mass of rock, and beheld the mutilated sap castles, in the same county, 10 belong to the pers crawling from beneath their shattered same category. protector, like so many pigs. But the chief The same characteristics do not so freof all besieging works was the movable quently occur in the southern English countower, brought up face to face with the ties, though there is Pevensey in Sussex, defenders, and containing battering-rams be- Goodrich in Herefordshire, and Cowling in low, with the various instruments already Kent, and there may be several other in. mentioned, employed in its several upper stances. They reappear on the Border, stories. To oppose such a formidable engine, where they were connected with the Scottish which could only be applied by some com- wars; the forms may be seen in Prudho, mander of vast resources, the flanking round Twizel, the outworks of Bamborough, and, in towers were of invaluable service, as the bas- a modernized shape, at Alnwick. tions and outworks are at the present day. Ireland is rich in these quadrilateral flanked The main difference in the projectile direc- edifices. There is Enniscorthy, guarding the tion of the operations in the two is, that bridge of the Slaney in Wexford, and Dunwhile the fire of a fort is chiefly horizontal, more in Meath, one of the most entire and the assaults made by the Norman keep were regular specimens, if we may judge by the vertical, and hence came the crest of machic- representation of Grose, who, to do him jusolations and turrets which has given so pic- tice, never idealizes. It is one of the many turesque a character to a whole school, of castles attributed to De Lacey, the governor baronial architecture. of Meath. Another of them, Kilkea, conThe instances of the Norman Castle, in its tinued long to raise its Banking round towers more persect shape, still existing, are very after it had laughed at the ferocious raids of interesting in a historical view. "It may be the O'Moors and O'Dempsies in the English observed, that in the settled districts of Eng-pale. Two of the best specimens, Lea, in land there are specimens of the older and Queen's county, and Ferns, in Wexford, were ruder style of Norman work; but that, in attacked and taken in the romantic inroad of the Edwardian conquests, the fully developed Edward Bruce, who thought that, as his form is the oldest of which vestiges are to brother had, by one gallant achievement, be found. wrested a crown in Scotland from the enAberconway, or Snowdon Castle, in Car-croaching Norman, he might as well endeavor , parvonshire, must have been one of the most to take one in Ireland. Grandison Castle, formidable specimens, from the great extent with two beautiful specimens of the bellof its curtain walls, and its numerous round shaped round tower, is attributed to the reign towers. It was built, say authorities on of James I.; but, though it is not the pecuwhich we place no reliance, except in so far liar defect of Irish antiquities to be post-dated, as they correspond with the character of the this portion must, we think, belong to the edifice, in 1281; it served the purpose for Norman period. There are fine specimens which the strongest fortresses are required of the round tower at Ballylachan and Ballythat of a frontier defence. In Flintshire nasad, whence the M'Donoughs were driven there are Hawarden and Rhudland. Beau- forth; and the utterly un-Norman names of maris, in Anglesea, has some fine diminishing these buildings do not exclude them from towers. Carew, in Pembrokeshire, has a identification as the work of the courtly insort of angular buttresses, instead of the vaders. In Ireland, however, this sort of graceful increment towards the base, in the work never ceased. There were round towers; but it is a luxuriant and noble O’Schauchnessies, O'Donahues, O'Rourkes, specimen; and though Welsh tradition says or O'Dempsies, keeping the Norman and the it belonged to the princes of South Wales- Saxon at work in making fortresses; and no man can tell how many hundreds of years perhaps the latest specimen of it is a relic of before William or Rollo either -- and was the '48, which we saw the other day in an given by Rhys ap Theodore, with bis daugh- antiquarian rummage in ancient and ruiniferter Nest, as a marriage portion to Gerrald ous Cashel, being a large iron box with de Carrio, yet we take the liberty of holding loopholes projecting out from the barrack that it as clearly bears the mark of the in- where it was placed, to rake the street into vader of Wales, as any government- house in which it projected, with musketry from the Canada or New Zealand bears evidence that loopholes. it is not the work of the natives. We take In Scotland, the Anglo-Norman origin of Cilgarron, Haverford-west, and Mannorbeer the earliest true baronial fortresses is attested ever a with remarkable precision. In the first place, there is not a vestige in Scotland of the earlier kind of square keep, such as might have been raised in the days of the Conqueror, or of William Rufus, with its semicircular arches and dogtoothed decorations. The pointed architecture, and the Edwardian baronial, had come into use ere any of the fortresses of which we possess remains were erected. Hence, the oldest of the Scottish castles were evidently built by Edward to secure his conquest. They may be enumerated as those of Caerlaverock, Bothwell, Dirleton, Kildrummie, and Lochindorb. These names at once excite recollections of the war of independence, when these castles were taken and retaken, and were surrounded by the most interesting and enduring associations of that majestic conflict. The architectural progeny which this style of building left in Scotland, is very different from its growth into the bastioned fortifications of other countries. The Scottish laird, or chief, when he made his house a fortress, as he had imminent