a wife's sister is rather more important to them not merely than, (to use Bishop Corbet's words): The adventures we have been in About the wearing of the Churche's linen; but than any dispute upon high and mysterious points of doctrine. The Church has always asserted, on behalf of Christianity, that all its practical points are plain, and we have its dignitaries recently undecided, whether to call the same act innocence or incest. It is about time this were finally settled; indeed, nothing, comparatively speaking, is worth their attention till it is, or till, to avoid a scandal, the minority sink into silent submission. As to the Bishop of Oxford's views in a speech, July, 1858, respecting continued development of delicacy on these points, there is no knowing to what length it might proceed-perhaps to a warning against wedlock as extensive as the range of an old founder's kin fellowship at the universities. * Look at the two great representatives of conservatism and progress-depending for their difference more on temperament than on talent or opinion. The one slow and safe, not liking to be talked about, but jealous as to what others think of him, anxious to keep in statu quo his sentiments, his friendships, his property, his character, never greatly enlarging his personal experience. The other anxious to mix in all societies, and to gain knowledge even by contra diction, risking one fortune to gain another, advancing and retracing his steps rapidly, irritating others by his faults and atoning for them by unexpected excellencies, crowding into a year more events and impressions than fill up the life of the cautious, now rising into glory, and now sinking into ruin. What is the only life worth living to one of these characters, would be nearly death to the other. Not even a French novelist, with his absurd love of the philosophy of exceptions, can deny that grand stream of tendency by which good actions generally lead to happiness, and bad ones to the reverse; but the moment we begin to assign special judgments we are led into all kinds of shuffling, prevarication, and concealment, in our endeavour to reconcile conflicting facts and events. The death of a Nicholas is improved upon as a judgment from a hundred pulpits, and then is shortly followed by that of a Raglan and St. Arnaud, all worn out by anxiety. As people will persist in the practice, which is an old one, let them read the following words on this subject, words, which to some may be new, from unexceptionable sources: "Like one who in a drouth observes the sky, he sits and watches when anything will drop, that might solace him with the likeness of a punishment from heaven upon us, which he straightway expounds how he pleases. No evil can befal the parliament or city, but he positively interprets it a judgement upon them for his sake, as if the very manuscript of God's judgements had been delivered to his custody and exposition.... ... But to counterfeit the hand of God is the boldest of all forgery, and he, who, without warrant, but his own fantastic surmise, takes upon him perpetually to unfold the secret and unsearchable mysteries of high providence is likely, for the most part, to mistake and slander them, and approaches to the madness of those reprobate thoughts, that would wrest the sword of justice out of God's hand and employ it more justly in his own conceit."-MILTON'S Eikonoclastes. "She can tell you what kind of a sin it was that set such a man's house on fire, or blew down his barns She has a crime for every misfortune that can befal any of her acquaintance; and when she hears of a robbery that hath been made, or a murder that hath been committed, enlarges more on the guilt of the suffering person, than on that of the thief or assassin. In short, she is so good a Christian, that whatever happens to herself is a trial, and whatever happens to her neighbours is a judgement." ADDISON, Spectator, 483. "When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgements; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things."-SHENSTONE's Essays. FOR another reason it is dangerous to use the words "judgment" and "punishment" too indiscriminately. Perhaps the law, the most visible in its immediate operation here, is that which brings suffering as a consequence of carelessness and imprudence, often extending beyond the agent, and which enjoins attention to self-preservation. The good man, if he overtasks person, purse, or, more awful still, brain, if he either thwarts or oppresses nature in any way, in a good cause, meets with consequences no less certainly than the bad one. This is said without denying a higher law, by which, slightly to alter the lines of Pope : : The safest smile unfeeling Prudence wears, even when the tears are caused by her own zeal or indiscretion. For those who wish to consider the question more deeply, there is Butler's "Analogy" and the commencement of Coleridge's" Aids to Reflection." ON most subjects every man may be said to have a right to his opinion; but it is astonishing to observe the audacity with which some men, of no great natural capacity or acquired information, will venture to utter a peremptory decision on a point purely literary. THOSE who have so feeble an imagination, that they cannot fancy" others doing anything but 66 what they have seen them do, or something like it, may disconcert themselves by striving to conceive Oliver Cromwell playing at snowball, and the grave polite Richelieu exhausting his pent-up animal spirits, by running round his table neighing and snorting like a horse; both these instances, I believe, and doubtless many others of the same kind, are on record. As regards the novellettes or stories in the penny serials which are now such a staple-What is their quality? What their topics of interest? Generally a somewhat heightened description of the ordinary joys, sorrows, hopes, and trials of human life, for the most part in a class above that of the reader-this is quite enough to make them popular. Scott and Dickens, as first leaders, seem to have had the especial mission of disabusing people of the idea that highly-seasoned love descriptions were what gave their chief interest to works of fiction-never had two writers less of this, never were two writers more popular. People could no longer talk about the necessary naughtiness of novels, and romances, or infer from the badness of human nature that there must be something improper in what was so attractive. As to the works of fiction of which we are now speaking, the husband is not very likely to be diverted by them from the work to which he is tied for his subsistence, though the wife may certainly be so spellbound occasionally by the description |