money, or men of genius receive it, without the insolence of patronage on the one part, or the abjectness of flattery and dependence on the other. Burns, brought up among a race of stern bigots, was inclined to vibrate too wide in faith from their revolting creed, and gave himself up to the unsteadiness and gloom of free thinking. He wanted an understanding of his proper gift and function, and directness of purpose. We cannot avoid one quotation more.

'Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness: but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly "respectability." We hope we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer : the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal; and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top to reach the stars! Like Burns, he is only a proud man; might like him have "purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to study the character of Satan;" for Satan also is Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model apparently of his conduct. As in Burns's case too, the celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; both poet and man of the world he must not be; vulgar Ambition will not live kindly with poet Adoration; he cannot serve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy; nay, he is the most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the product of a world; but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, which, erelong, will fill itself with snow!

Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth: they had a message to deliver, which left them no rest till it was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest lay smouldering within them; for they knew not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation, and they had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the camp of the Unconverted. Yet not as high messengers of rigorour though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers, and in pleasant fellowship will they live there: they are at first adulated, then persecuted; they accom. plish little for others; they find no peace for themselves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we view the fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history-twice told us in our own time! Surely to men of like genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of deep impressive significance. Surely it would become such a man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. For the words of Milton are true in all times, and were never truer than in this: "He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole life a heroic poem."'

"With our readers in general, with men of right feeling any where, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration, he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves; this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye: For this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines!'

We remark, in conclusion, of this most splendid composition, from which we have so liberally quoted, that the writer, in the spirit and fire of his Pegasus, has trespassed two or three false and redundant and overglaring paragraphs, which are spots in this review. Of this the last paragraph, but one, is a striking example.

ROBERT OWEN'S Opening Speech, and his reply to the Rev. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL in the recent public discussion in Cincinnati, to prove, that the principles of all religion are erroneous, &c. establishing a new political and moral system of government, founded on the laws of nature. Cincinnati. Published for Robert Owen. 1829. pp 226.

THE general intentions of this book may be gathered from the title. Its avowed objects will be best explained by the dedication.

'Dedicated to the Governments who desire to relieve the governed from the evils proceeding from the misdirection of mechanical inventions;—by forming ar rangements to give the rising generation a superior character from birth, and to render them, by a right direction of their physical and mental capacities, secure, without national or individual contest, in the enjoyment of the necessaries and luxuries of life, requisite for their progressive improvement and happiness.'

It is our painful duty to feel compelled to review this book; we say pain-. ful, because the calm decision of reason, philosophy, and impartial justice will not satisfy that large and very powerful portion of the communityself called orthodox, who denounce this book and its author, not because they know any thing about the system, except from mere vulgar rumor, but because it is their function to denounce and condemn, in toto, and by the wholesale, not remembering, or if remembering, not allowing, that truth is simple, incorruptible, eternal-that a truth found in Mr. Owen's book is not the less a truth, because in company with dangerous and fatal errors-and that the purity and incorruptibility and importance of the truth is no way stained, or diminished, or deprived of its value and natural tendency by the company in which it is found. It is far the more painful, because truth and duty compel us to enter our strongest and most solemn protest against the leading principles of the book, while the same

obligation and independence equally compel us to declare that there are in our view, many important and useful thoughts incidentally brought to light in the 'social system,' which Christians would do well to ponder and learn from an enemy, and which are neither the less true, nor the less important, because they are advocated by an atheist. It is still further painful, because circumstances' as Mr. Owen would say, have compelled us to an acquaintance of intimacy with the author; and while the highest obligations, by which a man is bound to his country and his kind, compel us to hold up to the strongest light the desolating and horrible results, which, we are clear, would flow from the adoption of the system, we owe it to all our feelings to declare that so far as regarded his intercourse with us, we were never acquainted with a more amiable man, than Mr. Owen, the atheist and author of this book. We leave it to others to explain how this can be. No one will need to be informed, how uniformly painful it is to a virtuous mind, to feel a paramount obligation to expose the folly, weakness and fatal tendency of a system, while we entertain personal feelings of kindness and good will to the author. Under these circumstances we are placed, in reference to the book before us, and its author. Disregarding every other consideration, than our most matured and deepest impressions of duty, that have arisen in our mind from a very attentive reading of the book, we shall present those impressions faithfully, and shall allow the consequences of so speaking to take care of themselves. We have heard so many opinions, touching the book and the author, and withal so entirely variant and contradictory, that we should be obliged after all, thus to speak; because we challenge any one, who has heard, and read, and seen, as we have, in reference to this thing, to make up any judgment founded on the testimony and opinions of others. Some Europeans, recently from the other side of the water, will tell you, that the system is gaining ground in Europe, and that the author has a high and growing estimation; and others, that the system and the author have so totally ceased to interest the great community, that they think not enough upon the subject to make it matter of interest, conversation, refutation, contempt or even ridicule. Equally opposite views are taken of the sincerity, good sense, and even veracity of the author. Not to go over the sea for proofs of this diametrically opposite portrait of the same man, you may obtain alternately the one and the other, in almost every two persons, who shall visit you from New Harmony.

In like manner they will pronounce him a profound philosopher, or a man of mere common endowment, a man of most agreeable person and manners, or odious and disagreeable, just as their opinions of the system happen to be. For us, circumstances, which took place during the discussion, left no doubt on our mind, that his intellect was originally one of great natural shrewdness and power. It is true, he professed not to be ready at extemporaneous speaking and discussion, always claiming the privilege of reading from his notes, and frequently stating, that his ideas were slow in flowing, that he had not been trained, like his antagonist, to readiness and fluency. The happiest of his sallies during the debate, appeared to have been shook out of him by the unceremonious handling of his adversary; and we consider him one of those men, who would have said more good things, during the debate, if not a word had been premeditated, and he had had the

plenary confidence of his antagonist, to talk on, according, as the sparks were struck out of him by the collision of his adversary. Infinitely the most felicitous thing which was said, during the debate, and with which the public is sufficiently acquainted, was his admirable retort, when charged with having publicly declared, that Cincinnati would be unpeopled in three years.

