rently indifferent to a state of things which threatens its desecration, nay, pollution! Why is this? Because you and others, Robert

SIR R. My father, you would not have your son raise the cry of "church in danger." Only consider the suspicion to which I must be exposed if I took such a course.

GHOST.-No, my child; do not mistake me. I do not mean that you should raise that or any other cry; but only that in contending for the rights of the church, in your place in the house of commons, you should manfully contend for the true principles upon which alone it can be defended. I desire nothing more than that you should make it plain to all men, that you are in earnest in your desire to uphold it; that yours is not a mere make-believe advocacy, a mere political ruse, to save your own credit, but which you have not the slightest expectation, or even wish, to see effectual against the enemies with whom you contend. And for this purpose, my dear child, you should call things by their proper names. Why is it that, in the case of the Irish members, oath-breaking is not denounced as perjury; and that in the outrages against the Irish clergy, killing is scarcely reputed murder? Why is it that your great men in high places do not cry aloud and spare not, when they have to deal with such before unheardof abominations? Glossing them over as they do, is it wonderful that the public, who look up to them, should regard them with comparative apathy; and that a respect for their authority may cause an apparent indifference respecting atrocities, which, under other circumstances, would have excited universal indignation? And yet, the worst of these atrocities is less atrocious than the end which they are all intended to accomplish, namely, the overthrow of the Established Church!

denounced. They are no help, but a hindrance, to true conservative policy; and they would be infinitely less formidable in the ranks of the enemy, than they are when they weaken your line of operations by a show of support, which, when the moment of trial comes, is not to be relied on. Discoursing with Edmund Burke upon this very subject, the other day, he observed, "many of the fashionable Conservatives of the present day, remind me of the composition of Pompey's army, as opposed to that of Cæsar. The latter consisted of hardy veterans, used to all vicissitudes of temperature, and inured to every danger; the former, of young men of fashion, of perfumed gentlemen, who cried, 'avaunt,' when any one presumed to bring a slovenly, unhandsome corpse, 'betwixt the wind and their nobility.' And what was Cæsar's direction to his followers? 'Push your javelins into the faces of your opponents,' said he, and they are sure to run.' And what says the Irish demagogue to his adherents? 'Bore your adversaries,' he says,' with Irish subjects, and you will soon make their benches empty." Such was the observation of Burke. Judge you, whether it was just or not; and whether a great cause should be sacrificed, because silly, or ignorant, or conceited young men, choose to shrink from the battle which is to be fought, or to be ashamed of the ground upon which it is to be defended,

SIR R. How I would value the opportunity of learning from the great man, whose name you have mentioned, the principle by which he would be regulated in selecting the Established Church. May I reverently ask whether you have had any communication with him which would tend to my satisfaction in such an inquiry?

GHOST. And that, my child, is in itself an evil against which you should enter your solemn protest. Ireland is the ground upon which the battle of principle is to be fought, which intimately concerns every other portion of the empire. The nincompoops who do not understand, or who will not perceive this, should be unsparingly

subserve. And where they are combined in an institute, admirable for its simplicity, and venerable for its antiquity, surely it is not too much to say that it should be reverently regarded.

SIR R. And now, my father, admitting to the fullest extent the claims of such an establishment upon the admiration of the wise and good, as all do not come under that denomination, when dissent does spring up, how should it be treated?

GHOST. As you, my child, would wish to treat it, with indulgence. Only, this should be observed, that that indulgence should never arise out of indifference, or proceed into partiality. If the former, religion itself is abjured; if the latter, the rule is superseded by the exception. Dissenters should be treated as a kind parent would treat wayward children, who require to be humoured. Their little peculiarities should be indulgently attended to, but not in such a way as that they themselves must be spoiled. Besides, dissent from the doctrines of an establishment, should be regarded in a very different light from the dissent from PRINCIPLE of an establishment. The former frequently arises out of tenderness of conscience; the latter is often no more than a cloak for treason; and should no more be countenanced, in such a state as England, than dissent from the principle of the monarchy. Your church establishment is an integral portion of the state, and as such it should be firmly maintained; and that with the more earnestness, as it is so perfectly scriptural, so perfectly rational, and contains, within itself, the means of every improvement.

