of the observatories of Edinburgh and Glasgow; as the first of them, however, has never yet been furnished with instruments, and as those which belonged to the second, after being nearly ruined by neglect, have recently been sold, it seemed unnecessary to detain our readers with the subject. We feel confident, however, that Professor Wallace, to whose care the former is intrusted, will be able to inspire his countrymen with a proper feeling for the honour of their celebrated city, and not only provide adequate funds for furnishing their observatory with instruments, but likewise prevent the possibility of their ever following the disgraceful example of their less scientific neighbours.

ART. XIII-1. Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion: illustrated by select Passages from our elder Divines, especially from Archbishop Leighton. By S. T. Coleridge. London, Taylor and Hessey, 1825.

2. The whole Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, Robert Leighton, D. D., Archbishop of Glasgow. To which is prefixed, a Life of the Author, by the Rev. John Norman Pearson, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Chaplain to the Most Noble the Marquess Wellesley. A new Edition, in 4 vols. London, Duncan, 1825.

BEFORE we proceed to analyze the contents and to discuss the merits of the work before us (a task, we confess, of no mean difficulty), we are anxious, as members of the Christian community, and in especial duty bound as conductors of this Review, to express our obligation to Mr. Coleridge, for the various lights thrown by his writings upon the excellence and the beauty of the Christian scheme. He is, indeed, only one of a distinguished phalanx of lay-writers who have voluntarily stood forward in our times in support of that religion which recommends itself to the understandings of mankind in proportion as knowledge and civilization are diffused; but it is not every one who has had the same range of inquiry and contemplation as Mr. Coleridge; and when a man of his undoubted genius and learning, after all his excursive wanderings into the regions of fancy, all his minute researches through the subtleties of metaphysics and the refinements of philosophy, rests at last, at a mature age, in the conviction that the Christian faith is the perfection of human intelligence, the result, however he may arrive at it, cannot but be a source of

the truest satisfaction to all who have the honour of the Gospel and the happiness of their fellow-creatures at heart. Nor will it be a small addition to this pleasure in the minds of churchmen, that the authors who have engrossed the greatest share of his attention and his praise, and from whom his strongest convictions have been derived (for he was not always what he is), are the chief founders and ornaments of our Episcopal establishment; and further, that the doctrines he has adopted, as including the true sense of scripture, are mainly, if not entirely, those which are set forth in the articles and embodied in the liturgy of our church. But while we offer this sincere and ready homage of our gratitude to Mr. Coleridge, we cannot refrain from an observation, which the present work, above every other, has forced upon us,—how infinitely more valuable and useful his labours would have been, had they been more simple and more popular; popular, we mean, not as 'giving back to the people their own weaknesses and prejudices," but as rendering plain and accessible to the average intellect of mankind, those involved or retiring truths which his learned leisure and superior sagacity have enabled him to work out. But this quality, so essential to the value and permanency of mental labours, Mr. Coleridge has rarely shewn; and the consequence has been, that his prose-writings have never possessed that influence with any class of readers to which, in other respects, they would be justly entitled. Men of ordinary minds turn away at once from his speculations, as leading them out of the common track of their thoughts, and, indeed, of their language; while those of more refinement are rarely tempted to persevere in a path pursued through so many intricacies, and beset with so much obscurity. The present work, however, must be judged of by itself, and without adverting to other causes elsewhere connected with this fault. There is one very prominent and striking fault in the part sustained by Mr. Coleridge, which we are compelled to notice, because the mischief by no means terminates with the obscurity it creates, and that is, his ambition of intruding, upon the Christian doctrines, the innovating language, and the mystical notions of the critical philosophy. It is quite impossible for an intelligent man to contemplate the infinite importance of the Christian faith to every human being, and the authority on which it rests, without coming immediately to the conclusion, that no alleged fact or principle, moral or physical, ought to be applied to it as a ground of reasoning, until it has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and approved by the understandings and consciences of the wise and good. But this philosophy, however explained, has not been sanctioned by any of these tests: it has not stood its ground even

in the place which gave it birth; and Mr. Coleridge, in the transgression of this rule, has ventured upon an experiment as dangerous as it is incautious and rash. We give him credit for his intentions, and we believe, that wrapped up as he seems to be in the importance of his own speculations, he is not aware of all the consequences to which they lead. It requires, however, no great stretch of intellect to predict the effect of them upon others, and we venture to affirm that they will neither contribute to his own reputation, nor, what is of much more importance, to the benefit of his readers. They may amuse some and perplex others-some again they may mislead, and a few they may puff up with conceited notions of their own sagacity, but we fear they will edify none.

We mean no offence to Mr. Coleridge, for many of whose qualities we entertain a high respect; but in a cause so vital we dare not shrink from the free expression of our opinion; and as we learn, upon his own authority, that he is on the eve of publishing a great work upon the Christian Religion, the labour of his whole life, in which the same principles are to be further developed, we do earnestly entreat him to learn fairly from his friends the results of the present trial, before he proceeds further in the same career.

It is time that we should turn, however, to the work in question, of which we shall give a short history, partly derived from the preface, and partly from its own internal evidence.

