been thus suffered to occupy, and selves." And as "for foolishly wasting their strength in defending untenable positions," how much oftener have empires been lost by relinquishing positions foolishly thought to be untenable, when they might have been held against all invaders -in front impregnable-nor to be turned on either flank, the one protected by rocks commanding the enemy's whole position, and the other by a wood, into which had he ventured, he had been lost. We are sick at "the eternal blazon" of the temper of the age." What is its temper? Is it, in sad truth, an irreligious age? No. Then let not the friends of religion fear. But neither let them act as if they did fear. Let them defy the hordes of infidels, Is it true, that "academical regu- by whom the Dissenters are backed lations offer no defence against bru-backed, perhaps, though we know tal acts of democratic violence ?" No. All regulations do for the sanctity of unviolated law overawes the multitude, else whence the stability of any state?" Academical regulations" are poor and inadequate words to express the power of time-hallowed institutions. Let the great, old, famous English Universities remain what they have been for so many ages, in purpose and in spirit, and sacred in the eyes and in the hearts of so many millions, with not one moral coward" among them all, and the might of their majesty, combined with that of a venerable and magnificent Church Establishment, will prevail even over "the brutality of democratic violence," for it will be for ever curbing it, and, better still, humanizing it, by the irresistible influences of religion, felt wide and afar over dwellers in darksome places, who yet know not whence the bless ing comes, while they owe it to a spirit that holds its court among those towers and temples, and speaks in the voice, and bestows through the hands, of its own Christian priesthood. With our admiration of Professor Sedgwick's talents, and our respect for his character, sorry are we to say, that we do not think that he and his friends, who have presented that Petition, have been true to them not how that is-without or against their will. True, that "Cambridge is a University in the proper sense of the word-a place of national education, not for the Church merely, but for all the learned faculties, a great scientific body, and a lay corporation." The passage quoted in a former part of this article explains that assertion, and puts it in its true light. It has long been soand it gained its glory under a system, which, we fear, has seen almost its latest day. Well does the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth say, in some pages this moment come to our hands-"What then is the title and definition of an English University? Call them, if you will, as they call themselves, SEMINARIES OF SOUND LEARNING AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.' Call them, even as they are called by Dissenters, National Seminaries of Education;' but call them not Scientific Institutions, or Literary Academies: the names are honourable, but they are not descriptive of the English Universities. The Universities of England have produced, and are producing, and still, by God's blessing, hope to produce, men eminent in every department of literature and science; but this is neither their sole, nor is it their primary and characteristic object." Farewell. Printed by Ballantyne and Co., Paul's Work, Edinburgh. BOB BURKE'S DUEL WITH ENSIGN BRADY OF THE 48TH, THE CONDE DE ILDEFONZO. A TALE OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 731 743 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, 45, GEorge street, EDINBURGH; To whom Communications (post paid) may be addressed. SOLD ALSO BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH. ALSO, JUST Published, No. CCXXI. FOR MAY. PART I. CONTENTS. 1. Cruise of the Midge. Chap. 3.-II. Memoir of M. de Chateaubriand. -III. Mirabeau.-IV. Thoughts and Recollections. By Mrs Hemans. 1. To a Family Bible 2. On a Remembered Picture of Christ. 3. Mountain Sanctuaries. 4. The Lilies of the Field. 5. The Birds of the Air. 6. The Olive Tree. 7. Places of Worship. 8. A Church in North Wales. 9. Old Church in an English Park.-V. The Lay of Sir Lionel.-VI. My Cousin Nicholas. Chap. 5, 6. VII. The Enchanted Domain.-VIII. Progress of Social Disorganization. No. 4. Decay of the Wooden Walls of England.IX. Loudon on the Education of Gardeners.-X. Four Lyrics. By Delta. 1. To the Skylark. 2. Twilight Thoughts. 3. Haddon Hall, Yorkshire. 4. Elegiac Stanzas.-XI. Woman; by Simonides (not of Cos). Translated by William Hay-XII. Song of Demodocus the Bard before Ulysses, at the Court of King Alcinous.-XIII. Admission of Dissenters to Degrees in the English Universities. THE historians of modern times, with all their ability and philosophic penetration, have failed in tracing with the lucid colours which might have been expected from them, the influence of religion on modern civilisation. The two great est, Hume and Gibbon, were taint ed with the infidel spirit of the age in which they lived, and which worked out its natural and appropriate fruit in the French Revolution. The view which they exhibit, accordingly, of the influence of Christianity, is not only defective, but false they have neither told the whole truth, nor nothing but the truth. The expedient which they have adopted for this purpose is the same which, in all ages, has been the most prolific source of error: viz. the application to one age, of the feelings and information of another; and supposing that every thing must be always prejudicial or ridiculous, because it is so in the age in which they live. Thus, they ridicule or vilify the Monasteries and Nunneries, the Papal power and superstitious feelings of the middle ages,-forgetting that the eighteenth was not the fourteenth century; that asylums