set apart amongst the Jews for the performance of another ancient ceremony, received upon his infant forehead by the hands of his godfather, the Rev. Mr. Pelham, otherwise Eugenius, the sign of the cross, the symbol of the Christian religion.

When this rite had been impressively gone through, and the child had been taken out by the nurse, Rebecca had to sustain a joyful surprise indeed, one that I anticipated, but had promised to keep secret from even my young friend herself. I thought the eyes of poor Mrs. Salamons would have started from her head, when she heard Mr. Levison say

"Rebecca, mother of my child, you are in heart a christian, would you like to receive the outward and visible sign of your religion, now our child's excellent godfather is with us? It is an opportunity that we cannot, I fear, get easily again. I detest making a scene of a religious rite, and it can be done now in private. Will you be baptised?"

Ŏ Joel, this is indeed kind!" said the young mother, who was reclining on a couch, and as yet extremely weak. Mrs. Salamons opened her mouth wide as well as her eyes. She was beginning to speak; but I assured her in a whisper, that any agitation now would be most injurious to her daughter.

"Let them please themselves," added I: it was a summary way certainly of getting rid of the argument.

"I understand nothing! I am in a dream! Hark! what does he say more?" said Mrs. Salamons; it was now my turn to feel astonishment; thus spake Mr. Levison.

"Husbands and wives, Eugenius are said to be of' one flesh;' I know it will give you pleasure to hear, Sir, that I am persuaded by your arguments, followed up by my subsequent investigation of them, and aided a little by this good lady here your relative, who is somewhat of a divine herself, I am afraid; we will be baptised together!"

"Not to day, not to day!" responded the young Clergyman ; "I will have no converts from sudden impulses, but from solid conviction-you and I, my dear Sir, will have a little more talk together this evening; and should you after that be resolved to abjure Judaism, and enter the pale of our Messiah's kingdom, I will administer to both you and Mrs. Levison the initiatory rite,-you shall be baptised together."

I went into the room that afternoon where the gentlemen were sitting. Many books were scattered over the table: I lingered a few minutes unobserved to hear their conversation, I uttered not a syllable.

"Listen," said my respected relative, " and candidly confess, that a religion which lays so much stress upon externals cannot be supposed to have much vitality; the real and interior communication with the Father of Truth.

"Let me read this extract from Maimonides in his treatise on the subject of your slaughtering animals; which treatise is acted on now as an authority by the Hebrews here in England. This slaughtering is not for sacrifice, or its peculiarity might be ac

counted for; but for common food, which is eaten every day upon the Hebrew's table :

"On which part of the animal is the slaughtering to be effected? On the windpipe from the edge of the rivala downwards, as far as the top of the extremity of the lungs, as these parts are situated, when the beast stretches out its neck to feed; this is the exact place of the slaughtering in the windpipe. But if there be any flaw or gap in the instrument, any furrow on the edge, even though the furrow be the least possible, the slaughtering is unlawful. If a slaughterer who has not had his slaughtering-knife examined before a wise man, a Rabbi, slaughters by himself, and it be found to have a gap in it, he is to be deposed from his office, excommunicated, and proclamation is to be made, that all the meat which he has slaughtered is carrion.' And it seems" said Eugenius, "that these regulations are now in full force, for I find that Mr.the slaughterer at for the Hebrews, is now under the ban of your Gaon, or chief Rabbi, for not attending to these rules properly, that it has been entered that the testimony of this offending party, -, is inadmissible upon his oath ;' and 'that every one who is surnamed with the name of Israel, must take heed not to eat of this so slaughtered meat. Further, even the vessels of those householders who eat of his slaughtering, are unlawful, as the vessels in which carrion or torn meat are boiled.'

"This," continued Eugenius, "is according to the rules laid. down within the Talmud, fully recognised by your society the Elders. Now own to me, whether such trifles as these should be deemed of more importance than those divine doctrines laid down by our great Lawgiver, which we have gone over again this day, To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God?" I stole out of the room on this to Mrs. Levison, who showed me afterwards the passage from Maimonides which Eugenius had read to her husband.

So easy was the temper of Mrs. Salamons, and so entire her devotion to the happiness of her beloved daughter, that she very soon grew reconciled to the thought of her becoming a Christian, especially as her husband chose to become one also.

