hoped to revive it with its old attributes, by studying the poets of the reign of Elizabeth, some have not been able to cover the improbability of romantic situations by poetry of style; and others have fallen into the error of adopting language in no way suited to the present state of civilization. Some, instead of painting real life and the passions in broad and energetic colours, have sunk into gloomy metaphysical abstractions. Finally, those who have appealed more directly to the judgment of the public, have sought to dazzle the eye by splendour of decoration, rather than to interest the mind by the genuine beauties of tragedy. The characters are all moulded on uniform models, and they usually consist of a remorseless tyrant, an insipid and unnatural lover, a superstitious priest, and a heroine, who, for the most part, closes her career by going mad.

Sanguine hopes were entertained that Lord Byron would distinguish himself in tragic composition; but the regenerator of the English drama has not yet appeared. He is not to be found either in Barry Cornwall, the author of Mirandola, or in Mr. Sotheby, the translator of Oberon, whose tragedies made a little noise, but are now forgotten. Knowles and Croly would perhaps deserve honourable mention; but they are too fond of indulging in those long declamatory speeches, which are generally fatal to dramatic effect.

LETTER XLIV.

TO M. L'ABBE

You wish to know, my dear Abbé, whether, among the clergymen to whom I have been introduced in London, I have met Fielding's virtuous Harrison, or Goldsmith's worthy Primrose, whose patriarchal simplicity you are inclined to regard as wholly fictitious. I must confess, that I have as yet seen nothing resembling either the one or the other; but when I visit the country, I trust I shall be more fortunate; and I shall, perhaps, even become acquainted with an Abraham Adams, whose original simplicity cannot fail to interest you when you allow yourself to read Fielding. But, my dear Abbé, let me warn you that that faithful painter of English manners is here on the proscribed list, and that he can only be read by stealth in this moral age. I hope shortly to have the pleasure of introducing to you a young English clergyman; but you must not even let him know that you read Richardson, who is not now recommended from the pulpit, as he used to be. This young gentleman will present you with a pamphlet, written by one of his Oxford friends, in which you will be surprised to find it proved, that Sir Walter Scott's novels are absolute profanations

of the Scriptures; and the author, above all, unmercifully anathematizes the Scottish puritans. You will ask me, whether methodism has reformed the English church, and whether the puritans, who were so outrageously insulted in the comedies of Charles the Second's reign, and who have since been more seriously censured in numberless pamphlets, have at length refuted the poets and libelists, by realizing the pictures of Dr. Harrison and Mr. Primrose. I shall not give a direct answer to this question; but in making you acquainted with all I have collected from reading and ocular observation, I shall furnish you with some preliminary information respecting the personal character of the clergy, to which I shall add new particulars when I return from my excursion to Scotland, where new objects of comparison will present themselves to me.

You love truth, and consequently you always lend a ready ear to discussion. You will therefore, I trust, listen patiently to all I have to say, while I attempt to give you an idea of the present state of the church in England. Being no very profound theologist, and living, as I now do, in the midst of heretics, I shall naturally employ some of their phraseology; but my boldness will afford me an additional claim on your attention, and I shall most readily yield to your refutations. I shall feel the less scrupulous, in allowing myself to speak like the ministers of the English church, because of all heresies theirs bears the closest affinity to catholicism. They now stand in greater

fear of Calvin than the Pope, whom they no longer burn in effigy, as they used to do. The government is their auxiliary against popery, which it takes upon itself the task of persecuting in Ireland. But they have to oppose, by their own efforts, the various dissenting sects, some of which threaten to subvert the power and influence of the constitutional religion. I make use of this expression, because the English church is at once a religious and a political institution.

With the first seeds of the reformation, weeds crept into the field of English catholicism. The minds of the people were, for the most part, wavering and undecided, when the polygamy of Henry VIII. by separating that monarch from the church of Rome, without making him renounce his despotism in religion, founded the English faith, which was finally established by the policy of Elizabeth, who dexterously availed herself of the ideas of her father's ministers. Flattering the passions and the arbitrary spirit of Henry, Cranmer and Cromwell perceived that it was time to grant the people a change, which would silence the importunities of the reformers. It would seem that they foresaw all the future encroachments of presbyterianism. The ministers of Henry and Elizabeth, when they freed the nation from the exactions and the proud influence of the church of Rome, by pretending to make common cause with the people, and exclaiming even more loudly than the latter against the new Babylon, formed a sort of league between the crown and the re

formers. But the adoption of new religious ideas by the government had no other effect than to enrich the royal treasury, and the two-fold aristocracy of the high clergy, and the courtiers, at the expence of the dealers in indulgences, and the monkish proprietors. All the rigour of the democratic theories of the reformation was softened down under the bishop's lawn sleeves. Evangelical republicanism was confined to the hearts of the puritans; and when at length it broke out with unrestrained fury, in the reign of Charles I. its re-action served only to prepare another re-action against itself, for violence has never founded a permanent ascendancy. Cromwell could not entirely subdue it, after having connected it with his glory and his power.

On the return of the Stuarts, the English church, which is only a modification of catho licism, resumed the ascendancy. The episcopal aristocracy recovered all their privileges, together with the monopoly of riches and honours. Finally, the revolution of 1688 was but a new guarantee to the power of the English church against the church of Rome. The first democratic ferment of the reformation, the subversion of the supremacy in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, the republican explosion under Charles I. and the political guarantees granted to the English church by the House of Brunswick, have produced no other practical result in England, than to secure to her a more abundant circulation of liberal opinions, religious as well as political, than exists