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crutoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was a Poor Relation.

2. THOUGHTS ON BOOKS.

"To mind the inside of a book, is to entertain one's-self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own." LORD FOPPINGTON, in the "Relapse."

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking I am reading; I cannot sit and think: books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of "books which are no books," I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, PocketBooks, Draught-boards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns,-and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without;" the histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's "Moral Philosophy." With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these "things in books' clothing" perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what 66 seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas), set out in an array of russia or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymond Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.

To be strong-backed and neat-bound, is the desideratum of a volume; inagnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of magazines, for instance, in full suit. The

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dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs for ever) is their costume. A Shakspere or a Milton (unless the first editions) it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property, in the owner. "Thomson's Seasons," again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful, to a genuine lover of reading, are the sullied leaves and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia), of an old circulating-library "Tom Jones" or "Vicar of Wakefield!" How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight! of the lone sempstress whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in?

Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear, to mine, at least, than that of Milton or Shakspere? It may be that the latter are more staled and run upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.

X. JOHN FOSTER.

JOHN FOSTER was born in 1770, and was educated at Bristol for the Baptist Church. He officiated as pastor in various districts; among others, at Newcastle, Battersea, and Frome. A swelling in the neck, however, interfered with his speaking, and rendered it for some time impossible for him to discharge the duties of his office. His leisure was employed in the composition of his "Essays," which appeared in 1805. Recovering a little from his disease, he removed to Stapleton, near Bristol; but the calm, logical character of his sermons, which had rendered him always an unpopular preacher, became, at last, so distasteful to his audience, that he was compelled to relinquish his profession, and he devoted his time mainly to writing for the "Eclectic Review." He died at Stapleton in 1843. Besides the "Essays" which have already been mentioned, Foster wrote an "Essay on Popular Ignorance." His " Lectures," and many of his contributions to the "Eclectic Review," have also been published. Foster's works have enjoyed a large share of popularity: they are distinguished by their originality, good sense, acute vigorous thought, and elegant language, and have exercised a powerful influence on the more reflecting class of readers of the present day.

1. THE CAUSE OF RELIGION INJURED BY THE GENERAL INFERIORITY OF EVANGELICAL WRITERS." ESSAYS.")

I suppose it will be acknowledged that the evangelical cause has been, on the whole, far from happy in its prodigious list of authors. A number of them have displayed a high order of excellence; but one regrets, as to a much greater number, that they did not revere the dignity of their religion too much to beset and suffocate it with their superfluous offerings. To you I need not expatiate on the character of the collective Christian library. It will have been obvious to you that there is a multitude of books which form the perfect vulgar of religious authorship; a vast exhibition of the most subordinate materials that can be called thought, in language too groveling to be called style. Some of these writers seem to have concluded that the greatness of the subject was to do everything; and that they had but to pronounce, like David, the name of "the Lord of Hosts," to give pebbles the force of darts and spears. Others appear to have really wanted the perception of any great difference, in point of excellence, between the meaner and the superior modes of writing. If they had read alternately Barrow's or South's pages and their own, they probably might have doubted on which side to assign the palm. A number of them, citing, in a perverted sense, the language of St Paul, "not with excellency of speech," "not with enticing words of man's wisdom," "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth," expressly disclaim everything that belongs to fine writing, not exactly as what they could not have attained, but as what they judge incompatible with the simplicity of evangelical truth and intentions. In the books of these several but kindred classes, you are mortified to see how low religious thought and expression can sink; and you almost wonder how it was possible for the noblest ideas that are known to the sublimest intelligences, the ideas of God, of Providence, of eternity, to shine on a serious human mind without imparting some small occasional degree of dignity to the strain of thought. The indulgent feelings which you entertain for the intellectual and literary deficiency of humble Christians in their religious communications in private, are with difficulty extended to those who make for their thoughts this demand on public attention. It was necessary for them to be Christians, but what made it their duty to become authors? Many of the books are indeed successively ceasing, with the progress of time, to be read or known; but the new supply continually brought forth is so numerous, that a person who turns his attention to religious reading is certain to meet a variety of them. Now, only suppose a man who has been conversant and enchanted with the works of eloquence, glowing poetry, finished elegance, or strong reasoning, to meet a number of these books in the outset of his more serious inquiries, in what light would the religion of Christ appear to him if he did not find some happier illustrations of it?

THE CAUSE OF RELIGION INJURED, ETC.

