He shows first that we are in a state of transition; namely, from working largely for ourselves and for the world in manufactures and in commerce, to taking our places as one of many nations similarly engaged. He next thinks, that on such changes proving inevitable, they should be met by government by counteracting remedies. He in the third place contrasts the value of agriculture with pasture, and both with commerce as national pursuits, and shows, apparently from calculations in figures, that the gains of agriculture, as compared with those of exportable manufactures, are as five or six hundred millions to fifty or sixty! Descending to the unhappiness of the labourers, agricultural and commercial, he thinks, as to the first, that it proceeds in England and Ireland at least (for in Scotland it seems to be unknown), 'from considering those interests first that should be considered last, and not considering at all those interests that should be considered first, namely, those of the labourer. Yet this' he continues, is the natural order;' and by tracing the history of landlords he shows that it was the original order.

Assuming as the corner-stone of his edifice that,

'Landlords and those who form the people's minds

Are the real rulers of the greatest states;'

he next proceeds to show how and wherefore both landlords and churchmen should be dealt with, and from the state of Scotland how they are dealt with, and with what good effects. He shows the necessity and propriety of rendering leases to tenants in land universal and imperative. He considers landlords as both originally and now 'governors of provinces ;' and that in that character they are, and they ought to be, responsible for the due management of their provinces; that if they govern well, the rural portion of the kingdom is well governed, and if they govern ill, the general government is powerless, and that consequently they ought in all things to govern by fixed and approved laws as well as in subjection to the general laws: that for landlords to govern without leases to their tenants, is to govern without written laws, to be wholly arbirtary; and that if they may so govern, and govern ill, and yet be irresponsible, then landlords are the real rulers of this country, and not the sovereign or the laws. They are also irresponsible rulers, and may at their pleasure exterminate the people ostensibly living under the laws, or at their pleasure tax and pillage them for their individual advantage, to the ruin of the comforts of the people and of the best interests of the state and we see that this state of things really exists, but in the opinion of this author it should not for an hour.

His opinions as to the Church are equally clear and decisive:

'What is the church establishment but this

A mere establishment to teach the state,
It has no other aim, no other use.'

And he holds that

The priest being, as he is, a public man

Should answer to the state, which at this day

Is what the church was when the church began,

For every slightly taught, or wrong instructed man.'

In a perfectly temperate, yet strong, and as it were etymological deduction of the ceremonies and policy of the church of Rome, he shows the almost incredible silliness of those particular rites for which Rome has so long and shamelessly (not to say childishly) contended. What do our readers think is the mass, the most solemn ceremony, derived from? From massa, a cake offered to the goddess of the seasons in pagan Rome!

'Yet so it is; the Great High Priest of Rome

Is just the augur of her darkest days;

His triple coronal is borrowed from

The triple HECATE, and his vaunted keys!

The cake he raises when he pontifies,

Was raised to CERES, as the VIRGIN now!' &c.

Mariolatry, so fearful in the church of Rome, is shown to be mere dissent magnified into heresy, and by the quotation of the charter conferring the title of Catholic Christians (the title so clung to by Romanists), they are shown to be themselves the very men whom that charter stigmatizes as heretics and madmen'!

Mr. Bain traces with equal ease and perspicuity the origin of many of the other errors of this church, and shows very palpably why they are so pertinaciously clung to by the priests, by showing that,

-As now his means of life are placed,
He as an interest even in their crimes

And their confession.'

Next by examples drawn from every quarter he shows, that
The more the priests, the deeper the misrule ;'-

and for their zeal, instead of praising it, as some very foolish people do,

'It is enough to draw an honest tear,

To see these madmen with their mummeries
Hast'ning wherever human beings are,

As 'twere a precept to pervert the race.'

And dreadful 'tis, that those whose right and place
It is to show men how they should advance,
Should suffer such abuse, and even countenance.'
Yet is it not so now? ay'even so ;-

'Tis thought illiberal, or impious even,

That men should venture on that ground to go,
Considered neutral betwixt man and Heaven:
There's no such ground, nay, not a shadow even!
Man is the child of precept and of thought;
And clear and glorious are the precepts given,
And precious the dilations from them wrought;

This Demonhood called Priests would yet bring all to nought.'

