We have, however, as we promised, some remarks on the work, of a general nature, to offer.

In the first place, if our readers would form a just religious estimate of the volume before us, let them not turn to our Review of the Tales of Miss Edgeworth, in a former number; for unquestionably that, on the whole, would be calculated to mislead them. The truth is, this gentleman and lady are thorough "expediency" people; and no Proteus is so hard "to have and to hold," as a philosopher of this breed. We plain Christian people have certain plain fundamental maxims,furnished by the Holy Scriptures, which of course never change. They are a sort of brazen meridian, to which all other lines may be referred; and we must burn our Bibles, or get a German critic to blot out their maxims, before any variableness can enter into our system. The abettors of the new philosophy (for such the better philosophy even of the Heathen world requires us to call it), far from completely owning these maxims, either forget them, or bring them to the test of expediency, without following them up to their important practical conclusions. Instead of this, cleaving to their own rule-a rule which shifts with the judgments, the caprice, the interests, of every individual who uses it, which changes with the very change of temperament in the same individual-nothing can exceed the mutations, the exits and entrances, the capers, the transformations, the leaps, the tumbles, of these moral and philosophical harlequins. Certain reviewers might be taken as one specimen of this species of harlequinading, and the works en masse of the Edgeworths as another. The author before us, indeed, is like a Will o'the wisp, leading us here and there, and generally ending by leaving us in a bog. He some times talks like a saint, and sometimes (we had almost said, if we did not know the race was extinct

among polite writers) like a sinner : he will raise a band of pious clergy in one chapter, and, in another, forbid men of other professions to listen to them; he will, in one page. talk most musically about peace, and then, in the next, create a band of officers, who would banish peace from the face of the earth. Such being the caprice of the author, we confess that we are very shy of fixing the sum total of the religion of the work. If we take (as perhaps we should be inclined to do) a very low estimate of it, some champion of the author would throw a dozen such sentences in our teeth as, if taken alone, must infal libly convict us of bigotry and harshness. If we take it high, any honest man might knock us down with a dozen such pages as make the angels weep." All, therefore, we will venture to say of the religion of the work,is, in the first place, that the author always speaks of religion as a sort of professional qualification; capital when encased in a cassock, but truly formidable when worn without one. Secondly, that the author, not content with agreeing with no one else upon the subject, is, in fact, so inconsistent, as to be continually at daggers drawn with himself. Thirdly, that such are the rapid variations of his religious sentiments, that, as St. Austin is respectively adduced as their ally by the Calvinists and Arminians, so our author, when future ages shall seek to bolster up their systems by. authorities of the nineteenth cen tury, may be respectively claimed by every party in church and state, who ever did exist, do exist, or shall exist through a succession of centuries.

There is one more point, on which we must say a few words; and this is, the decided preference of the Scotch system of education to the English, which is more than implied in various parts of this work, and justified in the review of it in the Edinburgh Review. Now we do not mean to enter on a very

extended view of the merits of the respective systems. The controversy has been for some time before the public; and pretty hard blows have been dealt by the combatants on both sides. It is as difficult to decide which advocate displays the most zeal, as to settle which writes in the worst spirit. There are, however, a few arguinents, which may be produced with a view of shewing that the English universities have something to say for themselves. If the point at issue comes to be fairly stated, it seems to resolve itself into this, How long shall the mind be kept in a state of pupilage? Shall the boy of fifteen or sixteen be turned loose upon the world of letters and philosophy? Shall all the bones of controversialists be thrown down for him to pick? Shall he be considered as having such a natural bias. to truth in sentiment, and to virtue in practice, that he will embrace truth, and follow virtue, when they are presented to him? Or, on the contrary, shall he be kept in literary leading-strings till about the period at which he may be considered as a inan; restrained, during that time, from any very daring excursions into the regions of politics or religion; have the Scriptures, and a few accredited authors in religion and ethics, put into his hands; be cautiously shut out from the great political questions which are agitating society, till the suns of perhaps one-and-twenty years have enlightened his eyes and matured his judgment? If he go to a Scotch university, he will be submitted to the former experiment; if to Cambridge or Oxford, to the latter. And, though at the risk of being called the champions of monkish, or rather Gothic, institutions, we do not hesitate to say, that we think the last system, on the whole, the best adapted to the constitution of man. It appears to us, that the one system supposes the natural bias of man to be to truth and virtue; the other, to error and vice: and, there

fore, the one rejoices to unshackle the mind; and the other, for a season at least, to keep it in check. In England, we forbear to cast before a fallen creature, in that period of life especially when his passions are strong and his reason weak, when he cannot correct by experience the decisions of his judgment, the grand questions of poli tics and religion. We cannot but think it the wisest course, to prepare him, by a long previous process, for the mooting of questions which involve the interests of both worlds. It may be, that the process is sometimes unskilfully con ducted, or unnecessarily protracted; that we may weaken the limbs we are thus confining in swathes; that even a reasonable freedom of excursion is denied; that, within the range of secure subjects, the mind, in some cases, is not directed to the best: but all this springs, not from the use, but the abuse, of the principle. We do think, that there are subjects, in the pursuit of which the mind is likely to improve its powers, without endangering their misapplication; which are as likely to make great men of their disciples as any other, and infinitely more likely to make them good.