The next day, quietly, without display, I witnessed the ceremony of baptism conferred on my beloved young Hebrew and her amiable husband; and I believe them to be, what is very rarely the case, though many may have submitted to the same rites, really in heart and conduct the disciples of Him, "who went about doing good."

Rebecca's health has improved with peace of mind. She has since increased the number of her divine Master's fold, and has done me the compliment to call her little daughter, since born, by the name of her she delighted to honour; and I do verily believe my young namesake "Mary" will turn out one of these days to be quite as beautiful as her mother. May she also be as good!

64

CENSUS OF FOREIGN LITERATURE.

CHARLES FOURIER, AND SOCIALISM IN FRANCE.

Théorie des Quatre Mouvements.

Association Domestique Agricole.

Par Charles Fourier. 1808.

C. Fourier.

Nouveau Monde Industriel. C. Fourier. 1829.

1822.

1838.

Destinée Sociale. Par Victor Considerant. 1834. Fourier et son Systeme. Par Madame Gatti de Gamond. THERE is a vague and undefined idea now stealing gradually over the minds of the industrious classes, respecting a regeneration of society, upon principles almost the reverse of those which have for six thousand years governed the world. This mechanical process of regeneration, is universally known by the name of "Socialism." Three individuals of original genius and astonishing perseverance, amid the revilings, the buffetings, and the raillery of society-each for himself-lay claim, respectively, to the honour of having first awakened the public mind to this unitary mode of conducting human affairs. These three are, St. Simon, Fourier, Owen. We arrange them in the chronological order of their manifestations in the press.

But Owen has certainly the honour, if honour it be, of having first filled the columns of the daily papers with his doctrines, and disseminated over Europe the knowledge of his name. St. Simon first appeared as an author in 1801; but his views were not then fully developed: he directed his thoughts to scientific unity before he entered upon the career of political or industrial agitation, He preferred the spirit of the Cartesian, to that of the Newtonian philosophy-"Descartes," he said, "avait monarchisé la science, Newton l'a republicanisée, il l'a anarchisée." Descartes maintained the theory of a universal harmonicon or analogy. Newton, according to St. Simon, has destroyed this idea, by leading the mind to fragmental philosophy-fragmental sciences, detached from the universal science, or the one philosophy-for which the socialists all contend, in their own peculiar style. In 1814 he brought his scientific theory into politics, and in 1819 he published his celebrated parable, for which he was tried, and acquitted, by jury, in 1820. This latter date is the epoch of St. Simon's notoriety. Owen was well known to all Europe, three years before this (1817). He bought the London press-spent several thousand pounds in a few weeks, upon newspapers only-and so loaded the mail-coaches with the new social ideas, that the directors of the post-office entered a complaint against him to the Government. Amongst the crimes laid to his charge, was that of having, on one occasion, delayed the departure of the mail twenty-minutesthis was in 1817. Fourier published his first work in 1808: but the work in which the science of association is reduced to a form and subjected to a severely critical and laborious analysis, is the Association Domestique Agricole, published in 1822. It is, therefore, impossible to determine to which of the trio the priority belongs, for each is prior in one sense, and posterior in another.

St. Simonism made a brilliant attempt to hatch the new social system in 1830; but ere two years had passed the sect was politically extinct, and now, sole stat nominis umbra; the ghost of a name alone remains to tell what it was. It gave an immense impulse, however, to French

industry. Even the Dublin Review acknowledges this; and one of the principal leaders of the party. Michel Chevalier, is now a favourite ingenieur of Louis Philippe, who gives abundant employment to his active mind--in making official inquiries into the mechanical industry of foreign lands—and suggesting plans for regenerating France, by the popular and lucrative means of Canals, and Chemins de fer. Many of the St. Simoneans were men of singular talent-Bazard especially was a man of true genius, and deserves to be noted for the decided stand which he took against the most offensive doctrine of the school, respecting the relationship of the two sexes. Enfantin prevailed, but the secession of Bazard destroyed the vitality of the sect; and Louis Philippe completed the dispersion of the party, by an act of prerogative. Enfantin went to Egypt, and took office under the Pacha; but has lately returned to France and married—à la mode Chrétienne.

