tant lesson, that a cheerful, hopeful, confiding religion, which treats human nature with respect, and teaches man that he is the child of God and fitted for a glorious destiny, is the religion to get hold of man's heart and make it a temple for the abode of God.-Passing over an article on Natural History, we come to a short but powerfully-written description of those moral and physical pest-houses, the lodging-places of vagrants and the poorest classes of our cities. These places are the normal schools of our criminals, and they are the fountain-head of a black stream of contagion and disease. At a time when fever is prostrating its thousands, and cholera is approaching our borders, these foul sinks should be cleansed out by the strong arm of the executive government. Private and associated philanthropy, in the mean time, is doing a good work in this matter. The "Labourers' Friend Society" has fitted up three convenient receptacles (one of which it has built for the purpose) for the accommodation of the houseless poor. A clean lodging, a decent sitting-room, fire for cooking, and the means of personal cleanliness, are provided in these establishments for four-pence a night. Decency, sobriety and order are strictly preserved. Much indirect as well as direct good is the result. The dens of filth and debauchery, previously without competition, are beginning to lose their attractions. Soap and the paint-brush have been called in to some of the haunts previously swarming with vermin and filth to a degree happily inconceivable by persons accustomed to cleanliness and comfort. One very bright feature of the model lodging-house is, that it is self-supporting. We say with the benevolent reviewer,

"Thank God! the experiment has proved successful. It has in no part failed; and we earnestly hope that when the evil shall have become more universally known, and the remedy have been substantiated by a somewhat longer trial, we shall see a multiplication of these efforts to drain and ventilate the morals of the people."

Of the article on "The Friends of the African," we have not now space to speak. The article on "Pentonville Prisoners" is a very interesting and important chapter on Prison Discipline, and a most triumphant vindication of the Separate system. It has been charged against this system of prison discipline, that it is a manufactory of madness. What is the fact? From the end of 1843 to the present time, the annual proportion of prisoners becoming insane at Pentonville has been just 1.48 per 1000. Now the proportion of insane patients in the Dragoon Guards at home (a class of men in their early prime) is nearly 1, is 1.43 in the Ionian Islands, 1.33 in Canada, and 1·41 in Gibraltar; so that, as the reviewer observes, "the prisoner under separate confinement suffers about as much as the soldier on the choicest spots of the Mediterranean or in the bracing climate of Canada." In the prison, the annual mortality per 1000 is 15.70, while that of the Foot Guards is 21-6, and even in the Household Cavalry falls little short of the mortality of the prison. But the moral effects of the separate system are its stronghold. It cuts off the entail of crime, yet spares the criminal. It teaches him to detest his former self, and, by furnishing him with handicraft skill and elevating him by intellectual and moral and religious instruction, fits him for usefulness, and gives him materials for self-respect. That is a spurious humanity which would stop all this incredible good to the prisoner and to society by unreal alarms for the health and sanity of the convict.-From the confused mass of statements and arguments and figures, huddled together with the general title of "Accumulations of Capital," we can draw nothing for our own instruction or our readers' amusement. The article which follows is on Pius IX. It is written in a spirit more congenial to the political atmosphere of Austria than England. Yet we can join in the remark, "that we should have thought better of the Pope, both as a priest and a politician, if he had not interfered in Ireland to prolong discontent and ignorance."

But the sting of the No. is in its tail. Art. 11 and last, on "Ministerial Measures," is a long complaint against her Majesty's present advisers for every

