scripture; Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. The following is an account given of De Courcy's first visit in this family. "The next day he dined at Dominickstreet, and found that Mrs. Wentworth's qualifying manner was not without a meaning, for he was introduced to a class of society whom he had never before met with. A large evangelical party dined at the house, (for the evangelical people remunerate themselves for renouncing the mixed assemblies of the world by frequent meetings among themselves,) and the men and women were unlike any men and women De Courcy had ever encountered before. The women all dressed with the utmost simplicity, with absolute plainness, arms covered to the wrists, and necks to the ears: no distinction of appearance between maid and matron, except that the former wore their hair very simply arranged; and the latter, however young, had their heads invariably covered. The men-they neither paid the general attention to women that is usual in mixed companies, nor saparated in groups to talk of politics; they sat apart on their chairs sublime, in thought more elevate, and reasoned high.' De Courcy heard terms used by them, some of which he did not under stand, and others which he did, he thought quite unfit for loose and general discussion. He felt himself quite disconsolate; and approaching a gentleman who stood leaning against one of the windows, he ventured a ewobservations on the position of the allied armies, then sufficiently interesting and critical, for it was in the close of the eventful year 1813. "Very true sir,' said the gentleman, with a contraction of countenance that appeared to De Courcy quite pantomimic, very true; you are speaking of the downfal of the power of Buonaparte, but have you ever thought of the means of overthrowing the power of satan, and extending the kingdom of Christ.' "Dinner was announced at the end of this triumphant sentence-the party mixed the dinner was excellent, but without parade; the first course contained the substance of two or three more splendid but less substantial. De Courcy remarked particularly the man who had rebutted him just as they went down to dinner. He was tall, but very ungraceful; a strange conscious ness of importance mingled itself most uncouthly with his coarse figure and awkward manners; his hair was red; his eye small, but keen and piercing; his voice powerful, but not melodious; most repulsively softened when he addressed females, to whom, however, he paid obvious attention. He never spoke but on one subject; and on that his eloquence was overpowering, and his information profound, but it was only on one side; he was a sturdy orthodox Calvinist, skilful in argument, vehement in decla mation, and amply equipped with weapons from the old armoury of Geneva, well furbished by modern artists, which he wielded with equal force and dexterity. But his manners, his habits of disputation, and even his pulpit oratory, powerful as it was, were strongly tinged with the original vulgarity of his origin and nature. "He was the son of a poor labourer, the tenant of a wealthy gentleman in Cork, whose wife was evangelical; she instructed the children of her husband's tenants in her own system; her husband gave her no disturbance; he followed his fox-hounds all day, and damned his wife's methodism over his claret all night. The good lady went her own way, and discovering in this lad, maugre his fierce red hair and bare broad feet, evident marks of his being a growing and gracious character;' and astonished at the fluency and eloquence with which he repeated his acquired creed, and gave the word of exhortation to his ragged family, wandering round the mud-walls of his native cabin, and exhorted the old women, (who, gossiping, squabbling, and even drinking forty yards distant from the chapel door, fell on their knees in the mire at the tinkling of the bell which announced the elevation of the Host,) to turn from the error of their ways, and seek the Lord. She proposed a subscription among her friends to enable him to enter the university, and be qualified to minister at the altar.' "The subscription went on zealously, and young Macowen entered college; but when once there, his views, as they were called, expanded so rapidly, that no church Epis copalian, Presbyterian, or Independent, had the good fortune precisely to suit his sentiments in orthodoxy of system, or purity of discipline. Thus he moved a splendid and erratick meteor, shedding his light on the churches as he passed, but defying them all to calculate his orbit, or ascertain his direction. In the mean time, it had been suggested to him that many evangelical females, of large fortune, would not be unwilling to share his fate. This hint, often repeated and readily believed, threw a most odious suavity into his manner; his overblown