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meetings, Sunday-school labors, domestic solitude and unsociality, and untimely vigils. Such a day was never drawn from the Old Testament, and nobody ever pretended to draw it from the New. To listen to the rereading of the well-known law, to tell the oft-told tale of Egypt and the wilderness, were quieting and easy exercises, alike to priest and people, to parents and children. By all means, let the Sabbath be maintained as "a day of holy convocation," as it certainly was from the very commencement of the Mosaic era; but let it also be remembered and kept holy as a day of much passivity and real repose, for such was its other, and, indeed, its primary use from the beginning.

and peasants, even humble maids with workaday fingers round their pens, and thousands of dumb, but prayerful dwellers in palaces and in huts" where poor men lie," have come forward with their strong protest against the rapid and insidious changing of the old English and Scottish Sabbath into a Pagan Sunday, no better than the Roman Merry-Andrew's holiday of giddy France, or of wicked Austria and her cruel allies in belated Italy. Most prominent by parliamentary position, equal to any in the depth of the principle that quickened him, foremost in persistive constancy, and the favorite butt of popular as of polished scorn, stood and fell, in the thick of this unprosperous cause, the late Sir Andrew Agnew, the principled and steadfast member for Wigtonshire, during seven ses sions of Parliament. Conceiving that his nature has been much misunderstood, and in order to come a little nearer the actual Sunday-question as it stands in the everyday world of London and Edinburgh, it may be an act of justice to inquire, in these pages, devoted by a North British Review to this urgent social and scientific, as well as religious, subject of Sunday in the nineteenth century, what manner of man the arch-sabbatarian of this century of Sabbath-loving Christianity really was. For a full-sized image of the man, the well-written and hearty biography by M'Crie must be referred to by the more curious student; — a work already in its second edition, and too well known and approved for a regular review at this time of day.

-But we must stop midway in this a posteriori or afterhand discussion of the claims of the Christian Sunday on the attention and observance of the world. The adverse reader must understand, however, as the friendly one knows full well, that this is not a hundredth part of what has to be said; and the purpose of this article will be abundantly subserved, if it drive the former to the more secret and legitimate study of so national and momentous a subject. Even the little that has been advanced on the present occasion, has been put forth in a peculiar style, of set purpose; the commoner strain of argument has been avoided, or only alluded to; and there has rather been presented the individual view of a particular mind, living much aloof from others, than anything like the generic plea of ever so catholic a party. It is the humble contribution of a private student to the common cause. Such as it is, it is a The scion of a long-ascending line of distant and unfinished approximation to the baronets, constables, knights, untitled Scotadequate expression of one mode of thought tish barons, and Norman soldiers of fortune in concerning this patriarchal, Mosaic, and right England and Ireland, a race remarkable for Christian institute of the Sabbath-day; -an keeping to the purpose of their heart even in institute thoroughly paganized and vilified in Scotland, the land of pertinacity, this obstinate the territories of the Greek and Roman and unflinching Sabbatarian was born at churches already, and grievously imperilled Kingsale in Ireland, just sixty years ago, the in our own land at last. Last century there only child of a poor young father who died arose amongst doubters and unbelievers, this before the birth of this genuine Agnew, century there has actually arisen among pro- From the showing of his congenial biographer, fessing Christians and well-wishers, a spirit of one might well suppose that the old and indifference and hostility to our most patriotic aboriginal Agneaus must have been so-called and politic, as well as world-old and sanc- (like Kirke's Lambs) on the principle of contioned day of rest. Excitement cannot stop, traries. Yet combative, aggressive, and selfpleasure cannot be stayed, cupidity will not providing soldiers and constables as it behoved withhold from gain, public and popular tyr- them to be (in order to suit the times, we anny must and will have unrested slaves; fancy), they seem to have early displayed a the senses grudge the soul a day. Yet this religious turn of mind; and that quite comreverted and fateful current of apathy, frivol- patible spirit could not fail to show itself inity, and dissipation has by no means been domitable, valiant, dogmatic, and ready alike suffered to run unstemmed. True-hearted for coercion or martyrdom, in such a race. men of every class of our composite society Taken all in all, this ancient family of the have lifted up their voices, and put forth their Agnews seem to have approved themselves hands. Bishops and divines, noblemen and as soldierlike, loyal, steadfast, kindly, and gentlemen, clergymen and scholars, physi- prudent a house as any in the land; at once sians and men of science, preachers and teach- proud and homely, brave yet wary, pious, but ers, book-reading and book-writing artisans by no means suffering their proper goods to

be spoiled, more capable of deep conviction | tion was getting in readiness to try his mettle. than of wide toleration, and much more tenacious than ready to render a reason.

