The ocean is inexhaustible. It will produce enough to pay for the rail road. Those who feel a sympathy for the fishermen will vote for the rail road, and he turned his back on any other kind of sympathy. He would make the rail road, if it cost $10,000,000. It would cost but $3,000,000, which at 4 per cent. would be but $120,000 interest. It would be worth twenty thousand dollars annually to Marblehead, one sixth of the whole interest. It would help the fisheries every where, and the salt works on Cape Cod.-What, he asked, is better to eat than cod fish? What is healthier? The coal mines of Pennsylvania, the gold of North Carolina sink in comparison with the endless treasures that the Ocean opens to the hardihood and enterprise of Massachusetts. The State should do the whole work. 'He was surprised that Cape Cod had sent so strong a delegation opposed to railways. They feared the coasting trade would be injured: he did not believe it. He thought the benefit to the fisheries would be almost incalculable. Massachusetts now made over two hundred thousand barrels of mackerel. In a few years, with the rail-road, he did not doubt we should make over one million of barrels. The people of Cape Cod need be under no apprehension. They who have lived so long on sand, would not starve. They had the best farms in the State. Their farms were on the mighty deep, and possessed treasures that were inexhaustible.' Quarterly Review-Southey's Colloquies. EVERY thing in this, our world, is given to change. In proof of it, we find the last number of the British Quarterly Review laying off its customary solemn, and rather ponderous character, and becoming gay, sprightly, simple and rather careless and natural in the composition of its articles. We have seen no periodical, for a long time, which contained so many good and amusing articles. The first one is 'Colloquies on the progress and prospects of society,' a work with engravings, in 2 vols. 8vo. by Robert Southey. It is a splendid article, and not much behind that most charming one in the Edinburgh Quarterly, on a life of Burns, from which, in a former number, we gave copious extracts. The writer will never forget the enthusiasm, with which in his young days, he devoured a volume of juvenile poetry, by Robert Southey. He was then a stern republican; was charged with writing in favor of the French revolution, and with regicide feelings, and dispositions disloyal to the throne and the altar. He had, we remember, in that volume a great fondness for German bug-bear and ghost stories, for Vampyre chronicles, and bloody giants, dragging ladies down into their dens, and the like. He seems to have been a believer in the immortality of brutes. Though more than twenty years have elapsed since we have seen the volume, we remember the closing lines of a monody to his dog, couched nearly in the following words: He was then held forth, as a perfect prodigy, in the unexampled facility, with which he made poems, and could pour forth, as Horace says, a thousand verses, ‘stans uno in pede.' He has written an immense amount of poetry and prose, of which, perhaps, the best known work among is, the 'Curse of Kehama.' His Espriella's Letters,' purporting to be the work of a travelling Spaniard, which he made in a tour through England, had a great run, and was one of the wittiest and most sprightly books of travels, we ever read. Even then Southey had his enemies. The loyalists, and the tories affected to hold him very cheap. The author of the 'Pursuits of Literature' laughed at him outright-denounced him as a Jacobin. and pronounced, that he would outlive all his poetry, telling him, from Chaucer, that his rapid verses were 'a rock of ice, and not of steel.' But this writer, notwithstanding the snarling of critics, and the full cry of all the little dogs, that bark at the moon, wrote straight forward, and wrote himself so decidedly into favor with the people, that the high conjuror of the treasury deemed it worth his while, to draw the golden rod of incantation in magic circles before his eyes; and lo! the fierce republican became as fierce a royalist-poet laureat, church-and-state-man, and so forth. Never was more complete metamorphosis. From that time to this, as far as we know, he has never blenched in his conversion, but has been as uniformly, as in the book before us, a thorough going British highchurch-man, and has held throne and altar to be as indissoluble, as soul and body. One noble act of his, change as he may, should never be forgotten. The late Henry Kirke White published a volume of his writings, and published it on inferior paper, and without taking any of the usual methods to have it puffed. The whole pack of critics, from the mastiff to the lap dog, uttered a full cry of denunciation. The poor poet, agonizing with intense and morbid sensitiveness, was internally bleeding to death under the infliction. Southey met the desponding invalid-was interested, enquired into his case, taught him all the author-secrets of getting the wind in his sails, had a new and splendid edition published, and it went with an lo pœan! to a great number of editions, becoming one of the most popular books of the time. An anecdote, by the way, not very favorable to the infallibility of criticism. The review before us turns upon a late work of Southey's, which has been, we are told, much talked of in England. We should judge from the review, that it was a very ingenious and elaborate defence