last catastrophe of Rome, with Goths, and Vandals, and Visi-Goths, at her gates, and trampling on her provinces, we find the bishop of Arverne and his friends, at a retreat among the mountain-passes, enjoying all the pleasures of the festive board, and as happy as good cheer and hospitable friendship could make them."

tion of the serious readers professing our faith; | paper put that stop to my loquacity which moso that the maintainers of the different opinions desty does not; of which, however, I should on this subject might discuss the grounds upon have been much pleased to give you an account, which some of our greatest divines have con- were I not ashamed to blur over the back of my demned this interpretation as a very sinister paper with my ink. Besides which we are on performance, and to be altogether avoided, al- the point of starting, and we please ourselves though it was so exact a translation of each word with the hope of soon seeing you again, if God and sentence, that neither Apuleius nor Tully permit; and then we shall best commemorate had more faithfully executed, the one the Phædo the suppers we have had with our friends in the of Plato, and the other the Ctesiphon of Demos- suppers we shall exchange with each other, only thenes, as a rule and model for Roman elocu let a complete week first elapse to bring us back tion. With these studies each of us occupied to our appetites, after this luxurious banqueting; himself as he pleased, until a messenger from for a stomach surfeited by luxurious fare is rethe chief cook reminded us that it was time to paired by nothing so much as by stinting it for a think of taking care of our corporeal part: which time." messenger, marking the time by the clepsydra, Upon this the author justly remarks :-"The came very punctually at the fifth hour (11 letter presents an image of more ease and cheero'clock.) Dinner was soon dispatched, after fulness than might have been expected to exist the senatorian custom, according to which a co- at a time when the Roman empire was falling pious repast is served up in a few dishes, al- to pieces, and successive incursions of barbarthough the banquet consisted both of roast and ous and unknown enemies were shaking to their boiled. Little stories were told while we were foundation the elements of society. But there taking our wine, which conveyed delight or in- is a tenacity in the habits of civilized life, and struction, as they happened to be dictated by an exigency in its usages and reciprocities, experience or gaiety. We were decorously, which sustain it in being and operation, amidst elegantly, and abundantly entertained. Rising all the casualties and revolutions to which civilfrom table, if we were at the villa called Voro-ized communities are exposed; and thus in the angum, we retired to our apartments to get our necessaries from our packages. If we were at Prusianum, the other villa, we turned out Tonantius and his brothers, some very select young men of quality of the same standing, to make room for us and our furniture. Having shaken off our after-dinner nap, we amused ourselves with a short ride, to get an appetite for our supper. Neither of our hosts had their baths completed for use, though each was constructing them. But after the train of servants and attendants which I had brought with me had a little respite from their cups, whose brains were somewhat overcome with the hospitable bowls of which they had freely partaken, a sort of pit was dug in haste near a rivulet or spring, into which a quantity of hot bricks were thrown, a circular arbor being made over it by the intertexture of the boughs of willows or hazels, by which the place was darkened, and air at the same time admitted through the interspaces, while a hot vapor was sent through the willows. Here an hour or two passed in the midst of much wit and merriment, during which we were all thrown into a most salubrious perspiration, being enveloped in the steam as it came hissing from the water. When we had been suffused with this long enough, we were plunged into the hot water; and being well cleansed and refreshed, we were afterwards braced by an abundance of cold water from the river or fountain. The river Vuardus* runs between the two villas, and except when it is thickened and discolored by the influx from the snow on the neighboring heights, it is a transparent and gentle stream, with a pebbly bottom, nor on that account the less abounding in delicate fish. I might go on to give you a description of our suppers, which were sumptuous, did not my

"This river runs through the country of the Volca Arecomici into the Rhone, once famous for a Roman bridge and aqueduct, of Roman structure, of which it is said some traces may yet be seen."

