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him, says I,' 'Capitalist!' (the name of the ruinous publication started) 'Pshaw, no popular interest there, it don't address the great public! Very confined class the capitalists; better throw ourselves boldly on the people. Yes,' said I, 'call it the Anti-Capitalist. By Jove, sir, we should have carried all before us; but I was overruled. The AntiCapitalist! What an idea! Address the whole reading-world there, Sir: everybody hates the Capitalist-everybody would have his neighbour's money. The Anti-Capitalist! Sir, we should have gone off, in the manufacturing towns, like wildfire. But what could I do ?'-' John Tibbets,' said my father solemnly, 'capitalist or anti-capitalist, thou hadst a right to follow thine own bent in either, but always provided it had been with thine own money. Thou seest not the thing, John Tibbets, in the right point of view; and a little repentance in the face of those thou hast wronged, would not have misbecome thy father's son, and thy sister's brother.' Never had so severe a rebuke issued from the mild lips of Austin Caxton; and I raised my eyes with a compassionate thrill, expecting to see Jack Tibbets gradually sink and disappear through the carpet. 'Repentance!' cried Uncle Jack, bounding up, as if he had been shot. And do you think I have a heart of stone, of pummy-stone! Do you think I don't repent? I have done nothing but repent; I shall repent to my dying day.' 'Then there is no more to be said, Jack,' cried my father, softening and holding out his hand. 'Yes,' cried Mr. Tibbets, seizing the hand, and pressing it to the heart he had thus defended from the suspicion of being pummy; 'yes, that I should have trusted that dunderheaded, rascally curmudgeon, Peck; that I should have let him call it The Capitalist, despite all my convictions, when the Anti-''Pshaw!' interrupted my father, drawing away his hand. 'John,' said my mother, gravely, and with tears in her voice, 'you forget who delivered you from prison,-you forget whom you have nearly consigned to prison yourself,-you forg-,'' Hush, hush!' said my father, 'this will never do; and it is you who forget, my dear, the obligations I owe to Jack. He has reduced my fortune one half, it is true, but I verily think he has made the three hearts, in which lie my real treasures, twice as large as they were before. Pisistratus, my boy, ring the bell.'-' My dear Kitty,' cried Jack, whimperingly, and stealing up to my mother, 'don't be so hard on me; I thought to make all your fortunes-I did, indeed.'-Here the servant entered. See that Mr. Tibbets' things are taken up to his room, and that there is a good fire,' said my father.'And,' continued Jack, loftily, 'I will make all your fortunes yet. I have it here!' and he struck his head. Stay a moment!' said my father to the servant, who had got back to the door. 'Stay a moment,' said my father, looking extremely frightened; 'perhaps Mr. Tibbets may prefer the inn!'-'Austin,' said Uncle Jack with emotion, if I were a dog, with no home but a dog-kennel, and you came to me for shelter, I would turn out, to give you the best of the straw!'-My father was thoroughly melted this time.-' Primmins will be sure to see that every thing is made comfortable for Mr. Tibbets,' said he, waving his hand to the servant. Something nice for supper, Kitty, my dear

and the largest punch-bowl. You like punch, Jack?'' Punch, Austin?' said Uncle Jack, putting his handkerchief to his eyes.-The Captain pushed aside the dumb-waiter, strode across the room, and shook hands with Uncle Jack; my mother buried her face in her apron, and fairly ran off; and Squills said in my ear, 'It all comes of the biliary secretions. Nobody could account for this, who did not know the peculiarly fine organization of your father's liver.""

This we affirm to be a very masterpiece. Which of our readers doubts it? Surely, we need not point out the consummate delicacy and tact, the refined humour, the thorough knowledge of human character, here displayed. Every word tells, Every epithet has the happiness of genius. We pity him who cannot "chuckle" quietly, but delightedly, over the various incidents which form this wondrous whole. We question whether "Tristram Shandy" contains any thing equal to it.

This one extract has occupied so much space that we are compelled to omit others we had marked for quotation: the admirable account of Sir Sedley Beaudesert's miseries in finding himself Earl of Castleton, and master of 100,000l. a year,— one or two Australian scenes, a humorous passage about a sixpence, and various sayings which pleased our fancy, or touched our feelings, must be left in their native sphere by us.-But, thus omitting to quote beauties, we must be very hasty, on the other hand, in the record of those censures which might have otherwise dilated beneath our pen, We did mean to suggest, that Sir Edward's humour, though generally most refined, does here and there seem to us, and yet the expression is strong, we were about to say,-does seem to border on silliness; but the fault may be in our want of appreciation. We could instance certain talk on p. 19, vol. i.; the passages, or some of them, introduced by Austin Caxton's "putting his hand into his waistcoat," the amount of learning anent the "Antanaclasis and Epiphonema,' which seems to us a little out of place, displayed, vol. ii. p. 283, even the rather studied break in the narration (vol. ii. p. 33), concluding with "the end of the chapter." Then, too, sundry affectations should be adverted to excess of sobbing and weeping in various places, and a certain priggish sententiousness, which shows itself in the speeches of Pisistratus, as in vol. ii. pp. 49. 53, &c. There is an occasional tendency, too, to "bigmouthedness," where there is really little to be said, as in the grandiloquent passage, vol. ii. p. 194, on "Silence : " but this error of judgment in Sir Edward's utterances is much less frequent than of yore. Then, too, there are the little stage trickeries already noticed; the last word, too, in many a chapter is forced and stagey, to avoid an anticlimax. But we can understand Sir

