such colours as our readers are by this time quite familiar with; nor can there be any need for our transcribing the account of the manner in which her sons and step-son were trained to spend their Sunday, nor the edifying hymns which they were doomed to learn. Knowing the limited stock-intrade of such writers, in the article of religious character, our readers will now be able to supply all that with perfect accuracy; and they will of course understand, that the character of this female saint would have been quite incomplete, unless she had been drawn as the unrelenting persecutor of her step-son-partly for having amused himself on Sunday, as a boy, and partly for the unpardonable offence of having wished to marry a French Papist, as a young man.

We have given a pretty copious transcript of these "religious characters;" but we are unable to give our readers an adequate notion of how the impression is commonly conveyed, that these are the usual, indeed the only sort of characters, that constitute what is called "the religious world." There is not the slightest intimation (if we except one or two saving clauses in Alton Locke) that anything purer or nobler than such characters is to be found in connection with a profession of evangelical religion; no hint is given that the thing delineated is merely the cant with which hypocrites have aped it, or the extravagance with which fanatics have inflated or distorted it. If we found, on the foreground of every such picture, specimens of earnest religion in its better and more winning aspects, of religion associated with a cultivated mind and a warm, affectionate heart-such specimens as every evangelical community can furnish,-then, so far from complaining of ridicule being cast on the more noisy, vulgar, and conceited members of the religious community, we would regard such wholesome exposure as a real service. The purest community has its illiterate, coarse-minded, low-toned men, who are ready to make themselves prominent on all occasions, and whose rude, boisterous, unmannerly spirit is apt to be ascribed, by the indiscriminating, to the whole society that has the misfor tune to own them. The race of polemics is not extinct, of whom Foster says, that they seem to value the arguments for evangelical truth as the assassin values his dagger, and for the same reason. A judicious and effective hit at such characters would be entitled to the gratitude of all pure-minded and pure-mannered men. Nay, we would be thankful to any graphic and effective writer, who should bring a wholesome ridicule to bear on the undeniable vulgarity of some ministers, and the glaring absurdities of some well-meaning fools, but in such a way as neither to ignore the virtues and graces of others,

nor to involve religion itself in the ridicule. But it is not in such books as are now under consideration that such service will be found to be rendered.

The truth is, and we write it with unfeigned sorrow, there are plain traces of most of these works being constructed on the theory of connecting with a profession of religion every feature of character that is distasteful and repulsive in the eyes of honourable men of the world; and on the other hand, associating all that is lovely and of good report with the absence of such profession. Let any man consider what are the virtues which commend themselves most to men of the world— he will be pretty sure to find that the religious characters in novels are drawn with the opposite vices, and that characters that are not designed to be religious are conspicuous for these graces. In the female character, no graces are more esteemed than gentleness and attention to domestic duty; hence the Mrs Snagsbys, Jellybys, and Pardiggles are rough and boisterous, and utterly careless of home; while Esther Summerson, and other pure creatures, who scarcely require religion, because they could never have the slightest difficulty in getting to heaven by their own native goodness, are patterns of every feminine grace. We may remark, by the way, that it is no compliment to the fair sex, that in works in which the profession of religion is ridiculed, there is usually so large a proportion of female characters-as if the authors found it more easy and natural to engraft their absurdities upon them, than upon the rougher sex. Again, in the judgment of worldly men, humanity and benevolence hold a very high place in the scale of virtues, insomuch that, as Foster remarks, Christ's instructions on these points have been commonly adopted by irreligious men, and even have improved infidels themselves. Hence it is a rule to represent religious persons with cold and even cruel hearts, while all the specimens of a warm, genial, and sunny nature are drawn from the ranks of the world. We have already remarked on the rule by which greed, meanness, cowardice, and other dastardly vices are commonly made to centre in the character of the dissenting minister. In those cases in which an attempt is made to unfold the peculiar views of religious men, great prominence is assigned to doctrines which are peculiarly repulsive to the worldly heart. Dickens scarcely enters this field, and Thackeray barely touches it-both, we apprehend, for a very good reason, because, from their ignorance of religious men, they know little or nothing of their characteristic views. Thackeray has a thrust at their strict views on the Sabbath-a standing butt for the gibes of the enemies of the truth in every form; but Thackeray blunders egregiously when he represents Mrs Newcome's head-gardener

as a "Scotch Calvinist, after the strictest order, only occupying himself with the melons and pines provisionally, and until the end of the world, which event he could prove by infallible calculations was to come off in two or three years at furthest." Had he known anything of Scotch Calvinism, he would have understood that calculations about the end of the world have nothing to do with it, and that the religious views of Scotchmen very rarely develop into such extravagance. In Alton Locke there is more attempt at stating doctrinal views; and there certainly we find abundant verification of our remark, that the doctrines which are most prominently exhibited, are those most distasteful to the worldly heart. The awful subject of God's eternal decrees is there approached with most culpable levity; under the name of Calvinism, a false and odious representation is given of the moral bearings of Calvinistic doctrine, which real Calvinists themselves would be the first to disown; and the subject is exhibited in such a light as could not fail to disgust every one with Calvinism, who had not the means of knowing the glaring unfairness of the representation.

