find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as "the watch's hand" for "the hand of the watch!" The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects; and I cannot conclude without insisting on the importance of accuracy of style, as being near akin to veracity and truthful habits of mind: he who thinks loosely will write loosely, and, perhaps, there is some moral inconvenience in the common forms of our grammars which give children so many obscure terms for material distinctions. Let me also exhort you to careful examination of what you read, if it be worth any perusal at all; such examination will be a safeguard from fanaticism, the universal origin of which is in the contemplation of phenomena without investigation into their causes. THE DEPTH OF THE CONSCIENCE.1 Literary Remains. How deeply seated the conscience is in the human soul is seen in the effect which sudden calamities produce on guilty men, even when unaided by any determinate notion or fears of punishment after death. The wretched criminal, as one rudely awakened from a long sleep, bewildered with the new light, and half recollecting, half striving to recollect a fearful something, he knows not what, but which he will recognize as soon as he hears the name, already interprets the calamities into judgments, executions of a sentence passed by an invisible judge, as if the vast pyre of the last Judgment were already kindled in an unknown distance, and some flashes of it, darting forth at intervals beyond the rest, were flying and lighting upon the face of his soul. The calamity may consist in loss of fortune, or character, or reputation; but you hear no regrets from him. Remorse extinguishes all regret, and remorse is the implicit creed of the guilty. TRUTH MUST AND WILL PREVAIL. Aids to Reflection. Monsters and madmen canonized, and Galileo blind in a dungeon! It is not so in our times. Heaven be praised, that in this respect at least, we are, if not better, yet better off than our forefathers. But to what, and to whom (under Providence) do we owe the improvement? To any radical change in the moral affections of man "To set the outward actions right, though with an honest intention, and not so to regard and find out the inward disorder of the heart, whence that in the actions flows, is but to be still putting the index of a clock right with your finger, while it is foul, or out of order within, which is a continual business, and does no good. Oh! but a purified conscience, a soul renewed and refined in its temper and affections, will make things go right without, in all the duties and acts of our callings."-LEIGHTON. kind in general? In order to answer this question in the affirmative, I must forget the infamous empirics whose advertisements pollute and disgrace all our newspapers, and almost paper the walls of our cities; and the vending of whose poisons and poisonous drams (with shame and anguish be it spoken) supports a shop in every market-town! I must forget that other opprobrium of the nation, that mother vice, the lottery! I must forget that a numerous class plead prudence for keeping their fellow-men ignorant and incapable of intellectual enjoyments, and the revenue for upholding such temptations as men so ignorant will not withstand-yes! that even senators and officers of state hold forth the revenue as a sufficient plea for upholding, at every fiftieth door throughout the kingdom, temptations to the most pernicious vices. *** No! Let us not deceive ourselves. Like the man who used to pull off his hat with great demonstration of respect whenever he spoke of himself, we are fond of styling our own the enlightened age, though, as Jortin, I think, has wittily remarked, the golden age would be more appropriate. To whom, then, do we owe our ameliorated condition? To the successive few in every age, (more, indeed, in one generation than in another, but relatively to the mass of mankind always few,) who, by the intensity and permanence of their action, have compensated for the limited sphere within which it is at any one time intelligible, and whose good deeds posterity reverence in their results, though the mode in which we repair the inevitable waste of time, and the style of our additions, too generally furnish a sad proof how little we understand the principles. Still, however, there are truths so self-evident, or so immediately and palpably deduced from those that are, or are acknowledged for such, that they are at once intelligible to all men who possess the common advantages of the social state; although by sophistry, by evil habits, by the neglect, false persuasions, and impostures of an anti-christian priesthood, joined in one conspiracy with the violence of tyrannical governors, the understandings of men may become so darkened, and their consciences so lethargic, that there may arise a necessity for the republication of these truths, and this, too, with a voice of loud alarm and impassioned warning. Such were the doctrines proclaimed by the first Christians to the pagan world; such were the lightnings flashed by Wicklif, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Latimer, and others, across the papal darkness; and such, in our own times, the agitating truths with which Thomas Clarkson and his excellent confederates, the Quakers, fought and conquered the legalized banditti of men-stealers, the numerous and powerful perpetrators and advocates of rapine, murder, and (of blacker guilt than either) slavery. Truths of this kind being indispensable to man, considered as a moral being, are above all expedience, all accidental consequences: for, as sure as God is holy and man immortal, there can be no evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them. It is the very madness of mock prudence to oppose the removal of a poisoned dish on account of the pleasant sauces or nutritious viands which would be lost with it! The dish contains destruction to that for which alone we ought to wish the palate to be gratified, or the body to be nourished. The prejudices of one age are condemned even by the prejudiced of the succeeding ages: for endless are the modes of folly, and the fool joins with the wise in passing sentence on all modes but his own. Who cried out with greater horror against the murderers of the prophets than those who likewise cried out, Crucify him! crucify him! The truth-haters of every future generation will call the truth-haters of the preceding ages by their true names, for even these the stream of time carries onward. In fine, truth, considered in itself, and in the effects natural to it, may be conceived as a gentle spring or water-source, warm