and they will have some notion of the teat which Atterbury had the audacity to undertake, and which, for a time, it was really thought that he had performed.

honoured his studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of De Pauw.

"Nam neque nos agere hoc patriaï tempore iniquo

Possumus æquo animo, nec Memmî clara propago

Temple did not live to witness the utter and irreparable defeat of his. The illusion was soon dispelled. champions. He died, indeed, at a Bentley's answer for ever settled the fortunate moment, just after the apquestion, and established his claim to pearance of Boyle's book, and while all the first place amongst classical scho-England was laughing at the way lars. Nor do those do him justice in which the Christchurch men had who represent the controversy as a handled the pedant. In Boyle's book, battle between wit and learning. For Temple was praised in the highest though there is a lamentable deficiency terms, and compared to Memmius: not of learning on the side of Boyle, there a very happy comparison; for alis no want of wit on the side of Bent-most the only particular information ley. Other qualities, too, as valuable which we have about Memmius is as either wit or learning, appear con- that, in agitated times, he thought it spicuously in Bentley's book, a rare his duty to attend exclusively to polisagacity, an unrivalled power of com- tics, and that his friends could not bination, a perfect mastery of all the venture, except when the Republic weapons of logic. He was greatly in- was quiet and prosperous, to intrude debted to the furious outcry which the on him with their philosophical and misrepresentations, sarcasms, and in- poetical productions. It is on this trigues of his opponents had raised account that Lucretius puts up the against him, an outcry in which fashion- exquisitely beautiful prayer for peace able and political circles joined, and with which his poem opens: which was echoed by thousands who did not know whether Phalaris ruled in Sicily or in Siam. His spirit, daring even to rashness, self-confident even to negligence, and proud even to insolent ferocity, was awed for the first and for the last time, awed, not into meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For once he ran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned in no paradoxes; above all, he returned no railing for the railing of his enemies. In almost every thing that he has written we can discover proofs of genius and learning. But it is only here that his genius and learning appear to have been constantly under the guidance of good sense and good temper. Here, we We must not omit to mention that, find none of that besotted reliance on while the controversy about Phalaris was his own powers and on his own luck, raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal which he showed when he undertook and attachment, wrote the Battle of the to edite Milton; none of that perverted Books, the earliest piece in which his ingenuity which deforms so many of peculiar talents are discernible. We his notes on Horace; none of that dis- may observe that the bitter dislike of dainful carelessness by which he laid Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to himself open to the keen and dex- Swift, seems to have been communicated terous thrust of Middleton; none of by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to that extravagant vaunting and savage others, who continued to tease the scurrility by which he afterwards dis-great critic long after he had shaken

Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti."

This description is surely by no means applicable to a statesman who had, through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided exposing himself in seasons of trouble; who had re peatedly refused, in most critical conjunctures, to be Secretary of State; and who now, in the midst of revolutions, plots, foreign and domestic wars, was quietly writing nonsense about the visits of Lycurgus to the Brahmins and the tunes which Arion played to the Dolphin.

All

bands very cordially both with Boyle | subtle speculations, sometimes prompted and with Atterbury. him to talk on serious subjects in a Sir William Temple died at Moor manner which gave great and just Park in January, 1699. He appears offence. It is not unlikely that Temple, to have suffered no intellectual decay, who seldom went below the surface of His heart was buried under a sun-dial any question, may have been infected which still stands in his favourite with the prevailing scepticism. garden. His body was laid in West- that we can say on the subject is, that minster Abbey by the side of his wife; there is no trace of impiety in his and a place hard by was set apart for works, and that the ease with which he Lady Giffard, who long survived him. carried his election for an university, Swift was his literary executor, super- where the majority of the voters were intended the publication of his Letters clergymen, though it proves nothing and Memoirs, and, in the performance as to his opinions, must, we think, be of this office, had some acrimonious considered as proving that he was not, contests with the family. as Burnet seems to insinuate, in the Of Temple's character little more re-habit of talking atheism to all who mains to be said. Burnet accuses him came near him. of holding irreligious opinions, and Temple, however, will scarcely carry corrupting every body who came near with him any great accession of auhim. But the vague assertion of so thority to the side either of religion or rash and partial a writer as Burnet, of infidelity. He was no profound about a man with whom, as far as we thinker. He was merely a man of lively know, he never exchanged a word, is parts and quick observation, a man of of little weight. It is, indeed, by no the world among men of letters, a man means improbable that Temple may of letters among men of the world. have been a freethinker. The Osbornes Mere scholars were dazzled by the thought him so when he was a very Ambassador and Cabinet counsellor; young man. And it is certain that a mere politicians by the Essayist and large proportion of the gentlemen of Historian. But neither as a writer nor rank and fashion who made their as a statesman can we allot to him any entrance into society while the Puritan very high place. As a man, he seems party was at the height of power, and to us to have been excessively selfish, while the memory of the reign of that but very sober, wary, and far-sighted party was still recent, conceived a in his selfishness; to have known better strong disgust for all religion. The than most people what he really wanted imputation was common between in life; and to have pursued what he Temple and all the most distinguished wanted with much more than ordinary courtiers of the age. Rochester and steadiness and sagacity, never suffering Buckingham were open scoffers, and himself to be drawn aside either by bad Mulgrave very little better. Shaftes- or by good feelings. It was his conbury, though more guarded, was sup- stitution to dread failure more than he posed to agree with them in opinion. desired success, to prefer security, All the three noblemen who were comfort, repose, leisure, to the turmoil Temple's colleagues during the short and anxiety which are inseparable from time of his sitting in the Cabinet were greatness; and this natural languor of of very indifferent repute as to ortho- mind, when contrasted with the maligdoxy. Halifax, indeed, was generally nant energy of the keen and restless considered as an atheist; but he spirits among whom his lot was cast, solemnly denied the charge; and, in- sometimes appears to resemble the modeed, the truth seems to be that he deration of virtue. But we must own was more religiously disposed than that he seems to us to sink into littlemost of the statesmen of that age, ness and meanness when we compare though two impulses which were un-him, we do not say with any high ideal usually strong in him, a passion for standard of morality, but with many of ludicrous images, and a passion for those frail men who, aiming at noble

