CONTENTS. VI. 1. Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Exca- vations in Egypt and Nubia, and of a Journey to the Coast of the Red Sea, in search of the Ancient Bere- nice; and another to the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon. By G. Belzoni. London. With a Portrait. 2. Forty-four Coloured Plates, illustrative of the Re- VII. An Inquiry into certain Errors relative to Insanity; and VIII. Report from the Select Committee on Criminal Laws, ART. I.-1. First Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the Means of ex- tending and securing the Foreign Trade of the Coun- 2. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to consider of the Means of maintaining and improving the Foreign Trade of the 3. The Speech of the Right Hon. the Earl of Liverpool on the Means of extending and securing the Foreign 4. Reflections on the present Difficulties of the Country, and on relieving them by opening new Markets to our Commerce, and removing all injurious Restrictions. 5. Observations on the injurious Consequences of the II. Melmoth, the Wanderer. By the Author of Bertram. 303 III. Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Asia, from the earliest Periods to the present Time. By IV. A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poi- sons, exhibiting the fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spirituous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionary, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and other Articles em- V. Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. By the Author of VI. Aristarchus Anti-Blomfieldianus; or, a Reply to the No- tice of the New Greek Thesaurus, inserted in the 44th 1. Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London. 2. Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. VIII. Abrégé de la Vie des plus illustres Philosophes de l'An- tiquité. Ouvrage destiné à l'Education de la Jeunesse. Par F. de Salignac de la Motte-Fénélon. IX. The Works of the Reverend William Huntington, S. S. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1820. ART. I.-The Life of Wesley; and the Rise and Progress of Methodism. By Robert Southey, Esq. Second Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1820. FEW more extraordinary persons have appeared in the Christian Church than Wesley, whether we consider his personal character, or the effects which he has produced amongst us. In a space of time much less than a century, the Methodists have extended their principles and their discipline over a very considerable part of the population of Great Britain, Ireland, and America. In the South Sea islands their missions are advancing with a success scarcely inferior to that of the Jesuits in Paraguay; and they share with the Moravians the merit of having brought among the slaves in our West Indies whatever quantity of religious knowledge their masters will allow them to receive. In all the countries whither they have penetrated, they form, as Mr. Southey observes, a distinct people, an imperium in imperio—who, though (the Wesleyan Methodists at least) avowedly members of the English Episcopal Church, and differing in few particulars from the faith of the majority of their fellow-citizens, have yet their own seminaries, their own hierarchy, their own regulations, their own manners, their own literature, their own rapidly-increasing population, who regard themselves as the peculiar people of God, and the remainder of their countrymen as, if not altogether worldly and profane, at most only half-believers. But it is not by the numbers of the professed Methodists alone, that the amount of their influence and the moral effect which they have produced is to be computed. Of their numbers, we confess we are inclined to think more moderately than the greater part of those who deplore or exult in their progress. If we were to admit, without qualification, those estimates of their increase and influence which their advocates, in the wantonness of partial success, and their antagonists in the alarm of watchful jealousy, have sometimes furnished, it would follow that the field of battle was already in their possession, that they were already the greater part of ourselves, and that the boast which Tertullian applied to the Christians under Pagan Rome, was as appropriate, in Protestant England, to the followers of Wesley and Whitefield :-' Ob VOL. XXIV. NO. XLVII. sessam sessam vociferantur civitatem: in agris, in castellis, in insulisomnem sexum, ætatem, conditionem, et jam dignitatem transgredi ad hoc nomen, morent!' If such expressions were applicable in their full extent to the present state of religion in our land, we certainly should be among the last to dissemble our opinion that it would be a state of things exceedingly to be lamented. Even if fewer objections were to be found (and the objections in our minds are many and grave,) to the doctrines which the Methodists particularly teach, and the discipline which they impose on their followers, yet is it no trifling evil in itself, (and one which could only be outweighed by an overwhelming necessity of reformation,) to unsettle the minds of men from the religion of their ancestors and of the state, and from those forms of worship which early associations have rendered venerable. Believing, as we do, that the present ecclesiastical establishment is the instrument the best qualified of all others which have been tried, to answer the purposes of religious instruction and public devotion, we have good reason to deprecate its removal or desertion in favour of systems which have as yet by no means stood the test of sufficient experience; nor can we consent that those rulers, whose office and authority we firmly believe to be derived from the Apostles themselves, should be displaced to make way for the successors of Dr. Coke and Mr. Astbury. There can, however, be no advantage in harassing the minds of men by an exaggerated alarm, or of swelling a danger in reality sufficiently great to call forth the best energies of the defenders of the temple, to an amount which, if real, would leave them little else than the choice of submission or of martyrdom. It must be observed, in qualification of such forebodings, that if, by the success of Methodism, the numbers of those who are avowedly separated from the church is increased, a great proportion of their converts were previously, in fact, of no church and no religion; that no small number have been drawn from sects whose principles were more hostile to the Established Church than those of the Methodists; that in the natural advance of population during the last half century, a certain and progressive increase might have been counted on, even without the aid of converts; that, if the chapels of the Methodists are numerous, they are, on the other hand, mostly small; that, as their principal harvest has been reaped if not from the indolence of the clergy, yet from the insufficient supply of church room, so many of them return to the worship of their forefathers wherever they meet with a free church or a popular pastor; and that, from the annual reports of the Wesleyaus themselves, the number of their members, who constitute more than half the whole body of Methodists, is not, we believe, in all |