are founded in fact, and give, I have no doubt, only the real picture of his feelings and thoughts at the time. This is exactly what I meant to describe as the characteristic of ancient Gaelic poetry. Every poem must be (according to the Druids) not only founded in fact, but its every character, scene, and deed, must be reconcileable to the verity of the history or tale it relates. But, at the same time, the dignified and strict morality of the Druids permitted, nay, encouraged, every embellishment calculated to move the heart and to captivate the imagination; but no deviation from truth and nature. "Donald, when he was old, and blind, under the conquest of age,' as he himself expresses it, was left at Fersat, then one of the winter towns of the clan, attended by his grandaughter, while all the rest of the family had ascended to their summer shielings on the mountains. He had long and fondly cherished the belief, founded on the promise of some spirit of the hills, that he would kill one deer more before hel died. To this belief he seemed to cling, as if it constituted his last tie to existence; and it was now to be verified by a singular accident-for, one morning, while brooding over the joys of former days, and reciting a tale of successful deer-hunting to the lassie, his ears were assailed by some unaccountable noise, at the back of the house. Look out, my Fawn!' exclaimed Donald, and see what is the cause of that noise.' The lassie ran out, but returned in a moment, crying that a stag had got his antlers entangled in the car; and that, in struggling to set himself free, and escape, he was sometimes rolling over with, and sometimes dragging it along the field. My bow and arrow,' cried Donald, and lead me forth with speed.' This order was promptly complied with, and the blind old deer-stalker, led forth by the hand of a child, drew his last shaft at the sound, and killed the last of his deer! He requested, on his death-bed, that the skin of this deer, which he had got carefully dressed and preserved for that purpose, should be used as his winding-sheet; that he should be buried in Kilkaril, and his face turned to his beloved Craiguana-directions which were piously and literally complied with." | "I never had the pleasure of hearing the poem of 'The Hunter and the Owl,' excepting once; and it was then recited by a fair Badenoch lady, who neither understood nor felt the bard's meaning; and who was yet so persuaded that she did, that she occupied more space with her own version or dissertation on the subject, than in the recitation of the poem itself. I should, therefore, like very much to hear a few stanzas of it from you, feeling convinced that you will preserve the poetry of the original in your recitation." "With all my heart," replied Allan, "provided that you promise not to fall asleep, as you lately did, in the shieling of Bencrulaist, leaving me to repeat every line of the Aged Bard's Desire,' and my own inimitable remarks on its beauties, before I discovered that I was minus a listener." I promise to escape the sin of not listening, on the condition that you avoid your old sin of lecturing, for I had enough of that, on this subject, from my fair Badenoch friend." HUNTER. Poor owl of Strone, this ruin, lorn and drear, Is a sad shade for age's dark decline; 86 Yet, if thy sorrowing tale I rightly hear, OWL. Behold yon oak, which towers above the glade, On many a fleeting age 't has looked with scorn; Fergus, the great in arms, I also knew; Clearing resounding forests with his band; Social at feasts, and glorious in command. And his successor, Angus, too, I've knownA chief still valued in his clan's esteemFor rural arts he earned his renown, And built yon mill on Eara's winding stream. HUNTER. Lone creature! surely thou art frail and old; And syne thy thoughts and actings be confest. OWL. I never thieved-I never told a lie, Nor broke into a consecrated place; Poor though I live, in innocence I'll die, A harmless carline of a harmless race. HUNTER. But thou hast known some chiefs of lofty name, Who from their people gained the meed of praise; Rehearse their actions in the field of faine, Their lofty deeds and their immortal lays. OWL. Oh! many a Northman's raid and patriot deed Lochaber witnessed in her days of woe; But who would shield the carline's helmless head, If, 'midst the strife, she showed her threatening brow? When loud was heard the war-cry and the fray, And rescued forays scattered o'er the wild, HUNTER. O Creg of joy! Creguana of my heart! In which I passed my youth's exulting day; My speckled fawn, amid thy sheltering brake! By heavens, the fellow is asleep!" exclaimed Allan, suddenly detecting the somnolence of his friend, "at the very moment at which Donald, fired by the recollection of his hunting days and favourite mountains, yields himself wholly up to his enthusiasm, and travels over every favourite haunt of the deer, naming and describing every mountain with the eye of the poet and the feelings of the patriot! If some heavy-headed Campbell has not been intimate with thy ; God forgive my raillery!