Cracow indeed was spared-two steps of earth in which to bury the plundered and assassinated victim. Could they grudge the body a grave? Even banditti will inhume the living corpse, were it merely to hide the token of their guilt, the memorial of their shame. But, alas! that which was the grave, was also the monument of Poland. It loomed mournfully before the eyes of Europe, and spoke of robbery, oppression, and murder." "Raze it, raze it-let not even the stones speak against us!" Such is the fiat that has gone forth, and the last relic of a mighty nation has disappeared. But On the downfal of the empire established by Bonaparte, the allied nations had an admirable opportunity of retracing their steps, and rescinding their deed of guilt. They were warned by a fearful retribution; and had the assembled sovereigns emancipated Poland, and restored its rights, they would indeed have been what they pretended to be a Holy Alliance. the lesson had not been read, nor the warning laid to heart. The dreaded giant had been overpowered by numbers, and the swarm of infinitesimal men by whom the doughty feat had been achieved, were prepared to outherod the giant himself in deeds of selfishness and aggression. The Congress of Vienna assembled, and the solemn game of diplomatic thimblerigging commenced, in which kingdoms and provinces performed the part of the pea, and changed their places and relations with a rapidity that astounded the on-lookers. And what would they do for Poland? This question was urged upon them both by France and England, now that these countries had a breathing time to speak, and could make their voices be heard. And even had they been mute, there would still have remained the earnest pleading of gratitude, as well as the reproachful cry of conscience, since, but for Poland, the three great nations of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, would have shrivelled into Turkish provinces. The appeal was in vain. The three partitioning powers, indeed, talked of liberal institutions, and a national representation which they meant to establish in their respective Polish possessions; and a charter of a hundred and sixty-five articles, which was granted by the Congress to the Polish nation at the end of 1815, seemed to fulfil all they had promised. But it fulfilled them only to the eye, and upon paper, and the Pole continued to be no less a bondman and a victim than before. One of the bases of this solemn treaty decreed that the city and district of Cracow were to be formed into a free and independent republic, under the guarantee of the three powers; and so ended the promised deliverance of Poland! Of a kingdom containing a population of twenty millions, one district—a little district, some nineteen and a half miles in extent-was to be inviolate thenceforth and for ever from foreign armies and institutions, and its population of sixty thousand souls were left free to follow their own devices, unchecked by the hangman's knout or the drill-sergeant's baton. Here then, at least, was a spot upon which the wandering dove of Polish liberty might find rest from its weary flight-an atmosphere, however narrowed, in which the sickening Pole might draw one blessed inhalation of freedom, and feel a brief interval from oppression. Even this, however, is now discovered to be too extravagant a boon, and is therefore revoked. And what the excuse?— this little republic, forsooth, had become the Goshen of the oppressed, the shelter of the discontented. Thither especially flocked from Galicia the sufferers in the late revolt. But who prepared that asylum so temptingly, and then stirred up those troubles that made Cracow a place of shelter? Was it not natural for men to flee to the city of refuge, when the avenger of blood was behind them? Offences, indeed, did come, but the crime must rest, as well as the woe alight, upon those by whom they came. And what have the three nations gained by a deed in which they have sinned so deeply through a long course of years? The monster crime in the modern history of the world is the partition of Poland; but what has been the benefit to those who dared to commit it? The answer is a tremendous -lesson to monarchs and politicians. -Men, as individuals, may daringly sin without fear of earthly retribution: they abound, and have need of nothing; and when they die, they have no bands in their death. But faith, that wings its way into the far-distant and unseen, can follow the shivering disembodied criminal to the steps of the eternal tribunal, and hear the sentence of inevitable retribution. So, however, it is not with nations. For them, there is neither a separate state of spiritual existence, nor a final day of doom. And therefore it is in time, and not eternity, that they are judged and punished, and every public political crime is followed by the dark shadow of its correspondent punishment. True, we cannot accurately trace the punishment in every instance; but this is not from the failure of inevitable justice, but our own deficient sagacity. But there are also cases of gigantic enormity, in the results of which, the principle has been so visibly inscribed, that the dimmest eye cannot fail to see, and the dullest heart to understand them. And such has it been with the dismemberment of Poland. While the crime was pending, a fierce crusade was preached against anointed sovereigns, and this their master-piece of atrocity gave tenfold weight and influence to