NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, &c. Nos. I.-IX. London: Chapman and Hall.

ALTHOUGH sufficient progress has not yet been made in this, Mr. Dickens' present work, to enable us at all to guess at the probable conduct of the story, or the destiny of its personages, we have had enough to warrant us in forming some judgment on its merits. These are very considerable; indeed, far above any that were to be found in Barnaby Rudge, and not a whit behind those of Mr. Dickens' other tales. The characters of the Misses Pecksniff, of Mr. Tigg, of Martin Chuzzlewit, and of Mark Tapley, are all admirable in their way; though the last is the only one-of those, at least, of whom we see much-that relieves the dreariness of such an assemblage of base and heartless people as Mr. Dickens has thought proper to introduce to our acquaintance. To do him justice, however, he has always hitherto brought us, sooner or later, into the company of loveable people; and therefore we look forward to by and by finding Mr. Tapley relieved from his solitude in goodness. Mr. Pinch might serve that purpose; but, though obviously a great favourite with the author, we cannot think his character a happy conception. Such gullibility as his is altogether incompatible with the intellectual power and accomplishments which he is described as possessing; for, although goodness be ready enough to believe in the pretence to goodness, intellect and information cannot be similarly misled, as regards a similar pretence to them. Such a man as Pinch could not have lived for years with such a man as Pecksniff without discovering him to be an ignorant quack; for the perception or non-perception of that could not have depended on temper. It must have been a fact too daily obvious to admit of his shutting his eyes to it.

The most humorous portions of the tale, as far as it has yet gone, are the scenes at Todgers's, and in America. The former display all that power with which the author usually works up his pictures of what is at once most pretending and least estimable in the lower regions of the middling classes. It is from the latter, however, that the work will take its character. Nothing can well be more odious than our author's pictures of men and manners in the United States; and we cannot help suspecting that nothing can well be more true, though we rejoice to know that is not the whole truth. Indeed, Mr. Dickens admits as much himself; admits that there are people in America as unlike his Colonel Divers and Jefferson Briks, as the most fastidious aristocrat on this side of the Channel could possibly be; and such it has been our happiness to fall in with. That it would be well for America were they more in number, and possessed of the weight to which their intelligence and character entitle them, is assuredly true; and that being so, we have a right to dwell on the baser many, who, standing between them and their true position, are the bane and disgrace of their nation. Whether it is wise, or even

justifiable, in Mr. Dickens, to deal forth, at present, such exasperating wounds as these pictures of his must necessarily be, is another question, and one which can be answered only by the event.

To one point, however, we are anxious to call attention. Nothing is more complete, surely, than the extinction of the American party among English politicians. The causes, indeed, of such extinction are obvious enough, and on them we need not dwell; all that we wish noticed is, that whereas twelve years ago English radicalism was enamoured of the American character and American institutions, all such enthusiasm for the other side of the Atlantic seems now to have disappeared from within our borders. But has all friendship gone with it? Far from it. They who will look in the pages, not of the Radical Mr. Dickens, but of the Tory Christian Remembrancer, will find that when all political sympathy has failed, there remains yet an affectionate concern for each other, between such Englishmen and such Americans as feel that they belong to one Church; that the brotherhood involved in that gets the better of a thousand prejudices; and that an English and an American Churchman, when they fall together, feel that thay have in common all that is most precious to each. Nor do such find any material difference between the one and the other in respect of manners and refinement. Such American prelates and clergy as we have recently seen, have been men as high bred as any European court could have produced. More might be added on this subject; but what we have said is enough to suggest serious reflections on both sides of the Atlantic. The Church may prove the basis of national friendship when every element of political alliance shall have been blown to the winds; and all unestablished though she be, America no less than England may discover that she is the main stay, the constitutive and conservative principle, the very life and soul of the nation.

Two Treatises on the Church: the first by THOMAS JACKSON, D.D. the second by ROBERT SANDERSON, D. D. formerly Lord Bishop of Lincoln; to which is added, a Letter of BISHOP COSIN, &c. Edited, with Introductory Remarks, by WILLIAM GOODE, M.A. &c. London: Hatchards.

