"Let the gall'd jade wince." Some of his notes are equally cutting. How well does he observe that the effects of certain creeds may be traced in the visages that adorn sundry godly magazines, and which speak more than volumes of the feelings which could produce such effects on the human countenance! shewing the analogy between the conformation of features and the creed-ruling passions of the mind. And difficult it is to say whether the effect is more hideous or ludicrous in some of these certainly not human, and yet not altogether diabolical aspects! Mr Bowles says, that, among a thousand others, he can avouch for the following fact, illustrating the effects of an abhorrence of morals characteristic of some sects. A young woman, of most respectable character, taught the children in a clergyman's village-school to read. After some time, she told the lady of the clergyman she should no longer superintend the school, as she had found, too late, she had been bred up herself in " a sad moral way!" She was soon put out of this sad moral way, Mr Bowles adds, and brought before the magistrate to affiliate the first fruits of her new "anti-moral creed.

But though we do, from the very bottom of our hearts, agree with Mr Bowles in the main, in his most eloquent and powerful denunciations of the wicked and fatal creed, against which he launches the lightnings of his indignation, he treads, in a few instances, on dark and difficult ground, where we are unwilling to follow him, and where it is probable we should part company in the haunted gloom of metaphysics. There is a Calvinism, we believe, which is a dreadful and a fatal faith; but there is a Calvinism which, though dark, is, we believe, not dangerous;-witness moral and religious Scotland. But at present no more of this.

Mr Bowles, in exposing the follyand worse than folly of those knaves or idiots who speak of that "wicked sinner" Shakspeare, says truly, that the drama is far more effective as a corrector of crimes, in many instances, (in many instances think you, sir?) than some places of worship where anti-moral doctrines of different shades are preached. Mr

Corder, the murderer of Maria Marten, to whom he was betrothed, rose from his knees in a chapel, and hastened to dip his hands in her blood. What hideous work must some preaching make among all the thoughts produced on the mind by conscience! What utter confusion and reversal of all the sanctities of nature! Minds so disturbed have not unfrequently rushed to the perpetration of the most horrid crimes. It is to make use of perhaps a vulgar expression-touch and go with all weak and ignorant-to which add vicious and savage minds-who sit under some anti-moral expounders of God's holy word. So far we agree with all Mr Bowles has said, or can say, on such a dreadful subject; but he goes much too far, we cannot help thinking, when he says, speaking of the dialogue between Macbeth and his wife after the murder of Duncan, that if Corder could have endured that heart-rending scene, let him have waited till he saw that terrible picture of remorse, when Lady Macbeth appears in her sleep, and "I would venture to say, that this deed of blood would not have been done!" That is too much to venture to say; for, in the first place, the ignorant blockhead might not have understood it; and, in the second place, the callous monster might not have felt it; and, in the third place, the infatuated wretch might have been even stimulated to the crime by the very picture of its acting before his eyes, for God only knows all the mysteries of wickedness; and, fourthly, had the murderess struck him with kindred passions of fear and remorse, such passions are an agony to endure; and the lisp or leer of some prostitute on the street might have driven them out of his head, and let in upon it again the determined dream of blood.

The evils of conventicles are great to the wicked; but the blessings of theatres are to the wicked, we suspect, but small; while to the good, they serve, even at the best, chiefly to please and improve the taste and the imagination, and through their agency, to elevate, no doubt, our moral feelings, and to awaken our enthusiasm for virtue. But then it is to be remarked, that with all the inevitable corruptions--and ine

vitable they seem to be-of the drama, in a state of great wealth and high civilization, theatres may be to many places rife with danger,-and that we allow, notwithstanding the senseless jeremiads against playhouses, of the Master-Tailor of The Age, a Poem. The influence of literature in general-the drama included-is benignant and beneficent; but it may be overrated; and the strength and stability of the moral soul of a people, is in the Christian religion, and in the Bible. This, Mr Bowles indeed knows as well as we do; and how gloriously he expresses it!

"Therefore, without a comment, or a note, We love the Bible, and we prize the more The spirit of its pure unspotted page, As pure from the infectious breath, that stains,

Like a foul fume, its hallow'd light, we

hail

example, most disgusting and loathsome, to hear some broad-backed, thick-calved, greasy-faced, well-fed, and not-badly-drunk caitiff, of some canting caste, distinguished in private and public life for the gross greediness with which they gobble up every thing eatable within reach of their hairy fists, preaching, and praying, and exhorting young people, full of flesh and blood of the purest and clearest quality, to forsake and forswear the world,-to quell within them all mortal vanities, and appetites, and lusts? To whom is the hound haranguing? What means he by lusts, while the sweet face is before him of that innocent girl of fifteen or twenty? For what are years to her, into whose eyes God and the Saviour have put that light angelical? -that ineffable loveliness, as pure from taint, as the beauty of the rose blushing on her lily breast, which she

clouds

Of mortal darkness, and of human mist, Sole, as the Sun in Heav'n !"