Before trying to estimate the moral results of those works of fiction, in which all the ugly vices are attached to the character of professors of religion, and all the attractive graces to that of people of the world, we shall first quote the remarks of the celebrated Robert Hall, on the tendency of the works of Miss Edgeworth. "In point of tendency," he says, "I should class her writings among the most irreligious I ever read. Not from any desire she evinces to, do mischief, or to unsettle the mind, like some of the insidious infidels of the last century; not so much from any direct attack she makes upon religion, as from a universal and studied omission of the subject. In her writings a very high strain of morality is assumed; she delineates the most virtuous characters, and represents them in the most affecting circumstances of life-in sickness, in distress, even in the immediate prospect of eternity, and finally sends them off the stage with their virtue unsullied; and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only true religion. Thus she does not attack religion, or inveigh against it, but makes it appear unnecessary, by exhibiting perfect virtue without it. No works ever produced so bad an effect on my own mind as hers. I did not expect any irreligion there; I was off my guard; their moral character beguiled me; I read volume after volume with eagerness, and the evil effect of them I experienced for weeks."

In one respect the writings of Dickens and Thackeray differ from Miss Edgeworth's; in another they agree. They differ in so far as they do not avoid attacks upon professors of reli

gion, they do not throw the reader off his guard; while they agree in representing a very high degree of virtue as attainable without religion, or without any thing that can be identified with the religion of the Bible. Dickens, in particular, does not scruple to represent that warm benevolence, which is always the cardinal virtue in his eyes, in union with habits which are utterly inconsistent with true religionsuch as that of taking God's holy name in vain. Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House is the best and kindest man on earth; his heart is a hidden fountain of unnumbered deeds of kindnessa treasury of the purest and warmest feelings that ever sweetened the breath of society, or alleviated the sufferings of the unfortunate. Yet this model of benevolence does not scruple to interlard his ordinary talk with the names of the Supreme Being, not of course after the vile fashion of the infuriated swearer, but in mere levity, and in such a pleasant spirit as almost to make the vice seem innocent. Now, we regard this as a most important fact, and most useful in guiding us to a sound judgment of the moral tendency of the writings of Mr Dickens. To do him justice, we believe that he writes with a sincere desire to promote the cause of benevolence. Shrinking constitutionally from the sight of misery, he is most anxious to alleviate it; he cannot bear hard-hearted people; and he hopes, and doubtless expects, by drawing pleasing pictures of benevolence, by surrounding the kind-hearted man's home with the brightest and purest halo, and making every thing about him attractive and cheerful, to induce many of his readers to become models of benevolence too. But the fact to which we have adverted makes it apparent that the benevolence in question does not require for its basis that supreme reverence for the character of God, and that careful submission to all His laws, which would, at the very least, secure a decent observance of the third commandment. aim of Mr Dickens is simply to vivify the benevolent instinct in the human breast; to bring into play the feeling that is pained by the contemplation of visible suffering, and give it a useful practical direction. He takes for granted that there is such an instinct in every bosom, but that in many it has become dormant or languid; he prescribes a series of galvanic shocks to rouse it; and he fancies that along the electric wires that stretch from Bouverie Street to the remotest corners of the kingdom, the monthly numbers of Bleak House may communicate the needed impulse. Alas! he reckons without his host. He has not yet learned the sad extent of that derangement which the human heart has undergone, nor does he see that to restore it, there is need of remedies far more powerful than any that are dreamt of in his philosophy. He does not take

The

into account, how terribly, in the great majority of cases, the thick folds of selfishness envelope and encrust the heart, and how vain and visionary is the expectation, that either a sad picture of misery, or a bright picture of benevolence, can ordinarily effect a revolution there; or, shouldering aside a host of brawny fellows, like Avarice and Pride, and a host of heavy fellows, like Sloth and Self-indulgence, raise active Benevolence to the throne. Most certainly, it is not so easy a matter to reduce the dislocations of the human heart. There is need of all the strongest influences that can be brought to bear upon it; and above all, there is need of the steady and earnest contemplation of the Divine character, in the affecting light of His Son's atoning death,-and of all the motives that can be drawn from the sense of His undeserved, yet unmeasured compassion, of the eternal misery from which He delivers, and the boundless bliss to which He exalts,-there is need of all such considerations, made influential and permanent by the living Spirit of God, to enthrone Love in the heart of man, and make him,-whatever be his natural disposition, a friend to the friendless, one who is unwearied in well-doing.

It really can hardly need to be demonstrated that the benevolence which is affected only by visible suffering, and aims only at relieving it, must be a very feeble and feckless thing. In the first place, it will be more apt to concern itself with the disease than with its cause-with the outward sores, than with the hidden poison that produced them. It will be apt to regard suffering more as a misfortune, than as a fruit of sin, -as a distressing result of the disordered condition of the physical laws which affect human well-being, and scarcely in any degree the fruit of agencies which imply guilt or moral evil on the part of the sufferer. Taking this exclusively physical view of the sufferings of the poor, it will content itself with prescribing mere physical remedies. It will demand clean water and better air, houses more adapted for human habitations, open parks, half-holidays, and public baths, and with these it will engage to purify society. Once for all, let us remark, that we are the strenuous advocates of all these things in their proper place; and were we to drop the anonymous guise, we could point to substantial facts that prove that this no empty assertion. But what can be the result of mere physical ameliorations, without the application of a cure to the moral evil? In vain "ye make clean the outside of the eup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness." Further, it is plain, that the emotion roused by the sight of mere temporal suffering, must be far inferior in strength to that which is produced, when, in addition to compassion for the state of the body, there is also deep pity