and that knowledge embracing all the sciences, and comprehending every manifestation of the Divine agency, which can be an object of mental perception, in the whole scheme of things, must be perpetually giving more light to the mind, and more exercise, and consequently more strength to the understanding. Instead of humiliating, it must exalt the reflective powers; instead of making the mind prostrate, it must cause it to be more erect. Instead of producing intellectual imbecility and lassitude, it must inspire double vigour and activity.

"Let the people be only duly taught that religion consists in knowing God, and that that knowledge can be obtained only by the study of his works in the material world; and let some of the innumerable manifestations of the Divine agency in the different sciences be clearly explained so as to be brought within the sphere of general apprehension, the most important truths will soon be popularised; and the strongest possible impulse be given to the intellectual advancement of the human race.”PP. 58-60.

What a comfortable doctrine for the unscientific and the simple rustic! But is it true that religion consists in knowledge or scientific discoveries of any kind? The dogma would be cruel, were it not opposed by the experience and the feeling of every one, so as to render it harmless. Do we find that religion, consisting as we take it, in the love of God and of our neighbour, increases with intellectual acquirements at an equal ratio? Is it not a most common occurrence, that we hear of knowledge and virtue taking quite opposite paths? We have no desire to depreciate knowledge, least of all scientific knowledge, believing that it has a tendency to elevate and brighten the intellectual powers, and thereby to purify the taste; and, believing that when the taste is purified, the moral affections are far more likely to be reached and acted upon, than when the mind is dark, and the fancy grovelling. But still it is the heart, or the affections of our moral nature, that have immediately, and far more, to do with the matter of religion, than the head or the intellectual powers. We never before heard that knowledge was virtue, or that an acquaintance with science was happiness. To the contrary, there have been an amazing number of woful proofs-amazing, so long as knowledge and religion are identified, but not when it is believed that the simple rustic, or unseientific domestic, often lives more virtuously and happily, and dies more contentedly, than the fathers in science do. Strange, that it never occurred to the author, when eulogizing so highly the importance of knowledge, that he should confine himself to certain departments, to the exclusion of others! Did he never suppose that a man's own heart was a legitimate subject of research and study?-one, an acquaintance with which, the experience of all agrees, leads to the most salutary results in this life, and, it is to be presumed, the happiest in the life that is to come. It appears, however, that our Doctor of Laws is not thoroughly versant in this branch of natural

and moral science, else, we think, he never could have penned the following passages :-

"The practice of prayer, according to the common modes, and the prescribed ceremonials, appears to me to throw great, if not insuperable impediments in the way of religious improvement. Religious improvement depends on the increased and increasing knowledge of God. Increased knowledge implies an addition to the stock of ideas in the mind. But can this be effected by the practice of praying, or by any of the common formularies of devotion? The few ideas they contain, become mere dull and wearisome formalities by continual repetition. They are sounds void of meaning to the ear; and words that excite no intellectual movement in the mind. But religion consists of acts, rather than of words. Its great and paramount object is to elevate the human nature to the divine; but prayer, on the other hand, by humanising the Deity, tends to lower his image to the level of our ordinary humanity. We make God an incarnation of what is frail in man. We lower the Omniscient to the level of our ignorance and imperfections. We suppose that the suppliant breath of our erring lips can induce the All-wise to do what he would otherwise leave undone; or to make some change in his previous resolutions. Hence, must not this habit tend to instil more degrading notions of the Deity into the mind, than are consistent with true piety; or than he, who is impressed with a profound reverence for the Infinite and the Eternal, will think it right to entertain?

"We do not importune an individual like ourselves, to give what it is the character of his disposition spontaneously to bestow. It is neither courteous nor wise; it would be a proof of bad taste, of impatient rapacity, or craving selfishness. But, with respect to the Deity, can it ever be consistent with a steady and enlightened piety, with a right sense of his moral government, or a warm trust in his parental regard, to importune him day and night, for that which he will of his own free bounty grant, if it be for our benefit? In all prayer must there not be some latent distrust of the Divine goodness? or, is it not more or less an indication, that faith, resignation, and the best religious sentiments have not obtained a complete ascendant over the mind?

