upon an error which we deem to be one of the most monstrous which can enthral the human mind-that a belief in revealed religion is hostile to mental freedom, that it is the foe of intellectual greatness, that it is degrading to the highest earthly destinies of man. Melancholy indeed it is, when young men, perhaps of excellent talents and amiable natural dispositions (although, so far as our experience has gone, it is generally the reverse) in their attempts to elevate themselves to distinction, degenerating into the desperate retailers of infidel indecencies and atheistical falsehoods; the apostles of systems or the semblancies of systems, concerning which we can only say, that we know not whether they most excite derision by their folly, disgust by their presumption, or detestation by their wickedness. Revolting is the spectacle often presented to our view-when babes in knowledge and almost in years, are seen positively deciding inquiries which the noblest intellectual giants have confessed themselves unable to solve, and proving themselves to be the very reverse of their arrogated character of mental freedom and power, by assailing the imperishable bulwarks of Christianity, because they cannot overlook them from the puny elevation of their pretended reasonan infatuation resembling an attempt to strike the sun from his station with a rod of broken straw. What can such beings as these accomplish for the diffusion of physical and moral good? How can such beings as these subserve the glory of God? How can such beings as these exercise any beneficial influence in preparing for the approaching catastrophe, when the powers of good and evil shall be brought into final collision, into decisive conflict, preparatory to the establishment of the final reign of truth, holiness and peace! If there be among men any persons peculiarly obnoxious, they are infidel sciolists-noisy as the sea, and barren as the shore concerning whom, it is enough to repeat the inspired declaration "Professing themselves wise they become fools."

As this is a subject of the greatest possible importance, and as we have reason to fear that many young men of the best and fairest promise have fallen victims to the error we have alluded to in the preceding sentences, we must be allowed to speak out, once for all, fully and decisively.

There is no enemy to intellectual elevation, to mental cultivation, so deadly as the prevalent scepticism of the age; and there is no friend to that elevation, to that culture, comparable to true Christianity—which (parodying the words of the celebrated Curran) instead of finding its emblem in the mole that hates the light, or the owl that moves in gloomy obscurity, has its type in the eagle which can soar upwards against the sun-blaze of every science, with an eye that never winks and a wing that never tires. The utter repudiation of modern scepticism is essential to the fulfilment of the obligations of young men. This, in fact, with a reference to mind alone, is the FIRST obligation which has to be discharged.

We have observed a work profusely circulated among educated young men, calling upon them to assert their "freedom from prejudice and superstition," by the rejection of revealed religion, and the deification of

what par excellence is designated REASON. Against this system, on the ground we have already stated, we wage inextinguishable war. It boasts of its freedom from prejudice, forsooth, when it is the slave of the meanest and most degrading prejudice that ever embruted the human mind—a prejudice which binds it in fetters of intolerable thraldom, and drags it along in chains after the chariot of a dark, a detestable, a soulless, and senseless materialism. Does this system vaunt of the deliverance which it affords from the agency and influence of "superstition?" Why, in itself it is nothing but a form of superstition-a superstition which stifles the highest and noblest aspirations both of imagination and of thought a superstition, which would annihilate the whole world of intellect and soul-a superstition, which reduces man with all his boasted superiority to the level of mere animal brutality, and oppresses his every sensibility and energy beneath the weight of a horrible destiny of darkness and of death. What! this system vapouring of its enmity to superstition?-Let our readers behold its type, its symbol, its personification, in the character of its most worthy and most appropriate champion, Voltaire, who ridiculed the attributes of a God, and trembled at the idea of a ghost. Does this system seek the suffrages of young men by priding itself on the unparalleled knowledge and superior vigour of mind displayed by its philosophers? O most rare and exquisite discrimination! which can prefer the Mirabauds of France, or the Taylors and Carliles of England, to such "intellectual pigmies" (as they have been called) who have sustained the cause of the Deity and of Christianity—such "pigmies," for instance, in natural philosophy as Bacon, and Boyle, and Newton, and Pascal-such "pigmies" in natural history as Linnæus, and Bonnet, and Cuvier-such pigmies in physiology as Hunter and Haller-such pigmies in metaphysical science as Locke, and Reid, and Stewart, and Browne! Is it necessary to proceed?-Only let the intellect which this system has marshalled, on the one hand, in the cause of misery and folly, be compared with the intellect which, on the other, is arrayed in the cause of religion and of God— why we may just as well compare an ignis fatuus which leads its votaries astray into every species of mental aberration, with the glorious light which, like that of a sun in the moral system, has risen upon the universe of mind, and which, after gilding with hope and joy the scenes of mortality, issues into the unclouded splendours of an everlasting day. Away with the degrading and odious system upon which we are animadverting! It arrogates the names of "Moral Reform," "Social Re-organization," "Intellectual Millennium," &c. &c., when its moral reform is moral brutality, its social re-organization is social destruction, and its intellectual millennium is intellectual chaos. From such a base, such an oppressive, such an absurd system as this, we gladly turn to our glorious Christianity that Christianity which puts into the hands of reason a ladder upon which it may ascend to the high and wondrous sublimities of a system of existence, heavenly, spiritual, and divine-and be brought into immediate contact with Him

