pictures (from the 'Moral Epistles') studded with brilliant points, and filled with the most truthful description: "Tis from high life high characters are drawn: More wise, more learned, more just, more everything, "Tis education forms the common mind; Ask 'men's opinions: Scoto now shall tell "See the same man, in vigour, in the gout; Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall. Thinks who endures a knave, is next a knave, Who would not praise Patricio's high desert, : To conclude the Essay on Man,' which is Pope's noblest poem, contains incontestable evidence of the large range of his mind-though his detractors have affected to set him down as one who was but clever in trifles. There is nothing, in my humble estimation, finer in English poetry than the following well-known passage: Pantheism (though Pope was a Catholic) was never more magnificently sung. "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, That chang'd through all, and yet in all the same; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, Cease then, nor order imperfection name: Submit. In this, or any other sphere, All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, The subject of" schools of Poetry" being now fairly started,—and trusting that a few observations (accompanied by extracts), may not be unacceptable to you, in your pursuit of self-culture,-I purpose to continue them in a few numbers. THOMAS COOPER. THE CHURCH AND HER GRIEVANCES. Gloster.-The Church where is it? King Henry IV. THAT the Church of England is at the present moment in a state of tribulation and alarm, must be evident to all who can read and think. Her stoutest friends and her sternest foes, with emotions of a very opposite character, feel and know that a mighty change is struggling in the womb of Fate. The one party is torturing its ingenuity to discover a method of quietly strangling the monster as soon as born; the other party is simply anxious that the birth should be suffered to take place, and is willing to trust to circumstances for its welfare and education. As a proof of the peculiar condition into which the mind of the ultrachurch party has been thrown, mainly in consequence of the late 'Gorham case,' it will be as well to quote a few passages from an organ of that party, which is also a fashionable and toadying journal of aristocratic doings. In the Morning Post of the 22nd and 23rd March, 1850, are two or three articles relating to church matters, from whence may be gathered no unimportant signs. One contains a notice of a pamphlet entitled "A few Words of Hope on the present Crisis in the English Church." In the course of its comments the Post says, "Words of hope are so truly needed at the present alarming time that we are glad to hear them from any quarter," and goes on to speak of the recent judgment as having "fallen on the Church, smiting its inward vitality as a curse." Pretty strong language this for a loyal supporter of Church and State, but Toryism is not remarkable for setting the example of passive obedience, when its own pet prejudices are interfered with. To proceed, however, with the Post; in another article, we find this sentence, "By the adjudication of the Committee of Council, the Church of England lies under the disgrace of having uttered an uncertain sound, or no sound at all, with respect to the important term 'regeneration."" And in order that a certain sound may be given on this "important term" the Post joins its dulcet voice with the parsonic cry for the convocation of a spiritual synod, in which all important doctrinal business may be spiritually and authoritatively transacted. It is not fit that laical and uninitiated fingers should dabble in ecclesiastical pie; it is not decent, thinks the Post and its Puseyites, that even Queen Victoria Defender of the Faith' as she is called, and head of the Church as she actually is, should presume to inform that Church of what it seems sadly ignorant; namely, itstrue faith. And we cannot refuse to agree with the Post when it says "We have always said, and say so still, that any occurrence which should cause, or tend to cause, a secession of earnest and good men from the church, must necessarily be a great evil. But even this danger ought to be braved, rather than, from motives of mere expediency, maintain a system which makes the church a double-tongued deceiver. But what is the "system" which inevitably places the church in so humiliating a position? How comes it that this powerful institution is forced into such a dilemma, that it must either lose many of its best and ablest ministers, or else be sneered at by the world as a deceitful, treacherous, mammon-seeking guide? How comes it that the would-be national Pharos of religious truth is compelled to acknowledge itself a mere ignis fatuus of faith? The solution of the problem must be sought for in the connection of the church with the secular government. In that connection lies the whole answer, and the clergy know it well enough. They must feel that their beloved church has sold her birth-right for a mess of state pottage, and a very unpleasant mess it is they have at last found. In discipline, in doctrine, religiously and politically, internally and externally, the church is at sixes and sevens, and the following passage from the Morning Post is perfectly true in its foreseeing pretensions. "We fully believe with the Bishop of Exeter, as expressed in his answer to Dr. Spry, that we are only commencing the struggle to which the unquestioned fact of several beliefs within the pale of the church has brought us. It will require no small zeal, as well as no small charity and tolerance, to conduct that struggle to an end without imperilling the very existence of the Church as a national institution.' Taking, then, the Morning Post, as the exponent of the heart-and-soul church party-assuming that it breathes the sentiments of that influential section-it appears