that the influence of his private habits and qualities upon his public conduct and fortunes, shall be clearly pointed out either for caution or for example.

Now it is in this part of the duty of a Biographer that we conceive Mr. Moore to have been deficient. Dazzled by the brilliancy of a genius, which must be admired even by those who most lament its misapplication, he overlooks the too frequent neglect (may we not say the abuse?) of this best natural gift of Heaven, which rendered it sometimes a snare to its possessor; and he seems to have fallen into the very common mistake of admitting, as palliations and apologies for sin (we write as Christian Examiners, and therefore must give things their proper names) those powers of mind which, in their legitimate use, would afford the best human preservative against it; and which, so far from conveying a dispensation from the restraints and requisitions of moral duty, involve, in fact, a peculiar responsibility; for it is a rule of natural justice, as well as a declaration of divine truth, that "unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required."

Another error into which Mr. Moore appears to us to have fallen, is that of considering the amiable affections as virtues. This may be true in a subordinate sense, as they are the materials and instruments of virtue: but our moral estimate of a character should be formed, not upon the possession, but the right use of those affections; and it is by an inattention to this rule that persons of strong feeling are led to forget the important distinction between principle and impulse, the very basis upon which the difference of virtue and vice is founded, in reference to man's character as a moral agent. If Sheridan intended to sketch his own portrait in that of his hero Charles, it is evident that he too practically adopted this error of his biographer.

Before we enter upon the Review of these Volumes, we must profess our sincere desire to execute it in that spirit of charity and friendliness which we would bespeak for ourselves, and to which not only our duty as Christians, but our feeling as compatriots should lead us. And we are happy to begin our strictures with the acknowledgment that Mr. Moore has performed his task with a laudable delicacy to the memory of his friend, and with an attention to moral propriety in his Narrative, which our previous acquaintance with his Poetry had not led us to expect. He has drawn a strong sketch of his interesting, but dangerous hero, and fixed the expression by some graphic and lively touches, which at once impress us with the fidelity of the resemblance, and attract us by its grace. The darker filling he has left to the gossipping memorialists of the theatre and the tavern: but the spaces left untouched by his more able and more delicate hand, while they indicate that something is wanting to the perfection of the likeness, lead us to feel rather relieved from the painful task of a too minute examination, than mortified at the particular disappointment of a curiosity which could not have been indulged without unkindness to the dead, and pain to many survivors.

Why, then, it may be asked, do we recall the memory of such blots on the fair and smiling face of genius and generosity? Simply because, as Christian moralists, and CHRISTIAN EXAMINERS, we would impress upon our readers the important truth, that genius and generosity are gifts and not virtues; that they are gifts for the use of which a strict and awful account will be required; that genius, abused to the purposes of licentious excitement and political irritation, aggravates tenfold the responsibility of its possessor; and that generosity, unguided by principle or discretion, and transformed by the debasing alloy of wild and dissipated habits into an indiscriminate and careless prodigality, not only loses the name and character of virtue, but becomes the parent of vices the most sordid and degrading; while if it does not altogether destroy the principle of honesty in the mind, it leads to a perpetual violation of its practice, and drowns the remonstrances of conscience in carousal.

The political portion of these Memoirs we do not consider as within the scope of our publication; and therefore shall pass it over with the remark (which we extract from a respectable Weekly Journal of this city,) that " Mr. Moore's partizan politics have, much to his credit, entered very little into a work which would have consistently admitted an extensive indulgence of his bias." Mr. Moore has sense enough to know, and to act upon the knowledge more than we could have expected from the supposed author of Captain Rock's Memoirs, that though lively misrepresentation may deceive the ignorant, and bitter invective may gratify the malicious, and both united may catch the passions and prejudices of the day, nothing but truth can survive the dissection of criticism, or retain its value and interest when the allusions of party are no longer understood, nor its animosities remembered. How little would the libels of Junius now be read, able and eloquent as they are, if the restlessness of literary curiosity had not found aliment in the mysterious concealment of the author: and to what a depth of oblivion and contempt have the doggrel scurrilities of Peter Pindar been consigned, while the venerable Monarch who was the object of them has been embalmed in the hearts of his people, and will live long and honorably in the page of History, (however men may differ as to his politics or his judgment,) as the upright Christian, and the Patriot King.

