The absolute increase of that class far exceeds the increase of the upper classes; yet what steps have been taken for their religious instruction in the church? To blame them for attending methodist and other meetings is worse than folly; it is cruel mockery. Under such an alternative as lies before them, they rather deserve to be commended, unless it can be shewn that methodism is worse than no religion.

We are far from imputing blame to individuals, because these things are not better managed in their respective parishes. In most cases we know it is out of the power of individuals to correct them. The law must do it, if it be done at all. But on this very account we have reason to look for aid from those whose seats in the legislature give them the means, as they impose the duty, of watching over the interests of the church. A variety of petty rights and privileges are suffered to exist undisturbed, which thwart every zealous attempt to comprehend the poor of a parish within the congregation. The interior of the church is already allotted in proportions, suitable enough three centuries ago to the several classes of inhabitants. These have in the mean time shifted, and are often quite inverted: yet the same preposterous distribution of space continues. A manor seat, often empty, or occupied by a single servant, covers an area sufficient to accommodate twenty or thirty willing hearers who are now excluded. A dissenter may be owner of a pew, and out of pure spite to the church, keep it empty every Sunday but one, when he sends a servant to save his privilege. A few passages and corners capable of containing, perhaps, a tenth of the poor, are graciously conceded to them, where they stand, or sit as they can, in immediate contact with that forbidden ground which is often wholly vacant. Thousands and millions there certainly are in the kingdom, who have no admission to a place in their parish church and if the obvious expedient be proposed of opening some additional building for public worship, the patron interferes, and without his licence nothing can be done. patron may be a dissenter he may be a profligate--a notorious despiser of all religion:-or, if a churchman, every one knows how obstinately men cling to their privileges, in spite of all that can be urged in the name of equity, propriety, or public good. Ought then, we ask, these things to remain as they are? If one tenth part of the inconvenience had been felt in the accommodations of a market town, it would long ago have been remedied by law. Unsightly projections are removed, streets are widened, bouses set farther back, and market-places enlarged, in proportion to the growing wants of a neighbourhood; the church alone, with all its antiquated arrangements, must remain the same. Against any attempt at improvement for the public benefit, private rights are here allowed to

This

be insurmountable; insomuch that it is a notorious fact, that while a meeting-house of any denomination may be opened any where, without the slightest difficulty, possessing all the sanction and security of law, hardly any efforts will avail towards the erection of a church-of-England edifice in some of the most populous parishes of the kingdom.

We do not presume to say what steps the legislature ought to take for the redress of this great evil; but that something should be done, and that quickly, no considerate friend to the church will deny. If a local jurisdiction were created, invested with summary power in all questions of church sittings, authorized to allot the space as they might think most conducive to general utility, much good might be effected. But even then the grand-object will remain to be accomplished, that of appropriating more buildings to church-worship, with an especial regard to the accommodation of the poor. Till this is done, we abandon that most numerous class, who have no other means of religious instruction, to the practices of every ignorant and ranting enthusiast, or to the condition of a heathen to whom the gospel is not preached. Lest it should be thought that we overrate the evil, we subjoin an extract from the returns of parishes containing a population of 1000 and upwards, in the year

1811.

1047 3,460,560 1511 1,054,231 2075

Here we have a list of about 1000 parishes, containing a population of nearly three millions and a half, in which the buildings appropriated to the service of the church will contain little more than one million; that is, about one seventh of the whole. If we consider further, that by far the greatest part, or rather the whole,

of

of the excluded population in great and wealthy towns consists of the lower orders, it is hardly possible to conceive a case which calls more loudly for the immediate attention of the legislature. We rejoice therefore in the success of Lord Harrowby's measure, because it has taken away one ground of reproach from our church establishment. But we rejoice still more in the hope which it affords of future benefits. It might perhaps be more satisfactory to see these important services undertaken by the heads of the church themselves. And we cannot frame to ourselves a line of conduct more worthy of a Christian bishop than such an undertaking. But we are aware at the same time of the difficulties he would meet with, and of the feeble influence which a single prelate, or even the whole order of prelates would possess, compared with that of a member of the cabinet. It is well for us that the cabinet contains some men, sincerely attached to the establishment, not merely as an engine of state, but as a pillar of christianity. And while we admire the firmness and decision which has been displayed by Lord Harrowby in prosecuting the late measure, we are inclined also to augur well of any future efforts, from the discretion, temper, and moderation which are not less conspicuous in the whole proceeding.

ART. IV. Correspondance Littéraire,* Philosophique et Critique, addressée à un Souverain d'Allemagne pendant une partie des Années 1775-1776, et pendant les Années 1782 à 1790 inclusivement. Par le Baron de Grimm, et par Diderot. Troisième et dernière Partie. 5 tom. 8vo. Paris. 1813.

