kinds of society: now going to a play in the Haymarket, then supping with the officers of the Horse Guards, with whom he was very intimate, although even he considered the majority of them worldgiven (one of these acquaintances was Captain Elliott, afterwards Lord Heathfield, the defender of Gibraltar); at other times going with John Blair, Smollett, and other literary friends, to a small tavern, where they had frugal suppers and a little punch, as the finances of none of the company were in very good order. When the news of the battle of Culloden arrived in London, Carlyle was at a coffee-house with Smollett. On leaving that place, they, in consequence of the fire-works and the unruly mobs, put their wigs in their pockets, and carried their swords in their hands, Smollett cautioning his friend against speaking a word, lest the mob should discover his country, and become insolent.

In 1746, Carlyle returned to his native land, where he preached his first sermon, which was received with universal approbation, "the genteel people of Preston Pans being all there." Shortly afterwards, he was presented to the church of Cockburnspath," an obscure distant place, without amenity, comfort, or society, where, if he had been settled, he would have more probably fallen into idleness and dissipation than a course of study." In the last century, preferment in the church of Scotland was so difficult to be obtained, and so trifling when obtained, that, as our author says, it required great energy of mind not to fall asleep when you are in a country charge. As one might readily suppose, Cockburnspath was eminently unsuitable to such a society-loving man as Carlyle. He therefore greatly rejoiced when, in 1748, he was preferred to the ministry of Inveresk. This step, however, was not unopposed. The parishioners of Inveresk said he was too young, too full of levity, too much addicted to the company of his superiors; that he danced frequently, in a manner prohibited by the laws of the church; that he "wore his hat agee," and had been seen galloping "through the links" between one and two o'clock. Notwithstanding these objections, Carlyle went to Inveresk, where he remained minister for the lengthy period of fifty-seven years. Among the clergy of Scotland he was a leading man in those dark days, and had a great voice in the selection of the men who were either to be brought into the church, or who were to be advanced as leaders from having proved themselves worthy in the ranks. Nor was his influence confined to Scotland, but extended to England and Ireland. This autobiography was the great occupation of his declining years. He began it in 1800, when in his seventy-ninth year. He had, in 1805, advanced it as far as his forty-eighth year, when he died. He was engaged on it until within a few days of that event, the pen having literally dropped from his hands.

The book is no doubt amusing; but it has, too, a melancholy interest. Here is a life squandered, a fair amount of talent worse than hidden, and a Christian minister living and dying, to all appearance, a stranger to "the power of godliness.'

Manual of Phonography. By Isaac Pitman. Pitman, Paternoster Row. 1860. Many of our readers will, we think, find this little book worthy of their perusal. Shorthand, though largely used in England, and still more so in America, has not been so generally

adopted by educated men as might have been expected from its general usefulness and facility of acquisition. To all classes of literary men, and especially to clergymen, it is in many respects of great service. Many celebrated divines have derived much assistance in preaching from this art. We have already, in a former number (May, 1859), expressed our sentiments and opinions concerning written discourses and extempore preaching. Where a clergyman is continually engaged in looking down on his manuscript, of course he is deprived, in a great measure, of that freedom of action which the extempore preacher enjoys; while the latter, through the entire disuse of notes, wants even those seasonable restraints which they will give to redundancy of action, and, perhaps, in some cases, to extravagances of gesture. Either way has its advantages and defects. If, however, a clergyman adopt the plan of making the notes of his sermon in shorthand characters, he will, to a great extent, combine the advantages of extempore preaching with the accuracy and finish of a written discourse. Shorthand characters, being written within a considerably smaller compass than the ordinary writing, catch the eye sooner, and more words can be taken in at a glance. In the "Life of Archbishop Sharp" we find that he used shorthand, and that the knowledge of that art contributed not a little to the acceptableness of his delivery; for he so disposed his characters as to take in a whole sentence, or as much as could be distinctly pronounced in the same breath, with one transient glance of the eye; and so disposed those sentences distinctly under each other as to be able, when he had taken his eye off, without any difficulty to recover the place where it had left the page. And we are informed that he was so expert at this, that it was sometimes thought that he had preached extempore, or that if he had notes, that he made little or no use of them. His whole attention was not required to watch over his words. Dr. Chalmers nearly always preached his sermons from shorthand notes, and this he did so skilfully, that it has been said that unless one were near him to observe the fact, it was difficult to know he was reading. A knowledge of shorthand would materially enable a clergyman to read a discourse as if he were speaking it, or, to use the words of archbishop Whately, "to read as if he were not reading."

PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

queen opened her parliament in person on the 5th of February; and it is gratifying to remark that the affectionate loyalty of her people, exhibited on these occasions, seems rather to increase from year to year than to suffer any diminution. The attention of the great council of the nation has been directed, so far, to questions of internal government. We are no enemies to the present administration. We should be sorry to see them displaced. But we are not

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sorry to have to relate that they have been for once defeated. Mr. Hubbard brought forward, on the 20th instant, a motion select committee to inquire into the present mode of assessing and collecting the income and property tax, and whether any mode of levying the same, so as to render the tax more equitable, could be adopted." The chancellor of the exchequer, on the part of the government, resisted the motion, which was carried, however, by a majority of 131 to 127. All that the house is pledged to is inquiry before a select committee; but that select committee will be singularly incom petent, or that inquiry very superficial, which does not soon discover that the large, unclamouring class who live by what has been, with scarcely an exaggeration, termed the sweat of the brain,-the clergy, physicians, men of letters, and, in short, all professional men, are now suffering a great injustice through the unequal pressure of this tax upon them. A majority of the house of commons has, it seems, at last arrived at some such conclusion.

The state of the laws affecting the relief of the poor has been par tially discussed, and will require much further consideration. A month's frost brought them unexpectedly to the test, and showed that they could not meet a sudden emergency. Now a month's frost is not an occurrence of so unusual a nature in our climate as that it ought to disarrange our social relations as regards the working classes. Yet tens of thousands were thrown into a state of sudden pauperism, from which an annual poor-rate of more than five millions could afford them no relief. It is felt that this state of things ought to be redressed; but we add, with unaffected sorrow, that the working classes themselves are most to blame. Their utter want of forethought is undeniable. They live like children, careless of to-morrow, and like children spend their last sixpence upon any frivolous indulgence that meets the eye. It is not one labouring man in a hundred, we question whether it be one in a thousand, who seriously endeavours to provide against future want. An artisan, with twenty or thirty shillings a-week, will spend more upon a day's pleasure than a respectable tradesman or clergyman of two or three hundred a-year would think of squandering in mere indulgence; and the amount spent in strong liquors, beyond the wants of nature, is something really frightful. Every one of us has an interest in reforming a state of things which disturbs, and may one day violently dissolve, our social fabric. The truth is, that the English working man is not taught to be self-reliant. Beyond the labour, by which he barely sustains himself and his family from day to day, everything is done for him; whereas he ought to be assisted to do everything for himself. His religion costs him nothing. The education of his children is taken off his hands. Even the annual confinement of his wife, if he live in a well-ordered parish, is so far from being expensive, that it is a positive source of gain. Medical assistance costs him nothing, and the baby's clothes are forthcoming from the ladies' charitable " 'bag." It is much, if he can be induced to subscribe to a sick club; much more, if the sick club is not a mere pretext for a monthly carouse at the public-house. Thus, while in health and full employment, he is taught to be helpless; and when the day of adversity comes, he is a starving man, and his wife

is in despair. No laws can remedy the evil; a higher moral sense alone can reach it. Kind expostulations frequently repeated from the pulpit might do much; instruction in domestic economy in our national schools would do still more, if it were wisely given. There are amongst our labouring men and women noble exceptions. It was calculated by the late Mr. Dandeson Coates, (no mean authority on such matters,) that nearly one-third of the whole income of the Church Missionary Society came from the pockets of the poor, and was paid in pence; and the £40,000,000 lodged in the savings' banks, chiefly by maid-servants and the poorest tradesmen, tells what might be done. What is done, the flaunting gin palace in the poorest streets, and the sudden wealth of its proprietor, too frequently proclaim.

The speech from the throne contained no promise of parliamentary reform. Mr. Bright, and a few men of extreme opinions, have expressed their displeasure at the marked omission; but the country is well satisfied. A bill, however, is now before parliament, which proposes to transfer the forfeited franchise from St. Albans and Sudbury to Lancashire and Yorkshire, and to the new boroughs of Birkenhead and Chelsea with Kensington. It is favourably entertained, and we believe is expected to pass. This is one of those changes which every ancient institution requires from time to time, to adapt it to the circumstances of an ever-changing world. Professional reformers do not display their wisdom when they depreciate "bit by bit reforms." They are the safest of all reformations; in old institutions, the only

safe ones.

