1775, an office which he retained to 1781, and then made way for Mr. Belsham, who had already been a student there, and who turned out at last a complete Unitarian of the modern school; so much so, that having some misgivings as to his fitness for executing Mr. Coward's will, which required the doctrines of the Assembly's Catechism to be taught, he in his turn abandoned this ill-fated academy; not, however, before his mode of conducting the lectures-which was to give the comments of Trinitarian, Arian, and Unitarian expositors, upon each controverted text, and leave them to make their own impression-had caused many of his pupils, and of those some of the best talents, and closest application, and the most serious dispositions, who had been educated in all the habits and prepossessions of Trinitarian doctrine, to become Unitarians,'-a result at which he professes his surprise and mortification.-Such was the progress of the Northampton and Daventry academy (university, it would in these days be called) during the period we have said; and the review of its operations on the whole, the Regius Professor prefers giving in the words of the memoir to which we have already referred. Hall there says: At the time of Mr. Toller's admission into the Daventry Academy, the literary reputation of this seminary was higher than that of any other among the Dissenters; but partly owing to a laxness in the terms of admission, and partly to the admixture of lay and divinity students, combined with the mode in which theology was taught, erroneous principles prevailed much; and the majority of such as were educated there, became more distinguished for their learning, than for the fervour of their piety, or the purity of their doctrine. ... The celebrated Priestley speaks of the state of the academy while he resided there, with great complacency: nothing, he assures us, could be more favourable to the progress of free inquiry, since both the tutors and the students were about equally divided between the Orthodox and Arian systems. The arguments, by which every possible modification of error is attempted to be supported were carefully marshalled in hostile array against the principles generally embraced; while the theological professor prided himself on the steady impartiality with which he held the balance betwixt the contending systems, seldom or never interposing his own opinion, and still less betraying the slightest emotion-of antipathy to error, or predilection to truth. Thus a spirit of indifference to all religious principles was generated in the first instance, which naturally paved the way for the prompt reception of doctrines indulgent to the corruption, and flattering to the pride, of a depraved and fallen nature. To affirm that Mr. Toller sustained no injury from being exposed at so tender an age to this vortex of unsanctified speculation and debate would be affirming too much, since it probably gave rise to a certain general manner of stating the peculiar doctrines of the gospel which attached chiefly to the earlier earlier part of his ministry; though it is equally certain that his mind, even when he left the academy, was so far imbued with the grand peculiarities of the gospel, that he never allowed himself to lose sight of the doctrine of the cross, as the only basis of human life.' In our opinion, this precedent of the regius professor stands fast, notwithstanding the effort that has been made by an able antagonist to set it aside, chiefly on the score that Cambridge is no theological seminary, nor its lectures deserving the name of theological lectures. For as, on the one hand, the academy of Northampton and Daventry was not, as Mr. Thirlwall's argument would seem to require, an exclusively theological seminary-since it had lay as well as clerical students; very copious lectures on what Dr. Doddridge calls pneumatology and ethics-(including, of course, those subjects which Mr. Thirlwall rebukes the Fellow of St. John's, for classing under the head of religious instruction); on the classics for the two first years; * and on mathematics and experimental philosophy; † insomuch that Robert Hall, we have seen, speaks of its literary reputation' being higher than that of any other of the dissenting academies, at the very time when he is disparaging its theology, and saying that those who were educated there proved rather learned than devout; -So, on the other hand, Cambridge is not exclusively devoted to letters and science, for it has clerical as well as lay students, and theology forms a much more considerable ingredient in its pursuits than Mr. Thirlwall seems to have been aware. For his statement has been keenly resented by the tutors of many of the colleges, and by none so effectually, though in language extremely temperate, as by the tutor of his own college, to whose counter-statement we have already had occasion to refer. No doubt the study of divinity in Cambridge has of late years increased—is now increasing-and we believe it is the opinion of few, indeed, that it ought to be diminished-the wholesome impulse having been received, not through the base arts of a miserable priestcraft,' which has suddenly bestirred itself to perpetuate the exclusion of Dissenters ;-though, had this been the case, animated as the Dissenters profess themselves to be by the spirit of the apostle, they would of course have rejoiced that Christ was preached though it were even of envy and strife;'but rather through a conviction which has been gaining strength in the country, that, whilst we have advanced beyond our forefathers in refinement, we have fallen far behind them in Christian knowledge; and that as this ignorance has begun to make itself felt by the bitter waters which have flowed and are flowing from it on all sides, it was high time for the clergy *See Dr. Kippis's Life of Dr. Doddridge, p. 55. † See Job Orton's Life of Dr. Doddridge, ch. vi. Works, iv. 307. (through (through whose hands almost every person of influence in this land passes) to cast the branch into that fountain-head of public opinion, our universities and schools ;-for in these latter too the subject of religion has been seriously taken up-here, at least, it will be allowed, under no fear of intrusion from Dissenters-and to make them, what every particular in their construction declares to have been the intention of their founders that they should be— nurseries for men duly qualified to serve God in Church and State. This attempt at national regeneration we trust nothing will occur to frustrate-much less that a dereliction of duty in past times will now be pleaded in bar of all return to it for the future. We know not where we are to stop in our road to ruin, if we make every breach, which culpable neglect may have occasioned, an argument for pulling utterly and altogether down. We think we have now said enough to justify the assertion with which we set