from the genial earth, and breathing up into the snowdrift that is piled over and around its outlet. It turns the obstacle into its own form and character, and as it makes its way, increases its stream. And should it be arrested in its course by a chilling season, it suffers delay, not loss, and awaits only for a change in the wind to awaken and again roll onward. The Friend. CHARACTER OF ALFRED. I must now turn to our great monarch, Alfred, one of the most august characters that any age has ever produced; and when I picture him after the toils of government and the dangers of battle, seated by a solitary lamp, translating the Holy Scriptures into the Saxon tongue, when I reflect on his moderation in success, on his fortitude and perseverance in difficulty and defeat, and on the wisdom and extensive nature of his legislation,-I am really at a loss which part of this great man's character most to admire. Yet above all, I see the grandeur, the freedom, the mildness, the domestic unity, the universal character of the Middle Ages condensed into Alfred's glorious institution of the trial by jury. I gaze upon it as the immortal symbol of that age,-an age called indeed dark,but how could that age be considered dark, which solved the difficult problem of universal liberty, freed man from the shackles of tyranny, and subjected his actions to the decision of twelve of his fellow-countrymen? Literary Remains. MILTON. In Milton's mind itself there were purity and piety absolute; an imagination to which neither the past nor the present were interest ing, except as far as they called forth and enlivened the great ideal in which and for which he lived; a keen love of truth, which, after many weary pursuits, found a harbor in the sublime listening to the still voice in his own spirit, and as keen a love of his country, which, after a disappointment still more depressive, expanded and soared into a love of man as a probationer of immortality. These were, these alone could be, the conditions under which such a work as the "Paradise Lost" could be conceived and accomplished. By a lifelong study Milton had known "What is of use to know, What best to say could say, to do had done. To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages coming, in the "Paradise Lost." Literary Remains. PARTY PASSION. "Well, sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partisan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, sir, and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?" "Oh, by no means, madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!" "Well, but, sir, and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?" "Why, madam, he squints, doesn't he?" "Squints! yes, to be sure he does, sir, but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!" Literary Remains. EFFECTS OF NOVEL READING. It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort; the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel reading. Those who confine their reading to such books dwarf their own faculties, and finally reduce their understandings to a deplorable imbecility. Like idle morning visitors, the brisk and breathless periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession; each, indeed, for the moments of its stay, prevents the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but all together they leave the mistress of the house (the soul, I mean) flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational guests. EDWARD IRVING, 1792-1834. Tuis celebrated preacher was born at Annan, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. After finishing his theological course of studies, he officiated in various churches, until he was recommended to the notice of Dr. Chalmers, who engaged him as his assistant in St. John's parish, Glasgow. Here he gained so much reputation, that he was invited to take charge of the Caledonian church in Cross street, Hatton Garden, London; and he entered upon his new field in August, 1822. He had not long occupied it before he attracted very large congregations by the force and eloquence of his discourses, and the singularity of his appearance and gesticulation. Tall, athletic, of a sallow countenance, with a profusion of jet-black hair reaching to his shoulders, added to a strong Scottish accent, accompanied with violent and ungraceful, but impressive gestures; while he was constantly straining after original ideas, embellishing his discourses with the metaphors of poets and philosophers, and adding to the piquancy of his censures by personal allusions and homely truths-all these characteristics tended for a time to give him unbounded popularity, and the great and the wealthy thronged to hear him. But in a few years the tide began to turn: his eccentricity had become familiar, and the curiosity of novelty-hunters was satiated. Envy and jealousy watched his course, and he was formally accused of heresy by the Presbytery of London in 1830. The charges were, that his views of the "atonement, imputation, and satisfaction," were not orthodox, and after a protracted trial he was ejected from his church on the 3d of May, 1832. Soon after this, consumption laid its hand upon him, and he died on the 6th of December, 1834. Dr. Chalmers, on meeting with his senior class at Glasgow, on the morning he heard of Mr. Irving's death, paid the following tribute to his memory: "He was one of those whom Burns calls the nobles of nature. His talents were so commanding, that you could not but admire him; and he was so open and generous, that it was impossible not to love him. He was the evangelical Christian grafted on the old Roman-with the lofty stern virtues of the one, he possessed the humble graces of the other. The constitutional basis and groundwork of his character was virtue alone; and, notwithstanding all his errors and extravagances, which both injured his character in the estimation of the world, and threw discredit upon much that was good and useful in his writings, I believe him to be a man of deep and devoted piety." Mr. Irving's publications were "For the Oracles of God, four Orations: "For Judgment to Come, an Argument in nine parts;" also "Last Days, and Discourses on the Evil Character of the Times:" also Sermons, Lectures, and occasional DisBut of all that he wrote, nothing exceeds, for beauty and eloquence, his Preliminary Essay to an edition of "Horne on the Psalms," from which we extract the following admirably drawn courses. I need not add any further remarks of my own on the character of this excellent man, as in the extracts from Carlyle will be found something far more satisfactory from one who knew him personally. |