overturn, overturn,' and there seemed to be a reBut if such a revolution is of a kind that must sponsive earthquake in the nations. The vain, excite alarm, where is the remedy, or what are short-sighted seers of us had all our enthusiasm the available means of safety and prevention? We ready to receive the magnificent changes; the cannot be of opinion either that the true remedy is downfall of all old and corrupt institutions-the far to seek, or that it is of doubtful efficacy. We explosion of prejudices-the demolition of the do not believe that the means proper for counter-strongholds of ignorance, superstition, and spirituacting the influences we have referred to, are such al, with all other, despotism-man on the point of as lie beyond the range of human wisdom to ascertain, or of the zealous endeavors of intelligent men to put in operation. Not indeed as if we would attribute more than is due to the sagacity, or to the energies of man, in relation to the sustentation and growth of religious belief. A deep sense of our absolute dependence, for wisdom and might, upon the divine aid, should impel Christian men devoutly to hope that both may be granted, and granted early, to some who shall set about to do what may be done for the renovation of the CHRISTIAN MIND, and the restoration of a profound and well-established religious belief.

being set free for a noble career of knowledge, liberty, philanthropy, virtue-and all that, and all that. A most shallow judgment, a pitiable ignorance of the nature of man, was betrayed in these elated presumptions. But they so possessed themselves of the mind as to prepare it to feel a bitterness of disappointment as time went on, through so many lustrums, and accomplished so niggardly a portion of all the dream."-Vol. ii., p. 443.

"I was pleased, not at all surprised, at your coincidence with me in opinion about dissenting ordinations, and also about a widely different matter, the principles of Wellington's policy in the measure so favorable to Ireland.

Disappointment as to the course of political events drove him first into egregious misapprehensions of the motives of public men, and then A word is yet due to John Foster's memory-wrought in him a mood, or temper, which masdeserving as it is, of tenderness and reverential tered his reason, and which, had it not been powaffection; and something should be said too, rela-erfully counteracted, would have broken up his tive to that feature of this signal case which has religious convictions. given occasion to the preceding suggestions. In some of the passages we have cited, and in several we have not cited, every reader, whose mind is governed by religious awe and pious affections, will be tempted to draw back; he will tremble as if some one were inciting, or dragging him on, to "One cannot help suspecting, that one of his look over the brim of a volcanic crater! Enough, chief motives was a wish to have the military enough! he will say-let us descend again to the force of the country more disposable for aid (under tranquil levels of the Christian life! A feeling is possible circumstances,) to support their infernal generated as if these sombre and daring medita- Mahomedan domination in the east of Europe, tions must, at the next turn, lead to blasphemy; which one earnestly wishes-all mere political calas if there were but a thin partition between John culations out of the question-to see crushed by Foster, and Shelley, or Byron. Foster's genuine the Russian invasion. Under sanction of that old piety, his deep and unfeigned humility, held him humbug, the balance of power,' and to prevent

some eventually possible inconvenience to our trade | are destined to witness a process more tremendous to the Levant that is to say, reduced to plain than all their predecessors have beheld. While exterms, some pecuniary disadvantage-our govern- ulting at what has taken place in France, I have ment would not scruple to sink the nation a hun- yet no confidence of a peaceful result in Europe."— dred millions deeper in debt. But Ireland again! Vol. ii., p. 190. who would have thought that the session of parliament, commencing with the beneficial political measure, would pass off without one particle of anything done for the internal relief and improvement of your miserable population-some plan for cultivating the waste land, or providing for the ejected cottagers?

And who shall dare to deny the probability that a woe may be still impending over Europe, and the world? Nevertheless, those who have lived to see cloud after cloud pass over and disappear, will be encouraged to put their trust in Him whose compassion is infinite, and will, with a cheerful imporUnfortunate Ire-tunity, repeat daily the prayer-"That it may please thee to have mercy upon all men."

