enjoyments, on the only day they can be at their own firesides. All must be abroad at the places of public amusement. Twothirds of the Sabbath day are employed, not in a way that tends to strengthen religious and moral feeling, and to form domestic reflective habits, but in dissipation and debauchery, or, at the best, in acquiring tastes and habits of a more expensive and refined life than they can afford to lead. The moral effects of this Sabbath-life in Stockholm, are seen in the appalling statistical fact, that in this city there is one illegitimate child born for every one and a-half legitimate birth; and the smaller Stockholms, the other town populations of Sweden, follow their prototype pretty closely, and produce one illegitimate for every four legitimate births. In 1838, these were the proportions, by the official returns to Government for that year, of the births, legitimate and illegitimate; so that here there can be no mistake in the fact of a remarkably low state of morals, whether the cause we assign for it be true or not. We can discover no more likely reason, than that the female mind is trained in tastes for show, and dress, and display-exists for dancing, music, attitudinizing in tableaux vivants, and for pleasing in society, and does not even know that there are higher objects in female existence—is left without domestic habits, or moral and religious principles. To gratify the tastes and habits acquired in the Sabbath-life of Sweden, we find, by the official Report of the Swedish Minister of Justice for 1838, that 3560 persons had been guilty of theft, and 68 of capital crimes, of whom 19 had been executed; and the criminal calendar of that year is stated in the Report to be unusually light. On referring to the Statistik ofrer Sverige of Karl af Forsell, who is head of the Statistical Board, we find, in one year, 146 divorces, viz., the year 1834. This is in a population very little exceeding that of Scotland, and with a Church Establishment of about 7320 persons. Conceive Scotland with 68 capital crimes, and 19 executions yearly, and 146 divorces, and let us rejoice in our Calvinistic religion, as a ruling moral power in our country. Let us rejoice in our strict observance of the Sabbath, as the cement of the moral and religious life, and of the domestic virtues of our population in the lowest and most destitute, as well as in the higher classes. Let us weigh life in Scotland against life in Sweden in the scales of religion, morality, and social order, and we shall be slow to sympathize with the loves of uncles and nieces, matrons and clerical tutors, married men the fathers of families, and fascinating widows, senility and youth, and with "life in Sweden," either real or fictitious.

If we turn from the page of the novelist to the page of the historian, we discover a sufficient cause for the low moral tone of

society in Sweden. Political profligacy in the highest class sinks downwards, and taints the whole social mass, where public opinion has no influence, and no organ in a free press to oppose the corruption. The counts, barons, colonels, presidents, judges, whose private life appears so amiable in the fictions of the novelist, are the very class who stand branded in the page of modern history, as the nobles who, within the memory of the living generation, assassinated one of their kings, were traitors to another, sold the crown of their native dynasty to a foreigner, and sold the troops and fortresses intrusted to their military charge to the enemy of their country. This is "life in Sweden" in the page of modern history. No revolutionary fury, as in France; no national movement against civil and religious oppression, which in England brought the first Charles to the block, and unseated the Stuart dynasty, justify or palliate these misdeeds; no reform in government was the excitement, or the result, as in France or England; these were the deliberate acts of a profligate nobility, committed without even the pretext of public good; but unblushingly, and avowedly, to put money in the purses, and decorations on the breasts, of the perpetrators; while the nation, and the nobles not directly participating in the guilt, profits, and honours of assassination, breach of allegiance to their native dynasty, and military treachery to their country, stood quietly looking on-dishonoured in their acquiescence as much as in participation, unmoved by public spirit or a sense of duty-intent only on their balls, and theatres, and elegant amusements, and accomplishments-the veriest of slaves, because enslaved by tastes and habits unsuitable to their means, and by want of energy, morality, and religion. The incontrovertible facts and documents of history and statistics prove that this is "life in Sweden" in our times; and we suspect that Miss Bremer's delightful novels give us only a beautiful embroidery over it-the filthy dowlas below protrudes, here and there, even through her brilliantly coloured work.

Miss Bremer is not much beholden to her translators. The American translation appears like the work of a foreigner not quite at home in the English language. Mrs. Mary Howitt's is verbose and feeble, with a sprinkling of words and phrases belonging to none of the known tongues. Travellers and translators who have resided long on the Continent--and we observe Mrs. Howitt dates some of her translations at Heidelberg-should, before they publish in English, visit, for the recovery of their idiomatic health, those extensive dominions of her Majesty which are situated between the four corners of Dr. Johnson's English Dictionary. To "quieten" the children-the meaning, we presume, being to quiet them, or put them to rest-is not Eng

lish. A Saxon termination to a noun of Latin derivation will not make an English verb. "My gracious"! is a classical exordium to a scolding harangue of Betty the cook; but we are not accustomed in this country to say, My gracious! or, O gracious! to a lady of title, instead of Lady, or Ladyship. It may be Heidelberg-English to translate "Meine gnädige" into "My gracious"! but it is not the idiom of England. The word "excellence," also, like majesty, grace, worship, and all words that have two meanings, can only be made a title of by prefixing a personal "Your excellence," or rather, "Your excellency," in pronoun. the usage of our language, is English; but excellence, per se, is the amount of good quality, not the person, and is not English as a title. If Mrs. Howitt will call at the Foreign or Colonial Office, she will hear of His Excellency at many a court and colony, who has no claim to excellence.

ART. VIII.-Christian Morals. By the REV. WILLIAM SEWELL, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford. London.

1841.