Most sincerely do we hope that Mr. Moore will persevere in the candid and gentlemanly tone which he has adopted in these Volumes. With his opinions we do not interfere. He has a right to them, as we have to our's; and he has a right to enforce them with all the fair argument and genuine evidence that he can bring to bear upon his subject. If he will resolutely limit himself to these weapons, we promise (though we may still see cause to dissent from his conclusions,) always to treat his genius with respect, and his prejudices with candour.

It will not be expected that we should enter critically into the discussion of Mr. Sheridan's merits as a Dramatic Writer. They

have been long established by the public suffrage, and we can well remember the fascination with which we have perused his witty and brilliant representations of human folly. But we can also remember the impression made upon us by the strong contrast of their loose and easy morality with the lessons of our Christian education. To some of our younger readers, the plays of Sheridan, celebrated as they are, may possibly be unknown; and for the information of such we must remark, (in the School for Scandal especially,) not merely the absence of any moral object or tendency, (though this defect alone would lessen in our view the value of a work of imagination,) but the more serious offence of putting evil for good, and good for evil: holding, indeed, the mirror up to nature; not, however, like our great Poet, to shew virtue her own image, but to make vice in love with herself, by a varnished and flattering likeness, and to bring the great principles of virtue and self-government into contempt, by conveying them through the lips of a hypocrite. We do not mean to say that hypocrisy should not be detected and exposed; but we do say, that the writer who exhibits the sententious Pharisee and the goodhumoured profligate as the objects respectively of disgust and of admiration, produces no useful moral contrast, and only substitutes one counterfeit for another.

That his engagement with the theatres greatly contributed to influence the habits, and to deteriorate the morals of Sheridan, is a fact which Mr. Moore's narrative, indulgent as it is, does not attempt to disguise and it is a fact which supports our conviction of the danger of such engagements. Indeed we retain, censors as we are, such a tenderness for the memory of this highly gifted man, that we feel almost anxious to find the origin of his faults in the circumstances of his education and profession-or rather no profession; for the poverty which precluded him from the advantages of a College, and threw him at nineteen upon his genius for a subsistence, naturally led him to such an employment of it as was likely to be most immediately productive; and he seems to have been too soon withdrawn from the care of the excellent mother whom Mr. Moore has described in a few happy lines, to imbibe that spirit of early piety, which though it may not always resist the tide of youthful passion and temptation, retains its vitality when the flood has passed over it, and, under the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness, often springs up to everlasting life.

And now, having precluded ourselves from theatricals and politics, (the great occupations of Mr. Sheridan's life, and the only ones noticed by his biographer,) we must explain what has induced us to bring these Memoirs before the readers of the CHRISTIAN EXAMINER, and what we propose to attempt in the Review of them. We have introduced them into our Miscellany because we think they will be generally read, (indeed they have already reached a third edition,) and because, with a more respectable tone of morals than we had anticipated, they still con

tain much that calls for the animadversion both of the moralist and the Christian. We shall not enter into any sketch of the Narrative, which we conceive will be better done by more general Reviewers, but content ourselves with noticing, as we look again through the volumes, such parts as appear to us capable of an application to the great subject to which our pages are devoted. This task we shall endeavour to execute in our next Number.

The Two Rectors-By one of the Authors of "Body and Soul."-Longman and Co. London.-12mo, 2d Edition, pp. 472.

When a man publishes a bad book, (by bad we mean of an evil tendency,) there is but one of two opinions to be formed of him, either that be does it with the deliberate purpose of producing mischief; or else, that his ignorance of truth has been the cause of the apparent misdemeanor, rather than any settled and prospective intention of doing evil.

