shame, by the use of human arguments, which His enemies could neither gainsay nor resist, so it has pleased Him (carrying out the promise made to His immediate followers,) to enable the defenders of His truth so to speak that their enemies have been put to silence; finding neither how they may oppose the irresistible force of truth, nor how they may, without shame to themselves, cast back scorn and reproach upon those whose words have breathed of that spirit of gentleness and meekness which shows them to be faithful followers of One who would not strive nor cry.

Such a union of power and meekness in the common cause of our holy faith, is an encouragement to us, as far as we can recognise (and who can doubt that we may?) the same heavenly impress on the language of many of those who are now carrying on the contest for truth among us. It is at the same time a token of brotherhood, (not to be despised when visible tokens are few,) and a real bond of union between those who outwardly are divided. Where the evil passions and errors of men have separated congenial spirits, He on whom they both rely, imprints His mark upon each-a mark beheld and deciphered by the angels, though the earthly eyes of men cannot see it, or know not what it means.

The contempt and ill-treatment of the world are, as it were, pledges of success to the Church. Against the former, not sparingly expressed, Manzoni has had to contend. In the boldly-urged censures of one individual are contained a whole class of the modern world's objections against the entire system of the Gospel law. All that appeals to faith, all that requires obedience, is set aside with that business-like air which indicates perfect self-gratulation, which apparently would be quickly stirred up into bitter scorn if it met with the slightest opposition. With this he has had to contend, and has come off more than victorious. The defenders of truths dear to us must be prepared, it seems, for a more positive exhibition of the world's feelings towards truth than this. Already has persecution begun. One act of oppression has been responded to by a loud and wide-spread cry of triumph. This we take to be a pledge of success. Ever have the humbling doctrines of the gospel grown more vigorously and been rooted more deeply when trampled under foot in the person of their defenders. The infant Church, scattered abroad by persecution, went every where preaching. S. Athanasius defended the faith against an almost unanimous world, while he himself, an exile and a fugitive, was enduring his share of the trials described by the great Apostle as the lot of a wanderer. S. Anselm triumphed over the arbitrary will of earthly power by submissive bearing united with courageous firmness, and was then really strongest

when he seemed to have lost all. S. Thomas of Canterbury sealed his victory by death. Archbishop Laud had a like reward, and preserved the English Church from destruction. In all these instances (and we might multiply them almost indefinitely) the cause prevailed while its upholders suffered: nor is it wonderful that it should be so, when the instrument of His victory, who is the Captain of our salvation, was death. So we doubt not it will be, and perhaps on no lesser scale, if the leading defenders of truth should be called upon to suffer more in the cause than they have already.

But it is time that we allowed Manzoni to speak for himself. We choose a passage in which he speaks of himself, and allows us to see with what feelings he undertook the task of fault-finding, even where the object of his censure is himself a fault-finder.

"A weak but sincere apologist of a moral doctrine whose end is love; persuaded that the sentiment of benevolence which arises in the heart of the ordinary-minded, is more noble and more valuable than the ample and sublime conception which originates in the mind of a great thinker; persuaded that the finding in the opinions of another a disparity with our own, ought to put us upon cultivating sentiments of esteem and affection towards him, just because our corrupt inclinations might draw us unjustly the other way; if I have not observed in this little book the most scrupulous feelings towards the author I undertake to refute, that certainly has so happened against my intention. I hope it has not happened, and I reject, by anticipation, every less considerate interpretation of my words."-Preface vi.

We suppose that no one, except the author himself, could for a moment have imagined such a protest to be necessary.

The following passage nobly defends, while it puts in a very striking view the disciplinary nature of the Church system:

Persons frequently separate and find fault with two kinds of religious precepts, which ought rather to be united and admired in their mutual relation. Of the first kind, are continual prayers, regulation of sensual appetites, perpetual resistance against setting the heart on things of this world, reference of every thing to God, watchfulness against the beginnings of immoderate desires, and such like. Of these it is said that they are despicable observances; chains, which bind down the mind without producing any good result; employments for the cloister.

