To the Editor of "The Lion." SIR,-I should thank you to inform me, through the pages of your weekly publication, the routine of the education of a Bishop, from his first perch upon the forms at Winchester, or Eton, through the University of Oxford, or Cambridge; the process of the impregnation of the Holy Ghost, and ordainment as a priest, to the final ceremony that fits him for the episcopal bench, among his brother knights of the shovel-hat and ephod; including a correct notice of the series of books, "ancient and new," classic and divine, that are to be "read, marked, and inwardly digested" (what stomachs they must have!) by them, before they become "Right reverend Fathers in God." There are a few persons still, who, on meeting a bishop, gaze upon him with a sort of mysterious awe, as a being of extraordinary qualifications, as a "celestial nondescript, who has had access to sources of knowledge beyond the reach of other men:" now, a statement of the books officially gone through, and the rest of the process of "making a Bishop," through its several stages, would let such weak-minded people see that they can easily avail themselves of the same sources of "holy illumination" as the "Right reverend Fathers," and might all be bishops in their turn, if they were the patient fools to go through the same routine, and had consciences sufficiently elastic to carry on the pious fraud. If Mr. Taylor (having been once himself a practitioner in the celestial courts) would be so good as to furnish the details requested, it will oblige, Sir, Dec. 1st, year of Grace 1828. Your obedient servant, ONE OF YOUR READERS. NOTE. Our correspondent has put a question that is partly difficult to be answered; for a layman cannot be supposed to know any thing of the operation of the Holy Ghost, when it fills either priest or bishop. This part of the answer must be left to the Rev. Robert Taylor. But in regard to books, we can inform our reader, that none are essential to the formation of a bishop, and that there have been bishops who could neither read nor write. That is not now the case; and as there is no other preparation for priest or bishop necessary, than to attend Divinity Lectures at one of the Universities, there is no particular preparation or study necessary now to make a bishop. Pelham, the late Bishop of Lincoln, had been a Colonel in a dragoon regiment, lost his fortune at a gambling-table, took the gown to gain another, and, his brother being a Secretary of State, he became a Bishop. Many a man studies law until he finds himself too dull for a lawyer, and then takes the gown to become a priest, an office for which no man is too dull. When there is no war to require young officers, they fly to the church for a living. The church may be considered the great receptacle and provider for aristocratic excesses and idiotcy. There is no particular kind of learning necessary, beyond the learning to read. Sermons are ready made to suit all persons, and originality is rather condemned than encouraged in the established church. After a candidate has successfully used his influence for a bishopric, he declares in the church, which, by way of figure, we may call in the face of God, Noli Episcopari; which means, I am unwilling or I will not be a bishop. He is then told that the Holy Ghost has called him, and he must be a bishop. This part of the farce being over, he declares that he has no motive of filthy lucre, none but the spiritual motive, which is a lie that would be damning, if the penalties of the church were applicable to its officers; as he has used all his temporal influence to get the appointment, for no other end whatever than the profit which is to arise from it. The Holy Ghost, and not learning, is the essentiality to form a bishop. The temporalities of the church make up the paradise for the officers of the church, and constitute the real Holy Ghost; the future state paradise is only for the fools who are to be deluded with such promises for their payments. Were there no pay for preaching, mankind might all go to hell, for what these Holy-Ghost-men care about them: and that would be a better state of things than the present; for now, to make a paradise on earth for themselves, these Holy-Ghost-men make a hell of the earth for those whom they delude; and thus they suffer a present hell under the weak fear that they shall avoid a hell hereafter, which they have not done any thing to deserve, and which does not exist. R. C. INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE from the Author of the " Empire of the Nairs;" with an original letter of the German Poet, Wieland's, and one of Percy Bysshe Shelly's on that work. TO MR. RICHARD CARLILE. SIR,-Being informed that you had noticed my Empire of the Nairs, I sent for the last Numbers of " THE LION," and I was not a little gratified at the ample extracts that you had made from it. From the importance that you attach to the work, I may augur in favor of its final success. But since we agree on so many points, you will permit me to differ from you on others. You are no friend to Christianity; but though this consideration may not recommend it to you, I must observe, that, were Christianity restored to its primitive simplicity, the Nair system would be the most Christian of all systems; for if benevolence be the essence of Christianity, and "Do as thou wouldst be done by," its first precept, that system cannot be unchristian that would establish a perfect equality between the two sexes. But enough of this. You may judge of my candour, when I speak in favor of Christianity to the Editor of "THE LION." But since you have inserted in your journal several opinions of the most celebrated men in Germany on my work, I inclose two letters, and if their publication would promote the cause of truth, they are at your service. The first is the translation of a letter from Wieland. Whilst 1 was studying at Brunswick, a Professor there had sent to him my Essay for publication; and I had written to him to correct several erráta. I had, as I said, not apologized for writing to him in English, as he had translated Shakspeare into German; and to this translation he alludes, and he calls his mother tongue a neighing language. Charles the Fifth having said, that the German was only fit to be spoken to horses. If he styles the system unchristian, he means in a financial point of view, or in the loss of pounds, shillings, and pence, that it would cause to parsons and to proctors. Had he considered the Essay immoral, he would never have published it. The first letter I, whilst a minor, had received from the patriarch of German