Parliament was besieged in 1831 with petitions about the Sabbath. The out-of-doors On the other hand the De Courcys, those leaders of the movement eventually fixed on old Earls of Ulster, with the head of whom the him as their parliamentary chief; and a stout first authentically recorded Agneau planted and obstinate battle he fought of it, in the himself in Ireland (whence a descendant house and on the platform, before both open eventually crossed in the reign of David II. to and exclusive meetings, in season and out of Wigton, and acquired Lochnaw, formerly a it, till he died in the cause. The man beroyal castle), probably underwent the soften- came possessed by the idea of our blessed ing, light-hearted, sprightlier, and less earnest Sabbath; and that to such a pitch of inspirainfluences of the Green Isle. Be this as it tion that, if the age had not been at once may, it is curious to find these long-parted averse to repose and incredulous of good, or lineages coming together again near the close even (with such fearful odds against him) if of last century, in the marriage of Lieutenant he had been as logical, imperious, and eloAgnew to the Honorable Martha de Courcy, quent as he was otherwise able and heroic, he eldest daughter of John, twenty-sixth Lord must have won the day. Yet this gallant Kingsale, premier baron of Ireland; a loving, and unyielding soldier of the Law and the sensitive, and most excellent woman, who Testimony wanted no laurels. It was his would assuredly have been frightened out of rare distinction to be indifferent to popular her wits among the old Scottish Agnews. applause and not afraid of popular obloquy. Their son Andrew and his sweet mother Here, said he, is the last new ballad just sung resided chiefly at Kingsale, under the guardian- under my windows: send it down to the ship of the maternal grandfather, until the North. When the Zanies were mocking death of Sir Stair in 1809, when he was sum- Copernicus on the public stage, he said the moned to take possession at Lochnaw. Then same :-Let them have their fun: the things he was handed over to Edinburgh, Oxford, I know give no pleasure to the people, and I Cheltenham, and glorious London, for a season. A young baronet, of an uncommonly high and delicate spirit, elegant, accomplished (for that he was especially in heraldry), and as amiable as his mother, though as stanch as old Sir Stair, this must have been a perilous time for the future friend of the workman; -and certes, that gay youth was actually getting ready to be the workman-like friend of all who toil, us of the horny hand, and us also of the knitted brow! Well-principled and, what is equally to the purpose, well-natured, he escaped the dangers of youth and fashion. Nay, the steadfast and self-preserving blood of the Agnews moved easily and at once in his heart to the music of ideas more remote and fascinating than those of prudence and honor. The accents of antique gospel-lore fell on his ear like no foreign tongue. Such glowing oracles as Gerard Noel, M'Crie the historian, and Chalmers, had only to speak, that so prepared a spirit might hear and understand the sign; and in an Agnew to understand was to obey, when the subject-matter of intelligence was the saving of one's soul alive. In short, Sir Andrew solidified with the advance of manhood into an Evangelical Protestant, with a natural preference for episcopacy and the Church of England, derived from habit and early associations, but sturdily Scottish and Presbyterian at the core; and, in fact, he eventually identified himself heart and hand with what is called the Free Church of Scotland.

In 1830 Sir Andrew was sent to Parliament by the county of Wigton, and after some reluctance he went with the Reform Bill. But another sort of task, and a deeper Reforma

do not know the things that give them pleas-
ure. For more than twenty years Sir Andrew
waged a thankless and unpromising and (sooth
to say) a little successful warfare, never fear-
ing the face of clay, nor covetous of admira-
tion and sweet voices, but trusting his convic-
tions, and true to his secret God.
We ques-
tion whether any public character of recent
times has done his stroke of work from such
a depth of conviction, so unsustained by
adventitious circumstances, even Clarkson,
and certainly Wilberforce, not excepted. In
the last result, this is his proper glory-to
have been capable of doing without commen-
surate success and without applause! Yet
Sir Andrew had respect unto the recompense
of reward: he would scarcely have been a
true Agnew if he had not. But he neared
the goal before he died. "It is dangerous,"
he said in that great hour," to speak of
what we have done." "The instrument is
nothing: God is all in all." It is what they
all say, the good men and true, in one dialect
or in another:-Not unto us, O Lord, not
unto us!