IF illustration were argument, and confident assertion indisputable proof, this would be the most satisfactory ethical treatise extant. As it is, to a certain and not inconsiderable class of readers, it is the most dangerous. It dazzles by its fertility and variety of imagery; it imposes by its calm assumption of infallibility. It combines the qualities most fitted to lead captive the lovers of a kind of exciting quietism, which, while it stimulates passive wonder, sopites active inquiry; and these constitute, especially in the present day, a body neither small nor unimportant. There is much in the book that is seductive; and if one can get over the High-Church-of-England puerilities of the opening chapters, and surrender himself in those that follow to the more

The following sentence in the preface may, perhaps, explain some things in the book :-" It was commenced with a wish to make it popular, like the other volumes of this series; but popular Ethics are already provided for us in our Catechisms and Bibles; and it was soon found impossible to treat the subject scientifically, without entering into abstruse questions. It is, therefore, designed principally for students, who may be capable of deeper researches than mere questions of common casuistry." Assuredly the book begins in a manner childish enough in all conscience, cirginibus puerisque, while before it ends, it gets into speculations abstruse enough for a lover of Cabalistick lore, or a student of the occult sciences.

plausible and respectable Platonism of an earlier ecclesiastical system, which sits but awkwardly on the half-reformed liturgy and wholly reformed articles of Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, there is a satisfaction in being carried along as if by a charm compounded of infantine simplicity, much learning, and solemn religious awe-until even wilder than Pythagorean fancies about numbers and forms almost cease to startle or surprise.

We speak of the general character of the book; for there are remarkable exceptions. There are valuable principles announced not unfrequently in a striking axiomatic or apothegmatic form, though often degenerating into paradox; and the protest throughout, against the shallow creed of the mere rationalist, which, leaving unsounded all the darker depths, whether of the divine nature or the human, pleases itself with the smooth transparency of its own artificial ice-pond, would be excellent, were it not a protest in favour of the far more presumptuous dogma, which puts the profoundest mysteries of God's will and of man's into the keeping of a self-styled priesthood. We are glad to see the compound science of Christian Ethics rescued from the double error of utilitarianism in morals, and infidelity or latitudinarianism in religion; but the sceptic, we fear, will too soon recover the ground if it be occupied by nothing better than the ritual of the formalist, or the discipline of the monk's cell;-and if, after all, it is to be faith, not in God and God's word, but in men or sets of men, whatever they may call themselves, that is to supplant or supersede the self-confidence of unbelief, it is at least an even chance that inquisitive and reflecting minds may resort to atheism or pantheism, distrusting all beyond themselves, or trusting all that is external equally and alike, as better than the surrender of their independence to any authority short of the voice, direct and immediate, of the Supreme.

It must have been observed, that writers of the Tractarian, or Puseyite, or British Critic school, are driving hard to bring things to the issue which the system of the Church of Rome has always been anxious to press the issue, namely, which perils and commits all upon the alternative of implicit submission to clerical dominion, or an entire renunciation of revealed truth. It is an attempt to raise the old cry of the Church against the philosophers. Certainly, Tractarianism was born, or hatched, in the lucky hour. Taking advantage of the rebound, in the spirit of the age, from Liberalism in politics, and still more from what, in morals, gave popularity to Paley, and in religion, turned the preachers of the Cross into "the apes of Epictetus," as Bishop Horsley characterizes them-this new modification of AngloCatholicism hit upon the propitious time for shewing a more excellent way. The The previous generation was impatient of my

stery and would have all things plain; the present is to a large extent a convert to the opinion, that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy;" and that the infinite, with which it is man's glory to be conversant, is not so easily gauged in all directions, as was once thought, by ingenious systematizers and plausible theorists. The hour was come, and the men. In the general recoil from academic indifference, as its fruits had been seen in the outburst of revolutionary violence, and in the dread of its repetition, the idol might again be set on his pedestal a power antagonist to the irreligious principle was desiderated, and Church power was ready at hand.

It was all the more so, because a revival of evangelical feeling had previously taken place, which it might use as its precursor, while gradually insinuating itself into its place. A work was in progress, among all classes, even the highest, of a spiritual and heavenly character, which the enemy could counteract only by simulating and mimicking it, or by diverting it into a side channel. He must work on this occasion, in his character of "spiritual wickedness in high places." Spiritual truth must be met by spiritual error; and accordingly it is not a little lamentable to observe how, in a large portion of the community, the evangelical revival seems to have done nothing more than create a certain discontent with old secularity, and a taste for something spiritual and new-such as Tractarian earnestness can meet and satisfy, without the same demand of personal conversion and the same sense of personal responsibility, which the evangelical doctrine of the Cross and the Spirit of Christ so unsparingly enforces.

We may here advert to an artifice of the work before us, which we have remarked in other works of the same school. It is the artifice of Popery or Jesuitism;-and it consists in letting the real and only adversary likely to give trouble, escape unnoticed, and dealing with enemies more easily overcome-the odium of whose principles, with the shame of their defeat, may thus be tacitly communicated to the cause and party that alone are truly formidable, though they may never once have been touched. In Mr. Gladstone's work on Church Principles, for instance, this device is very manifest. He excels in conquering men of straw, and putting hors-de-combat any opponent but the right one. Thus, in his chapter on the Nature of a Church, the only system which he sets up in opposition to his own, based on Apostolic succession and Episcopal ordination, is the theory that ecclesiastical communion is a merely voluntary association. So also, as the antagonist of tradition, he places mere rationalism, and the doctrine of sacramental efficacy, ex opere operato, he triumphantly establishes on the ruins of the bald and barren opinion, which, denying the sealing character of the sacraments altogether, reduces