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Edward's failing on this point very well: his style seems to render this little device unavoidable, occasionally. Of course, the worst point about this very clever book is its religious indifference, or fashionable pantheism, or whatever our author himself would be pleased to call it. Man's nature, with him, is divine. If we can but awake that, all must be well. We need scarcely say, that this is a very partial and a very incorrect view; that man's nature is compounded of good and evil; and that evil, for the more part, has a decided preponderance, wherever religion does not exert her influence. But religion is virtually ignored in this book; a clergyman is once mentioned, and only once, in a half line: one might suppose that the Church and Christianity were dead letters. True, there are one or two pathetic passages about the Bible; but then what do they mean? No one can tell. True, there is a fine passage (vol. ii, p. 41) about that SOMETHING, that immortal spirit, without which our best-beloved fellowcreature is but a clod of clay. But this, and more than this, forms but a slight "set off" against the downright infidel philosophy promulgated, as to the origin of man and of religion, and what we may call "the ignoring," throughout, of Christianity, as a vital element, nay, as the life itself, something beyond a sentiment, and a memory.

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has, then, much to learn, and to unlearn, before we can hail him as a fellow-workman in the cause of humanity. We admit that a man may serve God by action as well as prayer; we admit that an author may serve Christianity indirectly as well as directly. We admit, too, that in a Christian land, and under the omnipresent influence of Christianity, many of its fruits are ofttimes displayed by those who are not really Christians; even such men as "Sir Sedley Beaudesert." If not the rose (to recal the old and hackneyed Eastern simile), they have lived near it. Nevertheless truth remains truth. The Redeemer was what He proclaimed Himself, God suffering for humanity, or He was, what our pen would shrink from tracing. This is a central verity. He who neglects it, neglects it to his eternal peril. He who receives it, must realize it in all he does, or says, or creates. This is our last word for the present with Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

ART. V.-A Pilgrimage to Rome.

By the Rev. M. HOBART

SEYMOUR, M.A. London: Seeleys.

THE motives which influence many men in their choice of religion will scarcely bear the analysis of sober reasoning. To some persons the æsthetics of Christianity constitute almost its sole claim on their acceptance. The romance and mystery of certain parts and portions of religion, whether true or false, are a potent charm to minds of a certain constitution; and it is difficult to say what amount of effect is producible on such minds by skilfully appealing to their predominant sensibilities. Without doubt a great influence has been exercised over persons both within and without the communion of the Church of Rome, by the representation of profound self-denial, monastic austerities, continual habits of devotion, and other impressive features. The church continually open for prayer, and exhibiting its silent worshippers, the daily celebration of mass, the resignation of the world's gaieties and splendours by the self-devoted virgin,-all these are fraught with matter for the romantic, the enthusiastic, the pious, and the credulous; and all the other side of the picture being kept out of sight, and studiously concealed, the most favourable impressions are made.

Yet, after all, those who have been in actual contact with Romanism, and are not merely acquainted with it in books, are fully aware that there is a very different view of the case; and many a man has been cured of all his tendencies to Romanism by witnessing with his own eyes the actual state of things-by descending from the regions of romance and imagination to those of common sense and fact.

Mr. Seymour, in the work before us, has supplied a real desideratum in our literature, by presenting to us a minute and accurate survey of the actual state of things in the Church of Rome. He details to us the results of his own experience. Without doubt his book will be differently viewed by different parties; but we have here a series of facts accredited by the author's name, and which bear along with them the evidences of a candid and a conscientious investigation. We deem these facts of so much importance, that although we doubt not that many of our readers are already familiar with the volume, we feel it a duty

to draw attention to the volume as one which, though not without some slight blemishes, is calculated to be of high utility in the present times.

We have long felt the extreme desirableness of such a work as Mr. Seymour has here accomplished; and we know not where to look for such a work: for, though travellers have frequently collected valuable information, yet it was generally cursorily introduced, or little authenticated, and liable to be forgotten: we wanted a traveller who should make it the especial object of his research to represent the Church of Rome as it actually is, and not as it is imagined by some of those who have never been eyewitnesses of its proceedings. The value of this work consists in its minute and graphic details on all these points, which are of special importance and interest in the present day.

While, however, we admit, to the fullest degree, the merits of this work, we must note one or two points in which we think the author has not exhibited his usual discretion. In some places we think that insinuations are made in reference to the practice of immoralities in monasteries, which may indeed be well founded, but which are not supported by evidence, and which therefore will be only set down to uncharitableness and prejudice. On another subject, too, we have to express some difference of view from Mr. Seymour.

In the account of his visit to Milan cathedral, he is led to observe that it is the pride and boast of the city, and is regarded amongst the inhabitants chiefly in the light of the greatest ornament of the city; "but," he goes on to remark,

"It is seldom viewed by them simply in reference to that God to whom it is dedicated, or to that Church for whose services it is designed. Its chief use seems to be that of ornament; its secondary use, that of religion : and, accordingly, it is but poorly attended; and many churches, of not one-tenth of its magnitude, have a far larger attendance of the inhabitants for worship. I visited it many times, both on Sunday and on other days, and was surprised at the fewness of the attendants, the more especially as one of their popular preachers was there on Sunday, when the whole of his congregation did not exceed one hundred and twenty persons."-p. 54.

The same appears to be generally the case all over the continent, as far as cathedrals are concerned and this is an interesting fact, as bearing on the precisely similar case of our own cathedrals. It appears from Mr. Seymour's work, that the cathedrals are in general on the continent just as badly attended as our own; and the reason is the same in both cases. Seymour shall here speak for himself:

Mr.

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