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bears testimony to their extensive circulation, proves, moreover, the good sense of our brethren on the other side of the

water.

But we must close. We trust that Mrs. Child will continue her useful labors, and have no doubt that they will be received with constantly increasing favor. We would not have her desert fiction altogether. This would be needless severity of construction, in determining what was useful. High and beautiful lessons may be inculcated by a good story, and as good a rule in morals deduced, as laid down. We are in favor of the employment of efficient mind in the realms of fancy. We want works of imagination that shall do us honor and good at the same time; and these we can have. Genius is not slumbering in our land, and there are a thousand fields, as yet untrodden by its restless foot. Prose, it must be confessed, is the favorite language of the time, both with authors and the world at large, a consequence, as every one sees, of the matter-of-fact character of the age. As to writing grave essays in verse, or a treatise on the sciences in Lydian measure,' though once held not only possible but quite proper, men now would stare at the suggestion. Still we are no believers in the theory of those, who deem poetry altogether among the things of yesterday. Poetry can never die. It can never pass away. It is too much a part of ourselves. We hope for better things than our country has yet seen in this delightful art, and it lies with some of our best prose writers,-writers who have gone into the same fields with Mrs. Child, and given us poems in their sketches and tales,-to bring this about. There is too much inclination abroad to depreciate poetry; and the desertion of her standard by those who are best able to bear it bravely and well, is treachery to their country's honor, as well as to letters and themselves. We repeat, then, that we hope for better

ity, an anecdote in reference to one of Mrs. Child's popular works, lately published in Great Britain, which is worth relating, as an example of the amiable spirit of nationality. The publisher took the precaution to mention in his preface that his edition was true to the original, save in those instances where he had expunged the Americanisms. As thus expurgated, it came before the English public. A copy has since been faithfully examined here, and compared with the Boston edition. The only alterations consist in inserting this country' in the place of America, or United States, so as to suit it to the meridian of the United Kingdom. Thus much for Americanisms!

things. We look for high and powerful efforts in this department of our literature, and trust that the time is not distant when we can point to works that shall be destined, and shall deserve, to live with those that have already become classic in our language.

ART. VII.-Vaughan's Memorials of the Stuarts.
Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, including the Constitu-
tional and Ecclesiastical History of England from the
Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II.
By ROBERT VAUGHAN. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831.

THIS book has not been republished in this country, and we have seen but one or two notices of it even in England. To explain its object, we cannot do better than to borrow the words of the Preface.

"The revolution of 1688 is the acknowledged epoch of our civil and religious liberties. That revolution, though accomplished with little effort and without commotion, was the result of a protracted struggle in behalf of popular rights, and of one maintained chiefly by religious men. In its earlier stages, this patriotic contention derived its main strength from the Puritans and during the last, when it received important aid from members of the established church, it was an object of the utmost solicitude with the body of English non-conformists; nor is there any hazard in saying, that their weight was then found sufficient to turn the scale on the better side.

'The influence of these parties, and especially of the Puritans and their descendants, on the great question of civil freedom and liberty of conscience, is a topic of inquiry equally curious and valuable. It was not to have been expected that writers, having no sympathy with the religious principles of these men, should treat their story, in this view of it, either adequately or fairly: and it is a little singular that no non-conformist should ever have attempted that separate and continuous investigation of it, which its interest and importance so clearly demand. The leading design of the author has been to produce a work of this nature.

In the phasis which the civilized world is now rapidly assuming, fresh motives are plentifully supplied to look back and study the events Mr. Vaughan has undertaken to describe. No portion of political history presents more striking lessons of

experience, and none will bear with less injury that varied construction, which the peculiar political views of each writer induce him to place upon it. We have now a Catholic history and a Protestant history, a royalist and a republican, a religious and a free-thinker's history, all of which, with certain qualifications, are useful to the world. They all tell some truth. Where the testimony is common, there can be no reasonable doubt: and where it is contradictory, the duty of the cool-minded reader is to sit in judgment as well upon the passions as the statements of each writer, and thus arrive with greater certainty at the object of which he is in search.

At this time of day, nobody thinks of placing reliance upon the account of the British revolution given by Mr. Hume. Many writers have within a few years combined to expose his inaccuracies of fact and his partiality of judgment. He was a Scotch tory of the last century in politics, and a skeptic in religion. He was bred up in attachment to that law which made the Roman Emperors absolute sovereigns in their dominions, and he nursed in himself a supreme contempt for every thing that savored of devotion. Admirable, therefore, as the literary acquirements of Mr. Hume certainly were, he was by no means the person to compose a text-book upon English history. He is to be heard not as a judge, but as an attorney pleading a cause, and his arguments are worth no more from him, than they would be coming from Clarendon himself. Indeed, they are not worth so much, for Clarendon was a religious man. He could understand the sincerity of religious belief, even when it did not come exactly within the line of his own practice.

