voluntarily instituted. They know nothing of patronage, and have ever refused to recognize it. When once they shall have submitted themselves to an express statutory obligation, to receive and admit the qualified presentees of lay patrons, or when they have supposed themselves placed under that obligation, they may then reason upon the subject. It is probable that many of the Irish Presbyterians would steadily decline to subject themselves to such conditions. But why should they shrink from doing so, unless on the footing that by once accepting them, they would be bound in honour and honesty to fulfil them? We can pardon in our Irish friends something of that confusion of ideas, from which even the northern portion of the Sister Isle is not exempt. But a little reflection must convince them all, that an unestablished presbyterian church is a thing essentially different from a presbyterian church established by statutes, and which, in its very establishment, has consented to the recognition of lay patronage, and cannot read the charter of its legal rights without reading also the stringent clause which rivets its obligations. The conscientious Irish Presbyterians, who would refuse to accept of such conditions, because they would not agree to fulfil them, cannot approve of the conduct of those who refuse to fulfil them, after having already accepted of them.

While we feel convinced that the immoral and destructive doctrines of the Non-instrusion league are nowhere gaining ground in the country, we see, at the same time, that they are doing much mischief to the Church, to the cause of establishments, and to religion itself. The efficiency and legitimate influence of pastors is diminished by their being placed, on such subjects, in opposition to their flocks. The schemes which the Church has set on foot for diffusing religious instruction at home and abroad are languishing for want of support. The more wealthy and reflecting are alienated from her interests. The poorer classes are not conciliated, and yet are encouraged in those tendencies which are most natural to their condition-discontent with their situation, and jealousy of their superiors. It is indeed melancholy to see those whom the State has chosen as the teachers of peace, becoming

abettors of agitation, and holding out an example, which, to the popular mind at least, is only intelligible as inculcating resistance to the law.

We

In what manner are these evils to be remedied? By a legislative measure, or how otherwise? We confess we doubt the propriety of any legislation at present. We see no prospect of a measure being carried that would satisfy at once the reasonable part of the community and the majority of the Church, and we are unwilling as yet that any coercive enactment should be passed against them. were disposed to consider very favourably the bill of Lord Aberdeen, though we doubted whether its provisions did not give more power to the Church than she was entitled to obtain. But latterly we have inclined rather to the opinion of Lord Melbourne, that the fever should be allowed to run its course, provided, however, it be subjected to the usual anti phlogistic treatment which such cases require. We disapprove entirely of the direct or indirect encouragement which the contumacious party have already received from the Government in the distribution of patronage and otherwise: and we think it indispensable that to that system an instant termination should be put.

Independently of the general principle, that extraordinary measures should not be resorted to, while they can be avoided, we think that, in the present position of things, an obstacle to legislation has arisen, which is not likely for some time to be either removed or overcome. We allude to that which forms a most important part of Sir Robert Peel's views, as stated at his interview with the Duke of Argyll and certain delegates of the Church. The point to which we refer is explained in the following paragraphs of Sir Robert Peel's letter, containing an account of that interview :

"I observed, that even if I were to admit (which I could not) that the provisions of that bill were in themselves wholly unexceptionable, still that they were prospective only; and that I did not think the House of Lords would consent merely to legislate for the future; if the General Assembly should persist in its claim of authority to depose ministers of the Church, upon this ground-that those

ministers had obeyed the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Scotland, and by the House of Lords, on an appeal preferred to that tribunal at the instance of the Church of Scotland.

"That I presumed that the right to depose ministers involved substantially the right to deprive them of the privileges and emoluments attached by law to their parochial cures, and that it appeared to me-if such penalties could be inflicted for the cause assigned the authority of the Church over the statute law and civil tribunals of the country would be paramount even in matters of a civil and temporal nature.

"That I thought such a claim on the part of the Church of Scotland would greatly diminish, if not altogether destroy, any advantage that might have been hoped for from merely prospective legislation; and that new causes of difference, and new conflicts of authority, not provided for by such legislation, would very soon occur."

