18 All save those bones, dry, sapless, tall, 19 How dry and shrivell'd! Yet 'tis they 20 Those nerveless arms, they used to cling 21 That ring, my God, long years ago. 22 This slim, long-jointed skeleton Is that same white, full, tapering hand 23 Beside me then in youthful pride. I press'd that hand, and vow'd the vow. 24 Have I not kept it ?-Was thy life Not blest with love and happiness ?— 25 For 'neath thy grave, my thoughts will come. I have no other earthly home Where I may spend life's weary day. 26 And thus, my Mary, thus I cling To all that now is left of thee. God save thy spirit!-Save and bring Axminster, 9th Oct. 1849. FUIMUS. COLONIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY. COLONIZATION is no longer considered as a means of propagating the faith. Emigration is now generally understood to be the settlement of agriculturists on lands frequented by hunter tribes; but it has not always been so considered: and with the wide field recently opened to Christianity in Africa, in China, and in the islands of the Pacific, it may not be amiss to analyze the ridicule that has been thrown on such measures as a mean of propagating the faith of Christ: it may not be amiss to inquire how far the rulers of the Church may laudably avail themselves, for this purpose, of the course of political events, and to weigh the criticisms of their impugners. In the seventh century of the Christian era, arose an impostor whose success has obtained for him, in the minds of unthinking Christians and inconsequent moralists, but too easy a pardon for the impiety of his attempt and the grossness of his doctrines. This man willed that his followers should be conquerors: with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other, he caused the divinity of his mission to be acknowledged; his successors imposed the yoke of his creed and of their own despotism on the fairest region of so much of the earth as was then known to the civilized nations. They passed the straits that separate Africa from Europe: established themselves in Spain; and even made incursions into the provinces of France. The Holy Land, once trod by blessed feet, was included in their empire: and those Christians whose devotion led them to visit the places where the incarnate Word had lived and died and risen again, were vexed and tormented by triumphant bigotry. Of this last circumstance, the governors of the nations united under the name of Christendom, took advantage for their own defence they roused the courage of their people to encounter the dangers and the difficulties of a distant warfare. Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre and for establishing a barrier against Mahometan conquest, long exercised the valour, the zeal and the piety of Christian heroes. The expulsion of the Moors from Grenada, an act at least as justifiable as their intrusion into that province, may be regarded as the last of these crusades. It secured Christendom on this point, from the dread of a barbarous domination; and the Mediterranean rolled its waves between Spain and the ferocious pirate of the northern coast of Africa. But the errors and acts of the impostor had prevailed far and wide. Poland, Austria, Venice, and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, at last driven to the little isle where the Apostle of the Gentiles had escaped from shipwreck—these were become the bulwarks of the countries professing the faith of Christ. Meanwhile, the opinion that religion was to be defended as it was attacked, by force of arms, became familiar to Christians: and the extension of the true faith was considered as the work not only of its unarmed teachers, but also of the powers that bore the sword. With this object in view, Pope Martin V. gave to the Portuguese the countries they should discover after sounding Africa on the south: and his successor, Alexander VI., drew a line of demarcation from pole to pole; and assigned to that nation, all the unknown regions to the eastward, and to the Spaniards, all to the westward of this boldly and magnificentlyimagined line. The great discoverer of the new world destined a portion of his treasures to be obtained in the east, as a subsidy for the recovery of the Holy Land; and trusted in the blessing of Heaven on an enterprize that would convey the knowledge of the truth to people as yet "sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death." But Martin V. did not know the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope. Alexander VI. did not settle the disputes that might arise between the Portuguese and Spaniards when they should meet on the opposite side of the globe: and Columbus was a bigot. Such are the sneers and reproaches thrown out by modern writers; by Christians indifferent to their religion, or by philosophers who reject it. Yet; if the Christian religion be true, it is "the power of God unto salvation to him who believeth ;" and is to be taught, as such, in all the countries of the earth. How the divine justice and mercy may dispose of the souls of those who have not heard the word of truth, is not our affair: the more inauspiciously we deem of their future state, the more anxiously will Christian charity exert itself to show them