security of the town: but it at once convinces a person that Aden indeed must have been a place of the utmost importance, when they could commence and finish in such a masterly style so great an undertaking. The fortified island of Seerah would with the British be a most important point of defence. It is elevated above the sea 430 feet, and is united at low water to the main, by a narrow neck of land. It is very small, but being precipitous and easily defended, a most determined resistance could effectually be made by a handful of men against hundreds. It commands the eastern bay and town most completely.

Aden would no doubt under our government, soon become a place of the first mercantile importance, and be a town of the first magnitude in Arabia, its geographical position at once pointing out its advantages, and its harbour being not only safe and easy of access, either by day or night, but sufficiently capacious to enable an immense fleet to ride within it with perfect security. The town of Sennaa is only seven or eight days' journey from it for camels with merchandize: the coffee districts are actually nearer to it than Mocha, and the road equally safe and convenient. Other large towns in Yemen are not far distant from it, and the rich places in the province of Hadhar-el-mout, are open for its trade. Thus in every point of view is Aden advantageous; and I feel confident that should it ever belong to the British, in a few years Mocha will decline, and become what Åden now is.

The mountains to the northward of Aden produce gums, frankincense, and coffee, which would soon find a way for export under British law. Its harbour is immediately north of Burburra, so that vessels during the north-east monsoon, can reach it with produce of Africa in twenty-four hours, and return with British or Indian produce and manufactures, in another twenty four hours. Such facility must have its advantages. All the produce of Harrah, and other large interior towns, on the opposite coast, would find its way into Aden for exportation, which consists of coffee, gums, myrrh, hides, elephants' teeth and tusks, gold dust, and ostrich feathers, &c., &c. ; in return, our piece goods, chintzes, cutlery, rice, &c., cannot fail to secure a ready market.

The province of Yemen and Hadhar-el-mout, would also be open for the introduction of our manufactures and goods, both of British and Indian produce. The Surat merchants, Banians, nay even Arab merchants, would quit Mocha and other places for Aden, so as to ensure themselves greater security and protection, and more indulgent and just rule. Aden, from containing a population of a few hundreds, in miserable hovels, would in a few months contain thousands, and a flourishing town would be seen rising up upon the site of its former magnificence.

Situated as the harbour is, a ship or boat can at all seasons visit it, and quit it with facility; but it is not so from Mocha, for (particularly in January and February,) if a merchant vessel once enters the strait, and arrives at Mocha, she must either proceed upward with the southerly and incessant gales, or remain until they abate. I have known vessels in March, April, and May, six, seven, and eight days,

getting from Mocha to the Straits, a distance of little more than forty miles. These are considerations to the merchant worthy his attention, for the detention is not his only annoyance: his vessel by being able to obtain a cargo at Aden, will save the great wear and tear which she would experience on her return from the sea, unless like the present Arab merchant, she waited for the north west winds in June and July and it must be recollected, that when blowing at Mocha from south by east a hard gale, a fine single-reefed topsail and top-gallant breeze from east-north-east will be blowing at Aden; in the former roadstead, a vessel will lie with a whole chain on end, without being able to communicate with the shore; when at the same time in Aden harbour, she will be within a few yards of the land, in perfectly smooth water. It would be needless to remark further on the position of Aden as a coal depot,--but as a sailor, who knows the place from long experience, it will not be considered presumptuous, if I observe, that it is the best adapted port in existence for our overland communication with India, via the Red Sea.'-Parliamentary Papers on Aden, pp. 92-96.

