and heart. The poor child of love, abandoned in her cradle, reared by a kind-hearted blue-stocking, who neglects her charge whilst she is forming a theory how to educate her, grows up the child of nature and of impulse, listening to all their promptings, good and evil; and most touching indeed, and very natural, is her despair at the death of her benefactress, and nobly is her recollected love for her, odd and uninviting as she had seemed to the world, contrasted with her contempt for the beautiful and courtly mother who had abandoned her infancy for pride and interest, when she is casually recognised by her in the studio of a painter, her second benefactress. Finely, too, is given the sort of affection, with its effect on the heart-full girl, which the painter feels, from her eyes rather than her heart, for her beautiful model. Here is a quotation to prove how well the author could enter into that exquisite sense of a painter's eye :—

"To him a green leaf standing out on the blue ground of the sky is an inexhaustible subject of study. How that raw green tint can blend itself with so much softness into that clear and sharplydefined blue? By what artifice can they be so harmoniously united? And then those floods of limpid light, which come and bathe all objects, and soften them by surrounding them with a semi-diaphaneity! How to spread that transparent void of ether on an opaque canvas, with opaque colours? How paint those irised edges of the leaf, which are not green and are not yet blue? By what insensible gradations blend them in the vapoury atmosphere? And that insensible movement of the air which gives a gentle breathing to all objects, and hides their outline by ever displacing them-how imitate its ever-moving uncertainty?"

The child of nature loves at length, with all the energy of her impulses truly, devotedly, not wisely-and when a cloud came between her and her lover, "as it always happens, it was the one who loved with the most entire abnegation, who received and who bestowed on herself the bitterest reproaches." She refuses marriage, because she will not substitute duty for inclination, or bring down her dream of love to the cares of a wife and the forms of the every-day world; and when her lover is about to leave her for a time she stabs him in her jealousy, intending also to stab herself, that they may die together, but unluckily finds she cannot pull out the dagger for that purpose without hurting him. She is thrown into a prison, where are some fine scenes: the pitiless horror of her lover and her artist friend for her crime; the disgust (at her appearance, worn by sickness and remorse) of the artist eye, as it alone wakes in the wretched cell to watch over her; the noble anxiety of her

young advocate, to whom she had refused any information or gloss to save herself. Yet it is with horror she receives her condemnation. Some pious visitants in this her extremity pity and convert her, and she, strong in her new faith, rejects the anxious endeavour of her now forgiving lover to save her, and, we suppose, dies on the scaffold. Strange as the character is, thus summed up, we feel most painfully the trying, lonely path, and the terrible fate we are thus introduced to.

We have seen the exaggerations of the "power and passion" school much more ingeniously and spiritedly shown up than in Les Romans et le Mariage;' and the expedient of making the realization of the romantic beau ideal turn out a madman escaped from his keepers, is poor enough; yet it is a book intending to recommend morality with all its power, rather pleasantly written, and containing some ingenious thoughts. The following is naturally enough suggested by the tendency of so many novels:

"Those who place the whole of life in love condemn to suicide nine-tenths of the human race. Out of every ten men there are five, at least, who love without being loved, and four who have passed the age of loving."

In this story we have again the creed of self-sacrifice in the form of a noble philanthropy. Here, as is usual in French tales, the refuge of the disappointed man is not in a Brummelish misanthropy, such as we find his English prototype flying to, but in earnest and active exertion for a portion of that people, whose interests are so rife and whose existence is so mighty in French literature.

We return, then, to what we began with. There is a great vitality in this literature; though unfinished, immature, it will and must one day strongly affect ours. We English do not yet give much welcome to its lighter portion. We are too near, and not near enough. A language of which every one acquires a smattering, does not possess sufficient dignity to invite attention from the learned, except for the important matter it conveys. We even translate from it carelessly, adopting every word we cannot easily render, and thus entering little into the new beauty and riches which it has been acquiring by such a wise and copious widening and extending of its power and spirit, to embrace the new meanings and even new melodies from other tongues, without losing sight of its own genius. And when it is finished and mature, shall we then be ready to receive it? Perhaps not. It is not till after the grand epoch of a literature, that it finds its way into the hearts of other lands.

VOL. XXXI. No. I.

H

There is ever in the crowned potentates of literature something lofty, unyielding, separate, that requires us to begin with reverence to admire, ere we can admire. It is the works of lesser mark or beginning decay, which succeed a great era, that first find their way into foreign countries: we are only now going back to the loftiest productions of Goethe and Schiller. How long was it ere Shakspeare ceased to be called a barbarian-and when will Wordsworth be known beyond our shores?

F. B.

ART. IV. — The Reports of the Commissioners on Religious Instruction in Scotland.

THE

HE subject now to be discussed is exciting intense interest in Scotland, and is, in its principle and relations, of no ordinary importance to the nation generally. It is proper, therefore, that all who would understand aright the leading movements of the day, and form a just estimate of the duties they impose, should examine into its merits. As our readers can hardly understand the real state of the question without knowing the state of the parties between whom it is contested, a few remarks may be premised on the ecclesiastical denominations and differences of the Scottish population.

