existence is casual; and that all distinct, or separate, beings, owe their existence to the powers and operations of matter; have been refuted by direct demonstrations; they have been unanswerably proved not only to be false, but to be impossible. What then can we think of the mental capacity of him, who goes on quietly with his faith in these hypotheses, and resolves to believe, in defiance of demonstration and impossibility?

But the source of Atheism is the heart rather than the head; and it is a moral phenomenon of a most portentous and appalling character. It is the child of depravity, bearing all the worst features of its parent. A tree is known by its fruits; reason never produced such a monster as Atheism : it is to be traced to the indisposition of the heart to acknowledge the existence of the Creator. He that hates the control, and dreads the inspection, judgment, and retribution of his Maker, finds no refuge from anxiety and alarm so safe, as the belief that there is no God.

To us there is something fearful and even terrific in the state of mind which can delight in the renunciation of a Deity—which can derive satis faction from the feeling, that the infinite Spirit is gone, that the only solid foundation of virtue is wanting; which can enjoy pleasure in renouncing that system of doctrine of which a God is the great subject, and that train of affections and conduct of which HE is the supreme object. The idea of a God seems essential to every pleasurable and sublime exertion: without it we can conceive of nothing glorious, nothing delightful. And, could it once be exploded, in one view it would diminish to insignificance the range of thought, and the circle of enjoyment. The absence of God would cover the face of nature with funereal gloom; and, he that should first make the fatal discovery, according to our apprehension, would be at once and for ever the most miserable being in the universe. He would evince no eagerness to communicate the dismal search; on the contrary, he would envy his fellow-creatures the pleasant delusion which sustained their virtue, and encouraged their hope.

But Truth," says Mr, Shelly, "has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind." We admit the proposition, and therefore maintain that that which is subversive of their best interests, cannot be truth. We may confidently ask, in what possible way can Atheism secure the well-being of society?

If we grant that the belief of a Deity operates as a very slight restraint on vice, in individual cases where the character has become utterly depraved, yet its general influence must be mighty, interwoven as it is with the whole civil and social economy of man. It must act powerfully as an incentive to whatever is good, and as a check to whatever is evil; and, it can only fail in particular instances of atrocious obduracy. But, what offences against himself or his fellow-creatures, may not an Atheist perpetrate with conscious impunity, without regret, and without a blush? What protection can his principles afford to confiding innocence and beauty? What shall deter him from dooming an amiable and lovely wife to penury, to desolation, and an untimely grave? What shall make seduction and adultery criminal in his eyes, or induce him when she is in his power, to spare the victim of unhallowed and guilty passions? What can he know of honour, of justice, and integrity? What friend will he not betray? What tradesman will he not defraud? What enemy will he not pursue to utter destruction? What lawless gratification will he not in

dulge, when its indulgence does not compromise his personal safety? Who, we may ask, are those that set the decencies of life at defiance, that laugh at virtue, and riot in epicurean debauchery? Are they not the base apostates from God, who boast of their impiety, and write themselves "ATHEISTS" to their own disgrace, and the scandal of the country that gave them birth? These are questions which we put to what was once a conscience in the breast of Mr. Shelly, with little hope, however, that they will rouse this benumbed and long-forgotten faculty, to any thing like feeling. It is well for mankind that the life of the Atheist is so just a comment upon his creed, and that none can feel a wish to join his standard, but he who has become an alien from virtue, and the enemy of his species.

We had intended to indulge in further observations, and to bring the principles of the declaration of rights more prominently and distinctly before our readers; but for the present we shall forbear. A government founded on Atheism, or conducted by Atheists, would be the greatest curse the world has ever felt. It was inflicted for a short season, as a visitation, on a neighbouring country, and its reign was avowedly and expressly the reign of terror. The declarers of rights, intoxicated by their sudden elevation, and freed from every restraint, became the most ferocious tyrants; and, while they shut up the temples of God, abolished his worship, and proclaimed death to be an eternal sleep, they converted, by their principles and spirit, the most polished people in Europe into a horde of assassins; the seat of voluptuous refinement, of pleasure and of arts, inte a theatre of blood.