This invaluable port is now in our possession. In February, 1837, its natives plundered and otherwise maltreated the shipwrecked crew of a Madras vessel called the Doria Dowlut. Reparation was of course demanded; when after many protocols, a bargain came to be agreed upon, whereby the Sultan of the country sold the town and harbour, with the little island, and all adjacent fortifications to the East India Company, for an allowance of 8700 dollars per annum. In pursuance of this treaty a proper party went from one of our presidencies to take possession, when treachery getting better of their prudence, the Arabs had concocted a scheme for cutting off the British to a man. The massacre was prevented through a providential discovery; and hence war arose between the Company and its barbarian adversaries. Early in the present year, after a gallant action, Aden was captured, and has now been ceded to us in full sovereignty and all that remains is that its importance both as a packet-station and an entrepot of commerce, should not be lost sight of in settling the Turkish question. Our objects we trust will not be misunderstood, as to the mighty interests at issue. We wish to see both our country and the whole oriental world deriving every possible advantage, which circumstances will afford them, without injustice. That peace above all should be preserved, is the desire of our heart and we further feel satisfied, that the nearer India is brought to Europe, the sooner and the more completely will the religion and civilization of the latter be brought to bear upon the former. The rendering therefore Egypt a transit country ought, as it appears to us, to constitute a main feature in all Mediterranean and Oriental arrangements. With regard to other matters, we are quite ready to recognize the independency and

integrity of the Ottoman empire, so far as they actually exist; with the single exception of Bulgaria, which already swarms with Russian agents, and has done so, we believe, ever since the treaty of Adrinople. We should sincerely regret having to adopt coercive measures against Mehemet Ali, for reasons already intimated; and who can tell, when the first gun is fired, where the conflagration may pause. Meanwhile whatever ambitious projects the Czar and his cabinet may be meditating, there will never be a fifth universal monarchy; in the sense we mean of the Assyrian, Medo-Persian, Macedonian, or Roman empires. Every child learning to read from Archangel to Sebastopol,-every press that prints a line within the limits of Muscovy or Christendom,every loom, every sail, and every highway, rail-road, port, or packet, above all, every copy of the Scriptures winging its silent way to hearts, and hearths, and names on earth unknown,-are one and each among the component portions of an irresistible machinery which will grind despotism and ignorance to powder. What we apprehend most, just at the present crisis, is, that Foreign Powers are fostering the idea in their minds that we are a divided nation. The severe remark of an ancient consul as to Rome, Discordia ordinum est venenum urbis hujus, patrum ac plebis certamina, may be too applicable to ourselves. A government, vacillating at home, will not long retain its proper weight and influence abroad: and the impression is, we fear, not an unfounded one, that our diplomacy, which has never been creditable to us, is incurably tainted and stained with all those corrupt humours, those tendencies to dalliance with tyranny and absolutism, which could scarcely fail to be inherent in the aristocracy, whence it was derived. Autocracy itself is better for foreign objects, than an oligarchy; the force of public opinion bearing directly upon a single devoted head in the one case; whilst it breaks away in various subdivisions of responsibility, in the other. An occasional decapitation of some unfortunate Charles Stuart may have often checked the madness, or ferocity, or even the folly of an emperor; he is a mark for the eyes of the world abroad; and is after all only the slave of slaves at home. But aristocracies are like the wild ass of the desert, in her occasions, who can turn her away?' We may perceive the truth of this in even the commercial republics of the middle ages. Venice never seems to have taught her own senators or any others, the slightest compunctious visitings, as selfishness and venality led them down from the low depths of national degradation to lower abysses still; the idea being too horrible for concep tion, whatever might be their demerits, of consigning so many titled heads to the axe of the headsman, the cord of the gibbet, or the nobler waves of the Adriatic!

Brief Notices.

Ancient Christianity. By the Author of Spiritual Despotism.' Nos. 1, 2, 3. London: Jackson and Walford. 1839.

The author appears to promise two, or perhaps three, more numbers. We feel debarred from reviewing an incomplete work, although what has already appeared is a whole, taken by itself: but we cannot defer any longer to call our reader's attention to this interesting and auspicious production.