of the throne and altar, as united in England, disguised by a ruse de guerre in a form very well adapted to conceal the directness of the object, and to introduce his views with a great appearance of candor, justice and moderation. We admire the review, as earnestly as we deny and deprecate the doctrine. The almost omnipotence of talent and mind strikes us from every view. So long as the throne and the altar contrive to have writers of such infinite eloquence and ingenuity enlisted for them, so long they may still expect to preserve their union. How few young and ingenuous minds could withstand such delightful eloquence, such kind hearted descant, such mingling of orthodoxy and liberality, such appearance of justice, candor and moderation, such readiness to give all due weight to the opposite opinions! We can easily conceive, how a virtuous, warm hearted, and well trained young republican would be staggered in his estimates of our institutions, as he rose from the perusal of this book. But to the book itself, as presented in the review. It is a book, in the simple language, and full of strength and heart, of the olden time, 'such,' says the reviewer, 'as Evelyn, or Izaac Walton, or Herbert, would have delighted to honor.' Southey takes the name, in a dialogue with the ghost of Sir Thomas More, of Montesinos, a name with which the readers of Don Quixote cannot but be familiar. The ghost proves a judicious ghost; but wears rather a solemn face, and prophecies any thing, rather than 'smooth deceits,' in regard to the prospects of the future age. The dialogue turns upon the present times, compared with those, in which Sir Thomas More lived, and lost his head. The predictions, from the present to the future, are rather in the style of croaking. The surplus money and labor of the age, in those good catholic times, used to go into huge gothic buildings, one of which would swallow up the cost of two or three of our canals. The people, in the catholic times, were called to prayer and to church two or three times a day. Festivals, processions, with the fitting up of most gorgeous shows, crosses, stations, rosaries, pilgrimages, monasteries in the city and the wilderness, continually brought the national religion and the invisible world to view. The review is eloquent in declaiming how all these things are now changed. Then people were called upon to believe every thing, with the simple heartedness of faith; and credo quia impossibile was an evidence of piety. Now we require evidence for every thing, even religion. The first religious controversies were provoked by the publication of the "Harmony" of the gospels. A man would have been thought a proper subject for a mad house, who should have questioned the value and importance of churchmen and a state religion. Southey thinks, however, that then, there must have been numbers of unbelievers and unbelieving ministers in the bosom of the church itself. Now, as every body is called upon to exercise his reason in his faith, and as the party of unbelievers has its standard, there is no longer temptation for concealed unbelievers to remain in the church. There is, of course, more confidence to believe, that those who do remain are honest and sincere. Every body disputes against religion now, who chooses to do so; and this, says the reviewer beautifully, 'is one ground of hope with us, that though the religion of the country is exposed to more storms, than in the days of popery, it is held by a stouter anchor. It was then at peace, the peace of ignorance. It is now at strife; but it has some honest conviction of its worth, as an ally' He then adverts to the dangers of the fierce quarrels of protestants, and quotes very appositely the energetic distich of Horace. Neque Per nostrum patimur scelus 'Nor will our guilt allow the angry Jove to lay aside his thunderbolts.' Southey bears a strong testimony in favor of Wesly; and thinks him to have been a strong instrument in the hand of God for the correction of the times. He is evidently for having religion rather pressed by authority, than argument; and that when ministers preach a great deal about Vol. III.--No. 9. 6 the reasonableness and the evidences of christianity, it is like giving the hearers a stone, when they ask for bread. He judges, that indifference to religion, supineness and profligacy were the characteristics of the past age. They sowed the wind, and their children have reaped the whirlwind. Sir Thomas More rather consents to these views of Montesinos; and insists upon the fact, that in the midst of all the present improvements of the age, it is a monstrous mistake, to inculcate, that there should be no connection between church and state, and affirming, that all society and government which have not this basis, are built upon the sand. Upon this text, the reviewer eloquently expatiates in two or three paragraphs. He descants learnedly, too, upon the injury and contempt brought upon religion by the violent schisms, which, notwithstanding all her boasted unity, we know, have always existed in the Romish, as well as the Protestant church. From Erasmus he quotes the following dialogue, between two Franciscans and mine host of the tavern, with whom these professors of religion put up, after being refused a lodging by the parson of the parish. : "What kind of pastor have you here," quoth one of them to mine host of the Dog and Dish,-"Dumb, Iwarrant, and good for little ?" "What others find him, I know