and satanically profane; but, in that execrable poem, the profaneness is in keeping with all the other qualities, and religion comes in for a sneer, a burlesque, or a burst of blasphemy, only in common with every thing that is dear or valuable to us as moral and social beings. The essential profaneness of Lord Byron's feelings, is betrayed in the preface to this poem, where he says, with the grin of sarcasm :

With regard to the language of Lucifer, it was difficult for me to make him talk like a clergyman upon the same subjects; but I have done what I could to restrain him within the bounds of spiritual politeness.'

But it is not on the score of profaneness, that Cain can be brought under the cognizance of any criminal court. Unless the charge of an overt act of blasphemy could be brought home to the Author, it is neither suspected evil design, nor pernicious tendency, which could justify the interference of the civil magistrate. And this overt act must include blasphemous intention on the part of the Writer; since, in Paradise Lost, Satan is certainly made to blaspheme, although two opinions cannot exist with regard to the perfect innoxiousness of those passages, any more than respecting the religious tendency of the poem as a whole. It would, in our judgement, be very difficult to bring home blasphemous intention to the Author of Cain, although we cannot conceive of its having originated in any other source than the most hardened and callous impiety. Impiety is not an overt act: it cannot be laid hold of by human laws. It is too subtle, too intangible, too all pervading a principle to deal with, by any carnal weapons. One of the most impious works that ever issued from an EngJish writer, is Gibbon's Roman History; yet, it is free from blasphemy, and is seldom profane. One of the profanest books in our language is the Spiritual Quixote, the production of a clergyman; yet, few persons would pronounce it impious. A blasphemer is generally either a fool or a madman. If Tom Paine is an exception, he is likely to remain a solitary one. The infidel is too crafty, for the most part too unimpassioned, to indulge in blasphemy. Some of the Unitarian writers of the present day have ventured the nearest to direct and positive blasphemy, of any class of the community; and they are blasphemers of by far the most dangerous description. Yet, blasphemous intention could not be with truth imputed to them; nor would any wise man, not to say any pious man, p-wish to see the brute argument of power employed to silence them. We are not allowed to call down fire from heaven, and we should do ill to call it up from beneath. We may not employ the sword of Peter, any more than that of Mahommed,

even in defence of our Divine Master. He has committed to us the sword of the Spirit, and retains the sword of vengeance in his own hand.

After all," Cain" does not come up in licentious wickedness to " Don Juan :" it is at least free from obscenity, which, as regards the interests of society, is, perhaps, worse than direct blasphemy. On this point we agree with Mr. Southey, that the publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst offences that can be committed against society; a sin to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned.' Of this sin, it is to Mr. Southey's honour, that he stands so clear. But lasciviousness is generally a concomitant of infidelity in its most virulent forms. In the French Encyclopedists, in the wits of the reign of Charles II., in Smollett and Gibbon, in Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron, this morbid love of impurity is strikingly manifested in alliance with impiety. In this brutalizing tendency of infidelity, there is something of a judicial visitation. "Professing themselves to be wise," says St. Paul, speaking of the old heathen infidels, "they became fools i "wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness."

But the impiety chargeable on this Mystery, consists mainly in this; that the purposeless and gratuitous blasphemies put into the mouth of Lucifer and Cain, are left unrefuted, so that they appear introduced for their own sake, and the design of the Writer seems to terminate in them. There is no attempt made to prevent their leaving the strongest possible impression on the reader's mind. On the contrary, the arguments, if such they can be called, levelled against the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, are put forth with the utmost ingenuity. And it has been his Lordship's endeavour, to palliate as much as possible the characters of the Evil Spirit and of the first murderer; the former of whom is made an elegant, poetical, philosophical sentimentalist, a sort of Manfred; the latter an ignorant, proud, and self-willed boy. Lucifer, too, is represented as denying all share in the temptation of Eve, which he throws upon the serpent in his serpentine capacity;' the Author pleading that he does so only because the book of Gene⚫sis has not the most distant allusion to any thing of the kind,' and that a reference to the New Testament would be an anachronism.' It is not necessary to combat this monstrous absurdity with a serious argument. Lord Byron disbelieves the whole Scripture narrative: otherwise, he would not for a moment have adopted a supposition which renders the import of the prediction, Gen. iii. 15, almost unmeaning, and contradicts the plainest declarations of Scripture relative to the agency of the Tempter. There would be consistency, indeed,

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in making Satan a liar; but such was not the Author's intention; the lie is, therefore, his own, and the whole drama is a lie, a deliberate falsification of the truth. All fiction is in a certain sense literally untrue; but this is a fiction morally untrue, a perversion of fact intended to deceive. The sophistry of Lucifer is indeed couched in serpent's words.' We purposely refrain from extracts, but content ourselves with giving one expression from the long diabolical conference between Lucifer and his pupil, where the Poet makes the Evil Spirit ask,

'Did I plant things prohibited within

The reach of beings innocent, and curious
By their own innocence?'

