Elustrative Notices.

[Passages in their reproduction are commonly so varied that the original author often does not know his own production again. To avoid thus misleading, and to cultivate habits of accuracy on the part of our voung readers, the source is stated whence every passage quoted is derived, so that when secondhand the reader knows how to trace it or how to trust it.]

THE Birmingham Mercury, in its first number, writes these valiant and liberal words -more specific and practical than any newspaper has before used among us, so far as I am aware:-'We should also avoid that cant of spiritualism which thinks political reform useless, and which tries to satisfy the demand for political justice by the offer of churches, soup tickets, and ragged schools. It is an insult to ask the people if they had a belly-full would they care for reform? If they would not, they ought to do. The middle classes have demanded many things not necessary to physical well-being. There is a sense of justice and a sense of hunger-let both be cared for. Religious freedom we love in its widest sense : we ask freedom for religion from state bondage-freedom for all from political disqualification on account of belief-freedom from persecution of every kind. When we speak of religious liberty, we do not mean exaltation of chapel over church, or orthodoxy over heresy; but the utter cessation of punishment, political or social, for religious opinion. We will not do as some who cry out loudly against state-church persecution, make eloquent speeches about civil and religious liberty-but in private forget them, and, in social matters, even violate them. By religious freedom we mean absolute, unconditional liberty of religious opinion and action. Every case of persecution that comes to our knowledge we will record.'

The first lecture by the Rev. Newnham Travers, given February 11, at South Place, was considered deeply interesting-and Pantheistic in tendency.

The Bishop of Calcutta, in a letter to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (February 15, 1844) writes:- The great Arbiter is prospering our arms, and thus extending our influence. Central India is settled, (though thinking people don't like it). China is settled, and nothing remains disquieted but the Punjaub.' Sir T. F. Buxton replied to the above part of the Bishop's letter thus :-'I am far more of a quaker than you as to these Indian wars. I know every one of them may be called defensive; but the principles and root of all are aggression and conquest. I cannot conceive how our missions are ever to prevail against the arguments of our cannon. Six thousand heathens slain at Gwalior are a terrible set off against our converts.'

From the 'Spirit of the French Press,' in the Spirit of the Age, No. 25, we extract the following:- When the citizens of Gaillac sent a deputation with an address to Louis Philippe, in 1830, they received for answer the celebrated words -we shall endeavour to hold our course in the just medium (Juste Milieu). Upon this famous reply, the creed of vaunted moderation, the Peuple remarks:"Juste Milieu! the promise of all governments which commence—the error of all governments which finish. Juste Milieu! the first illusion of timid and honest hearts—the first hypocrisy of perverse and ambitious souls. Juste Milieu! impossible conciliation-impossible satisfaction-which has never conciliated anything, and never satisfied anybody. Juste Milieu! still more chimerical and Utopian than all the dreams of all the Socialists.":

A correspondent writes:-'I see by the papers that between thirty and forty thousand copies of the "Analogy" have just been sold amongst the workmen in one of our manufacturing districts.' By what papers?

A review notice in a journal, whose name and number I forget, lately had this paragraph on J. D. Morell's new work on the 'Philosophy of Religion :'—' Mr. Morell's preceding work, on the 'Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century,' caused much controversy; which is not likely to be diminished by the views he has put forth in this new volume. The object to consider religion as a purely philosophical and rational question, is at once to provoke the most determined hostility, amounting, indeed, with many sects, to a reprobation. He is deeply imbued with the doctrines of the German Rationalists; and Schleiermacher seems to be a particular favourite with him. He acknowledges that Germany has put forth much that is subversive of all genuine faith in God and true Christianity; but contends that this has arisen more from a desire to spiritualise too much, than from such materialist and grovelling utilitarian sapping as Chistianity has received in our own country. The gist of all is, that reason must be satisfied in order to establish religious belief; and a host of subtle and metaphysical argument is adduced, to show that if those who profess it have, as they pretend, the perfect conception of Christianity in them, they make a lamentably bad use of their knowledge, and therefore it is necessary to go much farther into the development of that conception.'

