would naturally mould itself into the shape of something like a Christian fraternity, with a marked religious character, were only natural. We cannot satisfy ourselves that the body which has adopted the ambitious title of 'Freemasons of the Church,' comes up in any higher degree than that of profession to those needs of the English Church, of which her pious attention to the beauty and propriety of the Houses of Prayer, proves both the need, and at least the wish to supply it. The subject we find, by the report of the Anniversary of the late Cambridge Camden Society, is beginning to attract attention: and, since old heart-burnings are now allayed, and as almost every church built in England within the last five years, proves that so much progress has actually been attained, we think the present a good opportunity for a move in this important direction.

J. Armstrong

Bp. J Grahamstown

39

ART. II.-1. Proverbial Philosophy: a Book_of_Thoughts_and Arguments, originally treated. By MARTIN F. TUPPER, Esq. M.A., F.R.S., &c. of Christchurch, Oxford. First and Second Series. London: J. Hatchard and Son. 1846, 1847.

2. Probabilities: an Aid to Faith. By the Author of Proverbial Philosophy.' London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1847. 3. Geraldine, a sequel to Coleridge's Christabel: with other Poems. By the Same. London: Rickerby. 1838.

4. A Modern Pyramid, to commemorate a Septuagint of Worthies. By the Same. 1839.

WE read in Milton's sonnet, that, while

'Thousands at His bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest
They also serve, who only stand and wait.'

But there are few, in this our practical and busy age, who seem to find their vocation in this latter office. Our popular writers, whether in prose or verse, have acquired their popularity by the treatment of some topic of the day, or the supply of some peculiar want of the times. The questions which agitate or interest the general mind, in theology, philosophy, art, or history, secure an audience by their announcement; and those who handle them with any ability are pretty sure of the double testimony of warm admirers and indignant enemies. But the author, whose books we have placed at the head of this article, is most successful when he is furthest removed from this busy scene. Tranquil and meditative, he seems to live apart, and in some other age. His works belong no more to this, than to any other period. No particular school can claim them as its offspring. They dwell in the generalities of man, and hence possess the singular advantage of affording almost equal pleasure to minds swayed by a very different bias. This at least is true of the two volumes of Proverbial Philosophy;' for to these his other productions are very far inferior. Indeed, the title-pages of Geraldine' and the Pyramid' present a considerable chronological difficulty; for it almost passes belief, that their author could have written them after the first series of 'Proverbial Philosophy.'

'Geraldine' is pure doggrel; and the other poems' are only rescued from being absolutely commonplace, by an occasional glimpse, though but a rare one, of truer poetry. The Modern Pyramid' is better, and displays in somewhat uncouth nakedness a quantity of rich material, which the author has elsewhere worked up into more delicate texture. We must not omit to add that it betrays too a symptom of irreverent feeling, which we are occasionally pained to see still clinging about him, though in a more subdued and hesitating form. But we shall probably consult Mr. Tupper's wishes, as well as our own and the reader's pleasure, by allowing these two volumes to repose in their native obscurity, and passing on to the work on which the author's reputation will ultimately rest, and which we really believe to be a permanent addition to English Classics.

The Proverbial Philosophy' is a collection of thoughts on moral and religious topics, clothed in careful language, and strung together without much regard to connexion or arrangement. It is an unusual attempt, and one to which our western character does not easily respond. We are more accustomed to regard thought as the rough material for system or argument, than as the direct object of reflection. The single blocks scarcely arrest our attention; we wait to see them fitted and piled up into the uniform and stately edifice. Thought after thought pass through the mind in rapid succession, but we seldom care to detain them, or fix their shadowy forms in distinct outline, unless they serve a present purpose. But the author of this volume delights in them for their own sake; he loves them with an unselfish affection. No idea passes from him unmarked; he catches it as it floats along, draws it with a careful hand, touches, retouches, brings it out in its just proportion of light and shade, foreground and distance, and finally hangs it up in his picture-gallery, and retires a few paces to admire it. His book is like a collection of miniature paintings on ivory, small, beautiful, highly-finished, and heterogeneous. It is, we believe, the result of an honest observance of his own rules, thus laid down in a piece 'On Writing':

'Hast thou a thought upon thy brain? catch it while thou canst; 'Or other thoughts shall settle there, and this shall soon take wing: Thine uncompounded unity of soul, which argueth and maketh it immortal,

'Yieldeth up its momentary self to every single thought;

"Therefore to husband thine ideas, and give them stability and substance, 'Write often for thy secret eye: so shalt thou grow wiser. 'The commonest mind is full of thoughts; some worthy of the rarest; 'And could it see them fairly writ, would wonder at its wealth.' —P. 192.