for helpless weakness are not required, when the reign of law and the authority of government is established; and that spells thrown over the imagination, useless or ridiculous in an age of order and civilisation, are the only bridles on vio VOL. XXXV. NO. CCXXII. lence in a period of anarchy and blood. The insolent and ungrateful modern liberals who revile the Christian faith, and see in its institutions only the remnant of feudal servitude and the remains of Gothic institutions, in fact owe the spread of the principles on which they pride themselves, and which constitute their political strength, mainly to the effects of the religion which they abhor; and, but for the previous effects of Christianity in breaking the fetters of slavery, diffusing general information on the most momentous of all subjects, coercing the violence of power, and mitigating the horrors of war, instead of being permitted to carry on, unmolested, their parricidal warfare against the Pa rents to which they owe all their blessings, they would have been crouching, as in Persia or Turkey, beneath the fetters of Oriental power. Such a spectacle has for a long course of years been presented in the neighbouring kingdom, and such consequences are now reaped by the first of European monarchies. It is in this view eminently favourable to the cause of religion and freedom throughout the world, that the second French Revolution has. arisen, and torn aside the thin veil which the pious dispositions and mild government of the elder branch of the Bourbons, had thrown over the disjointed remains of the revolu 3 B tionary volcano. During the Restoration, the liberal party of Great Britain were never weary of extolling the happy condition and brilliant prospects of the French people; and uniformly held out, that much as the violence and horrors of the preceding convulsions were to be deplored, their final results had been eminently favourable to the interests of mankind. The delusion was thus generally diffused, that Christianity formed no essential part of public felicity; that it was possible to rear up a happy state of society on the foundation of church spoliation, and general infidelity; and that in a regenerated monarchy, religion might be dispensed with, and public virtue supersede the necessity of ecclesiastical instructors. Is there any wellinformed man who will now dare to maintain the paradox? The revolt of the Barricades, the accession of the Citizen King, has dispelled the illusion: it has disclosed the interior of the whited sepulchre, exhibited the ghastly features of premature decay, amidst the triumph of the revolutionists; held up to public gaze the extinction of all the elements of freedom in the first of regenerated monarchies; exhibited a growth of licentiousness and profligacy unparalleled in any modern State, and revealed to the world, as the certain fruits of irreligious triumphs, the chains, the well-known chains of Eastern despotism. "There are but two eras in human affairs," says Madame de Stael, "that which preceded, and that which followed the introduction of Christianity." The evident and ruinous effects of the extinction of religion in France, have forced themselves upon the observation of the most enlightened even of the liberal party in that fervent country. It was impossible, that a generation could grow up under the practical influence of irreligious sentiments, without the disastrous effects of such a change forcing themselves upon the observation of every impartial observer; and accordingly M. Guizot, though one of the liberal leaders, and by no means guiltless in regard to the previous measures of that party which led to the Revolution of July, has portrayed in vivid colours the important effects of Christianity upon the fabric of society in modern Europe. Public misfortune has righted the human mind. We no longer meet with the sneers at religion in the enlightened writers of France, which disgrace the otherwise incomparable works of Hume and Gibbon. Even the lucid and philosophic spirit with which Ro bertson has reviewed the progress of society in modern Europe, yields to the antiquarian penetration, the enlarged views, with which Guizot has traced, through all the obscurity of the middle ages, the historical blessings of religious institutions; and that fervent and enthusiastic defence of Christianity, which for above a century had been wanting to French literature, was found within sight of the altar of the Goddess of Reason, in the burning thoughts and gifted eloquence of Chateaubriand. When Napoleon took the field, in 1815, against the forces of combined Europe, he marched in the first instance against the Duke of Wellington's army: "for if I defeat the English," said he, "what need I care for all the hordes which the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians, are directing to the Rhine ?" Revolutionary madness pays the same sincere, but involuntary homage to the Church, in every State which it invades: it directs its first and strongest attack against the establishments of Christianity. An unerring instinct tells its leaders, that if they can only overthrow its bulwarks, they will find it an easy matter to overturn all the other institutions of society; that when the sentinels at the gates are massacred, the battlements will soon be in their power. The Church was the first victim of democratic fervour in France; and before a stroke was levelled either at the nobility or the throne, the whole ecclesiastical property in the State was confiscated; the earliest measure of the revolutionists in Spain and Portugal, when they obtained possession of supreme power in 1823, was to extinguish the whole institu tions, and appropriate the whole possessions, of the Church; and the first use which the reformers of England have made of the extraordinary triumph of the Reform Bill, |