ceptible of many degrees, (according to the proportionateness of the objects contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears different only from the manners and original temperament of the individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a crackling flame; cold blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism. Enthusiasts, ενθουσιασταί from ἔνθεος, οἷς ὁ Oεòs eves, or possibly from iv ovcíais, those who, in sacrifice to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or influence mightier than their own individuality. Fanatici-qui circum fana favorem mutuo contrahunt et afflant-those who in the same conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and ferment by co-acervation. "I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a composite language, such as the English, before they are desy nonymized. Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal; and many others."-Vol. II. p. 365-367. We conclude with one extract more. chapter on Fenelon's work on Charity :— It is a note on a "This chapter is plausible, showy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the character of the whole work) makes the amiable.' To many, -to myself formerly,-it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. What is the remedy? What is the antidote?-Charity?-Pshaw! Charity in the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,-faith of grace,faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The Romish scheme is preposterous ;-it puts the rill before the spring. Faith is the source,-charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless, was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:-it is not faith,—but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very possibly co-exist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians :—I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. "Thus we see even our faith is not ours in its origin but is the faith of the Son of God graciously communicated to us. Beware, therefore, that you do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain. If, therefore, we are saved by charity, we are saved by the keeping of the Law, which doctrine St. Paul declared to be an apostacy from Christ, and a bewitching of the soul from the truth. But, you will perhaps say, can a man be saved without charity ?-The answer is, a man without charity cannot be saved: the faith of the Son of God is not in him."-Vol. II. p. 368, 369. ART. V.-1. The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple, GEORGE HERBERT. Wisdom IV. x. He pleased God and was beloved of him so that, whereas he lived among sinners, he translated him. London: Pickering. 1836. 2. The Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. By GEORGE HERBERT. Psalm XXIX. In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour. London: Pickering. 1835. "OLD friends, old wine, old books," was the motto of one who had seen and felt enough of the world's rugged experience to enjoy its comforts. The old books, with which we are at present concerned, have stood the test of time, and have been weighed in the balance and not found wanting. We take them to our hearts as we salute an old friend, with no suspicious or inquisitive looks distrustful of the claims of a new acquaintance, but with a warm welcome, full of the assurance of long intimacy. The well known words and sentences, like the familiar tones of home are proof against disappointment. There is a better presumption in favour of an old book than a new one. The past is a wider field to gather from, and has produced more of excellence, than many present times can attain. An industrious book-worm has calculated, that of the thousand works printed annually in Great Britain, but ten are remembered within twenty years; how many outlive their century he does not determine. We are willing, since life is short, to collect our choice library of classics from the Past, and leave the task to others of decimating the new comers in literature. The Present is coarse and tangible; it wants the softening medium of time and distance. We feel its evil close upon us while the good is afar off; the judgment is turned aside by local prejudice, or self-interest throws a deceitful image across its path. The Past is clothed with a mellow tinge that casts a shade over its faults, and brings its merits into relief. It is a picture hung at the best distance and in the best light, where we magnify the beauties and lose sight of the defects. The best view of the present is with this back-ground of the Past. A school of ultra-economists, looking only upon physical facts, rebuke this respect for the old ages of the world. They value life by a standard of utility, not by the scale of the imagination; and think when they have appealed to a table of statistics, their argument is complete of the insufficiency of the Past. They esteem it a dangerous precedent to uphold the days of Shakspeare and Sydney, as if they taught a disrespect of locomotives and spinning jennies. They seem to think the people will go unclothed, and perish before the blasts of the winter, because Julius Cæsar, or any other ancient worthy, is held up to their imitation in some respects, who "had not a shirt to his back or a pane of glass in the window to protect him. from the cold." Against such a class of philosophers it is in vain to object reason or argument. Talk to them of the poetry and imagination in old writing, which perhaps in their antiquity had a nearer relish of the garden of Eden which later