What a vastly better mode of spending time and money than Waterfording on the top of a four-in-hand, with an air-gun and putty pellets! But, indeed, the present volume displays great refinement of taste, and an admiration of Chaucer and Bocaccio, which has resolved itself into a poetical version of some of their stories in a style of great ease and harmony. Some of the smaller poems possess a strong pictorial power, as A VIEW IN HOLLAND. The tide comes up the black and gusty river, The dripping piles fling back the shattered spray; Hangs forth a sign, more tempting to the boor; Is flustered too, but 'tis with branteirein: Education for the People: embracing I. Pastoral Teaching II. Vil lage Teaching. III. The Teacher's Text-Book. IV. Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. By Mrs. Hippesley Tuckfield. 12mo. pp. 272. London: Taylor and Walton. A most valuable practical little volume on a subject of the highest importance. Mrs. Tuckfield, who has practised on her own property what she now communicates to the public, has rendered a real service to the cause of popular education by the issue of this little volume. She shows, what cannot be learned too soon, or too widely, at what a small cost of money or machinery, education may be given to the children of the working class all over the country. We shall, one of these days, have occasion to recur more fully to this little tome, but we mention it here that all who are interested in general education may get it, and see how much may be done by individuals, without waiting for government schemes. Literary Entelligence. In the Press. Memoirs of the Rev. W. Milne, D.D., of China; with Biographical Annals of Asiatic Missions, from Primitive to Present Times. By Robert Philip, Author of Life and Times of Bunyan and Whitefield.' The materials of Dr. Milne's Life hvae been supplied by his family and friends. Post 8vo. Just Published The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. In three volumes. A Diary in America, with Remarks on its Institutions. By Captain Marryatt, C.B. Three volumes. Lives of Eminent British Statesmen. Vol. VII. By John Forster, Esq. (Lardner's Cyclopædia, Vol. 115.) Repton's Landscape Gardening, and Landscape Architecture. A New Edition: with Notes, Biographical Notice, and Copious General Index. By J. C. Loudon, F.L.S. Part I. Means and Ends: or Self Training. By C. M. Sedgwick. Physic and Physicians; a Medical Sketch Book, exhibiting the Public and Private Life of the most Celebrated Medical Men of former days; with Memoirs of Eminent Living London Physicians and Surgeons. In two volumes. Prodromus, or an Inquiry into the first principles of Reasoning; including an Analysis of the Human Mind. By Sir Graves Chamney Haughton. The Lord's Prayer: Contemplated as the Expression of the Primary Elements of Devotedness. By the Rev. Thomas Griffith, A.M. Poems, now first collected. By Lord Leigh. New General Biographical Dictionary, projected and partly arranged by the late Rev. Hugh James Rose, B.D. Edited by the Rev. Henry J. Rose, B.D. Part I. Catiline; or The Roman Conspiracy: an Historical Drama, in five Acts. By John Edmund Reade, Esq. An Exposition upon the Second Epistle General of St. Peter. Thomas Adams, Rector of St. Gregory's, London, A.D. 1633. Corrected by the Rev. James Sherman. By the Rev. Revised and A Greek Lexicon to the New Testament, on the basis of Dr. Robinson's; designed for Junior Students in Divinity, and the Higher Classes in Schools. By Charles Robson. Services at the Centenary Celebration of Whitefield's Apostolic Labours, held in the Tabernacle, Moorfields, May 21, 1839. With Introductory Observations on Open-Air Preaching. Edited by John Campbell. The Millennium, a Spiritual State, not a Personal Reign. By John Jeffer son. Lord John This, and Lord Ex-Chancellor That. A Review of two Recent Pamphlets. By A Whig and something more.' Tea; its effects, Medicinal and Moral. By G. G. Sigmond, M.D. An Historical and Descriptive Account of British America; comprehending Canada Upper and Lower, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, the Bermudas, and the Fur Countries, to which is added a full detail of the Principles and best Modes of Emigration. By Hugh Murray, F.R.S.E. With Illustrations of the Natural History by James Wilson, F.R.S.E., and M.W.S., R. K. Greville, LL.D., and Professor Traill. Three volumes. (Edinburgh Cabinet Library.) The Rhine, Legends, Traditions, History, from Cologne to Mainz. By Joseph Snowe, Esq. Two volumes. British History, Chronologically Arranged; comprehending a Classified Analysis of Events and Occurrences in Church and State; and of the Constitutional, Political, Commercial, Intellectual, and Social Progress of the United Kingdom, from the first Invasion of the Romans to the Accession of Queen Victoria. One volume. By John Wade. Calvary; or the Cross of Christ. By Mortlock Daniell. Polynesia, or Missionary Toils and Triumphs in the South Seas. A Poem. THE ECLECTIC REVIEW FOR SEPTEMBER, 1839. Art. I. 1. A Text-Book of Popery: comprising a Brief History of the Council of Trent, and a Complete View of Roman Catholic Theology. By J. M. CRAMP. Second Edition. 8vo. pp. 480 London: 1839. 2. Essays on Romanism. By the Author of Essays on the Church. 12mo. pp. 487. London: 1839. 3. The Variations of Popery. By SAMUEL EDGAR. Second Edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged. 8vo. pp. 551. London: 1839. 4. Authenticated Report of the Discussion between the Rev. T. D. Gregg and the Rev. Thomas Macguire. 