that they consider the recent exercise of the state supremacy to have smitten the church "as a curse"-to have "disgraced" her-to have rendered her dumb when she ought to have spoken-and to have made her nought but "a double-tongued deceiver" when constrained to open her mouth. If such be the case, and there is no reason to doubt the fact, we really commiserate Holy Mother, her grievances are indeed manifold. But these are not all her miseries. It seems she is suffering from a rankling ulcer, on her precious body, in the form of her spiritual dictator (who, by the way, has not much power of dictation), the Archbishop of Canterbury. The clergy are not pleased with his Grace, and, with the Morning Post as ringleader, they are enacting the old fable of the belly and the members rebelling against the head. Hear how the Disaffected declaims, and almost "speaks evil" of a dignity. "He [the Archbishop] publicly avows that he believes in baptismal regeneration, and at the same time thinks it may be lawfully contradicted, and the very opposite doctrine taught in the same church; and, what is more to the purpose (as an illustration of morality) he quotes certain venerated fathers of the Church of England, as if they defended false doctrine, suppressing the context of the passages quoted; and, in one case, even altering the wording, as well as changing the sense of the pretended quotation. The Church of England has fallen indeed on evil days, if such a one is to be her representative." Ever let it be remembered whence these accusations emanate. It is not we who say that the Archbishop of Canterbury is dishonest, immoral, and an unfit representative" of the church. The snarl issues from beneath the now torn veil of the temple. What does it portend? Is it not a "prologue to the omen coming on ?" FRANK GRANT. PROSE THINKINGS, FROM THE POET SHELLEY. MORALITY AND IMAGINATION.-The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful, which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intently and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination, by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices, whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.-Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of punishment in general, in a degree which the reformation and the restraint of those who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and none more than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of men. It is almost a proverbial remark, that those nations in which the penal code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished from all others by the rarity of crime. But the example is to be admitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by a consideration of the universal connection of ferocity of manners, and a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of human life. Governments which derive their institutions from the existence of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with some rare exceptions, perhaps, are bloody in proportion as they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to a sympathy with their own spirit. LIFE. What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live on, and in living, we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come ? Whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and death? The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived. A FUTURE STATE.-The examination of this subject requires that it should be stript of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered amongst the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive being who does not deserve punishment, happy for ever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develope and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand that, the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose, at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent, as those through which it first became united with it. Nor if a future state be clearly proved does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward, THIS WORLD IS FULL OF BEAUTY. There lives a voice within me, a guest-angel of my heart, And evermore it singeth this Song of Songs to me- If men were more forgiving, and kind words were oft'ner spoken, While plenty round us smileth why wakes this cry for bread ? Oh God! what hosts are trampled amid this crush for gold! What noble hearts are sapped of love, what spirits lose life's hold! This world is full of beauty as other worlds above; And if we did our duty, it might be full of love! The leaf-tongues of the forest, the flower-lips of the sod, GERALD MASSEY. Co Correspondents. **Correspondents will please address "Thomas Cooper, 5, Park Row, Knightsbridge, London. 'A true Witness of Jesus Christ.' I receive his exhortations with the deepest respect; as I do the friendly advice of every good and sincere man. J. P., East Road, City Road; 'Juvenis'; 'Helen'; M. S., York; J. G., Gateshead; W. H., Smith. Their poetry is most respectfully declined. G. H., Earsdon. In 30 numbers, or about. There is no perfect 'Pronouncing' French Dictionary: the pronunciation cannot be learnt perfectly, except from a native, or by a residence in France. Lectures, in London, for the ensuing Week. SUNDAY, April 7, Literary Institution, John Street, Fitzroy Square. "Pizarro, and the Conquest of Peru"-Thomas Cooper. At 7, Hall of Science, (near Finsbury Square,) City Road. "Roman Catholic revival of horrible doctrines"-G. J. Holyoake. At past 7, Institute of Progress, 1, George Street, Sloane Square, "History of the Bible"--W. Baker. MONDAY, April 8, at past 8, Finsbury Mechanics' Institution, Bell Yard, City Road. "Conservatism of Social Life"-B. B. Wale. At 8, Temperance Hall, Broadway, Westminster. English Commonwealth "-Thomas Cooper. WEDNES., April 10, at 8, Hackney Literary and Scientific Institution. Poetry, &c."-Henry Phillips. "Moore's Lyric |