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the cup of passion. It is then we read, not separable parts, scanned with critical judgment, but the whole long work, devoured with unrepressed avidity. We desire to be carried on, days and nights, in the car of the enchanter, quite careless by what enchantment it is moving. We rather feel the passion which the melody is breathing, than listen to the cadence of the music itself. A happy time! which, like youth itself, never comes but once. In age, we return to poetry in order to embody, in adequate and perfect expression, feelings now made familiar to us by experience. We wish again to smooth, in the music of verse, the ruffled and distracted sentiment. We care not to be transported beyond the bounds of a known and tried reality, and sympathize little with ideal and imaginary conditions of the human heart; or, if we seek these wilder transports, we seek them as the ecstasies of our former days,-as the revived delight of a past existence. Our youth is with us as we read, and mingles one amongst the visions of the poet. Where we first learned to feel,to more than to live, we again revive an ardent sympathy with the various passions of mankind, which helps to ward off the torpor and contraction of old age.

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'O deem not, midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the poet brings!'

Even in manhood itself, amongst its severest labours and sternest cares, many a breeze from Araby the blest' comes freshening over our path. Paradise is not lost utterly while it remains in the poetry of Milton. And many a mind of far less power than Milton's may throw a momentary grace upon the scene of life, sufficient to conceal or obliterate its lesser troubles and afflictions. Amongst these the writer whose works we have attempted to estimate may fairly be placed; and who shall say that the sentiment of hope, the dearest to the heart of man, may not have gained one avenue the more from the language in which the poet has invested it?

ART. V.-The Church and Dissent considered in their Practical Influence. By Edward Osler, Surgeon to the Swansea House of Industry. London. 12mo. 1836.

WE

HILST the matter is still in abeyance, we are anxious to say a very few words on the subject of church-rates, with the simple view of putting our lay readers, and through them the public at large, rather more in possession of that question. We are encouraged to hope that such an attempt may not be altogether fruitless, by observing that many popular hallucinations have been

abated

abated of late by the gentle operation of time, which has allowed a nearer investigation of things, so that matters which at first sight were the easiest in the world to dispatch (for qui pauca considerat facile pronunciat), were found on approaching them more intricate than had been supposed. When one of our enterprising northern voyagers looked on one occasion from the mast-head, he saw, as he thought, his way smooth over the snow to the Pole; yet on actual experiment, the surface which seemed so level at a distance, proved to be a succession of chasms and ridges, presenting obstacles the most formidable at every step.

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We know not what Ministers may propose to do on a subject into which, we must be allowed to say, they rushed, as Baxter would express it, with the shell upon their heads.' However, if they are to make any change at all, there are but two ways of proceeding open to them: either to uphold the churches still out of the national purse, but by some other mode than church-rates; or to leave it to their respective congregations to uphold them for themselves. If the first plan be adopted, and the repairs be charged on the consolidated fund, for instance, where is the relief to the dissenter? for the principle by which he is made, indirectly to be sure, but still substantially, to contribute to the maintenance of a building which he never enters, is just in as full force under this system as under the system of rates; and it is the principle of the payment, if we understand it right, to which the dissenter objects, and not to the amount. And yet it seems singular that whilst he sees so much to reprobate in the principle which makes one man minister to the support of another man's creed, he should, nevertheless, accept on his own part the regium donum, a provision for poor preachers of the three denominations voted out of the national purse; and which, it appears, from the discussion in parliament towards the close of the last session, he is not willing to relinquish. True it is that the sum is small-a four or five thousand pounds matter-but the principle is not the less objectionable on that account; for we presume that he would shrink from sheltering himself under the argument of the frail girl, That her child though it was, it was a little one.' The dissenter in his new Marriage Act does not abstain from drawing upon the churchman's purse for the support of his registrar, he being clerk of a union, though he must be well aware that so far as that functionary is employed in celebrating a marriage, he is employed in doing a gross violence to the conscience of every churchman who pays him his salary; and who differs from the dissenter in holding marriage to be a holy rite, and not to be made over to unconsecrated hands. Surely it would be as well that the dissenter should not decry a principle when it happens to work for the church, and

hail it when it happens to work for the chapel, lest he should expose himself to misinterpretation, and give room for the surmise that his scruples are not so disinterested as they profess to be. The principle, however, to which the dissenters object thus inconsistently, is one of vast importance to maintain, and the pertinacity with which it is impugned by parties hostile to all our institutions shows that they think it so. Indeed, the principle lies at the root of all government, for it is merely this, that the minority shall give way. And if the contrary be contended for in our religious relations, why should it not be in our civil? One man may think it hard to support a church when he dissents from its doctrines; another, to support an army or navy when he objects to the profession of arms; a third, to support a police, when he repudiates such abridgment of the liberty of the subject. Now, if all these objections are to be allowed—and why should they not, if all men's alleged scruples are to be listened to?-all government is dissolved; for the nation must split into sections, according to corresponding divisions of opinion; and as opinion is infinitely divisible, those sections must split again; till at last each individual must do what seems right in his own sight; and then the principle has worked itself out, and the decomposition of the social system is complete.

