which are causing death. The blood gathering about the heart can no longer be propelled by its enfeebled impulse. Lear, too weak to relieve the impediments of his dress, which he imagines cause the sense of suffocation, asks a bystander to undo this button.'

ART. X.-1. The Church and its Endowments; a Charge. By W. Dealtry, D.D., F.R.S. 1831.

2. On the Use and Abuse of Literary and Ecclesiastical Endowments. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 1827.

IN

N the cheers with which the announcement of the ministers' propositions for the confiscation of a portion of the church property in Ireland was received by both sides of the House, one member, and one for whose talent, character, and honest bearing, we have a respect-one, moreover, whom we believe to be a friend to the church in his heart-professed to discover a testimony to the moderation of the reformed House of Commons, The remark, we conclude, was directed chiefly to the opposition benches, where many were found to applaud who might have been expected to resent. We confess, that we were compelled to put a different construction upon those cheers; more particularly when we coupled them with the heartless merriment which had

The small portion of Sir Henry Halford's volume which is in a dead language, appears to us equally creditable to him as his English Essays. We suspect there are few mere scholars of these days who could produce anything more elegant, as a specimen of Latinity, than the following passage respecting the late Dr. Matthew Baillie. In substance the tribute is honourable to the dead and to the living.

'In hoc dilecto nomine fas sit mihi commorari paulum, et dolere, quòd huic excellenti viro, tot annos in eâdem nostrâ illâ laboriosissima vitæ ratione comiti, socio, amico, singulari in hanc domum pietate, hisce comitiis celebrioribus, huic solemnitati, huic illustrissimorum et nobilissimorum Hospitum cœtui non licuerit interesse; quamquam eum famæ satis diù vixisse scio, æternæ felicitati, quod humillimè spero, bene satis. Et enim, patre usus pio, à primâ usque adolescentiâ in explorando corpore humano fuerat versatissimus; et ex hâc studiorem ratione sapientiam et potentiam Dei maximâ admiratione, summâ veneratione contemplatus est. Posteà verò cùm ad medicinam exercendam se accinxisset, facilè sensit, quantulum corpori, morbis et ægrâ valetudine laboranti, subventurus esset Medicus, nisi qui animi quoque motus, vires, adfectus, perciperet: animi, scilicet, unius et ejusdem cum corpore, tamen diversi,— consociati cum illo, sed distincti,—in ejus compagibus inclusi et involuti, nihilominus tamen liberi-immortale quid perpetuo præsentientis atque præmonentis, et illud futurum cupientis, tamen et metuentis. Ab his contemplationibus potentiæ ac majestatis divinæ ad debitum numini cultum præstandum incitatus est, ad fidem in Deo habendam, et ad totum se ei submittendum. Hinc pia illa vivendi regula, hinc spectata integritas. Hinc illi omnia graviter, humaniter, amabiliter mos erat cogitare;— hinc, quod cogitaverat, planissime ac verissimè dicere ;-hinc nihil alteri facere, quod sibi faciendum nollet; hinc eandor, caritas:-sed me reprimo; quanquam haud vereor, Optimates, ne vobis in præstantissimi hujus viri laudibus longior fuisse videar; quippe vestrum quamplurimi sanitatem ejus judicio et consiliis acceptam refertis. Nec timeo, ne mihi succenseatis, Socii, quòd eum his saltèm accumulaverim donis, qui tantum sibi vestrum omnium amorem vivus conciliaverit ; qui industriæ, benevolentiæ, sanctitatis, innocentiæ exemplum (quod omnes utinam imitemur!) reliquerit.'— p. 148-150.