vulgar courtesy was like the flowers of the poppy, all glare and stench. Under these circumstances, he had become the intimate of the Wentforth family; and from the moment he beheld Eva, his feelings were what he could not describe, and would not account for even to himself, but what he was determined implicitly to follow. His system took part with his inclinations, and in a short time he believed it a duty to impress her with the conviction that her salvation must depend on her being united with him. When a perverted conscience is in league with the passions, their joint influence is irresistible. "There is, among the evangelical people, an establishment something like the Court of Wards, abolished under James the first; a determination to dispose of wealthy unmarried females to distinguished professors or preachers, who are not equally favoured by fortune, and the families of the former conceive themselves not only honoured, but benefitted by the exchange. Thus the evangelical system is rapidly assuming the aspect of the papal, and, by the union of intellectual influence with actual wealth, bids fair to rival it in power as well as in pretensions. On this Macowen relied much, and, strange to say, on his personal advantages still more. * "The dinner went on; the men and women, seated alternately, spoke of their popular preachers, and of popular works of evangelical divinity, and of eloquent speeches made at the meetings of the Bible Society, and of the diffusion of the gospel throughout Ireland; and they uttered sundry strictures on the parochial clergy, who opposed the circulation of evangelical tracts, with many a by-blow at the contrast between the Calvinistic articles of the church of England, and the Arminian creed of her modern sons. "Such was the conversation: and when the women retired, it was not a whit more enlarged. One man talked incessantly of the election of grace;' his mind literally seemed not to have room for another idea; every sentence, if it did not begin, ended with the same phrase, and every subject only furnished matter for its introduction. Dr. Thorpe's last sermon at Bethesda was spoken of in terms of high and merited panegyric. "Very true,' said he; but a-a-Did you think there was enough of election in it?' "A late work of the same author (his elever pamphlet on the Catholic petition) was mentioned. "But does he say any thing of election in it?' "There was no opportunity,' said Mr. Wentworth. "Then he should have made one-Ah, I would give very little for a book that did not assert the election of grace!' "Once seated in his election-saddle, he posted on with alarming speed, and ended with declaring, that Elisha Coles, on God's Sovereignty, was worth all the divinity that ever was written. I have a large collection of the works of godly writers,' said he, turning to De Courcy, but not one work that ever was, would I resign for that of Elisha Coles.' "Won't you except the Bible?' said De Courcy, smiling. 6 "Oh, yes-the Bible-ay, to be sure, the Bible,' said the discomfitted champion of election; but still you know'-and he continued to mutter something about Elisha Coles, on God's Sovereignty. "Another, who never stopped talking, appeared to De Courcy a complete evangeli cal time-keeper ;-the same ceaseless ticking sound; the same vacillating motion of the head and body; and his whole conversation turning on the various lengths of the sermons he had heard, of which, it appeared, he was in the habit of listening to four every Sunday. "Mr. Matthias preached exactly fortyeight minutes. I was at Mr. Cooper's exhortation at Plunket-street in the evening, and it was precisely fifty-three minutes.' "And how many seconds?' said Mrs. Wentworth smiling, for she felt the ridicule of this. "Close to De Courcy were two very young men, who were comparing the respective progress they had made in the conversion of some of their relations. They spoke on this subject with a familiarity that certainly made De Courcy start. “My aunt is almost entirely converted,' said one. She never goes to church now, though she never missed early prayers at St. Thomas's for forty years before. Now,' with a strange tone of triumph, now is your sister converted as much as that?' "Yes-yes-she is,' answered the other, eagerly; for she burned her week's preparation yesterday, and my mother's too along with it.' After De Courcy was admitted on a more familiar footing, and for the avowed purpose of paying his court to Eva, he still experienced what he considered vexatious interruptions. "Every morning, though a constant visitor, he felt like a stranger to himself and those around him; the house was filled with religious persons of various denominations; all met for the purpose of controversy or devotion, or both; and, after the protracted and luxurious breakfast, the signal for battle was generally given by some spiritual leader. Predestination or Perseverance sounded their tocsin in the ear of some jealous and startled Arminian, the conflict commenced, and they would talk, Good gods, how they would talk!'