the poor man, and finding them clothes him with a sacred power, and adorns him with a celestial glory. Establishments honor the oppressorChristianity the oppressed. An advanced civilization is now teaching that selfishness cannot be dignified by ducal coronets. Selfishness is vice and baseness even while it wields a royal sceptre. According to the noble doctrines now abroad, Genius which betters and blesses the lives of men fills the real thrones of the world.

some dream that the English aristocracy are to | Barbarism connects scorn, contempt, and meancontinue the only instance of their order unre- ness with poverty and weakness; and the Esduced in Europe. Children build castles on the tablished Churches embody the feelings of barsand within tide-mark, and fancy they will not barism by excluding the lowly from power and be demolished by the advancing waves. honor. The religion of the Son of the Carpen"The most ominous quarrel for the aristocra-ter of Nazareth looks only for moral qualities in cy is that begun in England and completed in Scotland with the clergy respecting ecclesiastical power. The principle of the letter of Sir J. Graham, by alienating all earnest clergymen from connexion with the aristocracy, must in the end wither the arm of lordly power. Ministers are the greatest destructives of the day. When the bulk of the people of the Established Kirk leave her, they escape from her aristocratic influences. Moderate parsons, by taking the stipends and doing the bidding of the patrons, will not thereby become a link between them and the population. The passions and principles which in Scotland demand the reduction of aristocratic power, have hitherto been greatly restrained by the Evangelical clergy-thanks to the Peel Ministry, the restraint has become an impetus. Aristocratic doctrines will, undoubtedly, be taught for the aristocratic stipends. But, like Dean Swift, when his audience consisted of his clerk only, the preachers will have to say instead of dearly beloved brethren, Dearly beloved Roger, be a Tory.' The bits of bread will buy the bits of sycophancy. Hitherto, at most of the elections since the Reform Act, the Evangelical clergy have voted for the Tories, and to their influence over the political serfs of the counties coes the aristocratic party owe its position. This will never happen again. At the next general election, happen when it may, the Tories will have nothing to back them but the brute power of property.

Now, by their secession, the most loved and influential of the clergy of Scotland will insensibly and unconsciously become teachers of these democratic views of dignity. They may not become politicians; but they cannot prevent their influences from making democracy still more than it is a part of the sacred convictions of the Scotch. The Free Kirk will be to the upper classes of the towns, and the middle classes of the agricultural districts, a most powerful teacher of the doctrines which make men greater and lords less.

"Ministers have weakened the hold, the moral hold which the aristocracy have on their lands. The Conservatives have unsettled property. They have declared to all the world that clergymen can derive incomes from land only on terms deemed sinful by all churches. Subjection to Cæsar in the things of God is the indispensable tenure of tiends and tithes. Even stipends from land can be held only by allowing the aristocratic will to lord it over the sacred rite “ By the secession of the Evangelical party, of ordination. Thousands, however, of the best the aristocracy will lose dignity. They may minds in the three kingdoms judge the right of not see how this will happen; but they will find the clergy to their endowments to be superior it to their cost. They will have yet to pay a and stronger than the title of the landlords to high price for their patronage in filling the va- their estates. They would blot the baronial cancies. The Moderate Erastian, anti-Evan hall from the landscape sooner than the church gelical Establishment has not had, and when with its skyward spire. The reason why clergythe vacant stipends have found lifters will not men should enjoy the fruits of the soil, seem to have, any moral influence, over the people. them stronger than the reasons for giving the They will be odious to all men, and will involve aristocracy a monopoly of the earth. The clergy their patrons in their odium. Were I asked to they think came better by their property than name one of the worst effects of Church Estab- the aristocracy. When certain barons and chieflishments I should say-they neutralize the tains were asked of old to show the titles by Christian idea of dignity. The servant is great- which they held their lands-they drew their est in the New Testament-the lord is greatest swords. A soldier laid a village in ashes and in the Established Churches. A God-like dig-strewed it with the corpses of its owners, and nity, according to Christianity, invests the ser- thus his blood-covered sword made him lord of vant who, victorious over selfishness, does, the village. A chieftain and his clan seized a makes, and suffers most for others. According district, and held it by the sword, making the to Establishments, power and honor, the appoint- eagle's feather in his bonnet the symbol of his ment of the pastor, the highest place, the pew | sovereignty over hill, and vale, and stream. adorned with armorial bearings, the glaring es- Time puts his cloudy hand over these transaccutcheon, the black hangings, and the bannered tions. The descendant of the feudal baron is tomb, belong to proud and triumphant Selfish-clad in ermine instead of mail, and the chief of ness, riding in painted coaches, clothed in er- the clan is seen oftener in the clubs of Pallmall mine, and tricked out in stars, swords, and coro- | than on the heather of his native hills. But men nets. In the Bible glory is a radiance from the now-a-days suspect there is nothing high, holy, man: in the Establishments the honor follows noble, or divine, in what was done either by the the accidents. Christ says, honor most those sword or by time. Many see nothing but bold who are most successfully unselfish-asistocratic selfishness in these affairs. An owner of land, churches say by all their peculiar influences, hon-awakened to religious views, feels that he canor most those who are selfish most successfully. not better bestow a part of it than by giving it