THE JEWS OF SPAIN AND THE INQUISITION.

and "

Who would have thought that, in the year 1843, a persecution of the Jews would have commenced in Europe? An edict, extraordinary at this era, though of a class common enough in the good old times, has been issued by the General Inquisitor in Ancona, and other districts in his jurisdiction. This officer, whose name is Fra Vicenzo Salina, of the order of Predicatori, master in theology, in an edict, dated in the Chancellary of the Holy Inqui sition, at Ancona, 24th June, 1843, premising that, it being deemed necessary to revive the full observ ance of the disciplinary laws relative to Israelites, having hitherto without effect employed prayers and exhortations to obtain obedience to cred and Supreme Inquisition of Rome," decrees these laws, authorized by the despatch of the Sathat all Gipsy and Christian nurses must be dismissed from Jewish families, and that Jews are prohibited from availing themselves of the service of any Christian in any domestic occupation whatever," under pain of being immediately punished according to the pontifical decrees and constitutions;" that all Jews possessing permanent or movable property, rents or shares in funds, shall dispose of the same within three months, or the Holy Office will sell it; that no Jew shall inhabit any place where there is no Ghetto, or place of residence for Jews, &c. &c. It is not said whether the Ancona Jews are suspected of any of the pranks imputed to their brethren at Damascus. No part of the secular history of this nation is more remarkable than the barbarous and shameful persecutions they have endured in all times from people calling themselves Christians.-Asiatic Journal.

THE FREE KIRK OF SCOTLAND.

From the Westminster Review.

The People and the Church of Scotland. A
Reply to Sir James Graham and the
Government. By J. White, A. M. Sher-
wood.

THREE years ago we wrote and published an article in this Journal, saying why we thought the Kirk had strong claims on the help and sympathy of every friend of Reform.

At that time this was assuming an unique position. Letters of remonstrance poured in upon the editor. It was deemed necessary to vindicate the article. Many Radicals and Voluntaries could find no better solution of the circumstance than a love of singularity in the writer. Parliamentary Radicals, astonished to find a journal to which they defer taking a course beyond their appreciation, could do nothing but lift up their hands and eyes in amazement.

Three years have elapsed. Whether we or our various critics best knew the men and the principles involved in the subject has been made clear by what, three years ago, was the darkness of the future.

It is a singular satisfaction to the writer, both for himself and the friends who relied on his judgment, that events have justified every one of his views and realized all his anticipations. Differing entirely as he did from almost all the ablest and most experienced men of his party, it will not be egotism, but justice, to show that a love of truth, a knowledge of his subject, to which he could not be false, and not a conceit of singularity, impelled the writer to maintain his unique proposition of friendship to the Kirk.

Nobly have the evangelical parsons vindicated our belief in their honesty and sincerity. About five hundred of them have resigned permanent for precarious incomes, embraced a lower status in society, consented to live on one-half of their former stipends, and disdained a hundred thousand pounds for the sake of their ecclesiastical principles. Knowing from intimacy at school and college, in the play of boyhood, in the business of manhood,-aware long before 1840 that the evangelical Kirkmen were earnest and honorable men, who meant what they said,-it was not a love of singularity, but simply an avoidance of a shameful deviation from veracity, to declare the faith which we had in these parsons.

It

We were told it was a mere struggle for power on the part of the clergy. Their popular cries we were loudly told were mere crafty shams and delusions to hide selfish. ends. Nothing could drive this baseless idea out of the heads of the Radicals. was not an induction from evidence, else a larger and closer scrutiny of the facts on which it rested would have destroyed it. It was in vain to ask these men to look at facts, they could not see them, because their eyes were blinded by the passion of hatred, of which their accusation was only the expression. All over Scotland, as vacancies arose in parishes, the people found that their will had come to be, and the patron found that his will had ceased to be, the dominant thing in the appointment of the pastor. But this fact was disregarded. It was in vain to ask the parson-haters to remember that when the Moderates intruded presentees at the point of the bayonet it was the will of the aristocratic tron which lorded it over every other conLiberals who had known skeptics become sideration; and so determinedly blind were parsons for the sake of tithes, manses, and they, that there was no use in showing them chalders, might well be excused when their that by the Veto Act the popular will, exown minds were imbued with the ideas of pressed by the Vetoing cards of communithe French Revolution, if they exclaimed, cants, had obtained the ascendency. The "Ah! we have no faith in Parsons!" But General Assembly gave the election of we declared our faith in the evangelical par- elders to the people, thus enabling popularsons of the Kirk. We rebuked the narrow-ly-elected laymen to outvote the clergy in ness which calls every kind of honesty dis- all the church courts. The opponents of honest except the kind peculiar to the ac- the Kirkmen could not be made to see that cuser. Against the bigotry which would the whole movement began in a desire on not allow them to be honest because at first the part of the clergy to satisfy the Scripthey did not agitate for the abolition of tural convictions of their people respecting patronage, or immediately separate from the the influence that they ought to have over State, we maintained the wisdom of practical-the election of pastors. Instead of being ness, and the honesty of practical men who do the best they can, seek the best they can get, and love a small good which is to be had better for the nonce than all the grand unattainable abstractions out of St. Luke's. VOL. III. No. III.