--what awful sounds!” Allan had laid his hand on the shoulder of his friend, to awake him, but was unheeded. It seemed as if the melancholy coronach which terminated his sarcasm had Allan! tie the dog!" But Allan, though appalled. deprived him of the power of exerting himself, and he at the first by her horrific appearance and petrifying stood for a moment in that state of helpless agony voice, was restored to his presence of mind by her sometimes experienced under the influence of a pain-threatening gesture and command. He instantly ful dream, when the soul feels conscious of the delusion, and its want of power to break the spell. He could hear a gushing noise, resembling that of a stream that had burst its banks, descending the hill and approaching the bothy; while the same dirge-like voice, breaking forth at solemn intervals, poured forth these words:" Wail through the narrow glen! They come! they come! they come!" Angus Mor continued in the same trance-like sleep, but not so Oscar. He sprang on the heather mattress on which his master reclined, with a furious growl, and stood over him, watching, and in the attitude of springing at, the door, but in a state of excitement which more resembled the frenzy of terror than the energy of his usually fierce courage and determination. The creaking and crazy door sprang suddenly open, and a cloud-like form, gigantic and hideous, huddled itself forward into the bothy, and crouched opposite to Allan; and, with an appalling leer of recognition, spread its large paws over the fire to enjoy the warmth they seemed so much to require. In this position she remained for a moment immovable; when, just as Oscar's growl became convulsively violent, and he was in the act of springing upon her, across the fire, her body started at once to its terrific height, with a jerk resembling that of a well bent bow escaping the bondage of its snapped string; and bending forward above Allan, with her head touching the roof, she cried, in her supernatural and yelling voice, "Tie the dog, sprang to his feet, and snatching his dirk from its sheath, pointed it at her breast, replying, calmly but sternly, "I invoke the presence of the living God between us, and neither fear nor obey your commands!" Her red eye glared malignly in his face, her armed mouth opened from ear to ear, she stooped forward as if to snatch him up in her hand; and then, as if struck by a sudden thought, she broke into an eldritch laugh, while she hissed these words in his ears:-"Thou shalt see it! thou shalt see it! thou shalt see it! The sacked cottage, the burned hamlet, the strong and the brave of thy doomed race sinking without resistance in their own blood, the pure and the lovely dragged in ruffian arms, or flying from impure violence to the clefts of the rocks or the bosoms of the snowwreaths and the lakes! With thy proud and generous heart uncooled, untamed-thy strong and expert arm unshrunk, unwithered-thou shalt gaze at the melting sight, impotent to relieve, powerless to revenge!" After having uttered these denunciations, with gestures of malignant triumph, more easily ima gined than described, she resumed her crouching atti tude, and huddled herself out at the door. But the same appalling dirge-" Wail through the narrow glen! They come! they come! they come!"-uttered in the same petrifying tones, continued to ring in Allan's ears, until her voice seemed to dissolve itself in the tempest-invoked echoes of the towering cliffs which surrounded the shieling. THE NEMESIS OF FAITH.* very extensive circulation. To doubt is a necessity from which no thinker can escape. By his very constitution he is compelled to it. But no thinker, knows there must be truth somewhere, and truth discoverable by him, since he consciously possesses those faculties of cognition which God must have bestowed for the end to which they are so manifestly adapted. Doubt, therefore, is to him a beginning, not a conclusion—a mean, not an end—a starting Ir is not often our practice to notice at length || seminary in Hobart Town, it is certain to obtain a books exclusively devoted to the discussion of religious opinions, but the appearance of the "Nemesis of Faith" permits a deviation from ordinary practice. In Germany and France, where distem-worthy of the name, can rest satisfied there. He pered minds have long been impregnating the moral and religious atmosphere with pestilential speculations, its advent would have excited but little notice and no surprise. Here, on the contrary, where once, perhaps, in half a century some perverted intellect discolours the lucid current of our literature, such a turbid infusion generally creates astonish-post, not