in the most intelligent assembly of the universe, and in the face of the most formidable host of opponents which ever marshalled itself against a minister of state; might, we think, have served even for Mr. Irving's higher themes. He might have been well satisfied to adopt their style, without the attempt to revive that of a preceding century; an attempt which has issued in producing only a mongrel dialect, in which the beauties of the English language are not seldom sacrificed to quaintness and meretriciousness and bombast. If this be questioned, let any man, who is a judge of good writing, compare a few pages of Mr. Irving's book with a few pages in any one of fifty authors whom we could name, and he will at once see our criticism decisively illustrated. Let him take, for instance, the ORATIONS of Lord Grenville on the French Slave Trade in 1814, or on the EastIndia's Company's Charter in 1813, or that Nobleman's Preface to Lord Chatham's Letters; or let him take the Rev. Robert Hall's ARGUMENT against infidelity, or his funeral tribute to the Princess Charlotte, or any other of the writings of that distinguished Christian minister; and he will at once see what a wide departure from the purity of the English language may justly be laid to the charge of Mr. Irving.

We admit that specimens of eloquence of a very lofty kind are to be found in various parts of his work; but there hangs over many, even of these, a degree of obscurity, which is at all times unpleasant, and which renders the author's meaning abundantly open to misconstruction. Mr. Irving most assuredly may be as clear in his enunciation as he is vigorous in his conceptions; but, either through carelessness, or vicious imitation, or, as we suspect, from the joint influence of both, he frequently does injustice to himself, and leaves his reader in the dark as to his meaning. We do not here speak of such

passages as the following: "In this inquiry into the experience of the disembodied soul, we follow the method which the mathematicians do in their higher calculations; from certain partial changes which are given in one state of the variable quantity, we ascertain the amount of the change in another state of the variable quantity, and present the latter in a function of the former" (p.301): for, although this is mere Heathen Greek to us, it may be clear as daylight to the disciples of evanescent quantities. We speak of paragraphs which have nothing particularly technical about them; but in which the sense is sometimes so buried under a covering of words, and there is such an involution of phraseology, as to render the precise meaning of the author very difficult indeed to be ascertained. And if we should go to the consideration of particular words and expressions; if we were to speak of the "merry-making" at the creation (p. 185); of the good-luck of mankind, as implied in the word fortunately (p. 178), in having no conditions of salvation laid upon them;-if we were to descend to the coarse or uncouth terms which so frequently surprise us, such as threnes, rede, wis, open up, aye, sweating and sweltering, God bandying it, &c. &c. &c.; Mr. Irving would himself be astonished how little in some of these particulars he has attended to the common rules of good taste and respectable society. In a new edition, we hope that he will be at the pains to expunge these, and many other deformities which might be pointed out.

But we are afraid, that, with all its acknowledged merits, the volume before us is not exempt from the liability to still more serious objections. We doubt not Mr. Irving's profound reverence for the Deity we believe this to be the deep feeling of his heart: but we are constrained to say, that he has sometimes adopted a phraseology

which such reverential feeling will scarcely warrant or allow. We could have well spared the form of asseveration, "By the spirit of our fathers," &c. But what we particularly object to, are passages like the following: "Having already taken his [the Almighty's] constitution of government to task, it remains that we take TO TASK the judgment and the award which is [are] to pass thereon." (p. 326.) "To task" has not, in common parlance, the same force as to inquire into, to examine. Again: "If Christ had done no more than promulgate the code detailed above,....I should have shut up this argument of Judgment to come. ......I should have advised to pre'serve it for its good qualities......but as an instrument to JUDGE upon, I should have been altogether dumb in its defence." (p. 174.) Again: "Now if God did withdraw your footsteps from such high walks of virtue, I should hesitate once or twice whether it was better to listen to him or not." (p.368.) The hypotheses on which these remarks are founded, ought not to be framed: it should never, even for argument's sake, be assumed to be possible that God can act in any way inconsistent with his holy attributes.

Perhaps some of these expressions are to be traced to the "ingenium perfervidum Scotorum," to the warmth and energy with which a native of Caledonia prosecutes his cause and hence, too, may be explained the apparent want of caution with which points of doctrine are sometimes propounded in this work. We hinted at this subject in our former Number; and Mr. Irving must not be surprised if he should be quoted as an advocate for the most opposite views in religion. One will charge him with preaching unconditional salvation, and will quote his express sentiment (p. 177) that "the boon of forgive ness is unconditional". a statement which he repeats in the following pages; and yet he may be cited

as suspending our salvation upon the condition of repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. We are far from meaning to say that he does, in fact, contradict himself; but has he guarded with sufficient caution against the hazard of mistake?