20

agitators for clerical power, the clergy were themselves agitated by popular demands, their communicants requiring them to provide for them a voice in ecclesiastical affairs as the only means of preventing them

from joining the Dissenters, among whom State-paid was used by Liberal journals in they would have the power both of electing a way which favored the aristocracy and and ejecting their pastors.

injured the democracy in the distribution It might have been acknowledged, with- of Church power. If there is any truth in out any very great stretch of candor, that the professions of Liberals and Radicals, the an agitation for popular power in the admis- ecclesiastical democracy of Scotland are the sion to benefices was not a very likely rightful owners of Church power in the apscheme for adding to clerical power. The pointment of pastors. But in the recent aim of the movement was to wrest power controversy the clergy have been the chamfrom the aristocracy, and give it to its right- pions of these popular rights, and their opful owners, the people. The friends of ponents have been the professedly Liberal popular rights ought all along to have help-press-the men who claim for themselves ed the Church in her struggles. To give on all occasions the honorable character of the people who previously were scarcely friends of the people. consulted a right to say no-a veto, when The pretext, under color of which the they had no such thing before for a century, Liberal press have masked their hostility to was plainly to increase their power, and popular Church power, has been hatred of decrease the patronate power. Yet the clerical power. By the way, it will not do great majority of journals in Scotland which for them to tell us that they were friendly profess to support the cause of the people, to giving the election of ministers into the occupied themselves in vilifying and de- hands of all the ten-pounders in a parish, faming men at whose hands aristocratic Churchmen and Dissenters. This was never power has sustained greater reductions feasible; and our argument is that the Kirk from whose hands democratic power has communicants were more entitled to be rereceived larger accessions, than from any garded in the State than the patrons, that other men of the present generation in the contest for the power was between the Europe. To make lords less and men communicants and the patrons, and that greater, are the professed objects of the therefore it was the duty of the friends of Liberal press; yet the tendency of the la- popular power to aid the democratic rather bors of most of them were conservative of than the aristocratic claimants. The hatred aristocratic church power. Surely the of clerical power-the outcry against priestcommunicants are worthier depositaries of craft, which these journalists assume to be the State control over the State-paid Church a praiseworthy feeling, was itself in this than the patrons. Let it be granted that, case an illiberal, anti-popular, and anti-deif the State pay the clergy, the State ought mocratic thing. When the people have a to choose them; if the nation supports them, voice in the election of ministers, whether the nation ought to decide who they shall in the shape of a no or an aye, the clergy be. Certainly Liberals cannot consistently can exercise over them only the legitimate maintain that the aristocracy are to be con- influences of wisdom, knowledge, and charsidered the State-the patrons-the repre- acter. The noblest influence one man can sentatives of the nation. Popularly elected exercise over another-the most legitimate, town councils are not the only patrons. desirable, and beneficial, is the power of Most of the patrons are landholders-men convincing his reason, of giving him conwhom Liberals cannot receive as the repre-victions, and determining his conduct by sentatives of the people, nor regard their quickening old or kindling new principles interests as identical with those of the na- in his heart. To give men moral and tion. It is rare Liberalism which would intrust State control over State-paid clergy to an irresponsible aristocracy, rather than to the communicants who belong to the people and are identical with them in all their interests. Who are most the State? The few patrons or the many communicants? In whose hands is any portion of power best placed? The few or the many? According to the opinions of all Liberals, the aristocracy are less identified with the State than the electors or communicants, and are less worthy depositaries of power. But in Scotland, and in some cases in London, the argument of State-control over the