Owenism is labouring hard in England—but progresses only amongst the poor. It never can progress amongst any other class; for its fundamental principle is equality. It gives the same wages to a bad, as to a good workman; to an idle, as to an industrious workman; to a fool, as to a man of talent. Men of talent, therefore, will never flock around it—and rich men will defy it. The poor have everything to gain by it. Idlers would certainly have good reason to hail it as a kind and indulgent parent, and bad workmen would rejoice to find that their clumsy work was paid as well for as the more finished and skilful performances of abler men. But talent and industry have rights of their own, and it is not possible for a system of perfect equality to annihilate them. If man has a right to appropriate the earth to himself, without regarding the interest of the brute creation-so has talent a right to superior power and wealth, which are, in an especial manner, its own creation. Physical power may work and toil; but it is talent alone that makes that physical power profitable for the increase of wealth. True it is, that the labourer is worthy of his hire; he ought to be well fed, clothed, and lodged, if the aggregate produce of society can afford it; but it is not reasonable to affirm that a man of industry, of skill, of genius, deserves no higher reward than "the fat boy," to whom nature has given only a facility for eating and sleeping. In one sense, there is no merit in being a genius, nor demerit in being a fool. There is no merit in being a man, nor demerit in being a horse; but the man has rights superior to those of the horse-rights of talent-by which rights of talent, he makes the horse his servant. And the horse is happy in its servitude, when its servile rights are acknowledged and conceded. There is a similar relationship between the talented and untalented man. The rights of man are somewhat more complex than the equalists deem them. It is only where the men themselves are equal, that the rights are equal. Upon this point, Fourier has chosen the right ground-the only tenable ground in fact--and his social system differs from all other social systems, in not only not destroying the spirit of competition, but in giving it additional impulse; and so controlling it by counter checks, as to make it an essential instrument to the introduction of social harmony. It does not destroy private property, nor emulation, nor inequality of rank and fortune. It preserves all the gradations of society, as the ladder of ambition, which every man of industry and prudence, may

N. S.-VOL. II.

K

mount successfully. In this respect, therefore, the rich have no occasion to fear it, Nay, if the social philosophers' calculation be correct, they are as much interested in the success of the experiment, as the poor themselves. These calculations, however, are not to be received with simple and undoubting faith: they want the testimony of experience to corroborate them; and experience will throw down many an obstacle in the way, which Fourier's imagination, however minute and pictorial, forgot to introduce into the social composition.

We shall try to embody, in as concise and popular a form as posssible, the conception of socialism by Fourier, in order that the English public may thoroughly understand what the French Socialists are aiming at for there is no other system of socialism propounded in France at the present moment. Moreover this system is of a more respectable and rational character than any of the preceding.-It is essentially peaceful and conservative. So much so, that it has at last attracted the attention of Royalty,-the Duke of Orleans being a subscriber to the periodicals of the school, and his example followed by many members of the Legislature..

Fourier died on 10th October, 1837. He was born at Besançon, 1772, was trained to the mercantile profession which he pursued till the age of sixty, when he retired on a small income. Since his death, his place has been supplied by Victor Considerant, a man of talent and prudence, whose mother-in-law, Madame Clarisse Vigoureux, a lady of property, has materially contributed by her bounty to support the infant system. She alone has borne the expense of the establishment in Rue Jacob, where M. Considerant presides and occasionally reads lectures, and converses with the disciples of the school, and where an English architect, Mr. Daly, is employed in drawing architectural models for perfecting the idea of the Phalanstere. There is no agitation or popular excitement encouraged by Considerant. His coldness in this respect has given offence to many, and caused a rent in the party-but the name of Fourier unites them all, and the rent only brings into operation two modes of action. The original school published the " Phalange," a fortnightly periodical, price half a franc, and the "Secession," publishes monthly the "Chronique du Mouvement Social."

The doctrine of Fourier commences with the poetic and scientific idea of a universal harmony, and hence it proceeds analogically to the organisation of society, following the models which God himself has given us in his own sublime creation both astral and terrestrial. The destiny of man, says Considerant, is "la gestion de son globe," or, in Scriptural language, the dominion of the world; but it is man as a sympathetic morally organised unity alone, that can do this divinely. Unity is the fulcrum of authority. There may be force and strength of an inferior degree exercised by a race of living beings individually, but it is only in their collective capacity that we determine their authority. When that collective capacity is a combination of forces turning on a single pivot, then we must admit that the race alluded to, is a moral unity. When the collective capacity is not a combination of forces, but a resolution of conflicting forces, then the unity is awanting. When these forces are many, there is confusion and loss of power-anarchy. When there are only two forces, and the weaker patiently submits to the