been

been shortly before awakened in the same assembly by the history of a forlorn clergyman, one of the many who had been hunted from his house and home by a ruthless mob, for no fault of his beyond that of desiring to live by his own; by his own, to which his right was as good as that of any honourable member, who enjoyed the joke, to the property which qualified him for partaking of it in that place. And still further, were we disposed to dissent from the inference, when we observed the apathy with which Sir Robert Peel's appeal in behalf of the suffering clergy of Ireland was entertained, and the still silence in which it fell dead upon his hearers. For ourselves (in sorrow of heart we acknowledge it), we considered those ill-timed cheers as in part proceeding from men who raised the shout of triumph over the fall of an enemy; and, in part, from men who knew not what they did. To the former we have nothing to say; we shall not stoop to reason with those who would reply to us by force; but to the latter to those who are themselves shaking the church, or consenting thereto in others, and lending them their arm, in mere ignorance, we will offer a few words of warning; being thoroughly persuaded that the land-owners of this country are not aware of the suicidal act they are committing in contributing to the reduction of the church, nor of the unobtrusive but most important services it ren ders them, in their respective neighbourhoods, by preserving to them, to the extent it does, the cordial allegiance of their tenants, great and small.

However lightly the land-owners, and particularly the great land-owners, may think of the sound judgment or comprehensive views of the clergy-of this they may be assured, that they are an integral part of society that could be ill spared :—that their extinction, as an establishment, would create a much greater gap in our system, occasion a much greater falling in of its parts, than many of them imagine; and that, like the mainspring of an engine, which often lies buried in a mass of masonry, wholly out of sight, they minister to the machinery of life, in this country, more effectually than many more conspicuous parts of a higher polish. We offer our remarks, which will be very few, not so much in direct reference to the Irish Church Bill, though to this we may have occasion to allude, as with a reference to the general temper of the times, which has shown itself adverse to the church, in quarters where other things might have been anticipated; and where other feelings, we are sure, would have prevailed, had the parties been in full possession of the case, as it affected themselves. We offer them, however, not as apologists for men whose craft is in danger; for if the church is to fall, we have that opinion of its clergy, that they will not cry for quarter from any personal considerations, nor yet succumb to misfortune

in

in any abject spirit; howbeit, they may be permitted to grieve, for the sake of the nation, and indeed of Christendom, that so goodly a fabric should be so rashly dissolved; and calling to mind the agony of its construction, repeat with the monkish versifier,• Tantus labor non sit cassus!'

The clergyman of a parish, constructed as the church now is, stands in a position the most favourable that can be imagined for bracing the upper and lower orders of society together: he has usually, from the situation he occupies, even more than from any merit of his own, the confidence of his people: and the relation in which the different classes in his own district stand to one another is known to him far more intimately than to any other man in it. His domiciliary visits actually bring him into the closest possible acquaintance with the practical operation of the system upon which an estate is managed: neither the landlord nor the agent can see the consequences of their own acts, the developement of their own principles, at all so accurately, so widely, and in such full detail, as the parish priest. They are treated, however calculated may be their characters to inspire trust, with a certain degree of reserve by all the dependants of an estate; by the poorest, with that degree of it which must prevent them from knowing, with any tolerable certainty, how they are regarded by them. They may be lynx-eyed as you please, but they are not favourably placed for a good sight; and we, therefore, caution the great landlords not to be too sure that they know how they stand in their own neighbourhoods, whether they gather their knowledge from their own observation, or, what is still less to be depended upon, from their agents' reports. Were any civil commotion to arise, so that all prudential restraints upon the conduct were withdrawn, they would find themselves, we are persuaded, very often mistaken in their men; and that some, whom a nearer observer could have pointed out long before, would be the persons to cast at them the first stone-the very individuals who recommended themselves to their notice by more than common vociferations when their healths were drunk, as liberal

politicians and friends of the people.

We believe that few landlords, especially where the property is large, are aware of the real feelings with which a tenant accedes to a change of farm; or resigns a portion of it for an accommodation; or listens to a suggestion of an improvement in his system of cultivation; or marks, though he says nothing at the time, the influence of the landlord, direct or indirect, at a vestry; or submits to a hint about his vote; or watches the devastation occasioned by game; or with which he waits for the necessary repairs of his house, or, if it be a small tenant, of his cottagethe rain perhaps driving through his thatch, whilst he sees ten times

