land, in reference to the fatal present of the Union ministry to the landed interest, that true Deianira shirt of the Irish Hercules, is altogether excluded from the theme and purpose of this disquisition. It ought to be considered by the Legislature, abstracted from the creed professed by the great majority of these nominal freeholders. The recent abuse of the influence resulting from this profession should be regarded as an accidental aggravation of the mischief, which displayed rather than constituted its malignity. It is even desirable that it should be preserved separate from the Roman Catholic Question, and in no necessary dependence on the fate of the Bill now on the eve of presentation to Parliament. Whether this be carried or be lost, it will still remain a momentous question, urgently calling for the decision of the Legislature -whether the said extension of the elective franchise has not in troduced an uncombining and wholly incongruous ingredient into the representative system, irreconcilable with the true principle of election, and virtually disfranchising the class, to whom, on every ground of justice and of policy, the right unquestionably belongs; under any circumstances overwhelming the voices of the rest of the community; in ordinary times concentering in the great land-owners a virtual monopoly of the elective power; and in times of factious excitement depriving them even of their natural and rightful influence.

These few suggestions on the expediency of revising the state of the representation in Ireland are, I am aware, but a digression from the main subject of the Chapter. But this in fact is already completed, as far as my purpose is concerned. The reasons, on which the necessity of the proposed declaration is grounded, have been given at large in the former part of the volume. Here, therefore, I should end; but that I anticipate two objections of sufficient force to deserve a comment and form the matter of a concluding paragraph.

First, it may be objected that, after abstracting the portion of vil which may be plausibly attributed to the peculiar state of landed property in Ireland, there are evils directly resulting from the Romanism of the most numerous class of the inhabitants, bosides that of an extra-national priesthood, and against the political consequences of which the above declaration provides no security. To this I reply, that as no bridge ever did or can possess the demonstrable perfections of the mathematical arch, so

can no existing State adequately correspond to the idea of a State. In nations and governments the most happily constituted there will be deformities and obstructions, peccant humors and irregu lar actions, which affect indeed the perfection of the State, but not its essential forms; which retard, but do not necessarily prevent, its progress ;-casual disorders which, though they aggravate the growing pains of a nation, may yet, by the vigorous counteraction which they excite, even promote its growth. Inflammation in the extremities and unseemly boils on the surface must not be confounded with exhaustive misgrowths, or the poison of a false life in the vital organs. Nay,—and this remark is of special pertinency to the present purpose-even where the former derive a malignant character from their co-existence with the latter, yet the wise physician will direct his whole attention to the constitutional ailments, knowing that when the source, the fons et fomes, veneni is scaled up, the accessories will either dry up of themselves, or, returning to their natural character rank among the infirmities which flesh is heir to ; and either admit of a gradual remedy, or where this is impracticable, or when the medicine would be worse than the discase, are to be endured as tolerabiles ineptice, trials of patience, and occasions of charity. I have here had the State chiefly in view but a member of the Church in England will to little purpose have availed himself of his free access to the Scriptures, will have read at least the Epistles of St. Paul with a very unthinking spirit, who does not apply the same maxims to the Church of Christ; who has yet to learn that the Church militant is a floor whereon wheat and chaff are mingled together; that even grievous evils and errors may exist that do not concern the nature or being of a Church, and that they may even prevail in the particular Church, to which we belong, without justifying a separation from the same, and without invalidating its claims on our affection as a true and liv. ing part of the Church Universal. And with regard to such evils we must adopt the advice that Augustine (a man not apt to offend by any excess of charity) gave to the complainers of his day -ut misericorditer corripiant quod possunt, quod non possunt patienter ferant, et cum delectione lugeant, donec aut emendet Deus, aut in messe eradicet zizania et paleas ventilet.

Secondly, it may be objected that the declaration, so peremp torily by me required, is altogether unnecessary; that no one

thinks of alienating the Church property, directly or indirectly; that there is no intention of recognizing the Romish Priests in law, by entitling them as such to national maintenance, or in the language of the day by taking them into the pay of the State: in short, that the National Church is no more in danger than the Christian. And is this the opinion, the settled judgment, of one who has studied the signs of the times? Can the person who makes these assertions, have ever read a certain pamphlet by Mr. Croker?-or the surveys of the counties, published under the authority of the now extinct Board of Agriculture? Or has he heard, & attentively perused, the successive debates in both Houses during the late agitation of the Roman Catholic question? If he have-why then, relatively to the objector, and to as many as entertain the same opinions, my reply is the objection is unanswerable.

