In

opening new markets for our manufactures abroad, shall lay the axe to the root of the social arrangements which are connected with our holiest affections at home. We will never consent to the eradication of the aristocratic principle from the English constitution, nor sanction any measures which appear to have a tendency in that direction. Wherefore, if Sir Robert Peel's plan do not include a just and ample compensation for the immediate losses which a total repeal of the Cornlaws must necessarily inflict, at the outset, upon the landed proprietors of England, we shall resist it, and denounce it to the utmost extent of our power, because we can regard it only as the first decisive step towards the depths of democracy, whither we shall not willingly be carried. like manner, we must object to any settlement of the corn or any other law, which shall take away a portion, be it ever so small, from the already inadequate incomes of the clergy. The Tithe -commutation act, to which, be it remembered, the clergy were not consenting, and in the concoction of which they were never consulted, not only deprived the tithe-owners of a property improvable and improving from year to year, but fixed the amount of money-payment which each impropriator was to receive according to the average price of wheat in the market. Now it is manifest, that if the price of wheat be lowered to the extent which the Leaguers anticipate, no conceivable reduction in the costs of the necessaries of life will compensate the clergy for the loss which they must thereby sustain. Accordingly, unless Sir Robert Peel's device imply, that the clergy shall by some means or other be protected against this wrong, it will outrage the first principle of justice, and be by us, and by all who value justice between man and man, resisted. In a word, we are willing to accept cheap living provided we can get it, apart from bad living and mean living, and the consequent overthrow of the established institutions and the habits of social life, which dis

tinguish this country from all others in the world. But we will never be parties to arrangements which shall threaten to turn our landed proprietors out of doors, and to make beggars both of the clergy and the tenant-farmers even of the present generation.

The queen's speech is an able document. Somewhat oracular it may be in many of its clauses, and in none more so than in that to which the attention of the whole community is at this moment drawn. We go with it cordially in all that it tells regarding peace or war, and the necessity of being prepared for either. We are glad, likewise, to find that the system of open outrage that has prevailed of late in Ireland is to be put down. But the clause which refers to a further relaxation of the laws that regulate commerce and give protection to British industry, we do not pretend to understand; no, not after reading the speech of the minister who concocted it, and the answers more or less sharp which were provoked by it. Before we come again into the presence of our readers, both they and we will know better what all parties be about. And they may rely upon it that we shall take our places where truth, and honour, and good policy, seem to dictate; for it is by the truth and honesty of his purposes that the policy of a minister, not less than the character of a private person, is to be tried.

Since the preceding went to press, Sir Robert Peel has made his promised announcement. It is obvious that we have neither space nor time to give to so grave a matter the notice which it deserves; and we shall, therefore, decline entering at all into the many questions which are stirred by it. But this much of credit we will give to the minister's speech, that it is the boldest that was ever uttered in the House of Commons. What we ourselves think of it, and of its probable effects on the well-being of the country, we must state when a more convenient opportunity shall offer.

passes in interest Pope's narrative of a visit to the same university in the company of Lintot. The only similar occurrence, we remember, that can by any possibility be related in the same paragraph, is one recorded by Byron, and referring to his own appearance in type with Mr. Rogers, when Larry and Jacky solicited the public suffrages together. A gentleman in the Brighton coach, having been engaged in the perusal of the book, laid it down, when it was taken up by a fellow-passenger, who inquired the name of the author.

There are two," was the mysterious reply. Ay, ay, a joint concern, I suppose, summut like Sternhold and Hopkins." The possessor of the volume was a friend of the poets.

The scene in the Double-First returned vividly to our memory, when the recent publication of Mr. Newman announced his descent into Popery. Could it be possible? Was he a Jesuit after all? Had he remained in the fortress long enough to undermine the ramparts, and poison the water-springs? Had he conciliated the garrison, only to betray it? Had he now gone over to the enemy, with all the advantages of a comrade and all the malice of a deserter? Had he made himself so familiar with the battlements of our church, only to lead the storming party of her assailants? While these questions kept thronging to our lips, the observation of a contemporary came under our eyes. He concludes some general remarks on the degrees of trust to be reposed in the author himself "by alluding to one strange, inexplicable, moral phenomenon, which to Englishmen at least must wear an appearance so unsatisfactory, as to supersede much further examination. The present volume is a very elaborate, studied work, full of research, bearing proofs of long preparation; the result of matured thought; the conclusions of a course of reasoning which can now be traced back in Mr. Newman's writings to several years since, during which, we now know from authority, he has been meditating his recent step. It is not the questioning-the anxious, wavering questioning of an undecided mind; but the formal proof of a long-weighed conclusion. And during all this time where has Mr.

