which they finally create, have proved more injurious to human virtue and happiness than the pride of commercial legislation has ever deigned to understand, or dared to acknowledge? We allude to these matters not to discredit the benevolent views of Dr Chalmers, but merely to remind him, that important as are the particulars embraced by his plan of approximating town and country parishes, there are others not less essential in which this approximation must fail, and the guilty wealth of cities pant in vain after the simple and virtuous economy which has disappeared with their unnatural expansion.

But the principle of the reverend author at least is sound-for who can question the wisdom of imparting increased moral activity to the ministers of religion, and of opening up to them the recesses of indolence and vice, which, under an erroneous system, have been shut against their pious exertions? We concur entirely with Dr Chalmers, in thinking that the Christian religion, not merely by the force of its direct precepts, but by its elevating influence upon human character, affords the surest antidote against the prevalence of pauperism, and the long train of vice and misery by which it is attended; and that the same sublime system, which, while it inculcates indulgence to the frailties of others, prescribes the most scrupulous selfrestraint among its followers, provides at once for the abridgement of the claims made upon public benevolence, and the enlargement of that bounty by which inevitable calamity is to be relieved. It cannot be the spirit of that religion which broke the chains of domestic slavery over the wide extent of a converted world, to encourage that crouching habit, which is at once the cause and the consequence of poor laws, and which subjects the mind of the labouring classes to all the corruption of real slavery, with this additional degradation, that their state is the result of profligate choice, not of over-ruling necessity. The ascendancy of Christian principles over minds where their power is now unfelt, is the highest and noblest form in which that moral restraint can be diffused, to the redeeming energy of which philosophers have trusted for arresting the disorders of society. The disciples of Malthus cannot refuse their approba

tion of the course pursued by Dr Chalmers-for he proposes to make the first grand experiment that has yet been attempted to verify their speculations, which, but for the enthusiasm of this great preacher, might have long remained a dead letter in the repositories of neglected wisdom. The disciples of Christianity cannot refuse their approbation-for it is the object of the author, by relaxing the springs of a complex machinery, under which the moral energy of his office was chained down in inaction, and by repelling from his order a monumental incumbrance of secular duties, imperceptibly accumulating, and slowly exhausting their spiritual vigour-to restore them entire to the native dignity of their functions; and by the augmented power of their ministrations, not only to diffuse the blessings of religion where they are at this moment unknown, but to render Christianity the instrument of a great deliverance from an evil, fearful in its actual magnitude, and yet more appalling as it is seen in the distance of futurity. The men of the world, who, without philosophy or religion, cannot remain insensible to the actual pressure, nor shut their eyes to the approaching danger, must applaud the benevolent zeal, even if they should distrust the sanguine anticipations, of him who solicits only the unenvied privilege of labouring upon a field of neglected misery, from which feeble and fainting virtue would at once recoil, and who dares to traverse those regions of human wretchedness and despair from which worldly policy dreads every moment a fierce and wasteful explosion.

Every step made towards the accomplishment of the author's benevolent designs, is a clear and positive advantage to society. This is not a case where questionable principles are to be acted upon-where much good in possession is to be hazarded for uncertain improvement-where partial success is real failure-and where there are no intermediate points, in the progress of achievement, at which the mind can rest with the satisfaction that something has been gained. When one profligate character has been reclaimed by the assiduous ministrations which Dr Chalmers so beautifully enforces in his pamphlet, and which in their unostentatious privacy are yet so

much more powerful than the public services to which the clergy have, by the system of large towns, been necessarily limited, something of great and unquestionable value has been effected. Dr Chalmers has elsewhere remarked, that the influence of the Christian religion may be shed over the whole of society, although but a small number of individuals may be truly embued with its spirit-for such is the influence of purer character, and a more elevated tone of feeling, even over the profligacy with which it is surrounded, that it gradually raises worthlessness itself to an approximation of its own better standard. Every individual reclaimed becomes an instrument in the reformation of others; and the minister, acting upon the plan suggested by Dr Chalmers, without supposing him to have any incredible success in the work of conversion to Christianity, may, by multiplying, even in a very limited ratio, the examples of industry, sobriety, and independence of spirit, which the persons with whom he is the most successful will certainly exhibit, create a very magnificent result of moral and social improvement. What the reverend author demands, is the improvement of the Christian and civic economy of large towns, by subjecting to the pious influence of each clergyman a fixed and limited population, with every individual of which he can communicate, either directly, or through the medium of an agency chosen and confided in by himself-by restoring to the kirk sessions of towns the sole and uncontrolled management of the voluntary fund contributed for the maintenance of the poor-and by relieving the minister of the secular duties, which have of late years been crowded upon him in unexampled succession, and which have deprived him of the leisure necessary to the adequate discharge of his spiritual functions. Upon this last point, which has long been a favourite one with the reverend author, he has a vehement and powerful pleading in the pamphlet before us.