"I have little hope of any material good for either nation from the present parliament, or from the new monarch about whom there is so mad aus, on the one hand, from the mockery of any rant in fashion. What is such a man likely to know or care about the good of the nation, whose only notion of kingship, as far as yet appears, is that of enjoying himself at his ease (and putting other people at their ease with him) in a jolly, dashing, gadding sort of hilarity? Think of such a character, and then of the stupid baseness that, even in parliament, is calling him the best king that ever ascended the British throne.' It would be quite enough to say, that it is to be hoped he is better than the last, and there could not well be a cheaper praise.

in hand-that, and nothing more, nothing less, Foster compelled words and sentence to make known: he is one of a few who have brought the English tongue back from a sapless conventionality, to a vital actuality. He has helped to render words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, a medium of intercourse between mind and mind, in the most abbreviated form possible. If his sentences are long and complicated, and his paragraphs cumbrous, it is because they are-for brevity sakeovercharged with meaning.

when I know that the volume is all printed. Less of this kind of loss, however, would be sustained in making another volume; the long revision which I have now finished having given me a most excellent set of lessons in composition, in consequence of which I should much better execute the first writing, in the case of producing other works. You will forgive this egotism; none of it appears in the book."-Vol. i., p. 308.

Foster has not, however-such is our humble opinion-in any permanent or very appreciable manner, controlled the world of opinion. He has not visibly swayed a sceptre in the realm, either of thought or of action. Beside that he needed--for fulfilling any such function-a more solid structure of the reasoning faculty, as well as more of discipline and breadth;-more working force-more ing the task which his eminent powers might seem to impose upon him--he must have mastered the despondency of his nature --he must have known how to entertain hope, apart from excitement;hope, as the mind's moving force and guide. He must, moreover, have laid aside absolutely-he must have handed over to the inferior spirits of his party that congeries of preposterous prejudices, in the midst of which, as if stifled and choked, he rather gasped than breathed;-struggled, rather than moved!

"Holdsworth sent me the British Review, in which, in the terms exquisite precision of language,' I fancy I see a recognition (and the only one I ever have seen or heard) of that which I consider as the advantageous peculiarity of my diction; namely, if I may use such a phrase, its verity to the ideas-its being composed of words and construc- spring-more appliance-he must, before attempttions merely and distinctly fitted to the thoughts, with a perfect disregard of any general model, and a rejection of all the set and artificial formalities of phraseology in use, even among good writers: I may add, a special truth and consistency in all language involving figure. If you are beginning to say, 'Let another praise thee, and not thyself,' I may ask whether it should not be an excepted case when that 'other' has not sense to see anything in me to praise. Quite enough, however, of the subject."-Vol. ii., p. 35.

"I am very glad, not that indolence has so long kept me from being an author, but glad of the fact of having not become an author sooner. A more advantageous impression will be made by the first production of so mature a character, than I should probably have made by a progressive improvement to the present intellectual pitch from such an inferior commencement as I should have made, even six or seven years since. I am gratified in feeling that my mind was reserved, either in consequence of something in its essential constitution, or from the defectiveness of its early discipline, for a late-a very late maturity. It is yet progressive; if I shall live six or ten years, and can compel myself to a rigorous, especially if to a scientific, discipline, I am certain it will think much better then than it does now; though in the faculty of invention it has probably almost reached its limit.

"My total want of all knowledge of intellectual philosophy, and of all metaphysical reading, I exceedingly deplore. Whatever of this kind appears in these letters is from my own observation and reflection, much more than from any other resource. But everything belonging to abstraction has cost me inconceivable labor; and many passages which even now may appear not very perspicuous, or not, perhaps, even true, are the fourth or fifth labored form of the ideas. I like my mind for its necessity of seeking the abstraction of every subject; but, at the same time, this is, without more knowledge and discipline, extremely inconvenient, and sometimes the work is done very awkwardly or erroneously. How little a reader can do justice to the labors of an author, unless himself also were an author! How often I have spent the whole day in adjusting two or three sentences amidst a perplexity about niceties, which would be far too impalpable to be even comprehended, if one were to state them, by the greatest number of readers. Neither is the reader aware how often, after this has been done, the sentences or paragraphs so adjusted were, after several hours' deliberation the next day, all blotted out. The labor of months lies in this discarded state in the manuscripts, which I shall burn