to keep up for ever a church, and a clergyman | "to beg him not to banish the Gospel." to teach the grandest doctrine his heart can con- He could not see what the Gospel had to do ceive the divine ideal of self-sacrificing love, with the matter, and was angry with them. the awful fact which exhibits God in his blood Perhaps this chieftain will permit us to ask for sinners. Hence Church property. It is perceived that the clergy, however sluggishly, do if the preservation of the hereditary affecsome work for society in return for their incomes. tion of his clan is not truer Conservatism The aristocracy do nothing. Opinion is the than marking his disapprobation of their creator of law which again makes and unmakes Church principles in a way to alienate their property. Why should property of a base be affection for ever. Many Highlanders said, more secure than property of a holy origin? when they heard how the Kirk had been Why ought men who teach morals, console the sick and give future hopes to the dying, to hold treated, "There will be bonnets on the their incomes from land on a tenure of sinful green." Religious principles and religious subserviency to men who spend their lives in feelings are thus brought into hostility with making laws for their own interests, indulging lordly privileges, and aristocracy rashly their appetites, basking aloft in sunshine amidst tries a fall with Evangelical Christianity. the clustered fruitfulness of the land? Why is By refusing sites for Free Churches on their it right to allow every lordling at will, although estates, the aristocracy are making the vital his will may be formed by the most skeptical and the most libertine influences of the age, to domi-religion which has just displayed its power neer over the Church of God and trample under so strikingly inimical to them and their foot the cross of Christ? Such are the questions privileges, the security of their property, let loose by the folly of the Government on the minds, not of the revolutionary poor, but of the thoughtful and devout Kirkmen and Churchmen of these realms. Sir James Graham has brought a glare as from a revolutionary torchlight upon the foundations of aristocratic property.

"To me the fall of the Kirk is the only precursor of the fall of the Peerage. The praises which have been sounded in high places upon the distinct committal of the Government to the enforcement of spiritual duties by civil penalties, is ominous of the addition of the clergy to the multitudes already bent on the destruction of feudal aristocracy. The omen reminds me of a dream of the last Countess of the ancient family of the Keiths, Earls of Marischal. She dreamt she was standing on the land eyeing with pride the noble castle of Dunotter, which, built on granite, frowns defiance on the ocean, dashing against its rocky feet. A company of priests appeared in their robes, walking in solemn procession, chanting hymns, and sat down and began chopping the rocks on which the castle rests, with their penknives. The Countess laughed at them, she shouted to them derisively, and clapped her hands in scorn of them. However, while she gazed, the clergy disappeared, the rocks and walls rent and fell into the sea, and nothing was left to be seen of the great castle, except fragments of furniture floating on the waves.

"The aristocracy cannot afford to quarrel with the clergy."

and the maintenance of their dignity. When refused sites for Churches, devout Free Kirkmen exclaim, "The earth is the Lord's. Who gave you a right to refuse a spot on it for the worship of the Creator of it? Did you make the land? Did you get it from the Maker of it to prohibit his worship upon it?" Such were the words addressed the other day by a Conservative Free Kirkman to a Tory Peer. They show that the misconduct of Tory ministers and Tory lairds has injected into the minds of men (but yesterday the breakwater between Aristocracy and the surges of Democracy) the very central ideas of Revolutionary Chartism. The true Conservatives of their order are the Fox Maules, the Patrick Stewarts, and the Breadalbanes, who try to win for Aristocracy the love of religious Scotchmen.