We conceive that the difficulties here stated must cease to exist before the legislature can interfere further in the matter, in so far at least as any healing measure is concerned; and we have already said that we are averse to adopt, as long as we can avoid it, any measure of coercion. We attach so much importance to these preliminary questions, that we must be allowed to develope somewhat fully our views regarding them.

Before passing a new legislative measure regarding the Church, we must distinctly understand the effect and consequences of what we are to do. We must know upon what footing we are to legislate, and how the proposed enactment is to be carried into operation.

More particularly, we must have it clearly ascertained by what tribunal any statutes regarding the Established Church, whether past or future, are to be interpreted, if any dispute arise regarding them. We must have that question determined as a general and vital principle. If the Church is to claim in any respect the power of interpreting such statutes in competition with the civil courts, or to the exclusion of those courts, we must either now make up our minds to concede that general claim, which no rational statesman will ever do, or we

must have the claim distinctly disallowed and put to silence.

Further, we must explicitly understand whether the Church is to claim the right to disregard the interpretation of statutes as declared by the civil courts, and is to assert the power to depose ministers for disobeying the statute law as so interpreted. We care little whether such deposition is to involve the loss of the benefice or not. The permission to deposed ministers to retain their emoluments, might re. move or mitigate our feeling for them as individuals, but would make no difference on our views as to the political question. We require to know this fact, whether, in the event of the civil courts interpreting any statute in a manner different from the wishes of the Church, the Church is to claim the power of deposing ministers who obey the law, and of thereby either depriving them of their livings, or of separating the endowment from the spiritual office. In either way, we conceive it clear that such pretensions must be disallowed by the legislature, as incompatible both with social peace and with the principle of an Establishment; and if the legislature and the majority of the Church are at variance upon this vital point, it is needless to proceed further. Any pacification that may be thus attempted will be hollow and transient. The sole effect of the concession will be to postpone and aggravate the struggle which must ultimately ensue, and which can only terminate either in the submission of the Church to its statutory duties, as explained by the civil courts, or in the prostration of the civil power at the foot of ecclesi astical tyranny.

We

The question here noticed, does not now arise in an abstract shape. have not now to deal with vague pretensions and protests, with vain vapourings, and verba jactantia, with which the clergy may be indulged, as a salvo to their scruples, and which the State, while they remain as "winged words," can afford to smile at and despise. The arrogant assumptions of hierocracy have assumed a tangible and a terrible reality in the Strathbogie deposition-a proceeding of which it is difficult to say whether it be more cruel in its execution or more calamitous in its probable consequences. An act of such flagrant invasion of

the law, of such palpable subversion of the establishment cannot be overlooked by the legislature, if the legislature is again to legislate for the Church. It sees before its eyes how its former enactments have been treated; it sees how its existing arrangements for uniting cures and endowments have been respected. The legislature may, without any interference on its part, leave the parties who have so acted to the strong arm of the judicial power. But if the legislature is to interfere at all, it cannot overlook the past in providing for the future, where the two are so inseparably linked together in principle and in practical operation.

If the majesty of the law is not to be surrendered, it is of course impossible that the deposed ministers can be sacrificed, or any arrangement recognised that does not proceed on the footing of their still possessing their original status.

It is in vain to say, as has been attempted, that there is no probability of any future question or collision between the Church and the law, if such a bill as the Duke of Argyll's were now to pass. The man must be very inexperienced, or very disingenuous, who assumes that any statute can be enacted in which ambiguities may not exist, or may not be raised by the conflict of opposing interests: and the legislature is not likely to act in such deplorable ignorance of its duties and difficulties.

But, in the present case, and after passing any act which left the claims of the Church untouched, a plain and palpable cause of collision might immediately occur. Suppose a majority of the Assembly to declare patronage to be contrary to the " headship," and refuse to induct the presentees of lay patrons and not only so, but to depose, as they now do, any members of presbytery who shall discharge their duty to the state in this respect? Such a state of things is not unlikely to occur, if the present spirit of the Church is encouraged, and it might be defend ed by the very arguments now urged in the name of spiritual independence. We should then stand precisely in the situation which we at present occupy, or rather we should be in a much worse position: and should find too late, how vain it is to legislate upon undefined principles, for a body which further

concession may make stronger in its resistance, but which, according to its own pretensions, no obligation can ever bind to the performance of its duties.