a goal. He thinks away every propo ment and indignation. Men feeling themselves, sition he has been taught to believe, that he may and all they hold dearest, boldly aspersed, look for resume all that will abide the touchstone of his an echo of their sentiments from every man con- rigorous analysis and inflexible synthesis. He renected with the press, who, conversant with the in- duces his mind, with the exception of the first terdependencies of things, can appreciate the bane- truths, which no power can obliterate, to a mere ful effects of such a publication on the creed and tabula rasa, that thereon he may engrave, în regu morals of the people, the professions and institutes lar series, as with an iron pen, the utterances of eter of the country. Had it emanated from a quarter less nal truth. He descends into darkness that he may influential, and been likely to attain little notoriety, ascend into light. He empties his intellectual we should have left it, like others of its class, to wardrode of every habiliment, that he may repleglide into merited oblivion. But, written by a man nish it with nothing but the best and the richest in holy orders, a fellow of Exeter College, a good apparel. He discredits everything that he may scholar, of some intellectual grasp, and recently grasp all the attainable credendo. This, and this appointed by the Council of University College, alone, is the art of doubting well, an art which we London, to the headship of a large and important || are glad to think multitudes of minds, at least in * "The Nemesis of Faith,” by J. A. Fronde, A.M., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, this country, have successfully acquired and frequently exercised. Now, Mr. Fronde, whom we cannot separate from Markam Sutherland, the hero of his book, seems to possess the descendant faculty of negation in a remarkable degree. He sinks with the utmost facility, but, unfortunately, he is sadly defective in the ascendant power of probation. Once down, he is down for ever. His air-bag is but a semi-imitation of the piscatory arrangment. Perhaps he had some intention of remounting, but there he is still at the bottom, and for aught we can see to the contrary, there he is likely to remain. Surely such a type of intellect is little calculated "Pandere res altâ terrâ et caligine mersas." but slenderly acquainted with the themes it handles, more conversant with German rationalism and the literature of Greece and Rome than the massive monuments of Anglican, Genevese, and Scottish divinity. His reckless profanity that of a heart which, notwithstanding all his protestations to the contrary, is utterly inept to clothe a spiritual subject with that awful solemnity with which every man of fine moral perceptions will invariably invest it. The "Nemesis of Faith," wide as is the sweep of its scepticism, raises no question that has not been repeatedly answered, starts no difficulty that has not been frequently solved, and that to the satisfaction of intellects infinitely greater than the ci-devant Fellow of Exeter College, who only "Gleans the blunted shafts that have recoiled, From what has been said it will be observed that And aims them at the shield of Truth again." two processes are employed in all successful inves tigation, a negative and a positive. To the former There is one consideration which influenced us almost every man is competent, but to the latter much in condemning the book. During the literary, both a luminous intellect and a rectified heart are and especially the theological career of every young absolutely indispensable. Mr. Fronde has attempted man of talent and probity with whom we are acto grapple with the deepest problems with which quainted, the same doubts have been often expressed the human mind can be engaged, and his conquests, respecting the identical articles of belief which we regret to say, are by no means great. His book, Mr. Fronde assails, though in a far different tone on a cursory perusal, from its confident dogmatism, and spirit; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hunboldness of statement, and vigour of style, does not dred, we defy him to prove the contrary, even with seem to indicate any very great lack of head; and regard to the students of the English Church, for in every page, as we are literally deluged with the whom he has such a supreme contempt. After overflowings of benevolent sentiment, we cannot these young men had earnestly addressed themselves but think that he possesses a prodigious heart, to the task of discovering the truth wherever it might beating at a rate of not much less than a hun be found, and had carefully studied with the circle dred per minute for the welfare of the species. A of the Christian evidences, they came out from their little closer inspection, however, serves very mate- closets with an irresistible and ineradicable