times have lost, and they will oppose the Iliad and the Odyssey by a dictionary of Commerce. But "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The ultra-reformer lives a graceless being upon the earth, and though he prates of philanthropy, has very little sympathy with his race. Where he is sincere, his impracticable schemes of the improvement of society set a barrier between him and the rest of the world. He makes his own crude ideas the test of good manners and virtue. He treats, in his visionary way, of the people in general, and cannot descend to humour the little habits and sentiments of individuals. He cannot learn why one man is happy in the present, or another receives enjoyment from the contemplation of the past, while he looks only to the future. He has no affection for man as he is. He will not let the world wag on carelessly, as it has done these many ages, with its old-fashioned ways and opinions; but would have it pause and stand still till he has remodelled it again on some better plan of improvement. He is willing to throw the complex machine into confusion, and break up the old ties and well-knit bonds of society for some fancied good of his own invention. He places his imaginary scenes of the perfect state of society in the future, for he can derive very little authority for his creed in the past or present. Humble content with the situation in which life is cast, and pious veneration for the virtues of elder days, are out of his catalogue of merits. He belongs to a class who, in their crusade for the good of society, lose themselves in wild, barren regions of fancies and speculations, while they leave behind them the well-settled countries at home. The love of the good old times is still an honest passion of the heart; not that they really were better, had less of crime or more of goodness than the present, but that the mind, in its desire for perfection, imagines them virtuous, hospitable, wise, and benevolent. It is welcome to us even to be cheated into a love of goodness. This belief, too, is indulgent to many who would lose all trace of the ideal, and go down to their graves unthinking, absorbed in the poor selfish present. All men have not the strength of imagination to picture the world as it will be in the next and subsequent generations. The golden visions of Hope are bounded by the circle of their own lives. The future lies dark and mysterious, veiled from the view by a thick cloud. What, after all, is the condition of the mere world to them a hundred years hence, but as it involves the uncomfortable thought that it shall go on with its joys and pleasures equally well without them, and erect its palaces of mirth over their graves? The Past is held by a different tenure. It is not an estate in reversion to be enjoyed by our descendants, but an inheritance purchased by our ancestors, of which we are the heirs. It is permanent and sure, no fanciful island of the imagination floating in an unknown future, but a fixed spot of earth in which we may anchor our affections and make fast our hopes. We look back upon chosen periods in the history of the world as we do upon the experience of our youth, as something we have rescued from time and made our own for the future, "clouds and darkness rest upon it." We know, that in the days of our fathers and forefathers, there were kind homes and open hearts to grace them in the land; men felt their existence wrapt up in sympathy with one another; the warm pressure of the hand, and the moisture in the eye, spoke of affection; the same round of life was accomplished men rejoiced and suffered, laughed and wept, knew the mirth and melancholy of a jest, learned the serious meaning of life and eternity, and lived inspired by the very passions, humours, and fancies of our every-day life. These things may all continue so for the time to come; but, whether in misanthropy or not, we fear old faith and integrity will be banished from the earth. Bryant indulges a pleasing melancholy strain, full of the spirit of the past, of the sunset of life, of the falling leaf of autumn, or the fading day of winter, in the opening of his poem, entitled "The Ages:" When to the common rest that crowns our days, When o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows, And therefore to our hearts, the days gone by, Of times when worth was crowned, and faith was kept, It is false philanthropy to seek to rob the world of its respect for the Past: if it be a delusion, it is one that the wisest and best of men have always cherished; and hence, perhaps, have lived so well, that they have been equally admired by their successors. If men learn to be better subjects by venerating the loyalty of the days of Elizabeth; better scholars by emulating the diligence of the schoolmen; better Christians by adapting themselves to the measure of primitive piety; it is but a poor use of history to ferret out its forgotten records, and prove that the human alloy of imperfection was mingled in all these. Man has enough to do with the realities of life, comes too narrowly in contact with its pains and sorrows, to lose the great support of poetry in the Past. The love of the old age, like the dreams of pastoral life, is an evidence of some goodness of our nature, at least that it looks out of the present for its happiness. It is an easy task for the Divine to engraft Christianity on this state of feeling, and lead the mind enamoured of Old Piety to the better world, where it has long since met its reward. Would I had fallen upon those happier days |