"Who gives its lustre to the insect's wing,

And builds his throne upon the rolling worlds."

ON ORIGINALITY.

(Continued from page 92.)

In consequence, however, of this community of sentiment, and dearth of invention, where perfect novelty is considered essential on the author's side, coupled with an insatiable craving on the part of the public for what is new and entertaining, rather than that which is solid and useful -an appetite that is studiously pandered to by an ignoble though influential portion of the periodical press-the caterers for popular information and instruction are constantly tempted to sacrifice propriety to profit, and to substitute mere eccentricity of manner, or childish frivolity, where newness of matter and practical wisdom are either unattainable to themselves, or unwelcome to the class of readers whom

they serve. Blinded by the phantom of ephemeral applause to the substantial elements of an enduring fame, even the proudest prophets of the age scruple not to prostitute their highest gifts to gratify the mere marvel of the multitude, well knowing that if this object be attained they will have a numerous class of admirers, who will not be slow in giving them their reward-regarding less the dignity and truth of an author's sentiments, than their congeniality to their own indolent reveries and undisciplined vagary; and allowing less weight to the value of his information, than to the manner in which his ideas are expressed, and the style of dress and equipage in which he sends them forth into the world. For though the world is in general disposed to acknowledge and requite real merit, when it has once been made sensible of its deserts, correct notions as to the grounds that should entitle any professed prophet to its regard are by no means correspondingly common. This is proved by the early and extensive reputation that is often enjoyed by ephemeral favourites to the untimely suppression of more deserving genius; as well as by the increasing splendour with which, after the clouds of prejudice have passed away, that genius has shone forth upon the world, as lesser stars of rivalry have gradually faded from their ill-gotten glory into the silent shades of oblivion. And so long as caprice continues to be the standard of popular taste, it affords matter for small surprise that those who court its approval should at times mistake as well the real object of their aspirations, as the best method of attaining it. Here not only the young and inexperienced, but sometimes even intellects of the highest order, have utterly failed. Thus in aiming at effect, bombast is mistaken for sublimity, and mere insipidity for natural ease and propriety of sentiment; while the veriest eccentricities or extravagance are to establish an author's claim to originality and its reward. A comparison between the writings of two living poets-James and Robert Montgomery-would sufficiently illustrate and confirm our position.

Young writers are, however, apt to forget that the reputation of distinguished names, if at all connected with, is rather in spite than by virtue of such untasteful peculiarities. Hence in their attempts to attain to the

excellencies of a favourite author, they are in danger of producing a parallel to some point that is characteristic of their model only as it shows him to have been a man even as other men-not exempt from errors; and the too frequent consequence is that we have follies at second-hand put forth with all the pretensions of oracular wisdom.—It is not however my intention to discommend the use of the best authors, as standards for imitation; but to show that their beauties cannot be copied in a servile manner without the risk of appropriating their blemishes instead; and that originality in particular is a grace that cannot be acquired merely by adopting or contriving any odd style of expression-mannerism in short, or by becoming ourselves extravagant for the very sage reason that others have been so before us. So far from regarding book-learning as unfavourable, or even unnecessary, to originality, we look upon it that the laborious study of books as well as men is a principal, and indeed indispensable, means for the attainment of it. No man ever gained, or ever can gain, a good title to originality without it. No greater mistake can be made than to suppose that this first of all excellencies is the result simply of a favourable endowment of the natural powers; and that it is not dependent on the judicious exercise of them, and the proper application of knowledge thus acquired. The best gifts, unimproved by education and healthful employment, will always be held inferior in point of value to subordinate talents properly directed, and strengthened by continued exertion. Shakspere has said that "discretion is the better part of valour."-Still more emphatically true is it that industry is the better part of genius. To rely on the one without the other is to look to the clouds for a plentiful crop, not troubling yourself to plant the seed, or prepare the soil for its reception and growth; or as if Mahomet had continued waiting for the hill to come to him, instead of girding his loins and himself toiling up its steep ascent.

