it in a train of mind averse to the solemn contemplation which it is evidently the Author's purpose to excite. The beauties of pathos and imagination which "Margaret Lyndsay" displays, are not designed for the gratification of an idle moment, but to convey in a lively manner more than one high and important lesson. The ascendancy which the immortal part of man may and ought to maintain over the mortal, the power which religious resignation and a calm. conscience may exert over the most untoward circumstances and the most depressing afflictions--such are the truths in the illustration of which the Author has employed unusual powers of fancy, eloquence and feeling. Religion is freely yet unobtrusively introduced in the cordial, graceful and becoming character which truly appertains to her, as the best friend and comforter of mankind, the instructive source of fortitude, disinterestedness, and benevolence, the promoter of all the minor charities and attentions which sweeten life, and the bestower of that permanent buoyancy of mind which struggles effectually against its evils. Justice is also done to those kindly feelings which in a degree redeem the corrupt nature of man, and which the cynics who libel the world without wishing to mend it, would teach us to distrust; and the capabilities of human nature in the most humble circumstances, and under the roughest exterior, are shewn with truth and clear-sightedness. We particularly allude to the conduct of John Walker, and to the whole episode of old Daniel Craig, which last we consider as the most masterly and striking feature in the book, and shall therefore quote at length from it.

"The heart of the old man, that had for many years been locked up almost in a frost, now thawed, and dissolved under the gracious warmth of affection. Had he striven to do so, he could not have resisted the power of Margaret's perpetual smiles; but instead of that, he was never happy when she was out of the room. He had found suddenly, when no such hope could have been even dreamt of in sleep, a new object of natural delight to cheer his declining age. More beautiful was Margaret Lyndsay-more tender-more cheerfully sedatee-more sincerely loving than even she had ever been, who had left his bosom in her falsehood, and carried over her faith to another husband. Age had stilled all that passion in his soul, age and the grave. But every man has within him the feelings of a father; and here was a daughter rising up before him, in his old age-a flower seen, for the first time, in its perfect beauty; and as he prayed devoutly to God, long to bloom unfading, when his grey hairs were still in the airless cell of death. This strong natural delight visiting him at last changed his whole character, or rather restored and revived it;

so that, in a month or two, Daniel Craig was seen in neighbours' houses, on market days, and even at a fair, with a countenance almost as much enlivened with happiness as any other in the merry village." P. 258.

“Daniel Craig was now one of the best esteemed men in his native parish. The few friends of his youth that still survived met him in his own house, or in theirs, with unrestrained cordiality; he frequently entered doors which he had never darkened before; he took an active and useful part in the concerns of the Kirk Session; and not one of his brother elders was more frequently at the Manse, or seen oftener with the Minister. He accompanied Mr. Oswald on his visitations; and he who had for thirty years been seemingly blind, deaf, and insensible to all the weal or woe of others, now said prayers by the bed of the sick, and gave alms to the poor. 'Nobody ever doubted that he had a gude heart; and now ye see that loving lassie, or leddy rather, his niece yonder, has just warmed its blood, like a daughter sent to him in his aule age and she has made her uncle a Christian.' Such was the general feeling over the parish; nor was the old man himself ignorant how the happy change had been produced upon him-for never was child dearer to parent than sweet Margaret Lyndsay now to him whose life she had blessed and renewed.

"At threescore and ten, the morning and evening shadows are alike solemn—as they fall upon the bright fields rejoicing in the freshness of the dewy prime, or upon the dim landscape reposing in the gradual hush of the sinking sunlight. So was it now with Daniel Craig. He calmly counted the days as they glided by over the garden-dial now true to the changing heavens; and especially on each Sabbath that wound up the week, he felt that he was so many steps nearer and nearer to his grave. That feeling gave him a tranquil happiness; and he looked over his beautiful Farm, with a sort of gratitude to the very clover lea-fields, the green meadows irrigated by a hundred little natural rills, and the deep loamy soil that sent forth the tall wheat-when he thought that they would sustain the life and the happiness of Margaret Lyndsay when he was gone, and perhaps too a sweet family of rosy-cheeked urchins, that would know his tombstone among others, in the cheerful church-yard gatherings, on future Sabbath-days.

"Thus passed on the sunny summer among the silent shades of Nether-Place. I am oure happy now,' said Daniel, oure happy to live lang here; and I humbly trust that I am mair fit for the great change. The mortal body will not wait away from the dust, for all the deepest happiness of the immortal soul; and one Sabbath morning, Daniel having been longer of making his appearance than usual, Margaret went into his room, and found the old man lying asleep upon his bed, with a smiling countenance— but it was in that sleep from which there is no awaking, but in another region of thought and life.

"Margaret had borne every affliction that could search the nerves round the core of her heart; and youth, innocence, love,

and religion as native to that heart as mere human affections, had sustained her in them all, without any diminution of her happiness, although with a great change of its character; and, therefore, it was not likely that this loss should overwhelm her with such strong grief, as she had experienced at other dearer deaths. But the old man's face could not be looked at by the grateful and loving Orphan, without the fast flowing tears of holy nature; and she kissed the cold cheeks of him to whom the tender expression of human affections had for so many solitary years been wholly unknown; and with her own gentle hands she closed his eyes. But for him, she might have been a dweller under the roof of paid and mercenary charity; and but for her, he might have died in his loneliness, sullenly, and without those pious feelings that are best cherished by the breath of merely human love. The old man's latter days had been happy; and the shadow of death had fallen upon him at last, a few hours after a cheerful and fatherly conversation with one he loved, beside his own hearth, while the Bible had furnished the last words uttered to his deafened ear." P. 279.