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It may be replied that in the cases we have supposed, the parties objecting do, in spite of themselves, reap the benefits of the institutions against which they protest, by their reflex operation for good upon themselves, their property, their comforts, or their lives;that though they resent an army, yet, there being an army in spite of them, no foreign foe lays waste their fields; or a police, yet, there being a police, no robber breaks open their doors; and that thus they receive ample interest for what they contribute towards these wants of the state, having nothing to complain of, save that (as King Lear's fool says) they get a blessing against their will.' The same answer may be made to those who resist church-rates : they too have their full equivalent,' to use the nervous language of Archdeacon Bather, in one of his admirable charges, in having a better land to live in; the purification, through the Gospel, of the moral atmosphere in which they breathe being worth more than any man has to pay for it.' Or, as the great anti-puritan divine puts it If there were not a minister in every parish, you would quickly find cause to increase the number of constables; and if the churches were not employed to be places to hear God's law, there would be need of them to be prisons for the breakers of the laws of men.' Nay more- Dissent,' says Mr. Osler, in the little work of which the title heads our paper, and which we hope to make thus more generally known, Dissent is a fluctuating creed, and seldom continues in a family beyond the third generation.

generation. Without, therefore, alluding to the powerful influence which an orthodox and pervading religious establishment exerts upon every man, the Church is the source whence the individual dissenter received, either directly in his youth, or through his immediate forefathers, that religious knowledge which, when he became a separatist, made him a dissenter instead of an infidel: and however unwelcome the truth to his present feelings, he may conclude, from all the experience of society, that his own descendants will worship in the Church, and that, perhaps, even in his lifetime. Add to this, that the Church offers to himself security, that if the changes to which every Meeting is liable should destroy that which he attends, or compel him to leave it; or if he should remove into the country, or to a distant part of the kingdom, he will be sure to find a place where God is worshipped according to the truth of the Bible. In as far, therefore, as every man is interested in the source whence he derived the good he enjoys, in the welfare of his children, and in the contingent probabilities of his own life, every dissenter is interested in supporting the Church of England.'

Nor is this all that can be said in defence of the principle of church-rates. So long as you have national church-rates, you have a national church establishment properly so called. Rates are a sort of pepper-corn rent (for they are little more) paid by the people in testimony that the people has an interest in its services. Accordingly, the nation at large, without any reference to distinction of creed, does benefit in other ways besides those we have named, in having a body of functionaries in the country on whom society can devolve a number of offices which they are peculiarly qualified to fill; some springing out of laws and regulations which Courts call for at the hands of the legislature; and some out of laws and regulations which private societies adopt for themselves. It is a great public convenience, independently of the question of religious instruction, to have in a nation a body of individuals of the station, class, and character of the clergy-safe men upon the whole to trust; intelligent from their education; pledged to good behaviour from their profession; known in their several districts from their functions; at hand from the necessity of fixed residence; universal in their presence from the parochial divisions to which they are severally attached, and so covering every nook where it is wanted that a law or a regulation, public or private, shall penetrate. And accordingly it is difficult to frame an act of parliament for any im provement whatever in our internal economy, without some appeal or other in it to the services of the clergy; services which they never undertook to discharge, but which, when required of them,

they

they discharge cheerfully, under a feeling that whilst the nation, without any distinction of creed, maintains a Church Establishment of which they are the ministers, they owe to the nation, without any distinction of creed, whatever services their favourable position in society enables them to afford. Thus, if the government is called upon to meet any emergency, any national visitation or distress, the clergy are the organs of which it avails itself to act upon the prudence, the energies, the benevolence of the people. If the government has occasion to ascertain the life, the identity, the character, the conduct of persons who have claims upon it, say soldiers or sailors, it resorts to the clergy for its information as the readiest and most trustworthy it can procure. If the government has need of any statistical details, such as may conduce to the public welfare, the clergy are the quarter to which it chiefly looks for satisfactory intelligence. If, again, in private life, friendly societies have need of certificates of the bona fide sickness of their members on their application for relief, the signature of the clergyman is that they insist on. If the soldier or sailor has any communication on his part to make to the War-office or the Admiralty, it is to the clergyman that he repairs for assistance and advice. If a poor man falls under any family disaster, his limb broken, his pig dead, it is to the clergyman that he goes for a testimony to the truth of his tale and the fairness of his fame, and that testimony secures to him the help of the district in which he lives. If the thrifty cottager wants his little earnings deposited in the savings-bank, to the clergyman he confides it, to negotiate the matter for him. If he desires to have his frugal will made, that the nothing he possesses may be secured to the parties whom he loves best, it is the clergyman that he solicits to draw it out. These are but a mere sample, medio ex acervo, of the little services of a hundred kinds which the clergyman renders to the country at large, as a free gift, quite independently of his ministerial duties, and without any reference whatever to creed, sect, or sentiment. So that none but the clergy themselves, or those who happen to be under their roof for a season, and witness the numberless calls of this sort that are made on them, know how very large a portion of their time is occupied in such vocations as these; and none but they, whilst they are so engaged, can feel the full injustice of the hard measure which is dealt out to them in these days by that very public for whose welfare they are spending themselves in unostentatious but most effectual toil. Yet their capacity to do all this, and the justice of expecting it at their hands, arise entirely and altogether out of their being ministers of a national church; and sure we are that such good offices to the nation at large are far more than a set-off against the pay

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