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The Rector in search of a Curate. By a CHURCHMAN. London: Hatchard. 1843. Post 8vo. pp. 381.

PART of our education consisted in a branch of literature now too much neglected, and which lives only in the recollection of such greybeards as ourselves, or in the healthy practice of dame schools; it was the "getting by heart" divers copies of verses. These pleasant poetical prolusions, we own, were of very diversified character; besides crude lumps of Watts and Cowper, some even took the undignified form of anonymous fables and apologues. Treacherous memory has displaced them by sterner, and often less profitable lore; but being addressed, at least in theory, to "the heart," we gladly own that some scanty traces of our youthful accomplishments remain. Of our pleasant confabulations of foxes and geese all traces have departed, save that which usually makes the least impression on the fancy; and contrary to the recognised laws of thought, we have preserved only that dull tag of a fable which youthful moralists usually make it a point of duty not to retain-we mean the sage and unpalatable "moral,” which, from sop to La Fontaine, like the dose of rhubarb, which it is held right by all motherly dieticians to season our juvenile luxuries, points the otherwise too pleasant fiction. The homely couplet runs

"The faults of our neighbours with freedom we blame,

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But tax not ourselves, though we practise the same."

We are reminded of this simple warning by the present state of the Religious Fiction. In the vulgar Low Church periodicals, one staple complaint against "the Tractarians" is, their use of tales of the imagination. "Mr. Paget's last novel," "The Reverend Novelist," Mr. Gresley's Love Tales," are stock rówо of reviling -stereotyped heads of declamation-common-places as stately and crushing as undeniable-useful alike to point a sneer, or to veil an inuendo. And yet, if our memory serves us right, the credit, however questionable, of inventing this class of works, is not quite attributable to the orthodox writers of the Church; but little acquaintance with what one of our contemporaries calls "Popular Religionism," will show that the Lichfield divines found this weapon ready forgedthey are but humble imitators of their present critics. We have forgotten neither "Calebs in search of a Wife;" nor "The Velvet Cushion;" nor "Father Clement;" nor "The Siege of Londonderry;" and other, in every sense of the word, fictions, from the Charlotte Elizabeth scandal-shop. The Oxford writers here, at any rate, can substantiate but flimsy claims to originality; and the work which we are about to notice, shows, that if the "Evangelical" churchmen were not above opening this mine, neither are they prepared to relinquish its useful veins. Disdaining to quit what their organs would wish us to believe a preoccupied stage, they not

only become play-wrights themselves, but steal our plots: they dress our lay figures in their own tinsel, and they not only condescend to be imitators, but plagiarists; and under their rather unscrupulous novel-craft, "Bernard Leslie" is travestied into the "Rector in search of a Curate;" and the Yoricks, if such they be, of Portman-street and Rugeley, must at least admit rivals on their throne, in the facetious jesters of Piccadilly or Fleet-street.

We, at least, can afford to call attention to a fact which other critics find it convenient to suppress; we have not been backward in owning our suspicion, whether mere fiction is a legitimate weapon in the Church's armoury. We own that it is a missile brilliant and effective, but like the Greek fire, it is one which is apt to burn the compounder's fingers; or, like its pyrotechnic substitute, it may amuse women and boys, but it is apt to explode with more sparks than shot. It is too showy and attractive to tell upon a serious contest; it suits Pekin rather than Salamanca; it is more of the fancy than of the heart; it does no execution. But good or badChurch-like or emasculate-sound or trifling-dignified or the reverse ―our adversaries have no right to complain, if-and we own it to be a questionable point-any respected writers who claim and receive our sympathies, if not our more cordial approval, choose to have recourse to it, they are far from standing alone in their tactics; others can imitate as well as abuse them.

The "Rector in search of a Curate," is a novel of the most approved type; it has several nice young men, and nice young ladies to pair off with them; it has the legitimate amount of declarations of attachment; a disappointed swain who never told his love, and a successful rival who did, and consulted papa first, which is pretty, and dutiful, and unusual; it has the prescribed quantum of teaparties and smart dialogues. It has sweet glimpses of evangelical domesticities and charming families. It has the still life of rectorial conservatories, where the curate and the parson's daughter "walk for a few minutes before dinner," p. 160. Moon-light reveries; the damsel's dress, and the Corydon's hair, are duly chronicled; the brother jokes knowingly, and the sisters simper sympathizingly; the mother is prudent, and the father conciliating; the house is furnished, and the fiancée blushes-no; looking again, we think that she is of sterner stuff; the friends of the family congratulate and make presents:"Lo! two weddings smile upon the tale."