Such is a faint image of the great Scottish Sabbatarian. The cause is left with us who remain, now that he has joined the majority at last; but we want a chief. In the meanwhile, this were a proper time and place to review the past procedure of the case in the spirit of searching and inexorable criticism, to see if it were not defeated or deferred by the errors of its friends; and also to discuss the broader and more politic principles on which the standard should be advanced anew. But these practical questions must be deferred till

another opportunity. The lawyers have decided that the People's Palace, as it is fondly called by the Proprietors, cannot be opened of a Sunday; and the recent ministerial and parliamentary changes render it unlikely that a special bill will be soon presented. After all, moreover, the true beginning of a National Reformation were the radical self-reform of the friendly. Above everything, let the professing Sabbatarian, whether Jew or Gentile, whether Popish or Protestant, Evangelical or Formularian, cease from mere opinion and denunciation, and begin to be a Sabbatarian in right earnest. That is to say, let him see that he really work like an honest man during the six days of the week; for no soft and sighing do-nothing, no minion of ease and pietistic self-enjoyment, no idle busybody whose soul has lost its original sense of the comeliness of industry, is obedient to the First Part of that most noble Fourth Commandment, or can even try to obey the Second. He must then make sure that, supposing him to have been faithful to the primeval pledge of honest labor, he really and truly rest on the Seventh Day, and all his household, nay, and all the world in so far as he is concerned. He inust be no party to the overtasking of ministers and teachers, any more than to the mulcting of household or street servants of ever so small a part of their one day of rest, and freedom, and Christianlike self-disposal. In short, he must irremissibly determine that not only himself, but also every other man of woman born however humble (to the extent, that is, that he can help or withhold from hindering) shall actually be a gentleman of the grand old type of the Garden of Eden, at least for fifty-two days, or seven weeks and a half, of the Christian year. What an altered world it were, even in a secular point of view, if such a consummation could only be brought about! Then in very deed might the gentle poor man, a far nobler being than the poor gentleman of "the ignorant present time," look down without reserve into the welcoming eye of his loftiest brother man, were it a burdened prophet, a laurelled poet, a crowned discoverer, or a king sitting on his serviceable throne.

connected with political economy; a few being original, but the majority revised and corrected reprints. The direct treatises embrace some of the most important questions with which political economy is concerned-money, exchange, the letting and occupation of land, interest and usury laws, with the celebrated paradox on Irish absenteeism. The essays at once historical and economical treat of the commerce of the ancient world and the middle ages; the rise, progress, and decline of the trade of Holland; the causes which created the Hanseatic League and subsequently destroyed its power; the origin of the compass, the progress of maritime law, and the colonial systems of the ancients. The notices are biographical sketches of Quesnay, Adam Smith, and Ricardo. A goodly variety of subjects, involving various knowledge and various accomplishments, and furnishing the means of considering the character of their author as a political economist.

Natural qualities of mind may be stimulated by circumstances or improved by culture, but can never be supplied by art or effort. The sound common sense, the penetrating sagacity, and the wide sympathy, though rather perhaps of the understanding than of the feelings, which distinguished the great founder of political economy, were the gift of nature. Adam Smith's education at Oxford, his employment at Edinburgh as a lecturer on Rhetoric and the Belles Lettres, his engagement at Glasgow, however brief, as Professor of Logic, and his subsequent elevation to the chair of Moral Philosophy, which originated the theory of Moral Sentiments, gave him that close and extensive knowledge of history, of man, and of man's feelings and doings, without which he never could have produced the Wealth of Nations. That unerring sagacity which never failed him when he had sufficient data in the form of facts to deduce his conclusions-the power of analysis, at once keen and profound, which enabled him not merely to lay down the laws conducing to the wealth of nations, but to present his reader with the essential principles of the defence of nations, of public expenditure, and other subjects of government- the wisdom applied alike to the history of society and to the most trivial individual expenditure-would all have been comparatively useless but for his vast and From the Spectator-Parts of an article. varied learning, and the attention he bestowed M'CULLOCH'S WRITINGS ON POLITICAL upon pursuits which his age avowed to be, and this age without avowing considers to bevulgar.

ECONOMY.*

THIS volume consists of treatises, essays, and biographical notices on men or matters

* Treatises and Essays on Subjects connected with
Economical Policy; with Biographical Sketches of
Quesnay, Adam Smith, and Ricardo. By J. R.
M'Culloch, Esq., Member of the Institute of France.
Published by A. and C. Black, Edinburgh.
CCCCLXIV. LIVING AGE.

