instance, as the veneration which is given to the Mother of God. Writing, in 1824, to a female friend, he says

"Were not the associations so serious, the vanity of your sex might be gratified by thinking that the actual deity of a large part of the Catholic world is a woman, -the Blessed Mary." - vol. iii. p. 326.

It may be inferred from this error, how uninformed he must have been on the points of Catholic doctrine; and if misinformed, how defective and erroneous must have been his examination of their truth. Setting out, as we suppose he did, notwithstanding all his assertions of discarding prejudice, with the principle that the Catholics made a deity of the Virgin, it is not to be surprised that such a tenet should to him be found wanting in truth, and in opposition to the Scriptures. Yet we may rest assured that exactly similar is the process of inquiry and religious examination that is going on, in thousands of minds around us, under the guidance of that good old Protestant principle-the right of private judgment.

To come down from the high subjects which have hitherto engaged our attention, let us for a moment, ere we close this notice, take a glance at Channing in the privacy of his home. The following description of his usual mode of life at Boston, will bring him prominently before us, and make us for a moment forget the author in contemplating the man :

"The sun is just rising, and the fires are scarcely lighted, when with rapid step Dr. Channing enters his study. He has been wakeful during many hours, his brain teeming, and, under the excitement of his morning bath, he longs to use the earliest hours for work. His eye and smile are so bright, his step is so elastic, his whole air is so buoyant the spirit, in a word, seems so to shine through his slight frame, that a stranger would not anticipate the languor which a few hours of labour will bring. Dr. Channing small and weak!' said a Kentuckian, who was a fervent admirer of his writings; I thought he was six feet at least in height, with a fresh cheek, broad chest, voice like that of many waters, and strong-limbed as a giant.' And now in these morning hours you see how radiant he is with energy. His first act is to write down the thoughts which have been given in his vigils; he next reads a chapter or more in Griesbach's edition of the Greek Testament; and, after a quick glance over the newspapers of the day, he takes his light repast. Morning prayers follow, and then he retires to his study table. If he is reading, you will at once notice this peculiarity,

that he studies pen in hand, and that his book is crowded with folded sheets of paper, which continually multiply as trains of thought are suggested. These notes are rarely quotations, but chiefly questions and answers, qualifications, condensed statements, germs of interesting views; and when the volume is finished, they are carefully selected, arranged, and, under distinct heads, placed among other papers in a secretary. If he is writing, unless making preparation for the pulpit, or for publication, the same process of accumulating notes is continued, which at the end of each day are also filed. And as your eye scans the interior of the secretary, you observe that it is already filled with heaps of similar notes, arranged in order, with titles over each compartment. These are the materials for the work on 'MAN.' When a topic is to be treated at length in a sermon or essay, these notes are consultedthe reflections, conjectures, doubts, conclusions of many years are reviewed; and then with treasures of memory, orderly arranged, Dr. Channing fuses and recasts his gathered ores under the warm impulse of the moment. He first draws up a skeleton of his subject, selecting with special care, and making prominent the central principle that gives it unity, and from which branch forth correlative considerations. Until perfectly clear in his own mind as to the essential truth of the main view, he cannot proceed. Questions are raised, objections considered, explanations given, definitions stated, what is merely adventitious and accidental swept aside,the ground cleared, in a word, and the granite foundation laid bare for the corner-stone. And now the work goes rapidly forward. With flying pen he makes a rough draught of all that he intends to say, on sheets of paper folded lengthwise, leaving half of each page bare. He then reads over what he has written, and on the vacant half-page supplies defects, strikes out redundancies, indicates the needed qualifications, modifies expressions. Thus, sure of his thought and aim, and conscientiously prepared, he abandons himself to the ardour of composition." vol. iii. p. 468.

This picture partakes, in a high degree, of the colouring of a family portrait; and as the colours have been laid on by the pencil of a near relative, we are disposed to make allowances for the natural partiality of the painter. Dr. Channing's style is too well known to all readers, to require at our hands any minute or critical analysis. For force of expression, earnestness of argument, and sustained dignity of language, we know of no modern author who will not lose somewhat by comparison. If there be a fault, it is that it has too much of a certain solemnity of tone that savours strongly of the pulpit. This is to be naturally expected in the discourses that were to be so delivered; but even in his other and lighter treatises,

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where it is not at all required, it is also met with. Even his most familiar letters smack of the divine, and read as if they were to be delivered from the pulpit. This peculiarity of style must be ascribed to his professional habits; though something may be also due to his natural character.

Amid all the severity of his studies, and the fatigue consequent upon his ministerial duties, Channing was always of a delicate constitution. The preaching of even one discourse was frequently known to affect his health so much, that he was confined to his bed for days. During the last years of his life he resigned almost entirely the care of the congregation at Federal-street, Boston, of which he had been the pastor, and travelled over great part of the States, in the hope that change of air and the excitement of travel, would recruit and invigorate his shattered constitution. It was during one of these excursions that he was seized with his last illness, and died at Bennington, Vermont, while ou his return to Boston through the romantic scenery of the Green Mountains. This event took place on the 2nd of October, 1842. He was sixty-two years old.