-till their minds, infamed with the fiercest passion, and their tongues on fire with the most terrible anathemas, and scarce hiding their abhorrence of persons under a denunciation of principles, almost dooming each other to eternal torment, while they affected to supplicate the Divine Mercy on the professors of imputed error; on another signal given, they would sink on their knees together, but still continue the warfare under the shelter of an address to the Deity, by appealing to him for the defence of his own truth, and imploring him with that kind of charitable malignity peculiar to religious people, to turn their erring brethren from darkness to light, to give them the heart of flesh for the heart of stone,' &c. &c. &c. Such was the morning, and such was the evening too; and the evening and the morn ing that made the first day, made every other also." After the commencement of his acquaintance with Zaira, De Courcy had for some days forsaken the Wentworths. Montgomery, in the anxiety of friendship, contrived one morning, to drag him away from the fascinating actress, to visit the gentle, unrepining Eva. They arrived at Wentworth's: now it seemed to be Eva's fate, that, just at this period, her uncle's house, society, every light under which she could be beheld, every association connected with her image, should be particularly and pre-eminently repulsive. Macowen was there every day, and all day long, defining, disputing, dogmatizing, hair. splitting, and excommunicating--the absolute pope of the parlour-conclave. His hearers, dazzled by his oratory, stunned by his volubility, proud of his reputation, afraid of his virulence, would hardly have denied that a crust was a shoulder of mutton, if it had so pleased lord Peter to call it. It was ludicrous to hear these people, the moment they were allowed to speak, (and that was not often,) break out into exclamations against those who suffered themselves to be led by worldly teachers; or, as Macowen expressed it, suffered themselves to be harnessed to the old lumbering state-coach of the hierarchy, that they might drag it over rough and smooth, under the lash of tithesmen and proctors, bedizened with the faded trappings of lifeless ordinances and beggarly elements. "This day, however, he was resolved that more than admirers should witness his triumph; he announced that he had lately been engaged in the conversion of one who had nearly been brought to see the error of his way, and whom he had invited to meet him at Mr. Wentworth's, that he might produce his strong reasons' before the godly friends who were assembled there. Mr. Wentworth was just expressing his satisfaction, that his house was chosen for the assembling of the saints, and, with twinkling eyes, erect figure, fluttered handkerchief, prelusive hems, and oscillating motion in his chair, was speaking, as plain as attitudes could speak, his agitation of delight at the expected controversy, when a loud rap was heard at the door. The party sat hushed in grim repose. He is but a babe in grace,' said Macowen, with a preparatory leer of conciliation at the company, he is but a babe, and must be fed with milk.' "The door was thrown open-enter the babe-a man turned of fifty, six feet two inches high, broad and bulky in proportion, with an atrabilious complexion, a voice of thunder, and a tread that shook the room. The contrast was unspeakably ridiculous. "Babe!' murmured De Courcy; Babe! echoed Montgomery, and both had some difficulty in subduing their rebellious mus cles to the placid stagnation that overspread the faces around them. But the calm was of short continuance. This Quinbus Flestrin, this man-mountain of a catechumen, came not to sit with lowly docility at the feet of his teachers, but to prove that he was able to teach them. If he was a babe, as De Courcy said, 'techy and wayward was his infancy;' no ill-nursed, ill-tempered, captious, squalling brat, was ever a greater terror and torment in the nursery. He resisted, he retorted, he evaded, he parried, he contradicted, carped, and cavilled on the ninth part of a hair.' "Macowen lost his ground; then he lost his breath; then he lost his temper; scintillating eyes, quivering lips, and streaks of stormy red marking their brown cheeks, gave signal of fierce debate. All the weapons of fleshly warfare were soon drawn in the combat, and certain words that would have led to a different termination of the dispute among men of this world, passed quick and high between them. Struck with shame, they paused-a dreary pause of sullen anger and reluctant shame. Now, shan't we have a word of prayer,' said Mr. Wentworth, who