reliance is well founded, rational, just-THAT is what Hume and Voltaire would deny, and that is what Mr. and Miss Edgeworth do not affirm. To see and acknowledge the effects of any thing in third persons is one thing; to feel the effects one's self is another; the former is but the exertion of common observation and common candour; the latter is an internal conscientious conviction; in short, the former is consistent with deism or paganism, the latter is the distinction of a Christian.

It will not, we hope, be thought, that we have invidiously or unnecessarily introduced this subject. It forms so prominent a feature in Miss Edgeworth's work and in Mr. Edgeworth's Life, that we could not pass it over in silence, and we could not mention it without stating our impressions, and the reasons which produced them. We should have not imputed it as blame (though we should have regretted it as a misfortune) if the minds of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth had been so constituted as not to be able to believe in the great doctrines of Christianity-belief is not in our own power; and if they were not Christians, we should applaud the good sense and delicacy with which in their former works, and indeed in this, they have taken care not to give any offence by the ostentatious production of infidel opinions--but when we see, what we think, a design to induce us to believe the thing which is not-to represent Mr. Edgeworth as a Christian, and to justify as Christian doctrines and practices things which are certainly not so-when we find a system of education rejecting the Christian doctrines from its schools, and yet are told that the author of that system is a Christian, it becomes a duty to pull off the mask, under which Mr. Edgeworth's system and principles might be received without that caution and suspicion to which, in this particular, they are liable.

If, after all, we have been mistaken as to Mr. Edgeworth's religion, it is the fault of himself and his daughter. Three words would, as we have already said, have rendered all this discussion unnecessary; three words may yet clear up the difficulty, and if Miss Edgeworth, in her next work, is able to say, with confidence, my father was a Christian, she will do a pious office to his memory, and no inconsiderable good to mankind; and no one will be more pleased than ourselves to find that her inaccurate modes of expression had confirmed an error into which her father's own avowals had originally led us.

We have now done our painful task; and, on the whole, our greatest objection to the work is, that it must lower Mr. Edgeworth's reputation, and not raise that of his daughter. There is much to blame, and little to praise in what they, with a mistaken and selfdeceptive partiality, record of him-his own share of the work is silly, trivial, vain, and inaccurate; hers, by its own pompous claims

to

to approbation, fails of what a more modest exposition would have obtained, and might have been entitled to. Mr. Edgeworth had some ingenuity, great liveliness, great activity, a large share of good sense, (particularly when he wrote,) of good nature, and of good temper-he was a prudent and just landlord, a kind husband, (except to his second wife,) an affectionate parent; but he was superficial; not well founded in any branch of knowledge, yet dabbling in all :-as a mechanic he shewed no originality, but some powers of application-as a public man he was hasty, injudicious, inconsistent, and only not mischievous: in society we must, notwithstanding Miss Edgeworth's dutiful partiality, venture to say that he was as disagreeable as loquacity, egotism and a little tinge now and then of indelicacy could make him; but with all these drawbacks, his life was, as far as we have heard or seen, on the whole, more useful, more respectable than the representation which is here given of it. For his reputation these two volumes of biography ought to be forgotten. It is a mistaken tribute of vanity and filial piety, which almost justifies the superstition of our German ancestors, that monuments were onerous to the dead.

ART. XII.-1. The Church in Danger; a Statement of the Cause, and of the probable Means of averting that Danger. Attemptted by the Rev. Richard Yates, B. D.

2. The Basis of National Welfare: considered in Reference chiefly to the Prosperity of Britain, and Safety of the Church of England. Ry the Rev. Richard Yates.

3. Substance of the Speech delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Monday the 16th of March 1818, on proposing a Grant of One Million for Providing Additional Places of Public Worship in England.

4. A Sketch of the History of Churches in England, to which is added a Sermon on the Honours of God in Places of Public Worship. By John Brewster, M. A. Rector of Egglescliffe and Vicar of Greatham in the County of Durham.

5. A Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Liverpool on that Part of the Speech of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, which recommended the Attention of Parliament to the Deficiency in the Number of Places of Public Worship belonging to the Established Church. By James Elmes, Architect. 3. New Churches, considered with respect to the Opportunities they offer for the Encouragement of Painting. By B. R. Haydon. ANEW novel of American manufacture has reached us from Boston; the writer assumes the character of an English wo

man,

man, and lays the scene of her fiction in the vale of Keswick. Fietitious tales are good for something when they convey information concerning the age and country wherein they have been written and, as the Troy Book throws more light upon the age of Caxton than of king Priam, so does this little tale represent, unwittingly, the state of America in one most important point, when it speaks of England. After the lapse of some years,' it says, in which a parish has been vacant, and when the voice of prayer and the songs of praise have only been heard at long intervals, it may readily be supposed that the revival of religious institutions occasions a kind of jubilee among the people.' Hence it appears that, because of the want of a religious establishment in America, when a minister dies years sometimes elapse before his place can be supplied! And this is confirmed by what the writer supposes to have happened at Keswick, in a passage not the less amusing for its attention to local circumstances. A year had passed since her husband's death, and yet the living of Keswick was vacant. During this time, there had been some sabbaths in which divine service was performed, and the good Bishop of Landaff had not forgotten the people of Keswick. Two young gentlemen from Carlisle had also officiated there.'

