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ward affection which is to be professed. It is the same system which in its more full development, puts penance in the place of repentance, and the pattering of Latin forms, with the counting of beads, in the place of prayer.

These are two gospels, not one in different aspects. In proportion as each is developed, and brought into full consistency with itself, it departs from the other. At one of the New York anniversaries last May, the antagonist position of these two gospels was spoken of as the great religious controversy of the age. The speaker sketched the character of two editions of Christianity. One deals with men as individuals; it makes every man stand alone before God as a sinner -alone before the cross, to believe and be forgiven, or to reject the atonement and perish. The other takes men in masses, and proposes to save them as connected with a visible organization. The one puts nothing between the sinner and his Savior. The other puts the priest there, and the church, and the sacraments. The great idea of the one is individual responsibility and spiritual freedom. The great idea of the other is organized unity and spiritual dominion. These two gospels are now in conflict, not here and there, as factions, for ascendency in a parish, a city, or a nation; but every where, as principles and systems of thought, for dominion over the world. The world's destiny is to turn upon the issue of this conflict.

"is

alone.'" He says, "the difference" between these two systems, real. It is immense. It has been not untruly characterized, as being all the difference between spurious and true." This charge then helps us to understand on which side, in the conflict between these two gospels, the American branch of the Anglican church is likely to be found. One of the oldest prelates of a church which in this country calls itself "Protestant," a prelate who had given but three charges in a quarter of a century, has been moved by "the errors of the times" to take his position, in his fourth charge, against the principle of individual responsibility, or the right of private judgment and the sufficiency of the Scriptures alone as a rule of faith and practice-against the idea, that the Gospel deals with men as individuals and not as members of an organization-and against the doctrine of a renewal by the Holy Spirit as the beginning of holiness in the soul of man. That charge we are told by an official organ, "was received as it were with acclamation by every one." And in the charge now before us, we find another prelate, the most learned of his order, and, if we may judge from this specimen, one of the most eloquent, declaring ex ca thedra that the body of Christ is a a visible organization, united and sealed as Christ's body by sacraments; and that membership in that organization is the revealed plan of salvation; and this charge is "published by order of the convention."

The author of the charge before us quotes from that speech, and virtually acknowledges that the question was fairly put. He tells us, that "individual responsibility' separated from organized unity,' becomes a fearful source of danger, a snare and an undoing, to those who thus virtually put man out of Christ, to stand before God

We know there are Episcopalians-laymen, ministers, bishopswho have no sympathy with these anti-evangelical teachings. But what can they do? Time will show whether they can counteract the tendency which in their half reformed communion is developing itself so rapidly.

REVIEW OF THE MAYFLOWER.*

THE author of this little volume is one of that numerous class of matrons who were "born and brought up" on the hills of New England, and who have, on reaching more mature age, helped to swell the mighty tide of emigration, which flows and will continue to flow towards our western borders. And grateful indeed should that portion of our country be, that, amid the throng of hair brained speculators, and lazy, restless, or impoverished men, of all ages and professions, who wend their way to the El Dorado of the Mississippi valley, there are mingled such as our author, persons of strong hearts and sound heads, who take their position upon an eminence, and looking down on the turbulent movements of society about them, with an honest purpose and a judicious selection of means, do their part to "calm the angry storm," to cherish in their growth the seeds of freedom and true happiness, and to repress or eradicate whatever is in its natural tendency disorganizing and hurtful. It is by this class of persons that the already teeming population of the west, which, in the expressive language of one of her most eloquent divines, is "rushing up to greatness," is to be molded aright, and made to assume a true and well-founded greatness; a greatness arising from honesty, liberty and truth.

In this view, we hail with delight every token of the working of the healthy mental and moral materials of our western states: and in this view, we greet with special joy the volume before us. It makes its appearance in an unassuming form

*The Mayflower: or Sketches of Scenes and Characters among the descendants of the Pilgrims, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1843.

and bearing an unassuming title. But no less a person than Dr. Johnson once said, "Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all. A man will often look at them, and be tempted to go on, when he would have been frightened at books of a larger size and of a more erudite appearance." We remember, also, that the most valuable goods often come to us in the smallest packages, and that puffs and recom mendations are too often, like bolsters and swathing-bands, the indications of weakness rather than of strength.

We have so much to say in praise of the Mayflower, and so little in the way of fault-finding, that we shall notice at the outset some things which have seemed to us to be blemishes, and then trust to make our way to the end of this article in perfect harmony and good humor with the author.