Whether a decidedly melancholy plot be not the most consistent with the objects to which we have alluded, may be doubted; at least such seems the opinion of the Author, who seldom or never attempts humour, and whose characters, though in one or two instances admirably drawn, are chiefly subservient to the thread of the story. His great end may best be expressed in the language of Campbell.

"Yes; to thy tongue shall seraph words be given,
And pow'r on earth to plead the cause of Heaven;
The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone,
That never mused on sorrow but its own,
Unlocks a generous store at thy command,
Like Horeb's rocks beneath the prophet's hand.
The living lumber of his kindred earth,
Charm'd into soul, receives a second birth;
Feels thy dread power another heart afford,
Whose passion-touch'd harmonious strings accord
True as the circling spheres to Nature's plan;
And man, the brother, lives the friend of man!' "

Pleasures of Hope, P. 16.

Such an employment of talent would reflect honour upon any individual, and if report err not in attributing the present tale to the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, we may congratulate him on a work so well calculated to uphold his high literary character, and so consistent with the nature and objects of his dignified office.

ART. IX. The Christian and Civic Economy of large Towns. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. Glasgow. 1823. OUR readers are aware that the above miscellany is a periodical work written solely by Dr. Chalmers, and that the object of it is to enlighten the present generation, in regard to the best means of managing the poor, as well indeed as of regulating all eleemosynary establishments whatsoever. There are three Numbers of the Civic Economy now before us, of which the respective titles are; On the likeliest means for the abolition of pauperism in England:-On the likeliest Parliamentary means for the abolition of pauperism in England: On the likeliest parochial means for the abolition of pauperisim in England.-It is these topics of course, which recommend to our attention this, the latest portion of Dr. Chalmers' labours, on Christian and Civic Economy.

We find that the author, in order to qualify himself for pronouncing an accurate judgment on the practice and on the effect of our system of poor laws, spent some time last year in different parts of England; and that much valuable information was communicated to him in Dorsetshire, Essex, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, and London. As the benevolence of his views has never been questioned, and as the practicability of his scheme had already been sufficiently proved by the success which crowned his exertions at Glasgow, he appears to have been every where well received; readily and frankly informed on all the points to which his enquiries were directed and respectfully listened to, whenever he thought proper to tender his advice in return. It is our intention to give a summary view of what he learned as well as of what he recommended, during his visit amongst us; but before we proceed to this abridgment, we shall state, in a few words, the amount of his achievements in diminishing, and as applies to several parishes, effectually abolishing pauperism, in the populous city where he exercises his ministerial functions.

Glasgow, from the character of its inhabitants, who are chiefly engaged in trade or manufactures, approaches more nearly than any other town in Scotland, to that condition of things which, at first rendered necessary, and which in some measure justifies at the present day, our establishments for the relief of pauperism. Assessments for the poor had accordingly long been imposed in that city; where, as in all other places in which a fund for the indigent is raised by legal authority, the burden was becoming more and more

heavy every year. The amount of rates at Glasgow was not less than 12,000l. per annum; which, with the sums collected on the Sundays at the doors of the several Churches, might be taken at the average of fourteen or fifteen thousand pounds. The people, beginning to view such relief as a right secured to them by law, were fast becoming clamorous and shameless; assailing the magistrates with memorials and remonstrances, und demanding to be placed on the same footing, as to the regularity and amount of their allowance, as the working class in England. As the theory of the poor laws in Scotland is not materially different from that of the sys-. tem which obtains among ourselves, or is, at least, so much the same as to warrant an assessment upon the real property of a parish, for the maintenance of all the impotent and necessitous householders who may belong to it, our neighbours in the North found themselves placed decidedly within the influence of that vortex which has, of late years, drawn in and destroyed so much of wealth and of good feeling in many parts of England. To avert the evil with which they were thus threatened, it was thought worth while to make an attempt to return to the more simple method of parochial charity, which had been followed throughout all Scotland, previous to the introduction of this authoritative assessment, and to supply the wants of the poor as formerly, from the Sunday collections, as well as from those more private sources of individual philanthropy, which are never closed in cases of real distress. With this view, Dr. Chalmers entreated to have his parish disjoined from the other city parishes of Glasgow, and to have the entire command of the small parish fund now mentioned; that, namely, which is contributed by the voluntary donations of the parishioners themselves at the church door: and with these scanty means and facilities he undertook to provide for all his parochial poor; to relieve the Town's Hospital of all burdens as connected with his people; and to allow, at the same time, the whole amount of the assessment levied within his parish, to go in aid of the general disbursement for the poor in the other parts of the city.

This was a bold challenge; and it was accepted. Dr. Chalmers, we are told, has one of the poorest parishes in Glasgow, containing about 9000 inhabitants, nearly all of them belonging to the labouring class of society, and, at the time he undertook their reformation, greatly overrun with radicalism and other political and religious impurities. But he never despaired of success; and he has succeeded beyond ali human hope and calculation. He not only provides for