Of the general character of Channing, it is necessary to say but little. After what we have already stated, our readers will not expect unqualified approval. He had great qualities of mind, and great amiability of heart. Had they been consecrated by a spirit of true religion, and directed into a proper channel, we doubt not he would have accomplished great things for God and for his church. If, instead of groping his way blindly along by the glimmering of his own reason, and being conducted by it through many a quagmire until precipitated into the depths of Socinianism, he had been led onward by the blessed light of that sun of justice which sheds its benign rays on all of the Church's household, we doubt not that with his natural capabilities, God's grace would have conducted him to high perfection. As it is, though he has done some good to his fellow-man, and achieved for himself in the world's history a brilliant name and much renown, we must regard him as a melancholy and notable example of the evil of unrestricted inquiry in matters of religion. He is a light to men, but, alas! it is a light to warn them of the perils to be encountered, and the dangers to be shunned.

ART. VII:-Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, second Marquess of Londonderry. Edited by his Brother, CHARLES VANE, Marquess of Londonderry, G.C.B., &c. Vols. 1 and 2. London: Colburn, 1848.

M

OST of the actors in the great Irish drama which commenced with the rebellion of 1798, and ended with the act of Union in 1800, have long since passed into another world. Far be it from us to draw aside the mantle which death kindly spreads over human infirmities. That privilege belongs to God alone, to whom we, as well as they, must render an account of our every action. We were contented to extend to Lord Castlereagh that common charity which hides the weaknesses of all those who have paid the common debt of humanity; nor would we have felt ourselves called upon to interfere, if the relatives of the deceased had contented themselves with the usual privilege of friendship, and adorned his tomb with a long catalogue of real or imaginary private virtues. But when they bring forth his public actions as a minister of the crown-when they drag his ashes out of the grave, where they have lain, "cold and unhonored," for twenty-six years, and proclaim them to be the remains of a great patriot-when they produce his letters and correspondence as a proof of this, and challenge contradiction, we are reluctantly compelled to examine the justice of their claim, and without setting down aught in malice, to pronounce an impartial judgment.

The name of Castlereagh is unpopular in England, and in Ireland it is still execrated. He has been generally represented as a man devoid alike of genius, feeling, and principle-as a political trickster, who made his way in the world by unscrupulousness, corruption, and chicanery. We can, however, conscientiously declare that we took up these volumes wholly free from such prejudices, and that we expected to find in them much that would illustrate one of the saddest and most interesting portions of Irish history, as well as something to palliate the conduct of Lord Castlereagh, if not to ease him of a part of the load of infamy which presses so heavily upon his name. We are bound to state at once, that in both these expectations we have been entirely disappointed. On the contrary, if any evidence was hitherto wanting to prove that he was the guilty participator-if not the contriver-of the most tyrannical Acts of Parliament, of the most abominable atrocities, and of the most wholesale corruption that ever disgraced the annals of any nation, it is abundantly supplied even by the select correspondence published by the Marquess of Londonderry. In the entire of Lord Castlereagh's voluminous correspondence, we have not met with one noble or generous sentiment. The most heartless wickedness, provided it has been perpetrated by the friends of administration, is unable to draw from him in his most confidential moods, one word of honest manly indignation. When he bartered the principles to which he had pledged himself on the hustings, for place, and passed from the opposition to the ministerial benches of the Irish Parliament, he sold himself body and soul to his employers. Initiated into the impure mysteries of a government which persecuted and plundered, to use the calculation of Mr. Elliot, one of Lord Castlereagh's official assistants, more than three and a half millions of the people for the benefit of five hundred thousand, and ruled parliament by a system of almost universal corruption, he improved them so as to render them as nearly as possible the perfection of iniquity. Yet Lord Castlereagh was gifted by nature with some excellent qualities. He was possessed of both physical and moral courage in an eminent degree, as well as of the most unflinching perseverance and the most indomitable energy. Even coercion and cruelty were not with him an end, but a means, which he unscrupulously used to attain his object. But his best qualities were prostituted to such mean and wicked purposes-his energy being wasted in the miserable traffic of purchasing corrupt boroughs and more corrupt representatives, and his courage and perseverance in one sustained effort, which lasted during his whole life, to enslave Ireland, England, and even all Europe, by force and fraud and trickerythat they have borrowed the hue of those objects with which alone they were familiar, and appear in him themselves mischievous, paltry, and contemptible. This will be evident to every impartial reader of these volumes. Lord Castlereagh's letters are not like those of Burke-a study for the philosopher and the philanthropist, as well as for the statesman. They are as destitute of nobility of thought as of nobility of purpose, and wholly unillumined