necessity for doing, could not afford to erect the great flanking towers of the Normans; but he stuck little turrets on the corners of his block-house, which served his purpose admirably; and there are no better flanked fortresses, considered with a view to the form of attack to which they were subjected, than our peelhouses. • On the other hand, in the Continental castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as Heidelberg, Perronne, and Plessis la Tour, as the old representations give it, we see the flanking system extending itself later-effective defence. ally, until it forms something between the Norman keep and the modern fortress. It was on Plessis that Philip de Comines moral izes, as a large prison into which the great King Louis had virtually immured himself, becoming, by his own exertions for the enlargement of his power, and his protection from secret enemies, nothing better than the hapless immured prisoner, whose lot he forced upon so many others. The one great leading step which modern fortification took, beyond the mere flanking system, is the discovery of the glacis for covering the stone-work, and protecting it from the attacks of cannon. The whole system, it appears, is now on trial. The charge against it is, that every addition made to it in the way of protecting works, only renders a fort the more certain of ultimate capture, since these protecting works are themselves easily taken. It is said that they save the main work from a general escalade, which is never likely to be attempted, but facilitate a deliberate siege, which is the proper method of taking fortified places. It is said that in fortification we must, as in other matters of war, recur to the first principle, that the best way to protect ourselves is to kill our enemy. Of old, the main defences of a vessel were to protect the deck by castles stem and stern from a boarding enemy; now, the arrangement is directed to the destruction of the enemy before he can board. Our old knights in armor were a sort of moving fortresses made more for protection than destruction. In Italy, the steel incasement was brought to such perfection, that at the battle of Tornoue, under Charles VIII., we are told by Father Daniel that a number of Italian knights were overthrown, but could not be killed until the country people brought huge stones and sledge hammers, and broke their shells, like those of so many lobsters. It sounds like an odd accompaniment of civilization that she should make the external form of warfare more destructive and less defensive-but so it is; and a reform in fortifications is proposed, which, by the abandonment of the flanking system, and something like a restoration of the primitive form, is to make the fort more terrible to the invader, as a means of making it a more We profess not to enter on so great a question. Mere theories we have herein offered to our reader; and as they are given in all innocence and good-humor, all we pray is, that he will not, if they differ from his own, condemn us to some dire mysterious fate. Let him, if we displease him, simply content himself with the old established remedy, and mutter to himself, "Pooh! humbug!" And we, on our part, engage that we shall live in all charity with all men who accept not our theory; and will by no means endeavor to prove that they are sen sual, lewd, dishonorable people, deserving of some dire punishment. From Tait's Magazine. EDWARD IRVING.* WITHIN the compass of 278 pages, foolscap octavo, Mr. Wilks has given us an outline of the life, and an epitome of the productions, of this extraordinary man. Dedicated to Thomas Carlyle, and to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, it will be supposed that the author writes from a friendly, though not prejudiced, stand-point. He is a discriminating admirer, not a blind follower of his hero. We find it difficult to understand how he can be a common disciple of Carlyle, Maurice, and Irving. For perhaps it would be difficult to name three teachers, the methods and tendencies of whose minds more vary. But Mr. Wilks is catholic in his reading, and catholic in his sympathies; and he has brought to his present task a pains-taking reverence, and an honest wisdom, which we may without scruple praise. A sectarian, whatever his school, could not understand Irving; and should not do his life. Mr. Wilks does understand; and, though he has left much to be written and said, what he has done, he has done well. The aim of the book does not appear to be very high; and, though the tone of its author is occasionally above the manner and the matter of his work, both in matter and in manner the work is to the author's credit. We therefore thank Mr. Wilks for reviving a name the world should not forget. He who stirs the Church, whether to new thought, or to new zeal, augments the moral resources, and stimulates the moral energies of the whole community. Not in the establishment of new sects, nor in the mere sustenance of religious agitation, does the value of religious reforms and religious revivals mainly consist. These may, and, in most cases, naturally will, be the accompaniments or the consequences of such a movement; but they do not comprehend its full virtue, nor its essential glory. When the religious life of a great nation, or of a great sect, be Edward Irving: an Ecclesiastical and Literary Biography. By Washington Wilks, author of "Å History of the Half-century," etc. London: William Freeman, 69 Fleet-street. comes stagnant; when its priests become unfaithful to the sanctities of their office, and its people sink into unhealthy lethargy; when corruptions in its discipline provoke no remonstrance, and death-like repose in its worship occasions no solicitude, a lion-hearted, God-fearing, man-loving, apostolic adventurer is a benefactor and a blessing-he repeats within limits the unlimited work of Christ-he