out that the question before us is one in which every parent in England, who has sons to educate, has a deep stake. Surely, he would not desire to have them sent, at the most critical period of their lives, to a place where religion could not be maintained in its integrity-where religious services and religious instructions must be either altogether suppressed or greatly modified-or where religious peace must give way to the polemical disputations of angry boys, who will learn to be sophists first, and sceptics afterwards. Nor is it to parents only that the appeal may be made, but to all; for when it is considered that such is to be the preparation for sacred orders tooand that out of these schools-whether of mere secular learning, or of the most jejune natural theology, or of wild 'unsanctified debate,' according as one system or another might finally happen to prevail-the parish priest is to go forth-the question becomes one of great concern to every householder of England, however humble. We believe that this matter was taken up without due consideration-and that the discussion which it has provoked will open the eyes of many who, at first sight, might have been disposed to abet the measure: Nay, we do not despair of such being the case with many of the Dissenters themselves :-Not indeed with that political and factious body who have of late disgraced the name, and fought with Papists and Infidels a carnal warfare under a tricolour flag-but with conscientious men amongst them who cleave to the doctrinal articles of our own church as strongly as we do ourselves—and who can scarcely, therefore, wish to see Oxford and Cambridge-the nurseries of the Reformers, and the strongholds ever since of opinions which both they and we consider vital-sink into such spectacles as the academy of Northampton and Daventry. 2 K 2 ᎪᎡᎢ . Edited by the Countess of ART. X.-1. Dacre, a Novel. 2. Two Old Men's Tales. 2 vols. 8vo., 1834. -So exclaims the purest and greatest of our living poets. But were it ours to summon the libraries of Herculaneum to render up their dead, we could conceive ourselves hesitating for a moment between love for the works of art of the ancients and curiosity as to their common life-and doubting whether to raise up again some record stamped with the universality of genius, or preferably some fugitive scrap, or excerpt from a young lady's correspondence, showing what Lyce had to say to Neæra touching the new chlamys of Varus, or the toga virilis of Telephus, or telling how Septimius had detected Lydia, and pronounced against her the Res tuas tibi habeto,' and the Exi ociùs ociùs' with which a Roman flirt was rejected upon the wide world. We should doubt whether not to bring to life, in preference to the precious scroll from the pen of Simonides, a Roman novel, if such there were,—a reflection of the volatile peculiarities of the age, which by setting forth the details of the lives of private men, their social transactions, their relations with each other, their talk, their sports, their feelings, might lighten up for us those ancient modes of existence of which our knowledge is so indistinct, and be as it were a torch carried before us amongst the ruins of Time. We can conjure up something like a picture of the senator, the military commander, or the demagogue; but we stand greatly in need of a sort of knowledge which is gone past redemption, to make us feel that we can conceive anything vividly and with the sense of reality concerning the private gentleman, the commonplace member of society, the average man of antiquity; or concerning what may be called the hero of private life—the De Vere, the Trevelyan, or the Dacre of the days of old. When the present time shall be ancient, will its fashionable novels have wholly perished? Will its newspapers altogether escape the researches of the antiquary? Will the common life of our age be no more distinctly perceived in a remote retrospect than that of older times is by us? The hireling print devoted to the Court' in which Puddingfield read the announcement of the signature of Magna Charta, when messengers were instantly dispatched dispatched to Cardinal Pandulfo, and their Majesties, after partaking of a cold collation, returned to Windsor,' and the extract of a letter from Egham, which Beefington found in the same journal, are, alas! the only things of the kind which remain to us from the middle ages; and though hireling prints and letters from Egham might not be so plentiful in those days as they are at present, yet there must have been an abundance of scattered writings connected with private life, and giving token of the times, of which, so far as the earlier of the middle ages is concerned, hardly a specimen remains. We are apprehensive, therefore, that despite the press and all the efforts which it makes • To give To fluent operations a fixed shape,' the every-day life that we are now leading will flow on and lose itself in the past, without leaving any much more durable records of what it was, than those which are written in the running stream. If, however, any of these chronicles of fugitive manners and customs were to be built up like a coin or medal at the foundation of some edifice, so to transmit a memorial of our manners to a later time, those manners could not be found in any more vividly or more faithfully pourtrayed than in Dacre.' Before we go farther, we have a trifling matter of controversy to adjust with the accomplished person to whom this book is attributed. In an article upon fashionable novels in a former number, we ventured to allege that fashionable life does not present a very interesting aspect of human nature, and that the stronger affections and profounder passions of men are to be found more abundantly in rural retirement; and we quoted Dr. Johnson and the shepherd in Virgil in support of the assertion, that Love is a native of the rocks. We are thus contradicted : 'There have been some who think that love is a native of the rocks; but its birth-place matters little, when once it is called into being, for it can thrive alike wherever it is transplanted. It shrouds itself in an atmosphere of its own creation, and sees the surrounding objects through the medium of its own fanciful halo. The existence of colour depends not more on the rays of the sun, than depends the hue which is lent to all that is external, upon the internal feelings of the mind. The bustling scenes of gaiety may appear ill suited to the indulgence of deep feeling; yet the mind which is preoccupied by one absorbing thought has not only an inward attraction that bids defiance to the intrusions of others, but has even the power of converting into aliment all that should tend to destroy its force. The crowds that pass before the eyes of a lover seem but as a procession of which his mistress is the queen. If he talks to another, it is to listen to the welcome |