the ecclesiastical system, and as regenerators especially of the 'secular' clergy-as they were only too aptly called-who were at its head. But monks in their turn became worldly. Men less liable to be corrupted by wealth than even the brotherhood of a convent, and more disposed to activity and the work of instruction, were demanded, and in due time the demand called forth the supply. The four orders of friars proclaimed themselves as the enemies of the endowment of the Christian priesthood, and professed to cast themselves, as no other religious order had done, on the voluntary offerings of the people; while, to denote their special mission, and to rebuke the tithe-endowed clergy more effectually, they were designated preaching friars.' When the protestant reformation came, the clergy of the state churches of Christendom were again found unequal to the service demanded from them; and the jesuits became, what friars and monks had been in former ages-a new spiritual militia, summoned to do the work which a clergy living a life of indulgence in their worldly endowments were found incompetent to perform. Truly we wonder not that the heroic Wycliffe should have pointed to nearly all the miseries of the church in his time as flowing from the 'foul endowing' of her ministers in the days of Constantine and Pope Sylvester, declaring that Heaven foresaw the coming evils in that hour and bewailed them! For we see that throughout ecclesiastical history, the unendowed have been ever called in as the regenerators of the endowed. These have been to decayed churches what new infusions from less effeminate and debased communities have been to corrupt nations. They have brought about reform; and in so doing have staved off the ruin that would otherwise have been inevitable. Many a time the compulsory priesthood would have sunk hopelessly, and their system along with them, if a voluntary priesthood had not made timely appearance for the rescue of both. Whatever may be said against the particular character of these monastic, mendicant, or jesuit voluntaries, cannot at all affect the principle involved in their history. Indeed, if the men were so bad, or, at least, in process of time became such, and the principle even in their hands was nevertheless so powerful, what might we not expect from it as worked by men of more steady worth, and of a purpose still more resolute? If we descend from the time when these light and somewhat irregular troops of the papacy did their service in its cause, the state of things will not appear to be materially changed. Since those ages, state-churches have shown small signs of vitality, except as self-sustained churches have been allowed free action beside them, and have thus stimulated them to wakefulness and effort. The little we have said in a preced

ing section will suffice to indicate the manner in which the non-established churches in this country have acted upon the established church. It is true, the church awakened may react upon her awakener; but it is no less true, that if the latter had slumbered, the slumber of the former might never have been broken.

On the whole, it is thus manifest, that the good which voluntary churches have done, is little compared with the good which they have provoked their wealthy and powerful rivals to do. It is one of their characteristics that the good attributable to them should be thus twofold. But it does not say much for the excellence of a principle, that it should rarely be found to work well except as necessity shall be in this manner laid upon it. Such, however, is clearly the case with the church-establishment principle. Nor can we think it a desirable thing that the one-half of a Christian people should be so often put to this sort of inconvenience, merely to prevent the other half from going to sleep. It would surely be far better that they should be alike wakeful: --and what is needed to that end? Simply that they should be placed in a like condition-be alike self-sustained. We do not think so meanly of the church of England system, whatever may be the forebodings of some of its adherents, as to suppose that our episcopal church would become extinct, or, in fact, would suffer the loss of any real power, were her last glebe swept away from her to-morrow, and the last thread connecting her with the state snapped asunder. On the contrary, we can conceive that such a change would be to her as life from the dead. She would still be rich in all her historical associations, in all her ancient forms, and in all her adaptations to the hereditary tastes and habits of our people; and if it should only be given her to use her new freedom wisely, so as to reform some of the more obsolete matters in her ritual, and to put away the earthly-minded and impure from her priesthood, her loss of state connexion and emolument would be abundantly compensated by her augmented strength a strength that would be more than ever formidable to other religious bodies, and would become the especial antago nist of that Erastian spirit which at this moment has such fearful hold upon our statesmen. But, for the present, we fear much lower views-views relating to mere pelf-will suffice to preclude those loftier thoughts concerning church power, and concerning hat is greatly more important-church utility. The

sorry to

most conspicuous fault among dissenters, and one, we are late, is of say, which appears to have been growing upon them of fault which the sort to which all popular bodies are incident; a

h, in our time, is nowhere seen in so strong a form as

among our kinsmen on the other side the Atlantic, where broadcloth mobs sometimes take upon them the several offices of judge, jury, and executioner, in their own cause. What the Ostracism of the Athenians was to Attica, Lynch-law has since become to America. It is one of the modes in which popular liberty is liable to degenerate into popular tyranny. It is the sovereign power becoming arbitrary, lawless, oppressive; and we must be allowed to profess ourselves stern haters of such power when so wielded, whether it may chance to be in the hands of monarchs or of multitudes. At present, we have not proceeded to the length of the Athenian Ostracism, nor of the American Lynchlaw-but this one-sided passionateness in dealing with public questions; this disposition, in seasons of excitement, to stifle free and fair discussion by mere clamour; this practice of giving all sorts of bad names to the men who differ from us in judgment, and of subjecting them to all sorts of suspicions; this resolve to proscribe everything, almost without a hearing, as absurdity or treachery which does not square itself to the full with our own notions-this tone of things, which has been increasingly observable of late, has a great deal too much of the Lynch and Ostracism spirit in it for our taste. For ourselves, it will be no part of our vocation to play the sycophant either to courts or crowds. We sympathize with the popular power too fervently, not to be deeply grieved when we see it surrendering itself into the hands of the enemy by its excesses. It is not a wholesome state of things, when the one-half of a community are silent, because they see that to speak would be to commit themselves to a conflict with the other half which could bring nothing but disaster on both. That this virtual tyranny is at present largely visible within the pale of Evangelical Dissent, is unquestionable; that it must ere long come to an end, is as little doubtful. Our own earnest wish would be realized if we could see it end, not in a wide-spread division, but in that soundhearted unity which can only result from a more manly tolerance of difference in opinion.

