SELF-IMPROVEMENT.

TO THE YOUNG MEN OF ENGLAND.

DEAREST HOPE OF THE FUTURE!-In commencing our promised series of Letters on Self-improvement, we cannot better introduce ourselves than by laying before you the admirable, the inimitable Address of the Rev. Thomas Binney to the Young Men and Boys of the Grammar-school, Mill Hill. It is studded throughout with golden truths and great principles. It supplies the elements of a voluminous treatise. It deserves your perusal twenty times over. Read it, we beseech you; read it-read it-read it! And we will proceed another stage in our Elysian march next month.

MY DEAR BOYS,-You have heard what I have been saying about learning and religion; you see how we attach importance to both. Knowledge is good-large information is very desirable;-but religious knowledge is absolutely necessary. Science, literature, and elegant accomplishments- -all that gives to the intellect greatness or refinement-if possessed apart from religious faith and holy character, are only as flowers that adorn the dead.

There is a know

ledge which purifies while it expands-which is life to the soul as well as light to the intellectwhich will go with you to any world-and prepare you for any, by guiding you safely through the dangers of this. Seek that knowledge where you know it is to be found-in those "holy Scriptures," which you are here taught, and "which are able to make you wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus." Cultivate, dear youth, piety towards God, deep reverence for his presence, his service, and his name. Pray to him for that pardon of sin which boys need as well as men, and for that grace which children as well as adults can receive. The promise is to you as well as to us.

In relation to your general conduct, I should like you to associate real nobility and greatness of character with what is moral-with habitual obedience to the law of conscience and the dictates of duty. Vice is mean and degrading as well as wrong. In the Bible sinners are represented as objects of contempt as well as condemnation. A bad boy knows well enough that he deserves to be despised, for he can't help sometimes despising himself. Do bravely and manfully everything that you feel you ought. Cultivate a generous, open, unsuspicious temper. Despise selfishness; hate and loathe it in all its forms of vanity, sloth, self-will, oppression of the weak, harshness to the timid, refusal of help which it would be proper to render, or of little sacrifices to serve others. Detest everything like duplicity and deceit. Don't go within a mile of a lie. Value your honour, truthfulness, and integrity. When you have misunderstandings, do not be ashamed of acknowledging error, or apologising for wrong. As soon as possible get rid of grudges and resentments, and live together in cheerfulness and love. Be in manners

at once frank and courteous-in act and conversation delicate and pure. In one word, desire in all things so to behave yourselves, that, as you "grow in stature, you may grow in wisdom, and in favour with God and man."

One word in relation to your studies—WORK. Work well, hard, cheerfully. Don't wish just to get through, or to get off easily, or to be indebted to any one for anything whatsoever that you ought to know and to do yourselves. Everything depends on your diligence and industry. Let none of you fancy that because you have genius you may dispense with labour. No boy ever translated Homer by inspiration. Nothing will come to you in this way. Nothing valuable is in this world either done or got without effort. "Nature gives us something at first"-something to start with our original capacity, whatever it may be. Everything else after this she sells," -sells always, sells to all, and sells dear. You must pay the price. By intellectual labour you may purchase for yourselves attainments and distinction; happiness and respect come by virtue. If you like, you may be idle, thoughtless, wicked; the price is ignorance, contempt, hell. Recollect, also, that, in the long run, there can be no mistake. No boy or man can ever really get what he has not purchased, or carry away what belongs to another; or, if he does so, or appear to do so, he cannot keep it for any long time without being detected. Every day is a day of judgment-a day of reaping as you have sown-of revelation of what you are. "No man is concealed," or can be. Not one of you can go through life, all the way, with the reputation and character of a good scholar, if you are not really such. Things will be constantly occurring to reveal you, and society will not be long in ascertaining your precise height and depth-your solid contents and superficial dimensions. In the same way, you cannot pass for what you are not in respect to your actual moral character; somehow or other, you will come to find yourself weighed and measured. You will pass among your fellows for what you are worth, and for nothing more: if you are worthless, the world will soon make the discovery, and it will let you know that it has made it. Depend upon it, the best way to be thought good is to be good; the surest mode of being had in reputation is to have a character.