After these essential changes in the management of the soil, and the instruction of the people, Mr. Bain next proceeds to show the necessity for the reform of the laws, particularly in England and Ireland; and though he has been the first since Lord Brougham launched his memorable philippic against the entire of our civil and criminal administration some sixteen years ago, broadly to propose it, we believe there are few that will not concur with him. After showing the often horrible effects of the present sickening windings of the law, and that

This and the priesthood's most Augean sty,
Demand a powerful and determined hand;'—

and exhorts the Queen to

And when poets begin to speak so, the people speedily will. In short, many as are the points on which this author boldly touches, and most important as some of them are, and involving changes too great almost to be anticipated at the instant, we believe there can scarcely be a question that he only anticipates the public by a few years on them all, and that the sentiments announced in this very small, but very fertile volume in 1845, will be the sentiments of every man in the kingdom in 1855. Among other things this Bard of Edina assumes, that statesmen, like poets, are born, not made'; and upon this assumption has not hesitated to take the statesman's place

throughout. He advises, instead of contending with one another at home, to extend the field of our industry in many quarters abroad, particularly in Asia Minor, Syria, Circassia, and the Levant generally in the Old World; and in Uruguay, &c. in the New. The pictures given of some of these glorious scenes of enterprise' are often very fascinating, although he indulges in no descriptions but with an aim. He dwells particularly on the site of Homeric renown in the Troad, as

He says

'A paradise made void by stupid tyranny.'

These lands lie midway to our Indian Home;
We need a path to it, and place of rest.'-

and cannot help adding

A friendly settlement allowed us there,
Or at Nicea, or at Ephesus,

Or Rhodes, or any part or place more near
The path so common now, and dear to us,
The land so lovely, and so voluptuous,

So peopled once, ruled by so many Kings,

Rising as from the sleep of centuries,

And pouring wealth from its unnumber'd springs,

Might blossom like the rose, beneath our fostering wings '

Here is his only burst of enthusiasm and of prophecy :

Ye shades! that haunt this storied wilderness,

Of states so numerous, and dead so long,

Must still your echoes replicate the song
Of mourning, from the stranger wanderer ?
Or shall our summer crowds thy valleys throng,
And towns and temples rise again, where'r
Their relics are, and more divinely fair?
Yes! o'er thy calm and ever brilliant wave,
Beneath the pennant of the Imperial Isle
The Royal vessel yet her way shall cleave,
Till from thy marble landings she recoil,
And there a new Boadicea smile,
To see her empire rising in the East;
And through the universal garden toil,
An Araby, with every bliss increased,

Breathing the air of fruits, of every hue and taste.'

But we must pause; we had hoped to have made this much more useful, both to the author and our readers, by giving glimpses of many of the reforms suggested at home, which is now impossible; and many of the points that we conceive will speedily pass into and make part of the public mind, and

statutes of the realm; but that is equally impossible. We must refer to the volume itself. We can only say, that upon agriculture and internal management generally, as well as upon colonization and foreign management, we consider him equally sound.

It would surely be in no ordinary degree pleasing to follow such a man in describing Syria, Palestine, &c., as they are, and as they might be; in hearing him exhort to send, not ambassadors to annoy and profit by them, by treaties, but embassies of wisdom and of peace,' namely, lecturers on the natural sciences, to enlighten them in natural knowledge, and in moral, if possible; but we cannot even enter into the thousand and one things that are said of our domestic concerns that would ameliorate them and certainly one day will ameliorate them. We can only say generally, that we consider them equally scientific and interesting, with the rest, and very distinctly handled,—

Tho scarcely suited to a poet's song.'

After what has already been said of France, it will not surprise that her character is considered nationally, and that it is in the end said

and that

'France must indiscipline herself to peace,
And all whose aim is wholesale robbery.'-

At her great pas de charge

Europe should rise; nay, every race and name,
To quash even in its rise the hideous surge,
And show themselves what they mistake for fame :-

The power to play the wretch to other people's shame.'

Russia and its policy are dwelt on, even more at large; so is Turkey, and so America; but we cannot even glance at them. Ireland, however, has a stronger claim

- is part and parcel of our soil,
Half of our heart, and worthy to be so ;
Companion in our every gain and toil,
It should be equal made in every view ;
And 'tis a shame that it is yet to do!'

'Yet Ireland, wretched even at this hour,
To break the circle of our empire strain ;
Why?-not because a change is hopeless, but
From stolid bungling in authorities.'

And this is shown in many powerful lines. It is suggested, that if the true station of landlords were ascertained, namely, that they are really governors in their provinces and land-stewards