VOL. I. 6

Of the many successors of Adam Smith, M'Culloch comes the nearest to him in his variety of knowledge and his various sympathies; for although Mill had as varied knowledge, and perhaps deeper learning, his rigid logic and dryness of mind discarded from a subject everything which did not mathemati

cally belong to it. The sympathy of M'Culloch, however, is even more decidedly of the head than that of the great master, and might perhaps more properly be called interest. He has none of the pervading pleasantry which animates the style of Smith, and brings the minds of the philosopher and the pupil into fellowship; but M'Culloch's style is plain and forcible the latter quality, notwithstanding his hammerlike blow, being somewhat too uniform. His knowledge of what others have advanced on political economy is very great, not only extending to modern economists, but to old and obscure writers. He is greater as an expounder than as an original inquirer. In fact, from some deficiency of inventive logic, conjoined with a want of (to speak phrenologically) the "organ of cautiousness," his own opinions are often questionable, if not heretical. Such we consider are his theories on Irish absenteeism, the impossibility of gluts, and on there being no such thing as unproductive expenditure in the economical sense. The same want of cautiousness which induces him to push originality into paradox also induces him to state a paradox in the broadest and extremest manner. It is said that Queen Elizabeth insisted on having no shadow in her portrait; in like manner, Mr. M'Culloch will allow of no hesitation or question about his views, either to himself or others. What he sees he sees with wonderful distinctness; but he cannot, or he will not, see much at once, and he is too apt to require everybody else not only to see as he sees, but not to see anything else, either more or less. The endless shades and neutral tints which are found in nature are overlooked in the presentations of our limner; everything there is not only distinct but "stark staring. ." Neither is he very tolerant of those who differ from him even on difficult or abstruse subjects. Indeed, it is perhaps his manner of urging paradoxes, as much as the actual paradoxes, that raised up so many opponents, and for some years brought discredit on political economy itself. Even when he cannot resist an argument, he is apt to deny its importance or extent, on his mere ipse dixit.

As an expounder or enforcer of established truth, Mr. M'Culloch is very eminent. His peculiarity of genius renders him less certain as an applier of economical science as witness some of his late propositions for the management of our fiscal system. His leading pursuit, his varied knowledge, and in a certain sense his catholic range of mind, together with his literary acquirements, render him eminent as an economical historian; for he combines, and in a high degree, that special knowledge which is not always found in the historical inquirer, with the various reading in which the mere economist is very often deficient. Hence, we think that the

summary reviews of commerce, from its origin with (so far as we know) the Phoenicians, till about the close of the last century, is not only the most attractive but really the best portion of this volume.

66

Ox the subject of the relations of the free press first spirited answer that we have seen from any to the new French Empire, we put on record the foreign power to the demand impudently made for a general literary proscription in Europe — all the more willingly as this rebuke comes from an inferior power in the immediate vicinity of France. In his zeal to prevent Europe from reading the passionate denunciation of M. Victor Hugo, Napoléon le Petit," the new Emperor, has caused his minister to complain of the mul tiplication of copies "by the clandestine presses" of Berne, and to demand the suppression of these presses and the prosecution of the printers. The Department of Justice and Police of the canton reply with great spirit that "according to the existing laws, neither a patent nor an authoriza tion of the police is required to establish a printing-office in the canton of Berne; from which it follows that the expression, clandestine printing-office,' has no meaning in law. It must, besides, be mentioned," they add, as putting the case beyond the jurisdiction of the court, "that, according to the existing laws, the cantonal authorities cannot officially prosecute a publication offensive to a foreign government when sold or Athenæum. even printed in the canton."

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CURIOUS MARRIAGE LEASE. An assault case

came before the Birmingham magistrates last week, which, like the majority of matrimonial squabbles, would have been simply interesting in the eyes of those immediately concerned, but for a legal curiosity which was brought to light in the course of the hearing. A young fellow named William Charles Capas was charged with assaulting his wife. In giving her evidence, Mrs. Capas mentioned that her husband was not living with her, but was "leased" to a young woman named Hickson. This being a species of contract unknown to the magistrates, further inquiry into the matter was made, when it was elicited that a regular legal document had been drawn up, by which Capas and Hickson bound, or, as they termed it, "leased" themselves to each other for the term of their natural lives. The "lease" was produced in court and read. The girl Hickson was present at the time of the alleged assault. On being asked about the 'lease," she admitted that she signed it, and stated that it was drawn up by Mr. Campbell, the lawyer, who told her at the time she signed it that if Capas' wife gave her any annoyance he She, would put in that paper as evidence. office, and that she believed Mr. Campbell moreover, said that the paper was signed at his charged 17. 15s. for drawing it up. The magis trates fined Capas 2s. 6d. for the assault, and commented in very strong terms on the document which had that day been brought before them. Stamford Mercury.