convicrially to modify this impression. The shadow of a tion that the God of the Bible was the only true would-be Carlyle gradually ascends. Spasmodic God, and that the Bible was his veritable handiefforts to think like that celebrated writer painfully work. For ourselves, we felt perfectly familiar with appear. The shadow, as it develops, reveals but the geography of every district on his route; every the shadow of a shade, and the efforts produce but landscape of thought was a terra cognita over which a humiliating abortion-nascitur ridiculus mus. we had frequently ranged; every station on the The style alone is successful, and perhaps on this line was an old acquaintance, and from the very score the majority of our readers will not be dis-outset we descried distinctly in the distance the posed very cordially to congratulate him. The terminus chaoticus ad quem. Now, if, instead of work is divided into four parts: primo, a series of waiting a little longer at each position, and examinletters addressed by a sceptical young student,||ing more accurately its circumjacent phenomena, named Markham Sutherland, just returned from college, having passed through a distinguished eurriculum, to a friend who is more than tinged with sympathetic sentiments; secundo, fragmentary thoughts; tertio, confessions of a sceptic; and, quarto, a narrative of events in Italy. The letters are intended to portray the workings of a talented intellect on the affairs of the world in general, and the great fundamentals of Biblical Christianity in particular. Lawyers, physicians, and clergymen, the canonicity of the sacred books, the doctrines of With regard to the style of this part, we think inspiration and future punishments, the divinity of it greatly inferior to the rest. Several broken our Lord, the veracity of the apostles, and Bible metaphors, rude periods, ugly Carlyleisms, and a societies, are severally canvassed, and indiscrimi- tolerable array of infelicitous phrases, could be innately impugned in succession, and that in a tone dicated without much difficulty. Secundo, "Fragso petulant and characteristic of juvenile arrogance, mentary Thoughts." These are introduced by a and in language so violent and unmeasured, that preface, which we suppose Mr. Fronde designs pity is provoked for his weakness, astonishment at should be regarded either as his own production, or his audacity, and indignation at his reckless pro-that of Arthur, the friend and correspondent of fanity. His weakness is that of an ambitious in- Sutherland. Perhaps Mr. Fronde himself alone tellect capable of struggling, for a while, of conquer-covets the honour of our eulogium, for we have to ing, never; his audacity that of an understanding tell him it is the most impious, frontless piece of we had hurried to the press with our crude, juvenile, and defective induction, upon which we had reared a huge fabric of deductive inferences; or if we had, in maturer years, been instrumental in publishing such records-even though we should have had no hand in their authorship-what would the world have thought of the vanity, the folly, the pride, the presumption of such a procedure? And yet this is exactly what Fronde has sanctioned by promulgating the correspondence of Markham Sutherland. writing we have seen for many years in the Eng-||ing, because often true; but most humiliating are lish language. No atheist ever wrote more audaciously. The great author of the world is dragged to the bar of this pittering grasshopper, as the Saviour was before Pilate; and there he is crowned, like his son, with a wreath of thorns, and held up to the mockery of the universe he rules. We have hitherto intentionally refrained from giving any quotations, but, with the view of exhibiting the character of the whole monstrosity, we shall present a few extracts: "I think Nature," says he, "if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her farours; whose life is only suffering, and whose action is one long protest against the illforesight which flung them into consciousness." the conclusions of this erratic mind, that Biblical Christianity is based on "unreasoning reverence,” and her sacred institutes but products of humanity in weakness. Fronde's idea of religion is complete in the idea of a God, about whose will, character, and ways, he knows almost nothing; and in whom he believes as a mysterious necessity existing somewhere in the universe, but taking no care or cog. nizance of the insignificant children of men, or the ephemeral interests of human life. Poor selftormented, self-isolated soul, he stands like some gaunt, roofless ruin on the summit of a grim rock, exposed to the wild fury of the blast, and the shattering career of every storm, unnoticed, neglected, and alone. He feels his misery, he is conscious of his wretchedness, he bemoans his desolation, but he If, in the above