not, I find him a very worthy fellow; here he sits drinking all the day long; and for customers, no man brings me better and now I think of it, I wonder why he is not here." "He was not, however, over civil to us." "You have met with him, then?" "We asked him for a night's lodging, but he bade us begone, as if we had been wolves, and recommended us to try you." "Ha, ha, now I understand; he is not here, because he is aware that you are before him." "Is he a dumb dog?" "Dumb! tut; no man makes more noise in my tap-room -nay, he is loud enough at church, too, though I never heard him preach there. But why waste my words; he has given you proof enough, I fancy, that he is not dumb." "Does he know his Bible ?" "Excellently well, he says, but his knowledge smacks of the confessional; he has it on condition of never letting it go fur. ther." "Probably he would not allow a man to preach for him?" "Yes, I'll answer for it, provided you don't preach at him, as a great many of your cloth have a trick of doing.'" After proceeding to assign not the noblest origin, nor the purest motives to the reformation, he goes on to discuss the causes of the progress of indifference to religion in England, as in the following. It is not, then, in the defects of our church, (which is better fitted to promote true religion than any which has been founded,) but in the temper of the times, that we find cause for apprehension. The deisidaimonia of the Athenians was once the characteristic of England, but it is so no more. How, then, has this change been brought about? How is it that, sprung from forefathers who feared God, and who set him first in every thing, regarding his over-ruling providence as the great engine, after all, by which the destinies of nations are shaped, and endeavoring to promote His ends, whereby they also knew they were most effectually promoting their own-how is it that, sprung from such a stock, we should no longer be the wise and understanding people we were? We answer, as we have in effect answered already, it is come of the gross neglect of providing religious education for the young, and religious accommodation for the adult population. Now this observation, though it applies to the lower classes chiefly, does not apply to them exclusively. No doubt they are the first to be affected by wants of this nature, as by all other wants; but though it may not be easy to trace the progress of contamination through them to the middle and higher ranks, yet certain it is that the process goes on, scrpit contagio vulgi, and the influence of the million upon the character of the gentry and aristocracy (however loath the latter may be to acknowledge it) does eventually discover itself, as the lowest swamp may send up a vapour, that shall obscure the sun in the meridian. It is the interest, therefore, of the superior orders of society to watch over and protect the morals of their inferiors, if it be only in mercy to themselves; a fever is not the only or the worst infection they may catch from the populace. It is not, however, by this reflex action alone that the neglect of religious instruction has worked mischief in the state: it has reached the more influential classes directly, and without any circuitous approach, through a defect in the system of our schools. These eyes of the country (for such they are) have, nevertheless, a mote in them. Let us not be misunderstood.-That the cultivation of sound classical learning may ever flourish amongst us, and those ancient authors of Athens and Rome continue to be the study of our youth, which have been found, upon that best of all tests, the test of experience, to be the most effectual means of correcting the taste and expanding the views, and elevating the aspirations of a boy, this is our hearts' desire. But if religion be a true thing, it must be admitted to be a most important one; and we know not how to reconcile the omission of it to any scheme of education (be the parties concerned rich or poor,) with a hearty belief in its pretensions. Scholars we would have-gentlemen we would have; but we would have christians too; and it cannot, we fear, be denied, that a boy may pass through most of our schools with honour, and yet be wofully ignorant of the evidences, the doctrines, and the spirit of that revelation which those who founded the School, and those who still conduct it, would grieve to think him capable of questioning, as supplying the rule by which his life ought to be regulated, and whereby his soul is to be judged. This, surely, is an anomaly. We want not lads to be made fanatics-we want them not to come home at Christmas with sad faces, and scruples of conscience, and solemnity beyond their years. Let them have their day whilst it lasts 'Gay hope be theirs, by fancy led, Less pleasing when possest; The sun-shine of the breast: Wild wit, invention ever new, All this be theirs--but amidst all the things taught them, let not the one thing needful be the one thing neglected. In the following dialogue there is much worth attention; the more as Mr. Southey speaks from a practical knowledge of his subject.' A long extract of dialogue is then given, as a sample of the book, and a parallel of the reviewer's opinions. The dialogue turns upon a comparison of ancient and modern customs in colleges and schools. The result is that the tendency of every thing in modern times is to deaden the spirit of piety, and eat out the heart of religion. Manufactures, com |