whom it is probable that Christianity will seem welcome. There are pains of the understanding as well as of the heart. Men of grave and contemplative tempers cannot long remain insensible to the darkness which surrounds them. We find ourselves dropped (as it were) into a theatre of wonders; marvellously formed, and marvellously sustained; unknowing whence we came, or whither we are destined; ignorant with all our capacities for knowledge, and miserable with all our powers of enjoyment. The mind which sees these things must be base and sluggish indeed, if it feels no anxiety to escape from a prison where it is so 'strait kept without iron bars; and to ascertain the reality, or at least to take a closer view, of the mighty vision which is sweeping by us. The philosopher, therefore (I use the word in its proper sense), looks round for direction to his inquiries. Christianity boldly presents herself, offering a solution of every doubt, so far as knowledge is profitable, and promising present safety with future illumination. Surely it is not miraculous that a wise man should think such proposals worth examining; nor, if he examines, is it strange he should be convinced. The rest follows in order: 'he becomes first regular, then devout.' It may be expected, then, that a contemplative man will be an earnest Christian; nor can it seem wonderful, if, being a Christian, he still continues to be contemplative. Gravity, however, with the gay and thoughtless passes for gloom. They are guilty of two errors. They mistake seriousness for melancholy; and they impute that seriousness, so miscalled, to religion, instead of constitution. Even good men of a different temper, who have never studied human nature, often adopt the same misconception. Sophron possesses a very profound understanding. Happily for him he was irregularly educated, or his powerful mind might have been lost in dialects and prosody. Being left, however, to discover truth for himself, he became early accustomed to reflection, and few reflect seriously without being religious. He is so in an eminent degree. His spirits are easy and regular, for his heart rests in hope: he can review the past without remorse, and anticipate the future with humble but joyful assurance. Sophron's manners are rather distant, and to those who know but little of him, seem ungracious: his habits of thoughtfulness too have given him the appearance of gravity and abstraction. Thus it happens that some who are slightly acquainted with him, or only hear of him by report, fancy he wants cheerfulness; and as he is known to be very religious, Christianity as

usual bears the burthen.

There is yet a third class of men, of whom it may be said to be antecedently probable that they will at some period of their youth become zealously attached to Christianity. These are they who possess by nature great quickness of sensibility joined with ardent imaginations. Such men have strong and delicate perceptions of the sublime and beautiful. The grandeur of the rewards which revelation promises, and the awfulness of the punishments it denounces, naturally arrest their attention. The holiness and lovely simplicity of the character of Jesus, his dignity, his tenderness, and his sufferings, have charms to awake their best affections. Such men too are early disgusted or satiated with the coarse pleasures of the world. Their fancy sketches almost

intuitively an image of perfection, of which Christianity alone presents the perfect draught. Besides which they have generally very unequal spirits: the same heart which, during the hours of social festivity, overflows with gaiety, is weighed down in solitude by comfortless dejection. Their disappointments are greater than those of other men; for they over-calculate the value of every object they pursue, as well as their chances of obtaining it; and thus, whether they succeed or fail, they are still deceived. All these circumstances concur to invite them to become the children of God, to 'cast their cares on him,' forgetting and despising the baubles they have too long pursued. But the change which is wrought in them respects rather the direction than the nature of their affections. Christianity indeed will gradually teach them to controul their ardour, to regulate their emotions, and resist all excess of feeling, whether rapturous or mournful; and perhaps at last infuse into their bosoms that placid cheerfulness, which seems to be the kind and degree of happiness best suited to our feeble constitutions.

must be the work of time. Till then, much of their ardour or their sanguineness will remain; they will be at one moment elevated into rapture, and at another depressed with melancholy. Even good men of a more equable temperament, not comprehending the causes of their occasional dejection, may probably suspect that religion, which so evidently influences their hearts, affects also their cheerfulness; while their less serious acquaintance will undoubtedly lament (according to the mummery of worldly lamentation) that such noble spirits should be ruined by methodism. Eugenes is one of those beings I have described, who, from delicacy of organization, feels more quickly than the common race of mortals; and though he has been visited by no grievous afflictions, a variety of circumstances have hitherto made him better acquainted with sorrow than delight. Eugenes was early instructed in the best principles of Christianity, and the merciful visitations of Providence have gradually taught him their real value. He has made no great progress in religion, yet I believe he is sincere, and dreads sin more than suffering; but he has delicate health and very unequal spirits. It cannot be denied that religion is to him occasionally a source of pain as well as pleasure. His heart at times seems to overflow with gladness, but in other moments I have seen him dreadfully agitated. His friends perceive this, and express their fears of his being too religious. But in truth religion has no connection with his complaint; it is only the field in which his natural temper displays itself. If Eugenes had fixed his affections on any other object, his spirits would have been liable to the same fluctuation: we should still have witnessed in him the same returns of rapture and regret, of exultation and dejection." (Vol. ii. p. 135-141.)

The next essay is on the "Practical character of Christ;" and it is of a high order of excellence. It is however, impossible for us to enter upon any minute investigation of the merits either of this or of those by which it is succeeded: we must be content with saying that we think those on "trust in God," on "spiritualmindedness," and on "prayer," the best, and that none of them

are surpassed by any popular and devotional disquisitions with which we are acquainted. Their main fault is, we think, the want of arrangement and distinction of parts; so that it is difficult to collect or to retain the matter which is dispersed over them. Their excellences are very numerous. They have the transcendent merit of being warm though accurate transcripts of a Divine original; they are besides rational, tender, eloquent, and occasionally sublime. They are not perhaps much calculated to convince the gainsayer; but are abundantly calculated to touch the careless, to direct the wandering, to elevate the standard of opinion and conduct, to humble the formal and ostentatious professor, to throw round religion a new splendour and majesty, to direct the miserable to the true sources of consolation. Their effect upon ourselves, were we unbelievers, would be, we think, to leave us ashamed of infidelity, in love with religion, and assured that he who would be extensively useful, or habitually happy, must be eminently good. One peculiar feature of them is to bear, as it were, stamped upon every page and line of them, the exact impress of their author: had we never seen the man we should have known him, we think, from any one of his essays; he has thrown his very soul into them; he has poured into the dead letter the life's blood of his own feelings and experience; he has dipped his pen in his own heart; he plainly has verified in his own person the principles which he maintains, and "is himself the great sublime he draws."