passage, God is substituted for refuses to look to the only source of permanent "Nature," since she "Is but one grand effect, whose cause is God!" how horribly impious does it become! Again:Mòì, ¿yà, should be the maxim, and in future no colonists should be sent into this world who have too much or too little of anything." peace. He will turn him to the scenes of unthink- Thus proceeds this daring blasphemer for several As for the "Fragments" themselves, they are mere ebullitions of a mind fermenting in endless doubt and darkness. Deeply convinced, however, as it should seem, that "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas," he attempts to solve all the difficulties connected with the dogma of an Immanuel, and the origin of Christianity. In the sequel, we shall dispose of these questions. In the meantime, we regret we cannot say, with Persius, "Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter;" as we should certainly not have been greatly displeased had he, from the outset of his inquiries, adopted the principles and practice of Rosicrucius. He might then have smashed his lamp into a thou sand pieces, and the world would not have been a whit the darker. Confessions of a Sceptic." This part is really well written. Its language is subdued, tender, me lancholy, and affecting. It describes, with some truth and a large admixture of error, the feelings and fascinations of home-the earlier exercises of reason-the gradual progress from the great principles of Protestantism to the mystical dogmas of Puseyism, and thence to the barren, cheerless region of absolute Scepticism. The picture is touch beauteous joy of the infantine heart--the deep, intelligent happiness of the perfect man, and the only halo that never departs from the serene brow of the ancient peasant and the hoary sage. It was the religion of the Past; it is the religion of the Present; it shall be the religion of the Future; it is the only stable fabric of Time; it shall be the high habitation of Eternity. Quarto, “A Narrative of Events in Italy." De prived of health by intense mental distress, Markham sets out for Italy, establishes himself on the banks of the lake of Como, where, returning one fine evening from a boating excursion, he accidentally encounters a beautiful young lady who had been sitting on the shore, listening with delight to the music of his flute, that had crept smoothly along the bosom of the waters. At his approach she rises, but, in turning to depart, lets fall some half-intelligible expressions of admiration and gratitude. The following evening a card is found on Markham's table from Mr. Leonard, the husband of his fair auditor, inviting him to pay them a visit., They are an English family, caring little for the society the neighbourhood aflorded, and therefore anxiously seek the acquaintance of their countryman. As Leonard is a frank, unsuspicious English country gentleman, who preferred the field to the drawingroom, and Diana to the Muses, and went frequently a considerable distance from home, in pursuit of accents will often be heard his favourite amusements, our hero is eventually In the following remarks we have nothing to do requested to take up his abode at the villa, where, with Mr. Fronde as an atheist, though several of as he was a "pleasant companion, and talked his statements imply some lurking suspicions of the poetry," he seemed well adapted to amuse the non-existence of a God. If he entertains these, lady in the absence of her lord. Leonard leaves; we have done with him when we ask him to open his wife becomes deeply enamoured of Markham; his ears to the many-voiced creation, which, with he responds; they pass delightful days in each its thousand tongues, proclaims the name of God; other's society. The lake is frequently visited; no we should leave him in his joyless isolation, believone is permitted to accompany them in these ex-ing that, in the deep solitude of his soul, these cursions except little Annie, the only child of Mrs. Leonard. On their return from one of these excursions, Markham and Helen become so much occupied with their own thoughts and feelings, that the child is forgotten, catches cold, fevers, and dies. This seems a judgment from heaven on their intercourse. The husband announces his return. Mrs. Leonard, distracted, proposes an elopement. Markham struggles a while, but ultimately refuses, becomes desperate, rushes out, with the intention of destroying himself, and, while in the act of raising the fatal phial to his lips, is suddenly arrested by the hand and voice of Mr. Mornington, an old college friend, a member of the Romish Church. By his advice, Markham enters a monastery, where, for a while, he seems soothed by the flattering unction of Popery. But his diseased mind breaks out afresh, planges him deeper and deeper into agony; and at las this miserable existence terminates in the