It is professedly written against the new High Church school of divinity; whom it attacks with weapons hitherto used by none of their opponents. Instead of contending against these modern divines, or assailing tradition by abstract topics, he comes directly to the question, What is that doctrine which they are calling on us to adopt?' Their golden age is the Nicene era; their teachers, the Nicene theologians; meaning hereby, chiefly those of the fourth century, but also their predecessors of the third. This our author denotes as ancient Christianity, in opposition to apostolic Christianity. He urges that it must be taken as a whole, and not by picking and choosing at our will; of which the Oxford divines are thoroughly aware, although they are now translating select treatises of their favorite writers so as to give a most partial exhibition of the system. This work is, then, intended to bring strongly into view such cardinal points of the Nicene theology as its modern votaries are fain to keep, for the present, in the back ground. The first of these points is the merit of Virginity; which the author shows to be the great pivot of the system. From it, or with it, followed unbounded fanaticism, shocking dissoluteness, degradation and perversion of the moral principle, the celibacy of the clergy, ascetic practices; also monachism, and conventual establishments, alternating between sanctimonious hypocrisy and rigorous cruelty. With monachism grew up legends and false miracles innumerable, and the entire science (so to say) of demonology. The same fanaticism, overflowing in another channel, produced extravagant honors to martyrdom, insolent assumption of spiritual authority by confessors, miracles wrought by relics, and unbounded superstition concerning the eucharist. Meanwhile the church was practically divided into two classes, saints and common Christians, the fanatical will-worship of the former being a sort of justification of worldliness in the latter; and certainly a discouragement of all genuine virtue and piety. Amid these antichristian absurdities the gospel of the grace of God was lost: nay, the ability to understand the Scripture was almost destroyed. False meanings were put on its terms; thus chastity and purity were understood solely of the unmarried state; saints were interpreted as indicating the select inner church all the promises were appropriated to them alone. mystical mode of exposition was introduced, contemptible for its puerility, but fatally alluring, and turning holy writ into a series of

A

riddles or quibbles. Such practices, according to our author, had already reached a fearful height in the third century; and the most eminent doctors of the fourth exerted all their strength to support the entire system of error.

Mr. Taylor does not merely assert; he PROVES this: so proves it, that we do not apprehend bis opponents will choose to meet the main argument. They will probably attack only secondary questions, such as his opinion that the merit attached to virginity rose out of Gnostic doctrine, imbibed unawares by the church, while in conflict with that heresy. According to him, Buddhism and Brahminism' formed the two elements of that monkery which all the great saints of the fourth century lauded to the skies. Against this unpleasing thought the new Nicenists will perhaps exert their chief efforts. The Author has also made himself somewhat vulnerable to an uncandid adversary by a needless show of paradox in some of his statements, and by an apparent vacillation of opinion as to the real "spiritual character of these ancient divines. We are bound also to say that some of his allusions to the Dissenting body are far from being in good taste. But in so concise a notice, the minor blemishes which strike us in the work disappear in comparison with its sterling merits We earnestly hope that it will attain the wide circulation to which its learning, its sobriety and tone of sound virtue, its general candor, its genuine religious spirit, and the high importance of its topic, entitle it; and we are gratified to learn that the first number is already out of print In our opinion that number is decidedly inferior to the two others; we hope that the purchasers of the first will lose no time in ordering the rest.

In concluding, we would remark, that the general argument might operate to drive into Romanism those who are so infatuated with their tradition as to hold it at any cost: and this gives great importance to that part of the investigation which traces home to Gnosticism, Platonism, Buddhism, Soofecism, (for all appear to possess the common element,) the ascetism of the ancient church. Indeed, this part of the subject deserves to be developed and enforced with the author's utmost power; for to trace historically the parentage of the error is the most forcible of confutations to the votaries of tradition.

The Evangelist. An Itinerant Ministry shown to be the Ministry of the New Testament; and a Compulsory Itinerary proved to be Unscriptural and fatal to the Religious Liberty of Ministers and Churches. Also Remarks upon a Trust-Deed, Proposed to the Wesleyan Association. In a Letter to a Friend. By OMICRON. 8vo. pp. 37. London: 1839,

The gist of this pamphlet, which the title we have just copied so fully describes, lies in its bearing on a deed poll, by which, it seems, with a sort of hereditary infatuation, that child of Methodism, the Wesleyan Association, is about to bind itself-we were going to say in swaddling, but we should rather say in funeral bands. The writer of it argues most justly, and we think unanswerably, against this crushing