But we must here abandon a theme upon which certain tender and melancholy associations and reminiscences have perhaps already detained us too long. Our readers, however, have little reason to apprehend similar transgressions, as the age has few such young men to lose. Indeed we think the loss sustained by the country in the early death of Mr. Bowdler and of Kirk White-whose history and genius not a little resembled that of our author-is a loss of a very peculiar and affecting nature. From the "Bibliotheca Eruditorum Præcocium" of Kleforus, or the "Enfans Celebrés" of Baillet, it might be easy to select instances of early talents far more astonishing than those displayed by either of these distinguished individuals; but it would be very difficult in any age to find men combining to the same extent, talents, industry, and virtue. It would be easy to find individuals who had been the unripe victims of their own ceaseless toils and struggles up the steeps of science and through the fields of duty; but it would be difficult to discover any examples where the death of any individuals had disappointed so many hopes, wrung so many bosoms, and left so large a gap in the ranks of genius and virtue. But we hope well of our country; and though we should have predicted more confidently the rise

of other distinguished men on the national horizon had these survived, because we always observe that great men multiply great men by raising the standard and supplying the pattern of greatness; yet we think that, "though dead," such men will "speak" to their young successors; and that, out of their ashes, will spring up those who will soar to the same heights, and confer the same honors and benefits upon a grateful country. It is a maxim of philosophy as well as of patriotism "not to despair of the republic;" and though perhaps the present is a moment, when, as far as the young are concerned, it is difficult to keep alive the spark of hope, it is our wisdom and our duty to believe that he whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, will, in the immeasureable depths of his compassion, discover some sure remedy for all our disasters.

ART. V.-Mandeville: a Tale of the Seventeenth Century in England. By William Godwin. 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 1004. Longman and Co. London, 1817.

MR. GODWIN has produced one novel of no common interest;

the recollection of which induced us to look forward with anticipations of amusement to a new production from his pen. Caleb Williams can never be read without leaving a deep impression behind it and what is no slight proof of talent in the writer is, that this powerful effect is produced with scarcely any aid from delineations of love. He discards that passion which, in novels, seems to have a prescriptive right to sovereignty: he has no heroine, and no enamoured adorer: the materials upon which he works are of a masculine sort, and the interest which he rouses is of a sterner character than a tale of love could claim. The harrowing emotions of Falkland, arising from his consciousness of the enormity with which he is stained, the miseries of Williams, springing from a cause which at once strikes the fancy as uncommon, and confounds the judgment as insurmountable, excite a glowing sympathy in the reader, and occupy all his thoughts with solicitude for the fate of the two sufferers. The effect is, perhaps, heightened by the mode in which our emotions are balanced against each other. We know not whether to side with Falkland or with Williams; for we almost forget the crime of the former in the noble qualities with which he is endowed; and Williams, though guiltless of the charges alleged against him, loses in our affections much of the benefit of his innocence, from the unjusti

fiable conduct which he pursued after he began to entertain suspicions that his master was the murderer of Tyrrell. At the same time, the interest of the story is maintained by our inability to foresee the final result, or to guess by what means it is to be brought about. Shall Falkland be convicted as a murderer, or must Williams perish the victim of a false accusation? We approach the termination of the tale without knowing to which side the balance is ultimately to incline; we are not even certain in whose favour our wishes are: we feel that either of the two events must awaken our commiseration.

The man who could thus call forth our sympathy, and hold our curiosity in anxious suspense, in one work of fiction, might have been expected to display the same power in other similar productions. He has made the attempt again and again. St. Leon, Fleetwood, and Mandeville, have successively issued from his pen : but there has been infused into them no portion of that interest which hurries us impetuously on from the beginning of Caleb Williams to the catastrophe. They have a decent share of the common-place of novels; they abound in vague, and often unintelligible descriptions, and extravagant sentiments; they present grossly improbable situations; and they introduce us to personages who bear too little resemblance to real men and women for us to have much solicitude about their fate, or much fellow feeling with their joys and pains. We have sometimes wondered that an author, who succeeded so well in one work of fiction, should have failed in every other effort of the same kind. But our wonder ceased when we considered more closely in what the merit of Caleb Williams consists. The excellence of that tale lies, we think, chiefly in the general conception of its plot. An highly accomplished man is goaded on by unfortunate circumstances to the perpetration of the blackest crime: an innocent person is executed for the deed, while the true criminal maintains his place in the estimation of society: one of his dependants becomes possessed of the fatal secret; and, to free himself from the presence of the individual whom that secret most concerned, attempts to fly but his flight must not be permitted: the criminal must have the man who knows his guilt constantly within his power, and under his eye; that man's character, the moment he attempts to withdraw from controul, must be blackened in general estimation; nay, it will be still better security if his life can be taken away; and all this must be done without the intervention of violence-by the hand of the law, under the semblance of justice. It was a lucky moment when the idea of such a plot occurred to Mr. Godwin's mind: though no great share of invention should be exercised in contriving the details, the sentiments and struggles of antagonists so situated could scarcely fail to take fast hold of our