preach doctrines which unsettle men's minds, and even set fa thers against children, and children against fathers; and something should be done to check such attempts on the peace of society: but when we see the private habitation entered by an armed magistrate, when we see the peaceful inhabitants of the cottage thrown into consternation at the approach of a gend'arme, we pause a little, and ask for the cause of all this. The true answer is, that these people will worship God in their own way, and therefore they are subject to these outrages. Is this a thing for the present age to witness, even in a Catholic country? Does not even the Pope allow, or connive at, the English chapel at the doors of his palace? But here in a country professing the principles of the Reformation-professing the very religion which teaches above all things toleration and charity; a father of a family, or a pastor, who has no subsistence but in his parish, is sent over the cold mountains of the Jura or the flinty rocks of Savoy, to seek a shelter for three years, until the inquisition set up at Lausanne be satisfied! Observe too the ferocity of this law; it extends to all who furnish a local it even extends to those who attempt to make proselytes; and the same tribunal that made the law, is to judge whether such a person did attempt to make proselytes or not. We are convinced that these same legislators would not scruple to adopt the methods which the dukes of Savoy adopted in their neighbouring country, to eradicate that interesting people the Waldenses.

The government at Lausanne are awed by the mob! They boast of light and knowledge, but it would not be difficult to shew them from their own historical records, that they are as barbarous in their persecutions as their forefathers were three centuries ago. We have before us a very curious document, taken from the ancient copies of translations or mandates of Yverdon: it is an injunction addressed to the Bailli of the district to take cognizance of all witches and enchanters in his district; "Sur ce te donnons charge expresse d'avertir ceux de dessous ta charge et défendre publiquement en leur chaire de la parole de Dieu, que chacun se déporte de tels enchantemens et si aucun par après cherche conseil vers icieux devins ou enchanteurs, faisant contre cette defense que tu les doives punir comme s'ils fassent allé à la messe," &c. Instead of punishing delinquents in the same way as those who frequent the mass, the present government punishes them in the same way as those are punished who frequent conventicles. Mutato nomine, the thing remains just the same. In those sorrowful times which succeeded to the reformation in England, a Catholic priest who

said mass might be punished with death; if any person harboured a priest he was liable to the same condign punishment; if a priest made a proselyte, the same. In the Protestant Canton de Vaud, if a minister say a prayer in his neighbour's house, he is banished for three years. The person that furnishes the minister with the room is liable to the same punishment. If any one make a proselyte, the same, &c. The difference then only consists in the weight of the penalty. We cannot see the least difference in the spirit which actuated the bigotry of the sixteenth century, and that which actuates the senate of Lausanne in the nineteenth! We tremble for the responsibility of those men, who can thus condemn with open eyes a fellowcitizen to a miserable exile; with tearless eyes they indeed cannot, for some of these administrators of the republic have shed tears at the thoughts of putting in execution their unjust decree, and, like Felix, have trembled.

On the 5th of January last, in the present year, fifteen of those individuals, who had previously been sentenced to banishment by the magistrates of their respective districts, on the strength of this horrible "Arrêté," appeared before the high tribunal of Lausanne to make their appeal, and to hear their final sentence. Among them were observed two ministers, several of the respectable classes of society, and some poor peasants, who scarcely understood the merits of the case. Most

of them read defences, which were coldly listened to by the court of magistrates, "down whose hard unmeaning faces, there never stole a gentle tear." The religionists declared that they had no intention of transgressing the laws of their country, and that all they asked was, liberty to worship God after the dictates of their consciences; and they urged that they ought to experience the same favour as the Roman Catholics and English strangers, who performed divine service according to their own rites, in a church assigned to them by the government. These remonstrances made no impression upon the court, and it was deeply moving to hear one or two of the prisoners exclaim, "Oh ye judges, you may banish us from this our native country, but there is a country from which you cannot exclude us," and pointing upwards, "that is heaven." The result was, one man who had been in prison six months, was remanded for six more, and several who had been banished since August 1824, were exiled for a year from 5th January, 1825.

We have abundant cause for gratitude, in the reflection that no scenes of this kind are likely to be witnessed in England. Though there may be found some of our own countrymen, who take delight in vilifying the institutions of the land they live in,

yet the author of the pamphlet, who has so ably exposed the religious despotism which prevails in the republican Canton de Vaud, has had the good sense to pay the following compliment to the tolerant spirit which distinguishes Great Britain.

"L'Angleterre présente, sous le rapport de la tolérance religieuse comme sous beaucoup d'autres, de singulières anomalies. Si, d'une part, les Catholiques et les dissidens y sont encore soumis à un régime d' exception, si le clergé de l'église nationale y jouit de priviléges temporels exorbitans, d'autre part la liberté des cultes y a une latitude dont aucun autre pays de l'Europe ne pourrais offrir l'exemple. Chaque jour s'elèvent des églises, des chapelles, des maisons de prière, où les membres de toutes les communions, de toutes les sectes chrétiennes se réunissent sans le plus léger obstacle, pour celebrer, le service divin selon leur croyance et leurs usages. L'on voit donc que si, en Angleterre, le principe de la tolérance qui est inhérent à la religion réformée, n'a pas encore pu triompher entierement dans l'ordre politique, il est reconnu sans réserve dans l'ordre religieux, ce qui est d'une bien plus haute importance." P. 8.

