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fame. His "Hall of Vision," ," "Claims of Mind," "Christian Theocracy," "Character of the True Church," "The War System," and " Acquisition of Knowledge," are publications which multitudes have read, many admired, and not a few have profited from. "Our Era," however, is his last, most matured, and by far his best production. There are many passages in it which would not suffer by a comparison with Cowper's Task. Knowing as we do but little of Mr. Leask beyond his published works, we deal with him as a public writer, and solely on public grounds. If, then, we seem to be doing him a kindness, let it be understood that we are simply performing what we deem an act of justice. From our having been called to sustain a part in the recent adjudication of the Prize Poem on Slavery, we were brought into contact with the gentleman whose genius was honoured with the first prize; and when, for a critical purpose, we put into his hands Leask's "Era," on returning it, he thus writes, under date of February 11th: "I have perused Mr. Leask's volume with much satisfaction. The sentiments are admirable, and the language in which they are expressed is nervous, flowing, and poetical. It augurs well for humanity when such ideas as are contained in 'Our Era,' are even listened to by the public, much more when the author of them is received with favour." Such an opinion from such a quarter, casually and voluntarily given by a stranger to Mr. Leask, and without the slightest notion of its publication, has a value which men of sense will appreciate. But, that our readers may judge for themselves, we shall give them Mr. Leask's address to

THE UNITED STATES.

"Thou, Transatlantic World! whose youthful

fame

Has bid old Europe's despot thrones beware,
Accept a caution from a friendly pen!
Earth's eye is on thy movements; nations yearn
To see thy name and character unstained!
Thine is a great experiment! 'Tis thine,
To prove how far the elements of strength
Republican confederacies acquire,
Can vie with nations of monarchial pride.
Nor is it physical, but moral power,
The best of Europe's citizen's desire
To see exemplified among thy sons-
Strength springing out of freedom, with it link'd,
Each with the other growing, harmony
Existing and increasing, as they grow;
This is thy mission to our world of thrones,
Thyself still throneless, land of federal laws!
This is the problem thou art call'd to work;
And millions of spectators daily wait,
With most intense anxiety, to learn

The progress thou art making! Some with hope
Of glorious demonstration; some desire
The total failure of a kingless land-
A land without a state-created church,
Without nobility, patrician feuds,

Or, would that I could add, a single slave!
But no! alas for man! poor erring man!
Where is he perfect? where exempt from guilt?
This is thy plague spot! this the dreadful stain
Upon thy character-the fatal tint

Of spreading leprosy around thy heart,
Which, not removed in time, will send thy name
To latest generations with disgrace!
Talk not of liberty, of freemen's rights,
Of every man's equality at birth
With every other man! for truths like these
Condemn thee to thy face, America!
Slaves in America! preposterous phrase!
Democracy and slavery coexist,

In thy proud land of inconsistencies!
Europe's old kings are joyous at the fact,
And every enemy of human rights
Points to America, and says 'Behold!'
Is this the way to cheer the friends of man,
To animate the slave in foreign climes,
And waft thy praises on the western breeze?
No! better far to feed a score of kings,
Upon the produce of thy daily toil;
Far better be enslaved, than to enslave;
Than thus to ride in fell mob-tyranny,
Across the necks of God's dark-featured sons,
'Twere nobler far to kiss some despot's throne
And beg him to enslave your white-skinn'd
selves!

What is the crime of colour? Where the law
That authorizes white to chattel black?
That authorizes white men to immure,
As in thy Capital has oft been done,
Thy colour'd citizens, suspected slaves,
And then to sell them to perpetual bonds?
Shame on such villanies! such crying crimes
Against the clearest rights of human kind,
Against the Majesty of earth and heaven!
I know that there are many noble minds,
Men whom I honour, venerate, and love,
Dwelling amidst thy freer Northern States,
Who weep thy daring inconsistencies,
Thy odious crime, thy fiendish slavery,
And toil to rid thee of thy fest'ring plague!
With them I sympathize, and pray their prayers,
For thousands held in dreadful vassalage,
May find acceptance at the court of heaven,
And shame thy Congress into rectitude!
These are thy noblest citizens, tho' scowl'd
As interrupters of the public peace,
And hunted, on thy fair and fertile plains,
As men whose ruin would increase thy fame!
Emancipate thy slaves! or hush! no word
From thee in praise of thy DEMOCRACY !"