"When the Religion of the Universe is substituted for the existing superstitions, the teachers of the new doctrine will expose the futility of the prayer-making formalities and formularies in the old. How much time has it occupied that might have been devoted to some more useful purpose; to mental improvement, to physical enjoyment, or to corporeal recreation? How much industry has it relaxed, how much sloth has it occasioned ? Might not the time that has thus been mis-spent in a formal or hypocritical service, have been employed in promoting the best interests of piety, and the intellectual advancement of man ?"-pp. 80-82.

A tyro in philosophy! he who has the slightest knowledge of his own nature, and who is capable of calmly regarding its workings, need not be prompted as to the reply which can be made to this feeblest of all attempts we ever heard put forth, to render a man hopeless in adversity, or sedate and rational amid prosperity. Really, Doctor, you are as dull as you are dogmatic.

In a new system of religion, one cannot but be curious to see what it contains regarding a future state. The Doctor has too high a sense of his own nature, to think that there is to be no hereafter. We have, therefore, found in his dissertation something on this subject, part of which we copy, for the benefit of our readers; and much good may it do them.

"That next step, therefore, in the interminable gradations of existence, instead of being a state of never-ending fruition, will be preparatory to some other and higher sphere of life. Thus there will be a continuity of individual life through an endless succession of different states and forms of being. In every new state and form of being, there will be more full and gratifying manifestations of the Divine agency and perfections; so that the mind will for ever keep knowing more and more of God, without ever coming to that period when no more knowledge is to be had, and no further insight into the Divine agency and attributes to be obtained. For 'Deum scire est nihil nescire. Such is the Religion of the Universe.

"The Religion of the Universe teaches us to view this life as one stage of our being, leading to other and innumerable stages and forms of existence; and not as a probationary state leading to a fixed and immutable scene of stationary bliss. The popular belief is, that this life of toil and suffering, but of short and variable continuance, is to be followed by one of interminable beatitude, at least to a certain select portion of the human race. This state or region of endless bliss is termed heaven; but of which no one pretends to have ascertained the locality, or to know the WHERE. If heaven mean the heavens, or the ethereal space, we know that that space is occupied by millions and millions of suns and worlds; in which it is probable that there are infinite varieties of sentient and intellectual beings, all in their separate states, and according to their several faculties, anxiously seeking to know more and more of that Eternal being, the knowledge of whose agency and perfections, constitutes the dignity, the glory and happiness of sentient and thinking beings in every state and form in the universe. Of that agency and those perfections we cannot know all that is to be known, though we should live and think and observe for millions of years, and in millions of different worlds and states of existence. Deum scire est nihil nescire.' Such is the Religion of the Universe.”pp. 113-115.

Nothing is ever said about God's Word by the Doctor of Laws; indeed, in the page at which we this moment open, "The Religion of the Universe," we find these peremptory words, "God can be known only in his works ;" and like all the few and far between ideas contained in the book, this one serves for something like a ceaseless repetition, with wondrous little amplification.

We might have given abundant specimens of the author's liberality. Here is a sweeping one: "The ordinary gloomy (mark gloomy, and how it begs the question,) representations of human life, by the Calvinists and other (other here, means all but he of "The Religion of the Universe,") religionists, are neither agreeable to truth, nor favourable to virtue. They darken the canvass,

till all cheerfulness vanishes; all joy is extinguished; and earth looks like hell." The Doctor knows everything about the matter; and there can nothing else be said upon it, unless he allow us, with equal want of reserve, to assert that we never saw anything so gloomy as his " Religion of the Universe" appears, were it not that it is so confined in its scope, and so feebly advocated, that it can do no manner of mischief. In truth, the work is totally unworthy of the notice of any respectable journal, otherwise than that it is right to show, as widely as possible, how infidelity appears, even when advanced and supported by an LL.D. We suspect, at the same time, that there is something wrong about the upper story, or that there has been a crack in the roof of some years' standing, which gradually will grow wider; for, we find that so far back as 1819, the author endeavoured to shew how a very simple creed, if adopted by the Church, "would have opened the doors of the Establishment so wide, as to include all denominations of Christians within its spacious pale." What an amount of knowledge must he, who supposed such a thing, have imbibed of human nature. He is nothing of a visionary! not he; but admirably calculated to teach a universal religion, far superior to that of the Bible!

