oppressed by them, and the pressure, must grow with the growing amount to be raised. But even the amount of taxation gives a spur to the national industry, and calls forth national energies. It is true that taxes increase the price of labour, and may on that account, in a certain degree, check the export of manufactures; they affect also the annuitants, or those who have a fixed income; but these are partial evils, from which, even universal good' cannot be exempt.

Though something odious attaches itself to the very name of a tax, yet a nation without taxes can have reached only a very low degree of civilization, or power. Thomas Jefferson, in his philosophical Messages to Congress,' boastingly demanded who had ever seen a tax-gatherer in America? Professing ourselves among the number of those who experience no very particular degree of affection for our transatlantic brethren,' we are not disposed to rejoice that this wretched impostor has lived long enough to answer the question himself: we could rather have wished (as far as we are concerned) that our loving kindred had been still permitted to feed on Johnny cake, and hominy, without molestation from the tax-gatherer.

The Message' of Jefferson was merely foolish; but the speech of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which it was declared that taxation had nearly reached its limits, was both unwise and hurtful-unwise because it was known not to be true-and hurtful because, whether true or false, it tended to lower the public credit and the public confidence, by which this country has been enabled to struggle through the contest, and without which all the wealth of the nation would not have availed it at the trying moment when the bank withheld its cash payments. It was not by planting the seeds of despondency that Mr. Pitt taught the people of England to weather the storm. The pilot at the helm should be the last man to hint at danger.

ART. VI. The Velvet Cushion. By J. W. Cunningham, A, M. Vicar of Harrow. 8vo. pp. 186. London. Cadell and Davies. 1814.

THE very limited opportunity for the introduction of humour

into serious subjects, has amounted almost to a total exclusion of it from religion; for where the matter enforces the most solemn attention, we revolt at the impropriety of grotesque illustration: and this forbearance, in unison with our best feelings, has been established as a principle of taste, acknowledged by those who are most capable of judging, and respected by all who are influenced by received opinion. Immediately after the Reformation, when polemic

divinity

divinity appeared in its lower walks, in defence of the cap and surplice, and the proper postures of devotion, the pulpit became the organ of loud and railing disputation; nor was the same spirit entirely subdued, when controversy was diverted to more important subjects: the infidel was to be combated with his own weapons; and if ridicule, as in later times, prescribed the method of attack and supplied the want of argument, the sneers were retorted with a quaintness of wit, too nearly allied to petulance and scurrility. And here we may principally boast the improvement of modern controversy;-with the same arguments to enforce, we have felt the dignity of the subject, and forborne to sport with the solemnity of truth, or even to appear in her defence with unconsecrated ar

mour.

But though the subject of divinity is thus secured from profanation, connected as religion externally is with the world, it must create incidental topics of general allusion; and while its ministers are distinguished by situation, by peculiar habits or acquirements, they are exhibited to closer observation in their lives and manners. Few therefore are the representations of dramatic life, in which the clerical character escapes an introduction: it furnishes a ready advocate of virtue, or an enemy of vice; sometimes, as in Richardson, wandering into grave discussions, which, however useful for discipline, are prejudicial to the interest of the narrative; but more generally moralizing with traits of caricature, which, artfully placing the best intentions at variance with common sense, provoke a smile at honest simplicity, or broader laughter at ill-judged preciseness. The memory, we fear, of Mr. Abraham Adams is more fondly cherished in his distresses, as the incendiary of his own manuscript Eschylus, or as the half-drowned king of Bohemia, than as the intrepid guardian of innocence and virtue. It is hardly to be expected that the writer should withhold the exercise of a favourite talent, that he should conduct us into the tract of merriment, and suddenly shift the humour for the sake of moral consistency, or in exchange for personal eccentricity, preserve the dull propriety of character.

With these prepossessions against the application of wit to religious subjects, and with this scepticism on the practicable union of serious morality with humorous story, we read the little publication before us. It is an effort to introduce, in a light and cheerful narrative, the important objects of religion, and without any perplexing descant on immaterial controversies, to point out the distinguishing merits of that church which, after all the cavils at the envied opulence of its establishment, after all the imputation on the bigoted protection of the state, owes its principal support

to

to common sense and feeling, the zealous and unshaken advocates of truth.

3

"The Velvet Cushion,' from the reign of Mary to the present times, surviving the vicissitudes of Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenting worship in public, and of individual devotion in private, and finally devolving to the pulpit of a retired parish in Westmoreland, becomes, rather awkwardly, its own historian to a vicar in the forty-fifth year of his incumbency. Of its object we give the following account.

'From the Pisgah of the pulpit I have seen most of the great men of successive ages, whom piety, custom, accident, or their wives, have brought to church. In the same commanding situation I have heard all the best preachers of three centuries. Thus all the grand questions in religion and morality, and by dint of fasts and thanksgivings, in politics, have been submitted to my consideration. And when conveyed for warmth during the week, from the pulpit to the vestry, I have heard all sorts of questions discussed, in all sorts of tempers by all sorts of men. The clerks, sextons and pew-openers also, a class of persons falsely thought to have little to do with the affairs of the church, except to take one fee for burying the dead, and sometimes another for digging them up again, have given me much information. They play, indeed, inferior parts in the ecclesiastical drama; but as far as free and fluent elocution goes to form an actor, they have probably few superiors. Amidst such privileges, I trust, I have not been altogether idle. And if you are curious to see the result of my cogitations, and to compare them with your own, you have now the opportunity. The paper in your hands contains an account of much that I have heard and seen, with my own comments upon it.'—p. 12.