We consider him to have possessed, originally, talents of superior endowment, of quickness and keenness of penetration, and more than all, an admirable grasp of tact to measure the intellect, temperament and charac ter of the persons, with whom he is brought in contact. In other words, we consider him to have quick and profound views of character, or knowledge of human nature, not as it is in the mass, but as it is in the persons with whom he is brought in contact. He acknowledges, what every reader of disernment will see in this book, that he is no trained scholar, that he is unacquainted with the scholastic mysteries, and even with any other grammatical knowledge of his own language, than what results from having read, and conversed much; mixing much in the best society, and having been brought of necessity in contact with the most powerful minds.

With this knowledge of him, every judicious reader, instead of being offended with the uncouth moulding of many of his sentences, and the half formed and out of the way mode of his expressing many of his thoughts, will rather be astonished, that a man, so trained, could express them so well; that he so seldom commits grammatical or rhetorical errors, and that he generally writes English with so much simplicity and purity. He has a quaint and original way of expressing himself, which pleases from its freshness and artlessness. Occasionally he expresses a thought with singular brevity and force, and we shall have occasion to remark, in his journal of his voyage to Mexico, that two or three times, he evidences, that he possesses a mind keenly susceptible of feelings of sublimity and pleasure from the grandeur and beauty of nature. It is true, his mind is so theroughly imbued with his system, he has said, travelled, done and suffered so much for it, and has fostered it so long with his money, and has dandled this dear infant so long at his bosom and on his knees, and notwithstanding all his philosophic disclaimers of expectation or desire of posthumous fame, so earnestly, and perhaps, unconsciously expects to leave this heir behind him, as a perpetual memorial of the founder of the social system, that he dwells upon the subject to repetition. Like the far famed individual, my Lord Timothy Dexter, who in his original book, the pickle for knowing ones,' signed his name at the bottom of every page, through fear, that the reader would lose sight of the remembrance and the glory of the writer, if it were not thus frequently forced before his eye, Mr. Owen cannot long refuse his reader the repetition of the luxury of the twelve fundamental laws. Of course, they are repeated twice in this book, and are served up to you, after the fashion of the variations of a tune on the piano, many times more. It is the more unnecessary, therefore, for us to repeat them as one, or two of them involve all the rest, which flow from the admission of these first principles necessarily, and too obviously and easily, to require, that they should be made out, as distinct laws. The superstructure of the social system rests, as it seems to us, in Mr. Owen's view of it, upon two points. 1st. What has been called fatalism-the doctrine

of pure philosophical necessity, or, as he has chosen to present it, the necessity of circumstances.' 2d. Pure, simple, unqualified atheism. Perhaps we ought to class with these two, a third dogma, which requires sen⚫ sible, or mathematical evidence, or a certainty near to these, in order to produce those convictions, which ought to regulate our conduct. It will be seen, that this maxim goes almost to the demolition of what is called moral, or historical evidence, or testimony. When any fact is declared in history, or on testimony, that cannot be demonstrated to be true, it will be manifest, that on this system, it will be found to be contradicted by some one of the twelve fundamental laws, and will be therefore discarded. The git-the grand point of this whole school seems to be, to insist most rigidly upon such evidence for all matters of belief, as will exclude the possibility of doubt, or of entertaining more than one opinion. Such, the reader will remember, is the grand argument of Volney against Christianity in his 'Ruins.'

As to his first point, fatalism, in which all his twelve fundamental laws are virtually included, we do not propose at all to discuss the question of its truth or falsehood. The reader knows, it is one of the most beaten subjects, that ever was handled; and being a subject of dispute, involving only words without ideas, not only never can be settled, but if it could be, would not have the slightest conceivable bearing upon human interest or conduct. The only fruit, that has resulted from the argument is a general concession on all hands, that men must continue to act, under the admission of the doctrine of fatalism, just as they do under that of free will. The reader will go back, in recollecting the disputants upon this question, to the times of Zeno, who held to the doctrine of a pure, simple fate, in fact the controlling principle of the universe. In the Christian school it has been the grand doctrine of the advocates of decrees, or the principle, that the divine foreknowledge excludes contingency. Calvin has been the most renowned advocate of this system in modern times; and in America, Edwards is unquestionably the most acute author upon the subject, that ever has written. Emmons and Hopkins have produced a new school on the same general basis of fate; and very many learned American divines have hammered hard upon the cushion to work this unmalleable substance into the form and comeliness of edifying sermons. Many a good Christian has had most profound and refreshing sleep, while the pithy point was in discussion from the pulpit, how man could be free to act, when every action was unchangeably fixed from all eternity-the wit of this most sapient logic, generally consisting in the ultimate assertion, that so long as men feel not this invincible necessity of the divine decrees operating upon their motives, so long it was to them, as though it had not been.Strange, that these same men should be the first to regard Mr. Owen's ⚫general tenets with so much horror, when the prominent tenet of his sect and theirs a nounts precisely to the same thing, the whole difference being in terms. Mr. Owen's fatalism is that of circumstances.' The mind, according to it, has no free will, but receives all its impulses from abroad; having no more of self-motion than matter. The supreme power, which it will be observed in his book, he denominates it, instead of He, is anterior to this chain of circumstances, which controls every thing in our world. He has at length been made to see the folly of travelling up and