The church-rate contest is, of course, renewed. We are more hopeful than we have lately been, for the friends of the church are more united, and more disposed to accept a compromise. The violence of the anti-church and state party has been prematurely displayed, and will, we believe, defeat itself. Still the difficulty remains, how to exempt a dissenter from a tax which a churchman is obliged to pay, without, at the same time, holding out a premium to dissent, and offering a grave affront to the conscientious churchman.

But to our own readers, the most interesting, and in its consequences, we feel assured, the most important occurrence of the month is, the declaration of the whole bench of bishops in condemnation of the Oxford "Essays and Reviews." It is, as it ought to be, expressed in language which admits of no misinterpretation. The censure is the gravest that could be uttered. "We cannot understand," says his grace the archbishop of Canterbury, writing on his own behalf, and that of all the other prelates, (with the exception of the vacant see of Worcester,) "how their opinions can be held consistently with an honest subscription to the formularies of our church, with many of the fundamental doctrines of which they appear to us essentially at variance." This declaration is the more welcome to the country, and in our opinion the more honourable to the spiritual heads of our church, because they do not screen themselves behind any foregone judicial censures. His Grace proceeds to say: "Whether the language in which these views are expressed is such as to make their publication an act which could be visited in the ecclesiastical courts, or to justify the synodical condemnation of the book which contains them, is still under our

gravest consideration." A clamour has, of course, been raised by the partisans of the infidel cause, and the newspapers and reviews of a certain class ring with coarse invectives against the bishops for prejudging the essayists, and more particularly against the primate, for giving expression to their views in a letter to Mr. Fremantle, from which we have quoted. The latter point is easily dismissed. It has always been the custom of our political leaders, even the constitutional advisers of the crown, to indicate their policy, on questions upon which publicity was important, in letters to their constituents, or even to private friends. Sir Robert Peel's annual addresses to the electors of Tamworth may be given as an instance of the one, and Lord John Russell's letter to the bishop of Durham as an instance of the other. And as to the charge of prejudging the case, they are cases of criminality so flagrant that every virtuous mind prejudges them at once. Take the case (and it is not too strong an illustration) of an obscene print exposed in Holy well-street. The passer by is disgusted. He prejudges it. But he may still doubt whether it is sufficiently coarse and explicit in its depravity to come under Lord Campbell's Act, and whether more good or harm would result from a prosecution. We respect the christian courage of the bench of bishops, and feel grateful to them for their promptitude. Had the bishops of five-andtwenty years ago behaved with equal resolution when the Oxford tracts appeared, how different would have been the present condition of the church of England! The infidel movement we are now deploring is nothing else than the natural recoil from Tractarian violence and semi-popish credulity.

On the day before the queen opened her parliament the emperor Napoleon met his chambers. The want of precise information in our own royal speeches is now a grievance of old standing with constitutional grumblers, but that of the emperor Napoleon was so contrived as to be emptiness itself. "Words full of sound signifying nothing." But his conduct has since atoned for the deficiency. Gaëta was allowed to fall, and surrendered, on the 13th instant, to the Sardinians. The unpitied king of Naples, accompanied by his queen, who seems to have been worthy of a better fate, were received into a French frigate, and deposited at Rome. Thus, it is clear that Napoleon III. has washed his hands of the Neapolitan monarchy. Now the pope will have his turn. A pilot balloon, in the usual form of an unofficial pamphlet, prepares the way. We may expect that the French army, which for eleven years has occupied the ancient capital of Italy and the world, will now at last be withdrawn. What is to follow is evident enough. The pope's temporal power will not last a week. The news of the fall of Gaëta was received with a demonstration on the Corso which would have been a revolution had no French troops been present. The matter seems to be perfectly well understood; the French will retire when the revolution is ripe; and the will cease to be a temporal sovereign, except, perhaps, within the boundaries of his ancient city and some narrow confines. The king of Sardinia, too, has opened his parliament; the first great council worthy of the name which Italy has seen since the conscript fathers sat in the capitol of ancient Rome. Victor Emmanuel spoke with a

pope