It is this mistake also-which in effect is to divest reason of its legitimate office in union with conscience to be the regulator of human actions that has led, not only to the extravagance of conception and style above referred to, but also to the more serious error of extravagance of conduct in respect both of personal and relative duties-to young men's abandoning themselves to all sorts of improprieties in the delusion of themselves or others that in so doing they are but obeying the divine teachings of genius or originality. As obliquities in point of morality are however of much greater consequence than mere critical misadventures, it deserves to be remembered that here also it is yet more seriously the fact that any kind of extravagance is not only foreign and useless, but positively injurious, to all true excellence. And the importance of this maxim becomes increasingly apparent when we consider that, in morality as well as literature, it is principally the eccentric points of a great man's character that strike the lively imagination and sympathies of youth, and that it is these also which it is most easy, as it certainly is most dangerous, for him to imitate and admire.

"True originality," says The Student's Guide, "consists in doing things well, and in doing them your own way." "First learn to do a

thing well," said the excellent Robert Hall, "and then learn to do it in the least possible time." It would seem, therefore, that if the example of the really great and judicious is to be observed, and their advice to be trusted, we should first be solicitous to make our own way the best, before we manifest any anxiety to differ from other men. Not so, however, our little-great men-our juvenile Burns and Byrons, and the thousand other embryos of equivocal celebrity-they act upon the opinion that just the reverse of this is the natural course, and will put themselves to the trouble of walking miles away from the path of propriety for the sake of being thought original, or possessed of genius, forsooth. Such originality, however, great as it sometimes is, is little to be commended, and less to be followed, by those who value their own happiness and peace, or have any respect for the good opinion of that portion of the community whose estimation alone is worth obtaining.

THE BEAUTIES OF CREATION.

THERE is, in our opinion, nothing that confers on us so much pleasure, amusement, and instruction, as rightly contemplating and comprehending the beauties of creation. It is, indeed, a fund, a never-failing source of delight to the mind, that is endowed with a quick perception of all that is lovely, and, with a knowledge of that divine Being, who is the origin, and "great first cause" "of all. The eye of the industrious and eager in the acquirement of sound information, scans with a steady vision every thing that blends instruction with amusement, and finds in all the objects of its gaze, a something that directs the heart from earth and man, to him who is the maker and preserver of man. The meanest weed that ever grew by the stagnant pool, or on the barren, untilled waste, contains for the philosopher as much food for reflection as the splendid works of art, or the rich adornments of the sculptor. And why? Man's work, how insignificant! how low! God's, how wonderful! how mysterious! It is this latter soul-absorbing power that gains firm hold of the mind, and preserves it fast in a continuous band of mutual delight and pleasure; that makes man (I mean the reflective) dwell with an intensity of warmth and satisfaction on the contemplation of the works of him, whom the earth cannot contain.

I have heard it remarked, that those beauties of nature, the towering trees-the cloud-capped mountains-the broad expansive ocean-and the mighty, awful, and sublime roar of elemental strife, thunders and lightnings, are so terrific, that the sensitive mind finds not the least pleasure therein, nor derives any instruction from them. I maintain, the sensitive mind is generally the soonest to awake to a perception of such grandeur. At first, it may, perhaps, be fluttered and disturbed; but eventually how eagerly does it dwell on the late occurrences! How does it dive into the mystic abyss, and try to solve the problematic wonders! Whence came those brilliant flashes? Whence proceeded those awful, yet warning sounds of God Jehovah's chariots? Man cannot tell. Man, whose small scope of knowledge is unable to soar from the narrow limits of earth, vainly tries to discover: he puzzles and confounds his brain, tortures and distracts his brow, and, in the end, is none the wiser. God's ways are not his ways; he confesses, with thwarted pride, how small his own knowledge! how mean his own talent!

What a glorious study it is to ruminate upon, and contemplate the corn-fields! There are the sun-burnt reapers with their blue jerkins and red caps, so sweetly harmonizing with the golden sheaves around; there is the merry band of gleaners with song and jest; there is the heavily-laden wain, and the drawling though not unpleasant cry of the little fore-horseman; lovely flowrets are making gay the hedges, and the hum of sporting insects, together with the enlivening notes of various song