If at this moment I could gather together here all the pupils that have ever been located within these walls; if I could summon them from wheresoever they sojourn, and cause them to surround you in visible forms, and thus show you exactly what they really are, it would be a most affecting and instructive spectacle. Many, probably, would have to rise from their graves; of these, some would appear as spirits of lightsome, it is to be feared, with the awful aspect of lost souls. Others would be brought from the ends of the earth and the isles of the sea-from under ancient dynasties and new republicsfrom continents and colonies of the other hemisphere. Of these, some would be found to be honourably engaged in commercial enterprise ; some to have been driven from their fatherland by folly or misfortune; some to have gone voluntarily forth as ministers and missionaries, the highest form and office of humanity. Of those

that would come from the metropolis, and from the towns and cities of our country, how great would be the number, how varied the pursuits, how different in their tastes, habits, and character, how changed in appearance, perhaps in opinions, sympathy, belief, from what they were when, in this scene, as little boys, they plied their tasks, or bounded in the play-ground, or kneeled in prayer! Some would come with university-honours and literary reputation, some as presbyters of the Established Church, some as the guides and bishops of our own. Many would be here, there can be no doubt, who have passed through life, and are passing through it, with honourable characters and spotless reputation; many who are enjoying the fruits and rewards of steadiness and industry; and many besides, who, adding to their virtue faith, and following out their religious training, are known and esteemed as religious men, and adorn the community in which they move. Pleasant would it be to look upon the countenances of such men-men of intelligence, virtue, and religion; pleasant for you to hear their words of encouragement, and their united testimony to the advantages of learning, the worth of goodness, the possibility of securing, and the satisfactions flowing from, the friendship of God!

While such as these might allure and attract you towards holiness and heaven, there would be some others whose career and appearance would operate upon you in another manner; whose ruined characters and blighted prospects, debilitated health, reckless habits, wretchedness, and shame, would alarm and deter you from following their courses, and move your hearts by pity and terror. Some of these, perhaps, when at school, were gay and buoyant, loved by their associates, and worthy to be loved; they entered life with high hopes and bright prospects; they were the pride of their parents; everything was done for them to secure and facilitate their advancement and success: with all this, they have come to be what I have described —a ruin and a wreck. If such could speak, they would probably tell you that they fell from not having a fixed, settled, and serious aim in life; that they gave themselves up to the satisfactions of the moment, whatever they might be ; passed thoughtlessly from pleasure to pleasure; cared for nothing but immediate enjoyment, having no idea of living for any great or honourable purpose: thus wasting their talents and squandering time, they easily proceeded from folly to vice, till they found themselves utterly and irretrievably ruined. But, instead of fancying what they might say, I will tell what actually was said by a man of good abilities and finished education, who thus wasted life, and saw his error when too late. I refer to Sir Francis Delaval, who, when he was on his death-bed, sent for Mr. Edgeworth, and thus addressed him :-"Let my example warn you of a fatal error into which I have fallen. I have pursued amusement, instead of turning my ingenuity and talents to useful purposes. sensible that my mind was fit for greater things than any of which I am now, or was ever supposed to be, capable. I am able to speak fluently in public, and I have perceived that my manner of speaking has always increased the force of what I said: upon various important subjects I am not deficient in useful information; and, if I had employed half the time and

I am

half the pains in cultivating serious knowledge which I have wasted in exerting my powers upon trifles, instead of dissipating my fortune and tarnishing my character, I should have become a useful member of society and an honour to society. Remember my advice, young man. Pursue what is useful to mankind. You will satisfy them, and, what is better, you will satisfy yourself."