Review and Criticism.

Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-book, 1847. By the Hon. Mrs. NORTON. Fisher, Son, and Co.

Fisher's Juvenile Scrap-book, 1847. By the Author of "The Women of England." Fisher, Son, and Co.

The Gallery of Scripture Engravings, Historical and Landscape. With Descriptions by JOHN KITTO, D.D., F.S.A. Vol. I. Fisher, Son, and Co. THESE splendid volumes, while they remind us of the flight of an other year,

present us with Fisher's usual variety of artistic beauty. Mrs. Norton has, as usual, acquitted herself in a manner worthy of her character and genius. The entire volume, as may be supposed, is marked by the highest purity of sentiment, while the tendency of some of the chief pieces is emphatically moral, and to some extent religious. The finest piece, by far, is, "The Bull Fight." Vigorous, pungent, and breathing a lofty spirit of morality, it reflects not a little lustre on the humanity of England, and forms one of the most impressive lectures that can be conceived of to the youthful brides of Spain, the Queen and the Infanta her sister, who, on the completion of their nuptials, straightway repaired to the bull fight! Had these glorious verses been expressly written in reproof of the royal barbarity, they could not have been more appropriate. The stanzas open thus:

"Shame ye not to look so gladly,
Cruel eyes!

On the strife which worketh madly,
Cruel eyes!

While the brute, men-foes are taunting,
Desperate, tortured, breathless, panting,
Seeks a death too slow in granting?

Cruel eyes!"

The piece which next best pleases us is that on the portrait of Richard Cobden, which breathes a spirit befitting the granddaughter of R. B. Sheridan, and does meet homage to the human intellect, while it duly appreciates the magnitude and worth of Moral Power.

The Juvenile Scrap-book, like all that emanates from its author, combining sense with taste, may be safely placed in the hands of the young. "Pope Gregory XVI." is a beautiful narrative, and the "A Party of Pleasure" is, alone, worth the price of the volume. It is an admirable

PRESENT.

The Gallery, &c., is a magnificent production, which must be reserved for an extended notice: in the meanwhile we strongly commend it to the opulent portion of our readers.

Chemistry of the Four Seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. An Essay principally concerning Natural Phenomena admitting of Interpretation by Chemical Science, and illustrating passages of Scripture. By THOMAS GRIFFITHS, Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of St. Bartholomew's Hospital; Author of "Recreations in Chemistry," &c. 8vo, pp. 495. Churchill.

As truly as beautifully said Davy, in

speaking of Chemistry, "its beginning is pleasure; its progress is knowledge; its objects are truth and utility." Mr. Griffiths is a man of science, enthusiastically devoted to Chemistry, and in the volume before us mankind at large will profit by his studies. Having enjoyed the enviable honour of delivering Lectures on Chemistry before the Queen, he now addresses himself to her subjects, and he has thereby done an essential service both to science and to religion. The volume teems with facts, and is full of sound philosophy. We very cordially commend it. This, too, will form a most valuable Christmas Present.

The Eclectic Review, November.

We had resolved, at the beginning of the year, occasionally to publish selections, marked by special excellence, from the Eclectic, the British Quarterly, and the North British Reviews, and with that intention had gone through most of the Numbers, and actually prepared an article incorporating the principal portions of the chief articles; but its length, combined with a press of urgent matters, has led to indefinite postponement. Nevertheless, we cannot allow the year to close without at least a reference to these invaluable journals.

;

The Eclectic has, thus far, passed through the year with great spirit and vigour. The Number for November is an average one, presenting great variety and considerable interest. Tayler's "Religious Life of England" is ably done the "Memoirs of Wilson" is a very solid and sagacious article, full of practical instruction. The most brilliant, but by no means the most valuable article, is that on the "Comic History of England," which opens with the following criticism :

ence.