We shall merely notice, in conclusion, two inaccuracies into which the antagonists of the English universities have fallen. In the first place, they have represented the system of education, in these illus trions seminaries, as infinitely more crippled and limited than it really is. It is contended, for instance, that the Cambridge honours are appropriated exclusively to the brow of the mathematical student; whereas it should be remembered, that always seven, and frequently nine or ten, public university prizes, are annually proposed to the classical student. At Oxford, though the prizes, of any kind, are fewer, yet what there are, are still more indiscriminately bestowed, as every man has hitherto been allowed to

propose his own subject of exami

nation. This university has, indeed, recently discovered the error of this part of her system, and is substituting some general subject of examination for all her students; that, as in Cambridge, all being tried by the same standard, the comparative measure of each may be determined. But till now she has differed little in her system from that of the Scotch universities; except that in Scotland, besides giving the rein to youth at a considerably earlier age, they did not examine the self-directed pupils, and in England they did.

. The other inaccuracy, to which we allude, is that of marshalling a vast host of English worthies, and, having shewn them not to have been educated at public schools, thence to conclude that they were not the legitimate issue of the British system of education. Now, the patrons of the universities do not in all, nor perhaps in many instances, extend their patronage to the public schools. We ourselves deem them scarcely less favourable to scholarship than to morals. But let the list of the great and the good, who have been so triumphantly ranged in the front of this battle by one of the combatants*, be examined, and it will be found, that, wherever they begun their education, they ended it in an English university; that, if they did not drink the "milk of our public schools, still they devoured the "strong meat" with which the parental bounty of their Alma Mater supplied them. Indeed, if the respective claims of the two systems are to be adjusted by considering their actual influence in the production of great men, it is certain that the English universities may challenge comparison with all

Vide last Edinburgh Review, on Public Schools."

the world. Our dissenting brethren owe to them their Baxters, and Calamies, and Owens, and Howes; such luminaries as have at no after period risen upon the horizon of their respective assemblies. Our own Church, fed from these living fountains, has supplied, from the period of the reformation, to the seats of episcopacy and to the parishes of this realm, a body of clergy, who, when taken together, are perhaps inferior to none who have existed since the first ages of Christianity. The most celebrated lawyers of our land all conspire to cast their spoils at the feet of these seminaries. There our Chathams, and Pitts, and Foxes, have, as it were, prepared the thunders of that eloquence, with which they have shaken the world. Although, therefore, we may wish for some important modifications of their systems of education; though we might wish, in some instances, to change or to controul the movements of these powerful machines, yet we confess, that we tremble to touch with a rash or irreverend hand these arks of our prosperity and virtue. We desire to advert even to their apparent deficiencies with tenderness and humility; and we are ready to apply to them, what Mr. Burke, in his own eloquent manner, says of the state: "A man should approach to its faults as to the wounds of a parent, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country, who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent to pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that, by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life."

GREAT BRITAIN.

In the press: A Portraiture of the Heavens, as they appear to the naked Eye; on Ten Folio Plates; by the Rev. F. Wollaston, F.R. S.;-A brief Examination into the Increase of Commerce and the Revenue, brought down to the present Time, by the Right Hon. G. Rose-A Devotional Family Bible, by the Rev. J. Fawcett, in 2 vols. royal 4to.;-An Account of the Isle of Man, by Mr. George Woods;-Humboldt's Account of the Kingdom of New Spain, translated from the French and a Poem, by Mr. Southey, named Kehama.

The canal made for altering the course of the Tees, between Stockton and Portrack, was opened on the 18th of Septeinber.

On the evening of the 29th of September, the inhabitants of Luton, Bedfordshire, were surprised with a singular phenomenon, The common pond, situated in rather an elevated part of the town, which, as there had been no rain in their neighbourhood for some weeks, was getting rather shallow of water, suddenly filled, and emitted from its bottom all the filth and sediment, and continued flowing over and discharging a great quantity of water for some hours; and since has continued quiet as usual. The town's-people apprehend intelligence of some earthquake on the continent, as this pond had a similar agitation when the earthquake happened at

Lisbon, in 1775.

FOREIGN.

chased by M. Cotta, bookseller of Tubingen, who will print it in French, with all possible dispatch, illustrated with more that seventy plans, portraits, and medals. This work will comprehend only political papers, and nothing of what is contained in the Me moirs of the prince recently published st Weimar, and at Paris.