We conclude our desultory remarks with a few words respecting what ought to be done with Lord Aberdeen's bill, the posi tion of the Professors who have seceded, and what we think the present duties of Voluntaries and Radicals in Scotland.

Lord Aberdeen's bill has, it is said, reached the commons, only in consequence of his threatening to resign his office if his colleagues did not overcome their repug

Since the above was written, new facts have abundantly confirmed the argument.nance to it and support it. Shrewd people A Highland chieftain with whom we had a chat the other day, not on his native heather but in a gorgeous club in Pallmall, told us the following incident expressive of some of the consequences of this question in reference to aristocratic property. He found one morning recently, between sixty and seventy of his poor people assembled before his house in the Highlands. He went down to them. "They had come," they said,

always suspect a man of the vices of which he loudly accuses others, and this bill gratifies the clerical ambition of the Muir party, a clerical ambition of which the Chalmers party was falsely accused. The party who have left the Establishment rejected the bill of the Earl of Aberdeen, because it enabled Presbyteries to lord it over the people. Apparently the bill gives the Presbytery the whole power of deciding upon the

from memorializing every Town Council to avert the spectacle of highly-paid clergymen without congregations. Carping at the Free Kirkmen does not seem to be quite so much their duty as co-operating with them on the point of agreement-to avert from Scotland the calamity of an Ecclesiastical Establishment like that of Ireland. J. R.

DISSOLVING VIEWS.

BY MRS. ABDY.

admission of a presentee to a benefice, but] of Presbyteries and Courts of Tiends, and they must record their reasons for the re- legal opinions ought not to prevent them vision of the Civil Courts. The Church Courts are empowered to decide absolutely on the objections of the people and intrude any man they like in defiance of them. Before they can reject the presentee of the patron, their reasons must be such as will seem satisfactory in a court of civil law. Seemingly the measure cuts right down between the patron and the people, but the ecclesiastical Foreign Secretary takes care to put the poisoned side of the knife towards the people. The facetious illustrations of its absurdity which we have seen, however witty, have not been quite apt. It does not lock the door of the stable when the steed has been stolen, but it creates a disturbance among the horses that remain. It is not a case of a surgeon who, having brought his instruments, performs the operation although the patient is dead; it is a case of a surgeon who, missing the patient that called him in, operates on the first person that falls in his way. But no Tory surgery will save the Kirk. The Conservatives, whether Whig or Tory, will not be able to maintain for one million an intolerable burden on two millions of Scotchmen. life has fled from the Kirk. The spirit of John Knox has left it. The genius of Presbyterianism is gone. The Establishment is a corpse without salt on its breast.

The

The Professors of the Universities are bound to sign the Confession, conform to the worship, and refrain from injuring the Establishment of the Church of Scotland. The object of these conditions was to keep out Prelatists. An attempt is made to enforce this act against the separating Professors, beginning with Sir David Brewster, who is distinguished from his colleagues in St. Andrew's by being known to Europe. The object of this act was the protection of the constitutional settlement of 1690. Sir D. Brewster and the separating Professors have left the Establishment in adherence to this very settlement. It will be strange indeed, if adherence to the thing the act protects should subject them to its penalties, while Prelatical Professors are allowed to remain unmolested. Surpassingly odd will it be should the act be used to turn out the sort of persons it was enacted to keep in, while it keeps in precisely the sort of Professors it was passed to keep out.

A few words to Radicals and Voluntaries. Why have they not seized the initiative in a movement for the reduction of the churches in all the cities. Surely their principles require this of them. Obstacles

From the Metropolitan.

ARE they not wondrous? how the sight
Revels in changes quick and bright,
Less like the work of mortal hand,
Than some gay scene of fairy-land:
Lo! from our fixed and rapt survey
Object by object melts away,
Yielding their shadowy forms and hues
To merge in fresh Dissolving Views.
The ancient castle seems to shine
Reflected in the clear blue Rhine,
Anon, the proud and stately tower
Becomes a simple woodbine bower;
Swift sailing ships, and glittering seas,
Change to the churchyard's mournful trees,
Whose dark and bending boughs diffuse
Shade o'er the dim Dissolving Views.