Though we miss from the prints of Leech the air of refinement which pervades those of H. B., the qualities which suit them so gracefully for the drawing-room table, the want is made up by the presence of a higher and nobler moral influThere is more moral purpose in John Leech. He is in earnest to do good. He seems animated by the spirit of that democracy which is at one with philanthropy. To delight the elegant talkers of the drawing-room seems to be the ambition of H. B., while the purpose of Leech is to excite scorn against everything base, unmanly, and unjust. In moral qualities H. B. was a great improvement on Gillray, and Leech rises above H. B. in the same noble superiority. In mere genius both are surpassed by Gillray, to whom even George Cruickshank, the king of caricaturists, has not come up. Gillray, the grotesque splendors of whose genius have been surpassed by no artist, was a man utterly severed and alienated from all morality, all humanity,

all principle, all religion. His fierce sarcasms are animated by mere disdain and derision, and this greatly gifted lost spirit scattered abroad such malignant fancies as might be sported in Pandemonium. Grandeur and coarse humour are as closely associated in his prints, as if all the expressions of all the faces of a grinning match were permanently calotyped on sheet lightning.

In

His fancy soared into regions of beauty and loftiness, and sported with the manifold glories of sunrises and sunsets-of rainbows solar and lunar-and of wind-lashed seas-only to blend with them the mockeries of a despairing fiend to whom there was no holiness in the skies and no lovingness on the earth. Inferior though all caricaturists are to Gillray in intellectual gifts, all are superior to him in moral spirit. Himself a Jacobin, who sold his genius to the aristocracy, a man who for the wants of his body deprived his soul of all connection with the fountain of life-duty and God,-Gillray saw a similar disruption in all the universe. A vapour, as of sulphur, made the sun unbeneficent to him. his power of invention, in his wild magnificence of fancy, even Hogarth was less lavishly endowed. But the satanic mark is on nearly all the sketches of Gillray. He lived an outcast from the decencies of society. Privately he could drink on his knees the health of David the Jacobin painter, while publicly he was working along with Canning and Gifford against the progress of liberty and equality. Meagre and malicious as was the spirit of even John Kay, the Edinburgh caricaturist, contemporary with Gillray, his works are more entitled to complacency, for he evidently had a delight in producing true and characteristic likenesses. Gillray cared for nothing but the indulgence of his own wild and wilful fancies. No wonder though insanity darkened the last years of a genius without principles, without affections, without purposes, without self-respect. No wonder though the last accounts we find of him state that the gentlemen of White's Club were shocked by seeing his head sticking between the iron bars of the attic in No. 27, St, James'sstreet, in which he was confined insane for the last five years of his life.

Again, speaking of history, the critic proceeds:

There is no history of England in existence which a wise father can place in the hands of his family with safety. Instead of wishing our children to regard the past through the spectacles of a Hume or a Clarendon, we should teach them to laugh at it all. To make scoundrelism seem splendid was the aim of both historians, and, as a consequence, to paint nobleness and sanctity in the colours of baseness and hypocrisy. The more closely his period is studied, and the more clearly its facts appear, the mendacity of Clarendon becomes manifest, conspicuous, and revolting. Long known to have been as remote from fact in his history as he was from faith in his creed, Hume is now-a-days celebrated by his apologists only as the writer of a brilliant historical fiction. Now, viewed in this light, we have small admiration for the work of Hume. It is a dull romance-a prosy poem. Merits of style it undoubtedly possesses. Had not, however, grave authorities of church and state taught the last generation to believe it to be true, and the perusal of it therefore a

duty, few would have travelled to the end of the long colonnade of pillars of polished ice of which the glittering and unsubstantial fabric is built. Hume was careful to erect only a monument to his own ingenuity. Hume saw not God in history. In the ways of Providence there was nothing divine for him. The proverb tells us what to think of an undevout astronomer, and unquestionably a more favourable opinion is not to be formed of a godless historian.

