thing offensive veiled. The community endeavour to obtain respect by decent outward demeanour, and the priests inculcate with diligence the true doctrines of Christianity, dwelling with less conspicuous zeal on those additional inventions of man which encumber the superstructure of their faith. These false doctrines, as far as they are exhibited, are wonderfully adapted to the perverse inclination of mankind, offering to them the hope of salvation, on conditions of ceremonial observance, consistently with the indulgence of known offence. The ministers of their religion are themselves active and persevering. And above all, the whole body act with one impulse, are governed by one spirit, and press on continually to one and the same object. No wonder, then, if their numbers increase. Our only wonder is that they increase no faster.

Let Protestants learn the lesson of unity, and there will be no danger of their number being reduced. Let them unite, not in outward objects with divided minds, but in actual harmony of faith, in inward agreement of purpose. They would then not only obviate the reproach most frequently cast upon them by their avowed enemies, but might expect, with better-founded hope, a blessing on all their undertakings from Him who has prayed that we might be one, that the world might believe that He hath sent us.

ART. IV. The Amulet; or, Christian and Literary Remembrancer. London, Baynes and Son, 1828.

It is not, we believe, more than four or five years ago, since the literary Annuals of this country were confined to the common Pocket-book, comprising the calendar of the current year, its accompanying ruled pages for memoranda, its folded print descriptive of the newest fashions, and an appendix of letter-press, containing the words of the most favourite songs at Vauxhall, and a collection of charades and rebuses. How great is the change! On the table of every bookseller we find a host of Annuals vying with each other in the splendour of their decorations and the excellence of the miscellaneous essays which they contain. Among them our attention has been particularly attracted by the Amulet, or Christian and Literary Remembrancer; and a very elegant publication it is, not inferior in the taste and execution of the ornamental portion of its contents, to any of its fair compeers; and the celebrity of Coleridge, Daniel Wilson, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Mitford, Bernard Barton, Montgomery, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Hannah Moore, Miss Aikin, Bowles, and the late Mrs. Tighe, who are numbered among the contributors, is sufficient to guarantee that no inferiority should exist in the literary division of the volume.

Dr. Walsh's notice of some ancient coins and medals, illustrating

the progress of Christianity, is of a more learned character than we could have expected to find within the smooth and polished covers of a Christmas present. It is as interesting as it is erudite. How striking is the fact declared in the 119th page! After the severest persecution the Christians ever suffered, and in which 750,000 disciples are said to have perished by various kinds of death in a single province, medals were struck by Diocletian, commemorative of the extirpation of Christianity, and the following inscription was set up :-" Diocletianus Jovius et Maximian Herculeus Cæs. Aug. Amplificato per Orientem et Occidentem Imp. Rom. et nomine Christianorum deleto qui Remp. evertebant."—Christianity extirpated! And so, if human malice could have been effective to that end, Christianity had been extirpated; but the hand of Providence was stretched out for its preservation. The Church was built upon a rock, and the inveteracy and the power of her enemies only served to manifest the super-human nature of her strength, and realise the truth of our Saviour's prediction, that the gates of hell should not prevail against her.

The lines of Mrs. Opie, on Life a Pilgrimage, and the Death of Bishop Heber, are worthy the early reputation of a poetess, of whose prose we have of late years seen somewhat too much, and of whose verse we have seen too little.—We were much pleased with a tale by the author of May you like it; and the following serious epigram by Bishop Hoadly, strikes us as being peculiarly sweet both in thought and expression:

Written on seeing a clear Spring near a Friend's in Hampshire, which supplied all the Neighbourhood with Water.

Gentle reader, see in me

An emblem of true charity:

That while my bounty I bestow,

I'm neither heard, nor seen to flow;

And I have fresh supplies from heaven
For every cup of water given.

What the story of Amy Vernon could have been written for, we have no conception. An exaggerated tale of martyrdom like this, whether related by Protestants of Roman Catholics, or by Roman Catholics of Protestants, can have but one consequence, whatever may be the intention of the author in relating it:-its effect must be that of perpetuating religious animosities, and preventing that peaceful and kindly feeling among the members of all communions, by which alone the cause of truth can be effectually and substantially promoted. With respect to this story, the view taken of Queen Mary's character is untrue to history. The manners are not those of the times; and the incidents are offensively horrible, without raising a greater degree of pity than is excited by any common every day newspaper description of an execution. The author possessed capital materials for pathos

as a foundation to work upon, but he wanted the skill, the tenderness, and the facility which were requisite to raise the superstructure.

We cannot but approve the benevolent spirit in which the Rev. D. Wilson's paper on slavery is written; but his quotations from scripture do not appear to us to substantiate the proposition he lays down. Can indeed a single text, either from the Old or the New Testament, be produced, which shews that slavery should not be permitted under any circumstances? Mr. Wilson's citations prove that the legislature is bound to be careful in the formation of the laws that regulate the relation subsisting between the master and his slave; and they also prove that the master himself is bound to consider the spiritual and the temporal interest and welfare of his slaves. These things Christianity demands. To effect these objects might not have been difficult, if the friends of our negro fellow-creatures had not exaggerated the claims of the Gospel, and excited, as all exaggeration of every description ever will excite, a proportionate counteraction to their benevolent intentions in the minds of more cautious, and timid, and less enthusiastic men. It is very fine to make tirades upon liberty; but the world cannot be governed by declamation, and there is a state of barbarism in which liberty is an evil and no good. The first state of civilization in every society is that of a master and a slave. There are many grades of improvement, moral and intellectual, to be passed through, before the animal, man, is capable of being submitted, without peril of self-injury, to the daily charge and sole direction of himself. An emancipation of the slaves in the Colonies would be the most destructive event to the slaves themselves that could possibly occur. Slavery is only an evil when the mind is educated to that state in which it pines for freedom. That state the government should endeavour to produce by wise and benevolent enactments,-by insisting on the religious instruction of the negro population of our Colonies,-by securing to every slave such a portion of leisure as may enable him to gain property for himself, and by affording the industrious and the prudent the means of purchasing their freedom, at a price fixed and determined by the inviolable authority of Parliament. This we believe to be the only scheme of emancipation that can be maintained with justice to the planter and charity to the slave himself. As to Mr. Wilson's strong, but overcharged, account of the manner in which the negroes are obtained, it must be remembered that there is a pendant to his report of a very different description. The slave may sometimes be kidnapped, and most deadly is the sin in the villain who commits the act. It should be guarded against by every possible precaution, and punished with the utmost severity of justice, when detected; but the majority of the slaves brought to the slave-market, are either no better off in their own country, or are captives taken in war, who would be tortured to