thing they have done and every thing they have not done. The panic and all its distress is, if not of their making, aggravated by their folly; their feeble misgovernment is the cause of Ireland's present disorganization. But there are tenderer woes in the bosom of this afflicted politician. "Secular patronage is lavished on the Dissenting supporters of the Ministry." This may be endured; but it is impossible not to resent with deep though (there's the rub!) "powerless indignation" Lord John Russell's recent conduct to the Church, "the nomination of inferior, or at least undistinguished, men to the highest dignities, and the selecting out of all England for a Bishopric one chiefly, if not solely, known in the religious or literary world by a condemnation for heterodoxy." The logic of the reviewer's remark about the motive of the Jew Bill is a delightful bit of inconsequentiality, worthy of Sir Robert Harry Inglis or Mrs. Nickleby! "The endeavour to force a Jew, or two or three Jews, into Parliament, is an object in itself so inconsiderable, that it is obviously undertaken to forward the principle of a complete severance of Church and State"! This is about as reasonable as the statement would be, that the entrance of Baron Rothschild into one House of Parliament will, by a kind of electrical repulsion, at the same instant put Archbishops and Bishops (a fine covey!) to flight from the other House. Almost as bad, in the reviewer's eyes, as plotting for the complete severance of Church and State, is the permission (real or supposed) given to the Roman Catholic hierarchy to use their episcopal titles. The people of England will care but little for the reviewer's woes. They will be as little shaken from their propriety by the fulminations of JOHN TUAM as they are by those of HENRY EXETER. They will smile as mischievously at the round robins of Popish Bishops, as they have lately done at those of mitred Protestants. With pleasant inconsistency, the reviewer proposes, however, to endow the whole Irish priesthood, but with considerable naïveté confesses the motive-to save the little Protestant Establishment of Ireland. There is, alas! little comfort or hope for this political driveller, who is compelled to confess, notwithstanding the long list of Ministerial misdoings, that he "sees no present probability of a better Ministry, and a possibility of a worse."

The British Banner.-Dr. Campbell, the preacher at the Tabernacle and the Editor of "The Christian Witness" and "The Christians' Penny Magazine," has been set free for twelve months by his congregation, that he may devote himself to the task of building up a new Dissenting Newspaper and Journal. The first numbers are now before the public. The title is vulgar and warlike. The first No., with its Supplement, contained not less than 96 closely-printed columns, with advertisements that would almost fill an octavo book. The Introductory Address contains four columns of promises and professions. We select a few prominent points. The Editor's ambition is "to form a model citizen. The British Banner is not to be a common newspaper; it will be less a single journal than a collection of journals thrown in the broad-sheet. Its politics will be, in the largest sense, liberal and progressive, moderate and common-sense, to the exclusion of crotchets. Its conductors will wage eternal war with Rome, and a steady, intense, unmitigable opposition to the principles of Ecclesiastical Establishments. It will be the journal of all classes of Nonconformists, but the organ of none. All orthodox voluntary communities will be treated alike. The Banner will uphold Education of the best kind and on the best principles." So much for promise--now for the performance. From the two numbers which we have seen, the journal is most singularly devoid of news. Nine-tenths of it might have been written any time these last ten years, consisting of sensible but rather dull essays on a great variety of subjects, or rather the first sections of essays. There is nothing to offend. But we can see no augury of continued attraction to the 17,000 subscribers of whom the Banner boasts. It is scarcely equal to the Patriot, and very inferior to the Nonconformist, in the choice of its topics and the style of treating them.

Its literary articles are chiefly remarkable for the length of the extracts. We fear, if the "model citizen" is weekly to digest all these long columns prepared for his repast, he will become very lethargic in his habit. It may be that we lack martial ardour, but we must in truth confess that the Banner has not roused us at all, but exercised a very tranquillizing and soporific effect. Lest it should do the same to our readers, we turn to something else.

The Kent and Sussex Friendly Visitor pursues its useful course, having now completed its first volume. We have looked it through, and think it well adapted for nursing the religious spirit and strengthening good moral principles in the young, especially in humble life. With the new year the little Magazine (which is indebted for much of its excellence to Rev. J. C. Means and Rev. E. Talbot) puts off its local name, and takes the title of The Quarterly Friendly Visitor.

The Sunday-School Magazine, No. I., is another very cheap and promising religious periodical, published by the Manchester District Sunday-School Association, and edited, we are glad to see, by Mr. Travers Madge. We augur for it a wide circulation and much usefulness. The catholic and philanthropic spirit of the editor is evinced in the introductory address, and will find its way to many hearts. We take a passage almost at random:

"If one can but go to a Sunday-school, one feels at once to be at home. I remember once being laid up with way-worn feet,' at a little village in Wales. I had intended to spend the Sunday quietly in visiting some friends who lived in the neighbourhood. I was, however, for some time unable to put on my shoes, and when I accomplished this, could only hobble to a little Methodist Sundayschool close by. The place and people were strange enough to me, and so was the language that they spoke. But there were a few boys in the school who were accustomed, in the afternoon, to read the English Testament. These I at once began to teach, and found them very intelligent and attentive to what I said. I spoke in the simplest words I could, that they might understand me; and though they could say but little that was intelligible to me, they shewed such interest by their looks and signs, as made me feel myself at home amongst them. The short time we thus spent together has ever since endeared the place and day to my remembrance."