SIR R.-I am aware of the distinction between establishment and toleration, and it is a wise one. The state religion is entitled to the one, every modification of conscientious and innocuous dissent, is, under our constitution, entitled to the other. But are these two parties always to be maintained in a state of conflict? Should nothing be done which might tend to diminish their mutual antipathy, and bring them into harmonious action ?

GHOST.-Wise men will content themselves with taking care of the interests of truth, in the assured persuasion, that, by so doing, they are

most effectually counteracting error and falsehood. Your establishment is admirably calculated for the exigencies of full-grown human nature. It hits the golden mean of enlightened and cultivated man. Let every thing be done for its efficiency, which ought to be done, and you will see how soon it will absorb dissent; how soon the most impracticable recusants will become amenable to its gentle sway. Let dissenters be encouraged, as a peculiarly privileged class, and this, of course, cannot be the case. Even members of the establishment would, in that case, affect dissent, because of its temporal advantages.

SIR R.-Then your rule would be, indulgence as far as dissent is conscientious; no encouragement when it becomes malignant: indulgence as far as individuals seek relief for themselves; no encouragement when they would fain invade the privileges of others: indulgence when they ask to serve God after a fashion of their own; no encouragement when they presume to tell the state that it shall not maintain a religious establishment.

GHOST.-Exactly so. I would, in fact, have you act upon the principle, that there is the same distinction between your church establishment, and every variety of dissent, that Cicero long ago recognised between the "opinionum commenta," and the "naturæ judicia." Time, which abolishes the one, will only serve to ratify the other. Be it your business, therefore, to strengthen, to cherish, and to improve it. Be it, above all things, your business to protect it against the attacks of insidious and malignant assailants. It is hated by some because of its truth; by others because of its beauty; some object to it because of its property; others because of the rank which it holds in the state. Some, again, see in it a conservative principle, by which the fierce waves of revolution must be stayed; by those it will, of course, be impugned, and its overthrow made the precursor of the overthrow of the constitution. As you value that constitution, maintain its best outwork to the last. Be assured, that, by so doing, you are best maintaining liberty of conscience, and most effectually securing civil liberty. Farewell!

THERE is scarcely any species of literary popularity more ephemeral than that of the metaphysician. In all arts and sciences, to be sure, which are increased by the accession of new discoveries, the later authorities will be constantly supplanting the elder, and entering into the labours of those who originally cleared the ground, and did the drudgery, but whose solid foundation is forgotten in our wonder at the gay edifice which their successors have built upon its basis. But in metaphysics, the quickness with which one generation of philosophers jostles another out of view,

"Velut unda supervenit undam,"

is absolutely unparalleled. Whether it be that, in the dim twilight of abstractions, there is so much inherent obscurity as to make principles more uncertain and unsettled in this than in any other science-or that the shifting and ambiguous medium of language in which philosophers are compelled to clothe their subtle speculations, affords more room here than elsewhere for verbal differences among the learned, and the investing old thoughts with a new dress of modern phraseologyor that the temptations to paradox are too numerous to be resisted, where the vulgar herd of readers, too lazy to follow the toilsome investigation, may be dazzled by the strangeness of the result—whatever be the reason, the fact seems certain and acknowledged, that no class of writers of ability are sooner forgotten and neglected than your great metaphysicians. For our

own parts, we are free to confess, that it is rather in its practical bearing, and in immediate connection with the subordinate indeed, but (for that very cause) more familiar and interesting, sciences which it at once transcends and permeates it is rather in this grosser and more concrete form that we expect much of either light or profit, from the cultivation of metaphysical philosophy, than from the study of it in itself, and by itself, as a separate and independent subject of contemplation. We regard it as an extremely rare and subtle element of the intellectual atmosphere-most necessary, in combination with less etherial ingredients, to preserve it from becoming dense and stagnant; but far too thin and clear, when disentangled from all foreign mixture, to be breathed by mortal beings of such a rank as ours. On that side of this master-science which is conterminous with ethics or politics-that portion of it from which precepts of education, or rules of criticism are derived there is a broad and steady illumination; but for that which touches upon the great secrets of objective reality, or bears no intelligible relation to the immediate purposes of life and godliness, it seems wrapped in an impenetrable veil of mystery, and

"Shadows, clouds, and darkness lie upon it,"

When once pushed beyond a certain limit the limit within which they really subserve the ends of life-our researches end in doubt and contradiction. A string of premises, appa rently the most probable, conduct us to

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