would be paid to argument, Eugenius and his prelates withdrew from the council room; but not without leaving behind them a protest, in which, among other passages of Scripture, this verse of St. John is thus especially insisted upon, in vindication of the belief to which they adhered: "That it may appear more clear than the light that the Divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one, see it proved by the Evangelist St. John, who writes thus, There are three which bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.""

This remarkable fact appears to be alone amply decisive as to the authority of the verse in question. The manner in which it happened seems to carry irresistible conviction with it. It was not a thing done in a corner, a transaction of solitude or obscurity. It passed in the metropolis of the kingdom, in the court of the reigning prince, in the face of opponents, exasperated by controversy, and proud of royal support, and in the presence of the whole congregated African Church. Nor is the time when this transaction bappened, less powerfully convincing than its manner. Not much more than three centuries had elapsed from the death of St. John, when this solemn appeal was thus made to the authority of this verse. Had it been forged by Eugenius and his brother bishops, all Christian Africa would have exclaimed at once against them. Had it even been considered as of doubtful origin, their adversaries, the Arians, thus publicly attacked by this protest, would have loudly challenged the authenticity of the verse, and would have refused to be in any respect concluded by its evidence, But nothing of the kind intervened, Cyrila and his associates received its testimony in sullen silence; and by that silence admitted it to have proceeded from the pen of St. John. It must be further observed, that the greater part of these orthodox Bishops suffered severe persecutions for their faith. In the language of Gibbon, (c. 38,) "three hundred and two of them were banished to different parts of Africa, exposed to the insults of their enemies, and carefully deprived of all the temporal and spiritual comforts of life. Gudamund, the nephew and immediate successor of Hunneric, appeared to emulate, and even to surpass the cruelty of his uncle. length he relented, and recalled the bishops. Thrasimund, his brother and immediate successor, prohibited by a law, any episcopal ordination; and their disobedience was punished by a second exile of two hundred and twenty Bishops into Sardinia, where they languished fifteen years." Would such men be capable of introducing a spurious passage into the Word of God?

At

The Confession of Faith of these Prelates may be seen at length in the Historia Persecutionis Vandalicæ of Victor Vitensis.* When we add to this the express quotation of Cyprian, "De Patre et Filio, et Spiritu Sancto scriptum est; et hi tres unum sunt,” and the use of the same words by Augustine, “Tres Personæ sunt, Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus, et hi tres unum sunt, quia unius substantiæ sunt," can we reasonably question the genuineness of * See Travis' Letters to Gibbon, and Butler's Hora Biblicæ.

the verse? There are so many allusions to it in the works of Basil, Athanasius, Athenagoras, &c. that Bengelius says truly in his note on Acts viii. 37, "Plane Latinorum et Codicibus et Patribus antiquissimis hic locus nititur et nititur firmiter, ut 1 John v. 7.” Much stress must also justly be laid on the internal evidence, where as Bengelius expresses it, " Interpres si plane deesset, textus Græcus per se loqueretur, hiatum se habere." Here again we beg to refer our readers to the works already quoted, and to those before published by the learned Bishop of Salisbury, and this we do with greater confidence from the high testimony given by the Bishop of Winchester in a letter to Dr. Burgess. "The passage you quote from the Symbolum Antiochenum is certainly a very striking one, and adds materially to that species of evidence in favor of 1 John v. 7. Your other quotations and observations also have considerable weight; and I willingly own, that upon the whole you have shaken my former opinion." The Bishop of Durham writes, "When Porson was in controversy with Travis, I thought differently of the verse, but you have convinced me of its authenticity." The Bishop of Hereford writes in a still stronger strain: "An accumulation of presumptive, is sometimes more convincing than a paucity of direct evidence. Such are your citations, appeals, and reasonings, that I no more doubt the authenticity of 1 John v. 7, than I do the authenticity of St. John's Gospel, ch. i. v. 1. which even Griesbach could neither remove or surmount, although I believe he would have done both, had it been possible, consistently with common honesty. Whatever may have been the causes which occasioned the omission of the verse in so many MSS. the very ample abundance of collateral circumstances proves that the verse must have existed in the original text."

We trust that these well earned laurels will tempt the author to proceed further, where his efforts must be crowned with success. It is no very easy problem to solve, why the verse should so generally be found in the Latin MSS. and omitted in the Greek; and also why it should be wanting in the Oriental versions.These latter, indeed, are all translated from the Syriac, so the difficulty is reduced to its omission there. It is not found in any of the valuable Syriac MSS. (now in the University Library of Cambridge) which the learned Buchanan brought from the Syrian Churches in India, nor do we remember ever hearing of its existence in any MS. in this language which deserved attention from its antiquity. Certainly this version is one of great importance, as it bears internal marks of having been translated in the first century. These knotty points yet remain for future criticsFelix manet ea cura nepotes. We observe one slight error in the 57th page of the Bishop's work, where he speaks of the Montfort MS. as first introduced into the conroversy by Martin, whereas it was this very MS. which led Erasmus to insert the passage on the representation of Lee. At that time it was called the Codex Britannicus.

