mony which every man of genius perceives in the face of nature, and which many men of no genius are taught to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as this. In other landscape painters the scene is confined and as it were imprisoned ;-in Rubens the landscape dies a natural death; it fades away into the apparent infinity of space.

So long as Rubens confines himself to space and outward figure -to the mere animal man with animal passions-he is, I may say, a god amongst painters. His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs are almost godlike; but the moment he attempts anything involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods and goddesses, his nymphs and heroes, become beasts, absolute, unmitigated beasts.

The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this-that in their pictures ages are perfectly ideal. The infant that Raffael's Madonna holds in her arms cannot be guessed of any particular age; it is Humanity in infancy. The babe in the manger in a Dutch painting is a fac-simile of some real new-born bantling; it is just like the little rabbits we fathers have all seen with some dismay at first burst.

Carlo Dolce's representations of our Saviour are pretty, to be sure; but they are too smooth to please me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy.

That is a very odd and funny picture of the Connoisseurs at Rome' by Reynolds.

The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone, and something substituted for it,—very pleasing, but different, and different in kind and not in degree only. Portraits by the old masters,-take for example the pock-fritten lady by Cuyp,2—are pictures of men and women: they fill, not merely occupy, a space; they represent individuals, but individuals as types of a species. Modern portraits—a few by Jackson and Owen, perhaps, excepted-give you not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, that in which

"Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome,"-belonging to Lord Burlington.-ED.

2 I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr. Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan.-ED,

Tom is different from Bill. There is something affected and meretricious in the Snake in the Grass,' and such pictures, by Reynolds.

July 25, 1831.

CHILLINGWORTH.-SUPERSTITION OF MALTESE, SICILIANS, AND
ITALIANS.

IT is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book 2; but certainly it seemed to me that his main position that the mere text of the Bible is the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice is quite untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a more vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly believe Chillingworth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his friend, said so in substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics; he was more than a match for Knott 3 to be sure.

I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even Hooker puts the idea of a church on the true foundation.

Sir Robert Peel's.-ED.

2 "The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation; or, an Answer to a Booke entitled 'Mercy and Truth; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,' which retends to prove the contrary."

3 Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge against Chillingworth, On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed the articles of the church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of July, 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years immediately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent, beginning "Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this passage :-"In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of this thing, and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against the Arrians are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the most part discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the argument drawne from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost always defendants, and scacre ever opponents, he shall not choose but confesse, or at least be very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of Arrius is eyther a truth, or at least no damnable heresy." The truth is, however, that the Socinianism of Chillingworth, such as it may have been, had more reference to the doctrine of the redemption of man, than of the being of God.

Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson.-ED.

The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy exceeds common belief. It is unlike the superstition of Spain, which is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The popular superstition of Italy is the offspring of the climate, the old associations, the manners, and the very names of the places. It is pure paganism, undisturbed by any anxiety about orthodoxy, or animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much more goodnatured and pleasing to a traveller's feelings, and certainly not a whit less like the true religion of our dear Lord, than the gloomy idolatry of the Spaniards.

I well remember, when in Valetta in 1805, asking a boy who waited on me, what a certain procession, then passing, was, and his answering with great quickness, that it was Jesus Christ, who lives here (sta di casa qui), and when he comes out, it is in the shape of a wafer. But, "Eccelenza," said he, smiling and correcting himself, "non è Cristiano.'

" I

The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was preserved and communicated to me by my brother, I. T. Coleridge:

So. "

66

"As I was descending from Mount Etna with a very lively talkative guide, we passed through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host happened to be passing through the street. Everyone was prostrate; my guide became so; and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, I observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after many hums and hahs, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue took place. Guide. Signor, are you then a Christian?" Coleridge. "I hope G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians?" C. "I hope and trust they are." G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally?" C. "I trust not, through Christ." G. "What! you believe in Christ then?" C. "Certainly." This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are to be certainly damned?" C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests! what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what are the differences?" C. " 'Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin." G. "And why not, Signor?" C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman, and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God." G. "But do you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God?" C. 66 "We do." G. "Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left?" C. "I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingures, "sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor!"-ED.

July 30, 1831.

ASGILL. THE FRENCH.

ASGILL was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet1 is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as was pretended ;-I really suspect because he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift-an intense half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a diamond in itself.

Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day? Every other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts of the atmosphere of "honour," through which the lie did not transpire.

Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder-each by itself smutty

"An argument proving that, according to the covenant of eternal life, revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through death." Asgill died in the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for debt thirty years.-ED.

"An

2 When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the Hotel des Invalides. This was a lie. The Marquis de Semonville confessed with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards, taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search. Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a weakness," &c.—ED.

and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.

August 1, 1831.

As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be con

quered, but in this life never destroyed.

I will defy anyone to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on the ground of Christianity—its precepts and its as

surances.

August 6, 1831.

THE GOOD AND THE TRUE.—ROMISH RELIGION.

THERE is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth,—the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical—is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends.

Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.

August 8, 1831.

ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.

THE Conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my judgment, base and unprincipled beyond anything in our history since the times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the English people, at this