We think, then, that the cure of these lamentable mischiefs must be left to time, to the law, and to the influence of public opinion. The arm of civil authority is powerful and not easily wearied. The withdrawal of encouragement on the part of Government will abate the fervour of an enthusiasm which is not altogether blind to personal considerations: and the clergy will at last learn that where they can command no popular support they can possess no influence. All classes of men must in the end combine against the nuisance with which we are at present threatened. Those who revere the constitution of the country must desire to see the law enforced. Those who are lovers of liberty must abhor the encroachments of irresponsible power. The adversaries of an Establishment cannot wish to see it invested with an arbitrary and anomalous authority. Its friends must lament that its pretensions by exciting the alarm of every well regulated government, should render it doubtful whether it can be trusted with any authority at all. In the doctrines of the Church-majority, the statesman will discern the expanding germs of social discord and dissolution, while the simplest private citizen must understand their direct tendency to unsettle the foundation of his dearest rights. The man of honour will not suffer the conditions of a contract to remain unfulfilled by those who profit by its advantages. The religious man must shudder to hear the most sacred sanctions of Christianity desecrated by an unholy and promiscuous use, and the obligations of faith and doctrine confounded with the squabbles of ecclesiastical politics.

We trust, that ere long, these influences will produce their effect, that we shall look back on our present troubles, as on a feverish dream, and that the Church of Scotland will resume her place, and regain her usefulness, as the equal instructress of rich and poor, the nurse of piety and peace, and the constitutional supporter of that civil authority, which is itself founded on the ordinances of God, for the temporal and spiritual benefit of man,

LITERARY criticism, when plied regularly as a business, and allowed to become a habit, is a very barren and also a very dangerous affair. For as we do not live to anatomize our bodies, or eat to understand the chemistry of chyle, so we do not read books or look at pictures for the purpose of criticizing, but for the purpose of enjoying them. A sensible man, indeed, maymust make his remark on what he sees and feels; but he will do so accidentally as it were, and without pretence, not formally and in the style of a separate business. It is not every man, moreover, who is entitled even to drop casual remarks on what he sees; we must first serve a long apprenticeship of seeing and comparing before our speaking can serve any purpose but to publish our own folly. "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The spirit of this grand precept applies to intellectual almost as much as to moral judgments. Young minds beginning with criticism, generally ripen into conceit, and end in ignorance; as the most that criticism can achieve, even with those whom it does not utterly pervert, is to give a sort of dialectical nimbleness to the mere understanding, while it leaves the general intellectual character destitute of all real basis, and barren of all vital grandeur. A clever critic takes up an idea like a sword, and fences with it to the admiration of many; a great man enters into every idea as it were into a temple, and worships; and, like all true worshippers, worships oftentimes best when he worships in secret and in silence. With small ideas a clever critic may succeed in playing off a fine game of words to inferior men; but when he attempts to lay hold of large thoughts, he is like a dog snapping at the air. In vain, indeed, do we apply criticism of any kind to the highest creations. God gave us these like a sea to swim in ; and when we swim not in them we are

intellectually dead, and have only a name to live, how learnedly soever we may talk. Literature in itself, apart from life and nature, of which it is the mere reflection, is a thing altogether unintelligible; and a literature of literature, a systematic science of criticism, a formal architecture of the rules of the beautiful, attempted to be raised up by the mere understanding out of written books, will at best represent a botanist's hortus siccus, which a learned eye may microscopize to all eternity, and never be able to gain the simple conception of a green field. All attempts to explain literature out of literature alone, will never lift a man above the perfection of a delicate fingering: a mere critical, a mere literary man, we may say, is merelya pedant. No man ever got from a book the key to understand a book. Biblical criticism has saved few souls, and literary criticism has made few poets. The most that the one can do is to clip the noisy wings of a rambling religiosity; the most that the other can do is to prevent sounding sumphs from deceiving themselves and the public into the conceit, that they are sage singers; and now and then, also, to give a friendly hint to a real artist, that he do not look so strenuously upward as to forget the stone at his feet, on which he is about to stumble. Such is the humble office of criticism.