Such was the melancholy close of a sinful course. God forbid that any of the bright eyes that are now before me, glistening with the dew of their young life, and sparkling with the light of innocence and joy, should come to be dimmed with regrets like these! Nay, God forbid that any of you, my dear boys, should neglect to learn the important lesson, that what formed the highest object of this dying man's ambition and desire, even if attained, however it might really "satisfy" the world, ought not alone to "satisfy yourselves." The best that he wished he had lived for and aimed at, is short of the best that you should pursue. God is to be satisfied as well as "mankind." However the one may be content with virtue, the other requires piety and faith. He demands character founded on religion-" usefulness" flowing from love to himself. Your best doings will be imperfect; you will need mercy to pardon sin, the Holy Spirit to implant principles of heavenly strength, grace to renew and sanctify the heart, the atonement of Christ believed, trusted in, pleaded in prayer, as the source of hope and the ground of acceptance. "Seek first the kingdom of God." 64 Study to show yourselves approved unto Him." "Serve him with reverence and godly fear." "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." "See that ye neglect not the great salvation." "Flee, also, youthful lusts; but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." Pursuing a course of holy action and religious usefulness, you will come to know the truth of the memorable words of one of our devout and illustrious ancestors :-" You have been accustomed," said Philip Henry to a friend standing by his bed-side as he was about to die, "you have been accustomed to note the last words of dying men; these are mine-A LIFE SPENT IN THE SERVICE OF GOD IS THE HAPPIEST LIFE UPON EARTH."

ORDINATION.

TOTTENHAM.

THE recognition of the Rev. J. De Kewer Williams, late of Limerick, as pastor of the church at "Edmonton and Tottenham Chapel," took place on Tuesday, June the 29th, when the Rev. Drs. Burder, Henderson, Hewlett, and Jenkyn, and other ministers took part in the services.

LATIMER CHAPEL, MILE END. THE REV. John Hall, of Cheshunt, has accepted an invitation to the co-pastorate of the church assembling in the above Chapel, in connection with the Rev. Richard Saunders.

NEWPORT PAGNELL COLLEGE. THE annual services in connection with this Institution, were held on Wednesday and Thursday, the 9th and 10th of June.

The examination was conducted on the 9th, in the presence of several ministers and friends of the College, and was highly satisfactory to them. Two classes were examined in Hebrew, in the book of Genesis, and in the prophecies of Isaiah. Passages in Greek and Latin selected by the examiners were read from Plato's apology of Socrates, the Medea of Euripides, and Xenophon's Anabasis, also from Cicero's Tusculan Questions, and Cæsar's Commentaries. Considerable attention and intelligence were exhibited in an exercise on the two first books of Whateley's Logic.

A prayer-meeting was held in the evening, and addresses delivered by the Rev. Messrs. Boaz and Wilkins.

The more public services of the following day were well attended and deeply interesting. A very excellent and appropriate sermon was preached in the morning, by the Rev. George Smith, of Poplar, from 2 Cor. iv. 5. At the public meeting in the afternoon the report was read, and various resolutions were spoken to on that occasion, and subsequently at the teameeting by the Rev. T. P. Bull, G. Smith, Cecil, Alliott, Jukes, Boaz, Prust, Wilkins, Brooks, Castleden, Watson, Whiting, J. Bull, and by Messrs. Bateman and Hudson. Amongst the former students present at this anniversary, its friends were happy in the presence and assistance of the Rev. T. Boaz, from Calcutta. blessing of God has rested on the Institution during the past year; and though the visitations of sickness, and in one case of death, in the removal of a very devoted young man, have fallen upon it, yet its circumstances are such as to call for gratitude and thankfulness. As is too often the case in our public institutions, there was a complaint of deficiency of funds; but the Committee feel assured, from the deep sense entertained of the value and importance of this institution, that with a little effort on the part of its friends this cause of anxiety may be removed during the next year.

The

The London Treasurer and Secretaries of the Society, are Thomas Piper, Esq., the Rev. C. Gilbert, and H. Bateman, Esq.

The Life and Correspondence of John Foster. Edited by J. E. RYLAND. With Notice of Mr. Foster as a Preacher and Companion; by JOHN SHEPPARD, Author of "Thoughts on Devotion," &c. In Two Volumes. London: Jackson and Walford.

ADEQUATELY to discuss the varied merits of these volumes would require an article half as large as one of themselves. Our space must, therefore, determine our method of bringing them before our readers. But in yielding to this necessity, we may still perform all that is, in the present case, necessary to utility. We shall,

therefore, lay before them a critical estimate of the work, and of the advantages to be derived from its publication.