"Of the second kind are precepts, difficult to fulfil, but yet so evidently right, that men cannot deny their obligation. To obey these precepts, requires sacrifices against which the senses rebel; sacrifices which our soft and servile heart regards as heroic, but which reason declares to be no other than duties of strict rectitude. With regard to these, it is said that we must take men as they are, and not require perfection from a feeble nature. But religion, for this very reason, just because she knows the weakness of that nature on which she would operate, for this very reason, surrounds it with aiding power. For this very reason, that the combat is terrible, she would prepare man for it all his life. Just because we have a mind that a strong impression suffices to disturb, that the importance and urgency of a choice confound, while they require of it calmness; just because habit exercises a sort of rule over us, religion fills up every moment of our life to accustom us to self-command, to submission of passion to reason, to serenity of mind.

"Religion, from the time of the Apostles downwards, has been compared to a warfare. Following out this similitude, we may say, that, whoever cannot see and appreciate the unity of her maxims and discipline, acts like one who thinks it strange that soldiers should habituate themselves to the evolutions of warfare, and undergo fatigue and privation, when there are no enemies."---Morale Catt. cap. xiv. p. 158.

The objections here noticed are identical with that ordinary sort of declamation against the Church of Rome which one has been accustomed to hear from one's childhood; and very much like, also, to the objections lately brought up against the abstinence and stricter self-denial put forward by those who enter into the true spirit of our Church. But there is another and subtler form of objection to self-discipline which Manzoni does not mention, because the persons he has to deal with would, probably, be the last to make it. With us, however, it is a very common objection, and one which some persons think unanswerable. And minds of a different stamp there are, who, left to the wholesome instinct of a humble heart, would gladly submit themselves to such discipline; but (in great measure because of their humbleness,) they are frightened by the plausibility of the objection of which we speak. We mean the notion that the whole system of discipline, as a preparation for trial, is founded on some degree of self-dependence. Persons would say that Christians do not need such an artificial strength as is acquired by selfdenial in matters indifferent, that, on the contrary, it is vain to expect strength in such a way, because we should thereby be looking to ourselves for strength. Such is the form the objection commonly takes among us; to which the answer is plain, that it has seldom pleased the Almighty to work anything in us without means; that we cannot expect to be strengthened by His might, except in the use of the means He has appointed; and that self-discipline, prayer, and the holy sacraments, are the means which we are taught by His Church to use thankfully and trustfully.

We cannot arrange our extracts in any very precise order; but, perhaps, the next will carry our thoughts a little further in the same direction as the preceding.

"It is a truth, as well known as it is humiliating, that the abuse of meats exercises a degrading influence on the mind. A series of thoughts, grave, well-regulated, magnanimous, benevolent, can be interrupted by a merrymaking; and in the very seat of thought arises a sort of carnal enthusiasm, an exaltation of the senses, which renders persons indifferent to things of the greatest importance, which destroys or weakens their sense of the beautiful, and urges them towards sensuality and egotism. Sobriety preserves the faculties of the individual, as our illustrious author (Sismondi) justly observes; but religion does not content herself with this effect, nor with virtue such as this, known even to the Gentiles Having revealed the profound evils of humanity, she has made it her duty to proportion the remedy to them. In the pleasures of the palate, which may be combined with sobriety, she sees a sensual tendency which turns man away from his true destiny; and,

in cases where the evil has not yet begun, she points out the danger. She commands abstinence as an indispensable precaution to one who must susstain a combat against the law of his members; she commands it as an expiation for the faults into which human weakness causes even the best to fall; she commands it, again, as an act of justice, of charity, that the privations of the faithful may serve to supply the wants of others; to distribute necessary subsistence in such a manner among men, that those two sad contradictories may disappear from society, profusion where there should be fasting, hunger where there is want of bread."-Р. 178.