The happy pairs retire to their duties, parochial and connubial; and it all ends in smiles and happiness, just like the story-books: the bride's signature to the register is not forgotten; her "firm voice," and "scarcely perceptible tremor," (p. 364,) do credit to the heroine's nerve, though, by an unaccountable gaucherie, her chip bonnet and orange flowers are not described; and while "the ordination" of the selected curate heads the last chapter, lest the tale should terminate in anything like inconvenient and inconsistent solemnity, the new

deacon is "married in the course of the week of his ordination," and "the same cathedral" (!) (p. 381) is the witness of his vows, clerical and hymeneal, which is all, we presume, according to the canons, both of the Church and the Minerva Press, in such cases made and provided. All is decorum and regularity-the unities of the novel are strictly adhered to-justice, doctrinal and poetical, is fairly awarded to the candidates for the curacy and the maiden-and the most fastidious critic cannot complain of a single bold innovation of the laws either of fiction or of the ordinary conventional propriety, amatory or ecclesiastical. The love is not too vehement to allow the lovers to commit matrimony till there is a fair prospect of a fire to boil the domestic pot; and the considerate novelist, by furnishing them with a good living, is charitably disposed not to dismiss his characters to anything short of plenty and happiness, which is the due reward of so rare a combination of piety and prudence. Exeunt omnes, while the stage is strewn with bouquets, and the piece is announced for repetition amid universal applause. All this is quite according to the card; and we have not the slightest objection to it; only we deprecate, for the future, the most delicate sneer at the similar good fortune and prospects of our friend, Mary Clinton, and the apposite paternal cautions of the excellent Warden of Berkingholt.

If we have a fault to find with the artistic effect of the whole performance, we should say that the limner had mixed his colours in treacle; to speak technically, (we adopt the phrase from one of Sir David Wilkie's letters,) they "work too fat;" they are quite viscid; we are absolutely saturated with success and triumph; blinded with excess of light; banqueted, even beyond satiety, on cates and honey: the comfortable arrangement of all the characters at last becomes quite oppressive we are surfeited with virtues: the eyes swim, and the brain reels, and the limbs tremble, at the matchless constellation of graces and prosperity crowded upon one family: their faultlessness really requires relief. Oh, for a single blunder, just to show that even one of the little girls, the very youngest, almost approaches to humanity. But no, the author is merciless in his accumulated triumphs of propriety. The picture is not broken by a single shadow. No friendly fault offers the slightest prospect of a cool retreat from the meridian blaze of perfection. Like Greek illuminations, the very back-ground of the canvass is gilded. Take the following elaboration of "an early tea, which was ready in the library, which formed the drawing-room of the rectory :"

"While the tea-things were being sent away, Mrs. Spencer and her two eldest daughters procured their needle-work, and the younger boy and girl withdrawing to a window, employed themselves with their lessons. The conversation which ensued was not interrupted by any noise from the children, nor by their continually coming forward to ask questions of their mamma and sisters, nor by unnecessary attention paid them by the latter, nor by whispering consultations about cutting out and sewing, nor by movements on tip-toe about the room, nor by searches for needles, reels,

and scissors, nor even by unquiet or impatient looks, and wandering eyes. One would have thought that Mrs. Spencer and her daughters did not possess the faculty to which so many ladies lay claim,-of bestowing deep and continuous attention upon what is read or talked about in their presence, notwithstanding and during numerous little animated discussions upon quite different subjects among themselves."—P. 83.

