There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Now to the doctrine of this Article no Christian Dissenter objects. It contains no distinctive or disputed dogma of the Church of England, but a great fundamental truth, in which all denominations of Christians agree. To a subscription to this Article, therefore, none could object, but those who do not profess any belief in Christianity.

The laws of England, as at present understood, refuse even to listen to the evidence of any person, in a court of justice, who is known to be a disbeliever of the Christian faith and impugner of the Holy Scriptures. They even prefer the escape of a criminal, to the risk of receiving the testimony of an Infidel. And they do this, obviously, on no other principle than this, that a religious belief is the only substantial bond of society; and that he who knows no God, will fear no punishment, and be deterred from no crime. It is true the Infidel will reply, that he believes in a God, although not in the God of the Bible. But the founders of our Laws and Constitution have decided, upon the most wise and rational view of the question, that he who refuses the God of the Bible, can have. no other object of worship than a mere fiction of his own corrupt heart and imagination; and that society could have no just reliance on or respect for such an invention.

It may, again, be objected, that this plan would render the law, practically, more strict and exclusive than it has for the last eighty years been. And this, in a certain degree, would be true. Instead of a statute in its nature unjust and impracticable, neutralized by the expedient of another enactment depriving the first of its efficient force, we should have an intelligible and justifiable law, consonant with the tone and spirit of our civil constitution.

In fact, alteration, if it be effected, must bring us nearer to, or remove us farther from, the leading principle of all our institutions. Up to this time we have been, by public profession, a Christian people. If we are to depart from this profession, let us, at least, understand that we are to do so. Let the oath of an Infidel he declared equally good as that of a Christian; and let the preaching of blasphemy be made according to law. If Christianity is to be given up, let us at least act with consistency, and upon an understood principle. But if not-if it is the wish of the Legislature to continue their public

allegiance to the Christian faith-then let them now act upon that desire; and now, while they open office to all Christians, let it be to Christians only.

We know not whether we can have any ground of hope that these views may yet be suggested to the minds of our Legislators; but in sincerity and seriousness we believe them to be the only just ones-the only ones consistent with the integrity of our Constitution and the safety of the State.

Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Character of the late John Mason Good, M.D. By OLINTHUS GREGORY, LL.D. 8vo. pp. 472. London: Fisher. 1828.

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THERE is a pleasure in reading the biography of men of eminence or virtue, similar to that experienced in the contemplation of the decaying grandeur and magnificence of ancient monuments. The difference in the two sensations is, that in the former we look at humanity itself; in the latter, at its types and emblems our spirits in the one holding communion with their kind, in spite of the gulf which parts them; our hearts yearning in the other after some link of union, some gathering sign to our thoughts and memory, and finding them in the sensible records, in the ruined and falling towers on which Time has written the memorials of by-gone greatness. Our feelings, however, in both these instances depend greatly on the accidental circumstances attending the object of our reflections; and, consequently, the biography of eminent men affords a gratificatiou varying in every possible manner, and calling into exercise every principle both of our moral and intellectual nature. As we look with widely different emotions on the ruined cottage, with its broken trellices and neglected garden, to those which occupy us in contemplating the dismantled castle or its grassgrown courts; so is the sensations we feel at reading the memoirs of some plain and simple-hearted man, whose life was distinguished by its quiet usefulness, very different to that which fills our minds while pursuing the story of erring genius, of stern and long-suffering patriotism, or of men whose power and intellect gave a colour and impetus to the times in which they lived. The uses of the several styles of biography which answer to the different emotions it awakens, are also as various; and we are not a little surprised that the subject has been so seldom considered in a philosophical manner. The instruction to be derived from this interesting branch of

literature is uniformly insisted upon; but it seems to have escaped general observation, that the moral lesson to be derived from one piece of biography is not the same which is to be derived from another, and that it loses more than half its usefulness when its separate styles and objects are not clearly understood. It is one among a thousand other stupid practices in vogue among schoolmasters and teachers, to cram together, in a mass, memoirs of all kinds, and consisting of the most heterogeneous materials. With a volume composed in this manner, they think themselves in possession of a good introduction to the knowledge of human nature and its history; and their pupils are filled with an undigested crowd of facts about Alfred the Great and William Penn the Quaker, Joan of Arc and Howard the philanthropist. That any good can come from this, it is impossible to imagine. It is not the knowledge of facts merely that is of use, but the impressions they make upon the mind and heart; and these impressions are of no value but when they are distinct enough to be traced to their proper sources. Let the study of human nature be universal, but let it have its proper divisions and nomenclature. The confusion, however, attendant on this branch of literature is not confined to the class of readers we have mentioned, for it is equally great among others of better taste and more experience; and it is seldom, therefore, that we find it producing the benefit which naturally belongs to the subject.

