is very dear at any price. And such is the epithet which we cannot hesitate to apply to almost every thing of Mr. Emerson's which has fallen in our way. It is not to be denied that he often thinks and writes vigorously; and that there is now and then a sprinkling of high flown morality over his pages. But then he is an unhesitating infidel; and his infidelity sometimes takes the form of profanity; so that we should be greatly surprised to hear either that any one derived the smallest good, or did not suffer considerable mischief, from studying the productions of his pen. -These are hard words, and we doubly regret to use them of a transatlantic brother, of whom we are always delighted to speak with kindness. But they are as true as they are hard. One comfort there is to the devout reader of Mr. Emerson, that a great portion of his works are utterly unintelligible. Vague thoughts, contradictory propositions, mystical abstractions, cloudy expressions, disjointed and disconnected sentences-these are the order of the day-and these, we think, plainly indicate an unsettled mind, and perhaps an unquiet conscience. Our best hope is that, if this last surmise be true, he may live and make haste to repair the mischief which he is doing on both sides of the Atlantic. Does he never ask himself what, on a dying bed, he shall wish to have written? Mr. Bohn proposes to publish a series of American works at the price of a shilling. Why should he lend his name, as in the case before us, to the circulation of falsehood? He will tell us, perhaps, that there are other cheap copies of this and other works of the author. But both Mr. Bohn's name and the neatness of his typography will tend to give the book a wider circulation-than copies which no man would read if he could, or could read if he would. Besides, it is no reason that, because oxen must be killed, we should choose our abode in a slaughter house. Let the infidels do their own work-the "dead bury their dead." There are many of the American writers who are repaying with interest to this country the lessons which our forefathers taught them. Mr. Bohn will confer a real obligation to his countrymen if he will resolve to import wholesome drugs instead of rank poison. It is for him and for all publishers to remember that there is such a thing as being "accessaries after the crime;" and that not long since a person suffered the last penalty of the law for administering arsenic in a pudding which another hand had prepared. We are very far from wishing that Mr. Bohn should be hanged; but we cannot but say we should be very glad if Mr. Emerson's books were burned.

A few Words on the Spirit in which Men are meeting the present Crisis in the Church. By the Rev. E. Monro, M.A. Parker.

MR. Monro is well known as an able and zealous minister of religion, who has gradually descended from what we deem the safer, higher, and more scriptural level of evangelical religion, to the lower ground of what is termed Anglo-Catholicism. But, as in some other instances to which we could refer, we think that his earlier faith still in a measure clings to him, still modifies and colours many of his views, and assists to check him in that headlong course which many others are pursuing to the dishonor of religion and the peril of the national Church.

The present pamphlet is, in many respects, highly creditable to its

author. It refers to the two questions of "Education" and of Baptism; and its object, as to both, is to tranquillize and direct the public mind; to protest against the clergy fighting what they deem the battles of truth in public meetings and metropolitan assemblies; and to teach them that the true strength of their cause lies in the zealous, affectionate, and devout discharge of their duties in the pulpit and the school-room, at the hearth and by the bedside of those parishioners among whom they are called to labour. The whole pamphlet is vigorously conceived and expressed, and, bating some important errors, is likely to be of much use to partizans on either side in the contest.

As to the "Education question," Mr. Monro shews, that after all, no man is "bound, by any compulsory shackle, to receive the proffered aid of the Government," and that few ministers will need its assistance if only they will themselves, with whatever aid they can get, become the habitual guardians, superintendents, and teachers in their own schools.

"The truth is," he says, "there is a taste abroad for political agitation, which too much compromises the dignity and calmness of the clerical character. The platform and even Church union pander too much to the love of oratorical display, debate, and disputation; and secret love of pre-eminence and distinction are too strong temptations in this mode or operation: all this paralyses the moral judgment, lowers the holy calling, and unfits men to meet those distressing shocks which in this day we shall be called upon to encounter. It produces an irritable and petulant mood, instead of the calm moderation which, while consistent with our vocation, is far more likely to offer a successful opposition to hostile efforts." (p. 7.)

He then proceeds to describe the meeting in Willis's Rooms, very much in the spirit and language which had characterized our own report upon the subject, and says strongly, that "in the case of the clerical speeches on that occasion, when the speech was clerical it was out of keeping with the place, and when it was political it was out of keeping with the speaker." He adds, we think with much truth:

"Overstatement and exaggeration have a peculiar tendency to destroy true dignity: moral dignity is essentially dependent on truth: and the almost necessary consequence of such meetings is overstatement; and that peculiarly from the clergy, who are unused to disciplined oratory from the very irresponsible nature of parochial addresses, and are naturally inclined to exaggerated statements from the transcendental nature of the subjects they teach; while the lawyer's statements, arguments, and oratory, are alike restrained within the limits imposed by law." (p. 8.)