democratic propagandism. It deepened the general odium against crowned heads, and invigorated those assaults under which every throne trembled. Even yet, too, this growing hatred of the ruled against their rulers, is augmented by every renewal of Polish oppression. The Polish refugee, driven from his home, naturally becomes a preacher of that liberty for which he suffers; and sensitive men in Austria, Russia, and Prussia, listen to his doctrines, and lay them to heart. Such is the spirit which Poland has kindled among the three nations, and which, at no distant period, threatens a volcanic outburst, in wars of opinions, in fierce national revolutions, and the destruction of timehonoured, but effete and guilt-laden dynasties. Thus have the Poles avenged their quarrel upon the heads monarchs and statesmen, while the latter have only made them more formidable by every effort to suppress them. A type of that royal perplexity and dismay which such a reaction has occasioned, was lately exhibited in a most frightfully ludicrous display, whereby an imperial pleasure trip was made to resemble the flight of Cain. Nicholas, while hurrying from place to place like a meteor, and giving no inkling of his future whereabouts, must explore the stuffing of his mattress, lest it should contain an infernal machinehammer upon the wall, to ascertain that no Polish assassins were lurking within its hollows; unwire a flask with trembling hesitation, lest something more explosive than champaigne should burst from it; and even in his box at the theatre, interpose the burly chest of some life-guardsman or palace chamberlain between his own body and the audience, to intercept whatever Polish pistol-bullet might be aimed at his sacred person. But it was not sovereigns alone who were, and still continue to be, the sufferers; their people also approved of the deed, and shared in its advantages, and therefore they too have participated in its punishment. And here it is worthy of remark, that when some great political atrocity is committed, France is generally called forth to chastise the guilty; and in this instance she fearfully fulfilled her mission as the Nemesis of nations. The fires of Warsaw, the many Aceldamas of Polish patriotism, the national insults heaped upon its princes and nobles, were terribly returned upon their own heads at Berlin, Vienna, and Moscow, when conflagration, and slaughter, and national degradation, and territorial dismemberment, became in turn the lot of the oppressors. And at last, when France had inflicted her utmost, and become drunken with victory and carnage, the cycle of providence attained its wonted completion, by England being called forth as the chastiser of France. But when all had once more subsided into peace, the nations were more still unpersuaded, and Poland remained in fetters. And now, the last drop has fallen into the cup that makes it over- But now comes another question: Was the victim-nation so innocent the while, that her calamities were unmerited and uncalled for? Not so, or these would not have befallen. The history of Poland, alas! is one of moral and political iniquity, every whit commensurate with the calamities she has endured. The despotism of her nobles, and their iniquitous serfdom of the people; the turbulence, the selfishness, and the profligacy of these full-blown magnates, combined with the almost insane form of government by which they sought to perpetuate the ascendancy of their order, and to which they therefore clung with the tenacity of a death-grasp, were of themselves enough, amidst the progress of European science and civilization, to have shattered the discordant kingdom into fragments, even though the wedges of foreign oppressors had never been applied. Above all, they had idly cast from them that grand preservative of nations which of itself is the guarantee of civilization, and learning, and refinement, of political stability, and social happiness. Poland, equally with other countries, was visited by the glorious sun-burst of the Reformation, and half the land became Protestant; but as if that emancipation from the deadliest of all bondage had been nothing worth, she trucked it away to the Jesuits for a few oily words. Had Protestantism been suffered to go on unchecked, in a land which so needed her protection, and been welcomed by a nation at large, to whom' she so eloquently appealed-what a Poland might there then have been in the history of mo dern nations! Chivalrous valour, such as theirs, enlightened by religious knowledge, and hallowed by heavenly zeal, would have presented such an impregnable front, as would have made the proudest to recoil; and their enemies would as soon have thought of partitioning the firmament itself, as the Protestant kingdom of Poland. But the Poles were indifferent to the return of spiritual bondage, and knew not that the truth would make them free-and now they are slaves indeed. In religious belief, scarcely knowing what creed to hold by, and puzzled between the gospels of the evangelists, and that of Jean Jacques Rousseau—in politics, raging for every form of government, from a selfish and grinding oligarchy, to the most rampant French Jacobinism- —so divided in opinion and purpose, that where three Poles meet, there are sure to be at least two political theories of national government thus divided, thus distracted, thus quarrelling among themselves, they only meet to dream or to brawl over impossible theories