Whatever may be the fortune of the stupendous fabric at Sydenham, I shall ever think that the removal of the Crystal Palace from Hyde Park, was a detriment to the Metropolis which cannot be too much deplored. The fabric itself is no more. But the recollection of it remains; and whoever visited it, in the brief day of its existence, will acknowledge with gratitude the unexpected privilege of having lived in an age when such an assemblage of human beings, and their works, was, by an approving Providence, vouchsafed, not this nation. merely, but the present generation of men.

Let these few observations suffice for matters which directly appertain to this life only,-a life, at best, so brief as to create surprise that the retrospect of any individual should be capable of embracing the prodigious changes and improvements which little more than fifty years have sufficed to bring about. It is not till we transfer our views from secular to spiritual concernments, and contemplate the progress which religion has made in the last half century, that we see the fullest cause for rejoicing in this, the day of our existence. To go a little farther back than I have yet done-what must have been the state of manners and morals in the reign of George the First, which could admit of such a picture of the total disregard of every thing sacred, as is drawn in a number of the "Daily Post" for 1726:

66

:

Society was so demoralized, that when Catherine Hayes murdered her husband, with the aid of her illegitimate son, and when the mother and son, after pushing the mutilated carcase of their victim under the bed, proceeded to commit a crime more horrible in them than

murder itself, the wits of the day made a joke alike of the assassination and the incest. The wits' were des

formed themselves into

peradoes who assumed that name, 'sword clubs,' and took possession of the town in the dead hours of the night, to the peril of every human being whom at that season they found crossing their path. The 'Bold Bucks' and the 'Hell Fires' divided the Metropolis between them. The latter were content to kill watchmen and simple citizens. Such killing was with them but an act of 'justifiable homicide,' and the inclination for it one of those amiable weaknesses which the young gentlemen of the day looked upon as the most natural thing possible. The Old Bucks,' under their significant device of 'Blind and Bold Love' were however steeped in deeper infamy than their rivals. The beasts that perish were more decent than they, and their very sisters gazed at them with trembling apprehension. All the 'Bold Bucks' were necessarily Atheists. Atheism was one of the indispensable qualifications for admission. Every Sunday they were accustomed to assemble at a tavern adjacent to St. Mary-leStrand,' where, during divine service, they kept a loud band of music continually at work; and after service seated themselves at a banquet, the chief dish being blasphemously named a 'Holy Ghost Pie !'"*

• It is interesting to compare this period with that of James the First, so graphically described by Sir Walter Scott in his "Nigel." How striking is the recurrence of his Belgravian scenes, after the intervening period of the Protectorate-in which the extremes of profligacy were neutralised, in the combination of religious zeal and Christian exertion for the relief of oppressed Protestants, with such extravagances of puritanism as led to the production of that extraordinary work of wit and genuine humour, "Butler's Hudibras!"

As early as the middle of the sixteenth century, the name of Deist was adopted by Freethinkers in France and Italy, who were willing to cover their opposition to the Christian religion by a less repulsive name than that of Atheists.*

They all, accordingly, impugned the divine authority of the Scriptures; and, whilst for the most part professing a belief in the being of a God, they virtually repudiated our Saviour, and spoke of the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists as fables and dreams. Viret, a learned Swiss divine of great eminence among the first reformers, speaks of these Deists as men who held all religion in contempt; but conformed notwithstanding, with regard to external appearances, to the religion of those with whom they were obliged to live, or whom they may have wished to please, or feared to offend. "Some of them professed to believe the immortality of the soul; others were of the same opinion with the Epicureans in this point, as well as with God's providence with respect to mankind, as if He did not concern 'Himself in the government of human affairs. They set up for men of acute and subtle parts, and, restless in their own conceits, they took pains to spread the poison and to infect and corrupt others by their impious discourses and bad examples."

In our own country, the first Deist of any note was Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury; the first edition of whose book, "De Veritate," was published in 1624. He was one of the first who formed deism into a system, and

"A View of the Principal Deistical Writers," &c., by John Leland, D.D.,

5th Edit.

asserted the sufficiency, universality, and absolute perfection of natural religion, with a view to discard all extraordinary revelation as needless.

Next to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, on Dr. Leland's list, is Hobbes, "The Philosopher of Malmesbury," a man of great learning and acuteness, and, apparently by the constitution of his mind, so complete a Pyrrhonist that he found it difficult to believe anything positively except the materiality of the soul. Locke is supposed to have derived many of his opinions from the philosophy of Hobbes, which was likewise more or less adopted by Hartley, Hume, and Priestley.

The writings of Blount, of Toland, and of the Earl of Shaftesbury, of Collins, Woolston, Tindal, Morgan, Chubb, and others, are examined seriatim by Dr Leland, and their objections answered by him with dispassionate fairness, and with the most perfect reliance on the strength of the fortress which he had to defend—not single-handed, for he adduces a conspicuous band of fellow-labourers who wrestled successfully with the enemies of our salvation. All they effected, however, served but to scotch the snake to which, from the middle on to close of the last century, the writings principally of Lord Bolingbroke and Hume contributed to give prolonged vitality. To these the second volume of Dr. Leland's "View" is chiefly devoted, a work replete with instruction, and well calculated to fortify candid minds against the shafts of Deism.

But whether it was owing to the extreme dissoluteness of manners which became fashionable after the restoration of the second Charles, and which did not receive a check

till George the Third and his Queen resolved to set religious examples in their own persons, and to show the nation that vice should be no longer countenanced at Court; or whether the antidote was less diffused throughout the country than the bane had been; certain it is that, at the end of the last century, the religion and morals of England were so insecure, that they became more or less implicated in the flood of infidelity which, spreading from revolutionary France, found its way into this country through various channels.

What must have been the state of religion when men such as Monk Lewis and Tom Payne were capable of gaining extensive popularity; and when Frend, a seditious Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, on being arraigned for trial in the Senate House, could dare to bully the assembled dignitaries of the University, with a man of no less mental power and imposing presence than Milner as the presiding judge; when, in fact, the press was employed as an engine of contamination; and when it was scarcely possible to contemplate with veneration the office and person of a king; or to speak reverently of religion in a promiscuous company without provoking painful opposition ! *

That was, indeed, a day of danger and tribulation, when the sanctions of religion, in abeyance throughout

* A gentleman of the name of Lambert, whom I saw at Truro, after some conversation respecting France, wrote, at my request, the following words, which were uttered by the celebrated Dr. Gale, at a Lecture at Paris at which he was present:

"Je demand pardon à ceux d'entre vous qui croient qu'il y a un Dieu, ou bien plutot, Je vous demand pardon, Messieurs, de supposer que puisse se trouver parmi vous quelqu'un qui croit en Dieu."