One great quality, however, and a true mark of a great mind, and which, had other faculties and dispositions been congenial, would have fitted him for office as a master of his times-as a leader of the people; and better, as a servant of God, discharging an arduous function; was his superiority to the egotism, the petty solicitude about literary reputation, the small ambition of the "author." On this ground, Foster must be allowed to stand higher than Robert Hall, and he was, we think, more capable of an act, or a course of self-sacrifice than he. If the alternative had even been distinctly placed before Hall of throwing the universe overboard, or of risking his fame as an accomplished master of sentences, there is no doubt he would have risked it; and yet not without an effort; whereas Foster would have done so with little or none. Great, not merely in mind, but in soul; yet he would have been greater if at all times Robert Hall could have forgotten "Robert Hall;" but the day he lived in offered trying temptations to a mind such as his-a mind exquisitely sensible of the very finest qualities of style, as well as alive to the grandest conceptions. He lived through the closing years of the era, gone probably forever, in which a bright fame might engage much of men's attention. The era of genius is past; and we live amid things, amid events, amid interests, amid masses, and in the midst of "the public welfare." Thirty and forty years ago personal fame was at a premium; now, it is at a discount.

As to the breadth and the depth of his soul, as to his sense of the urgency of whatever touches the well-being of man, as to his constitutional mindfulness of eternity, and his "conscience towards God," Foster might have done that which at the present moment is so much needed to be done. He was personally capable of resolving to compromise his literary status, if by doing so he might have woke the dull ear of his fellow-men, and have prevailed with them to listen to the "things pertaining to their peace." He might have dared to sound heaven's trumpet, although forecasting the probable consequence that the wearers of nice ears would

severely criticise the performance. It was not any to the hopes which a Christian man fondly enteregotism (vanity he had none) that would have stood tains for the coming time, than to find young bosin his way in attempting the highest and the most oms-fresh from college, heaving with sectarian perilous tasks. Had it been possible for him to fervors!-to find that the acrid ecclesiastical tembanish forever from his thoughts the irritating re- per of the present moment-this narrow, burning collection of that "intolerable nuisance, the estab-mood, is the mood, not of soured seniors, who are lished church," Foster might have done much in awakening men to a sense of their indefeasible relationship to eternal justice, and eternal mercy. But John Foster is gone! Has his soul, his deep heart, his self-forgetting mind, his sorrowful and resentful sense of whatever bears upon the weal and woe of millions; has this intensely-feeling soul been breathed into any younger bosom? Among the men of twenty-three, the men who are to transact the affairs of the coming time, are there any who may be capable of the greatest services-ambitious of working-ambition apart; are there any, firm in reason and well-disciplined, calm in temper, immovable in resolve, and sound in belief, who would form the uncommunicated purpose of laboring to recall the Christian community to a sense of great truths, and to bring to bear upon the mass of minds, the unabated powers of the Christian Revelation?

Supposing there were the men to undertake such a work, they must remember that although it must be carried on from the pulpit in part, yet, as the world is now constituted, it must be mainly through the press; and so to carry it on demands years of sedulous preparation; it demands, at the least, a purpose formed, and steadily adhered to, through that seven years which rules a man's destiny-the period from three-and-twenty to thirty. But now if one should aspire to the task of schooling such a mind, one must remember that he whom one has in idea will not be that very person, unless he be moved from within, unless he be guided from within, unless he be instinct with that wisdom which never can be conveyed, as a lesson, from one mind to another.

But this is a theme too special and peculiar for the place and occasion. To descend for a moment to a lower ground, we must ask leave to express the earnest wish-a wish vividly renewed by our consideration of Foster's course and temper-that, in schools and colleges a loftier and wider feeling than seems at present to pervade many of such places were cherished. Nothing is more sickening

woman

JULIET'S TOMB.-A sulky German showed me the sarcophagus, called Juliet's tomb, which still stands in a dirty shed at the bottom of a slovenly but luxuriant garden, evidently once belonging to a convent, no doubt that of Friar Lawrence. The coffin was half full of water; the edges of red marble were much mutilated, having been chipped to make relics; there is a circular depression in the stone to receive the head of the corpse, and it is of very large size, and clumsily constructed. It is certainly, although earlier than the date assigned as the period when the lovers lived, not Roman, as has been asserted, and that is all that can probably be known about it. A shabby old house, now a common inn, is shown as the palace of the Capulets; the antique vaulted passage, under which I passed to the yard behind, is curious, and there is much in the building which proves it to belong to the thirteenth century a row of pretty ancient pointed windows may have faced the garden, and to one of them Juliet's balcony might have been attached; though this is one of the few houses in Verona which has