With an example so recent and so fearfully instructive before our eyes, it is not probable that we shall be deluded by Mr. Shelly or any of his school; the splendours of a poetical imagination may dazzle and delight, and they may prove a mighty engine of mischief to many who have more fancy than judgment; but they will never impose upon the sober and calculating part of the community; they will never efface the impression from our minds, that Atheism is an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful restraint, and to every virtuous affection; that having nothing above us to excite awe, or around us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with Heaven and with earth: its first object is to dethrone God; its next to destroy man. With such conviction, the enlightened and virtuous inhabitants of Great Britain will not surely be tempted to their fate by such a rhapsody as the following, with which Mr. Shelly concludes his Declaration of Rights, and with which we take our leave of him :

"Man! thou whose rights are here declared, be no longer forgetful of the loftiness of thy destination. Think of thy rights; of those possessions. which will give thee virtue and wisdom, by which thou mayest arrive at happiness and freedom. They are declared to thee by one who knows thy dignity; for every hour does his heart swell with honourable pride, in the contemplation of what thou mayest attain; by one who is not forgetful of thy degeneracy, for every moment brings home to him the bitter conviction of what thou art.

Awake!-Arise !—or be for ever fullen.”

II. The Templar. London, 1822. pp. 89.

WHAT have not the Whistlecrafts, or rather, what has not Mr. Frere, the sponsor of the Whistlecrafts, to answer for? Since the accouchement of his Lady Muse, and the consequent entré upon the poetical world of his unique bantling, we have been almost pushed from off our reading-stools by imitators, in the shapes of "Beppos," "Juans," and a hundred other like strings of" whitings' eyes," less felicitous imitations of the original wonder. Yet, although the line has stretched itself almost to the "crack o' doom," and relatives, down to cousins-german, have claimed kindred to the first Burgo-master; yet we doubt whether any of the distortions of the followers and the copyists, can compare with the peculiar antics and originalities of the first and inimitable doldrum of the sect. But there is a line of demarcation for all things; and, to prevent an excess in the population of ugly and deformed heirs of Parnassus, we must at once oppose, though it may go against our pre-conceived opinions, a free trade in the article, and be, like some of our agriculturists, petitioners for restrictive measures, and prohibitory duties. Sickened, however, as we are, by the overgrowth of this species of poetical power, we can make ample reservations in behalf of any scions of real beauty, that may spring from this multiplying stock; and considering that we ourselves have struck some cuttings, obtained, we should hope, from the parent stem, we hold ourselves, out of gratitude to the source of our success, bound to examine the pretensions and pedigree of any claimant upon the descent and family of the progenitor of the class.

These remarks have been elicited, in consequence of the prettily printed volume, entitled "The Templar," just now put into our hands; whose author is clearly one of those, that has imbibed the desire of shewing his relationship to the family we have been describing; though we very much doubt, notwithstanding his being a man of law, whether he will ever prove himself an elder branch of it. He is, however, by no means the ultimus Romanorum,-would that he were! and if he can but content himself with believing the Latin adage to be true-and he is very fond of quoting Latinnamely, that in medio tutissimus ibis, mediocrity is the safest state, we should not object to taking a brief in his cause, and venture to hazard the loss of our fee, if we did not bring good record of his birth, and clear evidence for a verdict. But to the work.

The Templar, then, is a good-humoured little poem of two cantos, containing, as is the case with poems of this calibre, something of every thing, but chiefly descriptive of the Temple Inns of Court, the general classes and opinions of its dwellers, its gardens, and its ancestral patrons, the Templar Knights. In a short, but pointed introduction, the author tells us, that to enliven the dreariness of the long vacation, and his imprisonment in his "little cage up three pair," he scribbled this volume; and became, for so his fate would have it, one of the " genus irritabile vatum.”

The first canto is a hodge-podge, an olla podrida, made of many materials. It may be said of the stanzas, sunt bona, sunt quadam mediocru, sunt mala plura; we have five or six to begin with, as our young Templar, for we know that he is young, himself admits, absolutely stolen from the antiquities of his very Inn; but we do not think his verses improve the dryness of the original document, we have deprecations of Lord Byron's censure,

"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba ;" and we have defiances and supplications to ourselves, as Reviewers, in a breath. We pass over, however, these unequal efforts, and proceed to amuse our readers with the following good-humoured, perhaps witty, and we dare be sworn correct, picture of his own profession, with reference to their impressions, as a body, of a brother quill becoming a poet. The second stanza, for its charitable sentiment, is deserving of higher praise :—

"My own profession are a curious set

The plodding men I mean-they do not like
Working for nought, and therefore they affect
Disgust at verse. Thus have I seen a pike,
Sly in the dark deeps, sullenly reject