A serious fault, yet one by no means uncommon in writers of this age, has sometimes exhibited itself, as we have turned over these pages. The fault in question is that of employing words of uncommon usage, or those which are derived from the less known languages, as the Latin and Greek, rather than those of Saxon origin. This we regard as deci dedly the most glaring blemish of the volume before us. We have said that this is no uncommon fault in writers of our time. So far is this true, that it is already a matter of serious complaint on the part of readers. Nor is this complaint con fined to the lower class of readers in point of refinement and classical learning. If these dislike, when perusing an off-hand tale or sketch, or a political squib, to be knocked down or stumbled by a long jaw-cracking word of ten syllables, which has

been raked up from the charnelhouse of Grecian or Latin antiquity; so, on the other hand, does the scholar and the man of ripe and polished accomplishments find something in such a use of words, which violates propriety and shocks his taste. Our mother tongue, it should seem, is rich and copious enough to accommodate all the wants of the writer or speaker. Such, it is found by the best masters of style in our own time, and such any one will find it ever to have been, who will take the trouble to turn over such authors of a former age as Addison, South, Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and numerous others. That brilliant reviewer, Macauley, speaking of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and passing judgment upon its style, says:

"There is no book in our literature on which we could so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed." No : our own "well of English undefiled" is enough for our wants, and to display under such circumstances the fondness which many do for terms of foreign use, renders them, as to this subject, justly obnoxious to the apostle's charge of being "without natural affection."

While we are upon this fault, we will take the liberty to dwell for a little space upon one which is akin to it, although not one of frequent occurrence in the book which we have made the subject of the prèsent notice. What we mean here to condemn, is that propensity so often exhibited in nearly every kind of writing, and upon almost every subject, to make numerous quotations, not only from the ancient and dead tongues, but from the modern languages of the west and south of Europe. Hardly any popular writer, much less any writer who is below mediocrity, is exempt from this fault.

In some cases, as in common newspaper and magazine stories, it really seems as though the writer had resorted to a dictionary of quotations, and hunted its pages with a diligence worthy a better direction, in order that he might, if possible, spice up his vapid stuff with an air of learning or classic nicety. To such an extent does this charge lie against the authors of the present day, that it has become necessary, if one would fully comprehend a writer of English, so called, that he should make himself acquainted at least with the French, German and Italian languages, to say nothing of the Spanish and Dutch, the gibberish of the Northmen, or the works of the masters of hoary antiquity. Indeed a distinguished living writer of England, in treating the subject of female education, declares it is requisite that ladies should be able to read French and Italian, and assigns as the reason, that they may be able to understand their own writers! Such writings as we have now under contemplation, remind us, by the variety of materials used in their composition, of Virgil's description of one of the thunderbolts of Jupiter, as manufactured by the Cyclops:

"Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ Addiderant, rutili tres ignis et alitis Austri. Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque

Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras."

We have always supposed that the great object of writing is conviction. Certainly it may be said to be conviction or amusement. But how is one to be convinced by words which he does not understand? The endeavor to convince by such means, is as judicious and as likely to suc ceed, as an attempt to check the fury of a wild bull by a long chain of syllogistic reasoning, or to govern the whirling planets by the ten commandments. Or, how is a man to be amused by quotations from Dante's Inferno, Moliere or Rochefoucauld,

Cervantes or Homer, when he knows nothing of the languages of those authors? True, at times these quotations are little else than graceful expansions of the thought which has just been expressed in homely English, and in such cases we can not say that we are unable to comprehend the writer. But sometimes the very pith and meaning of a paragraph is made to hang on some quotation from a foreign author, in which case the poor reader, if he is not master of a dozen tongues, is left to beat his brains in vain for the writer's meaning.

Now this fault of our writers is really

-"most tolerable and not to be endured."

The great mass of written productions are for the unlearned,-for those who have been initiated into the mysteries of their mother-tongue alone, and to the apprehension of this class of readers the mass of writing ought to be adapted. It is only a waste of time and learning on his part, and a waste of time, patience and good temper on the part of the reader, when a writer cuts up his piece to intersperse it with extracts from foreign works. In a professed essay, oration or review, which is not aimed so exclusively at the common and lower stamp of mind and education, a spice of the authors of antiquity, as they have come down to us mellowed by age, is not amiss. It gives a richness and freshness to the discourse that effectually secures the attention, and prevents any feeling of tediousness. It sends back the mind of the hearer or reader to the times of old, and brings before him once more the memorable scenes which have been witnessed in the world's history, and causes him to live over again with pleasure his school-boy days. It places him perhaps at the table of the suburban villa of Horace, or makes him one of the guests in the banqueting-hall of the princely Sallust, or his heart

is thrilled again with the sound of the martial strains which swell from the hosts of Cyrus or Alexander, as they go forth to battle against the world; or his soul is subdued. and melted by the same high and solemn chorus which enchained the "fierce democratie" of Athens.