leaving the stage, but of young men! With perfect patience we could sit and hear grey inquisitors talking about "our church," and ringing changes upon the old "no salvation" bells; but it is nothing less than an anguish of the soul to listen to the heartless and hateful solemnities of church or sectarian bigotry-from ruddy lips! John Foster left his college with such views of the world and the church as were given him there and then, and which should not be heavily inculpated, considered in relation to the political and religious state of things in England, at the close of the last century, and more than fifty years ago. But is it so, that these fifty years have done so little for us, that the fear may be entertained lest another John Foster may even now be leaving college-his head perturbed with notions not more philosophically sound, or more becoming a Christian teacher, than were those held to be unquestionable truths at Bristol, and elsewhere, in the year 1792?

Let none say that we are seizing the occasion to aim a shaft at "the sects," or at "radicalism." It is not this religious community, or that it is not this political doctrine, or that, which we deprecate; but it is that vehemence and rancor, ecclesiastical and political, which are turning men aside, everywhere, from the consideration of those truths which take a firm hold of the conscience, which, instead of irritating the temper, tranquillize it; which make man far more sensitive toward his own delinquencies, than toward the ecclesiastical or theological faultiness of others; which sicken men of the habit of dealing in denunciations; which make them tremble for themselves at the thought of God's thunderbolt, rather than grasp it to hurl at others. The diluted Christianism, the advances of which we dread, may well consist with sectarian fervor; but it will not consist with a deepened belief of the Gospel. The world has, in past times, seen church zeal, and pantheism, and polytheism, enthroned together; and may see them again associated but not if Christianity entire, lodges itself in the hearts of men.

no balcony. I never saw so many in any place before, and a few are extremely ancient, some of carved wood, and some of ponderous ornamented stone.-Miss Costello's Italy.

COMMERCIAL VALUE OF INSECTS.-The importance of insects, commercially speaking, is scarcely ever thought of. Great Britain does not pay less than 1,000,000 of dollars annually for the dried carcases of the tiny insect, the cochineal; and another Indian insect, gum shellac, is scarcely less valuable. More than 1,500,000 of human beings derive their sole support from the culture and manufacture of silk; and the sikworm alone creates an annual circulating medium of nearly 200,000,000 of dollars. 500,000 dollars are annually spent in England alone for foreign honey-at least 10,000 cwt. of wax is imported into that country every year. Then there are the gall-nuts of commerce, used for dyeing and making ink, &c.; while the cantharides, or Spanish fly, is an absolute indispensable in materia medica.-Boston Transcript. [Athenæum.]

From Fraser's Magazine. (Conservative.)

WILL THE WHIG GOVERNMENT STAND?

agriculture, in one shape or another, gives occupation, does not now exceed one fourth part of the population of Great Britain; if we take Ireland

THERE is no employment more profitless, in pub-into account, it hardly reaches one third; and the

proportion is continually growing less. In like manner the church, though still embracing a large majority of the people, is not the religion of the whole, and has long ceased by the legislature to be

lic as well as in private life, than to look back upon misfortunes that are beyond remedy, and to complain of their occurrence. Peel's corn-bill, whether for good or for evil, has become the law of the land. The great principle of free trade is estab-treated as if she were. Now it is obvious that, let/ lished as that on which the commercial policy of our tastes and wishes take what direction they this country must henceforth be conducted, and let may, we have not the power to deal with a nation its remote consequences be what they may, there so circumstanced as if it were a purely agricultural is no power in any quarter to avert them. We and church nation. The masses must be fed and have taken a step in politics which does not admit taught; and though we are satisfied that fed they of recall. Lovers of the Arcadian state of exist- would have been, both with temporal and spiritual ence may mourn over this, hankerers after feudal- food, quite as abundantly under the arrangements ism complain or threaten, and men of soberer judg-of 1842 as under those of 1846, we must not wonment than either doubt the wisdom of measures which bid fair to convert England, at no distant date, into a huge manufactory. But the impulse having been fairly given, we may no more hope to stay the progress of events than to arrest the speed of the railway carriage, or the descent of the loosened rock into the lake. We are in the beginning of changes, of which it would puzzle the sharpestsighted to foretell the end, and there is positively no help for it.

