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by the feeling of kindness, but it will acquire severity from the habitual fear of self-deception. His manner will be earnest, and perhaps vehement; but it will be the tendency of his representations, not to hold up an individual culprit to ridicule, but to make us weep over human nature itself, and feel that against the lowest or the vilest participant in that nature, we have not the right to cast the first stone.

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Whatever exceptions the reader may take against particular parts of this little volume, we are much deceived if the impression left by an impartial perusal of the whole volume, will not be equally in favour of the Author's design, and of the genius displayed in its execution. In some instances her satire may seem severe; as when she is describing the pompous imbecility of a retired country grocer and his dame in the year of his mayoralty. And this severity may only amuse, when we do not feel ourselves implicated in the raillery. At other times, when the attack is unexpectedly turned against our own party, when some mortifying truth is pressed home in open disclosure, or we find our secret misgivings put into plain language, this severity may not appear absolutely inoffensive: but still the conviction will remain, that the Author is right.

6

The first Essay is entitled Prejudice. It opens with a bumourous description of the personages above alluded to, as an exemplification of vulgar prejudice, the lowest kind.' The Author's design, in this frontispiece to the Essay, is obviously to take an extreme case; one in which the full dominion of prejudice is so obvious, as to appear simply ridiculous to minds of intellectual pride; and then to argue that prejudice, how different soever be the form it assumes, as we rise higher in the scale of intellect, is essentially the same; that prejudice being the most pernicious which sometimes infects minds of high native powers, and which

'Lies in thinking that themselves are free.'

The infidel, the worldling, and the material philosopher, are introduced as being the dupes and the victims of prejudice'As hopeless as can bind

'The meanest, most illiterate of mankind.'

• Could you but show by demonstration clear,
How spiritual existences appear;
Produce your apparatus, bright and clean,
And try experiments on things unseen;
Rare specimens, in due assortment, bring
Of seraph's eyes, and slips of angel's wing,
Or metaphysic air-pumps work, to show
A disembodied soul in vacuo;
Then 'twere a study worthy of alliance,
With any
other branch of modern science.

pp. 15-16.

But mere assertion of a future state, By unknown writers, at a distant date, If this be all its advocates advance, It is but superstition and romance.' The inveterate operation of prejudice, in the case of those who associate some darling errors with essential truth, is then slightly but keenly exposed. The prejudices of men of taste are beautifully illustrated, by imagining the effect which the preaching of Paul at Athens would produce in contrast with the surrounding scenery.

• When Paul the walks of beauteous Athens trod,
To point its children to their "unknown God,"
If some refined Athenian, passing by,

Heard that new doctrine, how would he reply?
Regarding first, with polish'd, scornful smile,
The stranger's figure and unclassic style,
Perceiving then, the argument was bent
Against the gods of his establishment,-
He need but cast his tutor'd eye around,
And in that glance he has an answer found;
-Altars and theatres, and sacred groves,
Temples and deities where'er it roves:
Each long perspective that the eye pervades,
Peopled with heroes, thick'ning as it fades,

-Those awful forms that hold their silent sway,
Matchless in grace, while ages roll away.
There, softly blending with the ev❜ning shade,
Less light and less, the airy colonnade:
Here, in magnificence of attic grace,
Minerva's temple, rising from its base;
Its spotless marble forming to the eye,
A ghostly outline on the deep blue sky :-
Enough-the doctrine that would undermine
These forms of beauty cannot be divine."
Thus taste would doubtless, intercept his view

Of that "strange thing," which after all-was true.'

pp. 18-20.

Our readers will probably have in recollection some remarks which were made in our review of Eustace's Travels, on the genius of Heathenism, and on the influence of the Arts, as an instrumental cause of the Romish corruptions of Christianity. The following lines place the subject in a very striking aspect. 'When Luther's sun arose, to chase away The "dim religious light" of Romish day, Opposing, only, to the mellow glare

Of gold and gems that deck the papal chair,
And each imposing pageant of the church,-

Good sense, plain argument, and sound research,--

Here taste, again, would prove a dangerous guide,
And raise a prejudice on error's side.

-Behold the slow procession move along!
The Pontiff's blessing on the prostrate throng;
The solemn service, and the anthem loud,
The altar's radiance on the kneeling crowd.--
Or seek, at summons of the convent bell,
Deep, sacred shades, where fair recluses dwell;
See the long train of white-rob'd sisters come,
Appearing now-now lost amid the gloom,
Chaunting shrill vespers in the twilight dim,
—The plaintive music of the virgin's hymn.
Then would not taste and fancy join the cry,
Against the rude, barbarian heresy,
That sought those sacred walls to overthrow,
And rend the veil from that seducing show?
And yet, according to our present light,

That barb'rous, tasteless heretic-was right.' pp. 20—21. The party-man, the ecclesiastical dogmatist, and the true sectarian, are portrayed with unsparing freedom. We were, for our own part, particularly well satisfied to have the bad spirit which often brings disgrace on a good cause, exposed in the instance of the party Dissenter, and to meet with the remark, that

'while Nathaniels stand on either side
The boundary lines that differing sects divide,
Unchristian tempers every form may take
And truth itself be loved for party's sake!