A more deadly sentiment, a more insidious falsehood than is conveyed in these words, could not be injected into the youthful mind by the Author of Evil. Innocence is not the cause of curiosity, but has in every stage of society been its victim. Curiosity, and Lord Byron knows it, has ruined greater numbers than any other passion; and as, in its incipient actings, it is the most dangerous foe of innocence, so, when it becomes a passion, it is only fed by guilt. Innocence, indeed, is gone, when desire has conceived the sin. Cain, in this drama, is made, like the Faust of Goëthe, to be the victim of curiosity; and a fine moral might have been deduced from it. There are passages which seem inserted on purpose to shew how wilfully the drama is made what it is. Lucifer promises to teach Cain all knowledge on one condition, that he will fall down and worship him. Cain answers that he has never bowed to his Father's God. The Spirit replies:

'He who bows not to him, has bow'd to me!

Cain. But I will bend to neither.

Lucifer.

Ne'er the less,

Thou art my worshipper: not worshipping
Him, makes thee mine the same.'

This is finely said, and there are other passages which one could wish to retrieve from the rest of the poem. But these are but gleams which shew the horrors of the surrounding darkness. The Poet asserts again and again the prevalence and triumph of Evil; he imagines its having extended to former worlds; he seems to exult in the idea of its universal diffusion, as rolling on for ever,

A part of all things.'

He goes further than even the Manichean mystics. He virtually

denies the notion of an essentially Good and an essentially Evil Principle, and, in the person of Lucifer, argues from the existence of Evil, against the benevolence of God. By this means, he prepares Cain, in the subsequent scene, to become a fratricide; and he would fain beguile the reader into sympathy with him, as less a criminal than a victim. For all this, he might plead high Pagan precedents. To the old Grecian muse, this was the highest flight attainable,-to soar above the vulgarities of Olympus, into the unfathomable darkness of metaphysical atheism, and there to shape to herself a blind, inert, implacable phantom deity under the name of Necessity or Fate. Lord Byron, it may be said, has but attributed to their right author, the stale impieties of the old atheists. He has but put into the Devil's mouth the bewildering question, Si Deus est, uude malum? making poetry the organ of the dark and barren metaphysics of Bayle and Spinosa. But then he has done this in a manner which shews that he sides with the enemies of human happiness, and with the arch enemy who inspires and leads them on. He has summoned both fiction and falsehood to aggravate the philosophical difficulties which he, in this poem, has laboured to embalm in verse; difficulties new to a large proportion of his readers, and with which the young and inexperienced are ill able to grapple. These, this new apostle of infidelity has endeavoured to propagate in a shape the most adapted to make an impression on the imagination. In the very spirit of the fabled Sphinx, he propounds these dark enigmas, that those who fail to unravel them, may perish,

That this is a heinous offence against society, who will dare deny? It is an offence of the deepest dye. Unhappily, it is not a solitary instance. The case of Lawrence the anatomical lecturer and preacher of materialism, is still more aggravated than that of the Author of Cain. But whether such men can be dealed with by the State as criminals, on any valid and equi table principle of jurisprudence, appears to us extremely doubtful. Even, if such proceedings could be maintained, the policy of instituting them is questionable. But on this subject we have already expressed our opinions, from which, on the maturest consideration, we see no reason to swerve, We have endeavoured in this article to point out the broad distinction between two things which are often confounded-simple profaneness and blasphemous impiety. This distinction was strikingly illustrated in the cases of Hone and Carlile, Hone's parodies were grossly profane: they were not blasphemous. There was no proof that it entered into his intention to degrade religion. Carlile's offence was levelled against Christianity itself. The same difference exists in the cases before us. Sou

they, like Hone, is only profane: Lord Byron, like Carlile, is a blasphemer. But, in whatever way the Law may deal with these offenders, we console ourselves in thinking, that as Christianity does not authorize, so, she does not stand in need of the aid of pains and penalties inflicted on her deluded assailants. Religion has nothing to fear from the puny efforts of such men. She has in every age suffered more from her inju dicious friends and blundering advocates, than from her most formidable antagonists.

Art. III. Report of the Committee managing a Fund raised by some Friends, for the Purpose of promoting African Instruction; with an Account of a Visit to the Gambia and Sierra Leone. 8vo. pp. 72, London. 1822.

WE have been much interested by this Report of a Quaker Missionary experiment. In the cause of suffering humanity, the members of the Society of Friends have on many occasions evinced a Missionary zeal; and no denomination of Christians has furnished more illustrious philanthropists. To individuals of this estimable body, the cause of general educa tion all over the world is very greatly indebted; while at home their members generally have distinguished themselves in promoting the circulation of the Bible. All these circumstances go to prove that there is a vitality in Quakerism, that the spirit of Penn is not extinct in their body, and that if hitherto they have not contributed their share to the sum of exertion put forth by the several denominations of Christians for promoting the evangelization of the heathen, it has not arisen from a deficiency of zeal, or at least not from any want of benevolence,

The doctrinal peculiarities of their religious system, have doubtless had the effect of deterring them from the direct method resorted to by Christian missionaries in general for promulgating the Gospel. We allude more especially to their views of the ministry and of preaching. But even if, on these and some other points, they are withheld from co-operating with the members of other religious bodies, still, in the formation of schools, in the distribution of the Bible, and in all the means of civilization,-branches of Missionary exertion scarcely inferior in importance to direct religious teaching,there is nothing, we apprehend, to prevent their actively concurring with others, or taking the lead themselves in new directions. Prejudices against Missionary exertions far more obstinate and malignant than any for which Quakerism may be answerable, have given way, in other directions, before the progress of enlightened views of the kingdom of Christ. Let a sect fence itself round as it may, it cannot keep out the all