LETTERS FROM THE IRISH HIGHLANDS.

Considering that we are committed with our readers to attend more especially to whatever relates to Ireland, we with pleasure embrace the opportunity of reviewing a very interesting publication -valuable not only for its intrinsic qualifications, but more especially for bringing for the first time to view a 'terra incognita' of Ireland. We consider Ireland to be little known to its own inhabitants, not to speak of English or Scotchmen,-though there have been writers enough, and no lack of tourists. But these sage explorers all come amongst us wearing spectacles, whose glasses, stained of many colours, of specific value in the opinion of the wearer to help the sight-enabled them, highly to their own satisfaction, to see every man and every thing through a medium strangely discoloured and strongly refracted. Mr. Twiss saw with the eye-glass of a satirist, Young as a farmer, and Wakefield as an ultra whig, compiled two ponderous tomes, huge and biting like Cheshire cheeses, rancid with politics and partialities; Curwen ran cursorily through the land, with the velocity of an engine under high pressure, and his post-coach collections are but the embodied prejudices of his political friends and entertainers. We are therefore now pleased to dwell not on the crudities of partial tourists, who saw every thing with discoloured sight, but on the mature and varied observations of a landed proprietor, who with the valuable help of his intellectual family, and with the aid of those dwelling amidst the people and scenery described, has contrived to produce a local work on Ireland, having the rare quality of being unsoiled by political partialities; evincing not only good sense and varied information, but much taste, much feeling and love for Ireland. With the family party we walk on heretofore untrodden ground. We have, it is true, heard of Cunnemara, as a sterile and rocky waste, bare and blasted by the force of Atlantic storms, and in the winter season have had our comforts increased by a pair of soft Cunnemara stockings; but further, than, that interspersed through its rocks there were sheep to supply wool and women to knit stockings, we knew nothing. Indeed the whole province of Connaught may be considered like those unknown regions which the cosmographers of ancient maps filled up for want of real information with the pictures of outlandish men and animals ;-so the world was contented to believe that the great fair of Ballinasloe presented a fair specimen of the whole Western region: fire-eating gentry and fat sheep, droves of bullocks herded by bare-footed barbarians and truly in looking across the Shannon, the prospect of its farther side does not appear very inviting, we have looked over from Tipperary, and were repulsed by a long ridge of moorland that insignificantly rose into pig-back'd mountains-a long line of dreary waste: from the King's County we observed dismal shoreless bogs touching the extreme horizon in one uniform and russet hue; and from Long

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ford even the green plains of Roscommon presented nothing tempting to any eye except that of cattle which grazed on them, or of the grazier enriched by their fertility, and therefore having once ventured into Galway as far as the Abbey of Kilconnel, near the great battle field of Aughrim, we were not surprised at the mournful epitaph inscribed on the tomb of a Leinster lord, we believe his name was Plunket, on whose grave-stone was inscribed: Here lies the Lord who died after a long banishment, driven across the Shannon by the usurper Cromwell."But the Letters from the Irish Highlands introduce us to a very different country, interesting by its varied features, and abounding in all the scenery that mountain, lake, island and ocean can present;-but not alone as to scenery; the people also are worthy of notice, and we may well suppose that were there any part of Ireland where the language and peculiarities of its aboriginals were preserved in all their sharpness and unmixed individuality, it would be in Cunnemara; as the song says of Donnybrook Fair, an Irishman all in his glory is there.'

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But let us hear from the Family Party the object which they have in view and the ground they mean to occupy. "The object has been to present to view details of domestic life; to open the door of the lowly cabin, to pourtray the manners and habits of its neglected inmates, and preserve the memory of facts.”

The scene of these letters is thus described:

"Towards the north-east extremity of the county of Galway we will distinguish a portion which seems, as if it were, cut from the rest by a natural barrier of lakes and mountains. If the map does justice to its subject, Cunnemarra will appear black with mountains, dotted with lakes and studded with bogs; its coast will be seen rugged and indented with fine harbours, sanctioning its very appropriate Irish appellation, which signifies" bays of the sea."