death at some disgusting festival of savage victory, if avarice did not mediate between them and their conquerors, and redeem them from murder in their own land to slavery abroad. A traffic in slaves, for instance, opened with the Ashantees, would be a real blessing to mankind: it would be an act of mercy to the unhappy captives of that barbarous monarch, and would be the first step towards humanizing his subjects themselves, by discovering to them a more humane mode of disposing of their captives, and rendering them less accustomed to the brutalizing sight of bloodshed. In the case where a negro escapes murder by the loss of liberty, we must think, in spite of all declamation to the contrary, that he is benefited by the exchange: let the civil regulations for his well-being, which receive him in the Colonies, be rendered as salutary as the wit of man enlightened by the beams. of the Gospel can devise; and the exchange of condition will prove most eminently to his advantage. He will have exchanged the precariousness of savage existence for the regularity of a civilized state; he will have exchanged a life of eternal warfare and never-ceasing danger, for moderate labour and perfect security; he will have exchanged idolatry for the religion of Jesus. To place a savage in the vicinity of the arts, and manners, and improvements of cultivated man, is advancing him to a higher rank in the scale of moral and intelligent beings. These are strong counterbalances to the evils effected by a few cases of wrong, which may, perhaps, be occasionally committed in obtaining possession of slaves. Kidnapping might very easily be prevented by legislative measures; and we think that the lives of negroes taken in war among themselves ought, if possible, to be saved. Christianity demands this. The slave-market affords the means; and as to slavery being opposite to the letter or spirit of the Gospel, the statement is untrue. By gradual amelioration, Christianity, equally operating on the master and the slave, will so raise the condition of the negro as to render him capable of purchasing and enjoying his own independence; but the act of possessing a fellow-creature in slavery is no where censured or reproved in the New Testament in any single passage. Wherever the word serrant-Dovλos-occurs in Scripture, it invariably means slave; and the master is enjoined to treat him as a brother, but is no where called upon to dispense with his services. We have too great a reverence for every the slightest intimation of Christ and his apostles, whether afforded us explicitly or inferentially, to dare exceed, in a single iota, beyond what is written.

The tale of Sir Edgar Fitzallerton and his good Hawk, Elinore, is of a description calculated to awaken a very lively interest in the mind of the reader. When the sports that intermingled with the fierce and bloody wars, which once desolated our now tranquil island, are

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vividly depicted; and when their sports too, are such as either no longer exist among us, or are only partially pursued; who is there but lends an attentive ear, and eagerly enters into the enthusiasm of the narrative? This story, which is replete with the spirit and gallantry of the days of chivalry, speaks of knights and ladies issuing from the frowning Castle in gay and glistening apparel, and going forth to the royal sport of hawking." The subject immediately presents to the imagination those brilliant groups that grace the pictures of Wouvermans. In the introduction to this tale, we have some general information tolerably correct, about the treatment and flying of hawks; but there is one mistake, which we are obliged to notice, because it impairs the truth of the whole story, and to those who are partially acquainted with the sport, in a great measure destroys its interest. We are told that these feathered favourites of the high and noble are not only intelligent, as they undoubtedly are, but also attached. Unfortunately for the romantic feelings which such a statement is calculated to excite, as well as for the point on which the whole story turns, this is not the fact. The sportsman must be content with the fidelity of his hound; for it is a charm in which his hawk will most assuredly be found deficient. It is contrary to the nature of the bird, and would even go far to render him unfit for the purpose on which he is employed. Fierceness and strength are the ungentle qualities required of them; and the one must be sharpened, while the other is only called into existence by the excitation of hunger. When the hawk feeds, he gorges: supineness invariably follows the satisfying of his appetite; nor can he be roused to renewed exertion but by privation from food. Such is the habit of the bird in its natural state; and the great art of the falconer is to keep it carefully, in every respect but one, in its wild condition. He reconciles the bird to the approach of man, and this is the only particular in which the hawk of the mews differs from the hawk of the forest; and even this natural fear of the human race the falconer never attempts to conquer, except towards himself, and himself peculiarly habited. This is effected by always feeding and handling the bird in the same dress.-The hawk of this story wins an estate for her master, Sir Edgar, by the superiority of her flight and a most wonderful flight she takes. None of her tribe in these degenerate days would attempt to leave her master's fist to strike a quarry that had already soared, as had the heron she brought down. Sir Edgar, having acquired by this extraordinary feat the fair manor of Allerton, loses it by the treachery of his cousin; and, after escaping the villain's dagger, he flies the country, without any object for such a measure that we can perceive, except that of proving his favourite bird in possession of a quality, which if she possessed, would prove her to be no hawk.-After an absence of ten long years, the faithful Elinore