der if they, and still more their employers, entertain a different opinion. Besides, the wealth of the country is no longer monopolized by the lords of the soil. Men like Lord Ashburton, Mr. Jones Lloyd, Mr. Joseph Neeld, and many more whom we could name, regard their broad acres, abundant though they be, as mere playthings. Their riches are counted in stocks of various sorts, and they are by no means singular in this respect. We will undertake to name a dozen manufacturing firms in Entertaining these opinions, and heartily sub- the north of England alone, of whom it would be scribing to the doctrine that "the brave never re- no empty boast to say, that they could buy up one pent," we purpose for the future, as often as the half of the squires in England, and that they give projects of politicians make a demand upon our at- employment to a greater amount of persons than tention, to look at them with a forward rather than ten times the number of landowners, even if we inwith a backward glance, forgetting, as far as we clude among them the most influential members of are able, party feelings that have been engendered the house of lords. And as to the dissenters, if of old associations, and delivering our sentiments they lack the power to press important measures on men and things more with reference to the ef- forward, they are sufficiently influential to stop all fects which they seem calculated to produce upon improvement if they choose, as is abundantly testisociety hereafter, than in the idle purpose of trying fied by the deplorable neglect into which the educathem by the test of bygone arrangements. And tion question has fallen. With these facts staring here we must be permitted to observe, in limine, us in the face, and remembering that we live under that in thus proposing to act, we are guilty of no the constitution of 1832, it is no matter of astonishabandonment of principle, that we have submitted ment to find that the feelings of the country are to no change even of opinion. We believe now, changed; that new men, with new opinions, are as we always did, that the only true end of govern- gradually usurping the places of our ancient arisment is to ensure the greatest amount of happi-tocracy, not in regard to precedence or etiquette, ness to the greatest amount of persons. We are or the polite forms of society, but in the power and satisfied, likewise, that the ancient institutions of the will to give to society itself a direction; and that, the country were admirably calculated to forward being able to wield the constituencies to their own this end, so long as all classes, high and low, rich purposes, they have fairly won the ascendant in the and poor, acted in the spirit of these institutions; house of commons, and, as a necessary consequence, for the settled institutions of a country have grown in the government. out of a state of things which had little or nothing He who sees all this-and he must be blind into do with mere money-power; which linked terri- deed who cannot see it-must with us acknowledge torial possession and political influence inseparably that we are in a state of social transition, and that together; which made the owner of the soil the such progress has been made towards a reörganizanatural protector of the families, be they many or tion of the machine, that to stop short at what we few, that dwelt within his domain; and held the have attained is impossible. At the same time there church to be the teacher of all in divine things, and is no just cause to assume that our course is necessathe ready and willing administrator of help to the rily one of deterioration. Danger there may be needy. But if the course of time, and the changes there always must be while a great people are changwrought by it in the habits of society, have dam-ing their views of things-while ancient prejudices, aged all this, then we must be prepared to meet or principles, if the term be preferred, are losing the evil in the best way that circumstances will permit. Now it is vain to think of denying that new elements have arisen, and entered into all our social relations. Commerce has become a science, towards the cultivation of which a high order of mind is directed. Trade, in point of importance to the well-being of the community, outstrips agriculture greatly. The relative numbers of the population employed upon the land, and in pursuits that congregate our masses in towns and cities, are quite changed. The amount of persons to whom

their hold upon men's minds, and the principles or prejudices that are to take their place remain as yet immature. But never surely was revolution-if a revolution it deserve to be called-carried forward with greater moderation than among us. Nobody makes an attack upon property. Many, in their secret souls may regret that it should have got into heaps, that hundreds should be overladen with it, thousands moderately cared for, and millions in poverty. But the thinking among the poor them-selves feel and understand, that they, far more than