sible one, which in excellence shall transcend all that the world has yet exampled, "must overleap itself and fall on the other side." Nevertheless, so watchful are human interests that such a result can scarcely happen. The cry for Reform, accordingly, produced a vehement Reaction, the consequence of which has been, that the law of progress was so powerfully antagonised by the principle of conservatism, that the two parties were placed hors de combat, with only just so much disturbance of the equilibrium as served to save them from absolute inactivity. But although the men who had taken up the cause of Reform, together with their opponents, were checkmated in Parliament, the opposing principles were yet abroad, one striving to countervail the other in a larger field of contention. Now, it is the progressive principle that is most likely to err on the side of activity, the retrogressive is quietly operant-just so much as will preserve the permanence of things in the proper and safe mean-a certain shifting point between the opponent twain. And thus it remains until the attraction of the opposite, becoming excessive, rouses it to increased exertion, aided also by the law of repulsion, of which the principle is to prevent too close an approximation to either extreme. The onward principle has become thus erroneously active in the wide field of general society, as of late it was in the narrower space of parliament, and will rouse reaction in its new arena as effectually as it did in the old. The Chartist excesses have already put society on the defensive, and the middle classes must join with the upper in quelling the perilous disturbances which now do more than agitate, which threaten the peace and order of daily existence. Nor in Parliament will the result be different, the once half-radical ministry, from Viscount Melbourne to Lord John Russell, are become conservatives, and a coalition is promised, not by the tories descending to the whigs, but by the whigs approximating to the tories. "There never was an instance," says the Rev. Sydney Smith, in his largely circulated pamphlet on the ballot, "There never was an instance in this country where parties were so nearly balanced; but all this will pass away, and, in a very few years, either Peel will swallow Lord John, or Lord John will pasture upon Peel; parties will coalesce, the Duke of Wellington and Viscount Melbourne meet at the same board, and the lion lie down with the lamb." Such seems now to be not only the general want, but the general desire. Nevertheless the ultra papers are offended with our syncretic correspondent for a little anticipating the time. These are, however, only the last gusts of the receding storm. The thunder-peal is loudest when about to lower its tone. But are the fierce sentiments of the daily press responded to by our public men? O, no! neither Sir Robert Peel nor the Duke of Wellington is pledged to the opinions of the newspaper scribes-and would never dream of attempting any thing so mad as the mildest of the schemes proposed in certain grandiloquent leaders indited by certain able editors. All their political writing is too abstract, too metaphysical, fitter for Utopia than for England; the politics of the MONTHLY MAGAZINE, on the contrary, shall be, as they have been, eminently practical. We abhor mere speculation-mere theory-as much as we affect legitimate philosophy and well-founded science. It is not, however, by any forced compromise of principle, any violent junction of parties, that the desirable result will be produced. O no! But it will be by a very different process, to which the necessity from external pressure will be but a temporary condition. It will be by the conviction wrought in the minds of the lower parties in the state, taught both from within and from without, that the higher principles of government are the truer, and the highest the truest. Every individual of any intelligence will acquiesce in the axiom, that government should be government; that in order to be so, it must be aristocratic, and monarchic; and thus the coalition will proceed, by absorbing the greater part of the antagonism into the one conservative principle, without which there can be no permanence for institutions; and without permanence there can be no progress. In illustration of this consequence,-who can have failed to remark the declining influence of the House of Commons, and the increasing authority of the House of Peers? It becomes a matter of indifference, whether the present ministry keep in or go out. One only scheme of policy is possible, and in that the lords will take the initiative. That party, too, in the state, which, if out of power, would be the first to question the prerogatives of the queen, must now, for its own sake, support them. It will ultimately become so pledged to constitutional views, that, even when out of place, the present order of whig-statesmen will scarcely be guilty of the monstrous inconsistency of acting like their predecessors. They must and will cease to be a faction opposed to conservatism, and must become, at farthest, moderate supporters of social progress; to which, with well understood limitations, no modern tory will object. Meantime, the very lowest class in the empire must be cared for by the highest, and will be. We sympathise to the full extent with Mr. Wordsworth in his advocacy of the Rights of Labour. We are quite sure that they will not only be conceded, but that the wisest and best of men will solicitously set about such method of relief as the circumstances of the times demand. Reduction of taxation has been tried and in vain ; we must seek to reduce the competition which hitherto has been the life of business. It is no longer its life. The different classes of society must come to some great social arrangement. The cry must no longer be for war but for peace. Provision must also be made for the new created intelligence, which, like a soul under the ribs of death, has been awakened in the mass of the labouring population, by that subtle and wizard music which has found its way into the national heart through the medium of the educational methods, which have placed in the possession of the multitude the mysterious Power of Knowledge. Would that the kind and measure of it had been better regulated! Something must be done towards a better accomplishment of this great state-need. We must provide the moral influence by which the information imparted or acquired may be turned to good. The only difficulty in our way, is the excessive sectarianism of English people; this, however, will cease, as the principles of Christianity become better understood. These once mastered, all intelligent minds will agree on the minor facts that symbolize their operation. Evidence is daily crowding on us of the large number of sympathetic minds that are seeking for One point of union in religious perceptions. To find this one point there only needs the desire; and Providence is marvellously preparing the way for a merciful consummation. The waves are now roaring, but ere long there will be a calm for the Church that shall not be transient. Doubts that once vexed our fathers are easily solved by us; and Faith becomes more and more established on the ruins of sceptical theories. Philosophy, too, has placed the evidences of the religion of Christ so high, that speculations merely historical can henceforth have no force with the instructed, and will excite little interest in the vulgar. Such are the perils that have past-and such the hopes that remain for the future. STANZAS. 