I scarcely know one amongst my dearest friends, except 'Bunsen, whom I do not believe to be, in some point or other, 'in grave error." We apprehend that these latter passages indicate the direction in which the study of German theology is likely to manifest its effects at the present time. So long as English education and tastes remain what they now are, the whole works of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, might probably be circulated throughout England without gaining as many adherents to the school, for its own sake, as it has produced writers in Germany. Our studies do not dispose us to look with much favour on teachers who seem to shrink from the statement of any positive and definite principle, and whose greatest success is often in disposing the veil of an affected diction, so as most to increase the original obscurity of their ideas. And if the principles of the philosophy were more clear and sure, and better recommended by the sober judgment and temper of their advocates, it would need much boldness to predict their extensive reception in an age so eager in its pursuit of secular advantages, and labouring under a feverish excitement to make progress in a race of which the prize, like the course, is on earth. But in a mind which is engrossed with these material objects, and has learned to look on the discoveries which have been made in connexion with them as the glory and excellence of the age, there is likely to be a mixture of unbelief, false shame, and vanity, which will prepare it for the ready reception of such professedly great and admirable intellectual discoveries; and so we may expect to find among ourselves also persons who will give their judgment that Christianity is the most perfect of all religions, but who will endeavour to reduce its revelations and requirements to the measure which the progress of the age will admit. To such persons the writings of the German school will be serviceable, as furnishing them with critical or philosophical grounds for eliminating those portions of Scripture which are deemed inconsistent with modern culture, because no counterpart to them is found in our present experience; and thus, while less submission and faith are required of the intellect, they will be enabled to contemplate with more complacency the elevation to which their philosophy has raised them. The narratives of Scripture which have provoked the objections or the ridicule of sceptics, may now be referred for their origin to the subjective mind, or the defective apprehension of the reporter; and the constitution of the Church, which has heretofore been believed to be established by a perpetual ordinance of Christ and His Apostles, and 1 Life, i. 405; ii. 270. has thus furnished a test and exercise of the obedience and humility of the members, may now be discarded as earthly and antiquated, or be modified at the dictate of the popular breath.1 It is not, we may well believe, by applying ourselves to the criticism of the Scriptures with a desire to remove whatever may have furnished a ground for objection, and to make them acceptable to the boasted illumination of the age, that we shall present Christianity in such a form as to convey spiritual and moral strength; Divine revelation speaks not as do the Scribes and Pharisees, but with authority, and must be received with humility and submission, if it is to enlighten and purify those who recognise it. In such wise has it ever been set forth by the Catholic Church, which, resting upon the ordinance of Christ, has itself in turn been the pillar on which the truth has been engraved, and set up and made visible to the eyes of men. And though at one time the storm of persecution may assail it, and at another the deceitfulness of unbelief may fret against it, it has a promise of perpetuity which no human invention or institution may boast, and the pride of philosophy-as the pride of power-shall wither before it. Only may English Churchmen remember where their true strength is to be found, and support themselves on God's promise of care and protection, and his gracious gifts to His Church, until this tyranny and presumption be overpast. 1 M. Bunsen's opinion is, that it is a lawful act of national sovereignty,' if Episcopacy be made the badge of Churchship constitutionally and nationally;' but if it be done 'on principle, and Catholically-the death-blow is aimed at that Church's inmost life;' i.e. there is no harm in our receiving it as ordained by the civil authority in any nation, but it is a renunciation of Christianity to look upon it as ordained by our Lord and His Apostles for the whole Church.-Verfassung der Kirche der Zukunft, pp. 409, 410. 396 ART. IV.-Jane Eyre: an Autobiography. By CURRER BELL. Second Edition. Smith, Elder and Co., Cornhill. SINCE the publication of 'Grantley Manor,' no novel has created so much sensation as 'Jane Eyre.' Indeed, the public taste seems to have outstripped its guides in appreciating the remarkable power which this book displays. For no leading review has yet noticed it, and here we have before us the second edition. The name and sex of the writer are still a mystery. Currer Bell (which by a curious Hibernicism appears in the title-page as the name of a female autobiographer) is a mere nom de guerre-perhaps an anagram. However, we, for our part, cannot doubt that the book is written by a female, and, as certain provincialisms indicate, by one from the North of England. Who, indeed, but a woman could have ventured, with the smallest prospect of success, to fill three octavo volumes with the history of a woman's heart? The hand which drew Juliet and Miranda would have shrunk from such a task. That the book is readable, is to