The bait when proffer'd; on a sudden strike
Upon it, if the glutton deem'd the prey
Might yield him gain. So lawyers for their pay.
I would not have a harsh expression hurl'd
At any body-corporate, sole, politic;
But when a truth by Honesty's unfurl'd,
'Tis pleasant to reveal what's hypocritic:-
There's, then, a deal of nonsense in the world,
And quackery in law, as well as physic:
"A seeming wise," as once 'twas said by Bacoa,
Which often for real wisdom is mistaken.
To wit: I know that many men would go-
(But they are lawyers, partial to their fees)

I say, they'd rather go to Jericho,

Than be found guilty of such lines as these.
But then these men are sombre, you must know,
And do not do as I do,-what I please.

These men are monstrous grave, and make a query,
Whether a lawyer can be wise, if merry.

Now what is this but trumpery and stuff?
Oh! I could quote them cases by-and-by,

Till each should cry, "Well; this is quantum suff ;-
Ohe! jam satis-satisfied am I."

Cases that would, however grave and gruff
My adversaries, or however sly,-
Cases that would by all be deem'd in point,
And put their learned noses out of joint.
In this, I will not please them to th' extent
I can; for which I will not give my reason:
But Coke advises how our time be spent,

So that we should not be for ever teasing
Ourselves with law; and as to that, he meant

Six hours a day's enough in every season,
And six for sleep; and four for pray'r and fasting;
And two for feasts-Best precept of long lasting.

So six are left to have a bit of fun in :

'Tis Coke's advice, it plainly to be seen is,
That we should daily sink our legal cunning,
And "ultro sacris largire camoenis."

I've many other cases-but this one in
My opinion's right, in class and genus.
If you must have some other case beside,
I know no better than the "Pleader's Guide."

The next quotation, from the commencement of the second canto, is in a somewhat more elevated strain; sinking, however, into the old minor key in the last stanza, and would induce one to think that our author were capable of better things than writing second-hand Beppos, and imitating a style and fashion of verse which would be "more honoured in the breach than the observance.” He is speaking of the Knights Templars

Despis'd, neglected, and at length suppress'd,
The only vestige of them that appears

Is yon fair church, by buildings sore oppress'd.
There has she stood for full six hundred years
A model of that sepulchre confess'd,

Where zealous pilgrims dropp'd fanatic tears.
The tombs of cross-legg'd knights guarding their dust,
Are mingled here with monument, and bust,

And tombs of modern date:-The wise and sage,
With Ross and Pembroke, and with Essex sleep,

Men famous in their day!-but past's the age,

And those who wept for them have ceas'd to weep;
They, too, are number'd on the silent page

Of death, whilst o'er their frames the cold worm creep.
Here Selden, Barrington, and Plowden lie,

Born to instruct the world-but born to die !

Yet this is melancholy,-ill according

With my intention to produce a smile;

It ever is my aim to be affording

A pleasantry that shall old Time beguile.

I love not miserable, lengthy wording,

And spinning out of sorrows by the mile;
So let us leave our churches to churchwardens,
And take a walk into the Temple gardens."

There are some smart lines; but, as if they could not shew their affinity without it, somewhat coarse withal, on Madame Vestris, and her characteristic, masculine, and lively personation of that very fashionable character, Don Giovanni.-But we must onward to our summing up.

We do not attempt to point out the blemishes and haste-marks which disfigure this altogether unassuming bantling; for, where they are "too tedious to mention" in more experienced craftsmen, it would be an improbability to assert that they are less frequent in this, not so old and experienced associate. The very character of this species of poetry renders such faults almost its inseparable companions. If, for instance, we determine within ourselves, although we may wish such unspeakable wonders to be banished the stage, to enact Mr. Barnes's part in the Covent Garden pantomime, we should most assuredly make ourselves, as he does, of preposterous appearance, and unnatural stature.

The notes are lively, and well written, and, like a good epilogue,' a capital make-weight to the duller portion of the work; and we do think, that if the three pair of stairs Templar, always provided the more substantial part of his calling does not prevent him from mounting his friend Pegasus, and looking at dusty sparrows in the Temple gardens, were seriously to begin wooing a fairer muse then the patroness of the Whistlecraft school, that he would be neither the worst accoutred, or the last aspirant in the race for the goal of Parnassus. At present, he is fully worthy to pick the cow