صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[blocks in formation]

Then every shrine in yonder hall she sought,
And many a garland offer'd, many a prayer,
Whilst from the myrtle shoots she stript the leaves.
She wept not, moan'd not; nor could coming ills
Rob her soft skin of wonted loveliness."

These lines are beautifully turned; and there are many such.

MR. CHARLES MARRIOTT'S " Reflections on a Lent reading of the Epistle to the Romans," (Oxford, Masson,) are just what their Title indicates, and nothing more-the fruits of a pious habit, greatly to be commended, of studying detached portions of Holy Scripture, from time to time, in a devotional manner; not an exposition of the Apostle's argument.

We are glad to be able to count DR. HOLLINGWORTH, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and late Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, among the vindicators of the Church's Law of Marriage. He has now, "at the renewed request of the Clergy," published a Charge, which he delivered in 1842, deprecating the proposed alteration of the Law, on Scriptural grounds. (J. W. Parker.) People seem at length to have discovered, that a question affecting religion and morality is really at stake. Presbyterian Scotland, too, is becoming alarmed.

The Daily Life of a Christian Child. (Masters.) A series of excellent rules in simple verse, and beautifully illustrated.

Church Music, by the REV. C. MILLER. (Van Voorst.) A sound and eloquent Sermon.

The Rest, by the REV. CLAUDE MAGNAY, (Cleaver,) is written, if we understand the dedication aright, for the purpose of introducing a sketch of a departed sister of the Author's, who laboured much and successfully among the poor. This gives a reality to the tale, which will make it both useful and interesting in the village library.

Mr. Pickering has just published a beautiful office book of The Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, in small quarto. It is printed in Elzevir type on thick rough paper. But the price, we must say, seems to us unreasonably high.

An Essay on Priesthood, intended as an Answer to the theory of the Church, as advanced by Dr. Arnold, &c. By the REV. HENRY HARris, M.A., Demy of Magdalene College, (Oxford: J. H. Parker,) is a clear and temperate piece of reasoning, but falls short, as it appears to us, a little of the true Catholic doctrine. The vindication of the use of material instruments for the conveyance of spiritual influences is however very satisfactory.

Reflections, Meditations, and Prayers, (with Gospel Harmony,) on the most Holy Life and Sacred Passion of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, (Masters,) will be welcomed very heartily by many at this sacred season. The signature "R. B." alone is guarantee for a deep and healthy tone of devotion. The volume is dedicated to Mr. Isaac Williams and Archdeacon Manning.

We call attention to An Appeal for the Formation of a Church Penitentiary, (J. H. Parker,) by the REV. J. ARMSTRONG, Vicar of Tidenham. The writer is manifestly in earnest, and offers himself to conduct the Institution, if only sufficient funds can be procured to found and to maintain it. In the last number of the "Christian Remembrancer," was an interesting article, (we presume) by the same hand, containing the facts and principles on which the "Appeal" is based. Mr. Armstrong has our best wishes.

MR. DE BURGH, the author of several works on the interpretation of Prophecy, has published a volume of Discourses on the Life of CHRIST. (Rivingtons, London; and Ogle, Glasgow.) We cannot say that the style of writing is very pure, nor the treatment of the subjects exhaustive, (the Forty Days after the Resurrection, are most inadequately handled ;) but as an improvement upon the dull, formal, way of stating doctrine, that has been in vogue of late, the work deserves to be spoken of with commendation.

To say that MR. FLOWER'S Tales of Faith and Providence, (Masters,) are formed upon the model of Mr. Neale's "Christian Heroism," and "Endurance," is to award them very high praise. The Tales, with one exception, are taken from ancient sources, and are related with considerable spirit.