ends, but often drawn from the right, between the effect of written words, path by strong passions and strong which are perused and reperused in the temptations, have left to posterity a stillness of the closet, and the effect of doubtful and checkered fame.

GLADSTONE ON CHURCH AND

STATE. (APRIL, 1839.)

The State in its Relations with the Church.

By W. E. GLADSTONE, Esq., Student of Christ Church, and M.P. for Newark. 8vo. Second Edition. London: 1839. THE author of this volume is a young man of unblemished character, and of distinguished parliamentary talents, the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be at all strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most unpopular men in England. But we believe that we do him no more than justice when we say that his abilities and his demeanour have obtained for him the respect and good will of all parties. His first appearance in the character of an author is therefore an interesting event; and it is natural that the gentle wishes of the public should go with him to his trial.

We are much pleased, without any reference to the soundness or unsoundness of Mr. Gladstone's theories, to see a grave and elaborate treatise on an important part of the Philosophy of Government proceed from the pen of a young man who is rising to eminence in the House of Commons. There is little danger that people engaged in the conflicts of active life will be too much addicted to general speculation. The opposite vice is that which most easily besets them. The times and tides of business and debate tarry for no man. A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must; and if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully. He finds that there is a great difference

spoken words which, set off by the graces of utterance and gesture, vibrate for a single moment on the ear. He finds that he may blunder without much chance of being detected, that he may reason sophistically, and escape unrefuted. He finds that, even on knotty questions of trade and legislation, he can, without reading ten pages, or thinking ten minutes, draw forth loud plaudits, and sit down with the credit of having made an excellent speech. Lysias, says Plutarch, wrote a defence for a man who was to be tried before one of the Athenian tribunals. Long before the defendant had learned the speech by heart, he became so much dissatisfied with it that he went in great distress to the author. "I was delighted with your speech the first time I read it; but I liked it less the second time, and still less the third time; and now it seems to me to be no defence at all." "My good friend," says Lysias, "you quite forget that the judges are to hear it only once." The case is the same in the English Parliament. It would be as idle in an orator to waste deep meditation and long research on his speeches, as it would be in the manager of a theatre to adorn all the crowd of courtiers and ladies who cross over the stage in a procession with real pearls and diamonds. It is not by accuracy or profundity that men become the masters of great assemblies. And why be at the charge of providing logic of the best quality, when a very inferior article will be equally acceptable? Why go as deep into a question as Burke, only in order to be, like Burke, coughed down, or left speaking to green benches and red boxes? This has long appeared to us to be the most serious of the evils which are to be set off against the many blessings of popular government. It is a fine and true saying of Bacon, that reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man. The tendency of institutions like those of England is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every ge

neration, minds often admirably fitted | His mind is of large grasp; nor is he for the investigation of truth, are ha-deficient in dialectical skill. But he does bitually employed in producing argu- not give his intellect fair play. There is ments such as no man of sense would no want of light, but a great want of ever put into a treatise intended for what Bacon would have called dry publication, arguments which are just light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees good enough to be used once, when is refracted and distorted by a false aided by fluent delivery and pointed medium of passions and prejudices. language. The habit of discussing His style bears a remarkable analogy questions in this way necessarily reacts to his mode of thinking, and indeed on the intellects of our ablest men, exercises great influence on his mode particularly of those who are introduced of thinking. His rhetoric, though often into parliament at a very early age, good of its kind, darkens and perplexes before their minds have expanded to the logic which it should illustrate. full maturity. The talent for debate is Half his acuteness and diligence, with developed in such men to a degree a barren imagination and a scanty vowhich, to the multitude, seems as mar-cabulary, would have saved him from vellous as the performance of an Italian almost all his mistakes. He has one Improvisatore. But they are fortunate indeed if they retain unimpaired the faculties which are required for close reasoning or for enlarged speculation. Indeed we should sooner expect a great original work on political science, such a work, for example, as the Wealth of Nations, from an apothecary in a country town, or from & minister ὦ γῆ τοῦ φθέγματος, ὡς ἱερὸν, καὶ σεμνὸν, in the Hebrides, than from a statesman who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater in the House of Commons.