Newman been? In what name, and in what authority, has he been teaching the children of the English church, if not by his voice in the pulpit, at least by private communication, and by his previously published works? His sermons have been read as those of a minister of the Church, even those which contained the germs of the poison which he is now openly administering to the Church. His reasonings have been listened to, have been permitted to find access to minds, from which they would have been anxiously excluded under the present title."

These comments, be it remembered, come from no semi-Dissenter, with whom St. Paul's and the Weigh House are equally sacred, and Binney and Barrow co-efficient authorities. On the contrary, they are the sentiments of one of the representatives of that large body in the Church of England, who think that her orders are apostolical, and that her Halls and Beveridges knew something of the Fathers; who, with Hooker, can revere her majestic polity; and with Horsley, refuse to be scared by the bugbear of purgatory; who, with the greatest men of the brightest times, believe nothing to be holy which is not honest; and scorn to acknowledge any devotion to be profitable or sincere which grows only in the dark, and is fed only by deception. Mr. Newman would have us to believe that his conversion rushed upon him with an irresistible impetus, while he was descending these inclined planes of developement. But no, we are wrong. It was not until type had imparted to his arguments that clear symmetry, by which they are recommended to the general reader, that the blaze of conviction burst full upon his eyes. Not by his own, but his printer's proofs, was the change to be effected. "When he had got some way in the printing, he recognised in himself a conviction of the truth of the conclusion, to which the discussion leads, so clear as to supersede further deliberation." Can this statement be received for a moment? Is it credible? Is it possible? Every understanding is undoubtedly open to new accessions of light; and one eye perceives some defects in a book, that another is unconscious of. Montaigne

was accustomed to say that he read in Livy what another could not, and that Plutarch read there what he did not. In like manner, Bolingbroke confessed of himself, that he had read at fifty what he never could find in the same book at twenty-five. This we can easily comprehend; for not only does the intellectual eye-sight reflect its own colours upon the object, but its vigour and penetration vary with conditions of the moral health. But Mr. Newman comes within neither exemption. If the theory of developement made him a Romanist, it would have made him one in its working.* No; the solution of the mystery is to be sought and found in the book itself. The author has furnished the key to the problem. At the end of the introduction the inquirer will find this sentence," It would be the work of a life to apply the theory of developements so carefully to the writings of the fathers and the history of controversies and councils, as thereby to vindicate the reasonableness of every decree of Rome; much less can such an undertaking be imagined by one who

IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS DAYS IS BEGINNING LIFE AGAIN."

We entreat our readers to mark these words. Where do they occur? Not in the preface, not in the postscript, not even at the close of the volume, where the faint ray of Roman Catholic sunrise may be supposed to have broken upon the pilgrim, then ascending, after so wearisome a journey, into the sweet garden and paradisiacal atmosphere of indulgences and image-worship. In none of those positions will this declaration be discovered. It stands in the beginning of the Essay, and that essay, which the writer commenced and finished according to his own assurance, while belonging to the Church of England. There can be no mistake here; the meaning of the passage is distinct and positive. To become a Romanist

