School to be built in this parish, where, if the young people cannot go to church, they may at least be taught to hold themselves in readiness to go, on some future day, possibly before the end of the century, and in the mean time their piety according to the principles of the established church must be put, as the lawyers say, in abey ance. All this is but tampering with this imperious duty; the whole is a vain mockery, full of insult to common sense, mere prating about the thing, without a particle of straight-forward practical intelligence or honest intention. The Church of England must sink under all this foul play, and fraud upon its rights. It is not the national church, for it is not the church of the nation; an immense numerical majority is shut out of it, and when this numerical majority comes to be, which it will, the moral majority, the fainting church will in vain plead the blood of its martyrs, and display its pure and holy ritual; it will encounter everywhere a chilling apathy and an alienated mind; as little spiritual reverence for its service and sacraments as seems now to exist within the closes of her cathedrals. If this is really a Christian government it must without delay prove its title to that appellation, by setting about the due provision for this great and transcendant exigency. must not "suffer its eyes to sleep nor its eyelids to slumber, neither the temples of its head to take any rest, until it finds out places for the temples of the Lord: and habitations for the mighty God of Jacob."

It

On this great subject of its care, the legislature cannot commit a more fatal and senseless mistake than by waiting for the parishes themselves to make the application. Wherever the want of church room has long existed, it has produced its natural consequences, an enormous secession from the pale of the establishment, so as to create an over-ruling majority against its interests. The very circumstance of there being no application for the assistance of parliament is, in many cases, the strongest argument to show the real necessity for it. If the legislature is really of opinion that no religious establishment is necessary, (and in the progress of the evil, if not checked in time, this will come to be its avowed sentiment,) it will act very consistently in adopting the maxim of Dr. Adam Smith, who, dealing with the religion of Christ as with a commodity of the market, rather than as the treasure of the soul, maintains that the article of religious instruction should be left to the pure operation of demand and supply, like any article of ordinary merchandise; to which Dr. Chalmers well answers:

"He seems to have overlooked one most material circumstance of distinction. The native and untaught propensities of the human constitution will always of themselves secure a demand for the commodities of trade, sufficiently effective to bring forward a supply equal to the real needs of the population, and to their power of purchasing.

But the appetite for religious instruction is neither so strong nor so universal as to secure such an effective demand for it. Had the people been left in this matter to themselves, there would, in point of fact, have been large tracts of country without a place of worship, and without a minister."-" The experiment, indeed, has been tried with variations on a large scale, and with results which are very instructive. In the southern, and, we believe, in the middle States of America, there is no general provision for the clergy. The population are left to find their own way to the supply of their own wants in this particular; and we have been credibly informed that there are, at this moment, from four to five millions of the people of the United States who are growing up without any regular administration of the word, or of its ordinances, amongst them. In the northern States there is a legislative provision; and the difference in point of moral habit and character between their population and that of the other States is all in favour of religious establishments." (App. p. 37, 38.)

But it is impossible to take leave of Dr. Chalmers without extracting from his excellent Appendix a train of observation admirable for its character of affectionate piety and practical good

sense.

"But a still more direct and homeward argument, on the same side, may be drawn from the ecclesiastical state of our larger cities. It is quite notorious that the population of these cities has greatly outstripped the provision of churches that has been made for them by the establishment; or, in other words, the establishment takes up a very small proportion of the ground, and leaves a mighty remainder to that very operation to which Dr. Smith seems inclined to leave the whole extent of the country. It were, therefore, an interesting point to ascertain, in how far this remainder is taken up by dissenters, or by those who exemplify the effect of that great principle of demand and supply, which is supposed by some to supersede the necessity of a religious establishment. I beg leave to recommend the prosecution of this important survey, to those who perceive its bearings on a great practical question most intimately connected with the interior policy of the state, and with the best interests of the population.

"It was partly with this object in view, that the writer of this lately made a survey of his own parish, consisting of a certain district in the city of Glasgow. Those who reside in the place will recognize it, when he tells them that it comprises all that portion of the city which lies to the east of the Saltmarket, and to the south of the Gallowgate, within the limits of the royalty, and containing a population of eleven thousand one hundred and twenty souls. He now regrets exceedingly that he did not push his inquiries to that degree of particularity which would have enabled him to state with precision the number of individual sitters, both in the establishment and among dissenters. He merely ascertained the number of three discriptions of families-those who had seats in the establishment-those who had seats among the dissenters-and those who had seats no where. He found that in the great majority of families, there were sitters somewhere; but soon per

ceived, that if, from the commencement of his survey, he had made it an object to ascertain the number of sitters in each family, he would have made out a fearful deficiency indeed of congregational attendance and congregational habits among the people. He at times accidentally got the information of one individual seat being all that was taken by a family of ten members; and, while he submits himself to the correction of more accurate surveys, he ventures the assertion, for the present, that, out of the above population, there are not three thousand five hundred sitters of every description-of whom the sitters in dissentinghouses form at least two-thirds of the whole.*

"Now, in this district of town, there ought to be a church-going population of nearly seven thousand. The establishment does not furnish accommodation for one-sixth of this number, leaving a mighty remainder, over which Dr. Smith's favourite principle is free to expatiate. And it certainly has expatiated, and with an effect, too, which claims the gratitude and the acknowledgements of the Christian public. The dissenters have, at the very least, accomplished double the quantity of good in this part of the town, which the establishment has done. But with all their zeal, and all the worth and literature of their clergy, and the many accomplishments which they possess, and no where more than in Glasgow, for attracting a population, and for obtaining a wide and extensive influence among them, do we behold the one-half of the whole ground unreached and unreclaimed by them, and altogether left without the benefit of the fittest and most powerful instrument of moral cultivation among the people.