The author then proceeds to treat the question of the recent "Privy Council" decision in the same spirit:

"It must be a matter of regret to see continually men called away from home, and threading the streets of the metropolis, to discuss for hours questions of business which would be far better discussed and arranged by lawyers, who would be incalculably strengthened in such struggle by the moral weight of a clergy in their own spheres, leavening and forming the mass of society all over England. We want to see men at their posts, and each one doing his own work, and there will be far better hope that each work will be then done effectually." (p. 10.)

Having touched on the Home duties of the clergy, he adds:

"A life led among the children whose Catholic education he asserts, would give his manner and presence a gravity and dignity which reality always invests men with, much superior to the excitement merely produced by meditating on an injury. And in a still higher degree would the daily ministration of the Church shed a dignity, a calm and holy power over the minister of God, if he met his fellows in a meeting convened by authority, with the echoes of holy words still lingering in his ears: daily prayer and communion are the high work of the priest: it is his life, and, apart from that, he is bereft of part of his nature. The performance of high ministrations in his own parish, and surrounded with his people, invests him with a power he cannot spare; it not only gives weight to his example and judgment, but it adds actual wisdom to his deliberation and counsel. The meeting of clergy under these circumstances, and in this close connexion with their own spheres of action, would bear a very different aspect to what we now see. And the enemy with whom we have to contend would far more respect us and fear our power, if we were thus offering a firm opposition to their aggression, by remaining calmly at our post, and awaiting in faith and hope the outburst of the storm.” (p. 13.)

"The way to meet the imminent peril is, by winning the people to the Church by a strenuous and vigorous move, such as we never made before; by each being at his post, and teaching the people to love and lean on daily prayer and weekly communion; by mixing daily with the mass in the concerns of daily life; sympathising with their sorrows and troubles, and by first leading them to love us, to leadthem on to love the Saviour, by inducing them to confide their difficulties to us, and by earnestly, affectionately, and simply preaching to them; by so arranging all our time and our church service, as to make them feel that our time is theirs, so that by seeing that we honestly concerned for their welfare, they will realise the fact of the Church being SO too." (pp. 17, 18.)

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We have not space to quote from the author's striking address to those disposed to get rid of their present difficulties by deserting to the idolatrous Church of Rome, in which he refers to the doubts alleged as to the Catholicity of our own Church, the absence of moral discipline among us, the want of union, the alleged tyranny of the civil power, the supposed suppression of Catholic truth, the imagined deadness of the Protestant Church; and he ends by saying,

"If only those who doubt would pause a while, join their strength to ours and abide the issue; if only those who are true to us would throw themselves devotedly into their work; if only individuality of action would succumb to the good of a united cause; above all, far above all, if only all would pray,"kings of the earth and all people, princes and all judges of the world, young men and maidens, old men and children," "rich and poor, one with another," -if only all who love God would join in one united prayer for the success of truth, we must succeed. His ear has not been deaf since the assembled myriads of Israel calmly waited on the Egyptian shore, with an armed host behind them and a rolling sea before them. His arm is not shortened since, from the dungeons of of Babylon, Ba the released captives of seventy years beheld once more the rocky defiles of Jericho and the blue hills of their own Judea. He will do for us what he did for them. Only let us pray and act in faith; and what will not the prayers of a united Church effect, still bearing in them the echoes of the Holy Week, and bursting from hearts which have been dwelling on the Passion of Him who purchased with his own blood the Church for which we plead?"

This pamphlet, with all its excellencies, seems to us to have great defects. It assumes the truth of the highest views, as to the necessary effects of Infant Baptism, with as much confidence as though Scripture had decided upon the subject as though the language of our own Church was unequivocal upon it-as though no other view were compatible with honesty or truth. The pamphlet also renders profound homage to the Bishop of Exeter, whose general proceedings appear to us to stand in point blank opposition to Mr. Monro's whole argument. It also, to a painful degree, forgets the supremacy of the Holy Spirit, in the intensity of its zeal for sacramental influence. Again, it seems to us that it habitually puts the Church in the place of the Saviour. And, finally, in the author's exhortation to his friends not to desert the national Church for Popery, he argues as though the question were rather one of expediency than of duty-as though they might almost toss up, or draw lots on the subject as though truth and error had no definite distinctions-as though Protestantism were not the honest transcript of the Bible, and Popery the mother of error, and the curse of the nations. His forefathers in the Church did not thus deal with the Roman heresy; and we must soon cease to have a Protestant Church if we have no better reasons for cleaving to it.