We are informed that the future Nos. of the Magazine will be issued under the title of "The Sunday-School Penny Magazine," in order to avoid a title already appropriated to a Magazine published (if we mistake not) by the London Sunday-School Union.

The Irish Unitarian Magazine is, we regret to find, discontinued. Its publication proved a burthen rather than an aid to the funds of the Belfast Unitarian Society. This ought not so to be. We hope Dr. Montgomery will collect and complete his papers on the History of Irish Presbyterianism. A new Magazine has, however, taken its place, called The Irish Truth-Seeker. If it proves worthy of its name, we will give it a hearty welcome. The opening address on Sectarianism lacks discrimination. Sectarianism is not indicated by the name, but by the spirit, of a religious body. So far from Unitarians having too much of the sectarian spirit, the fact is, the absence of it prevents their making that advance on account of which the Irish Truth-Seeker rebukes them. He holds up Mr. Joseph Barker as the model of zeal and non-sectarianism. We admire and honour Mr. Barker's zeal, but can scarcely receive it as a perfect model of the Christian spirit. Sectarianism, as evinced in his aggressions on his old Methodist allies and on the clergy, appears to us to be the tendency against which he most needs to be on his guard. We have long been persuaded of the fact, that some of the most remarkable effects of our existence and exertions as a religious sect are to be seen in the theological modifications going on in other bodies. So far from allowing this to damp our efforts, we are cheered by it to increase them. Our Irish contemporary

is not the only Truth-Seeker who begins with censuring his Unitarian brethren; but in the end he may find in them his truest allies. But for the sake of truth, why should we be Unitarians? If this be not our object, we are of all men most miserable. The other articles are good, and betoken a kind and earnest spirit.

The month of January has brought forth other new periodicals. Dr. Stebbing puts out The Christian Enquirer, the tone of which is Protestant, and moderate as to the authority of the Church. A passage or two from the opening article on "Church and State" may illustrate the progress of Nonconformist principles in as well as out of the Church.

"The plainest facts of our history shew that the union between Church and State has not been ripened by years. But, while it politically exists in this country, we have to lament that so much of what is corrupt, base and selfish in governments, and so much of what is servile in churches, has entered into it, that we have never reaped the fruits which ought to have resulted from such a union. The discovery that this is the case becomes every day more evident; and the consequence will be that Englishmen, so characteristically practical, will be tempted to despise a political arrangement which, with such high pretensions, has effected so little good."

The blot of the Christian Enquirer is a letter from the Vicar of Gainsborough, furiously hostile against Jewish emancipation, which (to adopt words used in another portion of the Magazine) "it is quite impossible for a man of ordinary candour to read, and not acknowledge that the Church has but wretched defenders in some of the clergy who pretend to be most zealous in its cause." The argument of the Rev. Charles Smith Bird is, that God's blessing will be denied to us if we cease to be a Christian people! If this is good for keeping the Jews out of Parliament, it is at least equally good for depriving them of religious toleration-for enforcing from them a profession of Christianity; and in the failure of this, it is good for driving them out of the kingdom. There is no stopping short of this conclusion. When the Vicar of Gainsborough concedes to Jews, on the score of the rights of property, the elective franchise, and, on other grounds, the exercise of the office of magistrate and juror, he has with his own hand drawn the bolt which fastens the door of Jewish exclusion from the House of Parliament.

Another new-year offering is the first No. of The Baptist Record, edited by Mr. Edward Bean Underhill, known to many of our readers as the editor of the Hanserd Knollys Tracts. The Magazine promises to be a useful and well-conducted work. The Editor is desirous of elevating the literary taste of the Baptists, and teaching them the mighty power of the press. Thus frankly are their defects stated:

"Baptists alone have seemed indifferent to the use of a weapon so powerful, of a guide so valuable. Even the noble men that have spoken from our midst, and whose voices echo in pages of profound and crystal thought, our Bunyans, our Rylands, our Halls and our Fosters, have not received at our hands that love and reverence they deserve. Their mental qualities, metaphysical acumen and eloquent strains, find wider sympathy and more grateful admiration without than within the denomination they adorned."

The Editor professes on the part of the Baptist body an abhorrence of creeds. The spirit of the Record is to be free and fearless. "We open our pages to every discussion, always provided that it be conducted without personal offence, with Christian feeling, courtesy and love. We desire an open field, fair conflict, truthful purposes, and we have no fear of the result."

INTELLIGENCE.