We never shall do otherwise than thank those who render any portions of the thoughtful and rich theology of other days more generally accessible than they had previously been; and therefore are we grateful to Mr. Goode for the present reprint. His introductory remarks are not much to our mind, being both needlessly angry, and more than a little unfair. We cannot feel implicated in any charges which Mr. Goode may substantiate against the Catena Patrum, which are to be found in the Oxford Tracts, but we honestly own our inability to see what, in this instance, he has substantiated. If we remember aright the documents in question, they were each testimonies of high authorities in favour of some one specific point-the Apostolical succession, the rule of Vincent, and the like. We have no recollection of its ever being pretended by the compilers that all the writers cited in the Catena coincided with every sentiment they might themselves have advocated in the Tracts or elsewhere. The pretence would have

been too absurd even for minds that would not have recoiled from its dishonesty. We may refer Mr. Goode to the Clarendon edition of Hooker to satisfy him how far Mr. Keble is from making it. In his able and admirable preface to that edition, he distinctly admits that the first generation of high-Church divines did not complete. the scheme of their successors; nor do we imagine that he was ignorant of what, not being ignorant of it, he certainly would never have denied, that among those successors all were not equally exclusive in their opinions of the channel of ordination.

Again, when Mr. Goode speaks as follows

"The favourite phraseology now is, that it is through our union with the visible Church, that we become united to Christ, and that all grace is derived to us through the Church. Dr. Jackson's language is, that the Church is a true and real body, consisting of many parts, all really, though mystically and spiritually, united into one Head; and by their real union with one Head, all are truly and really united amongst themselves.' 'Every one is so far a member of Christ's Church, as he is a member of Christ's body.'

"The difference is of no little importance. In the Tractarian view the prime question is, What constitutes a man a member of the Church? In Dr. Jackson's, What unites a man to Christ, and constitutes him a member of Christ's body? According to Tractarian notions, a man becomes united to Christ only by becoming a member of the Church. According to Dr. Jackson, a man becomes a true and real member of the Church only by being united to Christ."

he is surely very unfair. He cannot be so ignorant_as_to_imagine that the question he here raises is one between himself, Jackson, or any other, and the Tractarian. He ought to know, if he does not, that there have been, and that there are, many upon whom he has no right to confer that appellation, who would, on the whole, accept the statement which he denounces; not, perhaps, in the bald, crude way in which he has presented it, but in this sense, that the Church is not a mere general term for the multitude of believers, but a divinelyendowed society, holy in essential constitution and character, whatever be her members at any given time, and exercising a formative power over them, rather than they over her. In truth, this is a large, grave question, which, in one shape or other, is always rising up among men; and it is to be profitably discussed, not by giving each other nicknames, or by hinting at dark suspicions, or by trying to aggravate an alienation between brethren already far too great, but by the wisdom of brotherly love exercising itself in meditation and prayer.

Finally, has not Mr. Goode dealt with reckless cruelty by the memory of the departed, in his citations from Panzani's accounts of his progress and prospects in England? He admits that Montague, probably, was deceived by his wishes in his estimate of his brethren. May not Panzani have had, at least, equal inducements for misrepresenting even Montague? An agent would, probably, wish to be considered as successful as the facts could, by any possibility, make him out to be. To implicate Laud and his school in the charges insinuated by this reference to Panzani, (and if not to implicate them, for what conceivable purpose was it made?) is a proceeding of which, happily, the unfairness is only equalled by the extreme absurdity. Rome knew better what was in the author of the Conference with Fisher than to be very sanguine of gaining him, or any much influenced by him.

Hymns for the Young; a Second Series of Hymns for Children. By the Rev. J. M. NEALE, M.A. London: Burns. 1843.

SACRED verses are, indeed, a perilous adventure; in none do more people make shipwreck, and in none is a shipwreck more to be dreaded. Has Mr. Neale split upon any of the numerous rocks in his way? We cannot say that he has. There is nothing in the little collection of hymns before us that one wishes had not been written ; nothing that is rescued from insignificance only to be rendered offensive by its connexion with religion. The tone of his hymns is devout and reverent; their thoughts are graceful and just, and their structure, so to speak, very like that of the ancient metrical devotion. As was the case in the latter, so here, each hymn winds up with a reference, if not always a doxology, to the Eternal Trinity-a catholic feature, to which we recommend the attention of all who purpose writing hymns in any degree congregational, or liturgic.