is literally to begin life again; to begin it with a desecrated Baptism, and an inheritance of imposture. What shall we say, then, to Mr. Newman's assertion, that "his first act on his own conversion was to offer his Work for revision to the proper authorities; but the offer was declined, on the ground that it was written, and partly printed, before he was a Catholic, and that it would come before the reader in a more persuasive form, if he read it as the author wrote it?" We repeat,-what shall we say? What can we say, but that the author has been committing a fraud upon his reader, and perhaps upon himself? When he wrote the first page of this essay on developement, he was as much an alien from the English communion as he is at the present moment. He held, indeed, nothing of hers, except her Fellowship. He may not have been a Romanist, but only a sceptic. "Possibly," writes Bishop Taylor in his inscription of the Great Exemplar to Hatton, "two or three weak or interested, fantastic and easy understandings, pass from church to church upon grounds as weak as those for which formerly they did dissent; and the same arguments are good, or bad, as exterior accidents, or interior appetites, shall determine." In attributing this fantastic temperament to Mr. Newman, we are not unsupported by the highest authority in that splendid city which he has so long troubled and infected. Bishop Wilberforce was not afraid to denounce him, even in the cathedral of Christ Church, as having been borne upon the wings of an unbounded scepticism into the bosom of an unfathomable superstition. Mr. Newman does not hesitate to confess, that between Popery and infidelity is the only choice; drawn gradually to the grassy margin of the precipice, he may have felt the impulse, so common to those who gaze down

into an abyss, to plunge into it; but, scared back again by the appalling darkness beneath, he caught at Romanism. Will it hold him? We doubt it. For what Romanism is it, which this unhappy person has grasped in his plunge, and now seeks to recommend openly to the hopeful youth of England? Is it that Romanism which strikes out its roots into the early seed-land of Christendom; and whose boughs have truly sheltered some of the noblest spirits who fought, or perished, for patriot ism or virtue? Is it the system of faith that sweetened the temper of Fisher, or endears to the affection of all time the beautiful piety of More? which woke the eloquence of Bossuet, and wasted the bloom from the cheek of Pascal? It is none of these. It is German infidelity communicated in the music and perfume of St. Peter's;-it is Strauss in the garment and rope of the Franciscan. It is a system which offers no insurmountable difficulty to the producer, because, in the words of Horsley, it is a system of his own making.

These complaints are uttered in no bitterness of controversy. We write them with sorrow and pain, though the vehemence of Pascal might well be pardoned, when Escobar is alive again. We know how admirably it has been said by Donne, that when God gave a flaming sword to cherubims in Paradise, they guarded the place, but the sword killed none, wounded none; and that, in like manner, God gives to his servants zeal to guard their station and integrity of religion, but not to wound or deface any man. May we never forget the allegory and its lesson! Let every available apology be tendered for one, who manifests so little disposition to apologise for himself. No eye becomes dim or confused at once. It is the result of continued derangement of the constitution. So may Mr. New man have weakened the intellectual eyesight, not only by the disordered functions of the moral frame, but by protracted labours in the dark mines and heavy air of papal theology. Nay, we will even give him the advantage of Johnson's remark on Burnet, and think that he has not told falsehoods with intention; but that prejudice, or scepticism, de

terred him from recognising the truth when he saw it. That he will adhere to his theory for a season, now that he has launched it, is naturally to be expected. The French essayist had looked into the heart, when he said, "Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire épouser au prix de la vie."

It was one of the many forcible sayings of Atterbury to his most celebrated friend, that he hated to see a book gravely written, and in all the forms of argumentation, that proves nothing and says nothing,the only object of which is to occasion a general distrust of our own faculties, to unsettle our conclusions and bewilder our vision, until the reader is driven to doubt whether it be possible, in any case, to distinguish truth from falsehood, the good from the evil, the beautiful from the coarse; whether, in fact, the Lutheran be more a Christian than the Arian, Cæsar a braver soldier than Horace, or Pope a nobler poet than Pomfret. Now, of Mr. Newman's essay, in whatever degree the other objections of Atterbury may be able to attach themselves, it cannot, with the slightest show of justice, be affirmed, that it says nothing. Throughout 450 very closely printed pages, the learning and ingenuity of the writer are kept in constant motion; and cloud after cloud of sophism is subjected to the embrace of a genius, singularly vigorous, lively, and productive. That the offspring inherit some of the unsubstantial elements of their creation, will excite surprise in none who reflect upon their composition.

And, perhaps, of all the subjects which the author endeavours to demolish, not one engages so much of his attention as that religious designation which is known as Protestant. Almost from the very first page of the book, the attack upon Protestantism begins. Whatever be historical Christianity, we are assured that it is not the religion of Protestants. Again (p. 6), the Protestant is said to be compelled to allow, that if such a system as he would introduce, "ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what it