Parental Wisdom. - The Philosophy and Social Bearings of Education. Saunders and Otley, London.

A CELEBRATED diplomatist is reported to have said, that "the use of language is to conceal our thoughts." If so, few writers have turned the English language to a better purpose than the author before us. He has an abundance of words, and is very cunning in the construction of sentences. Tropes and metaphors, epithets and circumlocutions, flow freely, and, it would seem, almost by necessity, from him. He is not a man to use a single word when the idea may be expressed in ten; or to use the language of the nursery and fire-side, if only a metaphor is within reach. Now, if the real object of all this be, as we have surmised, to conceal his meaning, we must say that, at least, as respects ourselves, he has completely succeeded. We wish to see and to understand; but our eyes are dazzled, our ears charmed, and we feel as in the presence of a wizard, spell-bound and confounded. Even the "contents" of the several chapters, which are in themselves simple and intelligible, have often failed to guide us to the sense of the chapters themselves. It has occurred to us that possibly the work may have first been written in a poetical form; and then, to oblige the publishersvery good judges in these matters-broken up into prose. Take the following passage as a specimen; which, with slight alterations, would make excellent blank verse :

"Soul-moving poesy here oft essays its first impassioned thoughts, catches the spirit of her infant strain, and takes the hue that colours all her themes. Whether with pure intent she tune her numbers to a moral lay, touching the finer chords of human hearts, or meanly bent to please the wanton taste of grovelling sense; whether, with blended grace of thought and language, she recreate and charm the soul, or mid the day-dreams of creative mind, in all the luxury of thought, she weave, in sportive mood, her fairy wreath of fiction's brightest flowers; whether to paint fair deeds and high emprise, and by their rich reward to lure the steps of virtue to sublimer height, or touched with fire seraphic, caught from the hallowed page, she make creative power and redeeming love her rapturous theme, painting the heavenly home of saints, their triumphs and rewards, in seats of endless bliss; the gifted muse, virtue's bold champion, and truth's firm ally, is the nation's prize; but when venal and CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 149.

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vicious, is the bane of innocence, the nation's curse, and shames its literary annals with a blot."

To speak seriously, the author seems to be a man of good principles, fair talents, and truly desirous of doing good. Let him be assured that, at all times, intelligible writing is likely to be, in the end, the only successful writing: and that, especially in a busy, railroad age such as this, men insist upon facts rather than words; and deem that book the best which conveys the best thoughts in the fewest and simplest expressions. In return for our criticism, which, we fear, the author may consider as a little uncourteous, we give the subjects of his chapters. "Importance of Education-Parental Responsibility-A Philosophical Theory of Education-Prevalent Levity of Youth-Testimony derived from Ancient and Modern History-Practical Hints to Parents." What can be better? And, on all these subjects, the author may have thought and reasoned accurately, and even profoundly; but as to this point we must hesitate, for reasons above stated, to pronounce any very decided opinion.

Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. Vol. III. Longman. 1850.

To the preceding volumes of Mr. Southey's Life and Correspondence, we must have adverted with a good deal of pain and censure. But the letters improve as they advance. It is something to have escaped entirely from the air of Wine Street, and to find ourselves in connection with a great part of the literary world of the day; for the interest of Southey's own character is not sufficiently strong to communicate itself very fully to obscure scenes and ignoble personages, merely in virtue of their relation to himself. There is, certainly, a charm in the letters from their natural kindliness, their animated style, and the infinite variety of allusions dropped, subjects touched, and ideas hinted; and which fall around us like a shower of sparks struck off from the anvil at which he so vigorously labours. But the reader must not expect much more; he will not find his admiration roused by the unfolding of a great mind, or the formation of a noble character. Here is a literary man-a man of taste, of imagination, of sense, of amazing industry, and of infinitely various reading; but we have no indications of a mind whose searchings are deep, or whose aspirations are high; pregnant with great ideas, and giving birth to them from an inward necessity, which impels him to pour them into the hearts of others. There is a want of high conceptions on subjects which are great, and of earnest feeling on those which are serious. Traces of personal religion are not easily discovered. During the period through which the letters have already conducted us, he has passed from Socinian sentiments to the character of a satisfied adherent and zealous defender of the English Church. Yet the constant letters to his intimate friends, give not the faintest evidence of inward conflicts and anxieties. There was a gradual alteration in the opinions entertained; but we cannot feel that it was, with him, a question of ideas which were the life of the soul, and which, where they are so, must shake the spirit in the change. The Church of England appears to become the object of his attachment, quite as much because he regards it as a defence against Methodism, as because he feels it to be a sanctuary of the