In the United States,' says Mr. Bristed, there is no national church established, no lay-patronage, no system of tithes. The people call and support their minister; few churches having sufficient funds to dispense with the necessity of contribution by the congregation. The law enforces the contract between the pastor and his flock, and requires the people to pay the stipulated salary so long as the clergyman performs his parochial duty according to the agreement between him and his parishioners. The general government has no power to interfere with or regulate the religion of the Union; and the States generally have not legislated farther than to incorporate, with certain restrictions, such religious bodies as have applied for charters. In consequence of this entire indifference on the part of the state governments, full one third of our whole population are destitute of all religious ordinances, and a much greater proportion in our southern and western districts.'

Such is the state of things in America; and the consequences are thus described by the same able and meritorious writer:

The late President Dwight declared in 1812, that there were three millions of souls in the United States entirely destitute of all religious ordinances and worship. It is also asserted by good authority, that in the southern and western states societies exist, built on the model of Transalpine Clubs in Italy, and the atheistic assemblies of France and Germany; and, like them, incessantly labouring to root out every vestige of Christianity. So that in the lapse of a few years we are in danger of being overrun with unbaptized infidels, the most atrocious and remorseless banditti that infest and desolate human society.' A society

A society has been formed in Connecticut for the purpose of endeavouring to remedy this evil. It appears by the statement in an address to that society, that five millions of people in the United States are destitute of competent religious instruction.'

An immediate universal vigorous effort,' says Mr. Beecher, must be made to provide religious instruction for the nation. It is indispensably necessary, to prevent the great body of the nation from sinking down to a state of absolute heathenism. Let the tide of population roll on for seventy years as it has done for the seventy that are past, and let no extraordinary exertion be made to meet the vastly increas ing demand for ministers, but let them increase only in the slow proportion that they have done, and what will be the result? There will be within the United States seventy million souls, and sixty-four million out of that society will be wholly destitute of religious instruction. They may not become the worshippers of idols; but there is a brutality and ignorance and profligacy always prevalent where the Gospel does not enlighten and restrain, as decisively ruinous to the soul as idolatry itself. If knowledge and virtue be the basis of republican institutions, our foundations will soon rest upon the sand, unless a more effectual and all-pervading system of religious and moral instruction can be provided. The right of suffrage in the hands of an ignorant and vicious population, such as will always exist in a land where the Gospel does not restrain and civilize, will be a sword in the hand of a maniac, to make desolate around him, and finally to destroy himself. It is no party in politics that can save this nation from political death, by political wisdom merely.'

The American legislators, those of Old America at least, will probably ere long consider these things to be worth a fear:'-they will otherwise be repaid, and with large interest, by our demoralizing philosophism, for the evils which their political lessons have brought upon Europe. The old Americans will lay it the more to heart, because the first and chief consideration by which their forefathers were moved to establish themselves in a wild country, was the belief that it would be a service unto the church of great consequence to carry the Gospel into those parts of the world.' But if the general government continues to profess a liberal* indifference whether there be any religion in the country or

none,

And

* When the American Convention were framing their constitution, Dr. Franklin asked them how it happened that while 'groping as it were, in the dark, to find political truth,' they had not once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate their understandings?" I have lived, Sir, (said be) a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that GOD governs in the affairs of men. if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe, that without bis concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach 70

VOL. XXIII. NO. 46.-Q. R.

none, the Americans will find, and at no very remote time, that the want of an adequate provision for the moral and religious instruction of the people,--that is to say, the want of an established church, a circumstance of which their short-sighted admirers have boasted as their peculiar happiness,-will bring upon them in its inevitable effects worse evils than have ever been produced, even by superstition itself.

Modern colonies are always in a more immoral state than their respective mother-countries. This is lamentably exemplified in Spanish America, and in the Columbian Islands; but nowhere more strikingly than by the Dutch, wherever they have established themselves in India, in Africa, or in the New World. In their native land they are an exemplary people, but in their colonies and conquests none so vicious, so brutal, and so mercilessly inhuman. Two causes tend mainly to produce this degradation; the existence of slavery, for wherever that abomination exists, it is in its moral effects scarcely less injurious to the oppressor than to the oppressed; and the absence of religious institutions. The backsettlers of every new country, receding from civilization themselves while they prepare the way for it, live without law and without religion, an assertion which the history of every continental colony supports. Even in the Spanish Indies and in Brazil, where the governments have always been influenced by a Catholic zeal for the salvation of souls, it has not been possible to provide adequately for the spiritual instruction of a population scattered over so wide a surface of wild country; and if this is impracticable for the Romish church, with its celibacy, its power, its admirable organization, its great auxiliary force of Regulars under the most despotic discipline, and the zealous aid of governments which, upon that point at least, were beyond all doubt conscientious,-how much less is it to be effected by protestant churches, to which all these advantages are wanting!

We have upon former occasions adverted to the service which the monastic orders formerly rendered in aid of the church in this. country. While they existed the church had in itself a principle of growth which kept pace with the growth of cities, the general increase of population, and the necessities of society. It would have been difficult, or perhaps impossible, to reform them upon their original foundation, because so much audacious and blasphemous imposture was connected with their history. But it is on many accounts to be regretted that the revenues of these orders, instead of being so scandalously and sacrilegiously squandered, reproach and a bye-word down to future ages." He then moved that prayers should be performed in that assembly every morning before they proceeded to business. "The Cenvention, except three or four persons though! prayers unnecessary!! These words, and these notes of admiration were written by Franklin himself.

had