The following is his theory of laughter:

Laughter is caused by sudden collisions of ideas, or assemblages of ideas. When objects are represented with qualities the opposite of their own, the clash of the ideas and of the opposite feelings in the mind at the same instant produces the physical expression, laughter. It is the utterance of a sudden conflict of emotions. To illustrate this explanation: a smart little girl, brought up in the Presbyterian church, when she was taken to an Episcopalian church for the first time, saw, to her astonishment, a clergyman preaching in his surplice. She had often seen clergymen in the pulpit dressed in black, but never in white. As she was returning home, the phenomenon occupied her thoughts, and at last she said," Mamma, what a hurry that clergyman must have been in this morning to be obliged to preach in his night-shirt!" Here two opposite assemblages of ideas clash in all minds acquainted with the meanings and associations which cluster round those resembling, but different articles, the surplice and the night-shirt. This was not the case in the mind of the child. Brought up in ignorance of the priestly pretensions and superstitions of which the surplice is the symbol, she saw nothing but a night shirt. In her mind there was no collision of ideas, and for her there was therefore no laughter. A young clergyman of our acquaintance is habituWhen ally blunt and honest in conversation. examined for holy orders, the bishop asked him what his motives were for desiring ordination. "Chiefly pecuniary, my lord," was the prompt and truthful reply. This anecdote excites laughter by clashing the ideas proper to the desire for ordination, with the improper ideas, which everybody knows are very often the real motives for seeking the holy office.

The article closes with the following generally just observations:

It is a joyful thing, that in our day wit and ridicule have taken the side of the people and of progress. From the Restoration to the Georgian era-from Samuel Butler to Theodore Hookthe wits have been the tools of courts and parties. Ridicule was called the test of truth at the Restoration, and wit was used as a weapon against everything sacred, or beautiful, or noble. Ridicule is as much a test of truth as it is a test of medicines, but it is a powerful and valuable instrument in the service of any cause.

Each fool still hath an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side. Wit is most valuable as a means of gaining attention to truths and facts which are shut out from many minds, by headstrong prejudices and selfish interests. The tinklings of the cymbals of wit gather audiences to hear ideas. The last seven years has seen wit and ridicule change

their service. They have doffed the plush liveries. A new generation of wits has arisen, who have disdained to serve either courts, aristocracies, or parties. The jesters have refused to serve successively the courts and the factions of the noblesse, and will now be merry only in the cause of right and man. The wits were long the Swiss of literature, ready to do battle for anything which could pay them, either with pelf or puff. However, another, a better, a noble breed of wits has now shone forth, who seem animated with the desire chiefly to make the world benefit by their being in it.

Among this new race of light writers Mr. A'Beckett holds a distinguished place. He carries their spirit, principles and purposes into the past. To him we shall look for a compendium of English history, which may be safely placed in the hands of our children,— a history in which rouged licentiousness will not be passed off as beautiful-in which selfishness, though throned, crowned, sceptred, and jewelled, will be shown to be baseness still-a simple manly book on the side of the people, because their cause is one with justice and right.

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Well, if we must have "fun," "puns,' and "ridicule," let it by all means be on the conditions above specified-" on the side of the people, and of progress;" but truth compels us to say that, had we a choice, we should rather dispense with the services of "fun and puns;" while, in certain circumstances, we should not object to a little ridicule. We cannot but regret that the high authority of the Eclectic Review should be given to the principle conceded in this article. Splendid wickedness, we grant, may have somewhat to fear from such assailants; but, assuredly, the cause of serious piety has very little to hope-nay, we think it has much, very much to apprehend. On this ground we feel constrained reluctantly to record our most emphatic dissent from the opinion of the reviewer, when he says the Comic History "may be safely placed in the hands of our children."Far from our children, and the children of England, be all such lessons of levity and drollery, nonsense and absurdity! "Puns" and contrite prayer, "fun" and godly fear, are ideas which ill accord. We cannot conceal our serious dread of "this new race of light writers." conviction is deep, painful, and unalterable, that they are operating most injuriously on the religion of the country. This is a matter which, in more than one way, deeply concerns the "man of God." The spirit of Paul cannot be amalgamated

Our

with the spirit of "Punch." They are as opposed as light and darkness. It is not enough that the ministry remain safe from this spreading pestilence; it behoves that ministry, in all possible ways, to denounce and obstruct it. Wherever this spirit prevails, it is the death of gravity, dignity, and spirituality; and without these graces, what is a deacon, a teacher, a parent?