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From the Gentleman's Magazine.

deep in Lethe when men will be still addressTHE BARONESS D'OBERKIRCH AND CITI- ing themselves with pleasure to the pages of

ZEN MERCIER.

Citizen Mercier.

Louis Sebastian Mercier was a Parisian, born in the year 1740. He had not yet attained his majority when he opened his literary career by poetical compositions in the style of Pope's "Heloise to Abelard." Upon poets, however, he soon looked as he subsequently did upon kings, and speedily addressed himself exclusively to works in prose. Racine and Boileau, according to him, had ruined the harmony of French verse, and he henceforward considered that if such harmo

Ir it were possible that the vexed spirit of the above-named illustrious lady could be conscious that her very noble name could have been mingled with that of a common bourgeois her indignation would be most intense. Had she ever reflected that her keeping a diary would have made of her a member of the republic of letters, she would have died rather than have belonged to such a commonwealth. The baroness was one of a class whose numbers were great and whose in-ny were to be found at all, it was in his own fluence was unbounded. Their sympathies were given only to aristocratic sufferers; royalty they adored; the democracy they despised; and the very fine ladies of the class in question would, generally speaking, have preferred a faux pas with a prince to contracting honest marriage with an inferior.

The Baroness D'Oberkirch is a type rather of the follies than of the vices of the class, for having made her a member of which she prettily offered her best compliments to Heav

en.

She was the daughter of a poor Alsatian baron, whose shield had more quarterings than it is worth while to remember. Early in life she married a noble gentleman, old enough to be her father, and her best years were consumed in performing the functions of lady-in-waiting at the court of the Duke of Wurtemberg at Montbeliard, in visiting the more attractive court at Versailles, and in chronicling what she saw, and registering what she thought.

66

prose. He became Professor of Rhetoric in the college at Bordeaux, and was rather a prolific than a successful dramatic author. He threw the blame alike on the vitiated taste of actors and public, and, shaking the dust off his sandals against theatres and capital, he hastened to Rheims, with the intention of practising the law, in order to be better enabled to apply its rigors against the stage managers who had deprived him of his "free-admissions." In 1771 he printed his "L'An 2440, ou Rève s'il en fut jamais," a rather clever piece of extravagance, which was imitated in England, half a century later, by the author of The Mummy." In 1781 he published anonymously the first two volumes of his famous Tableau de Paris. He was disappointed that his labor was not deemed worthy of notice by the police authorities, and he retired, somewhat in disgust, to Switzerland, where he completed a work which has been far more highly esteemed abroad than in France, and which even there enjoyed a greater reputation in the provinces than in Paris. In it he showed himself a better sketcher of what lay before him than a discerner of what was beneath the surface; and he spoke of the impossibility of a revolution in France only a year before that revolution broke out. When the storm burst in fury he claimed the honors due to a magician who had provoked the tempest. He wrote vigorously on the popular side, but-and to his lasting honor be it spoken-he broke with Now while this illustrious lady was taking the Jacobins, when he found that they hoped notes, which her grandson has printed, a citi- to walk to liberty through a pathway of zen was similarly occupied; and, had the blood. He voted in the Convention for savCountess been aware of the circumstance, ing the life of Louis XVI., and this and other the impertinence of the commoner would have offences against the sons of freedom, whose been soundly rated by the lady-in-waiting. abiding-place was the Mountain, caused him The notes of the bourgeois were committed to the press three quarters of a century ago; those of the Baroness-Countess" have only just seen the light.* The evidence of two such opposite witnesses is worth comparing; but the book of the lady will be ten fathom

The diary which she kept, and subsequently enlarged, has been recently submitted to the public. It introduces us to the court and capital of France during the closing years of the reign of Louis XVI. It is interesting, as showing us both how the court acted and how the capital thereon commented; how the lady profoundly admired all the former did, and as profoundly despised all the thought devoted thereto by the canaille, who had no claim to stand upon red-heeled shoes, or to sit down on a tabouret in the face of royalty.

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to be arrested, and would have led to his execution but that his enemies were carried thither before him. At a later period he was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and made himself remarkable by opposing the claims set up for Descartes for admission into the French Pantheon; and he also gained the approbation of all rightly-thinking men for taking the same adverse course against

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