Coleridge relates, in his Table Talk, that 'A Turk was, by a Romish priest, prevailed on to turn Christian, having been promised plenty of wine in this life, and a paradise of eternal delights in the next. He was regularly instructed in the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and, after a time, the sacrament of the eucharist was administered to him. The next day, when his instructor was interrogating him, he asked him how many Gods there were? "None at all," said Mustapha. "How! none at all?" said the priest. "No," replied the sincere believer; “ have always taught me there was only one God, and yesterday I eat him."

you

A public meeting was recently held in the Middle Parish Church, to consider the propriety of establishing Ragged or Industrial Schools in Greenock. Amongst those present on the occasion was his Grace the Duke of Argyle. His Grace said

I perfectly agree with Dr. M'Farlan, that the education to be given to the children in these schools ought to be pre-eminently a religious education (Cheers.) I agree further with Dr. M'Farlan, that that religious education ought not to be separated either as to time or place from the general education of the school (Cheers.) For, gentlemen, with one of the greatest and most enlightened men of modern times-for such I hold Dr. Arnold to be-I believe, that it is a mistake to separate Christian instruction from what is called secular education. It was his great maxim, which he followed out most admirably in teaching and writing -that nothing ought to be done, written, or said by a Christian except in a Christian spirit. Whether poetry or history, or any other branch of what is vulgarly called secular instruction, he insisted it should and ought to be written with a Christian purpose.' [Was fanaticism ever more unblushingly expressed? What would be said to the atheist should he display a tithe of this intolerance?]

The Christian Times, of December 15, congratulated itself on a 'fact communicated in an Irish paper, that within the last few weeks nineteen paupers in the Dingle workhouse had publicly abandoned Popery, and embraced the truth as it is in Jesus. The whole of the cases were investigated by the Board of Guardians (all Roman Catholics), but they were unable to elicit a single fact justifying a doubt as to the sincerity of the converts.' [We suspect that pauper conversions are as suspicious as death-bed conversions. In the pauper case the evidence of the baker and butcher would go farther than the evidence of the Fathers.]

G. J. H.

The

No. 143.]

Reasoner.

EDITED BY G. J. HOLYOAKE.

THE REPUBLICAN EXILES.

[PRICE 2d.

LAST week a few persons met to dine and spend the evening with MM. Louis Blanc and Caussidiere. During the evening several persons left the room, and went into company where paragraph-makers for the Times were present-and some one of them gathering the fact of the dinner, took the liberty of transferring it to the pages of that not over-scrupulous journal; and on Wednesday morning, amid its veracious chronicles, it was read that 'Yesterday evening the friends and political admirers of those distinguished members (Blanc and Caussidiere) of the French National Assembly honoured them with an entertainment at the Whittington Club-rooms, Strand. The company present embraced the names of all the well-known Republicans, Communists, and Socialists, both of the metropolis and of the provinces. After laudatory addresses, in which the speakers enunciated their peculiar views, and expressed their anticipations of seeing, and assisting to bring to pass, a state of "greater freedom" in mind and morals—a revolution in society which would ever be associated with the names of their distinguished guests-M. Louis Blanc and M. Caussidiere responded. The company separated mutually pleased with each other.'

This paragraph is very well for the Times, as its four sentences contain only eight things which are not true.

1. The dinner was given by one gentleman who invited others whose presence he thought would make up a small party intelligent, agreeable, and convivial.

2. These persons were not all 'political' admirers of Blanc and Caussidiere. Those who were not were content, in the words of the chairman, ' to do honour to the intellect, and the might, and the honesty, of the republic-which they believed to be represented by the distinguished exiles present.'

3. Not a single public man from the 'provinces' was present, and the representation with respect to the metropolis' is very untrue.

4. Nothing whatever 'laudatory' was said. None of the usual fulsome adulation of dinner parties was fallen into.

5. No allusions whatever were made to 'bringing to pass' a 'revolution,' either here or elsewhere, associated with the names of the chief guests present. The 'addresses' more resembled dissertations on abstract principles. The speech by one from whom the Times would most expect ultra things, was pronounced by a friend to be frightfully moderé.'

6. Neither Blanc nor Caussidiere 'responded' to anything, as the Times puts it. For not knowing English, they could not know well what to respond to. They simply acknowledged the sentiment of their 'health.' Caussidiere spoke chiefly in praise of the English police, who appear to have struck him with admiration.

7. The last sentence of the paragraph is not true in the sense in which the Times intends it, for several were of opinion that the speaking on the English side, though impromptu, was hardly equal to the occasion, or worthy of the

nation.

8. The paragraph contains an imputation of political partisanship on the part of the Whittington Club, which is no less untrue than the allegations noticed. Upon [No. 8, Vol. VI.]