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here is seen the effect of the constant and undue cultivation of imagination. The continual excitement it requires, gradually renders tasteless even its own better productions; and the enervated judgment and palled affections sink in the intellectual as in the moral scale; and pantomime and buffoonery succeed, while true genius is neglected or condemned. Does not the same spirit pervade and lower even the first poets of the age; poets whose genius might have sustained a loftier Hight, and introduced a higher taste into their country? Are not their purest productions mere lovetales, mere delineations of nature, holding no rank, diffusing no influence in the moral world?

I can make no concession in favour even of what are called good novels: indeed, I only consider them as so much the more injurious. The foundation of the building is radically wrong, and the superstructure and ornaments are of little consequence. I think, therefore, with regret, of those illustrious writers, who have added to the respectability of other names what they have taken from their own, by enlisting under the degrading banners of the Porters and Owensons of the day. They have sanctioned by their talents and example a species of writing, which must have fallen into contempt from its own weakness, and ridicule might then have been more efficaciously applied; but vice and folly become bold, when genius and virtue deign to become their leaders. The last age in France was characterised by the number of profligate novels, and behold the consequences in the total corruption of the present. I do not in general say, however, that those at present read in Britain come exactly under that description; yet I maintain they lead directly to it, by substituting imagiuation for the qualities of the heart, and show, and sentiment for the social and domestic affections, Imagination, and all the passions

which necessarily follow in her train, require the continual stimulus of novelty, and of a stronger excitement, which will be administered in due time, as the public taste calls for or is able to bear the display of passion: for of what do these productions consist, but of the war of inclination and folly against duty and prudence? And behold their effects in the dissipation, the low tone of public morals, and I will add, in the numerous and disgraceful divorces of the day. Novel reading connects as naturally with dissipation, vice, and want of conduct, as good principles and a sober course of reading with exemplary habits and all the better affections. How is the female mind, in particular, to defend itself against the continual influence of these popular and amusing productions, when they see them the chosen study, the frequent subject of conversation, among those they are accustomed to respect? And if ballads alone are considered as sufficient at once to indicate the taste and influence the conduct of a nation, what must be the effect of such a mass of immorality and folly continually bearing upon young untutored minds and ardent affections?

I have hitherto avoided considering novels in a religious point of view, both because I considered them as so wholly incompatible, that no arguments which were necessary to prove them so in a moral point of view, but must be doubly strong in a religious one; and because I meant to propose religion as the only possible remedy for this wide-spreading evil. This searching principle can alone at once point out and remedy the mischief; for such is the slow and subtile nature of this poison, that it is not till the patient is nearly incurable that any proof can be produced of his illness. The spear of truth can alone discover this tempter in disguise, and shew, that, however specious the pretexts, how small so

ever the deviation described, the tendency of the whole is injurious, while it endeavours to increase that love of the world which it ought to be the object of all our efforts to subdue, and that we cannot feel interested for the passions of others and our own remain untainted.

I conclude with earnestly warning and entreating my fair countrywomen to consider impartially what I have advanced; to compare it with their own personal experience, and with their observations upon others; and if they cannot disprove my reasoning by experience and by facts, let them for ever exclude from their libraries a silent but powerful engine, which is quietly but surely undermining both their principles and happiness.

I have already, sir, trespassed so largely upon your time and pages, that I unwillingly omit both illustrations and observations, which even this one limited view I have taken of this important subject almost forced upon me. I shall therefore hastily conclude, with fervent wishes for the success and increasing influence of your excellent publication, and of every work whose tendency is, like yours, to promote the only true good of mankind.

A, A..

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. As my name has been very conspicuously introduced in your review of the Memoirs of the late Mr. John Tweddell; and as an appeal is there made to me on the loss of his valuable manuscript journal and drawings; I beg leave to state, that at different times I have sent his brother (the author of those Memoirs) an account of such particulars as I could recollect, concerning the arrival of Mr. J. Tweddell's effects at Constantinople from Athens, and of their subsequent history. And though you have thought proper to express in very strong language your opinion of the inconsistency of those CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 164.

details; I hope to be believed; when I say, that if they are inconsistent with the statements of others, those persons may have been acquainted with facts unknown to me; and that if there be any inconsistency in my correspondence itself, it has arisen from wishing to furnish even faint and imperfect recollections, on a subject in which the public, and particularly a brother, naturally feel the most lively interest.

The effects of Mr. Tweddell that were sent by our Consul at Athens, were, I suppose, directed, officially to his Excellency Spencer Smith, British Minister at the Porte: but before they reached Constan→ tinople, the Earl of Elgin had arrived there, as Ambassador Extraor dinary and Plenipotentiary: to him, I presume, they were officially brought, and placed under his orders.