redeems the people of God. There is Divine power in his strange, strong, unfettered, and undismayed humanity. His holy indignation, awakened by ostentatious abuses; his fervent prayers, inspired by dread of prevailing impiety, and by unwonted devotion to the Most High; his appeals, which august conventionalisms cannot silence, and his rebukes, which no sense of earthly interests can restrain; his prophetic glances, of which piety, poetry, and love (the three elemental attributes of one beautiful flame) are the illumination; his outbursts of deep lamentation; his grand and sacred scorn of all affectations, and unseemly, unnatural courtesies; his defiance of enthroned ecclesiastical potentates; his faith, warm as his heart, and solid as his instincts; his eloquence, which rolls with mysterious majesty, as though it were the echo of speeches addressed by God to the nations; his absorption in the infinite, eternal, and almighty wonders of that Gospel which is at once the theme of his ministry, the plea of his assumptions, and the law of his heart; the tenderness of his many tears, shed over the obstinacy of the wicked, and the cruelty of unfaithful friends; the yearnings of his broken soul; in short, the magic fervor of his whole address-these, as they are so many embodiments and utterances of a religiousness uncommon in his day, become the creative agents of new light and new life to all who come within the range of their influence. Words thus spoken are pregnant with sublime spiritual power. The man thus constituted wears the commanding dignity of a king, whilst he exercises the functions of a prophet. Among the saints he restores new sanctity. The minister of remorse, he | is truly the minister of salvation. To none | the gratitude of the Church, and the respect should the Church or the world be more of history, are abundantly due ! grateful than to such a man; for from none Edward Irving was born in the little town do richer blessings proceed. of Annan--a place of some other interesting It is not too much to say that, in very associations on the 15th of August, 1792. many respects, Edward Irving was preëmi- His father was descended from a French nently a man of this order. He was con- family ; bis mother was supposed to bave nected with a branch of the Christian king. come from the family of which Martin Ludom where spiritual flatness and inactivity ther was an illustrious member. His parents bad been fostered by events and by leading were in comfortable circumstances; and, men for some generations. He came upon though Edward was one of eight children, an age when a few others, equally with him- bis education was not neglected. His first self, felt the necessity of renewed enterprise instructress was Margret Paine---an aunt, and restored faith. To the restoration of and the reputed teacher, of the author of the faith and the renewal of enterprise he hon- famous “Rights of Man,” and “The Age of estly-with all the ardor of impulse, com- Reason.” The youth was given to the more bined with all the solemn sobriety of con- exuberant and healthy amusements of his scientiousness—dedicated his life. In the age-devoted to athletic sports, and long face of innumerable obstacles he persevered, rambles on the shores, or rowings on the even unto death. Independent in the appli- waters of the beautiful Solway Frith,—but cation of his reasoning powers to the great he attended, notwithstanding, with some sucproblems of Revelation, and of religious cess, to the severer occupations of the school, truth, he met the charge of beresy with where he especially distinguished bimself as calm self-reliance and holy appeals to God. an arithmetician. The promise thus given Working in spheres that had been long was fulfilled at the University of Edinburgh, neglected, and with an enthusiasm to which to which seminary he was in due course sent. his contemporaries were utter strangers, he He made such proficiency in mathematics, sustained the criticisms of the captious, the that, on the recommendation of Professor exclamations of the astonished, and the jeers Leslie, he was, as early as his seventeenth of the envious, with that equanimity which is year, appointed teacher of mathematics in an an attribute only of true greatness. Flat- academy at Haddington. He had already tered by a popularity that had never been taken the degree of “A. M.”. In about surpassed, he yielded to none of its seduc- twelve months, he was promoted to the rections. Royal smiles, and the blaze of aris- torship of an academy at Kirkaldy. It was tocratic beauty, never put him off his guard. here that he completed the probation rePrinces heard his faithful warnings; and the quired of him by the Church of Scotland, as splendor and the wealth of the metropolis a candidate for its ministry. He was well trembled beneath the weight of his rebukes. versed in classics, modern languages, and The patronage of the exalted could not be ancient and modern standard literature; and tray, the persecution of the mighty could he had studied natural philosophy and the not overcome; the sneers of the ignorant, the more practical sciences to considerable purfactious, and the profane, could not disturb pose. Thus equipped, he awaited a “call" ” the resolutions of his piety, or the fidelity of to the office for which he had diligently and his services. He was God's own; and he solemnly prepared himself. Long he had to was true. To this, rather than to any pecu- wait. By his occasional sermons he had liarities of opinion, must be attributed his rendered himself rather notorious than popusuccess. For he was successful. Commu- lar, and, wherever he went, excited rather the nities with which he was never associated, felt curiosity of the few than the admiration of the force and the value of his zeal. The the many. Without conforming to the estabcommunity from which he was cast out had