be traced a very large proportion of the glories and of the idolatries of the heathen world. Dreadful rites, fantastic superstitions, and bloody massacres, may be traced to a single rhetorical figure. It is to that charming principle. which, by a kind of magic, imparts life to inanimate objects; which connects the world of morality with the world of sensation, and the world of nature with them both; which peoples every lovely recess, and every rocky eminence, with imagined beings; which places a ruling spirit in the storm, and a nymph by the "haunted stream;" which gives a separate existence to virtues, to principles, and to passions; that we owe the popular ideas of mercy and of justice, with all the hypotheses that have been founded upon them, and all the laws which tyranny, or mistaken policy, has justified by their aid. We have thus acquired the idea, and embodied the image of a being, founded on some mysterious laws, by which God himself is bound, who requires an evil to be suffered com mensurate to every evil committed; who beholds men from some stormy eminence blindly rushing into guilt, and insists on their being made to suffer, not to prevent others from becoming guilty, but because they are themselves wicked. Mercy was then imaged, as embodying the gentler and kindlier emotions of the heart, in the shape of a lovely and pitying angel, to turn aside the vengeful sword of justice, and supplicate for the pardon of the offender. On the contrary, all the dispensations of the Almighty—the Source of all authority, and the model of all legislationprove the gross misapplication of terms by which we have been deluded. Every thing tends to show us that he knows no division of character; no opposition of perfections no contention of feelings or passions-That, acting with one design, with all means and events fully open to his omniscient eye, he framed every law of na

dispensed every affliction, to raise his creatures to a stat purity which must render them infinitely blessed. tempests and hurricanes, which dispel the contagion of atmosphere, are fit emblems of the stormy passions w desolate the moral world with ruins, but which prepar for the triumphant course of goodness and of truth. 1 sessed of the amplest means, the Great Father of Sp has so fitted his laws for every occasion, and every he that he plans with a certainty of succeeding. Mercy, rather beneficence, is the foundation of his designs; J tice, or discipline preparatory to happiness, the means their success, and the pioneer of their triumph. Actua by a similar motive, the legislator, who is also the fri of his species, would imitate, as far as possible, the mod at present, indeed, but dimly seen, of perfect wisdo Laying down the same principle, to employ the least p sible evil in the production of the greatest possible go he would take the best feelings of the heart for the basis, interweave them with the whole of his system. If be ficence be always his object, and pain sometimes his mea true and genuine feeling will see the execution of his nalties, not, indeed, without emotion, but without a w

see his operations suspended. His laws will be the p fection of his reason; his reason, the offspring alike of understanding and his heart. All will be evident, simp and consistent. The great laws of Heaven will be seen beautiful miniature; the same in their design, and the sa in their tendency; till the image of God glows once m in the features of man.

In this world, indeed, we never anticipate the complet of so pure a system; yet to imagine and to desire it, is grow nearer to its attainment. Such a reformation of is our present object, as shall ameliorate and soften

legislative provisions, and adapt them to the improvements of human reason. And surely when we reflect on the triumphs so lately won in the great cause, and the talents now occupied in the mighty contest between prejudice and reason, we may indulge without folly in hopes which, to the sensual and the worldly, may appear somewhat romantic. If we carry our views back a very, few generations, we shall be amazed and delighted at the progress of our species, and the reforms of legislation and of government, To speak only of the former; we see how recent the time when the profession of that faith, which now "exalts its mitred frontin our Courts and Parliaments," was considered as deserving of death here, and of endless torments hereafter; when the altars of the Prince of Peace were stained and polluted with the blood of his closest and brightest followers; when it was law to torture unbending virtue; law to maintain the ignorance of the poor; law to destroy truth; law to murder in the name of religion; when tyranny was practised, and enormities were committed " by divine right;" and when every thing dignified and cheering was compelled to seek the peaceful recesses which yet remained unpolluted. In the last few years more advances have been made towards true purity and greatness, than in several ages preceding the revival of intellect and of freedom. We are yet fresh from the greatest victory ever won, at the conclusion of the greatest battle ever fought by mor tals; by which a termination was placed to a legalised sys tem of robbery, torture, and death; a deadly cancer was plucked from the vitals of our state; and a savage conti. nent emancipated from the horrors with which its Christian brethren had long distracted and enslaved it, and produced from its agonies a revenue of exhaustless degradation and misery to themselves. Of what should he despair which is truly good and great, when we remember with honest

pride that the traffic in human bones and sinews; the exe crable profit upon misery; which, a few years ago, was a staple branch of commerce, is now, by an act introduced by one of the brightest ornaments of the cause of manly freedom and temperate reform, made a FELONY! Last Session a triumph, most brilliant, was obtained without the aid of eloquence or of party; unopposed; undelayed ; almost unnoticed. Laws which, ten years ago, were considered as necessary to the being of our Church establishment, were repealed as monstrous anomalies, which were almost too absurd to be attacked. In the mean time, the education of the children of the poor, the great work which invigorates all the hopes, and brightens all the pros pects of a nation, has been advancing with an almost magical rapidity. By cherishing the generous sentiments of youth; by raising the eyes just opened on earth to heaven; by throwing round the ingenuous mind a talisman, which will preserve the artlessness of childhood amidst the experience of age, we have added new energies to the very heart of the State. Philanthropy is shining in Britain in the midst of the hor rors which convulse the continent. By union of heart; by annihilation of bigotry; by cordiality of parties; by glowing charity; by hopes, increasing with our resources, we are preparing for the high station of the benefactors of the unenlightened regions of our terrestrial abode.

Nor is it possible to refrain from a cordial burst of congratulation at the characters of those, who have triumphant admiration at the labors of those who are engaged in the, cause of that legislative reform, which is so gently and yet so surely invigorating the decayed energies of British equity. Those, indeed, who distinguished themselves in the great cause to which we have just alluded, have inscribed their names deeply in the hearts of a people exulting in the completion of a tardy act of justice of a nation in conscience un

burthened, and in a nature almost renovated. The generous eloquence and fervent zeal of a Wilberforce, the masculine energy and blasting philippic of a Fox, and the unwearied, though humbler, labors, adorned by the scriptural simplicity of a Clarkson, have left it dubious whether the curses and horrors of the iniquitous traffic were more degrading, or the struggle by which it was abolished more glorious for human nature. Nor can any true friend of humanity forget that peaceable and unearthly sect; the only sect, it is not invidious to mention, who retain the purity of primitive religion unstained with the vices; who seem like a sacred ark embellished with small external ornament, destined to preserve the principles of love and peace and goodness inviolate amidst an universal degradation, whose charity is more a principle than a feeling, and whose zeal, if only on great occasions splendid, is always bright and pure, and directed to Heaven; who steadily lay the foundation of improvement without coveting the glory of success; and who reap all their garlands and derive all their rewards from the calm satisfaction and unsullied purity of their own bosoms. Equally impossible is it not to assign the first place in the rank of literary champions to that great periodical work, which has maintained an almost magical influence on the tastes and feelings of the country-which has shone unrivalled in almost every department of knowledge and of taste, and has raised the mind of the nation to a tone of philosophic thinking, bold without rashness; and has joyfully and gracefully offered all its green and unfading laurels on the shrine of freedom and beneficence. The legal profession, which has been frequently represented as cold, unfeeling, and contracted, boasts a Romilly and a Brougham, who have in their turns shone as the advocates of free discussion and of public virtue, and are yet destined for more complete and more extensive victories. Whether we con