[ocr errors]

The

We have received A Manual of Psalm Tunes for Congregational Use, by the Exeter School of Church Music. (Exeter: Wallis.) object of the undertaking was to provide a collection of Tunes so adapted for Church singing, as should not be beyond the reach of ordinary congregations in our Parish Churches, and yet should be "sound and devotional," and selected on definite and consistent principles." Its chief characteristic is the repudiation of harmony, except in the organ accompaniment, as being beyond the knowledge or power of any, except comparatively very few, and so, if attainable at all, yet involving generally disproportion in the strength of the parts. The tunes are therefore, many of them, transposed into lower keys, to suit all kinds of voices; and are all set in common time, as being the more simple. In the selection of tunes the Editors have been guided by the principle that the melody of each should be of so marked a character," as "to express its leading idea," "and that it should be a distinct tonal arrangement of the notes of the scale, and have a responsive character in its several divisions." Hence both the tunes and their arrangements are of a remarkably chaste character. The tunes are published in two distinct forms; one, with the melody alone, for congregational use; and the other, with the addition of the organ part.

Poetry, Past and Present, (Mozleys,) forms an elegant volume, but suffers somewhat in solidity from the circumstance of the editor having previously published two other selections of a more serious complexion.

SCEPTICISM AND IMMORALITY.

Raphael, or pages from the Book of Life at Twenty. By ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. London: J. W. Parker.

The Nemesis of Faith. By J. A. FROUDE, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. London: J. Chapman.

"WHAT a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement, does a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid! Nor do I mean to say that virtue is not virtue, because it is never tempted to go astray, only that dulness is a much finer gift than we give it credit for being, and that some people are very lucky, whom nature has endowed with a good store of that anodyne." These are the words of one who has exhibited human nature as it is and suffers, more truly than any of his school of littérateurs-we mean Mr. Thackeray. And in setting his apophthegm at the head of our remarks on the two works of Lamartine and Mr. J. A. Froude we consider ourselves to have given a fair warning that we are not now writing for that large and happy class, the insensibles. Dear good souls, we wish you well; nay, we almost envy you, but we can add no jot to your contentment, and with all charity, therefore, we tell you our article" is not for you; you need it not; let us only have our say, and be content to enjoy a quiet chuckle at us in your comfortable chairs. Neither of our books are the work of insensibles. They are enthusiastic, fanatical, wild-any other hard name you please; and so to write intelligibly about them we must put ourselves more or less in their attitude or frame of mind, and be enthusiastic, etc. etc. also. We have a type of the insensible in our eye. Respected, esteemed, upright, excellent-how many years it took thee to build thyself up into thy present insensibility we know not. How much starch in thy spotless tie and waistcoat and shirt front was necessary to secure thy soul within from the rude blows of most troublesome emotions, we cannot estimate. We can but admire at an awful distance thy just balance and unswerving placidity. Like Cicero's Epicurean deity thou seemest immersed in a perennial contemplation of thy own completeness. "Ego beatus sum, mihi bene est," is thy life's cry. How much good thou hast done, how many kind thoughts cherished, we know not. We opine much and many; but in all thy doings, sayings, and thinkings, we see a perpetual warning off of "foreign aid and sympathy." Good friend, we revere thee, but we too must warn thee and the class of whom thou art the very type and symbol, off our present ground. The yearnings of a passionate love-seeking soul, the aberrations (that is thy pet word) of VOL. VII.-MAY, 1849.

NN

a "warped and morbid" intellect have no claim on thee in thy company "non raggionam' di lor' ma guarda e passa." So now we have packed our audience we will have it all our own way. Some of you, dear friends, have heard of, some perchance have read, the two books we are to speak of. Naughty books they are. Ay, in truth and sober sadness, books to make the angels weep, but books, for all that, (nay, because of that very thing) not to be mocked at or pooh-pooh-ed. Let us briefly sketch their contents and then give our rationale of them.