8vo. Dublin: W. Car son. RO OMANISM-what are the signs of the times in relation to it? To this question it is not easy to return a summary answer. It is, however, high time that some answer to it should be attempted. There are appearances which make it probable that the Catholic controversy is about to obtain a larger share of public attention than has been bestowed upon it since the age of Bellarmine. The causes which have contributed to place this probability before us, deserve our grave consideration. Indeed, among the many, agitating questions of the day, there is not another of greater moment than that which relates to the best method of dealing with the state of things which has thus risen up around us, and which, in fact, has come upon us, in great part, by surprise. Fault, no doubt, there has been somewhere; and it will be well if we are found capable of so looking to the failures of the past, as to brace ourselves to the obligations of the future in a more adequate temper. Some attention to the general history of this controversy is necessary to an effective management of the points at issue. In its VOL. VI. S early stages it was a dispute about revenue and secular power, based upon a real or pretended difference in religious opinion. There were men who cared only about the politics of the question; there were others who looked simply to its theology; but in the view of the majority a mixture of both was always present. In every state, the church was a richly endowed corporate body. These bodies were all liable to suffer from questionable exaction, or from open pillage, sometimes as proceeding from the power of the crown, and sometimes as the work of the sovereign pontiff. But so long as these rival authorities continued to hold their usual positions, the jealousy with which they regarded each other operated as a means of protection. The Popes looked on all national churches as so many provinces of their spiritual empire,and were prepared, in consequence, to restrict the privilege or right of making exactions in those quarters as much as possible to themselves; while kings were prompted by similar passions to place the strongest available check on the interferences of these foreign potentates. But the blow which severed one half of Europe from its dependence on the chair of St. Peter, put an end, so far, to this system of divided allegiance. Kings resumed the entire sovereignty of their dominions, repudiating the religious grounds on which no mean portion of it had been so long conceded to another; and the pontiffs betrayed the usual symptoms of mortification and resentment under the loss which they had sustained. Their struggle henceforth, with all the south of Europe at their back, was to regain what had been wrested from them; while the effort of the princes of the north was to keep their hold on what they had resumed. The point immediately in debate, was one of theology,-namely, the right of the pope to the species of sovereignty which he claimed; but dependent on that issue was the question,-whether the wealth of the national church, sometimes amounting to nearly half the wealth of the state, should be left to the sole disposal of the sovereign, or be managed as heretofore by the joint authority of the prince and the pontiff. The immediate aim of both when they came forth as antagonists, was to possess themselves of the spiritual authority involved in being head of the church. But that authority derived its chief attrac tion from its being a convenient medium through which to ex tend their power over other matters much less etherial in their nature. Thus the Catholic controversy in the sixteenth century received all the stimulus that could be supplied by the authority and wealth of the one half of Europe as arrayed against the other. The cause might be bad in many respects on both sides, but there were substantial considerations which disposed men to give to it the best possible appearance. Polite literature and the arts re vived; but the grand struggle of learning and of mental power in those times, was the struggle of the Reformation. This involved the future sovereignty of Europe the sovereignty over mind, and through that over all inferior interests. On the one side were the new demands of princes, sustained by the aspirations of the devout, the generosity of the patriot, and the servility of the selfish; on the other, the ancient claims of the papacy, still strong in its powers of appeal to the interests of the unprincipled, to the fears of the timid, and to the usual force of hereditary recollections and feelings; and all that such resources could supply was thus furnished to give breadth and power to the great war of argument then waged. The Popish controversy, therefore, must not be regarded as a topic of small compass or little intricacy. It has its root in all learning and all science; and there is no strength or complexion of intellect that has not been enlisted in its cause. During the greater part of the long reign of Elizabeth, the Romanists in this country indulged the hope of seeing a Catholic sovereign again upon the throne, and of recovering by that means the whole of the power which they had lost. So long as it was at all possible that such hopes should be entertained, their plottings were subtle, bold, and unwearied. Hence, in great part, the severity of the penal laws enacted against them in that age. But subsequent to the death of the Queen of Scots, there was little prospect of their ever gaining their former ascendancy; and the extent of their expectations appears to have been, to obtain a more lenient treatment from the government, and, ultimately, a toleration of their worship. The accession of a new dynasty in the person of James I., tended to strenghten this expectation, while their manifest weakness as a party served to prevent their expecting any thing more. But the cruelties practised in the reign of Mary had diffused great fear and resentment among the people; and soon after the death of Elizabeth these passions were inflamed to the utmost by the discovery of the gunpowder treason. the civil war began, the Catholics took side with the court, having much more to hope from the dispensing power of the crown, than from the Puritan majority which had long governed in the House of Commons. When During the whole of this period persons brought up in the expectation of public employment, either in the state or the church, were generally made to bestow a systematic attention on the questions of the Romish controversy. Europe being about equally divided between the two religions, hardly a question of diplomacy could be settled without a considerable acquaintance with the matters in debate between them, and ability to reason soundly upon them at any moment. Thus, from the commencement of the Reformation, to the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, |