"I recur, therefore, to the difference in point of attendance and in point of actual ministration between that state of things where the population are left to themselves, and that state of things where they are met by a regular and a ready made provision, as the great practical argument for the necessity and the good of religious establishments. I assert that, if, with the growing population, there had been a growing ecclesiastical provision for their moral and religious wants; and that, if ministers had been permitted to cultivate a close and spiritual connexion with their parishes, by that connexion not being rendered impracticable; and that, if the mischievous system had not been adopted, of widening the breach still more between them and the people of their local and geographical vineyard, by exposing those seats, for which the parish ought, in all justice and in all expediency, to have the preference, to the general competition of the whole city; and that, if the clergy had been permitted to give their concentrated energies, each to a manageable district, where he stood endeared to the great mass of the families by his week-day attentions, and where the influence of these attentions was strengthened every week by the recurrence of his Sabbath ministrations; and that, if the government of our country had not fallen into the monstrous impolicy

"It will be recollected that, according to legislative enactment, in country parishes, accommodation ought to be provided for as many sitters as make up onehalf of the population; and in town parishes, for as many as make up between onehalf and two-thirds of the population."

of withdrawing the mind and the talent of the clergy from their own peculiar objects, by the overwhelming accumulation of civil and of secular duties, which they have laid upon them; and that, if in this respect they had not been imitated by all the municipalities of the land, who, if not resisted to the uttermost, would do what in them lay to accelerate that precious transformation, by which the ministers of religion must at length, in our larger towns, sink down into officers of police, or drivelling subsidiaries to the mere arrangements of state and city regulation-Had some of these plain things been done, and some of them not been done, then I assert, that, at this moment, there would have been in full circulation throughout that peopled mass, which looks to the distant eye so awfully impenetrable, the kindly and pacific flow of such a sweetening, but powerful influence, as would have made the complexion of our larger cities to be as different from what it is now, as the softness of home and of friendship is different from the rude aspect of hostility, or as the music of church-bells differs from the wild and terrific notes of insurrectionary violence." (App. p. 39-42.)

Thus have we endeavoured to take as wide a view of the subject of our amiable Princess's death, in all its bearings, as our room has permitted; not refusing to follow Dr. Chalmers into that digressive field of observation into which he found himself insensibly conducted by the occasion. Indeed, we can scarcely, with propriety, call it a digression, since, if ever any great public event has put us upon reflecting upon our real religious predicament, upon the most probable means of averting the wrath of Heaven, upon the best security against the political dangers which may await us, it is that by which the nation has been recently smitten. Remarks made in such necessary haste as those above offered to the public may be entitled to some indulgence from the reader, even though Reviewers, that ruthless unpitying tribe, put in their claim to it. One distinction we proudly assume the dignity of disinterestedness; for we do not know the party in the country that has given its complexion to our sen timents, or to which they can be specially acceptable.

The little poem, the title of which stands last at the head of our article, we have chosen as affording an opportunity of relieving the reader, after the long didactic lecture we have given, by an interesting extract or two. We have given it a preference because we are of opinion that it harmonises better than any we have seen with the general strain of our reflections, and that it is in itself a specimen of fine thinking, and a fine imagination, in the author. It is stated, in a short preface, to have been designed as a record in verse of the sentiments universally entertained respecting the character of her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales, and of the profound grief expressed at her death by the whole British nation. We have at this hour

great need of some native genius to whom our national poetry may be indebted for the restoration of its moral character;-of some man of thought and principle, as well as of taste and imagination, ambitious of giving a sort of Christian elevation to the British muse, and of rescuing her from the clutch of the melodious advocates of infidel debauchery, who seem to be fast running away with the taste of the nation. We can safely recommend the perusal of this little poem, and shall be glad if our praise of the author, of whom we have never before heard, should induce him to stretch this elegant use of his time as far as a feeling, honest, and pious clergyman dare do it, amidst the higher claims of the parish or congregation which surrounds him. Let the reader judge of the propriety of what we have said of this little production by the following lines.

"Through each gradation, from the castled hall,
The city dome, the villa crown'd with shade,
But chief from modest mansions numberless,
In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life,
Down to the cottag'd vale, and straw-roof'd shed,
Our Western Isle hath long been fam'd for scenes
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling place;
Domestic Bliss, that, like a harmless dove,
(Honour and sweet endearment keeping guard)
Can centre in a little quiet nest

All that desire would fly for through the earth;
That can, the world eluding, be itself
A world enjoy'd; that wants no witnesses
But its own sharers, and approving Heaven;
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft,
Smiles, though 'tis looking only at the sky;
Or, if it dwell where cultur'd grandeur shines,
And that which gives it being, high and bright,
Allures all eyes, yet its delight is drawn
From its own attributes and powers of growth,
Affections fair that blossom on its stem,
Kissing each other, and from cherish'd hope
Of lovely shoots, to multiply itself-

Such home-born blessedness, in its effect

And virtuous cause, that princely woman knew;
Whom, as our British garden's blooming pride,

Death's frost hath nipp'd, destroying flower and stalk,
When not one living germ had met the day:

Yet by our love her memory, embalm'd

In its own spicy odours, ne'er shall die.

She liv'd for us by setting (where, most view'd,

It most attracted admiration's gaze)

Pattern of that which gives to social life

Its charm, and forms a kingdom's moral strength;