mark and brand of Christianity. Nor must I omit to add that, agreeably to this religion, THE FEELINGS OF THE POOR ARE NO MORE TO BE INSULTED IN RELIEVING THEM, THAN ARE THEIR

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WANTS TO BE NEGLECTED. MR. MALTHUS may, indeed, say, that dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful;' but to save it from that disgrace, GOD has taken poverty under his peculiar protection, and it remains so connected, in every form of religion, throughout the earth. 'JESUS CHRIST,' I quote from TILLOTSON, chose to be a beggar, that we, for His sake, might not despise the poor;' or, to use the language of another distinguished prelate, He seems studiously to have bent His whole endeavours to vindicate the honour of depressed humanity, to support its weakness, to countenance its wants, to ennoble its misery, and to dignify its disgrace.'

Perhaps so much allusion to our religion and its sacred records may appear very strange in a pamphlet of the present day, and demand an excuse; I will therefore give one, in the terms of the reverend expounders of our common law: Christianity is part and parcel of the law of the land.' It became more particularly so as our immortal legislator, ALFRED, left it, who embodied into his institution the entire spirit, and much of the letter of those passages to which I have been appealing, and with whom that enlarged and systematic charity for which England has, happily, been long distinguished, first commenced. By his laws, it was ordained that the poor should be sustained by parsons and rectors of churches, and also by the parishioners;' in other words, by the property of the parish as at present, so that none should die for want of sustenance.' A national provision for the poor was, however, of a still earlier date, and as DR. BURN remarks, was even anterior to the monastic foundations of the country; it was doubtless coeval with the introduction of Christianity. Far more ancient and even more important than Trial by Jury, IT IS PART OF THE COMMON LAW OF THE LAND, which has survived every change of government, and been sanctioned by every form of legislation, AND WILL REMAIN WHILE ANY

SHALL EXIST.

Lastly, then, I remark that the poor have a legal RIGHT to relief, and one that has been confirmed by innumerable Acts of Parliament, and enjoyed by them for a succession of ages, and which, when granted, was only a substitute for a far more ancient and ample provision, of which they had been deprived. MR MALTHUS says that they have no claim as of right; the Constitution of the country says, (and here I express myself in the words of PALEY,) that ‘the poor have the same right to that proportion of a man's property that the laws assign them, THAT THE MAN HIMSELF HAS TO THE REMAINDER.'

THE BAY OF POZZUOLI.

"THE SOUTH-WIND BLEW, AND WE CAME TO PUTEOLI.”

He blessed thee not-when soft thy smile
Beam'd bright on Malta's rock-girt isle,
And wooed him from her strand,
With murmur soft, and calm blue eye,
Once more thy heaving gulphs to try.

He blessed thee not, when swift the prow
Shot hither like a dart,

When now stretched Rhegium, and now
Puteoli's ocean-mart—

He knew the gentle hand that led
And smoothed thee like a mother's bed-
Unstable as thou art,-

And placed the sands to bound the tide,
A curb upon thy crested pride!

The hand that scoop'd thy waste of waves,
Had stilled their angry roar,

And, day by day, o'er yawning graves,
Guided his ocean-car :

And the same hand would shield him still,
From every snare, from every ill;

Till, led by Bethlehem's star, He gained, with an expanded sail, Where wrecking storms no more prevail.

O for a faith! the faith of Paul,-
To rise above things seen;
To cease to feel and mourn that all
Are not as might have been:
That ocean, air, the land, the fire,
Might aye celestial thoughts inspire,
And from earth's pleasures wean-
Then all I think, or hear, or see,
Were token from my God to me.

And thou, fair sea!-for be thy form,
As spread before my sight,

Or heaved and frothed abroad by storm,
Or gemmed with twinklings bright-
I love thee for thy Master's sake,
And hail the thoughts thy waves awake,
Thoughts clothed in mystic might,
That He, who rules in heaven above,
Loves me, his child,-for He is Love.

One hour upon this lonely shore,
Where Paul before me trod,
Hath lent me wings in hope to soar,
And commune with my God:

*Jer. v. 22.