this subject was, some time ago, brought under the notice of the House of Commons, (if we recollect aright, by Mr. Butterworth,) certain honourable persons laughed to scorn the worthy member who introduced the subject, because, forsooth, the Sunday newspaper is printed on the Saturday, and it is in the printing of the Monday's paper, it was alleged, that the Sunday is employed. Their flippant ridicule might have been silenced, if it had been properly shewn, that the printing of the paper does not constitute the nuisance or the main part of the offence, but its being exposed to sale. It matters little, comparatively, whether it be a Saturday's or a Sunday's weekly paper that is hawked about and placarded as a decoy for loungers, its columns teeming with provocatives to licentiousness and the virus of infidelity,-the concentrated poison of the press. The title of the Sunday newspaper has, indeed, an air of defiance to religion and the laws, which may justly excite indignation; but the offence to which the attention of the Legislature should have been called, is the sale of any newspapers on the Sunday. For this, no plea of necessity or expediency can be urged; and there can be no question that it powerfully contributes to the increase of profaneness and licentiousness. The Sunday news-rooms,' Bishop Blomfield remarks, may be described as a sort of moral dramshops, where doses of the most deleterious poison are imbibed by thousands of persons who ought to be engaged in reading ' and hearing the word of God.'

Sunday travelling is another point to which the Bishop very properly adverts, as a crime in which the higher classes are more especially implicated. By them the practice was introduced, as a sort of patrician privilege, the roads being on that day less thronged with carts, waggons, stages, and droves, and consequently more free from interruption, and, in summer, from the petty annoyance of dust. This plea is now well nigh destroyed by the baleful effect of their example; for, not even double tolls can protect them against being almost as much exposed to such inconvenience on the Sunday, as on any other day of the week. It might possibly offend against the consciences of the great, to attempt to recover the exclusive prerogative of violating the Sabbath by travelling on that day; but we would willingly assist in restoring to them a monopoly of the crime. We are quite aware that, to put down all Sunday travelling in this country by law, would be an utterly chimerical attempt. There are occasions which amply justify it, on the admitted construction of our Lord's declaration, "the Sabbath was made for man,"—which excepts from the prohibition all works of necessity and mercy.' It seems absolutely necessary, too, that the public vehicles should, in many cases, either set out or reach their destination on some part of the Sabbath. No Jewish laws can be con

sidered as binding upon Christian men in this matter; and the wanton desecration of the day by unnecessary travelling, can be put a stop to only by moral means. Still, as we have laws

applicable to certain tangible and unnecessary offences of this description, by which drovers, carriers, and others are restricted from travelling on the Sunday, it surely is not expecting too much from the Legislature to ask, that those laws should, after due reconsideration, and, if necessary, amendment, be efficiently enforced. The principle on which Sunday tolls are doubled, ought to be distinctly understood: they ought not to be regulated by caprice, nor be made a source of litigation or vexatious oppression. The practice in this respect ought to be uniform and consistent. Surely our highways, on the Sabbath, ought to be at least kept clear from droves of cattle obstructing the road to Church, endangering or alarming the passengers, and disturbing, even during the hours of service, the assembled congregation within ear-shot of the shouts, cries, and execrations which are the usual accompaniment of the shameless practice. Nor should we deem it a very unreasonable demand on the part of the decent and pious portion of the community, that the usual hours of service, in our towns and villages, should be held so far sacred, as to prevent the free passage of stages and vehicles of all descriptions during that brief portion of a day still nominally sacred by the law of the land.

We believe we have now come to the end of our specification of those objects which a revision of the laws relating to the Sabbath would embrace. It will be seen, that we are proposing no innovation on the principle of our laws, no chimerical scheme, no Puritanical severities, no Judaical restrictions. It is upon moral and political grounds, that we petition and implore the attention of the Legislature to the subject. The law must not, cannot be left in its present anomalous and defective state. We have endeavoured to define and to defend the principles upon which its amendment and effective administration should proceed. Let these principles, if correct, once be admitted, and it would not be very difficult to adjust the details of a comprehensive legislative measure, at once declarative of the object and grounds of the law of the Sabbath, and guarding, by effectually protective penalties, against its wanton violation. Scarcely an abuse exists, that is not condemned by the unrepealed Statutes. The very Book of Sports itself did not countenance that unbridled license which now prevails. Were the public mind duly prepared for the measure by legislative discussion, as well as by pastoral exhortation and the aid of the press, there could be little difficulty, we imagine, in putting down at once the most scandalous and demoralizing abuses;the holding fairs or markets on the Lord's Day, or exposing

goods to sale, (with the exceptions specified in the Act 29 Car. II. c. 7); the keeping open of liquor-shops, or shops of any description, except those of chemists; the vending of newspapers; the loading and unloading of boats, carts, or waggons; the opening of any place of public amusement; all gambling, shooting, or tumultuous amusements; the driving of cattle; and, perhaps, some other practices with which we will not swell the recapitulation, lest we should include any offence of doubtful criminality.