We know not a more certain symptom of hypocrisy in religion, than in minds, themselves obviously worldly in the extreme, an exaggerated condemnation of all little worldlinesses in all other honest people, gravely jogging, or gaily skipping along their path of life. Those people are often the least worldly, on whom they who make the loudest boast of their unworldliness, seek basely to affix that opprobrious epithet. For they walk the world with a heart pure as it is cheerful; they are, by that unpretending purity, saved from infection; and as there are as many fair and healthy faces to be seen in the smoke and stir of cities, as in the rural wilds, so also are there as many fair and healthy spirits. The world-the wicked world-has not that power over us Christians, that the canters

hours ago, among the earliest songs of birds, while yet the pensive expression had not time to leave her countenance, still lingering there from the piety of her soul-breathed prayers? Shocking, to hear the ugly monster coarsely canting to such a creature of her-corruption! She knows that she belongs to a fallen nature, Oftentimes her tears have flowed to think how undeserving she was of all the goodness showered on her head from Heaven. Often hath she looked on the lilies of the field, and envied their innocence. Meek and humble is she, even in her most joyful happiness; contrite and repentant even over the shadows of sin, that may have crossed her spirit, as the shadows of clouds suddenly over stationary spot of sunshine." Even for her sake, she knows that " Jesus wept." With what a reverent touch do these delicate hands of hers turn over the leaves of the New Testament! Her father and her mother intensely feel themselves to be Christians, while she reads to them the story of the crucifixion. She remembers not the time, when she knew not Him who died to save sinners. For her parents were instructed by these words,-" Suffer little children to be brought unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Fine are all the threads of holy feeling, by which her pure

a

make the likeness of any thing above the earth, or under the earth,' this machine has a number of idolatrous images, in wood, representing horses! But, far worse than this, boys and girls-instead of precocious edification, in the mysteries of destiny and decrees (to the horror of this age, of the march of intellect,' be it spoken) boys and girls together are found riding round, with the most impious tranquillity, and apparent sedate satisfaction, one after the other, on the same wooden likenesses of little horses !"

In pleasant accordance with such views of the perfect harmlessness of many of the gaieties of this life, humble or high, Mr Bowles sketches a beautiful picture of a little rural festival, which ended, as we know, though we were not there to see, with a choral flower-dance:

"If we would see the fruits of charity, Look at that village group, and paint the

Trample in dust thy mask, nor cry Faith -Faith,'

Making it but a hollow tinkling sound,

That stirs not the foul heart! Horrible wretch,

Look not upon the face of that sweet child, With thoughts which Hell would tremble to conceive!

Oh shallow, and oh senseless!-ina world Where rank offences turn the good man

pale

Who leave the Christian's sternest code, to vent

Their petty ire on petty trespasses―
If trespasses they are when the wide

world

Groans with the burden of offence, when crimes

Stalk on, with front defying, o'er the land, Whilst, her own cause betraying, Christ

ian zeal

Thus swallows camels, straining at a gnat !!'"

That is fine vigorous writing; but the Poet rises into yet a loftier flight, and he takes us along with him on his wings:

"Oh! whilst the car

Of God's own glory rolls along in light, We join the loud song of the Christian host,

(All puny systems shrinking from the blaze,)

Hosannah, to the car of light! Roll on! Saldanna's rocks have echoed to the hymns Of Faith, and Hope, and Charity! Roll on !

Till the wild wastes of inmost Africa, Where the long Niger's track is lost, respond,

Hosannah, to the car of light!' Roll on !

From realm to realm, from shore to far

thest shore,

O'er dark Pagodas, and huge Idol-Fanes, That frown along the Ganges' farthest

stream,

And flashing cymbals, and delirious songs
Of tinkling dancing girls, and all the rout
Of frantic Superstition! Turn away!
And is not Jaggernaut himself with us,—
Not only cold insidious sophistry,
Comes, blinking with its taper-fume, to
light,

If so he may, the Sun in the mid Heaven!
Not only blind and hideous blasphemy
Scowls in his cloak, and mocks the glo-
rious orb,

Ascending, in its silence, o'er a world Of sin and sorrow, but a hellish brood

some of the worthy Rector's most esteemed friends; and deservedly praising "Generous Hoare," the owner of the "Elysian Temple of Stourhead" the Reverend Mr Skurray,

"distributor

Of bounties large, yet falling silently As dews on the cold turf"

the excellent Earl of Cork and Orrery at Marston-Mrs Heneage of Compton-House,

"who never turn'd her look From others' sorrows-on whose lids the tear

Shines yet more lovely than the light of youth❞—

Mrs Methuen of Corsham-House, "fair as Charity's own form," and the Rev. Charles Hoyle, vicar of Overton, near Marlborough, of whom our Poet speaks with more than common affection and esteem ;-a man, we believe, of genius, learning, and virtue. And so endeth Part Second of Banwell Hill.

Part Third is entitled The Spectre and Prayer-Book, a Tale of a Cornish Maid, versified from an extraordinary and striking fact in Mr Polwhele's

the form

touches true to nature, and is throughout elegantly written; but it is overlaid with ornament, and does not storm the heart through the imagination. Crabbe could have told the story far better in far fewer words; by merely keeping to it-grasping the soul of it-and scorning all unessential adjuncts. But no manno Poet can at once be a Bowles and a Crabbe-any more than a Coleridge and a Wordsworth-a Campbell and a Moore-a Byron and a Scott. Let every man and poet stand on his own legs-a single pair; but let him take warning by Mr Atherstone, and beware of stilts.

Mr Bowles (we charged him some pages back with an occasional fib) would fain make us believe that it had been raining all the while he was telling a Tale of a Cornish Maid. That was a plumper. Yet we forgive the fib for his beautiful way of telling it. Part Fourth thus opens: "The show'r is pass'd-the heath-bell, at our feet,

Looks up, as with a smile, tho' the cold

dew