'Experience is the title of the second Essay. It is not perhaps desirable that the anticipations of youth should be lowered down to the melancholy colouring of such a retrospect; but indeed there is no danger of our being led to expect too little from the world. We never recollect, however, to have had the utter insufficiency of earthly pleasures and possessions, brought home to the feelings with so affecting an emphasis, as in this simple, unexaggerated tale of the heart. It is not by the 'complaint' of disappointed ambition, by weeping monodies, or by philosophic declamations on the nothingness of grandeur, that the mind can be made to renounce its own peculiar projects of happiness. Those writers who throw all the blame of our disappointment on the objects of life, only betray their ignorance of the true seat of unhappiness; while those who represent life as altogether gloomy, shew that they have ill performed its duties, and that they have not appreciated in the spirit of gratitude, these common mercies' which fall to the lot of all. The view of life which is given in this Essay, will appear gloomy

to those only who have never known what is to be awakened out of the day-dreams of romance to the encountering of

tasteless cold reality;'

from whom grief has never extorted conviction, or whom the pressure of present evil has never forced to exert the energies of prayer. The picturesque of fancy, and the real of truth, are admirably contrasted in the following lines.

'A tatter'd cottage, to the view of taste,
In beauty glows, at needful distance plac'd:
Its broken panes, its richly ruin'd thatch,
Its gable grac'd with many a mossy patch,
The sunset lighting up its varied dyes,
Form quite a picture to poetic eyes;

And yield delight that modern brick and board,
Square, sound, and well arrang'd would not afford.
But cross the mead to take a nearer ken,-
Where all the magic of the vision then?
The picturesque is vanish'd, and the eye
Averted, turns from loathsome poverty;
And while it lingers, e'en the sun's pure ray
Seems almost sullied by its transient stay.
The broken walls with slight repairs emboss'd,
Are but cold comforts in a winter's frost:
No smiling, peaceful peasant, half refin'd,
There tunes his reed on rustic seat reclin'd;
But there, the bending form and haggard face,
Worn with the lines that vice and misery trace.
Thus fades the charm by vernal hope supplied

To every object it has never tried.' pp. 43, 44.

The tenor of this Essay is adapted, not to encourage any feelings bordering upon disgust with the world, but rather to shew the unreasonableness of our expectations. This is instanced in the romantic estimates of early friendship; and we could not perhaps select a passage more strikingly displaying the refined correctness of sentiment and the experimental wisdom, which characterize these moral dissertations.

'Blind to ourselves, to others not less blind,
We slowly learn to understand mankind.
Sanguine and ardent, indisposed to hold
The cautious maxims that our fathers told,
We place new objects in the fairest light,
And offer gen'rous friendship at first sight.
Expect, (though not the first rate mental pow'rs)
A mind, at least, in unison with ours;

Free from those meaner faults, that most conspire
To damp our love, if not put out its fire.
Cold o'er the heart the slight expression steals,
That first some trait of character reveals;

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Some fault, perhaps, less prominent alone,
But causing painful friction with our own.
Long is the harsh, reluctant thought supprest,
We drive the cold suspicion from our breast;
But when confirm'd, our gen'rous love condemn,
Turn off disgusted with the world and them,
Resolve no more at Friendship's fane to serve,
And call her names she does not quite deserve.
But this is rash-Experience would confess
That friendship's very frailties chill us less
(Sincere and well-intentioned all the while)
Than the world's complaisant and polish'd smile.
With other chattels, nameless in my verse,
Friends must be held "for better and for worse;"
And that alone true friendship we should call,
Which undertakes to love us faults and all;
And she who guides this humble line could prove,
There is, there is, such candid gen'rous love,
And from the life, her faithful hand could paint
Glowing exceptions to her own complaint.' pp. 46, 47.

We shall make room for one more extract from this Essay. Every real sufferer must feel how just is the following representation.

When hope her seat to memory has resign'd,
And our chief solace is to look behind,

Then shall we learn, perhaps too late, to know
That sin weighs heavier on the mind than woe.
Grief, genuine grief, that comes at God's command,
In which our own misconduct has no hand,
Though, for the present, not a joyous thing,
Yet, when it passes over, leaves no sting.
The pains we fear'd, the ills we dreaded most,
Departed-seem a weak and harmless host;
We suffer'd, wept, but now can smile serene,
And wonder that our anguish was so keen;
Or if some blow that struck the tend'rest part,
Has left its deep impression and its smart;
Still years allay it, and at length diffuse
A pleasing sadness that we would not lose.
But when by conscience, memory's eye is cast,
Pain'd and reluctant, on the guilty past,
And sees life's path bestrew'd on every side
With sins and follies thick and multiplied,-
Follies for which our shame arrives too late,
Sins that Heav'n only can obliterate,

And what slight efforts had restrain'd their pow'r,

How bitter the remembrance to this hour! pp. 54, 55.

The tale which closes this Essay, will disappoint readers who are interested only by incident. It portrays a person of an or

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