The researches commenced at Ostia, have been for some time suspended. Important discoveries might, nevertheless, be expected to be made there, if they were contioned, as that town, formerly so spacious and opulent, was almost entirely overwhelmed by a sad den inundation of the Tyber, and all the valuable objects which it contained were buried in the mud of the river. People may still walk upon the tops of the houses, and trace out whole streets, by following the direction of the roofs. They may de scend into some of these houses which have been cleared, and which are built in the same style as those of Pompeji. The only edifice that has been entirely disencumber ed, is the temple of Neptune, situated on sa elevation; that of Mercury, in which the deity is represented holding a parse, is cleared only in part.

During last winter, a phenomenon, which would appear, incredible, were it not attested by a great number of persons of known veracity, occurred in the vicinity of Placentia. On the 17th of January, red snow felf upon the mountains in this department, and especially upon that known by the name of Cento-croci. A coat of white snow had covered the tops of these mountains, when several peals of thunder, accompanied with lightning, were heard. From this momeat, the snow that fell was red; this continued for some time, after which white snow again fell, so that the red was enclosed between two strata of white. In some places, this snow was only of the colour of peach-blassom, but in others, of a deep red. Some of it was collected, and the water which it yielded, when melted, retained the sa colour. The analysis of it by M. Guidoti, a chemist of Parma, promises interesting re sults. This phenomenon seems to furnish u with the means of explaining the showers of blood, which are mentioned by the anciran in their histories. We have already ascer tained the existence of pesinites, or atend

fallen from the atmosphere, which the Greeks and Latins have spoken of; and now it is impossible to deny the reality of

showers of a blood-red colour, which are described by the same authors.—Monthly Mag.

THEOLOGY.

Twenty-four select Discourses, from the Works of eminent Divines of the Church of England, and of others, never before published. 8vo. 10s.

A Funeral Discourse, which was preached on the Death of the Rev. Thomas Barnes, D.D. at the Protestant Dissenters' Chapel, at Cockey Moor, on the 22d of July 1810. By the Rev. Joseph Bealey. 1s. 6d.

Hints on Toleration; in five Essays, suggested for the Consideration of the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Sidmouth, and the Dissenters. By Philagatharches. 8vo. 12s.

Preparation for Armageddon. In which are included two Letters to a Man called by himself and Associates the Rev. Joseph Samuel C. F. Frey, Minister of the Gospel to the Jews; also, Strictures on "Remarks on the Uses of the Definitive Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament. By Granville Sharpe."

A Sermon preached at the Parish Church of Stoney Stratford, at the Visitation of the Archdeacon, June 28, 1810. By the Rev. Latham Wainwright. 1s. 6d.

Russell's Letters, Essays, and Poems, on Religious Subjects, 12mo. 5s.

The Exaltation of the Messiah the Basis of Consolation in Death: a Sermon delivered at High Wycombe, Bucks, Oct. 14, 1810. By the Rev. Snelgar. 18.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Letters on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Chemistry, Anatomy, Physiology, and other Branches of Science pertaining to the Material World. By the Rev. J. Joyce. 12mo. 10s. 6d.

The Principles of Fluxions, intended for

the Use of Students in the University. By William Dealtry, M. A., Professor of Mathematies in the East India College, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 8vo."

14s.

The Life of Beilby Porteus, Lord Bishop of London. By a Layman of Merton College, Oxford. 8vo. 9s.

The Philanthropist, No. I. (to be continued Quarterly). 2s. 6d.

The nefarious Practice of Stock-jobbing" unveiled. By Thos. Mortimer, Esq. 5s.

Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the Nature and Effects of Evangelical Preaching. Part IV. 4s. 6d.

The Reformer; comprising twenty-two Essays on Religion and Morality; with an Appendix. 12mo. 6s. boards.

The Two Pictures, or a View of the Miseries of France, contrasted with the Blessings of England; earnestly recommended to the Notice of every true Briton. 5s. per dozen.

A Warning to the Frequenters of Debating Clubs; being a History of the Rise and Progress of those Societies; with a Report of. the Trial and Conviction of John Gale Jones, the Manager of the British Forum. 39. 6d. per dozen.

A Sketch of the State of British India, with a View of pointing out the best Means of civilising its Inhabitants, and diffusing the general Knowledge of Christianity throughout the Christian World; being the Substance of an Essay to which the University of Aberdeen adjudged Dr. Buchanan's Prize. By the Rev. James Bryce. 8vo. 10s 6d.

The Crisis, or Can the Country be saved? briefly considered. 1s.

JEWS.

A LECTURE to the Jews will be delivered at Ely Chapel, Ely Place, Holborn, on the first Thursday evening in every month, by clergymen of the Established Church, upon the following subjects:

Dec. 5. Divine Revelation the only Foundation of Religious Truth.

1811. Jan. 3. The Authenticity and Inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures.

Feb. 7. The Evidences by which the Authenticity and Inspiration of the Jewish

to the New Testament,