We do not, for our own parts, very much object to this fervid temper, nor to that spirit of manly independence with which it is generally associated; but it would have been as well if the consciousness of it had been less obtrusively brought forward in this volume. Doubtless Mr. Irving does occasionally (see in particular the last chapter) use, with respect to himself, disqualifying phrases, which ought not to be overlooked: but the more prevailing tone is that of authority, and superiority, and self-confidence; of a spirit which brooks not submission and almost claims infallibility, and which looks down from too high an elevation upon the world beneath him. Sometimes it seems to take a tinge of Radicalism-pp. 245; 258; 286; 329-yet Mr. Irving is a loyal subject. Sometimes it appears to set him up as the enlightener and reformer of mankind: the Preface is, in this respect, particularly unhappy: yet we fairly acquit him of any such intended assumption. But most frequently it contents itself with lamentations over the stupidity and degeneracy of the age he lives in. There is something in these wailings which has often forced from us an involuntary smile. We cannot be angry, although it is necessarily our misfortune to belong to this degenerate species. "Why should it have fallen," as Mr. Irving indignantly exclaims, "why should it have fallen to my lot to rebuke such a generation?" (p. 447.) We really cannot tell why: we only hope that he may improve them by his rebukes. We do not, however, think quite so ill of the intellect and talents of mankind as Mr. Irving seems to do. We have to boast of

Christian poets, even in these later days; and great divines; and eminent statesmen; and orators inferior to few whom the world has seen. Enterprises of humanity have never been more zealously undertaken, or conducted to more glorious results; and discoveries have been made in every region of art and nature, and are still daily advancing, in a way unknown to our fathers. We are persuaded, therefore, that there is no lack of talent in the land; and we hope that Mr. Irving will not be induced to despair of us too soon. He may. do the world a great deal of good; and he has our best wishes for his success.

It is not difficult for men to bear censure when attacked in the mass; but, in the warmth of his zeal and indignation, our author has been more special and pointed in his animadversions than quite befits the pulpit. Wordsworth, indeed, is a "prodigious" favourite; but Southey, Lord Byron, and Moore, have fallen successively under his lash. Leaving Byron and Moore to his tender mercies, we cannot but express our strong disapprobation at his treatment of Southey. The "Vision of Judgment" may be as unworthy of the subject as Mr. Irving represents it: but Mr. Southey is not the enemy of his country's religion: he is not a man who would esteem blasphemy a virtue, when it makes for loyalty: he is not a member of that school which, in the preface to the very work condemned by Mr. Irving, he describes as "the Satanic school:" no man is more hated by the writers of this school than he is: and whatever censure Mr. Irving might choose to pass upon the VISION OF JUDGMENT, the writer of it is eminently entitled to most respectful consideration.

We will not stop to extract what Mr. Irving says of our public amusements in town; or of the sickly sentimentality of our rural pursuits; or of the sensual enchantments of the school of Byron and of Moore

those "high-priests of the senses, and ministers of the Cyprian goddess," who "bewitch the intellectual and moral and spiritual being " of our 'young men and women"-for we have no substantial difference with him on these points. But, to go a step higher: what thinks Mr. Irving of our universities?

"Oh! that the spirit of the antients would rise again and ashame these modern men, who go dreaming in universities over a philosophy which hath no kernel of nourishing food, a philosophy of mind they call it, but it is a mind without a heart,-who go wearying the dull ear of senates with talk about law, and jargon about the moral government of men; while in all their researches after wisdom and government, they see no form nor comeliness in the institutes of God, and hear no music to enchant them in the gospel of Christ, though it poureth the full diapason of harmony into the heart of man:-which their deafness to the voice divine doth interpret the platonic notion of the music of the spheres,-most ravishinaudible from the noise and bustle in the ing melody ever sounding in our ears, yet midst of which we have our abodes. Methinks the quiet groves of Pythagoras, where they would have five years of silent meditation with their own thoughts and study of the divine oracles; or the school of Socrates, that chastiser of haughty sophists; or the oratory of Paul, who con

verted members of the renowned Areo

pagus, and shook monarchs upon their royal seats; or something equally powerful were needed to move this age and generation of learned men, who look to Christ as if he were a fanatic, above whose ignoble sphere they stand most highly exalted." pp. 206, 207.

"I cannot find in my heart to speak against intellect, and, thanks be to God, I am not called by my Christian calling to speak against it. It is a handmaiden of at its hands. But must I speak the truth, religion, and religion loveth to be adorned

that it is often a handmaiden of other mistresses with whom religion hath no fellowship; of vanity, of power, of carnal pleasure, and of filthy lucre. Go to the seats of learning, which intellect decked for herself with chaste and simple ornaments, where she dwelt in retirement from noise and folly, wooing meditation under the cool shade, or forcing her to yield her hidden secrets to midnight research and mortification, what find you generally but