Now this happy circle is a paragon of domestic right-mindedness. It is like one of Holbein's family groups. The rector, Mr. Spencer, and his wife; the temporary curate and the eldest Miss Spencer, his wife (in prospectu); Mr. Digby, the incumbent of the district church. without a wife; young Mr. Spencer, and the other Miss Spencer; and the two little Spencers in the bow window ;-all quiet, all attentive, all serious, and all discussing justification by faith only. And that happy stroke, the absence of all "impatient looks and wandering eyes," not

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin"

in Ecclesbourne rectory; there is not a single yawn; bed-candles are unsought the cat purrs harmoniously, and

"The flapping of the flame,

And kettle whispering its faint undersong;"

all wrap the soul in one mellow haze of satisfaction and complacency. Should we ever encounter the " Churchman" again, we entreat him, in mercy to his critics, to be less profuse in purple lights and sunny glades; annihilation itself were preferable to endless Arabian festivities; in jewelled halls and brocaded pavilions we sigh for the rough heath and tangled brake; and it may be, that in justice to themselves, his readers will one day retaliate their too delicious wrongs upon their author. Awaking from their voluptuous slumber, they will make him to feel what it is to be thus prisoned in Circean bowers; and, to his cost, this Sybarite of controversy will find that "To die of a rose in aromatic pain"

to be pelted to death with comfits-to be smothered in myrtleleaves to be choked with Sabæan odours-is no joke after all.

And now, should our remarks shift at once from the playful to the critical, should we at one line leap

"From gay to grave, from lively to severe,"

we follow but our author. Amidst his bowers of roses lurks many a thorn and sting of controversy: it may turn, like the nettle, to velvet in his hands; but to the less-experienced, or weaker-nerved, it may irritate, even more than he suspects, or wishes. And now at once to be serious, we will own that, barring the tone of exaggeration, which we have sufficiently laughed at in "the Rector," and some more serious causes of complaint, to be noticed presently, we are not unpleasantly disappointed in this little work. Its faults of structure, the one-sidedness of the arguments, and their very unreal character, as details of what never was, or could be conceivably, said in the defence

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or attack of certain theological views-the undramatic and slender texture of the plot, are venial faults, in which perhaps it is hardly worse than many similar fictions on the other side of the dispute; but we hail it as a very marked and pleasing token of the general advance of Church principles in the ranks of those who still, with whatever unfairness, are pleased to denounce "the Tractarians" as papists and heretics. Of course there is not a little which we are bound to condemn and protest against in this tale; but, with very much of a party purpose, there are also counterbalancing surrenders of the stock dogmas of a narrow and meagre theology, now we trust passing away. There are extorted admissions of the improved tone of thought among the mass of the evangelical clergy on the most weighty subjects; that of baptism, for example; and, which is not so noticeable, though in its measure thankworthy, there are sure indications of vast improvement in ritual matters and other externals in the same quarter. Besides, the present author exhibits a very favourable contrast to many whom we could name in the mere conduct of a controversy. He is rude and unfair beyond all common decency, as we shall presently show; but though he hates "Anglo-Catholicism" with a bitterness all but rabid, he is not a mere party follower of evangelicalism. He candidly owns and deplores its many and serious vices. We believe him to be a lover of the truth, and therefore we cannot but feel some, though lessened, attractions towards him. Earnestness is so rare a virtue in these sad times, that we cheerfully own it, even in an adversary; and for the sake of truth-seeking, even in a rash spirit, we would pardon many sins, and all misconceptions. We may err on the side of charity in refusing to attribute to this writer the charge of wilful slander; but as we are about to produce instances both of what we like and dislike in his book, our readers may settle for themselves its motives. Our own judgment is about equally balanced as to its intentions. We can hardly measure an author's purpose; indeed, our praise and censure must be alike so vehement, that we cannot calculate the preponderance of either, or even trust ourselves to say all that we think; but as the "Rector," &c. is rather quotable than readable, extracts, though of the longest, will form a tolerable index of the better and worse-the more improved, and, alas! the more debased characteristics of one, and at all events an important, phase of the English Church, as well as will afford an estimate of the book itself.

It cannot be denied or concealed, that the so-called Evangelicals are but a disunited party and it is well that it is so for we cheerfully own that, since even as a body they are better than their principles, and since it is only in words that many of them deny the truth, and many of them begin seriously to suspect that there are latent vices in their whole theological system, the best of them will, at no greatly deferred period, be at one with us; and already some have advanced very considerably in the heavenly truth, that a recognition of the high doctrines of grace is best evidenced by viewing the

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