This volume, then, was at first intended as a selection of such passages from the writings of Archbishop Leighton as appeared most striking for their beauty, or valuable for their piety, with a few notes and a biographical preface from the selector. As the work advanced, however, new prospects opened to his view, and new objects engaged his pursuit. The lofty and spiritual tone which characterises the writings of Leighton, was calculated to excite the prolific energies of Mr. Coleridge in no ordinary degree, while his conversations with his friends and his own private studies were perpetually suggesting fresh matter, more or less applicable to the subject. Thus by degrees the character and the objects of the work were changed. The archbishop, who had entered as a principal, soon became only an auxiliary. Other authors were permitted to dispute the place with him; and above all, the reflections of the editor himself, fermented by the spirit of the critical philosophy, swelled to such a magnitude as to become the dominant feature of the whole; and at last, instead of the beauties of Leighton, there came out a motley collection, consisting of aphorisms, introductions, and

sequels to, and commentaries upon aphorisms, with notes indifferently upon them all; which after being arranged in order, as prudential, moral, and spiritual, have been ushered into the world under the imposing title of " Aids to Reflection." How far the work is entitled, generally speaking, to this distinction will be shown hereafter from the extracts which will be produced: our first business is with Archbishop Leighton, for whose name and writings we have long entertained a high respect his simple and beautiful sayings, though labouring under the disadvantage of being presented in small specimens, and apart from their native beds, still shine with singular lustre amidst the various productions around him; and though we should have been much more indebted to Mr. Coleridge if he had adhered to his original plan, we still think that if the éclat of his name, and the approbation he has stamped upon the author, should be the means of bringing his works into more general influence and circulation, he will have conferred a greater service upon Christianity, than by all that he has done before. Under this impression we have placed a new edition of Leighton's works at the head of this article, and as Mr. Coleridge has neglected to furnish the biographical notice he had promised, we shall endeavour to supply its place by a few particulars of his life and writings, principally extracted from a spirited and eloquent memoir prefixed to the new edition, by the Rev. Norman Pearson. It is a reproach to the present age, that a man of his eminent piety and learning, one of the soundest props of episcopacy in Scotland-the breathing model from which Burnet drew the features of his minister in the Pastoral Care-who is declared by this sagacious and eminent historian to have had the greatest elevation of soul, the largest compass of knowledge, the most mortified and heavenly disposition that he ever saw-it is, we say, a reproach, that a man like this, with so many titles to our esteem and reverence, should be so little known to the members of our establishment; and still more is it to be regretted that his valuable writings, breathing as they do the sublimest and purest spirit of piety, rich in beautiful images and classical learning, throughout abounding in practical reflections, and all expressed with the sweetest and simplest eloquence, should have been so long neglected amongst us.

The author, then, who has been thus distinguished by Mr. Coleridge, was the son of Dr. Alexander Leighton, a presbyterian divine in the reigns of the first Stuarts, well known for the work he published in the time of Charles I. under the title of "Zion's Plea against Prelacy," and still more notorious for the

cruel and excessive punishment to which he was condemned by the Star Chamber; having been first repeatedly whipped, pilloried, and mutilated, and afterwards imprisoned for life.

Sprung from such a parent, brought up at Edinburgh at the feet of Gamaliel, and endowed with a mind of peculiar sensibility and affection, it was natural to expect that the memory of his father's wrongs, united with the prejudices of his education, would have fixed in his mind a deep hostility to the government, both in church and state, and placed him, when of age, amongst the most zealous and formidable advocates of the Covenant. But such was by no means the case. Other circumstances of an opposite character served to counterbalance these propensities. To nature he was indebted for a mind of peculiar moderation and benevolence, which his early and unfettered study of the Gospel, and a liberal course of reading, after he had taken his degree, tended to ripen and improve; and having afterwards spent many years in travel through France, and various parts of the Continent (an advantage, which he declared was not to be understood without trial of it); and having examined besides, under various aspects, the different forms of ecclesiastical discipline in use; he entered at last upon the ministry at Newbottle, under the auspices of the national church, in 1641, at the mature age of thirty, without, as it should seem, any strong prejudices in favour of any particular regimen, but with high qualifications as a divine, and a strong desire and determination to do his duty as a faithful minister of the Gospel.

It was soon evident, however, that such qualifications and dispositions, however excellent and amiable, were not suited to the times, and least of all to the country in which he officiated; and accordingly we find, that, notwithstanding his exemplary conduct and character, he was publicly reprimanded at a provincial synod for not preaching up the times, and when, in answer to his inquiry, Who did preach up the times? he was told that all his brethren did it, he replied with his characteristic naïveté, "Then if all of you preach up the times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach up Christ Jesus and eternity." It was probably owing to a continuance of this species of persecution, not less than to his intimacy with Burnet at this period, that his disposition in favour of a moderate episcopacy began. However this may be, it appears that in 1652, after eleven years of close residence on his cure, he gave in formally his resignation of it to the presbytery, which after a year's consideration was accepted.

His talents, however, were not suffered to remain long in ob scurity, for in 1653, on the death of principal Adamson, and