These volumes, then, are not to be classed with ordinary, or even superior, biography, any more than John Foster himself is to be classed with ordinary or even superior men. Like himself, they stand alone; and the probability is, that the day is very distant which will produce aught of the sort worthy to be placed by their side. His first great work, the

Essays," the "Discourse on Popular Ignorance," the "Broadmead Lectures," the two Volumes of Reviews, form an immense storehouse of truth, wisdom,

and eloquence, of its sort, far surpassing anything that has proceeded from any other English pen-a mighty accession to the literary treasure of Europe; but the crowning gift is, undoubtedly, the work before us, which incalculably adds to the value of the volumes just mentioned. The whole together constitutes an intellectual treasury that will not soon be exhausted, a mine of thought that will not soon be worked out. For many years it was matter of constant and deep regret with religious men of letters that Foster had written so little, and that, to all appearance, he was indisposed to write any more; but it now turns out that he was, after all, far more industrious than was generally believed, and that, notwithstanding his aversion to literary labour, the sum total of his productions has been really much greater than was supposed, and quite as great as that of the most industrious of his mighty compeers-several times greater than that of Sir James Mackintosh, his illustrious contemporary --and at least equal to that of Edmund Burke, his immediate, and most distinguished predecessor in the walk of philosophical morality.

In these volumes there is a prodigious amount of invaluable matter, which could not, by possibility, have found a place in any regular composition. These volumes may correctly be viewed as supplemental to his works, and, as such, may be bound, numbered, and ranged along with them. It is matter for public congratulation that the honourable trust was confided to such a man as Mr. Ryland, who has proved himself worthy of his unrivalled subject. He has, from first to last, managed it with a tact and a judgment which leave nothing to be desired. In the hands of such a man how different had been the costume in which Burke and Mackintosh would have gone down to posterity! Burke has been very unfortunate in his biographers, none of whom possessed either the capacity or the industry necessary to do justice to that greatest of Moderns: and the fact that five or six volumes of Correspondence have been subsequently, and some of them but recently, brought to light, of itself establishes the charge of culpable negligence against his biographers. The "Life of Mackintosh," by his son, is a superior production, but falls far beneath its noble subject. The Life of the late Dr. Arnold, which, upon the whole, does justice to that excellent man, is the only production of the present century which,

on the ground of philosophical claims, is worthy to be classed with that of John Foster. Still, as men, Arnold and Foster had very little in common. Arnold was one of a class, and in that class he stood the foremost;-take him for all in all, he was a glorious man, the type of his age and country. Foster was not one of a class, but an individual-a man of colossal stature, whose vision extended immeasurably beyond that of Arnold, and whose lofty musings indicated a mind that belonged to a far higher order of being. The public reception of these works, respectively, may apparently furnish an index to the mental condition of the age, as also to their respective merits. Before Arnold's Memoir had been the same time (some fifteen months) before the public, it had gone through several large editions. This has not been the lot of Foster's. Are we, then, by this circumstance to determine the merits of the men, respectively, or of their memoirs? Certainly not let it be remembered that Arnold was a Churchman, a clergyman, a public tutor, a moderate reformer both in church and state, and a mitigated Evangelical;-in a word, in all respects a man of his age and country-a-head, and yet not too far a-head-and always breathing a spirit manly, generous, noble; so that in most respects his life is nearly as agreeable to Dissenters as to Churchmen. It is on these grounds difficult to conceive of a more thoroughly marketable literary commodity than the life of Arnold. It owes, indeed, a very large proportion of its popularity to its complete adaptation to the passing hour; ten or fifteen years hence it will be seldom mentioned. The absolute fame of Foster, notwithstanding its present comparative greatness, is still in the bud; his full glory is reserved for a coming age. When Arnold is forgotten, he will stand first among the classics of England. On the other hand, Foster was a Dissenter of the first water-" a dissenting teacher;" and yet worse, if possible, a Baptist; and, worse still in the eyes of Churchmen, he was, moreover, a universal and radical reformer-things which go far to shut him out from Episcopalian circles, from all libraries, both private and public, where clerical influence prevails. Then, as to the world at large, he was a moral philosopher whose depth of view and range of speculation, whose purity and severity, were such as to form a great gulf between him and the bulk of mankind. We do not speak of the