spiritual theories for the guidance of their lives is the highest and most dignified occupation which genius and talent can accomplish. Man cannot do nobler work. If the clergy implant in the minds of the people their own views of Church politics, and the people apply those views to the election of ministers and elders, to vilify this process either quoad the clergy by calling it spiritual despotism, or quoad the people by calling it religious gullibility, is to blaspheme those holy processes of thought appointed for the elimination of all that is good and beautiful in civilization. When men talk of the liberty of the press, they mean by it the

right of one man to form the convictions of hundred disinterested parsons have been many men in the department of morals, found in Scotland. Our surprise has been called politics. But is the press the only excited by the exhibition of a disregard of legitimate disseminator of moral convic-professed principles by the Liberal press, tions? Are the lords of the pen no longer quite as extraordinary as the sacrifices of content with sharing this power with the the free Kirkmen for their conscientious occupants of the professorial chair and the convictions. When, three years ago, we orators of the pulpit, setting up the preten- maintained the duty of helping the Kirk as sion that this power of disseminating con- the popular cause, amidst the numerous victions is legitimate only when used by notices with which our article was honored themselves? Two centuries ago the clergy there was not one single attempt made, wielded the power of forming the convic- though some were promised, to contest the tions of the people in the morality of poli- ground with us by argument, foot for foot, tics as well as in the spiritualities of religion. and inch for inch. We did not maintain a It seems as if the new power were becoming singular opinion: most of the gentlemen of intolerant of the old one, and newspaper highest reputation in London as interpreters editors, after stripping the clergy of their of Liberalism and Democraey coincided in political functions, were resolved to set up our views. They thought it impossible by in their stead, as also the instructors of the any logical process for Liberals to take any people in spiritual concerns. All that can other course than the one we recommended. be required of any men is that the power At the general election almost all the Libthey seek over others shall be the power of eral candidates adopted the views we had mind over mind, of genius over intelligence, promulgated. Those who did not were of intelligence over ignorance, and of in- unseated in burghs, and some of those who tegrity over selfishness. With a negative did won counties. Yet, with few excep. or an affirmative power lodged in the popu- tions, in spite of its principles, the Liberal lar body, the people who aspire to lead them press took an opposite course, and the Nonby convincing them, and to rule them by Intrusionists were obliged to set up journals doing them good, are not actuated by a base of their own. but by a most honorable ambition. Instead To explain this strange fact; the Liberal of the fact of their aspirations entitling them journalists were actuated by a feeling to be abused, they give them claims on the stronger than their love of the rights of the gratitude and affection of their fellow men. people or of fair play to talent. They were We shall be prepared, ere we conclude this animated by a hatred of Evangelism. An article, to show that even if the objects of observer, unsurpassed in this age for his the Evangelical party had been purely cleri- acquirements in the philosophy of politics, cal, without a particle of popular aim in exclaimed to us,-"How much more true them, they would have been entitled to the the newspapers have been to their infidelity help and sympathy of every man capable of than to their democracy!" We may retaking enlightened views of the interests of mark that the infidelity to which these civilization. But in the present case the gentlemen have been true is not the most clergy reserved no power for themselves, except the legitimate influences of superior wisdom. They sought to make the people their patrons. Their object was to make the communicants their masters in the matter of appointment to benefices. When the Liberal journalists opposed and vilified them, they so far betrayed the cause of popular rights, and outraged the great democratic idea of fair play to talent-of the Right of the Fit. In this case, in so far as Liberalism would make the poor stronger, these writers were false to it-in so far as Liberalism would establish the authority of justice and wisdom they thwarted it.

Our purpose in recapitulating these arguments is to direct attention to, perhaps, the most extraordinary phenomenon exhibited by the Kirk question in Scotland. We leave it to others to be astonished that five

liberal or enlightened kind of it at present to be found in Europe. Theirs is a bigoted hatred of earnest belief-the feeling with which the courtiers of Charles the Second regarded the convictions of the Puritans; the hatred of a De Grammont for Cromwell; the fanaticism with which a Voltaire might have regarded a Wesley. To the most enlightened skeptics of London and Paris, fervid Christianity appears to be venerable and beautiful, the divine element in modern history full of blessings to society. They do not scoff-they perhaps envy the men in whose hearts Christianity is enkindled as a living fire. Among the Scotch journalists, however, the scriptural principles which have quickened in the hearts of their countrymen, and led in our day to so many instances of devotion to duty-to so many touching sacrifices for

