step, and from range to range, of these celestial hierarchies, to the lowest steps of the Eternal Throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be left him in drawing near to the Father of Spirits ?" But the substance of these pages will be found implied in the following reply to them. NOTE. More weight with me than all this Pelion upon Ossa of imaginary hierarchies has the single remark of Augustine, that there neither are nor can be but three essential differences of being, namely, the absolute, the rational finite, and the finite irrational; that is, God, man, and brute. Besides, the whole scheme is un-Scriptural, if not contra-Scriptural. Pile up winged hierarchies on hierarchies, and outblaze the Cabalists, and Dionysius the Areopagite; yet what a gaudy vapor for a healthful mind is the whole conception (or rather phantasm) compared with the awful hope holden forth in the Gospel, to be one with God in and through the Mediator Christ, even the living, co-eternal Word and Son of God! But through the whole of this eloquent declamation I find two errors predominate, and both, it appears to me, dangerous errors. First, that the rational and consequently the only true ideas of the Supreme Being are incompatible with the spirit of prayer and petitionary pleading taught and exemplified in the Scriptures. Second, that this being the case, and "supplication with arguments and importunate requests" being irrational and known by the supplicant to be such, it is nevertheless a duty to pray in this fashion. In other words, it is asserted that the Supreme Being requires of his rational creatures, as the condition of their offering acceptable worship to him, that they should wilfully blind themselves to the light, which he had himself given them, as the contradistinguishing character of their humanity, without which they could not pray to him at all; and that drugging their sense of the truth into a temporary doze, they should make believe that they know no better! As if the God of Truth and Father of all lights resembled an oriental or African despot, whose courtiers, even those whom he had himself enriched and placed in the highest rank, are commanded to approach him only in beggars' rags and with a beggarly whine! I on the contrary find "the Scripture model of devotion," the prayers and thanksgiving of the Psalmist, and in the main of our own Church Liturgy, perfectly conformable to the highest and clearest convictions of my reason. (I use the word in its most comprehensive sense, as comprising both the practical and the intellective, not only as the light but likewise as the life which is the light of man. John i. 3.) And I do not hesitate to attribute the contrary persuasion principally to the three following oversights. First (and this is the queen bee in the hive of error), the identification of the universal reason with each man's individual understanding, subjects not only different but di verse, not only allogeneous but heterogeneous. Second, the substitution of the idea of the infinite for that of the absolute. Third and lastly, the habit of using the former as a sort of superlative synonyme of the vast or indefinitely great. Now the practical difference between my scheme and that of the Essayist, for whose talents and intentions I feel sincere respect, may perhaps be stated thus. The Essayist would bring down his understanding to his religion: I would raise up my understanding to my reason, and find my religion in the focus resulting from their convergence. We both alike use the same penitential, deprecative and petitionary prayers; I in the full assurance of their congruity with my reason, he in a factitious oblivion of their being the contrary. The name of the author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm is unknown to me and unconjectured. It is evidently the work of a mind at once observant and meditative. And should these notes meet the Author's eye, let him be assured that I willingly give to his genius that respect which his intentions without it would secure for him in the breast of every good man. But in the present state of things, infidelity having fallen into disrepute even on the score of intellect, yet the obligation to shew a reason for our faith having become more generally recognized, as reading and the taste for serious conversation have increased, there is a * Mr. Isaac Taylor.-Ed. large class of my countrymen disposed to receive, with especial favour, any opinions that will enable them to make a compromise between their new knowledge and their old belief. And with these men the Author's evident abilities will probably render the work a high authority. Now it is the very purpose of my life to impress the contrary sentiments. Hence these notes. DIALOGUE BETWEEN DEMOSIUS MY DEAR IN emptying a drawer of rose-leaf bags, old (but, too many of them) unopened letters, and paper scraps, or brain fritters, I had my attention directed to a sere and ragged half-sheet by a gust of wind, which had separated it from its companions, and whisked it out of the window into the garden. -Not that I went after it. I have too much respect for the numerous tribe, to which it belonged, to lay any restraint on their movements, or to put the Vagrant Act in force against them. But it so chanced that some after-breeze had stuck it on a standard rose-tree, and there I found it, as I was pacing my evening walk alongside the lower ivywall, the bristled runners from which threaten to * See ante p. 127.—Ed. entrap the top branch of the cherry tree in our neighbour's kitchen garden. I had been meditating a letter to you, and as I ran my eye over this fly-away tag-rag and bob-tail, and bethought me that it was a by-blow of my own, I felt a sort of fatherly remorse, and yearning towards it, and exclaimed, "If I had a frank for· this should help to make up the ounce.' It was far too decrepit to travel per se-besides that the seal would have looked like a single pin on a beggar's coat of tatters-and yet one does not like to be stopped in a kind feeling, which my conscience interpreted as a sort of promise to the said scrap, and therefore, (frank or no frank), I will transcribe it. A dog's leaf at the top was worn off, which must have contained I presume, the syllable Ve― Rily," quoth Demosius of Toutoscosmos, Gentleman, to Mystes the Allocosmite, "thou seemest to me like an out-of-door patient of St. Luke's wandering about in the rain without cap, hat, or bonnet, poring on the elevation of a palace, not the house that Jack built, but the house that is to be built for Jack, in the suburbs of the city, which his cousin-german, the lynx-eyed Dr. Gruithuisen has lately discovered in the moon. But through a foolish kindness for that face of thine, which whilome belonged to an old schoolfellow of the same name with thee, I would get thee shipped off under the Alien Act, as a non ens, or pre-existent of the other world to come. To whom Mystes retorted ;-" Verily, friend De |