folly of the age, which will look to others than Arnold and Foster for its intellectual provender, but of multitudes who might get on tolerably well with the celebrated schoolmaster with his blended brilliancy and common sense, but who would feel themselves utterly bewildered and lost, amid the mystical profundities of the Philosophical Essayist. The capability, indeed, of being interested by Foster, and drawn irresistibly along by the mighty current of his massive thought, is of itself a proof to him who feels it that his intellectual nonage is past and gone, and suffices to establish his claim of admission to the fellowship of thinking men.

It was the remark of a sage, that the "Rambler" was "a book to make a man think;" and this may, with greatly augmented emphasis, be said of the "Life of Foster." It is a huge repository of thought, and fully to master it will prove no inconsiderable exercise of the thinking powers; and to have thoroughly performed that exercise will make a man no mean thinker. It will be a noble praxis! In this light we especially commend this memoir to the attention of our readers, and in particular to that class of them— which, we rejoice to know, is greatconsisting of clever, intelligent, inquisitive young men, to whom it will prove an invaluable introduction to "the art of thinking." There is not one of the thousand or more pages comprised in these volumes which does not contain something worthy of attention-a thought, a sentiment, or something by which thought and sentiment will be excited.

Another peculiarity of the volumes before us is this, the young man intent on the prosecution of his studies will find them a valuable introduction to the knowledge of a multitude of the most important books on most subjects of human knowledge, not directly scientific. The character of such books, whether in the way of excellence or defect, is frequently given in a manner calculated not simply to guide choice, but to promote reflection and cultivate the spirit of sound critical judgment. Nor is this all; the work will also serve as an introduction to eminent men as well as to standard literature. Not a few of the most distinguished individuals in the walks of literature and religion for the last fifty years figure here, amid glances at their several characters, and records of their most distinguished actions. In this respect the volumes present a splendid gallery of intellectual and moral portraits.

Another striking feature of the work is, that it abounds with exhibitions of great principles on the subjects of religion, morals, politics, and social economics-sometimes stated, sometimes reasoned, and sometimes illustrated-and these in a manner frequently so striking, so original, and occasionally with such beauty and tenderness, as to make impressions never to be effaced.

To a very large extent Mr. Ryland has made Foster his own biographer, a circumstance which has exceedingly enhanced the interest of the narrative. Foster could do nothing meanly, nothing feebly. Scarce a passing note seems to have issued from his pen without enunciating some great truth, some noble sentiment; and to his particular friends he poured himself out with an energy, a heart, and a copiousness, which to busy men, compelled to be laconic, will seem altogether extraordinary. With such materials, Mr. Ryland has been enabled to give a completeness and a finish to his volumes which renders them as charming from their fact and incident, as they are commanding from their massive truth and majestic eloquence.

There are points in these volumes for animadversion; such points refer chiefly to ecclesiastical organization, and certain dogmata concerning future punishment. Mr. Ryland, we conceive, was bound to act as he has done, in regard to these matters, from which we apprehend very little mischief. While such marks of infirmity will tend to comfort ordinary mortals, they will add, from the lists of greatness, another illustration of Matthew Henry's maxim, that "the best of men are but men at the best."

Life of William Allen, with Selections from his Correspondence. In Three Volumes, 8vo. London: Gilpin. WILLIAM ALLEN, a name dear to humanity, was born August 29th, 1770,-just eighteen days before John Foster, and the last day of George Whitfield's life. The history of William Allen is throughout a history of action. No two works can be more unlike each other than these memoirs, and those of Foster; and as with the works, so with the individuals to whom they refer. Both lived long, and each, in his way, laboured muchthe one intellectually, and the other morally. Few men did less than Foster, and on subjects merely speculative, few thought less than Allen. But this work