When the work is one affecting the interests of vital religion, we are specially bound to afford the writer the shelter of a possible mistake in judgment, ere we bring him in guilty of a settled determining to transgress; we are compelled in common charity, to pronounce him weak rather than wicked. Balancing therefore, these alternatives, we must declare the author of the Two Rectors, to be among the most bewildered of those who ever wandered about in the Egyptian darkness of a gross and palpable ignorance. Let him stand high upon the list of those whose consistency of blundering, shews them utterly unacquainted with the subject they selected for discussion, lest we should be necessitated to rank him among those whose hearts sin as well as their heads, and who boast the splendid infamy of having knowingly suppressed truth, and invented falsehood.

There is no one who has looked, even in the slightest manner at what has been doing in the Church of England for some years back, who must not acknowledge, that a very remarkable change has taken place, and that a decided earnestness about spiritual things, a zeal among the clergy to labour with their flocks, and a corresponding anxiety among the laity to receive the ministrations of their pastors, have superseded the torpor and indifference which were but too evident to our enemies, at all events, if not to ourselves. It is equally a matter of notoriety, that while this alteration has given heartfelt pleasure to many, it has also caused grief to not a few: what the former class term a most desirable reformation, the latter style a melancholy revolution, and we hear continually the lamentations of those sticklers for antiquity, who had rather dream on in the good old way, and let the Gospel trumpet remain suspended in silence, than have their slumbers broken by

their brethren of the present day calling to them and saying, "It is high time to awake out of sleep."

The author of the Two Rectors seems to us indeed, to have all the air of a person wakened out of a most venerable lethargy: he is evidently excessively disturbed and annoyed at so uncalled for a proceeding, and has written his book in short, to expose the indecency of such unwholesome agitations, and to recommend the propriety of our returning with one consent to that desirable state of calm and primitive repose, which as he maintains, not merely ministered to the comfort, but to the credit of every clergyman and layman in our Establishment. That there is a very palpable and evident distinction between one part of the clerical members of the Church of England and another, we will admit freely that there are some, who by their activity and faithfulness in the discharge of their duties, prove themselves "workmen that need not to be ashamed," while others by their inertness bring upon themselves well-merited reproach, is unquestionable. is certainly a want of unity in opinion; but that the fault lies with those who are the subjects of this author's condemnation we utterly deny. We can however enter perfectly into his feelings, mourning as he does in his preface, over the ominous state of affairs among us, over that " hapless dissension among the children of the Established Church, which, if not timely corrected, must be fatal to her repose: an overstrained zeal, aiming at something surpassing the excellence of former times." There is no saying in short how the matter may end; perhaps every man will be obliged to stir himself at last. This innovating zeal is terrible to all who are for lying down.

"Still it cried, sleep no more, to all the house,"

and hence all the annoyance," hinc illæ lachrymæ.”

There

It is not a little amusing that our author, who has discharged the full force of his artillery, such as it is, upon the monstrous system now so prevalent, of making "Religion the medium through which a serious tale or story is to be conveyed," should himself employ a fictitious narrative as the vehicle of his opinions. However in conformity we presume to the taste of the day, he has devised the following story.

The Rev. Mr. Gordon, who had been for some years a close resident upon his living in London, goes down on a visit to an old friend and fellow collegian, the Rev. Mr. Alworthy, residing in the country. These two gentlemen are set forth to the reader, the former as one of the few remaining patterns of the sober, sound, and canonical ministers,' one almost the very ultimus Romanorum;' the latter as a specimen of the misled, intemperate, and over-righteous supporters of the modern heresy. During Mr. G's sojourn with Mr. A. there are of course many incidents and many discussions, all tending to elucidate truth, and to con found error; all the obnoxious practices of the 'serious school,' are sifted closely, their unsoundness made manifest, and the