How sad a tale of truth ye tell,
How do ye bid the spirit dwell
Upon the change, the dream, the strife,
The mockery of human life!
Soon is each fleeting joy o'ercast,
Nothing that glads our eyes can last,
Rich sunlight may the scene suffuse,
But ah! it gilds Dissolving Views.
The banquet-hall becomes the shed,
The battle-field the lowly bed,
The hero sinks into the slave,
The altar changes to the grave;
Forms of young loveliness and bloom
Shine forth and fade-we mourn their doom,
Till Time, to soothe our grief, renews
The bright and false Dissolving Views.

In every season, clime, and age,
Poet, historian, and sage,
Warn us distrustfully to meet
Life's frail and flattering deceit;
But ye in graphic might arise,
Bringing the lesson to our eyes,
We look, and pensively we muse
On once beloved Dissolving Views.

Nor idle is your fair array,
Surely a moral ye convey,
Bidding us prize that far-off home,
Where shade and change shall never come;
And, as your phantom world departs,
We sorrow for the spell-bound hearts,
Who smile to greet, and weep to lose
Earth's varying Dissolving Views!

AMERICAN POETRY.

From the Dublin University Magazine.

But in the case of England and America, and in that case alone, we can approach the point of divergence, and watch the process of separation from its commencement. The Poets and Poetry of America. With an Mankind will eventually have an opportu Historical Introduction. By Rufus Wnity of examining by proof all those nice Griswold. Philadelphia: Cary and Hart. and refined questions which only an argument of remotion was before able to solve for us; it has the process going on under its eyes, and it may test by actual experiment all that was hitherto but theory and deduction.

1842.

doubt be the first to alter, as may be expected, it being there that the process is left to itself, and in it we could, if we were so disposed, and that our space and subject admitted of it, even now exhibit very remarkable variations, not only in words, but in idioms and forms of expression. American literature has hence a double interest with Englishmen. For a philological inquiry mixes itself with it, and urges attention as a matter of duty, where inclination would have already recommended it. It is not our part, however, to point out examples of what we have been noticing, either directly or by the selection of our quotations. It is enough to denote the com. mencing existence of such changes, and recommend it as a subject worthy of national observation.

In general, the point of divergence of two languages originally one, is concealed in the obscurity of unapproachable antiquity. That ramifications have taken place naturally, since the miracle of Babel, we For all the efforts of America to preserve have every reason to believe-but we only an identity of language with us (the only discover the streams where they are far thing she seems to wish to follow us in) apart, and it is a work of difficulty and un- will not avail to resist the immutable law certainty to trace them up to their original which ordains that nations removed shall diffluence. There are many curious cir- not be identical in any one particular; and cumstances which must strike even the even from her literature she will not long most superficial philologist in returning up be able to exclude the elements of change, these streams. The few parent-fountains which in the volume before us begin to forming the miraculous origin of each great make a show, and give an exotic tint to family of tongues, preserve their distinctive the blossoms-and there are many bright characteristics through endless combina- ones-with which it is overspread. The tions, and tend to imprint on their deriva- vulgar tongue it is, however, which will no tives corresponding varieties of character and expression, according to their combination and arrangement. For it is of such materials that a spoken language is composed, and from such materials alone it can be modified and inflected. No power of taste, custom, or circumstances can do more than qualify one language by the admixture or extraction of other known ones; nor can the utmost ingenuity of man create new elements out of which to supply, enrich, or strengthen the current media of expression. But, subordinate to these great distinctions, there are wide differences where we can trace an original unity at a period more recent than the confusion of tongues, and in which the divarication has been caused by natural circumstances, such as the migration of tribes, colonization, conquest, geographical position, or The endeavor to hold strictly to English the long-continued friendship or hostility in literature has had its cramping effect on of neighboring nations. To apply our- the powers of American poets. In prose selves to the examination of such matters the restraint is not equally felt, or at least can never be unprofitable, even in the un- does not so severely cramp the author; certainty in which they are wrapped-we and accordingly their prose compositions say uncertainty, for we have only the in- are many of them bold, natural, and rich. ternal evidence of a language as it is, for But in verse it is essential that there should our guide; as in geology we are unable to be an entire freedom from restraint-an discover any authentic history to assist our independence of expression as well as of researches. Man in his earlier state was thought; nor has any poet ever been able as utterly unconscious of the philosophy of to show a bold and vigorous originality his language as of that of his mind; and hence we must be content to meet with those difficulties by which observation upon the casual relics of unobserved changes will ever be accompanied.

