In fine, this ode, or prayer, may be considered as the creed of one who lays aside all regard for religious distinctions and tenets, and rejects every standard of duty but the casual suggestions of conscience: that is, the notion of right or wrong which every man acquires from some source or other. From this remark we must except the allusion to free will, in which the poet makes his good man embrace, with great confidence, a party in one of the most abstruse, perplexed, and indeterminable of all theological controversies. 0. BEFORE the reformation of religion, the Romish clergy, with the pope at their head, were railed at with unwearied animosity: their avarice, pride, sensuality, and hypocrisy were blazoned in all possible shapes. The vices of the priesthood became a bye-word; the sting of every jest, the burthen of every ballad, the theme of every declamation: yet it excited no alarm, and provoked no punishment. It prevailed, indeed, with more acrimony in the metropolis of the reigning religion than any where else. These invectives, though less violent than before, came to be viewed in a very different light after the reformation. That which had previously been uttered with impunity, and listened to with smiles, was thenceforth discountenanced as sacrilege and treason, and pursued with vengeance and rage. It is curious to observe in what different light the same thing is placed by a difference of circum stances. The present age seems to have produced a similar event in relation to political distinctions. Mankind might rail as much as they pleased at clerical establishments, provided they practically acquiesced in their authority, and did nothing to subvert them. So wits and moralists might make the vices and follies of kings and ministers, the noble and the rich, the topic of unceasing invective, with impunity, and awaken in the subject of their satire only smiles and good-humour, as long as this hostility was confined merely to invective: but when men began to entertain designs of reducing kings and nobles to the level of other mortals, and of utterly dissolving those distinctions, by which the wealthy, for the most part, hold their wealth, the case was quite altered: laughter gave place to frowns, and exile HAS CLASSICAL LEARNING AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN TENDENCY? 427 and death were denounced, where formerly all was lenity and allow ance. No one railed more at kings and lords than Pope. If we consult and believe his writings, we should be tempted to imagine, that wisdom or virtue, or liberal knowledge, is incompatible with rank or royalty. Ignorance, pride, folly, are, according to him, the sole generical distinctions of the great and the rich: yet princes and lords were the friends of Pope, and, no doubt, relished his jokes, though made at their own expence, in no small degree. The most offensive tenets of the present times would express themselves, in relation to these matters, in terms hardly more strong than those of this poet. What censure could they utter more severe than this? Court virtues bear, like gems, the high est rate, Born where heaven's influence scarce can penetrate. The same versatility is strongly illustrated in the history of human conduct and opinions, respecting the religious symbols, rites, and traditions of the Greeks and Romans. Christianity originally made its way among men, in opposition to these rites and symbols. The world was peopled with the worshippers of Jupiter and Venus. Their temples and altars were frequented with religious adoration. The prayers addressed to them were put up with a sincere belief in their divinity, and a lively faith in the efficacy of these prayers. To discontinue and renounce these prayers, to overthrow these fanes, statues, and altars, was the natural dictate of the new religion. Hence the general ruin that involved the architectural, sculptural, and literary monuments of the ancients. Their poems and narratives were merely tributes to the honour of false and pernicious divinities. Their temples were the resorts of VOL. III. NO. XXI. superstition, whose extirpation could not be more effectually promoted than by the utter destruction of the priest, the temple, the statue, and the hymn. In process of time, the Roman world became entirely christian. All former prejudices, habits, and traditions were exterminated in the lapse of a dozen centuries. The links which connected devotional ideas and remembrances with the ancient temple and statue, with the drama or the hymn of Homer, Sophocles, and Pindar, were utterly dissolved. Mankind found themselves able to view, without any danger of adoring, those objects of primitive superstition. They were able to perceive the grace, beauty, or sublimity which these objects possessed, disconnected with their claims to divine worship, with the consideration of the sentiments of their original builders or inventors. Their admiration of these qualities led them to display the same zeal in restoring and preserving those monuments of past ages, which had already been displayed in their overthrow and devastation. Hence the popes and cardinals of the sixteenth century did all in their power to restore what their predecessors, in the fourth and fifth centuries, had laboured to demolish. The latter were accused of ignorance and barbarism in waging war against the statues