ART. XIII.—A Saunter in Belgium, in the Summer of 1835; with Trails Historical and Descriptive. By GEORGE ST. GEORGE. London": Westley. 1836.

WHO George St. George may be, or whether there does exist a person of the name, is more than we can answer to; but this, it is safe to say, that the Saunter in Belgium, by whomsoever written, is a poor performance. By far the greatest portion of the volume consists of an uninteresting abstract of the history, from the most remote periods of their existence, of the various towns and cities which the writer visited, in which abridgment he draws largely from Froissard and others, whose Chronicles are accessible to every one. The small amount of original matter, that, we mean, which purports to have been the result of his own personal observation, is bald, lean, feeble, and trifling; frequently puerile and silly. The style of the whole is inaccurate, and often ungrammatical. Many expressions, as faulty as the following, occur in the course of the work" It once prevailed all classes"-" as I sat to breakfast ;" a ridiculous fondness for the elliptical, being the least that can be charged against these instances. But then we have also," It came on to rain in a perfect torrent"-"I have ever fell in with" "found considerable more difficulty," &c.; which cannot be supposed to rest upon any sort of whim, but rather something that is not more creditable to an author. Indeed, the alliterative George

St. George has given us a pretty good specimen of book-making, and the most common-place trash. And yet, we think, he adopted a plan of travelling, that might have yielded opportunities for making unusual observations, had he been able to take advantage of them, and that might have afforded materials for the construction of an extremely entertaining book. What a very different volume, we have frequently been ready to say, while running over the pages before us, would Sir George Head have made of Mr. St. George's travel! The former bestows upon the most trifling, and the most familiar things, such engaging colours, taken from his own fancy, or hangs upon them so many sweetly described, but natural incidents, that the reader cannot possibly be but delighted and bettered when he follows the painter and narrator. On the other hand, the present writer seems but to catch at the fag end of characteristic features, while he is without the ingenuity of conferring on them anything enticing of his own; and to be always stretching towards some more elevated or some better defined object than he can reach; hence tameness, incertitude of hand, and fragmentary bits, uniformly take the place which should have been filled with rapid, easy, and descriptive sketches.

Mr. St. George travelled alone, and a-foot; he wore the costume of the common people of the country, carrying at the same time a change of linen, or rather of cotton, together with some other indispensables. But he adds, "I never used stick nor staff from the beginning to the end of my journey." Now, this last, we take to be one of those undescriptive notices which are so abundant in the book; but let it pass. He travelled for "pleasure and instruction." This is all very well; but why did he not, when beholding human life in an aspect which summer tourists seldom court, contrive to convey some pleasure and instruction to his readers? Simply because he had it not within him, to sustain, in proper style, this solitary pedestrian saunter; while yet he flattered himself that the mere adopting an unusual, and somewhat formidable mode of travel, necessarily made him out to be a person of a manly, and somewhat singular genius.

The author himself, on starting, lets us into one or two things, from which we at once augured, that he was not made of the stuff, and had not the caliber for a solitary pedestrian tour in a foreign land. He says, "I left England with a deranged digestion." The announcement is unnecessarily precise, because it is offensive; and had his taste been as sound as his presumption was great, he must have known that this small piece of information would create a prejudice against him. But still more, he says, referring to his plan of procedure, after his first days' journey:-" Before I resumed my route, I breakfasted; and I would recommend every traveller on foot to do the same, whenever he has the opportunity. My break