1. BRIGHT is thine eye, and fair thy brow; The tender thoughts of Love and Hope! The trembling fear thy lips betray, Thy speaking eye alike reveals Thou meanest, "Yes"-then, why say, "Nay"? 2. This hand is thine, that ne'er was vowed 3. Those quivering lips that breathed it too, But this one kiss restores their hue, And on thy cheek what charms awake! Thy bosom speaks as did thine eye Thou meanest, "Yes"-thou sayst not-" Nay." Now FIRST Translated from the LATIN BY FRANCIS BARHAM, Esq. Prolegomena to the Adamus Exul of Grotius. THE great design of the Deity in creating by his eternal Word the spiritual orders of being, involving the work of the divine Redeemer in saving and restoring them when fallen into transgression, forms the leading theme of Scripture. In connection with this, the aboriginal glory of Man in Paradise ending in his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as explained by the inspired writers, is a topic of universal interest. This first scene in the grand drama of human destinies-this sole key to the enigmas of mortal experience-this tremendous lapse of mind and nature which has thrown so deep a colouring over all subsequent histories, has necessarily excited the most intense and scrutinizing attention. The brief yet forcible description of the sacred writers has been very differently expounded by theological investigators. Origen and some of the primitive evangelical fathers, agreeing with the Cabalistic and Gnostic dogmas, supposed this description to refer to a purely spiritual, angelic, and transcendental form of human existence, associated with the divine Word in an ethereal Paradise among the unfallen stars. Others, like Augustine, More, Brocklesby, and the symbolic Platonists, supposed it to allude to a fall of Angels, and the lapse of souls with their social stars, each retaining its proper paradise in lower and separate economies, while others, abiding by the literal account, have imagined that nothing superterrestrial, mystical, or figurative was at all intended. These several expositors have likewise entertained different notions with regard to the original sin; some, like Berrow, regarding it as the original and general lapse of souls, some, like Cudworth and Ramsay, esteeming it the lapse of our particular species into a state of materialism; and others more prudently conceiving it to be the offence of disobeying the divine command with regard to the forbidden fruit. Among the expositors who have supposed that the Mosaic account should be construed literally, a great question has been mooted with respect to the geographical position of the terrestrial Paradise and the Garden of Eden. The true theory appears to have been nearly attained by Father Calmet the Benedictine, in his commentary on the text in which the river which gave birth to the Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Pherath N. S.-VOL. II. 3 B is mentioned. He imagines that these four rives are the Phasis, the Araxes, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; and consequently, that Paradise or Eden was placed in Colchis, now Mingrelia, near the mountains of Turcomania, and that this was what gave rise to the fable of the golden fleece. Happily this question is now nearly set at rest, Hales and Faber having well nigh demonstrated that the situation of the Garden, according to the Mosaic account, was in the mountainous region of Ararat in Armenia. And that consequently the first birth-place of mankind, and their first post-diluvian settlement, were closely approximated. This is an important discovery, as it confirms the fact that the great chains of mountains and rivers were not essentially dislocated by the flood. A short statement of the critical situation of these rivers will give the reader the power of correcting the errors which yet remain undefeated. We cannot define the name of the river that watered the garden; but it is not so difficult to specify its four main branches. The first is Phison (a term signifying a deep or overflowing river): this stream, which is synonymous with Phasis, was the source of the Araxes, or Arras, which rises from Ararat, and separates Armenia from Media, and falls into the Caspian. Bridges have been built over it several times, but all the art of man could never make them strong enough to resist the violence of its stream. Wherefore Virgil gives it this epithet: "Pontem indignatus Araxes." Both gold and bdellium are found among the mountains that surround Havila Propria and Caspiana, through which it flows. Now Calmet has confounded this stream-the original Phasis or river -with that other Phasis more generally known by this name, which rises in the northern range of Caucasus. For this Faber substitutes the Absarus of Pliny, or Batoum of modern geographers, which rises in Armenia and runs into the Euxine sea. But its course, as Hales justly observes, "appears too short to encompass the whole land of Havila, supposing, with him, Havila to denote Colchis, which was famed in ancient times for the abundance and excellence of its gold. "The Araxes, therefore," continues Hales (in confirmation of our theory), seems to have a better claim, which, rising in Armenia, runs by a more circuitous course into the Caspian sea, skirting the countries of Colchis and Georgia, which lie between the two seas, and might both have constituted the land of Havilah." But a more serious error than this respecting the Phison, is pointed out by Ralegh. It arose among those expositors who forgot to distinguish between Shem's descendant and Joctan's son Havila, to whom the regions of Caspiana, Colchis, and Upper Media were allotted, extending towards his brother Ophir's Indian possessions, and that other Havila, the son of Cush. This has given rise to the gross blunders of Wells and his followers, now nearly exploded. The name of the second river is Gihon (an impetuous river), the ancient Choasper or Korun, which surrounds Asiatic Cush, or Ethiopia, and Susiana. Its waters are so sweet, say the ancients, that the kings of Persia drank no other; and in their expeditions they always carried some with them which had been previously boiled. The numerous mistakes concerning this stream have arisen from |