The genius of caricature essentially belongs to Bedlam. In its fuller developments it always indicates some portion of mental derangement. Who can doubt that Gillray, mentioned in our first extract, was a madman long before he stuck his head between the iron bars of St. James's-street? The fact is clear. And are madmen now to become the Mentors of the youth of England? We hope not. Away, then, from the church of God, and from the families which compose it, with all "Comic Histories," "Comic Almanacks,' ," "Comic Annuals," "Comic Periodicals," and, we will add, Comic friends and companions! A world like that we live in a world overflowing with sorrow, and so full of sin and death, is an unmeet theatre for the doings of the jester and the buffoon!

--

So long as this comic genius was satisfied to disport itself within the limits of a paragraph, a page, or even a weekly sheet, if not less dangerous, it was at least less alarming. Now, however, that the punster and the joker and the comic painter have forced their daring way into the path of the historian, and purpose to perform a morrice dance through a march of some two thousand years, it becomes a serious affair. The perusal of the history of this great empire, thus written, would damage the reader, both intellectually and morally, to an extent wholly inconceivable, and inflict upon him wounds which time would not suffice to heal. The danger is fearfully augmented by the fact that poison is poured into the soul through a double channel. The text alone, without the illustrations, would be a source of mighty mischief; but by the union of both, the mischief is doubled. Let it suffice to say that this spirit, with all that comes of it, is expressly condemned both by the spirit and the letter of Christianity.

588

THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS.

TO ADVERTISERS.

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THE FOLLOWING IS THE VERY LOW SCALE OF CHARGES:

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LONDON, DECEMBER 1, 1846.

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If men of Mr. Jarrold's intelligence and respectable position in the community, so completely misapprehend the relations of the Congregational Union to the CONGREGATIONAL LECTURE, it is not to be wondered at that the same error should prevail among classes less favourably circumstanced. The truth is, then, that the CONGREGATIONAL UNION, as such, has no more to do with the subject than Mr. Jarrold himself. The laudable project of the Lecture originated with a few gentlemen forming the Committee of the Library, who incur the risk and the labour on purely public grounds, and without regard

to any personal pecuniary advantages whatever. Their conduct has, from the first, been as disinterested as their object is public-spirited and highly praiseworthy.

In furtherance of the scheme of Cheap Editions of their Lectures, some time ago, we solicited an audience of the Committee, which was most cheerfully given, and the utmost readiness avowed to fall in with any rational plan for the efficient accomplishment of so desirable an undertaking. The matter is still in hand; we are to meet them again; and, we doubt not, that at the beginning of the year something will be done. We are not a little encouraged to proceed by Mr. Jarrold's noble offer, which induces us to pass by his uncharitable insinuation respecting the UNION. We shall open a communication with our friend on the subject, for, as a printer, and publisher, and a practical man, he seems a very likely person to lend efficient aid where aid is most wanted, in realising this glorious scheme.

*** Have we TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND Persons among our readers who will subscribe Eighteen Pence a Quarter for a good volume?

Slavery.

AMONG Christian communities in Scotland an honourable place belongs to the United Secession Church, in relation to American Slavery. While it is by far, the largest and most powerful Dissenting body there, it is inferior to none in the spirit of enlightened policy and Christian philanthropy. In May last it adopted a Resolution" declining Christian fellowship with those CHURCHES WHICH LEND THEIR SANCTION TO SLAVERY." But the

matter did not end there: a Memorial "TO THE CHURCHES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" was likewise adopted at the last meeting of the Synod, which, with the said Resolution, is, we believe, while we write, upon its way across the Atlantic. This admirable document deals as follows with the real or assumed

Legal Difficulty.

It is to be deeply deplored that slavery, in its

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