The following testimony to an interesting fact, from one well informed, and worthy of credence, is pleasing :

"Abstinence from flesh is a means prescribed by the Church to facilitate the acquirement of penitence... If there are those who elude it, yet there are not wanting rich persons who obey sincerely, and in the spirit of penitence, the law of penitence; there are not wanting those among the poor who, forced to a sobriety which they render noble and voluntary by loving it, find means of treating the body with greater severity on those days in which a special humiliation is prescribed by the Church; these she considers as her richest ornament, her best-loved sons."-P. 184.

We think few serious-minded readers can peruse the very striking chapter "Sulla dottrina della penitenza," without a degree of sadness. Certainly one must feel more and more daily (and the parochial clergy will, perhaps, have felt this most strongly,) that those who would become penitents, and live the life of penitents, do stand in need of some external help; some visible act of the Church by which they, as what they are, may be recognised as among those for whom she has especial care: for whose case she has provided. Two things they want-two things which they have lost by the loss of discipline; they want encouragement, in the shape of some assurance, that they may claim something; they want, i. e. to be withheld awhile from the full portion of the upright, that they may have some proper ground of trust that some portion may be theirs. And, on the other hand, they want not seldom to be reminded that they are penitents; they want an external help to keep them in a penitent's condition. In default of the Church's living voice, they are thrown back (alas! too often on themselves alone! or) on such discipline as their individual spiritual guide may give them: and so a burden of responsibility is often laid upon him which he is little able to bear. Is not such a want as this acknowledged, in a manner, by the preaching and publishing of the Hebrew professor's late sermon, "The Holy Eucharist a comfort to the Penitent"? True and great benefit, we trust, will many a penitent derive from it; and we hail this cheering thought as a bright spot amid the dark waters of unholy and angry controversy which are rolling around that memorable discourse. A blessed comfort we think that it suggests; but its teaching does not supply both the wants which we have noted. We cannot say more at present on this point, but must refer such as wish to see some deeply interesting thoughts on the subject, to the chapter itself, the 8th of the "Morale Cattolica."

We have one more quotation to make; it contains some acute distinctions on the moral sense. Speaking of Locke he says:

" He has proved that men vary prodigiously in the application of the idea of justice, but he has not observed that they agree in having an universal persuasion that there are just and unjust things; actions becoming, or base. Those who, since his time, have established this truth, have, I do not say confuted a great error of his system, but certainly filled up a great void in it.

But, comparing the truth discovered by Locke with this latter, there results a third consequence, and that is, the necessity of a Divine law as a holy and infallible rule of morality. The universal moral sense of mankind proves the aptitude of man to receive an universal rule, and to apply it. That Finger which wrote the law, had already formed the heart of man with a disposition to understand and recognise it."-P. 21, Note.

Certainly, the one little remark with which this begins, shows how utterly impotent, even an infinitely-extended induction on the system of Locke would be to disprove a moral sense; and the consequence drawn from the comparison of the result of Locke's induction with the true doctrine of the moral sense, suggests, as it were, a new link in the mysterious chain which unites nature with revelation.

Here we take leave of Manzoni. If, in remarking upon his character and writings we have been all but indefinitely excursive, we trust that the wide field over which we have had the liberty of expatiating-in which, too, bright flowers and rich fruits were ever tempting us in a new direction-will be our excuse, should such be demanded, for the character of our notice of this very remarkable writer.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Change for the American Notes; in Letters from London to New York. By an American Lady. London: Wiley and Putnam.

1843.

The Attaché, or Sam Slick in England. By the Author of the "Clockmaker," &c. 2 vols. London: Bentley. 1843.

WHAT, more pleadings in the great case of Old England versus America! How can any decision be expected, when, to adopt the terms of the ecclesiastical courts, both parties are daily amending their libels, and putting in new matter of evidence? In the two books at the head of this notice we have England sketched from America and her own colonies; the opinions of a genuine Yankee New Yorker, and of a Nova Scotia Judge under false colours. The one all sneering and bitterness, the other sharp, honest, and true; reading our legislators a lesson on colonial government under the