The style is, as the reader will have observed, a something

between prose and verse; not so rigid as to fetter the thought, nor so free as to necessitate absolute distinctness, or to exclude the turn and phrase of poetry. Sometimes the accent, sometimes the meaning determines the line; but there is almost always just enough of restraint to please either the ear or the mind with the notion of regularity and order. There is much of poetic beauty in the frequent metaphor and elaborate image; but in all the same habit of isolation is apparent. We are never borne along upon the full tide of thought, careless of the vehicle or the passage: we dwell upon each particular expression, and seem quietly and tranquilly to suck out its sweetness, and then pass on composedly to the next. We subjoin a string of pretty and happily-expressed fancies, which well illustrate this observation. They are from 'The Words of Wisdom.'

'Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter:

To what shall their rarity be likened? what price shall count their worth?

'Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches,

'No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty.

They be chance pearls, flung among the rocks, by the sullen waters of Oblivion,

'Which Diligence loveth to gather, and hang around the neck of Memory;

They be white-winged seeds of happiness, wafted from the islands of the blessed,

'Which Thought carefully tendeth, in the kindly garden of the heart; They be sproutings of an harvest for eternity, bursting through the tilth of Time,

'Green promise of the golden wheat, that yieldeth angels' food;

They be drops of the crystal dew, which the wings of seraphs scatter, "When on some brighter sabbath, their plumes quiver most with delight: Such, and so precious, are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter. 'Yet more, for the half is not said, of their might, and dignity, and value; • For life-giving be they and glorious, redolent of sanctity and heaven : 'As the fumes of hallowed incense, that veil the throne of the Most High;

As the beaded bubbles that sparkle on the rim of the cup of immortality;

'As wreaths of the rainbow spray, from the pure cataract of Truth: Such, and so precious, are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter.

'Yet once again, loving student, suffer the praises of thy teacher,
For verily the sun of the mind, and the life of the heart, is Wisdom:
She is pure and full of light, crowning grey hairs with lustre,
And kindling the eye of youth with a fire not its own;

'And her words, whereto canst thou liken them? for earth cannot show their peers:

'They be grains of the diamond sand, the radiant floor of heaven,

Rising in sunny dust behind the chariot of God;

They be flashes of the day-spring from on high, shed from the windows of the skies;

They be streams of living waters, fresh from the fountain of Intelligence:

'Such, and so precious, are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter.'

P. 5.

There is a richness and variety in this string of images which may justify the length of the extract. We subjoin one of a somewhat different character, from the poem 'on Prayer.'

'The salt preserveth the sea, and the saints uphold the earth;

Their prayers are the thousand pillars that prop the canopy of nature. Verily, an hour without prayer, from some terrestrial mind,

'Were a curse in the calendar of time, a spot of the blackness of dark

ness.

'Perchance the terrible day, when the world must rock into ruins, 'Will be one unwhitened by prayer,-shall He find faith on the earth? For there is an economy of mercy, as of wisdom, and power, and

means:

Neither is one blessing granted, unbesought from the treasury of good. And the charitable heart of the Being, to depend upon whom is happiness,

'Never withholdeth a bounty, so long as his subject prayeth;

Yea, ask what thou wilt, to the second throne in heaven,

'It is thine, for whom it was appointed; there is no limit unto prayer: But, and if thou cease to ask, tremble, thou self-suspended creature, For thy strength is cut off, as was Samson's: and the hour of thy doom

is come.

Thousands bewail a hero, and a nation mourneth for its king, 'But the whole universe lamenteth the loss of a man of prayer.

Verily, were it not for One, who sitteth on His rightful throne, 'Crowned with a rainbow of emerald, the green memorial of earth,For one, a mediating Man, that hath clad his Godhead with mortality, 'And offereth prayer without ceasing, the royal Priest of Nature, 'Matter and life and mind had sunk into dark annihilation, 'And the lightning frown of Justice withered the world into nothing.' P. 128-9.

To many of our readers this book is probably already too familiar for them to require more extracts; to others we trust that what they have now seen may prove a sufficient inducement to seek a further acquaintance with it. We pass on to a work of more recent date, though of less pretensions :- Probabilities; an Aid to Faith.'

This is a singular, a fanciful, nay, even a whimsical book; yet it is one which will well repay the exertion of a careful perusal. If the thoughts are not unfrequently abstruse, the style is almost always attractive; the matter derives no additional repulsiveness from the form. And if we rarely meet with a compact and finished picture, we have a compensation in the multitude of sketches which melt into one another with the rapid haziness of dissolving views. It is eminently a suggestive book. An endless vista of thought is opened up, and the mind is launched along into the shadowy distance; but almost before its flight is well begun, it is twitched back again, to be sent