When such as these are the effects produced by the use of quotations, no one can object to them. On the contrary, they become a high embellishment of style, adding not only elegance and interest, but real and permanent value to the writings which they adorn. But no such reasons as these can be alledged in defense of the practice of making quotations upon subjects and occasions which make their appeal not to the classic mind, but to the comparatively uneducated alone. In the latter case, instead of rendering the topic treated of more plain and intelligi ble, writers too often but make "confusion worse confounded." Like the common cuttle-fish, they make use of their ink only to darken and obscure what was before clear and transparent.

With the two above specified, we dismiss the faults of the book before us, and take pleasure in coming to a part of the subject where we can speak in terms of the highest praise.

The great characteristic of Mrs. Stowe, in a literary point of view, is her descriptive power. Though we doubt not that her pen would be extremely felicitous in other departments of authorship, yet we deem this peculiarly her proper field. She has, in the present volume, confined herself more particularly to the delineation of New England character, manners and scenery. In this our author stands without a superior, and with no equal, if we except perhaps Washington Irving. In the description of scenes in "Yankee land," Mrs. Stowe seems to be emphatically "at home," and treads the soil of her native hills with a step as free as that with which Sir Wal

ter Scott brushed the dew-drops from the heather of his own dear Scotland. In her delineations of character, there is nothing so commonplace and universal, that it may be with equal truth and propriety applied to the dark warrior-brave of the Yellowstone and the planter of Georgia, to the foggy self-complacence of the citizen of London as well as to the turbaned gravity of the Persian nobleman. There are minute and peculiar touches, which at once and infallibly distinguish the subject in hand from each and every other. In wandering through our author's gallery of pictures, we find large and small ones, landscapes and portraits; but we recognize in all alike the hand of a master. We remember to have seen a large pic ture by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in which, through a window shown at one extremity of the canvass, was seen something resembling a globe in form, and apparently made up of all the various colors of the pallet thrown together in an indiscriminate mass. In our general examination of the piece at first, we did not observe this, and it was not until we gave the whole a more minute scrutiny, that our attention was arrested by what seemed to us a thing having no relation to the subject or the artistic effect of the picture. Nor could we divine the object for which this globe of color was introduced into a portrait. In answer to our queries upon the point, however, we were told by a professor of the brush, that it was designed to produce a proper effect. The perusal of the various sketches which go to make up the volume under our notice at the present time, has reminded us of this picture by the great English artist, and we see scattered along in each, little, and to many readers, perhaps, unnoticed thoughts and sentences, which, like so many of Sir Thomas Lawrence's globes of color, though they may not arrest the attention of the casual

reader, are yet what produce the grand effect alike upon every mind, and to the connoisseur are indispu table evidence of a master's hand.

That we may not seem to be speaking here "without book," we shall proceed to give our readers a little specimen of the author's power of description. And although the extracts must be brief, we can not but think that they will fully support what we have said. We commence by giving a portion of the sketch entitled "Uncle Tim," which we are inclined to regard as the best tale in the volume. The scene purports to be laid in a certain town bearing the by no means uncommon or classical name "Newbury." This town and one of the chief personages of the story are thus introduced.

Newbury, in New England? I dare say "Did you ever see the little village of you never did for it was just one of those out-of-the-way places where nobody ever came unless they came on purpose: a green little hollow, wedged like a bird's nest between half a dozen high hills that kept off the wind and kept out foreigners: so that the little place was as straitly 'sui generis' as if there were not another in the world. The inhabitants were all of that respectable old standfast family who make it a point to be born, bred, married, die, and be buried, all in the self-same spot. There were just so many houses, and just so many people lived in them, and nobody ever seemed to be sick, or to die either-at least while I was there. The natives grew old till they could not grow any older, and then they stood still, and lasted from generation to generation. There was, too, an unchangeability about all the externals of Newbury. Here was and across the way was a yellow house; a red house, and there was a brown house, and there was a straggling rail-fence or a tribe of mullen-stalks between. The parson lived here, and Squire Moses lived there, and Deacon Hart lived under the hill, and Messrs. Nadab and Abibu Peters lived by the cross-road, and the old "widder" Smith lived by the meeting-house, and Ebenezer Camp kept a shoemaker's kept a milliner's shop in front: and there shop on one side, and Patience Mosely was old Comfort Scran, who kept store for the whole town, and sold axe-heads, brass thimbles, liquorice-ball, fancy handkerchiefs, and every thing else you can think of. Here, too, was the general post-office, where you might see letters

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