How long they remained at Rodosto, after having been there wrecked, or how long they remained in the ware-rooms of the Chan cery at Pera, I know not. Nor do I know how soon his Lordship, in the midst of much public business! (for the French army was then in Egypt), found leisure to attend to them. But, when the trunk and cases were opened, it was observed that the medals had been plundered, and other little gold articles gone, which probably had taken place at their recovery from the shipwreck, The manuscripts and drawings, also, were so much spoiled and defaced by sea-water and mouldiness, that his Lordship employed some gentlemen of his suite, and Mr. Barker the Panoramist (then at Pera), to dry them in the best manner they could, and to preserve every article, however trifling, of so accomplished a scholar: his Lordship taking charge of them, and waiting for a favourable opportunity to send them to England.

In the absence of Lord Elgin's Secretary of Embassy, and of his other Secretaries employed on d.

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ferent missions, a great deal of public business, connected with the embassy, devolved on me, so as entirely to occupy my time; and his Lordship generally consulted Mr. Professor Carlyle (then in his suite) on matters of a private or literary nature, and on such as form the subject of this letter. I therefore expressed my belief to Mr. Robert Tweddell, that Mr. Carlyle had assisted Lord Elgin in packing up and transmitting Mr. Tweddell's papers to England; and that know he recommended their being directed and consigned to Mr. Losh, a merchant at Newcastle or Carlisle, and a friend of Mr. Tweddell's family. I have already sent Mr. Robert Tweddell an enumeration of every part of the effects which I saw; but, after an interval of so many years, I could only state my firm belief that they were sent home in the manner I describe, without being able to vouch for the accuracy or precision of my recollections of the time, or the ship in which they were embarked, or what the trunks contained, as I was not personally engaged in that business.

I must, however, repeat, that I never had reason to suspect, during my residence or acquaintance with Lord Elgin, that any scrap of Mr. Tweddell's journals or drawings had been withheld by him, after a favourable opportunity occurred of transmitting them to his friends: that I well remember to have seen the journal of a Tour in Switzerlaud (the only manuscript that appeared to have been transcribed with care, as if for publication, by Mr. Tweddell), but I only saw it for a few minutes, as it was amongst the property which I suppose Mr. Thornton delivered to Lord Elgin undamaged: that I have no recollection of the portfolio of sketches, views, and drawings of costume, said to have been given at the same time to Lord Elgin; and that, consequently, I can say nothing about those views and drawings having been seen in Lord Elgin's possession after the Lord Duncan sailed, except that such an assertion grieves and surprises me by the manner in which it is made.

I am, sir, &c.

PHILIP HUNT.

Bedford, July 7th, 1815.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Sermons, by the late Rev. WALTER BLAKE KIRWAN, Dean of Killala. With a Sketch of his Life. London, Longman. 1814. 8vo. pp. 418.

Ir the object of eloquence be persuasion, no man has greater occasion to be eloquent than a preacher of religion. The truth is, that the disputes on this subject have chiefly risen from a confused and inaccurate use of terms. There is a species of eloquence which employs itself, not in convincing men, but in delighting them; which loves to shine, rather than to warm;

which, at the best, studies, not im pression, but effect: and this certainly has little place on any serious subject, and the least place on the most serious of all subjects. Such eloquence may be compared to a telescope, the glasses of which should be so euriously cut and frosted and flowered, as entirely to exclude those lieavenly objects which it is the sole use of the instrument to make plain to our eyės. But that other and better sort of eloquence, that graver and loftier art, which aims at displaying, not itself, but its subject; which has

both its origin and its end in a profound impression of important truth; which is merely the heart becoming audible to the heart; which directs its beams rather to animate and purify, than to dazzle-of this kind we may surely say, without impropriety," against such there is no law." It is the legitimate ally of reason and virtue; a weapon, of which no cause has need to be ashamed, and by which the best may be promoted.

In introducing to our readers the remains of the most celebrated sacred orator of our times, it seemed natural to define what we meant to convey by the term eloquence; and at the same time to state our high estimation of an art, which can be undervalued only where it is misconceived, and which becomes debased only in its misapplication. The prefatory pages of the present work exhibit an interesting, though somewhat superficial, account of the extraordinary person whose memory it is designed to perpetuate. It appears that Dean Kirwan was born in the county of Galway about the year 1754, that his family were Roman Catholics of an ancient and respectable stock, and that he was educated in the College of English Jesuits at St. Omer's. The seclusion of monastic life has occasionally bred active spirits and great geniuses;-it was in the bosom of the establishment at St. Omer's that Mr. Kirwan first imbibed that ambition to do good for which he was remarkable through life.