The worthy vicar, to whom this is addressed, is the truly pastoral divine. A pinch of snuff, rarely a pipe, an occasional nap and a trifling complaint, compose his frugal stock of bodily indulgence and mortification; and except a digressive leaning to loyalty and tythes, his whole mind is concentrated in the spiritual welfare of the church, and more particularly of his own flock. Of his mode of life we give the following extract:

It was a rule with him always to follow up his morning petitions to his Father in heaven, by resuming the study of that blessed book with which he had closed the day. After this he called together his circle. of grey-headed servants, to join him in devout supplication for blessings upon his family and upon the world. Then he breakfasted. Then, chiefly, though not exclusively, by devout reading, he laid up materials for the sermon of the next Sunday. Then he visited, perhaps, some cottages in his village, instructed the ignorant, rebuked the careless, or bound up the wounds of the broken-hearted, and taught them, without appealing to his own case, though no one who saw him could help making the application, how "happy is the people, who have the Lord for their God."-p. 28.

Having introduced the Vicar, we cannot in courtesy neglect his partner.

'There was one bosom which shared all his joys and sorrows. He had a wife who was the pillar of his little fabric of worldly comforts.' (p. 7.) 'She had taught herself to love whatever he loved. Indeed fifty years of intimate communion were not likely to leave much difference of taste.' (p. 14.) They were like the strings of two finely-tuned instruments brought into contact-touch the one and the other vibrated.'p. 20.

In this echo of all his sentiments, this reflection of all his feelings, there are still discoverable the distinguishing features of female affection; that minute superintendence over his trifling habits, those admonitions on his bodily health, and the sly practices on his diet, which mark the faithful wife, and which, whether, in this instance, they were considered as the overflowings of love, or the trials of patience, were submitted to with equal resignation. If he read aloud, he was reminded of the mortal texture of his lungs; if he drank his tea, his nerves were consulted by the unequal mixture of black; and if his fancy ever wandered in the regions of theology, it was recalled by a memento of the hour of bed. We were particularly pleased with the essential difference of character in this worthy couple; with those contrasts in trifles which offer no interruption to the strictest unison, and yet mark the distinguishing properties of their minds. The vicar, indignant at the holes with which the puritanical halbert had pierced his cushion, is transported to the controversies of other centuries; the careful lady reflects on the wasteful consumption of cotton in repairs: he foresees, in the contempt of his surplice, the insult to religion itself; she exhausts her sensibility on the neglect of her own handy-work: he demands the consequence of a successful rebellion of the branches against the stem; she hurries to gather her young chicken, straying from the dam lastly, the vicar prognosticates the suffocation of popery by the general diffusion of the Bible. Suppose, my love,' (said the old lady,) to whom the mere name of the Bible always suggested her own duties with regard to it, we now read our own chapter and go to bed.' (p. 26.) To complete this picture of harmony, the influence of religion was always over them. In earlier youth, when life engages by its own attractions, and the mind, buoyant with happiness, flies from the feeling of mortality, they checked the thoughtless rapture, with the hallowed thought of God: in their later day, when, with the decaying senses, enjoyments fade, and nature grows sad and weary, there was for them a steady ray of setting light, which softened the abruptness of the decline, strengthened resignation, and gave assurance to hope. They did read their chapter and rose from it, as I have heard them say they always

did, loving God and one another even better than they did before.' We have only to wish that the picture of the lady had been more consistent; sometimes she is in danger of drivelling, and sometimes she discourses on subjects apparently beyond her reach, quite as well as the Vicar himself.

Although we have thus largely entered into the peculiarities of this worthy couple, we feel a demand upon our attention to other figures in the back-ground of the picture; Vetusta and Selina, Munster and Berkley. If the reader should have formed his taste of portraiture in writing from the character of Law, from the pungency of his satire, the strength of his language, and the close analogy which every feature of the illustration bears to the subject, he will not here be gratified by these attainments; but he will yet find an exposure of those false appearances, which, under the mask of religion, delude our vanity and impose upon our weakness. He will find also a warmth of expression which reaches the heart, and the touches of truth and nature, which give so strong a reality to the creations of the fancy. Vetusta was a woman of strong passions, to which, in her youth, the dissipation of society afforded constant occupation in frivolous amusement or vicious indulgence. Like Feliciana in Law,

'She is to be again dressed fine, and keep her visiting day. She is again to change the colour of her clothes, again to have a new head, and again to put patches on her face. She is again to see who acts best at the play-house, and who sings finest at the Opera. She is again to make ten visits in a day, and be ten times in a day trying to talk artfully, easily and politely about nothing. She is to be again delighted with some new fashion, and again angry at the change of some old one. She is to be again at cards and gaming at midnight, and again in bed at noon. She is to be again pleased with hypocritical compliments, and again disturbed at imaginary affronts. She is to be again pleased with her good luck at gaming, and again tormented with the loss of her money. She is again to prepare herself for a birth-night, and again to see the town full of good company. She is again to hear the cabals and intrigues of the town; again to have secret intelligence of private amours, and early notice of marriages, quarrels, and partings.'

In the decline of life, she has recourse to religion for the strong sensations so necessary to her existence, and which pleasure could no longer stimulate. 'She read, talked and prayed, all that she might feel, and was as much a Christian on her knees at sixty, as at her toilet thirty years before.' We give the conclusion of the picture, the taste of which, however, is very indifferent.

• Vetusta, though she had ceased to love any thing here, felt nothing but a chilly horror of an hereafter. The car which had, as it were, borne her affections from the earth, had not, like that of the prophet,

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