In biography there is the pith and kernel, and the outward husk; the heart and leaves of a most precious plant. It may be, and certainly is, useful to learn the manners and habits which belong to individuals in particular circumstances; and to collect together the notices of human fortune that may be gathered from private history; but the noblest and most valuable purpose to which the records of existence may be applied is one which can be attained only by a more careful study than is called for in the former instances. The development of our nature may be watched with greater closeness than is commonly imagined; and it is the observation of this development which forms the higher study of biographical readers; and the materials which biography offers for the purpose, the true foundation of its value. Different, therefore, as may be the degrees of pleasure, or the kind of pleasure, we receive from various pieces of biography, while it is studied with a proper regard to this its chief excellence, instruction of the most valuable kind may be gathered from its plainest as well as most brilliant pages. If the diamond be of the same value, of whatever its casket may be made; or if a book may be read with delight; whether its binding be

plain or ornamented the same value ought to be set on the mind of man through whatever outward circumstances it may have to work, and the same interest taken in its study.

While, however, this is the end which reflecting and philosophical minds will propose to themselves in this study, there is a lower one, which others, more desirous of practical improvement than speculative wisdom, will aim at. To these, the great use and pleasure they seek for in biography is the lessons of experience it affords them; the beaten track it makes over the broad plain of human life: and every incident which is recorded, every fact gathered out of the great common stock of human experience, is a valuable addition to the lessons they have learnt from the teachings of their own hearts.

Some useful rules might be derived to biographers from a careful consideration of these various purposes to which their branch of literature is applicable. They would be taught by such an observation to examine the tendencies of their subject to illustrate this or that moral truth, or to be made serviceable to the inculcation of this or that practical lesson; and they would see the value of minute circumstances, which often illustrate a character better than more important ones; and be more skilful in arranging and correcting isolated facts, so as to make them throw light upon the main truths of the narrative. It is not, however, in our opinion, the proper office of the biographer to philosophize upon his subject, or to be too eager in drawing out the moral of each chapter; and whenever a biographer is found doing this, we are inclined to set it down to one or the other of these causes a want of skill in disposing of his materials, an insufficient acquaintance with the object of his memoir, a secret design to inculcate some particular opinion of his own, or a mistaken idea as to the proper method of conveying instruction by this species of composition. For it should be remembered, that, if a biographer inform us of all the particulars with which he would have us suppose him acquainted, he puts his readers into as good a condition for moralizing on the subject as he is in himself; and if he philosophize on impressions he has received from circumstances only known to himself, his philosophy is of no use to the reader, or is, in fact, altogether founded on a shadow. Moral lessons, also, that are derived from the guesses that writers of this class are sometimes fond of making, no more belong to biography, properly considered, than they do to a fable; and the mixture of this vague kind of reasoning with truth, which, as far as it goes, speaks for itself, destroys the really useful and legitimate aim of the composition. Biography, as well as history, is intended, when applied to its

proper practical purposes, to furnish us with the materials of experience; but whether we get our experience from the busy and troubled scenes of the world and our engagements in its turmoil, or find it, like manna, on the fair and sunny field of literature, it must be sought for and gathered by ourselves, and be the treasure of our own earning. The efforts which a biographer makes to shew us the moral of his history, reduces his composition to a flat and uninteresting essay. He has done that which he should have left for the head and heart of his reader to do; he has preached a weak sermon on a text which had already carried conviction to the bosom.

Biographical compositions, therefore, possessing all the essential characteristics of that class of literature to which they belong, and being at the same time free from affectations and excresences, are extremely rare. They require in an author a union of qualities not often found together: a quick apprehension of every moral quality, in its different degrees of strength or weakness; a power of quickly discriminating the various kinds of human character; a talent for narrating facts and displaying the circumstances of human existence in their proper depth and distinctness of light and shade; and, with all these qualities, disposing their possessor to luxuriate in a diffuse moral application, a sufficient knowledge of the proper style of biography to restrain him from every attempt to invade the rights and office of the reader. Without, however, possessing all the qualities we have mentioned as among those necessary to a perfect biographer, a writer of this class may be both useful, and deserving of considerable praise, by attending to the plain and obvious duties of the office he has taken. It is hardly necessary to say, that the first of all is a most strict adherence to truth; and that not merely in respect to facts themselves, but to the manner of stating those facts, so that neither friendship nor prejudice shall have any share in influencing their appearance to the reader. But the one which we are most inclined to insist on as the principal duty of the biographer, after that of strict integrity, is the collecting of every attainable information on the subject of the memoir, and the leaving this information in the hands of the reader, not merely ungarbled by falsehood, but so distinctly presented, and so unmixed with any dictates of the author's judgment, that the student may have, as we have said, to gather instruction from it himself, and be satisfied, when he has gathered it, that it is the proper inference of facts, and not mere opinions. How far the work before us answers to these ideas on biography we shall by and by consider. We shall first, however, endeavour to give our readers an account