Among the representatives of the people of England, is there no individual who will be heroic enough to stand forward in Parliament, as the advocate of the desired reform,-braving the sneers of the polite irreligious, the scoffs of the vulgar profane, the opposition of the interested, the ribaldry of the licentious,— and to persevere in urging the measure upon the Legislature, till the force of public opinion, coming in aid of his exertions, shall ensure success? Have we no Christian patriot among the six hundred members of the House of Commons, competent and willing to achieve this great service for morality and religion? And if not, in the Upper House, will no Prelate step forward, and justify his claim to a seat among our hereditary legislators, as a guardian of the best interests of the country? Then are we indeed fallen as a people from that proud moral elevation which once distinguished Protestant England among the nations of the Christian world. Then no more must the

sweetest of our female lyrists sing of

Already is the sacred day banished from the crowded districts in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, where scarcely the sound of the church-going bell can be heard, and of which it may almost be said, though with reference to circumstances widely different from those to which the poet alludes, that those scenes

'Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.'

But we would fain hope, that, as the evil has now reached a height which renders it an element not less of political danger than of moral corruption, motives of self-interest, if not of patriotism, of prudence, if not of piety, will induce the adoption of timely measures with a view to abate the nuisance, and to repress that daring profanation of the Lord's Day which out

rages all the sanctities of religion, all the decencies of morality, and which defies all law, civil, ecclesiastical, and Divine.

Art. II. The Pilgrim's Progress. With a Life of John Bunyan by Robert Southey, Esq. LL.D. Illustrated with Engravings. 8vo. pp. 515. Price 17. Is. London, 1830.

GRATIFIED and instructed as we never fail to be, when we have the good hap to meet the Laureate on his proper ground, we are in an almost equal degree annoyed by the strange incompetency, perverseness, and bad feeling that almost invariably characterize his intermeddlings with political and theological matters. His style is excellent, although injured by an increasing mannerism; he is a ready and impressive, if not an eloquent writer; his knowledge, though not profound, is singularly extensive; the clearness and raciness with which he tells a continuous story, are admirable; and the skill with which he seizes on remote connexions and illustrations, making them part and principal of the main narrative, is altogether unrivalled. With all this, however, he is no reasoner; although we suspect that he takes this to be his strongest side. He has not, as it appears to us, sufficient coolness to hold the balance firmly: he is too imaginative for logical precision, too prompt and fiery for calm and cautious induction, and, we are afraid, too overweening, to give any chance of success from quiet and amicable expostulation. Hence, all the real or apparent contrarieties in his opinions and conduct. Honourable and of entire integrity, he has laid himself open to the sarcasms and reproaches of men, compared with whom he is as Hyperion to a satyr;-single of heart and eye, he has exposed himself to imputations of Jesuitism and trimming;-gentle and humane of nature, he has enforced illiberal and extreme counsels. In character and demeanour, he is kind and urbane: with pen in hand, he is haughty and overbearing. He delivers his decretals without modification or appeal; deals discourteously with those who lift the head in his presence; overwhelms with contempt the luckless objects of his dislike; and, by the uncalled-for pertinacity and extravagance of his hostility, awakens the suspicion that he is stimulated and sustained by consciousness of

wrong.

Dr. Southey's "Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society" have been, ever since their publication last year, lying on our table for review; but we have never found ourselves in the mood for bestowing on them the sort of notice which they would require, and we shall now release ourselves from an irksome task by a brief and passing reference. It

would have been impossible to enter on a systematic exposure of their weak points, without taking a good deal more trouble than Dr. Southey has felt it expedient to employ. We have no particular taste for tendering arguments to a gentleman who so seldom condescends to use them; and we have still less relish for that kind of controversy of which Ben Jonson has given a specimen in his Bartholomew Fair, and which consists in the simplest possible mode of affirmation and denial. For reasons and from motives of a similar kind, we have abstained from noticing other polemic publications from the pen of Dr. Southey, of which our readers may have expected us to render them an account.* We have no relish for controversy, nor have we ever engaged in it, but from a sense of duty and with the hope of doing good, neither of which inducements was presented to us by the circumstances of the case. Dr. Southey is too much totus in se, to be moved either by reasons or by reproofs; and the peculiarities of his mind are now so generally and thoroughly understood, that his writings may be very safely left to find their proper level. In the present instance, the case is somewhat different. The same spirit, it is true, manifests itself wherever it might find, or make, a stage for its display; but it is under forms and modifications which render it amusing, rather than vexatious. It must needs have a whimsical effect, when a biographical memoir is written con amore,

ours.

* We may, perhaps, find an additional excuse for not noticing more particularly the works referred to, in the masterly review of Dr. Southey's Colloquies in a recent No. of the Edinburgh Review; an article which we cannot but feel to have superseded any remarks of With nice discrimination and a quaint mixture of candour and caustic severity, the talents and qualifications of Dr. Southey are there characterized as posterity will deem of them. To the high subject of his Colloquies, it is remarked, the Author brings two faculties never vouchsafed in measure so copious to any human being,the faculty of believing without a reason, and the faculty of hating ' without a provocation. It is, indeed, most extraordinary that a mind like Mr. Southey's,-a mind richly endowed in many respects by nature, and highly cultivated by study, a mind which has exercised 'considerable influence on the most enlightened generation of the 'most enlightened people that ever existed,-should be utterly des'titute of the power of discerning truth from falsehood. Yet such is 'the fact. Government is to Mr. Southey one of the fine arts. He 'judges of a theory or a public measure, of a religion, a political party, a peace or a war, as men judge of a picture or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination. A chain of associations is, to him, what a chain of reasoning is to other men; and what he calls his opinions, are in fact merely his tastes."