We therefore hail with pleasure, though assuredly not with unmixed pleasure, the appearance of this work. That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his parliamentary avocations, have constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from all consideration of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone's doctrines may become fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become.

gift most dangerous to a speculator, a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import; of a kind of language which affects us much in the same way in which the lofty diction of the Chorus of Clouds affected the sim ple-hearted Athenian.

καὶ τερατώδες.

non

When propositions have been established, and nothing remains but to amplify and decorate them, this dim magnificence may be in place. But it it is admitted into a demonstration, it is very much worse than absolute sense; just as that transparent haze, through which the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes and in false bearings, is more dangerous than utter darkness. Now, Mr. Gladstone is fond of employing the phraseology of which we speak in those parts of his works which require the utmost perspicuity and precision of which human language is capable; and in this way he deludes first himself, and then his readers. The foundations of his theory which ought to be buttresses of adamant, are made out of the flimsy materials which are fit only for perorations. This fault is one which no subsequent care or industry can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone reasons on his Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be, in premises, the more absurd are the conmany respects, exceedingly well quali-clusions which he brings out; and, fied for philosophical investigation. when at last his good sense and good

nature recoil from the horrible prac-|tical law. It is to be observed, that tical inferences to which this theory Mr. Gladstone rests his case on entirely leads, he is reduced sometimes to take new grounds, and does not differ more refuge in arguments inconsistent with widely from us than from some of those his fundamental doctrines, and some- who have hitherto been considered as the times to escape from the legitimate most illustrious champions of the Church. consequences of his false principles, He is not content with the Ecclesiastiunder cover of equally false history. cal Polity, and rejoices that the latter It would be unjust not to say that this part of that celebrated work "does not book, though not a good book, shows carry with it the weight of Hooker's more talent than many good books. It plenary authority." He is not content abounds with eloquent and ingenious with Bishop Warburton's Alliance of passages. It bears the signs of much Church and State. "The propositions patient thought. It is written through- of that work generally," he says, "are out with excellent taste and excellent to be received with qualification;" and temper; nor does it, so far as we have ob- he agrees with Bolingbroke in thinking served, contain one expression unworthy that Warburton's whole theory rests on of a gentleman, a scholar, or a Christian. a fiction. He is still less satisfied with But the doctrines which are put forth in Paley's defence of the Church, which it appear to us, after full and calm consi- he pronounces to be "tainted by the deration, to be false, to be in the highest original vice of false ethical principles," degree pernicious, and to be such as, and "full of the seeds of evil." He if followed out in practice to their legi- conceives that Dr. Chalmers has taken timate consequences, would inevitably a partial view of the subject, and “put produce the dissolution of society; and forth much questionable matter." In for this opinion we shall proceed to truth, on almost every point on which give our reasons with that freedom we are opposed to Mr. Gladstone, we which the importance of the subject have on our side the authority of some requires, and which Mr. Gladstone, both divine, eminent as a defender of existby precept and by example, invites using establishments.

that the propagation of religious truth is one of the principal ends of government, as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition, his system vanishes at once.

to use, but, we hope, without rudeness, Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests and, we are sure, without malevolence. on this great fundamental proposition, Before we enter on an examination of this theory, we wish to guard ourselves against one misconception. It is possible that some persons who have read Mr. Gladstone's book carelessly, and others who have merely heard in conversation, or seen in a newspaper, that the member for Newark has written in defence of the Church of England against the supporters of the voluntary system, may imagine that we are writing in defence of the voluntary system, and that we desire the abolition of the Established Church. This is not the case. It would be as unjust to accuse us of attacking the Church, because we attack Mr. Gladstone's doctrines, as it would be to accuse Locke of wishing for anarchy, because he refuted Filmer's patriarchal theory of government, or to accuse Blackstone of recommending the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, because he denied that the right of the rector to tithe was derived from the Levi

We are desirous, before we enter on the discussion of this important question, to point out clearly a distinction which, though very obvious, seems to be overlooked by many excellent people. In their opinion, to say that the ends of government are temporal and not spiritual is tantamount to saying that the temporal welfare of man is of more importance than his spiritual welfare. But this is an entire mistake. The question is not whether spiritual interests be or be not superior in importance to temporal interests; but whether the machinery which happens at any moment to be employed for the purpose of protecting certain temporal interests of a society be necessarily such a machinery as is fitted