GLOSSARY TO THE APPENDED DIALOGUE.

As all my readers are not bound to understand Greek, and yet, according to my deepest convictions, the truths set forth in the following combat of wit between the man of reason and the man of the senses have an interest for all, I have been induced to prefix the explanations of the few Greek words, and words minted from the Greek:

Cosmos-world. Toutos cosmos-this world. Heterosthe other, in the sense of opposition to, or discrepancy with, some former; as heterodoxy, in opposition to orthodoxy. Allos-an other simply and without precluding or superseding the one be fore mentioned. Allocosmite-a denizen of another world.

Mystes, from the Greek tw-one who muses with closed lips, as meditating on ideas which may indeed be suggested and awakened, but can not, like the images of sense and the concep tions of the understanding, be adequately expressed by words.

Where a person mistakes the anomalous misgrowths of his own individuality for ideas or truths of universal reason, he may, with out impropriety, be called a mystic, in the abusive sense of the Euphonie gratia.—Ed.

F*

2

term; though pseudo-mystic or phantast would be the more proper designation. Heraclitus, Plato, Bacon, Leibnitz, were mystics in the primary sense of the term; Iamblichus and his successors, phantasts.

"Enɛα ¿úovra—living words.-The following words from Plato may be Englished ;-" the commune and the dialect of gods with or toward men;" and those attributed to Pythagoras ;-" the verily subsistent numbers or powers, the most prescient (or provident) principles of the earth and the heavens."

And here, though not falling under the leading title, Glossary, yet, as tending to the same object of forc-arming the reader for the following dialogue, I transcribe two or three annotations, which I had pencilled (for the book was lent to me by a friend who had himself borrowed it), on the margins of a volume, recently published, and intituled, "The Natural History of Enthusiasm." They will, at least, remind some of my old school-fellows of the habit for which I was even then noted: and for others they may serve, as a specimen of the Marginalia, which, if brought together from the various books, my own and those of a score others, would go near to form as bulky a volume as most of those old folios, through which the larger portion of them are dispersed.*

HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.

I.

"Whatever is practically important on religion or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued in the simplest terms of colloquial expression.”—p. 21.†

NOTE.

I do not believe this. Be it so, however. But why? Simply, because, the terms and phrases of the theological schools have, by their continual iteration from the pulpit, become colloquial. The science of one age becomes the common sense of a succeeding. The author adds-" from the other style should at any time be heard." no more direct means of depriving Christianity of one of its peculiar attributes, that of enriching and enlarging the mind, while it

See the Author's Literary Remains.—Ed.

pulpit, perhaps, no Now I can conceive

† 7th edit.

purifies and in the very act of purifying the will and affections, than the maxim here prescribed by the historian of enthusiasm. From the intensity of commercial life in this country, and from some other less creditable causes, there is found even among our better educated men a vagueness in the use of words, which presents, indeed, no obstacle to the intercourse of the market, but is absolutely incompatible with the attainment or communication of distinct and precise conceptions. Hence in every department of exact knowledge, a peculiar nomenclature is indispensable. The anatomist, chemist, botanist, mineralogist, yea, even the common artisan and the rude sailor discover that "the terms of colloquial expression," are too general and too lax to answer their purposes, and on what grounds can the science of self-knowledge, and of our relations to God and our own spirits, be presumed to form an exception? Every new term expressing a fact, or a dif ference, not precisely and adequately expressed by any other word in the same language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned it.

II.

"The region of abstract conceptions, of lofty reasonings, of magnificent images, has an atmosphere too subtle to support the health of true piety. * * * In accordance with this, the Supreme in his word reveals barely a glimpse of his essential glories. By some naked affirmations we are, indeed, secured against grovelling notions of the divine nature; but these hints are incidental, and so scanty, that every excursive mind goes far beyond them in its conception of the infinite attributes."―p. 26

NOTE.

By "abstract conceptions" the Author means what I should call ideas, which as such I contra-distinguish from conceptions, whether abstracted or generalized. But it is with his meaning, not with his terms, that I am at present concerned. Now that the personeity of God, the idea of God as the I AM, is presented more prominently in Scripture than the (so called) physical attributes, is most true; and forms one of the distinctive characters of its superior worth and value. It was by dwelling too exclusively on the infinites that the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato excepted, fell into Pantheism, as in later times did Spinoza. "I