who has been obliged to watch his expressions as they arose in his mind, and square his words when written according to an unfamiliar vocabulary. Hence there is timidity and restraint in all their poetical

efforts they are laboriously correct, but But after all it will be better to give the undaring and tame; and a general absence reader an opportunity of judging for himof forcible metaphor, novel and striking self. And we purpose, in doing so, to use metre, startling eccentricity, and success- all possible impartiality in the selection, ful innovation, mark the uneasy anxiety which must after all be but a scanty gleanafter English which guided their composi- ing from such a field. It was about the tions. Of course, in so voluminous a mis-close of the seventeenth century that the cellany as that before us, this assertion will shell was first sounded beyond the Atlantic be qualified with exceptions-one must be by bards of English descent. For, quaint obvious, that of Maria Brooks's poetry, and grotesque as were the productions of (Maria Del' Occidente,) of which wild and those worthies, Folger, Mathew, and Wigreckless vigor is one of the high charac-glesworth, the circumstance of their being teristics. It must be remembered, how-published in America does not in itself conever, that she, like Irving, was a long resi-stitute them American poetry-the authors dent in England, and benefited moreover were English born, and would probably by the critical care, advice, and assistance have put forward their absurdities at home, of Southey, in whose house she was for a if they could have found a printer-with considerable time domesticated. this difference, that their names and books

99 66

1640, and wrote an astounding epic, entitled "New England's Crisis," about the year 1676. Besides this "great epic," he wrote," says the editor of the collection before us, "three shorter poems, neither of which have much merit."

In these higher qualifications, then, we would have been already in the tomb of are bound to record American deficiency."all the Capulets." The true commenceGenius, the transfiguration of the beautiful ment of American song is with Benjamin into the sublime, the wings upon the head Thompson, "y renowned poet of New and feet, the magic wand of inspiration, are England." He was born at Quincy, in not there. Like elegant translations, or accurate copies, these writings please and satisfy, but do not move us-we admire and approve, but must refuse homage; and delightedly admit them to the shelves of our library, while we must exclude them from the sanctuary of our hearts. In such It is attempted to be proved in this vola position, however, they stand becoming- ume, that very little poetry worthy of prely-they have many claims on our regard, servation was produced in America before and in one or two points, we are bound to the period of the revolution; in fact, till confess, put to shame our own modern the spirit of freedom began to influence the school. A healthy and wholesome spirit national character. "The POETRY OF THE of thought and morality uniformly pervades COLONIES," says the editor, "was without their pages a simple and safe tone of feel- originality, energy, feeling, or correctness ing is caught, we trust, from the tastes of of diction." Nothing is more easy to make their readers, and conventionally purifies than such an assertion-nothing more easy their lays; there is little that is false or af- to prove. A little judicious selection in fected in sentiment, much less of what is both periods will make it all plain; but, pernicious or demoralizing, in the large even giving him credit for making a fair collection they have sent over to us in this selection from the colonial bards, will the volume; or if the former admission is too specimens he produces support the implied strong, we may safely allow it as far as assumption that the "spirit of liberty" has morbid and unhealthy sentiment is con- begotten "originality, energy, and freecerned. There is also an absence of per- dom" in the later bards of his country? sonal and political acrimony, singular We hesitate in replying to the question. enough in a people, who in plain prose At least we are unable to observe the must be admitted to possess a national tal-strong demarcation between the two perient for invective, whetted by constant practice, and which either argues the cau tious and rigid selection of the editor, or else how completely the bards of America keep in their minds the identity of poetry and fiction; and we have a right to thank them that on such ground at least they can lay aside inveterate habits, and allow their imagination to give practical efficacy to the precept "Peace, good will towards

men."

VOL. III. No. III. 21

ods which he would have us recognize.

Philip Frenneau was the most distinguished poet of the revolutionary time. Out of his voluminous compositions, the editor has been able to extract a few detached scraps, fit to be ranked in a "select" collection. The equivocal merit of his verse makes us the more regret not being indulged with a little of his prose, which, as Mr. Thomas modestly remarks, "combined the beauty and smoothness of Addi