lished conventionalities of the pulpit, either been enriched by bis labors, and was re- in the courses of his thinking or the style of proached by his excommunication. And bis address, there was a wayward earnestanother community, respectable for the char-ness, and a deep-seated originality, which aracter and the numbers of its adherents, and rested attertion, but failed to establish power. noteworthy for the comprehensiveness of its Growing weary of delay, and anxious to be basis and the magnificence of its worship, is | diligently and regularly employed for God, for ever identified with his life, though not | he had made up his mind, at the age of known by his name. Surely, to such a man | twenty-seven, to devote himself to missionary adventures. His intention was not to commit himself to the control and the protection of any existing religious corporation; but, with apostolic simplicity and apostolic faith, to go forth under the guidance of Providence alone, "without purse or scrip"-thus leaving the sinister interests of life to the care of Him to whose glory his spiritual energies were to be so unreservedly and chivalrously consecrated. He was destined, however, to a less hazardous, though, perhaps, a not less troubled and laborious career. On Saturday afternoon he received a message inviting him to preach on the following day for Dr. Andrew Thompson, of Edinburgh; an intimation being given that Dr. Chalmers, who was at that time seeking an assistant minister, would be one of the congregation. A few days having passed without bringing him any communication, his old resolution came back to his heart with augmented force, and he actually packed up his books, despatched them to Annan, and proceeded on a farewell journey round the coast of Ayrshire. By a strange whim, he extended his ramble to Ireland: and when he arrived at Coleraine, he found a letter from his father awaiting him, in which was inclosed a communication from Dr. Chalmers, soliciting his immediate presence in Glasgow. The Doctor informed him that he wished him to become his assistant. Irving would only consent on the condition that the people should first hear him preach. He preached before them, and was forthwith installed in the office of assistant minister of St. John's, Glasgow. This engagement lasted only three years-time long enough for the earnest young man to discover that honesty, originality, and naturalness in the pulpit were not the best securities of public and official approbation. Again without satisfactory occupation, the mind of this brave servant of God resorts once more to its favorite dream of missionary enterprise-a dream which is again interrupted by an incident from which may be dated the origin of Mr. Irving's peculiar position and influence in the Christian Church. The Caledonian Church (of Scotland) in Cross-street, Hatton-garden, London, was at this period in a very dejected and low condition. An appeal was conveyed to Mr. Irving, through Dr. Chalmers (who through life remained his friend), that he would take the ruins under his care. He consented, and immediately removed to the metropolis, after having submitted to the rite of ordination in his native parish. He had not occupied his new pulpit many months when he acquired a quite unprecedented popularity. Members of the Royal family, leading statesmen of all parties, noblemen of every grade, the representatives of the public press, might be regularly seen among the crowds who thronged to hear the wonderful preacher. At length, seat-holders were obliged to be admitted by a side door, and those who came from curiosity could only gain admission by ticket. The earnestness, originality, and true Christian boldness of the man, commanded, as they were entitled to, this eminence. Nor were the critics silent. From the Times newspaper to the smallest penny journal-from the Quarterly Reviews to the petty organs of denominational progress-the journals of the day recorded his fame and canvassed his powers. This unrivalled notoriety neither betrayed his meekness, nor modified the practical fidelity which was, from the beginning, one of the most obvious characteristics of his ministry. He was not abashed by the presence of kings; nor did the powers and potentates of iniquity effect any restraint of his sacred denunciations. At the same time, he continued his independent pursuit of truth; and, when invited to preach a sermon on behalf of the London Missionary Society, he was not afraid to avow the belief on which he had himself been once ready to act, that those who went far and wide with the Gospel, should trust, as did the first missionaries, to the hospitality of those on whom they might call, for their support. The publication of this discourse brought upon him some bitter animadversions from those more immediately connected with the administration of the Society at whose request it had been delivered. This was the small beginning of strife. Before long, the preacher got involved in the meshes of prophetical interpretation. Like some good people in all ages, he wished to know the times and the seasons of coming events. In this fruitless work he soon got quite absorbed. He now, also, began to teach, respecting the sacraments, that they were more than appropriate ceremonies, they were sacred symbols: they were not mere barren signs, but operative and vital mysteries. For instance, he went so far as to say, "No man can take upon him to separate the effectual working of the Holy Spirit from baptism, without making void all the ordinances of the visible Church," &c. Notwithstanding his largeness of soul, and his generally very liberal notions on questions of civil and religious liberty, and notwithstanding these approaches |
0 Recensies Reviews worden niet geverifieerd, maar Google checkt wel op nepcontent en verwijdert zulke content als die wordt gevonden. Review schrijven |