us almost proof enough of the truth of our hypothesis. But we could accumulate evidences to the same effect. Mr. Rochester, the hero of the story, is as clearly the vision of a woman's fancy, as the heroine is the image of a woman's heart. Besides, there are many minor indications of a familiarity with all the mysteries of female life which no man can possess, or would dare to counterfeit. Those who have read Miss Edgeworth's Montem, and know how a lady paints the social nature of boys and the doings of boys' schools, may judge e converso what work a man would have made of the girls' school in the first volume of Jane Eyre. Yet we cannot wonder that the hypothesis of a male author should have been started, or that ladies especially should still be rather determined to uphold it. For a book more unfeminine, both in its excellences and defects, it would be hard to find in the annals of female authorship. Throughout there is masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, combined with masculine hardness, coarseness, and freedom of expression. Slang is not rare. The humour is frequently produced by a use of Scripture, at which one is rather sorry to have smiled. The love-scenes glow with a fire as fierce as that of Sappho, and somewhat more fuliginous. There is an intimate acquaintance with the worst parts of human nature, a practised sagacity in discovering the latent ulcer, and a ruthless rigour in exposing it, which must command our admiration, but are almost startling in one of the softer sex. Jane Eyre professes to be an autobiography, and we think it likely that in some essential respects it is so. If the authoress has not been, like her heroine, an oppressed orphan, a starved and bullied charity-school girl, and a despised and slighted governess (and the intensity of feeling which she shows in speaking of the wrongs of this last class seems to prove that they have been her own), at all events we fear she is one to whom the world has not been kind. And, assuredly, never was unkindness more cordially repaid. Never was there a better hater. Every page burns with moral Jacobinism. Unjust, unjust,' is the burden of every reflection upon the things and powers that be. All virtue is but well masked vice, all religious profession and conduct is but the whitening of the sepulchre, all self-denial is but deeper selfishness. In the preface to the second edition, this temper rises to the transcendental pitch. There our authoress is Micaiah, and her generation Ahab; and the Ramoth Gilead, which is to be the reward of disregarding her denunciations, is looked forward to with at least as much of unction as of sorrow: although we think that even the doomed King of Israel might have stood excused for his blindness, if the prophet had opened his message of wrath with a self-laudatory preface and eight closely-printed pages of panegyrical quotations, culled with omnivorous vanity from every kind of newspaper. We select the following extract as an illustration of our remarks-a specimen at once of extraordinary powers of analyzing character and moral painting, and of a certain want of feeling in their exercise which defeats the moral object, and causes a reaction in the mind of the reader like that of a barbarous execution in the mind of the beholder. To render the passage intelligible, it is only necessary to premise that Jane Eyre, the heroine of the tale, is an orphan committed to the care of Mrs. Reed, her aunt, who after maltreating the child till she breaks out into a wild rebellion, sends her to a charity school to live or die as she may. Jane Eyre lives. Aunt Reed is dying, and Jane Eyre is at her bedside. "I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. "I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?" 'I assured her we were alone. One was "Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the other" she stopped. "After all, it is of no great importance perhaps," she murmured to herself: "and then, I may get better; and to humble myself so to her is painful." 'She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation-the precursor perhaps of the last pang., "Well I must give it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell her. Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there." 'I obeyed her directions. "Read the letter," she said. " It was short and thus conceived : 'Madam, 'Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is: it is my intention to write shortly, and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever may have to leave. I 'I am, Madam, &c. &c. 'It was dated three years back. 'JOHN EYRE, Madeira.' ""Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane,— the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me with a man's voice. Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!" Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she required, "think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.' 'She heeded nothing of what I had said; but when she had tasted the water and drawn breath, she went on thus :— 6.66 I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertionexpose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment; my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed, which but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.” "If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness "You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend." "My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you, if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt." As I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed; and again demanded water. I laid her down-for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she |