That the execution of his arrangements would increase the moral influence of the clergy, and prove a blessing to the people of Scotland, it is impossible to doubt; but that it would not be speedily or generally attended with all the practical consequences anticipated by the enthusiasm of the author, it is

impossible to disguise. He approaches the subject with the zeal natural to the founder of a system, and seems to count upon the general diffusion and the perpetuation of that ardour which is perhaps confined to his own sanguine and benevolent bosom. His own accomplishments are of a rare, and, what is more to the present purpose, of a highly popular order; and what may be found practicable to the attractive talent of Dr Chalmers, may prove utterly impossible to the pious and useful mediocrity with which he must, in the nature of things, be surrounded, and by which he and his contemporaries must alike expect to be succeeded. The system of the reverend author is one of a simple and obvious structure, owing little to the ingenuity of invention, and claiming every thing from the energy of performance. It is one which proposes to recall the clergy of our large cities from the minute but useful toils of a secular nature, which have, in the progress of society, been superadded to their spiritual functions, and of which the performance is exacted with the regularity, and yielded with the facili ty of mere official routine, to the sublimer offices of Christian zeal, which there is no external influence to enforce, no reward but the approbation of conscience to encourage, and which, above all, are beset with difficulties such as can be conquered only by something like apostolic energy and devotion. Is it unreasonable to fear, that a project of this kind, cast above the level of the ordinary capacities of execution, may perish with the ardent spirit of the projector, and that its very essence may be found to be that unconquerable zeal, which the lapse of years, alas! must extinguish, and which the system itself cannot survive? Dr Chalmers has eloquently demanded the exemption of his order from that load of secular duties, of which, no doubt, he has personally felt the intolerable pressure, and has urged the splendid contributions which they might make to the literary and philosophical fame of the country, as an inducement to the concession, and painted in strong colours their intellectual degradation in another age should the reasonable boon be refused by, the legislature. But among the clergy of the church of Scotland, highly respectable as they are, how minute

pastoral nations, have, from the earliest period of their history, been passionately fond of that species of music which consists in the simple expression of natural feeling, and which aims at no other object but the exciting of one emotion in the breast of those who hear it. This has long been observed; and hence, the Scotch music has become, throughout the whole island, the usual expression to denote those simple and touching strains which spring from the genuine feelings, and are adapted to the unsophisticated sentiments of a rude and artless state of society. In the expression of such feelings, it is inferior to none that has ever existed; and hence, her national airs, like the poetry of Burns, have spread far beyond their native sphere, and touch the human heart, in places the most remote, and among nations wholly unknown to the people among whom they originally arose.

But though, in this simple and artless style, the Scotch music has long and deservedly been celebrated, yet there is no disguising the fact, that till of late years there has been very little taste amongst us for those higher and more complicated efforts of art, which, in other countries, contribute so much to the delight and moral improvement of the inhabitants. Perhaps, from the universality of the taste for the simple and national airs of the country, and from the intensity of the feelings which they awaken, has arisen a dislike of foreign music, and a contempt for the complicated system on which it depends, which has contributed in a great measure to prevent the growth of that delightful art in this country.

There can be no doubt, however, that such prejudices are utterly unfounded. That we do not, in many instances, perceive the beauty of pieces of music, of which greater proficients in the art express the highest admiration, is quite certain. But we are by no means warranted in thence drawing the conclusion, that our taste is the only correct one, and that there is something artificial or unnatural in the music of other countries. With equal justice might we conclude, that no state of society is agreeable to the order of nature, but that which first springs up amongst men, or that no poetry is beautiful but that which is adapted to the taste of the first ages of the world.

In fact, in all the fine arts, a relish for the higher and more complicated efforts of genius is, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has remarked, an acquired taste, and can be felt only by those who have made the subject long a matter of study, or, from accidental causes, have been insensibly led to an habitual observation of its excellencies. If we imagine, that the works of Raphael, or Handel, or Tasso, are fitted at once to please every capacity, and that no previous education, or discipline of the mind, is requisite to a perception of their excellencies, we have fallen into an opinion which the universal experience of the world proves to be erroneous. It is observed by the author last quoted, himself gifted beyond most other men with a sense of the grand and the beautiful in the arts of design, that at first he could perceive no beauty in the paintings of Raphael and Michael Angelo, in the Vatican; but that, by incessant study, their merits gradually opened before him, till at length he came to regard them as the utmost efforts of human genius. The same observation has probably been made by every person who has had the good fortune to see these inestimable remains; and it is equally applicable to all the other fine arts. It is hence that the peasants of Scotland gaze with utter indifference on the beautiful hills of the Trosachs, clothed with the utmost profusion of natural beauty; and that the modern Greeks lived for centuries at the feet of the Athenian temples, without perceiving that there was any thing remarkable either in their execution or design.

But to none of the fine arts does the observation so forcibly apply, as to the art of MUSIC. This delightful art, indeed, speaks a language which, in part at least, is felt by all mankind, and which possesses the power of moving the soul beyond what human genius, by any other means, is able to effect. But from this very fact, of the universality, generally speaking, of a taste for some of its beauties, has arisen in this country, the circumstance which has contributed most to check its progress. The generality of men, feeling intensely the charm of those simple airs to which they had been habituated, and perceiving at first no beauty in the more complicated music of foreign countries, have been naturally led to imagine, that there is something