"The man who lives in solitude, and seldom communicates with minds of the same class as his own, works out his opinions with patient scrutiny, returns to the investigation again and again, imagines that he had examined the question on all sides, and at length arrives at what is to him a satisfactory conclusion. He resumes the view of this conclusion, day after day: he finds in it an unalterable validity: he says in his heart, 'Thus much I have gained; this is a real advance in the search after truth; I have added in a defined and palpable degree to what I knew before.' And yet it has sometimes happened that this person, after having been shut up for weeks, or for a longer period, in his sanctuary, living, so far as related to an exchange of oral disquisitions with his fellow-men, like Robinson Crusoe in the desert island, shall come into the presence of one, equally clear-sighted, curious and indefatigable with himself, and shall hear from him an obvious and palpable statement, which in a moment shivers his sightly and glittering fabric into atoms. The statement was palpable and near at hand; it was a thin, an almost imperceptible partition that hid it from him; he wonders in his heart that it never occurred to his meditations. And yet, so it is; it was hidden from him for weeks, or perhaps for a longer period; it might have been hid from him for twenty years, if it had not been for the accident that supplied it. And he no sooner sees it, than he instantly perceives that the discovery upon which he plumed himself was an absurdity of which even a schoolboy might be ashamed." ―pp. 251 253.

I would in the first place assert that the merits and demerits of the public-house are very unjustly rated by the fastidious among the more favored orders of society. We ought to consider that the opportunities and amusements of the lower orders of society are few. They do not frequent coffee-houses; theatres and places of public exhibition are ordinarily too expensive for them: and they cannot engage in rounds of visiting, thus cultivating a private and familiar intercourse with the few whose conversation might be most congenial to them. We certainly bear hard upon persons in

this rank of society, if we expect that they should take all the severer labor, and have no periods of unbending and amusement. But in reality, what occurs in the public-house we are too much in the habit of calumniating. If we would visit this scene, we should find it pretty extensively a theatre of eager and earnest discussion. It is here that the ardent and 'unwashed artificer' and the sturdy husbandman, compare notes and measure wits with each other. It is their arena of intellectual combat, the ludus literarius of their unrefined university. It is here they learn to think. Their minds are awakened from the sleep of ignorance; and their attention is turned into a thousand channels of improvement. They study the art of speaking, of question, allegation, and rejoinder. They fix their thought steadily on the statement that is made, acknowledge its force, or detect its insufficiency. They examine the most interesting topics, and form opinions, the result of that examination. They learn maxims of life, and become politicians. They canvas the civil and criminal laws of their country, and learn the value of political liberty. They talk over measures of state, judge of the intentions, sagacity, and sincerity of public men, and are likely in time to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating what modes of conducting national affairs, whether for the preservation of the rights of all, or for the vindication and assertion of justice between man and man, may be expected to be crowned with the greatest success: in a word, they thus become, in the best sense of the word, citizens." pp. 177-179.

This approbation of ale-house meetings is, we repeat, only applicable in the absence of better associations. They will be no longer needed, and much less frequented, when the new institutions which have sprung up among us shall have been so far modified by the wants of their members as to supply to them the aid which the higher classes derive from their appropriate resources, With the growing intelligence of the people will approach the time when the ends

of existence shall be better understood and more extensively attainable those aims which at present enter so little into the thought of the great majority of the most advanced nations. A very large proportion of every civilized people is occupied in preparing the tools by which the animal necessities are to be provided for; another large proportion is employed in raising food, and circulating and preparing it for consumption. This is a very proper business for them, if it were pursued as a means of subsistence merely, and if the subsistence were a certain reward of a moderate quantity of labor. But it is not so. Men think it the purpose of their life to saw, to carry bricks, or to sow and reap; and no wonder they think so, when their utmost labor will do no more than support life. When all this is done, and the body is actually nourished with this food, we have only fulfilled the necessary conditions, and not attained the ends of our life. All that is yet done is only preliminary; not only to some highly-favored classes, but to every individual. Bodily strength and ease, and the pleasures which result from moderate labor, are the means by which the mind is to be formed and nourished; and though, among the laboring classes, the process does go on insensibly to the individual, he does not receive what is due to him from society till this progress is proposed to him as an aim, and till he is allowed opportunity to attain it. When, by the conscious employment of his means, the individual feels himself fulfilling the purposes of his being, his progress is continually accelerated; for the power of exertion and the pleasure arising from it act reciprocally as cause and effect. Their action is compatible with the humblest occupations, and through it will the laborer realize what our author describes when he says, "he vests a certain portion of ingenuity in the work he turns out. He incorporates his mind with the labor of his hands."

When the time arrives which is reasonably anticipated by philanthropists whose sobriety of judgment is unquestionable, when every man shall have that labor appointed him which he is best fitted to perform, and when that labor shall be pursued in reference to an ulterior and unseen object, human virtue (on which our author writes eloquently) will be widely different from what it is now, while the grounds of moral obligation remain the same. In the present state of society, and consequent position of every individual in it, it is all that the most enlightened piety can do to keep the spirit free to be acted upon by the holy influences which, being essentially fitted for universality, shall, at length, operate upon all minds. The struggle with very gross temptations is now long and severe to the wisest and best of us; while thousands occasionally fall, and myriads have little power to resist. Almost all these grosser temptations, whether of prosperity or of adversity, spring out of the social system by which one man's loss is another man's gain, and the natural consequences of actions are delayed or averted. Penal enactments present a very insufficient opposition to such temptations; as the awful amount of social crime testifies every day. When the ends of individual life are duly regarded, the aims of society (which are themselves but means) will be certainly fulfilled. labor were more equally distributed, individual capacities would be more easily distinguishable; and as a consequence of this, the rewards of labor would be more appropriate and secure. Then the temptations of self-interest would be weakened, as there would be less want, and men could not covet or grasp with impunity. The pressure of necessity being removed, men would have leisure for the pursuit of high and higher objects; and the absence of the grosser temptations would leave them free to be wrought upon by the fine influences created for them, and ever awaiting their

If

reception: while the state of society should itself generate these impulses perpetually, especially those which proceed from the reciprocal communion of minds at ease, and earnest in the pursuit of things unseen and eternal.

Here we must stop; not because we have transgressed the bounds to which sound reason warrants our advancing; but because the prospect is already as extensive as we can take in at one survey. It is no region in the clouds that we are contemplating; it is a land of promise stretched out before our eyes, in all its distinct reality. The prophetic voice of philanthropy has long announced to us a state of society in which every individual shall be employed according to his capacity, and rewarded according to his works and in the meanwhile we are ready to hail the appearance of any "Thoughts on Man," which shall not only supply desultory facts and observations, but suggest means for securing to him all his rights, and cultivating all his capabilities.

ROMANISM AND EPISCOPACY.*

THE idea of this work is excellent. We were struck with it on first seeing the advertisement; but it was not till we had read the book itself that we became fully aware how comprehensive is its plan, and how admirable a clew it furnishes to the intricacies of all established religions, not excepting that of which the author is an honored minister. This work is, in fact, an exposure of the evils of establishments; and all that is necessary for a logical overthrow of the church of England is a fair extension of the

* The Errors of Romanism traced to their Origin in Human Nature. By Richard Whately, D.D. London: Fellowes. 1830.