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There is another large class of Christian books, which bears the marks of learning, correctness, and an orderly understanding, and by a general propriety leave but little to be censured, but which display no invention, no prominence of thought, or living vigour of expression; all is flat and dry as a plain of sand. It is perhaps the thousandth iteration of commonplaces, the listless attention to which is hardly an action of the mind; you seem to understand it all, and mechanically assent while you are thinking of something else. Though the author has a rich immeasurable field of possible varieties of reflection and illustration around him, he seems doomed to tread over again the narrow space of ground long since trodden to dust, and in all his movements appears clothed in sheets of lead.

It would be going beyond my purpose to carry my remarks from the literary merits to the moral and theological characteristics of Christian books; else a very strange account could be given of the injuries which the gospel has suffered from its friends. You might often meet with a systematic writer in whose hands the whole wealth, and variety, and magnificence of revelation shrink into a meagre list of doctrinal points, and who will let no verse in the Bible tell its meaning, or presume to have one, till it has taken its stand by one of those points. You may meet with a Christian polemic, who seems to value the arguments for evangelical truth as an assassin values his dagger, and for the same reason; with a descanter on the invisible world, who makes you think of a Popish cathedral, and from the vulgarity of whose illuminations you are glad to escape into the solemn twilight of faith; or with a grim zealot for such a theory of the Divine attributes and government, as seems to delight in representing the Deity as a dreadful King of furies, whose dominion is overshaded with vengeance, whose music is the cries of victims, and whose glory requires to be illustrated by the ruin of His creation.

It is quite unnecessary to say, that the list of excellent Christian writers would be very considerable. But as to the vast mass of books that would, by the consenting judgment of all men of liberal cultivation, remain after this deduction, one cannot help deploring the effect which they must have had on unknown thousands of readers. It would seem beyond all question, that books which, though even asserting the essential truths of Christianity, yet utterly preclude the full impression of its character; which exhibit its claims on admiration and affection with insipid feebleness of sentiment; or which cramp its simple majesty into an artificial form at once distorted and mean; must be seriously prejudicial to the influence of this sacred subject, though it be admitted that many of them have sometimes imparted a measure both of instruction and consolation. This they might do, and yet at the same time convey extremely contracted and inadequate ideas of the subject. There are a great many of them into which an intelligent Christian cannot look without rejoicing that they were not the books from which he received his impressions of the glory of his religion. There are many which nothing

would induce him, even though he did not materially differ from them in the leading articles of his belief, to put into the hands of an inquiring young person, which he would be sorry and ashamed to see on the table of an infidel; and some of which he regrets to think may still contribute to keep down the standard of religious taste, if I may so express it, among the public instructors of mankind. On the whole it would appear, that a profound veneration for Christianity would induce the wish, that, after a judicious selection of books had been made, the Christians also had their Caliph Omar and their General Amrou.

2. COMPARISON OF COUNTRIES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES.

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(CONTRIBUTIONS TO ECLECTIC REVIEW.")

A curious and reflective mind will not fall on many subjects more attractive than the relation of ancient regions, such as history and monuments have recorded them, to the same regions viewed in their modern and present state. It is striking to consider how widely they are, as it were, estranged from their primitive selves; insomuch that the mere local and nominal identity has less power to retain them before us under the original idea fixed on the place and name, than their actual condition has to present them as domains of a foreign and alien character. They are seen divested to so great a degree, of that which had created a deep interest in contemplating them, that we consign them to a distant province of our imagination, where they are the objects of a reversed order of feelings. We regard them as having disowned themselves, while retaining their ancient names and their position on the earth. We say divested to so great a degree; for if the regions be eminently remarkable for natural features-mountains, rivers, defiles, and peculiar productions— these do, indeed, continue to tell something of ancient times. In keeping under our view a groundwork of the scenes we had meditated on, they recall to us by association what once was there, and is there no longer. But they do so to excite a disturbance by incongruity. What is there now, rises in the imagination to confound or overpower the images of what was there then. So that, till we can clear away this intrusion, we have an uncouth blending of the venerable ancient and the vulgar modern.

Again, there are seen in those territories striking relics of the human labours of the remote ages; which are thus brought back more impressively to the imagination than by the most prominent features of nature. But these disclaim more decidedly still, in the name of that departed world to which they entirely belong, all relationship with the existing economy of man and his concerns. They are emphatically solitary and estranged amidst that economy. Their aspect, in their gloom and ruin, is wholly to the past, as if signifying a disdain of all that later times have brought around them. And if, in some instances, man is trying to avail himself of some parts or appendages of them for his ordinary uses of resort or

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