the appointed way, the revealed truth, the hope of life eternal. The cruelty and rapacity of some profligate Spanish adventurers have thrown dishonour on the cause of proselytism: but for their atrocious conduct, neither the zeal of the pastors of the Church nor the piety of Columbus ought to be made responsible. Shall the patriot glory in the spread of the language and name of his country by colonization: shall the statesman applaud himself for thus increasing its power and resources: shall the man of commerce point out his own gains as part of its wealth: and shall Christians regard as a matter of no moment the diffusion of that light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world? This is not natural: not consistent with gratitude to God; not in accordance with "the love of our brethren." The project of Columbus for yet another "Jerusalem delivered" was neither so silly nor so impolitic as, in these days, it is apprehended to be: it is justified by the danger which, half a century after his death, threatened Italy and all Europe,preserved from invasion, perhaps from subjugation, by the battle of Lepanto. Three centuries have far advanced the discoveries to which this great this more than great-this good man led the way: forty millions of Christians dwell in those countries which he began to make known to Europe: the pure oblation of our altars has been substituted for human sacrifices: the shores of the great inland lakes and the horrid wilds of Paraguay have reechoed the praises of the true God. "Beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of peace: they who turn many to justice shall shine like stars in the firmament of heaven." 66 The constellation of the cross animated the first wanderers in the southern hemisphere: still the injunction "go and teach all nations" has been imperfectly obeyed; and the purpose of the Creator, that man should replenish the earth and subdue it, is as yet far short of its accomplishment.. Meantime a redundant population in some countries may make it most difficult in the classes not possessed of property, to restrain that cupidity which appears to them justifiable by want and misery. Colonization is, if not a remedy, at least a palliative of the evil. It is not a remedy; for the numbers who may depart from a thickly inhabited region will only make room for new and multiplied increase: but as a palliative, it is the best, the most glorious to the people who may adopt it; the most beneficial to the great interest of mankind. To this object, ought to be directed the efforts of Christian charity for the relief and amelioration of the condition of the labouring classes. Moral restraint, popularly sneered at as the doctrine of Malthus, is, indeed, the only efficient means whereby population can be confined within the limit of easy subsistence: but the privation of the delights of domestic affection is, in a general and extended view, no light evil; and ought not to be imposed or required while so many regions remain unoccupied and desert, as if in scorn of the magnificence of the Creator. 14 RECOLLECTIONS OF EMINENT MEN. DR. PHILLPOTTS.-M. BLANQUI.-DR. GENTILI, D. D.- AT the Green Dragon at Harrowgate, I was seated at dinner beside a staid lady-like woman;-the wife of the clergyman on the other side of her. We spoke of the changes that had taken place in the Lower Town since I had seen it last. "How long is it since then ?" she asked. "Oh, I have not been here for these hundred years," I replied. She opened her dull blue eyes very wide and looked at me in silent amazement. At length she observed, in a tone of blended doubt and fear, "I should not have thought you so old!" "I was very young at the time," I answered: "I was scarcely twenty years old."............ What memories must be mine! "Passons, s'il vous plait, au deluge." Need I translate these words and explain to what they allude? More than fifty years ago, the present Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Phillpotts, apologised to me for the inconvenience to which he had put me by not understanding the meaning of the letters R. S. V. P. which I had written at the bottom of a letter; and though French and French literature are not quite so strange to us now as they were before Prince Albert established prizes for foreign languages at Eton, still there may be some country gentlemen unacquainted with Racine's comedy of Les Plaideurs, in which counsel, pleading in the case of a stolen chicken, begins his speech with the protasis "Before the creation of the world"............and is interrupted by the judge, Dandin, exclaiming, with a yawn, "O Mr. Avocat, let us skip on to the deluge, if you please." Thus, though enriched with the memories of "a hundred years," I have skipped over half of them and find myself embarked in the see of Exeter. But, fifty years ago, Dr. Phillpotts was little liable to be addressed in the mysterious initials of French politeness. He was struggling with difficulties at Magdalene College, Oxford: and was cramming religion and sound principles of church-and-state into the mind of his first pupil. But, himself of a reduced gentleman's family (so much reduced, indeed, that his father attempted to mend his circumstances by |