and relievos of the Capitol and Pantheon; but surely this war was completely justifiable. It was even necessary to the advancement of the christian religion, though the modern Leos and Clements might, with equal propriety, ratify a truce with those marble gods, since they were now regarded, not as objects of religious veneration, but merely as specimens of human art. A stranger, with imperfect information, would be oddly affected by the prevalence of Greek and Ro man ideas in modern times. Should he go into our seminaries, he would find our youth, at the most docile and susceptible age, intensely busy in the study of the names, history, 4 428 HAS CLASSICAL LEARNING AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN TENDENCY? and attributes of deities long since exploded. He would find them laboriously conning over volumes, which may be considered, in some sense, as the bibles of paganism. In opening our books he would find perpetual allusions to these antiquated deities, not in terms hostile or contemptuous, but exactly in the same apparent spirit with the Romans and Athenians. Our poetry abounds in hymns and invocations to these imaginary gods, which cannot be distinguished by any thing but language from those which the Greeks and Romans were accustom ed to offer. Our greatest geniuses have thought themselves worthily employed in translating the ancient hymns into modern tongues. This fashion has seldom excited any alarm as to the stability of the popular faith. No tutor thinks it necessary to apprize his pupil that the stories of Ovid and Virgil are false, or to guard his imagination against implicitly crediting their fables. A sincere convert to paganism would be deemed, in the present age, quite a prodigy. Some may deem such opinions not absolutely inconsistent with sound intellects; but, in general, such belief would be thought the clearest evidence of madness. Thomas Taylor, an eminent scholar, now alive, has avowed his belief in paganism in the most positive manner; but the voluminous publications of this man afford numerous proofs, besides this one, of insanity. This kind of education, this early and intimate acquaintance with all the apparatus of the old Roman religion, has been fashionable during several centuries. The most eminent dignitaries of the church, and some of the most famous devotees, have been celebrated for their knowledge of, and attachment to, this mythology. Nay, in almost every European hierarchy, this kind of knowledge has been an indispensable qualification of a teacher of the gospel. To be conversant with the history, literature, and religion of a nation that was not christian, and on the ruins of whose habits, literature, and religion christianity was built, is deemed, not only ornamental in the citizen, but necessary to the preacher of truth. These may justly be considered as groundless and absurd modes; and they have frequently and deservedly been condemned: but the reasons for condemning them have seldom or never been built upon the supposed danger there is of the student's conversion to the religion of the Athenian populace, or of his becoming, on this account, lukewarm or hostile to that of his own country, and his own times. Of all objections to classical learning, this is surely the most groundless and absurd. For the Literary Magazine. THE ART OF WAR. THE art of war has undergone a considerable change in the course of the eighteenth century; and the rapidity of the movements, as well as the extensive line on which they are conducted towards its close, form a striking contrast to the precision and regularity which in the early part of the century distinguished the campaigns of the duke of Marlborough. The great Frederic brought the old system to its utmost perfection; the Austrians adopted it, and have been compelled to change it by the French, who have made as great a revolution in their art of war as in their politics. For the Literary Magazine. INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON HAPPINESS. WHETHER happiness or misery occupies the heaviest scale, in the balance of human experience, is a question that will never be universally decided. The tribe of benevolent philosophers fancy that the good greatly predominates, and draw inferences from the wonder-working power of habit, not only to equalize the goods of every condition in human life, but almost to annihilate the evils. Wealth, they say, is accompanied with its train of peculiar evils, and poverty by a numerous company of benefits, to which poverty alone gives a claim. Let us listen to the feelings of one who received a full measure of the joys and sorrows of this life; and if speculation can but little help us to a right decision, let us bow to the lessons of experience. The poet Burns expresses himself thus, in a letter to a friend : "After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favoured by partial heaven; whose souls are tuned to gladness, amid riches and honours, and prudence and wisdom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days, are sold to the minions of fortune. "If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza of an old Scottish ballad, called, The Life and Age of Man;' beginning thus: · 'Twas in the sixteenth hunder year Of God and fifty-three, Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear, As writings