The father of the Family Party, in the beginning of the work, states himself to be a landed proprietor of a district in Cunnemara, and commences by describing his visit to his paternal property, in order to put in his claim to a vessel wrecked on his part of the shore; and thus he introduces us to the scenery of this fresh country :

We

"Lough Corrib lay to the south as smooth as glass, reflecting in her dark bosom, the varied shape of her numerous islands; Lough Musk to the north, spread forth her placid waters, while her wooded islets in the brown livery of the winter, formed a fine contrast with the blue enamel in which they were set; and to the west were seen the dripping sides of the snow-capped mountains glittering in the sun. proceeded onwards along the margin of Lough Corrib: our attention sometimes attracted by a bold projecting crag; and at others, by a gurgling rill or a proud waterfall; then again by a cottage or a village peeping up among the grey rocks, and scarcely distinguishable from them; and sometimes by an amusing group of little children, trotting along bareheaded and berefooted by the side of our horse, for the pleasure of keeping company with the quality. After climbing the pass of Mam Cloughaloon, with much difficulty to our horses, we had to pass the lords of Dealnabrach, or rather to ride for several miles in the bed of a mountain torrent, which formed the track by which we were gradually led to the pass of Mam Turc; we climbed the pass, we found scarcely any track by which to ascend, and where we followed the course of the mountain streamlet, the difficulty which our horses had in finding a footing was greatly increased; we were however amply compensated by

the magnificent view from the summit, when we wound through the narrow defile; and caught the sun sinking over the broad Atlantic, with the twelve pins of Bennabola (abrupt conical mountains, with extensive lakes at their base) rising as a fore-ground, and the broad valley at our feet, enlivened by the setting beams.

He thus describes the wreck, the people, and his tenant, the middleman

"On the shore we found a party of wild looking fellows as can be imagined; some idly watching the surf, as it rolled in successive waves, and dashed against the side of the vessel, which was at that time surrounded by the tide; and others, under the command of a person of superior rank, running in and out of a hovel dug in the sand that served as a watch-house for the party destined to protect the timber and staves already landed. I soon found that the leader of this motley group was a son-in law of Mr. , and that it would be impossible for us to refuse the invitation, which, without any consideration of the purport of our visit, was most hospitably given, to what was emphatically called, "the big house." I was indeed delighted at the opportunity of seeing, for the first time, the interior of such an establishment. A middle-man, possessing an income of 1500l. per annum, arising from his good management of profit rents, surrounded by a numerous and untutored tenantry, utterly unconscious of any other claims on the land, must have been undoubtedly a person of consequence in this country, and, as such, an object of great curiosity to those who little understood the arrangement of these matters. His authority too received an additional sanction, from the circumstance of his claiming to be a lineal descendant from the old Kings of the West, O'Flaherties of centuries long since gone by,"

"The big house," then was a thatched cabin about sixty feet long by twenty wide, and to all appearance one story high. It ostensibly contained an eating parlour and sitting room, about twenty feet long by sixteen or seventeen wide, or as they are called in this country, two reception-rooms, from each of which opened two small bed-rooms. We had oral evidence in the night that there was other accommodation in the thatch, but those who had the benefit of it were placed far beyond our ken. Conceive then our surprise at being gradually introduced to at least two dozen individuals, all parlour boarders. There was mine host, a venerable old man of eighty-six, his young and blooming wife, a daughter with her husband, three or four gay young ladies from Galway, two young gentlemen, two priests, and several others, evidently clansmen and relations. A room full of company, the fumes of a large dinner, and the warmth of a bright turf fire, rendered the heat almost insupportable, and during the feast, amid the clatter of knives and forks, and the mingled voices of our party, we were indulged ad libitum with the dulcet notes of the bag-pipe, which continued its incessant drone until the ladies retired from the table."

The writer then proceeds to relate an excursion through Joyce's Country, to inspect a slate-quarry which is reported to be on his property; and on his way he meets with a man of the name of Martin Joyce, one of the old, and formerly powerful clan composing the gigantic race that gave their name to the country ;- a conversation with this man, and an introduction to a cousin of his, big Ned Joyce, the head of his clan, who was between six and seven feet high, and large in proportion, introduce what follows:

"The moon rose before we reached our resting place and it was under her solemn influence, that Martin Joyce, who was still with us, entered into deep conversation with me. He asked many questions concerning my family, myself, and my future plans; all which I answered as far as was consistent with discretion. He then proceeded to my religion: "Pray are you a Catholic or a Protestant ?" "A Protestant," was my reply. "Do you say that?" rejoined my querist. "I do," said I," then you are the first of your family that ever denied his religion.” "I do not deny my religion," 1 replied. "Take my word for it," said he," that you are wrong; and take advice, if you ever are in danger, cross yourself and go to