PREFACE. Ar the close of the Fifteenth year of unremunerated editorial labour, the Conductor of this Magazine ventures to make another appeal to the friends of Unitarianism on behalf of the CHRISTIAN REFORMER. His sole object has hitherto been, and will hereafter be, to promote the instruction and the increased zeal and usefulness of the religious denomination with which it is his happiness to be associated. While desiring to uphold with a firm hand Christianity as a divine revelation, and Unitarianism as the true exposition of Christianity, the Editor has always freely opened his pages to all the seekers after Truth, of every shade of religious opinion, whose knowledge and literary ability entitle them to a public hearing. He respects the principle of the freedom of the religious press too much to refuse to those from whom he may have differed in opinion, the opportunity of explanation and defence. He may perhaps be allowed to refer with satisfaction to the volume now completed, in proof of the usefulness of the Magazine. In its biographical articles it furnishes the future historian of liberal Christianity in England with materials for which in other quarters he would seek in vain. In the other departments of the work there has been (thanks to the ability of his contributors) the reflection of the light of a free and catholic faith on the literature, incidents and controversies of the age. Never, the Editor believes, was a Magazine conducted on the principles of the CHRISTIAN REFORMER more needed than at the present time. He therefore asks his friends to do what they can in giving it increased circulation. Without expecting pecuniary remuneration for his labours, he feels entitled by past services to ask for such an amount of support as will protect him from future anxiety and loss. If that support be given, he will cheerfully, while health and strength are his, continue his labours in a cause in which he believes are involved Truth, Freedom and Charity. 1, Frampton Villas, South Hackney. THE Coquerel family includes some of the most earnest, devoted and talented pastors of the French Protestant Church, and is, to English ears especially, representative of the great cause of religious freedom and progress in France. Father and (we believe) three sons have devoted their eminent gifts to this sacred calling. The father's principal work, Le Christianisme Experimental, was introduced to English readers ten or eleven years ago by the Rev. D. Davison (whose decease we have this month the sad office of recording). In the author's English Preface to that translation, it will be remembered that he gives a very interesting account of his early life and education under the care of his aunt and adoptive mother, Helen Maria Williams, and expresses the most generous admiration and sympathy towards England and the English. Though a Frenchman by birth, though my whole life has been spent on the Continent, I was brought up half an Englishman." "We enjoyed" (that is, his brother Charles and himself)" the singular advantage of speaking two maternal languages; and one of the earliest lessons we were taught was the long and ancient ties of our family with England and Scotland." To these two "maternal languages," his accomplished son, the author of the book on Italian Religious Art now before us, added the early acquisition of the Italian language in great perfection, together with a devoted love to the literature and art of that historic land, as infused into his young mind by a most noblehearted and highly-gifted Italian lady, who lived her married life and died in Paris, and to whose memory this book is affectionately and gracefully dedicated. The English Preface includes a brief memoir of her most interesting life, concluding thus: "When I add that this gifted woman, during seventeen years, shewed me a motherly kindness, taught me her native tongue, accustomed my northern ear to its melody, read with me the poets of Italy,-commented with glowing enthusiasm upon the master-works of Italian art, often The Fine Arts in Italy in their Religious Aspect: Letters from Rome, Naples, Pisa, &c.; with an Appendix on the Iconography of the Immaculate Conception. By Ath. Coquerel, Junior, Suffragan Pastor of the Reformed Church, Paris. Translated from the French by Edward and Emily Higginson; with Corrections and Additions and an English Preface by the Author. Post 8vo. Pp. 287. in the Louvre galleries, oftener among the prints and drawings she delighted in,—and lastly made me personally acquainted with proscribed and illustrious patriots whose perils she had shared,-my partiality to Italy ought to be excused, if indeed any excuse be needed. As often as I meet with any opportunity to shew my respectful sympathy to Italy's noble exiles, to such men as the deeply lamented Marin or my eminent and justly admired friend Montanelli, it seems to me that I do but pay a debt, not only the debt all generous hearts owe to those who suffer for the common cause of mankind, but the debt of one who has been blessed with the friendship of Bianca Mojon, and who must cherish, with religious scrupulousness, feelings and purposes that have been hers. When I write her revered name on the first page of this volume, that name, though little known to the world, is to me the representative of Protestant Christianity, of Italian Liberty and of immortal Art, all blended together in rare and sublime harmony. May the day come when true religion, established freedom, and art restored to something of its ancient glory, shall grace that unhappy land, so often betrayed and so shamefully oppressed! Without the first, neither the second nor the third are to be hoped for. "Such are the firm belief and fervent wish that embolden me to hallow, with the name of my long-departed friend, these few desultory pages, rendered less unworthy perhaps of so great an honour, were it only from a depth of feeling and conviction she would have smiled upon."-Pp. xii, xiii. Such thoroughly idiomatic English as the above extract is perfectly wonderful, to have proceeded from the pen of a foreigner, and makes us think Mons. Coquerel might almost have been his own translator, doing as full justice to our tongue as to his own meaning. Occasional passages in this Preface, however, betray the foreigner in a most genuine and acceptable manner, while its whole contents (we ought to attest) are a very valuable addition to the book as it originally appeared in French. Mons. Coquerel equals Montalambert in his admiring sympathy with England, breathed in connection with his sorrowing yet hopeful sympathy towards Italy. He is a true Luther in his free and confiding Protestantism. He is all that an ardent love of beauty joined with cultivated taste and pure Christian feeling can make him in relation to Sacred Art. We quote his tribute to our own country with which the Preface opens: "I trust that English readers will consider much less the temerity of a foreigner, in attempting, somewhat rashly perhaps, to borrow their language, than the homage he wishes to pay to their literature and to them. I am born of a family in which deep feelings of reverence for the British people, admiration for their poets and statesmen, brotherly love for themselves as fellow Protestants, religious pride in the glorious liberties they mainly owe to their bold and unflinching fidelity to the spirit of the Reformation, are a part of the household education, and, if I may say so, an heirloom. Such were the early convictions impressed on my mind by an elderly kinswoman, whose poems and political cor |