But we shall not pursue this subject further. We think we have now given proof, as stated in the commencement of this paper, that our aim has not been to vindicate Dissent, so much as to give a fair light and shadow account of what it really is. If we have at all failed in charity towards any man, we have failed unconsciously.

134

ART. V. Friends in Council: A Series of Headings and Discourses thereon. Book I. Pickering. 1847.

We have a peculiar regard for the Essayists; and now that they seem dying out of fashion, we become more sensible of their importance. The author of Friends in Council' is, if we mistake not, the only essayist of note now living; yet the solid repu tation and steadily increasing admirers, won by his Essays during intervals of Business,' and his 'Claims of Labour,' which, in the shape of review, and then of translation, have become known even in France, show plainly enough that there is still a public for such works. Perhaps the increased channels of communication between the authors and the public, has contributed to reduce the essay to this much less conspicuous position. Now a writer moralizes in a novel, or in a review. Instead of set essays, we have incidental remarks. All this may be for the better; we will spend no sarcasm on the present state of things, because it happens to cripple one favourite of ours; but with a sigh for the departing race, let us all the more warmly cherish this last of the essayists.

The author of Friends in Council' has many qualifications for an essayist. A musing, thoughtful, subtle mind, of a mixed boldness and timidity in speculation, which, while swerving from the beaten path, is yet careful not to offend, thus securing independence of thought, without alarming the general reader; a style at once grave yet animated, polished, yet easy, somewhat too latinized in its construction, yet redeemed from pedantry or strangeness by the colloquial familiarity of many of its turns and phrases-a style deficient in colour, in vigour, and in warmth, yet one which, in its calm strength and luminous repose, is peculiarly adapted to the subjects of which it treats. These qualities mark him out for an essayist, but an essayist of a kind apart. He has not the deep bold thinking, the pell-mell learning, and attractive egotism of Montaigne; he has not the impetuosity and force of the wilful, subtle, paradoxical Hazlitt; he has not the delicate humour of Elia, nor the poetical grace so happily garlanding the wit and humour of Leigh Hunt; nor has he the sustained power of Foster. The stamp of an individual mind so visible in the slightest essays of these writers, and which constitutes a special charm the more, is not so visible in his pages. There is a reticence and misgiving which shroud the man behind the writer. In so far, there is a great loss of power. On the other hand, there is an absence of that cause of objection which is inherent in all sharply defined characteristics. If

one cannot know the author and love him, at least one does not hate him. Taken all in all, he is a subtle thinker, and an accomplished writer; but beyond his intellectual qualities, he gives you no glimpse of himself.

Friends in Council' is a novelty in conception, and a happy novelty. Instead of being a collection of separate essays on diverse topics, it has a sort of dramatic unity in it, which greatly heightens the interest. We are in the country; the fresh breezes from the Downs stream wooingly' upon us; the cathedral is at hand; on a lawn before a country-house, situated on an eminence, which commands a series of valleys sloping towards the sea, an elderly clergyman (Dunsford) is wont to meet two of his former pupils, Ellesmere, the great lawyer, and Milverton, a gentleman of a contemplative turn, fond of writing essays. At these meetings Milverton reads his essays, and the three then converse on the subject, suggesting doubts or modifications, much in the same way as they would converse in real life. The difficult art of dialogue is admirably mastered in these discourses. The interlocutors do really speak out like men, and not like awkward contrivances. The conversation digresses, enlarges, returns to the point, becomes argumentative, epigrammatic, and personal by turns, just as in real life; and thus, instead of its being a clumsy contrivance, which succeds only in wearying the reader, as is almost universally the case when dialogues are ventured on for any but dramatic purposes, it forms perhaps the most agreeable portion of the work.

So much for the plan. In execution it certainly leaves something to be desired; the topics are by no means exhausted; one often feels that the author has not himself got to the bottom of them, or else has not grasped firmly what he found there. Perhaps the very modesty of an essay should shield it from such a demand; meaning, as it does, no more than an attempt towards setting the subject treated of in its true light; and yet one can never help making the demand. The most rigorous critic, however, will scarcely refuse to Friends in Council' the high praise of being very thoughtful and suggestive,-of containing many striking remarks, and of opening up unaccustomed tracts of thought. Our readers shall judge from the examples presently to be quoted.

The first essay is on that old, but ever new subject, Truth, about which essays will be written to the end of time, and probably with no better result than heretofore. The present venture is not successful. It is a series of remarks more or less pertinent about Truth, which, with one or two exceptions, hereafter to be given, might as well have remained unwritten. We