Sermons and Charges, by the Right Reverend Father in God, Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Calcutta; with Memoirs of his Life. By HENRY KAye Bonney, D.D. Archdeacon of Bedford. 8vo. Pp. 326. 14s. London. Longman. 1824.

If ever any body undertook an arduous task, surely the worthy Prelate whose life and whose works, to'a certain extent, are presented to the public in this volume, may be said to have done so nor was it engaged in rashly. If it were an object of singular importance, that a Bishop should be appointed to take charge of our eastern settlements, the choice, we are satisfied, could not have fallen upon a more competent person, nor the appointment have been accepted upon purer or more honourable, we may say, more truly Christian principles. As government made no mistake in the selection of the individual, so are we assured, that the individual himself entered upon the charge with no overweening conceit of his own abilities, no mean ambition to be great at the expense of those committed to his charge, no sinister views or prospects of becoming rich or powerful; but that he might do good to the utmost of his means, in a sphere of action, elevated indeed, but so new and untried, as naturally to present to the imagination of any person of

feeling and sensibility, what we cannot scruple to call, tremendous difficulties. In short, it appears to us still to be a post. that so far from coveting, no man of such talents and attainments, as ought to command success at home, could be induced to accept, but upon motives of the most exalted character; and we cannot think it possible for any person, let his religious, political, or moral principles, be what they may, to read the Memoir of the Life of Bishop Middleton, placed at the beginning of this volume, without being persuaded that he went out to India with no motive, hope, or expectation upon his mind, that could at all compete or interfere with the ardent desire he felt to be active, to the utmost of his abilities, "in the cause of religion, of order, and of peace." [See his own Address on taking leave of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, May 17th, 1814.].

Dr. Middleton went out at the risk of all that man could devote to such an object as that before him, not excepting life itself. For it must be known to all, that though many certainly do escape not only the perils of the way, but even the injurious effects of so great a change of climate and of a residence under the tropic,-yet that the chance of sacrificing his life in the cause must have occasionally presented itself to his mind as he thought of these things in the case of others, he must have thought of them in his own case, and that he did think of them in the case of others, is evident from his very feeling and beautiful address to M. Jacobi, the German missionary, sent out by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, in which we find the following pathetic remark: "You are ready," said he," to encounter the perils of the ocean, and the danger of disease in a foreign clime." If, then, this consideration, which could not, it appears, have escaped the reflecting mind of the worthy Bishop, and whieh was, alas! proved to be but too true in the case of the interesting subject of the address, did not damp his resolution of embarking in such a cause, we may reasonably conclude, upon Christian principles, that it even added force to it. Bishop Middleton, as might have been expected, forbore to apply to himself the Apostle's words, in his valedictory address before referred to; yet that in point of feeling and principle, he might, with no excess of confidence and determination, have adopted them. Not only in the spirit, but in the very words of the first great Apostle of the Gentiles, he might have declared, that he was "ready not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem, for the sake of the Lord Jesus."

We say all this of the subject of the Memoir before us with

the more boldness, because we think every article of our commendation was proved by indisputable facts. It was proved by his first rejection and subsequent acceptance of the proposed appointment. The former expressing his diffident opinion of his own abilities, his deference to the dissuasions and remonstrances of anxious friends, and, perhaps, his sense of the risk of greater sacrifices than could, in any worldly point of view, be compensated. The last expressing, in the fullest manner, the force and commanding influence of those exalted principles which bade him go, in spite of all these checks and embarrassments, to be a conspicuous labourer in the Christian harvest. It was proved by the fearless and earnest manner in which, when" he put his hand to the plough," he discharged the du ties of his high and arduous station, during the short time in which he was permitted to exercise them. It was proved by the disregard he manifested to all other objects-having died, in those regions of wealth, comparatively poor. His biographer even thinks it right to apologize for some attention to external appearance, which might be called parade, but which the Bishop thought necessary to give weight to his episcopal commission. We need only compare him, however, with the Bishop of the depressed Syrian Church, to mark, as to personal appearances, the great difference between them. The latter, we are told, met our English prelate, the representative of the first Protestant Church in Europe, in a dress of "crimson satin, with a green velvet mantle over his shoulder; a crimson mitre on his head, ornamented with gold, his attendants carrying a splendid crosier, and a cross of jewels." Do we object to the dress and appearance of the Syrian Bishop? far from it. Where such externals are known to excite awe, respect, and veneration, they may surely be used to some advantage by the minister of heaven or rather, they cannot be altogether neglected, without disparagement to the true religion. Still we are, undoubtedly, for a medium, and simplicity, wheresoever (to use the words of the excellent Bishop)" the minds of men can be brought to be satisfied with the simple decencies of the garb of truth;" but to

return.

We cannot read the prefixed Memoirs without being concerned to find, that Bishop Middleton had great difficulties to contend with, as in some instances appears to have been the case; though they could not, perhaps, have been avoided, without some sacrifice in point of time.. Otherwise, we should think his way ought to have been better prepared for him, by such previous notices and arrangements, as should have left no doubt, on his arrival in India, as to the precise extent of his