literature, then full of years, and receiving the homage of all his compatriots. The second I received several years afterwards from a minor, then beginning his literary career, which he was destined so soon to close, a martyr to his talents, his virtues, and his enthusiasm. Had Bysshe Shelly been a German, how different would have been his fate! SIR, I avail myself of your silent permission to answer, in the neighing language of my country, the letter with which you honored me on the fifteenth of this month; particularly as you concluded your letter with reminding me of one of the literary sins of my youth, one that can scarcely appear venial in the eyes of an Englishman, and of which I am in fact not fond of being reminded. You are much too kind, Sir, in holding yourself obliged to me for admitting into the German Mercury your ingenious writing against the holy state of matrimony, since it was rather myself, who owe to you the warmest thanks for the honor that you did me, in preferring me to the Editors of similar periodical publications; but were you not astonished at my boldness in publishing a diatribe so heterodox, so anti-Christian, that threatened the Consistories and Marriage Courts in all Christendom with such sensible losses; that I, without preface or apology, should make it known to a nation like the German, so little alive to the irony either of a Socrates or a Swift. I must lament that so bright a production of your genius should, in spite of four successive revisals of the proof sheets, have been disfigured by so many, and often by such material errata: a most particular notice shall be taken of them in the next number. In compliance with your command is inclosed the sheet containing the conclusion of your excellent essay; I add my request that you will forgive the disagreeable trouble that my own or my correctors' negligence has caused, and may, as I am appre hensive, still occasion. The copier of the MS must, it is true, not object to bear his share of the blame. I have the honor to be, with greatest respect, A Monsieur WIELAND. Monsieur Lawrence, Gentilhomme Anglais, a Bronsvic. SHELLY'S LETTER. Lymouth, Barnstaple, Devon, SIR,-I feel peculiar satisfaction in seizing the opportunity which your politeness places in my power, of expressing to you personally (as I may say) a high acknowledgment of my sense of your talents and principles, which, before I conceived it possible that I should ever know you, I sincerely entertained. Your "Empire of the Nairs," which I read this spring, succeeded in making me a perfect convert to its doctrines. I then retained no doubts of the evils of marriage, Mrs. Wollstonecraft reasons too well for that; but I had been dull enough not to perceive the greatest argument against it, until developed in the "Nairs," viz. prostitution both legal and illegal. I am a young man, not yet of age, and have now been married a year to a woman younger than myself. Love seems inclined to stay in the prison;* and my only reason for putting him in chains, whilst convinced of the unholiness of the act, was, a knowledge that, in the present state of society, if love is not thus villainously treated, she, who is most loved, will be treated worse by å misjudging world. In short, seduction, which term could have no meaning in a rational society, has now a most tremendous one; the fictitious merit attached to chastity has made that a forerunner of the most terrible of ruins, which, in Malabar, would be a pledge of honor and homage. If there is any enormous and desolating crime, of which I should shudder to be accused, it is seduction. I need not say, how much I admire "Love," and little as a British Public seems to appreciate its merit, in never permitting it to emerge from a first edition, it is with satisfaction I find, that justice has conceded abroad what bigotry has denied at home. *NOTE BY EDITOR. This is an allusion to a Poem, by the author of "The Empire of the Nairs," entitled "Love, an Allegory," in which Hymen is introduced as the gaoler of Love. Mr. Shelly's love very soon broke away from this gaoler, Hymen, in confirmation of the more sound social views of the gentleman to whom he was writing. The Poem in question is published with a collection under the title of "The Etonian out of Bounds." + The Poem of "Love, an Allegory."-ED. I shall take the liberty of sending you any little publication I may give to the world. Mrs. S. joins with myself in hoping, if we come to London this winter, we may be favoured with the personal friendship of one whose writings we have learnt to esteem. Your's, very truly, To the Chevalier Lawrence, To the care of Mr. Hookham. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY. AN ESSAY ON THE DOCTRINES OF SPIRITUALISM AND MATERIALISM. And 1 Am left absorbed in the uncertainty, Of one awaken'd, mid' some midnight spell, Unconscious yet, in what society I hold my being." From an unpublished Canto of the Early Life of Somebody. * READER, if thou art a thoughtless, open-mouthed, laughterloving man, turn this page over--it will not suit thee. If thou art of a serious, widely grasping, deeply pondering mind, read on; and I will give thee food for that noble appetite, which, in the digestion of what it receives, leaves no excrement behind. In some vision of the night, hast thou not felt as if thou wert falling from a height into a bottomless abyss, while around thy hurried descent a pitchy darkness which thou didst almost feel seemed closing? In just such a condition is the man who neglects the calls of reason, till at last in the hour of death, when the strongest become weak, and the weakest still more helpless, he dies in all the horrors of an unprepared state; in just such a condition is he, who having reasoned as far as reason possibly can go, plunges into the bottomless gulf of uncertainty and illasion. There are such men as enthusiastic believers, as enthusiastic deists, as enthusiastic atheists. It appears to me that for the most part men believe or disbelieve, precisely for the same reason; namely, because neither of them properly comprehends the object of his search. The cardinal points, however, of all creeds are, Spiritualism and Materialism. As far as possible, I have endeavoured to divest myself of all preconceived notions, that I may fairly judge the claims which these contested points present to the attention of my fellow men. First, I shall treat of Materialism, and challenge your attention to what may be considered an entirely new view of the doctrine of causation. If what I am about to state be not a new view, or if it be an erroneous view, I can only say, that the endeavours |