the cause of God, are regarded as things to to them on account of their vital Chrisbe covered with contempt and crushed with tianity. Looking on Establishments as the ridicule. Sixty years ago Robert Burns pieces of silver given the Church for the was abreast of the literary and philosophic betrayal of her Lord, the Voluntaries despirit of his age, when the satirist of Evan- nounced the Evangelicals as corrupters of gelism he wrote his 'Holy Willie,' and his Christianity. The skeptics abused and Holy Fair' but the Scotch journalists, vilified them as fanatics who would restore who feebly express his spirit and repeat his the black despotism of superstition. A jokes, are two generations behind their age. common Christianity was not so strong to Their political philosophy belongs to the unite as a difference about Establishments last century. Like the Protestant parsons was to dissever the Dissenters from the at Rome, who are said to have gone to learn Evangelicals. Common democratic tendenthe Protestant religion from the Pope, they cies could not prevent men from encounteracquire their notions of faith from unbe- ing each other as enemies-to one party of lievers, and study Christian history under whom Christianity is The Truth, while to David Hume, the infidel. To be just to a the other party it is Fanaticism. faith, or to the believers of it, you must have loved it or them. Tell us where a man's contempt begins and we will tell you where his ignorance begins. Of the spirit of Robert Burns these journalists have caught nothing but the satiric part of it. They feel not with him the beauty of the scene described in his 'Cotter's Saturday Night,' nor the emotion which gushed up in the heart of Robert Nicoll at the mention of the Big Ha' Bible.

We extract a sketch of the nature and history of the principles involved in the Kirk question from a recent tract.*

The point at issue in Kirk affairs is, whether the will of the patron or the will of the communicants shall be the dominant thing in making the licentiate the pastor of the parish. Out of this question another has arisen-Whether the clergy are liable to civil damages for what the law courts deem wrongs of commission or omission in their ecclesiastical procedure.

Scotland is called a religious nation. Presbyterianism, it is said, has protected The non-intrusion struggle is part of the the Scotch from skepticism. Unlike the battle between aristocracy and democracy. countries in which Catholicism has con- The power of making parish ministers is tinued the religion of the State, Scotland, the thing contested. Who shall lord it over they say, has never produced a Voltaire. the process which makes a licensed preachBut David Hume was an Edinburgh man. er a parish pastor? This is the point of The brilliant philosophers and literary men contention between the patrons and the who made Edinburgh the mental metropolis communicants. Whose will shall be clothed of the empire towards the end of the last with the dominancy of the matter; the will century, were skeptics to a man. Nowhere of the Home Secretary of the day, and a is earnest piety treated with more unspar- small body of the landlords, or the will of ing ridicule than in Scotland at the present the recipients of the eucharist in the parish hour. In Paris, in London, in Berlin, and the patronate or the congregational will? Vienna, there is abundance of disbelief of In the name of the law and the civil courts Christianity, but nowhere is vital faith in it the patrons claim the dominancy for their treated with less respect or encountered will. The communicants by the Church with a more unflinching_hostility than in Courts maintain, in the name of the ConstiPresbyterian Scotland. But, in fact, Scot- tution and of Christ, that their will ought to land is not Presbyterian. A million of be dominant in making the preacher the Voluntaries, Catholics, and Episcopalians, -a million of Free Kirkmen who have just left the Establishment, and a million of persons avowedly unbelievers, or mere rational gentlemanly adherents of the Establishment, these make up the three millions Just as certainly as the Revolution settleof the Scotch. Hence the explanation of ment placed William of Orange on the the course pursued by the Liberal journal- throne, did it establish the Kirk on a basis ists. In opposing the Evangelical Kirkmen of non-intrusion and spiritual independence. they were giving utterance to the principles Strike the Act of Anne out of the statuteand passions of two-thirds of their country-book, and the dominancy over the appointmen, the million of Dissenters hostile to the ment of pastors reverts to the communiEvangelicals on the principle of Establish- * The Fall of the Kirk,' by Mr. John Robert

ments, and the million of Moderates hostile

pastor.

The contest and the claims of both parties are old. History shows that each party has had its victories. Law also shows the fact in an abundance of contradicting statutes.

son.