times the amount of his wants lavished on what he considers a whim. We believe that few landlords are conscious of the murmurs to which their rate of rent, however moderate, gives rise, particularly amongst the small occupants; or how far the subject of tithe is from being the only one of the kind upon which such persons sit in judgment. We believe that few landlords know with accuracy the respective consideration for each other entertained by the farmer and labourer; or the many ways in which the eye of the resident clergyman operates as a check upon the conduct of either towards the other-insomuch that let him be removed, and in a few years the vestry shall disclose a system of oppressive jobbing and insolent insubordination, till Swing steps in to settle the difference. We believe that few landlords are acquainted with the precise estimation in which their agents are held by the farmers; or the underlings of those agents (officers, of all others, to be most carefully selected by landlords who have a regard for their own characters), by the peasantry. Few of them suspect the unreasonable as well as reasonable grounds of hardship which these latter are apt to take up, and muse upon;—their speculations upon the inequality of men's lots in life-their shrewd, but seldom over-charitable, attempts to account for inconsistencies in their betters that puzzle them-their keen sense of inconveniences which accrue to themselves from such and such regulations, which may be all very good, but which they do not think so.

Now all this multifarious local knowledge obtrudes itself upon a clergyman; he cannot escape it if he wished it, which indeed is very often the case. The complaints of his parishioners, positive or imaginary, are forced into his ears in spite of himself—they feel that they are safe with him—they are not afraid that he will betray them-they are willing to think he may have it in his power to plead their cause and procure them redress. He is the last man to desire to be made the depository of their secrets, much less to encourage them to communicate; for he cannot but often be embarrassed by the situation in which it places him—that of a responsible lion's-mouth; but he cannot do his duty in his parish, and be exempt. The merest accident that may occur during a call furnishes an opportunity for the disclosure-more especially in seasons of sickness, which are those when the clergyman has the closest intercourse with his people; for then comes, with the poor at least, the tug of life; and whatever dregs there may be in their cup are then sure to be cast up-to say nothing that at such moments the heart naturally opens more than at other times. Then the fire kindles, and at the last they speak with their tongue-but it is in accents very different from those they would have addressed to their landlord, of whom they stand in some fear-or to his agent, of whom they stand in much greater; to them they do not un

bosom

bosom themselves-before them they are in some degree spellbound-a power is on them.

Let the landlord act with what kindness he may to the people on his estate, let his agent do the same, still it will be found in the practical economy of life, that untoward matters will, from time to time, turn up, which it is well to assuage, to remedy, to explain; such matters as, but for the genial interference of some healing hand in season, will fester and irritate. The clergyman steps inhis personal respect and regard for the landlord would, even under other circumstances, lead him to set his character and conduct right with the people, if possible; he probably knows him well is aware of his private feelings, real intentions towards his neighbours and dependants-is sure, from what he does know, his meaning is of the best, whatever may be the interpretation put upon him, or whatever may be the mistakes in the execution of his purposeshas heard him, perhaps, express a dozen times over the object at which he is driving in his measures-a humane object—a benefit in the event to the parties who are at present the loudest to complain. Even if the squire should be of a less disinterested kind, still the bias of the established clergyman of the parish is to make the best of him with his people. Independently of the obligations or courtesies by which he may have been in some measure won—and which it would be false and foolish pride to reject, or not to remember-he is by habit, as an episcopalian minister, no less than for conscience'-sake, disposed to maintain respect for rank, upon principle-honour to whom honour is due-upon principle which the party aggrieved, or thinking himselfˇso, feels that the clergyman is in his vocation when he urges, and would despise him if he forbore to urge. Any clergyman would be conscious that he was acting not only an unrighteous but an unwise and dishonourable part, were he to foster the querulous disposition of the people committed to him-he would be conscious that he was placing himself in a false position; and he would know that, independently of all higher considerations, his influence with them would soon decline were he to aggravate instead of dispersing their ill humours. His line is clear and precise-a line which we honestly believe the clergy of the established church almost universally follow-to plead for the landlord with the tenants, and for the tenants with the landlord-and so to encourage the one to be content and the other to be considerate.

Nor is it only by rectifying mistakes, removing prejudices, and mitigating grievances, real or imaginary, that the clergyman interposes between the landlord and tenant, with so much advantage to the former, however little it may be appreciated;

but