We doubt whether Mr. Neale has kept within the range of children's understanding; but, perhaps, he has gone somewhat above it on principle, a point on which, as our readers know, we are not likely to quarrel with him. A worse charge against him is, a want of music in his verse, a serious deficiency in any metrical compositions, and especially in such as are designed for the young, in whom the enjoyment to the ear bears a very large proportion to their whole enjoyment in poetry. And, perhaps, we may venture on a doubt how far Mr. Neale is endowed for his present task beyond fine feelings, taste, temper, and principles. We are not quite sure as to the validity of his call to serve the muses in this way. Still we thank him for what he has done, and, amid much which we desiderate, have great pleasure in calling our readers' attention to the following specimens of his powers, of which they may thereby be led, perhaps, to form a higher estimate than we have been able to do :—

CONFIRMATION.

ACTS VII. 15, 16.

Blessed Saviour, who hast taught me

I should live to Thee alone;

All these years Thy Hand hath brought me
Since I first was made Thine own;
Safely brought me, though so often
I have wander'd from Thy fold;
Striving thus my heart to soften,
And as Thou wouldst have it, mould.
Others vow'd and promis'd for me
That Thy law I should obey;

They have warn'd me, sorrowing o'er me,
When I wander'd from Thy way:
But Thy holy Church commandeth
Me myself to take that vow;
And Thy faithful Bishop standeth
Waiting to receive it now.

Many foes will straight assail me,
Craftier, stronger far than I;
And the strife will never fail me,
Well I know, before I die;

Keep me from mine own undoing;
Let me turn to Thee when tried:
Faint, if needs, yet still pursuing,

Never venturing from Thy side.
I would trust in Thy protecting,
Wholly rest upon Thine arm;
Follow wholly Thy directing,

O my only Guard from harm!
Meet me now with Thy Salvation,
In Thy Church's ordered way;
Let me feel Thy Confirmation

In Thy Truth and Fear to-day:

So that might and wisdom gaining,
Hope in danger, joy in grief,
Now and evermore remaining
In the Catholic Belief;

Resting in my SAVIOUR'S Merit,

Strengthen'd with the SPIRIT's strength,

With Thy Church I may inherit

All my FATHER's joy at length!

"An Order of Morning and Evening Prayer for the Use of Schools," (Burns,) extracted from the Prayer-Book, will be found useful. It is got up, too, in a convenient and attractive form.

"How shall I understand the Bible, &c." (Burns,) is a tract on the value and use of Tradition. From our own experience,-and that of our readers will bear it out, since all theological questions are ultimately landed in this question, we have long felt the need of a plain and short statement of Church doctrines upon it: and the lack is in the present tract adequately supplied; should its outline seem hard, we must remember that the times are captious and querulous.

And probably it is from a half-defined feeling, that prayer, under present circumstances, will prove a stronger weapon than controversy, that we especially recommend, from the same publisher, "An Act of Humiliation for Prevailing National and Parochial Sins." It is cheering to find that these beautiful devotions are "used in the author's parish in private by communicants early on Friday mornings." Bishop Andrewes is the author's model, and one richer and more suitable to present needs it were impossible to select.

"Devotions for the Sick Room," (Burns,) is a sequel to "The Companion for the Sick Room," which was lately announced; composed originally for the benefit of the patients of the (medical) Editor, we can safely state that we are acquainted with no single manual of the doctrine and practice of the higher christian graces, more acceptable for the use of a clergyman's patients. Notorious as are the deficiencies of a high religious practice which a sick room exposes, the lamentable ignorance in christian doctrine which the clergy find in it, is, if possible, even more appalling.

"The Two Kingdoms,” (Seeley and Burnside,) is an allegory of some merit. There are features in its theology which we think very unsound, but one of the principal ideas is by no means unimportant, that Christians are not to be contented with an entrance into their Master's Kingdom, but are to labour after an abundant one. The late Mr. Irving somewhere described the socalled Evangelical preaching around him, as a continual keeping on the edge of Christ's fold and the world; and without entering on questions as to where that edge lies, or when and how it is generally crossed, we must pronounce the incessant harping on the mere transition from danger and wrath, to a justified state in Christ, to merit his strictures.

NO. XXXIV.-N. S.

3 M