WE E ventured to suggest, on a former occasion, that the five ponderous octavos which we then noticed, and of which those before us contain the sequel, might have been compressed into two, certainly without injury to the readers, and probably with advantage to the publishers of the work; and we find that this suggestion has since been adopted by our London booksellers. But the advice, however well calculated for the latitude of our northern metropolis, was, it seems, founded on an inaccurate estimate of the quantity and quality of Parisian curiosity. The sale of the first series was so rapid that, within three months, a second edition was called for. We are not therefore to wonder that the discovery of a farther lot of this profitable merchandize, was immediately, followed by the offer to the public of a quantity

*We are given to understand that five more volumes of this Correspondence will shortly be published, comprizing a period of time anterior to that contained in the series which we before announced, and which will therefore bear the title of Première Partie.' The whole work will therefore extend to fifteen volumes.

equal

equal to the former, nor that we are promised the future delivery of a fresh cargo.

6

It appears, however, that even in Paris itself some surly critics were found to question the necessity of so voluminous a publication, and to deny the importance of its contents. We have seen a little book, entitled Grimmiana,' the compiler of which professes to give in about one hundred duodecimo pages all that is worth notice in the five octavos of the former series; nay more, to throw many notable sayings and anecdotes of Mademoiselle Sophie, unnoticed by the Baron, into the bargain. This is certainly improving on our own notions of economy. But if all that was worth preserving in the last publication could be contained in such a nutshell, we are forced to admit that a still smaller would be fully capable of answering the same purpose with respect to the present. Whether the advance of that dismal era of the Revolution really made itself felt by such symptoms as are the usual forerunners of great concussions in the natural world, and the gaiety and vivacity of Frenchmen gradually gave way to the gloomy heaviness of that moral atmosphere which surrounded them; whether, without resorting to an hypothesis which may be set down among the reveries of Swedenborg and Rosicrucius, we may find a more obvious solution of the phenomenon in the advancing age of the Baron, or whether we suppose that he grew at last a little tired of his office of hired correspondent to a German prince, and committed the discharge of it to inferior hands, we are pretty certain that (at least in the article of mere amusement) the volumes now before us will not justify all the expectations which the perusal of the first set must have excited.

We have been favoured with the sight of one volume of the MS. Correspondence, which we before announced as being now in a private library in this country. It was for the entire year 1775, and agrees with that published in the present series, sufficiently to confirm us in our supposition that the one Correspondence is principally, if not entirely, the duplicate of the other. In a notice prefixed to that volume, the name of M. Meister is inserted as the author of a very large proportion of the articles it contains; and a female writer, whose name is not given, is mentioned as having contributed several others, so as to leave but a small number, certainly not near half the quantity, to Grimm himself, and (if we remember rightly) none at all to Diderot. The inference we would draw from these facts is, that during the whole continuance of the correspondence, the nominal writer was greatly assisted by a number of others; and it is probable, therefore, that his personal labours decreased with the advance of age and its attendant inactivity. In other words, the whole work may, we imagine, be fairly con

sidered

sidered in the light of a literary journal, of which the Baron was the editor, and, in that capacity only, responsible for a very large proportion of its contents, We wish that this matter had been more fully explained by the present editors, and that they had pointed out to us such of the articles as are of Grimm's own composition, and such as may have been written by other persons of any name in the literary and philosophical world at Paris. Without such a clue to guide us, it will be impossible to draw from the work, what we hoped it had furnished us, any just or accurate estimate of the character, talents, or opinions of the ostensible author.

The miscellaneous nature of this work may be sufficiently col lected from the substance of our extracts from the former series. The space occupied in the present volumes by notices of insignificant books and analyses of theatrical pieces of ephemeral notoriety, appears to us to be considerably larger than before. Of the prevailing fashions of the day, the whims and caprices, the vices and follies which, from time to time, shed their influence over Parisian society and marked its character, we certainly find no unamusing record in these pages. The literary disputes and intrigues of the Academy are a never-failing source either of ridicule, or of observations which the real insignificance of those broils invests, at this distance of time, with the air of ridicule. Whether it be M. de la Harpe, who at last received the palm due to his triumphs,' while his rival Marmontel, under colour of extreme naïveté, pronounced an éloge which the laughter of the audience. converted into a pungent epigram; whether it be the act of petty treason' by which M. le Comte de Tressan seated Condorcet,* in violation of his promise to Bailly, and secured to d'Alembert the victory which his superior skill in arithmetic had obtained for him over the French Pliny;' or whether we contemplate the twelve mareschals of France assembled in conclave to decide on the important question of the admissibility of a member of the Academy of Inscriptions into the ranks of a more illustrious fraternity, we are equally carried back in imagination from the present to the past, and appear to be eye-witnesses of the scenes set before us in so lively a manner. In this view, we are not altogether ill disposed to enjoy the fragments of academical discourses which are rather unmercifully heaped upon us, although they are so well

*We do not remember before to have met with the Soubriquet bestowed on this revolutionary chieftain. Speaking of one of his pamphlets, published in 1786, the writer of the critique says, il est aisé d'en reconnaître l'auteur à cette precision d'idées qui caractérise sa manière d'écrire, et à cette amertume de plaisanteries qui, melée aux apparences d'une douceur et d'une bonhomie inaltérables, l'a fait appeler, dans la société même de ses meilleurs amis, le mouton enragé!

characterised