It is one of the most ominous and least healthy symptoms of modern German literature, (for we exclude the Niebelungen and the Minnesinger as belonging to a practically isolated world,) that as it ushered itself into existence some eighty years ago with Lessing's lancet, so now it seems hewing itself to death with Menzel's hatchet;-not that either Lessing or Menzel are personally to blame in the matter; they were both of them made for better things, and have, in fact, achieved better things than mere criticism; but their literary battles

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have been forced upon them, like Napoleon's wars, by a peculiar train of circumstances; only we must say, that the circumstances which forced such bloody work were necessarily bad. In Lessing's case the cause of the evil is manifest. Germany had lain bleeding and exhausted, the victim of her own dissensions, since the unsatisfactory peace of Westphalia. She had no native strength to do any thing, and, of course, fell an easy vietim, intellectually as well as physically, to the dazzling superiority of Louis XIV.: in this palsied and enfeebled condition Lessing found her, looking, nevertheless, very dignified -a starched caricature of French courtliness-utterly insensible to her own native worth, utterly false to her own native character. There was no remedy left but the surgeon's; "mittatur sanguis plenorivo,"-out with the old corrupt blood, that there may be room for the new. Lessing was forced to waste a great part of his vigour in cutting down gigantic dolls, in unrobing lay-figures, solemnly frilled and furbelowed, to look like breathing men. He protested the first in Europe, and with true old Teutonic independence, against the French dynasty of Voltaire; in that man he annihilated all clever shallowness: in numberless adversaries at home, he caused pretenceful pedantry, if not to blush with shame, (for of this it is seldom capable,) at least to roar with ineffective rage. Menzel, again, in these latter days, had a nobler, but, in some respects, not a less dangerous enemy to contend with. He found the poetry of petty princedom, the true German ideal of the eighteenth century, incarnated in Goethe; and two-thirds of the German people in the nineteenth century blindly worshipping this incarnation. As a genuine son of this new century-as a man in whom the grand national inspiration of 1813 had found a literary representative, Menzel was impelled to a debut in the shape of a rude, slashing anti-Goethian criticism, more beneficial to the public mind of his nation, than favourable to the healthy development of his own intellect, or calculated to impress strangers with large ideas of what was to be expected from the young German genius of the present age. He has, however, like Lessing, laboured manfully for more durable laurels than those

which a polemical criticism, however noisy and however clever, can earn. In his "History of the Germans," we delight to recognise a national work, in spirit and in execution second to none, perhaps, of which any people can boast.

There is one good thing which characterizes not only Menzel's criticism and leanings, but Frederick Schlegel's, Herder's, and indeed German criticism generally. It is essentially a searching criticism: a criticism of men, not of books; of the spirit, not of the letter; of the inward soul, not of the outward lines; of great general tendencies rather than of particular artistical results. One may indeed become vague in this region; and, what is worse, distort things fearfully if one idea happens to master the mind, as the idea of the middle ages mastered Frederick Schlegel, and the idea of Germanism generally, as opposed to petty princedom, masters Menzel; but the criticism of tendencies when carried out by men who are something more than mere praters, always ensures a certain comprehensiveness in the spirit, and a certain philosophy in the tone of enquiry, which we shall seek for vainly in the works of those writers who are fluent to discourse of the creations of art, as isolated products apart from the informing genius of the producer. One may make a cabinet of shells and stones, but not easily construct a cosmogony, without a God. And, as for the one-idea men, your Schlegels, Owens, Urquharts, et hoc genus omne, political as well as literary, they are dangerous only to a few fools; for the many, led by the healthy instincts of nature, disregard them utterly; while a select few, whom the world call philosophers, find, that by allowing the extremes of all nonsense to work quietly together, by a sort of wise chemistry of the brain sense is invariably the result. The fact of the matter is, that the German critics are, of all species of that ill-favoured genus, the least to be suspected, because they criticise, for the most part, with the heart as much as with the head, by a grand speculative intuition more than by a precise hair-splitting understanding, with a glowing imaginative sympathy as much as with that nice, fastidious, priggish thing which we used to write essays on, called TASTE.