testifie.' "I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived a while in her girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of The Life and Age of Man.' "It is this way of thinking, it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor miserable children of men. If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusi asm, What truth on earth so precious as the lie!' "My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophizings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and distress." Religious people tell us, that, in a future state, all the disorders of the present system of things will be rectified, that every suffering will be amply compensated, and man deprived of even the power to injure himself, to impair his own felicity. By these reasonings it is generally intended merely to raise the sum of good, to intellectual beings, higher than the sum of evil; but the truth is, that such considerations produce an immediate effect. They fill the mind, directly and immediately, with joy and hope. The prospect of future good annihilates the present evil. The reward is possessed the moment it is distinctly unveiled to view. I think I never saw the influence of religious promises on present happiness pourtrayed with more touching eloquence, than in the following passages from a genuine letter of a nameless and obscure girl to her friend, which is in my possession: "Ignorance, I believe, my Julia, is the mother of some kinds of happiness; at least, of quietude. How can we regret what we have never lost? and to lose it we must have it; and by having it only can we know its value? I am now, in all external respects, just as if I never had a sister; but how different would my feelings be, if, in truth, they had never been born! "How my mother shrieked over a breathless son who died in childhood! But suppose the boy had never been born; then, as now, she would have had but four children, and she would not have lamented that they were but four. "Pleasure and pain, my Julia, strangely run into and mingle with each other. Ignorance, I said, is the mother of content; but I would not, for all that, be ignorant. Contentment, methinks, is no desirable thing. Pleasure, indeed, cannot be had without the risk, at least, of accompanying or ensuing pain; but this mixture of bitter and sweet is better than the utterly insipid; better than the limpid, tasteless potion of indifference. "But why do I call the broken bones of sympathy pain? Why, indeed, do I call them broken? Death severs us not from those we love. They still exist, not in our remembrance only, but with true existence; and if good, their being is a happy one. What more should we wish, and why should life, with all its cares and maladies, be prayed for, either for ourselves or our friends? "My friend removes to the next village, or he crosses the sea; but I am not much unhappy, even at parting, and that sadness is succeeded soon by sweet tranquillity. He is living, and is prosperous, and forgets me not; and some time I shall see him again, and that consoles me in his absence; but how blind is my sagacity! "How know I that he lives! that he is virtuous and happy! that he gives me still a place in his remembrance. Is he not a mortal creature, and encompassed, therefore, by the causes of sickness and death; beset by temptations, and liable to new affections, that exclude the old? "But intelligence is brought that he is dead, and why should I weep? Am I grieved that he has gone, from perishable, feverish life, to that eternity, where maladies of mind, and ills of body betide him ne more? But I have lost him!' "No; while he lived I had lost him indeed, for the space between us was so wide that I saw him never, and heard from him but rarely; but now has he not come home to me? and do I not hourly commune with him? Am I not sure of his existence and safety, for my friend was good? And is he not more present to my thoughts, and more the guardian of my virtue, and partaker of my sympathy, than ever? But I shall never see him more !' "Indeed! and whose fault will be that? I must die like him. It is uncertain when; but then we shall meet. And what, then, but my own unworthiness, my own misdeeds, shall sever us? Nothing but guilt will divide us from each other dead, though virtue itself was unable to unite us living. And how invigorating to my fortitude, what barrier against temptation is that belief! "No, my Julia, death is no calamity to virtue, to dead or to living worth. Our wailings for the dead are breathed only by thoughtless or erring sensibility. Is it not so? I would not affirm too positively, or too much, I know so little. Yet I can't but think that many of our woes are selfish woes. "Yet I mourned for my sisters, but rebuked myself while I mourned. Such reflections as those comforted me; but they would not come at first, nor would they stay long, till time had soothed me into some composure. Now and then, at thoughtful moments, when taken, if I may say so, unaware, my tears gushed anew, and my breast was agonized by sobs. "Still have I, as I long have had, something that may be called sorrow; but a sweet, a chastening, a heart-improving sorrow. Most dearly do I prize it. For the world I would not part with my sorrow. Glad am I that I once had sisters, and I have them still; but I would not have them any where on earth. |