of their country's regeneration. And at all this discordance their oppressors chuckle, as a sure promise of the confirmation of their rule. Even with all united Poland, twenty millions though they stand upon the record book, the combat for liberty would be perilous in -the extreme, although perhaps not wholly hopeless; and it might end in some Bannockburn, where a Polish Bruce would start up as the assertor of his country's freedom. But when will the Poles be able to decide, not only how their country is to be delivered, but how it is to be governed? Thou who art love, and peace, and concord-no people can be one until they are one in thee! And now we have said our melancholy say; and in vain have we written, if we have failed to impress upon our readers the great moral of the history of Poland. It is, that every national deed of guilt is inevitably followed by a national retribution. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge. Righteousness exalteth a-nation, and sin is the reproach of any people. Still, the Lord reigneth, and therefore let the earth be glad. The heavy guilt of Poland procured her dismemberment, but wo to those who dismembered her! They were visited and punished in kind by avenging France; and France in turn, who but sought her own, having merely gone forth in the lust of carnage, and conquest, had carnage and conquest rolled back over her territories, and into the streets and palaces of her gay capital. Look to it, Britain, and profit by the warning! Study the history of thy suffering cotemporaries, and learn to be just and merciful before it be too late. NEW PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH. An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century. By J. D. Morell, A.M. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 510 and 536. London, 1846.-This is a very important work, and demands at our hands something more than the present brief notice of its scope and object; and we trust soon to be able to devote a portion of our space to a critical examination of it. The various systems of Speculative Philosophy already exercise no mean or contracted influence upon the mind and beliefs of our age, and that influence daily widens and gathers strength, as the study of them extendsand reaches lower and broader strata in society. We fear, that, amongst the friends of Christianity in general, and by ministers of the gospel in particular, this study has been too much and too long neglected; and there is room to apprehend, that, unless they speedily bestir themselves, they may, ere long, be immersed in a contest for which they are all unarmed and unprepared and in which they must fight at disadvantage. One great obstacle which has hitherto barred the way against any general prosecution of this study, is the breadth and vastness of the Metaphysical field, and the want of any clue or directory to guide the inquirer through the labyrinth of conflicting systems, and enable him to grasp a comprehensive view of the whole, in their several bearings and relations to each other, and upon the truth at large. The want of such a Directory was strongly felt by the author of the present work in entering upon his course of study, and gave birth to the determination to provide one. He appears to have passed through a course of preliminary training, well adapted to fit him for the efficient discharge of his arduous undertaking. Beginning his career of study at Glasgow, under Dr Thomas Brown, he passed from thence to Germany, where he heard Brandis and Fichte, and after exploring the whole course of German philosophy under the very eye and hand of its greatest masters, he turned to Cousin and the French Eclectic school, and his work bears indubitable traces of his having well digested the results in his own mind. Its arrangement is clear and masterly, and admits of being very briefly stated. First, he explains and illustrates the general idea of Philosophy, and deduces the fundamental notions from which it springs. Having grasped this idea, he next proceeds to examine the different views which have been entertained of its details, or to classify the different systems which have been in vogue, more or less in every age of the world. As the result of this classification, he obtains four great generic systems-SENSATIONALISM, IDEALISM, SCEPTICISM, and MYSTICISM and a fifth, ECLECTICISM, the mingling of them all. Having laid this basis for his superstructure, he then proceeds, in the first great division of his work, to trace their history in order from the revival of letters to the opening of the Nineteenth Century; and in the second, to follow up that History more minutely to the present day. Finally, he examines the tendencies of the various systems, as respects the future, especially in their bearings upon Science, Legislation, and Religion. The Pre-Adamite Earth: Contributions to Theological Science. By John Harris, D.D., author of the Great Teacher, &c. 8vo, pp. 380. London, 1846. This is another important work, on which we trust to be able, ere long, to bestow a more enlarged measure of attention. It is stated by the author to be the first of a short series of treatiseseach complete in itself—in which the principles or laws therein deduced and applied to the successive stages of the Pre-Adamite Earth will be seen in their historical development as applied to individual man-to the family-to the nation to the Son of God, as "the second Adam, the Lord from heaven"-to the Church which he has founded- to the Revelation which he has completedand to the future prospects of humanity. This first volume or treatise consists of five parts. In the first part, what the author deems Primary Truths are stated and expounded. These are 1. THE GREAT REASON, or, Why God is, and must be, His own end from everlasting to everlasting. 2. THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE; or, The Manifestation of the Divine All-sufficiency the last end of Creation. 3. THE FUNDAMENTAL RELATION; or, The Manifestation of the Divine All-sufficiency Mediatorial. 4. THE PRIMARY OBLIGATION; or, Duty arising from the Mediatorial Manifestation; and 5. THE SUPREME RIGHT; or, Mediatorial authority and happiness commensurate with the Discharge of Obligation. In the second part, a series of twenty principles or laws of the Manifestation, are deduced from the Primary Truths laid down in the first part. These two parts are introductory and fundamental, not only to the present Treatise, but to those which are still to follow. The Third part treats of the First stage of the Manifestation-the simple attribute of POWER as displayed in Inorganic Nature. The Fourth part treats of the Second stage of the Manifestation-the combined attributes of POWER and WISDOM, as displayed in Organic Nature or Life. And the Fifth part-which closes the present volume-treats of the third stage of the Manifestation-the attributes of POWER, WISDOM, and GOODNESS, as evolved in sentient existence. There is also an Appendix, containing a criticism on Genesis i. 1-3, and Observations illustrative of the Theory of successive Creations. The Gallery of Nature, a Pictorial and Descriptive Tour through Creation, illustrative of Astronomy, Physical Geography, and Geology. By the Rev. Thomas Milner, M.A. Imp. 8vo, pp. 804. London, 1846. This is a truly splendid volume, and will prove a most welcome and useful addition to the literature of the cultivated and intellectual family circle. Its object is to condense and systematize the results which former and recent science and research have contributed towards the illustration of the constitution, laws, and mutations of the physical universe, and to present them in an attractive and intelligible form to the general reader. Three great divisions make up the volume. The first-Astronomical--under which is given a neat and compact history of astronomical discovery, and a very full and satisfactory view of the scenery and phenomena of the heavens, compris ing the sun and solar phenomena, the moon and planets, and lunar and planetary phenomena, comets, aerolites, the fixed stars and nebulae. The second division, occupying nearly one-half of the whole volume, takes up Physical Geography. The heads treated are- -great natural divisions of the earth,-high lands, valleys, and great levels; caverns and subterraneous passages; springs, rivers, and lakes; the ocean, tides, and oceanic highways; changes in oceanic regions; alterations of coast line; interior land changes; the atmosphere and its currents; aqueous atmospheric phenomena: physical climate; optical phenomena; geographical distribution of plants, animals, and of the human race. The third and concluding division treats of Geology, including the structure and formation of rocks, plutonic or igneous rocks, and the various geologic systems in the order of their formation, viz., the gneis, mica shist and clay slate; the silurian; the old red sandstone; the carboniferous; the new red sandstone; the Oolitic; the cretaceous, and the tertiary systems; of diluvium, or drift, and erratic blocks; and alluvium, or recent formations, general indications afforded by the science, &c. The volume is illustrated by eight line engravings, four maps of the sidereal heavens at different periods of the year, of the moon's surface, and of her phases and movements round the earth, all on steel; and 250 wood engravings, executed in the very first style of the art, of remarkable phenomena, interesting localities, objects of natural history, &c. Altogether the work supplies a popular view, at once complete and interesting, of the leading appearances of physical nature-the economy of the heavens and the earth-a most attractive digest of the sum of human knowledge respecting the "wondrous whole" of which we form so small a part. The Elevation of the People, Moral, Instructional, and Social. By the Rev. Thomas Milner, M.A. 8vo, pp. 672. London, 1846.-A very seasonable and praiseworthy work, which, though marked by no great originality, or profundity of thought, or vigour of style, and containing occasional expressions of sentiment in which we cannot concur, is yet, upon the whole, well and pleasingly written-is characterised by a fine spirit of philanthropy, and presents a vast mass of most valuable and interesting facts and statistics upon the topics which it discusses. The volume is comprised in fourteen chapters, under the following titles, viz., a Glance at Bygone Times; Modern aims at National Elevation; the Last Census; Home Aspects; the Certain and the Possible: Instruction for the Masses; Industrial Discipline; Methods of Instruction; Provision of Instruction ; a National Experiment; the Strife for Life; Morality of Dens and Wigwams; the Public Health; Social Improvements. These titles, however, supply only a very faint indication of the variety and impor tance of the subjects discussed. volume is eminently deserving of the at The |