Numerous as the corrections of Hume have been, few, we might say not one, has been directed particularly to the point where he was most unjust, the history of the Puritans. We are therefore delighted at last to take up a work which undertakes to supply this deficiency; which proposes, in a brief compass, to review and rectify what has heretofore been written. Mr. Vaughan is evidently equal to his task. He writes with boldness, because he feels that he is doing an honorable duty, and has truth and justice to sustain him. His volumes may not meet with the applause which they deserve, but the cause will be apparent. The British public has been long in leading strings both in Church and State. It is only now making a struggle to get out of them. The events of the day merely

shadow forth as yet a portentous change. May we not hope that the change will be an improvement?

It can hardly be doubted, that the expulsion of the Stuarts was almost exclusively owing to the Puritans. They alone possessed the determination, which was necessary to effect that result. The Reformation, in our humble opinion, did far more for the liberty of England, than Magna Charta, the confirmatio chartarum, or the statute de tallagio non concedendo. It made the people think, and not the barons. It rested the public safety upon the basis of the public interest, and not that of the nobility. There have been many struggles where the name of liberty has been freely used, which have yet ended only in a change of despotism. Such efforts are of no use, unless the people act understandingly in the matter, -without this, civil wars are the curses of the earth, and the producers of them not a whit better than seditious disturbers of the public peace. Shall we be deemed enthusiasts if we go a step farther, and say that the cause of liberty must forever be united with the cause of the Christian religion? We mean that religion which is well understood,-that which appeals to the mind and not to the senses,—that which is the result of reflection and not of passion. The great and leading error of the church of Rome seems to have been the union of a temporal with the spiritual power; a union which the history of the Saviour expressly disavows, and of which even Dr. Lingard indirectly doubts the expediency. The interests of religion were made secondary to the interests of the Prince. The acquisition of power and of supremacy was too tempting an object to the minds of a succession of mere mortals, and the Christian virtues of forbearance and humility were consequently too often forgotten. Thus grew the gorgeous hierarchy, which so long governed the Christian world. Its basis was false and inconsistent with the spirit of the founder of the faith, and it could be sustained no longer than the people could be kept in mental ignorance. The slavery of the mind and the slavery of the body went hand in hand together. When the former was released, the latter necessarily followed. The spirit of inquiry, which examined the Testament and compared the simplicity of Christ and his followers with the arrogant pretensions of their self-appointed representatives, pushed itself with similar zeal and success into the subject of civil rights. The lessons were hardly learnt and dearly paid for, but they

were lessons which produced the British constitution and our own free system of government.

But if, on the one hand, the Bible teaches men to think and feel for themselves, instead of trusting the whole business in the hands of a Sovereign Prince, it equally teaches the necessity of a strong and self-restraining civil government. A well ordered and moral Christian government would never make an unhappy State. So true is this, that every demagogue, who cries for liberty and means licentiousness, thinks it necessary first to reject Christianity. It was the want of this restraining principle, that produced the horrors of the French revolution; it was the existence of it, though even in a mistaken form, which arrested similar horrors during the civil troubles in England, and wherever the world is now in commotion, it would not be an idle foresight in the people to look well at the religious principles of their leaders and flatterers, before they move an inch. Revolution is not a business to be trifled with.

We have uttered a doctrine not much in fashion among politicians, nor properly considered in the world at large; but the present are perilous times and require extraordinary treatment. It is not right that the peace of numbers should be jeopardised every day by any person, however able he may be, merely because he takes the fancy into his head. If it be a security to a body politic that the men who aspire to lead should be moral and religious men, without cant or affectation, let those qualifications be required. If it be not, then the case of this world must be very bad indeed. At the same time, we are not to be understood as advocates of a union between church and state, any farther than as both mark the same course for human conduct. It is not about creeds that we would contend, but about practice. It remains yet to be proved to the world, by what rule of argument a bad character in private relations can be at the same time worthy of confidence in public affairs.

The Puritans have been unjustly treated. They were conscientious men. They were fearless and uncompromising in matters where they thought their duty concerned; and even their faults, many of which they undoubtedly had, were productive of some good to the world. They were stern and unamiable, but the times required such spirits. Would gentle and refined beings have carried on, at every disadvantage, a

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