"Raphael" opens with a slight sketch of a character whose name the book bears, by way of prologue, in which the author says that the name was suggested by the bearer's likeness to that sweet portrait of Raphael, which some of us have seen in the Pitti and Barberini galleries, or at Paris in the Louvre, and many know by the engraving of it which is seen everywhere. A sweet pensive face it is melancholy in its serene beauty as we have felt the bright summer noon of Italy, because it suggests something beyond itself, and so carries on the mind to linger with it on the threshold of the unscen world. Raphael's morale was of a piece with this physique. A soul full of lofty imaginings, a poetry too deep for expression by word or any other form of art. An intense love of virtue, but not for its goodness: chiefly, if not only, for its beauty. Sensibility so acute that daily common things, not moving a fibre of ordinary hearts, wrung and vibrated every chord of his soul, filling him with strange ecstacies, such as we wot of, but tears and heart-throbbings cannot express, much less written words. These were the chief characteristics of Raphael. O piteous mystery, what days and years of suffering, what unsated longings, enjoyments which cannot satisfy, hopes postponed, reachings forth of the soul into a blank weariness of unrest, is the man of sensibility born to! Such was Raphael. His heart was as it were naked to every unkind wind and bared to every blow. The world galled him he longed for sympathy and was never filled with it. Such were his

early years. At length worn out with the beating of a mighty soul in a frail prison-house, he is sent to Aix to seek for health. Here he meets with a lady, Julie, whose history is somewhat like his own; a mysterious attraction draws them together; a short, vain, struggle for indifference is made; an accident produces an éclaircissement and the wanderings of the two are closed for ever; heart has found heart; pain, weariness, restlessness is past; a keen piercing joy takes the place of them. They sit entranced gazing on each other for hours, scarcely breathing, as though the spell of intensest communion might be broken by one word or motion; and in the sense of entire mutual devotion, they recognize the long sought end of being. The remainder of the book dwells on some developments or manifestations of this devotion. The most striking is the design of joint suicide, which is averted only

by the accident of the lady's fainting. Another is an obscurely hinted offer on the part of the lady to yield herself in body as well as spirit to the will of Raphael, which he rejects with a sort of lofty chivalry of devotion. Then too, he recognizes in her soul the presence of God, and worships the Supreme Being in a long dream of passion in the person of another man's wife. For Julie is the young wife of an old philosopher who is quite agreeable to this sort of Platonic attachment. Both the philosopher and his wife are infidels, but as Raphael finds in her the realization of the Supreme Being, whom it is hinted the Catholic religion had not made known to him, so Julie, on her part, awakens to the hope of immortality through the intense love which consumes both of them with a mutual fire. Then comes the end. After a few years, during which he lives on the vehemence of passion, poverty compels him to remove from her neighbourhood; and as he is revisiting the scenes consecrated to him by the memory of the first meetings with Julie, the last faintly scrawled characters of her dying letter are put into his hand. Henceforth his days are but a dreamy, painful repetition of the truth, which he never realizes, but which ever weighs him down. Julie is gone; his heart is widowed, and soon follows her beyond the grave.

Such is an outline of Raphael. Now for Mr. Froude's Nemesis of Faith. Our good-hearted insensibles have given it a nickname by the way. They call it "faith with a vengeance," and so get them to their dinner with unimpaired digestion and minds composed. Mr. Froude's book, then, is not one to trouble them: "It is infidel, blasphemous; the arguments chiefly borrowed from Tom Paine and Spinoza." Alas, it is all this, O insensibles! Do not dream that we like it, or excuse it; yet still we say, that the way to prevent such books being written, is not merely to abuse them. Let us briefly sketch out our author's story. His hero is still a young man, but getting quite old enough to make a settlement in life necessary. Holy Orders are what his family have looked forward to for him, and the book opens with some letters to his friend Arthur, on his misgivings as to his fitness. Truly, misgivings are not unreasonable: first, he rejects the teaching of the Old Testament, because he cannot persuade himself that the Almighty could take vengeance on a whole nation indiscriminately; then he rejects that of both Old and New Testament, because he cannot believe in the eternity of punishment for sin; then he sets forth a theory that there is no sin, but only mistake in the world, and by consequence of course there can be no punishment due or exacted for sin. Then he gives us a sketch after the manner of the moderns of Germany and Rugby, of the decayed and effete condition of the Christian religion, likening its dying away out of the courts of the mighty and the studies of philosophers, to the gradual banishment of Paganism, in a passage of singular

« السابقةمتابعة »