At the age of seventeen he embarked for the Danish island of St. Croix, under the protection of a relation who had large possessions there; but, after enduring, for six years, a climate pernicious to his constitution, and spectacles of cruelty shocking to his feelings, he returned to Europe in disgust. By the advice of his maternal uncle, at that time titular primate of Ireland, he next repaired to the University of Louvain, where he received

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priest's orders, and was soon afterwards promoted to the chair of natural and moral philosophy. office, however, he did not hold long, being named, in 1778, chaplain to the Neapolitan Ambassador at the British Court; an appointment which may be thought to have laid the foundation of his subsequent oratorical fame. His residence in London gave him the opportunity of attending those exhibitions of public speaking by which the English senate and bar were at that period eminently distinguished, and in which some of his own countrymen bore a very conspicuous part. Mr. Kirwan was diligent in turning this opportunity to account; apparently, in order to fit himself for the duties of the pulpit by a study of the best forensic and parliamentary models. He practised also, as well as studied, his art, by preaching in the chapel of his patron, the Neapolitan Ambassador; where his discourses gained him much credit, though not that fulness of fame to which he was ultimately destined.

At this point the biography seems to exhibit a chasm. We are not told how long he remained in London, nor why he quitted it. What we next hear is, that, after two years past in retirement in the bosom of his family, he, in 1787, took the resolution of quitting the communion in which he had been bred, in order to join that of the Established Church. The biographer conjectures, with great seeming probability, that the two previous years of seclusion had been employed in deliberating on this important step. The occurrence attracted much attention, and, on the 24th of June, an overflowing congregation attended at the church of St. Peter's, Dublin, to hear the first protestant sermon of this distinguished convert. It was expected that he would take the opportunity of censuring the principles or practice of the church from which he had seceded; but he

wholly avoided the subject. He seems, indeed, to have avoided it both then and afterwards. For polemical divinity he had no taste; nor did he ever, it is said, even in his most confidential communications, breathe a syllable of contempt or reproach against any religious persuasion whatever."

The biographer states, that the resolution of Mr. Kirwan to conform to the Establishment was greatly promoted by the conviction (as he himself declared) that he should thus obtain more extensive opportunities of doing good. But envy or uncharitableness assigned worse motives for the act, as may be learned from the following paragraph.

he quitted, and that which he join ed. In the absence of any such account, it would have been desirable to receive something like an equivalent from his confidential friends; from those who had the opportunity of becoming familiar with his mind, and who therefore, if they did not actually know the reasons that actuated him on this remarkable occasion, might at least conjecture them with certainty. The narrative before us says, as has already appeared, that he wished to do good; and it says no more; an account extremely general and imperfect. The truth apparently is, that Mr. Kirwan held the points of difference between the two creeds to be wholly non-essential, and that, so believing, he suffered the consideration of doing good to turn the scale. Those points he no where insists on in the present volume; and, in a summary of essential doctrines, which he gives in one of the sermons, and to which we shall hereafter have occasion to refer, they are altogether omitted. They were therefore thought of no moment; and, though we are religious establishments in France, of far from acquiescing in this opiwhich (during the captivity of the ill- nion, we willingly believe that Mr. fated Louis) he was partly an eye-wit Kirwan held it very conscienti. As the habitual advocate of huously, and entirely acquit him

"They who are conscious of interested inferiority, naturally suspect the motives of a line of conduct apparently calculated to invite promotion: but his unblemished and amiable life, fervently devoted to the public good, may vindicate his preference of a sphere in which he could pursue that great object with the best effect: and, if he sometimes adverted to public events, it was not surprising that a zealous divine should

be shocked at the sudden crush of all

ness.

manity, he felt peculiar horror at the atrocities of an ungovernable multitude; but they who were most gratified by his vehement invectives against such outrages, were often no less surprised and humiliated by the manly boldness with which he intermingled severe, though general, reprehension of their own vices." pp. vii. viii.

The transition of a highly gifted person of mature age from one religious communion to another, from the Roman Catholic to the Protestant Church-and, above all, from the priestly office in the one church, to the priestly office in the other is an event sufficiently remarkable to excite attention and inquiry. We are not indeed sure that Mr. Kirwan did not owe some public exposition of his motives to both societies-both to that which

of the interested motives to which

his conformity was sometimes ascribed.

For some time after he conformed, he preached statedly in St. Peter's church, His discourses turned chiefly, we presume, on works of beneficence; for the collections for the poor are said to have risen four or five-fold above their level. Before the expiration of his first year, he was wholly reserved for the task of preaching charity sermons; and, soon afterwards, the governors of the general daily schools of several parishes entered into a resolution for calling vestries to consider the means of securing his valuable labours to the metropolis. So the biography informs us, but without stating in

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