horrors of despair. Mrs. Leonard dies in a convent, forgiven by her husband and loving Markham to the day of her death. Of Markham it is said, in conclusion, "his new faith fabric had been reared upon the clouds of sudden, violent feeling, and no air castle was ever of more unabiding growth; doubt soon sapped it, and remorse, not for what he had done, but for what he had not done; and amidst the wasted ruins of his life, where the bare, bleak soil was strewed with wrecked purposes and shattered creeds; with no hope to stay him, with no fear to raise the most dreary phantom beyond the grave, he sunk down into the barren waste, and the dry sands rolled over him where he lay; and no living being was left behind him upon earth, who would not mourn over the day which brought life to Markham Sutherland. Of Mrs. Leonard, "whether from deadness of conscience, or from apathy or indifference, or because of the unrepenting tenderness of her love, which never left her, (although they took care to tell her of Markham's repentance), she still clung to her feeling for him as the best and most sacred of her life. She acknowledged a sin which they told her was none, for she felt that she ought never to have promised Leonard what she had; but Markham she loved, she must still love. Her love for him could not injure him. If he was happy in forgetting, in abjuring her, she was best pleased with what would best heal his sorrow." This last part is interestingly written, and on that account all the more dangerous. It attracts only to destroy. Like the fabled apples, it is externally beautiful, while within there is nothing|| but bitter dust and ashes. It more than sanctions illegal love, and sheds a false and delusive light round the last and most horrible of crimes. Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it; Our business with him is then as a theist alone; a theist, too, of a very peculiar description, for he seems to know little or nothing about the character of the being he feels must necessarily exist : "Thus possessed of the simple idea of a great First Cause of all things, what can be gathered from the effect witnessed, respecting the nature of the invisible efficient? Reason teaches that the phenomena resulting from his agency must bear certain exponent notes, or characters, by which the intelligent observer may inductively ascend to the properties of which they are the miniature representation; and that the possession of these properties must involve, when contemplated by their possessor, a certain invariable subjective effect, and that this determinate subjective effect must be the final cause of their objective manifestation." To illustrate and substantiate this reasoning: "Two ideas are found to be inseparable from the human mind, the ideas of time and space. Time and space are objective entities. Time exists, space exists, and that altogether independent of the subjective percipient, and totally distinct from it. In thinking of time, we are carried back through cycle after cycle of duration, until we find ourselves arrested, not by the discovery of its beginning, but by the imbecility of our own faculties-which, at a certain point, become perplexed and staggered by the prospect of an illimitable wilderness of ages. Here we are assailed and confounded with the idea of uncommencing time-of an unborn eternity. Baffled in the attempt to seize and define the past, we rise into the future. But there also, after advancing through innumerable lapses of duration, to the utmost line that bounds imagination's flight,' the spiritual pinion droops, and we stand looking out dreamily upon-what ?-upon the unceasing roll of billows chasing one another in endless progression towards a perpetually receding shore. Here we are met with the wildering idea of unending time-of an undying eternity." This eternity, we are conscious, is not a person, but a thing; and from the impossibility of grasping it, we feel that it belongs not to us, but inust be referred to a Being that can adequately conceive its magnitude, and whose existence has been, is, and shall be commensurate with itself. Eternity, therefore, is not God, neither is God eternity, but God is eternal. In thinking of space, we ascend beyond the outermost star that lights its sublimities, and the eye still struggling upwards is at length bedimmed by the dark and darkening expanse, and forcibly closed upon the planetless prospect of immensity. We descend to the boundaries of the nethermost sphere, the farthest down in the deeps of space, and there, standing on the brink, plunge into the yawning abyss to an immeasurable depth, where we descry far away beneath a deep, immeasurably deeper still, where imagination is compelled to pause again, and wrap the soul in the mighty shadow of immensity. Returned to our little planet whence we started, we look around, on every side, but limit |