The doctrinal articles of the Kirk of Scotland are, as is well known, fundamentally the same with those of our English Establishment, both being Calvinistic. There is not the same agreement in church-government, Episcopacy being established in the southern, and Presbytery in the northern, division of the island. A Presbyterian Church, where the theory of its constitution is fully reduced to practice, forms a spiritual republic. Each congregation chooses its office-bearers, consisting of a minister, who both rules and teaches, and elders, who rule, but do not teach; and these elders, with the minister presiding over them, constitute the Session, or lowest court by which ecclesiastical causes can be tried and decided. An appeal lies from the Session to the Presbytery, from the Presbytery to the Synod, from the Synod to the General Assembly; all which judicatories, though differing in gradation of power and comprehensiveness of jurisdiction, are representative in their character, and should consist of ministers and elders popularly elected.

Such is the Church of Scotland theoretically; and if such had

been its actual condition, there would have been no dissent from its communion, or the numbers dissenting would have been few and without influence. A wide departure from the doctrinal tenets of the Church on the part of many of its ministers, created, at an early period, great offence to their brethren and to a vast body of the people.

The civil establishment of religion is sometimes defended as securing the perpetuity of an orthodox faith. It betrays singular inconsideration to put forward such an argument, when most of the reformed churches of Europe, holding connexion with the State, have articles of one creed, and clergy of another. If it be said that an establishment preserves at least evangelical standards, the advantage is surely equivocal of subscribing what is not believed; and, at all events, the assertion is not borne out by facts, for in some instances, as in the case of Geneva, the standards have been altered in accommodation to the change of sentiment. There has been of late years a growing conformity between the actual faith and the printed confessions of the Scottish Church; but when the Secession originated in 1734, the tendency was very decided to Arminian, and even to Unitarian principles. While novel ideas, differing essentially from the standards of the Church, and therefore esteemed by all who adhered to these standards grossly heretical, were absolutely protected or very sparingly censured by the General Assembly, the rights of the people, in virtue of which they possessed a voice in the selection of their teachers, were assailed and subverted. Popular election had been always qualified in its operation, seldom including a larger constituency than the elders and heritors (landed proprietors), with the consent of the congregation; but even this restricted power was wrested from the religious community, and a system of unrestrained patronage substituted in its stead. Scarcely a vestige of ecclesiastical liberty remained to the communicants of the Scottish Church. Patrons nominated the clergy, the clergy their elders, and nothing was reserved for the laity but oppression and submission. Not contented with a despotic sway over the people themselves, the Assembly exercised a like tyranny over a minority of their own number who espoused the popular cause. They resolved, in particular, that no dissents from their offensive measures should be marked in their minutes, a resolution equalled only by that into which the American Congress has recently entered, that petitions against slavery shall be simply laid on the table, without being discussed or so much as read. This arbitrary enactment was the immediate cause of the secession. Mr Erskine, minister of Stirling, finding the legitimate channel for the relief of his conscience thus summarily shut

against him, boldly, yet temperately exposed the Assembly's errors in a sermon which he delivered as Moderator of the Synod of Stirling and Perth. The Synod, by a small majority, decreed that he should be censured: he appealed to the Assembly; the Assembly confirmed the Synod's deed, and censured the appellant: he lodged a remonstrance against the censure with three of his brethren, for which contumacy they were driven from their pulpits; and thus began that Secession, which now comprehends, not four ministers, but nearly four hundred. *

The Relief body (so called, as affording relief from patronage) is next in magnitude to the Secession, and had a similar origin. As several Presbyteries declined to ordain unacceptable ministers over unwilling congregations, the Assembly appointed committees to supersede these Presbyteries in the discharge of this unwelcome service. The itinerant character of these committees, and the imperfect authority of the Supreme Court over Presbyteries, which their appointment involved, began to bring upon them contempt and ridicule. They were styled in common parlance, "galloping committees." The Assembly determined to terminate this reproach by coercing these refractory Presbyteries into compliance with its mandates. The Presbytery of Dunfermline were accordingly enjoined, in opposition to their convictions and inclination, to carry into effect an unpopular settlement in the town of Inverkeithing; and because Mr Gillespie, one of its members, absented himself on the occasion, he was deposed from the ministry. He had no part assigned him in the services of that ordination was a minister of distinguished amiableness and piety, and was selected for an example (we have it on the authority of Sir Henry Moncrieff, long a distinguished leader of the General Assembly) as being a good, weak man, who was not likely to offer any formidable resistance. Sir Henry thus narrates the facts:

"Mr Gillespie, on whom the severest censure fell, was charged with nothing but his absence from Inverkeithing on the day appointed for the induction of the presentee; for, excepting his attendance, he had no official duty imposed on him which could have been affected by his absence. It has always been admitted, by those who had access to know him, that nothing but what he considered as a sense of duty had prevented him from obeying the appointment of the Assembly. He was indeed one of the most inoffensive and upright men of his time. He was equally zealous and faithful in his pastoral duties, and his private life was irreproachable. His

* For a detailed account of these transactions, see An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Secession Church, by the Rev. John Brown, of Haddington; or, the Life of the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, by Dr Fraser, of Kennoway.