had been watching them with as much deliberate enjoyment as an ancient Roman would a spectacle of gladiators." On another similar occasion, circumstances were equally inauspicious to Montgomery's benevolent intentions. "They called in Sackville-street, and then went on to Wentworth's. The fates seemed to have picked out the society that morning with malice prepense. Breakfast was half over, but Wentworth, Macowen, and the Babe, were all steeped in controversy to the very lips. The muffins had been swallowed wholesale, the eggs scarcely tasted, (though Macowen was a very good judge of eggs,) and the tea drank scalding hot, in the rage of debate, and still it raged. Mrs. Wentworth sat at her knitting, at safe distance from the field of battle, and Eva poured out cup after cup in silence. Macowen had been pressing the new convert for a test of his faith; for he had no idea of a man's having any religion unless he could specify it under a particular denomination, and signify his creed by a kind of free-masonic sign, technical and decisive. This the convert refused, it seems; and as the young men came in, he was bellowing, with a cup of tea in his hand, which he was spilling in the trepidation of his rage,No, sir-no, sir-never, never. I will neither be Catholic or Protestant, Arminian or Calvinist." "Don't put Arminian first,' said Mr. Wentworth." "He went on.- Neither Trinitarian or Arian-neither Universalist or Particularist. No sir-sir, I will be a Christian.-Yes, I will be a Christian, (foaming with passion,) I will -I will be a Christian.' And his voice was ally a roar, and he thumped the table e fury of his vociferation, and the eaess of his orthodoxy." the second volume we have a long iment on the existence of a deity, in ch the advocate of atheism is permitto triumph over the feeble reasoning aira, who was equally ignorant of the ences of religion, and of the power of faith. We have no room for an extract from so unprofitable a discussion. There is, however, a moral to be deduced from it, for it was the miserable sophistry of Cardonnean, that drove Zaira to the desperate resolution of committing self murder. After all the jeers at evangelical religion, we are hardly prepared for so edifying a scene, as is exhibited by Eva on her death bed. There is, however, even in this, an occasional gird at the orthodox. "Her dissolution was now obviously "At these words, Wentworth, who was in 24 the room, came forward. He could not bear that a niece of his, brought up in the very strictest sect of evangelical religion, should thus depart without leaving a memorable article for the obituary of an Evangelical Magazine. He had expected this, at least, from her. He had (unconsciously in his own mind) dramatized her whole dying scene, and made a valuable addition to the testimony of those who die in all the orthodoxy of genuine Calvinism. "My dear Eva,' said he, approaching her bed, and softening his voice to its softest tones, I trust that I am not to discover in your last words a failure from the faith, for which the saints are desired to contend earnestly, and to resist even unto blood. I trust that your approach to the valley of the shadow of death does not darken your view of the five points, those immutable foundations on which the gospel rests, namey-and Wentworth began reckoning on his fingers-Mrs. Wentworth in vain made signs to him-he went on as far as Perseverance, when Eva, lifting her wasted hand, he became involuntarily silent. "My dear uncle,' said the dying Christian; the language of man is as the dust of the balance' to me now. Reality, reality is dealing with me. I am on the verge of the grave, and all the wretched distinctions that have kept men at war for centuries seem to me as nothing. I know that salvation is of grace through faith,' and, knowing that, I am satisfied. Oh, my dear uncle, I am fast approaching that place where there is neither Jew or Greek, Barbarian or Scythian, bondman or free, but Christ is all, and in all.' Speak no more of points, which I cannot understand; but feel with me that the religion of Christ is a religion of the soul that its various denominations (which I have heard so often discussed, and with so little profit,) are of light avail, compared with its vital predominance over our hearts and lives. I call,' said she, collecting her hollow voice to utter the words strongly. I call two awful witnesses to my appeal-the hour of death and the day of judgmentthey are witnesses against all the souls that live. Oh, my dear, dear uncle, how will you stand their testimony? You have heard much of the language of religion, but I fear you have yet to learn its power.' She paused; for dim as her eyes were hourly growing, she could see the tears running fast down Wentworth's rugged cheeks. His wife led him from the room. The mercy of God visited him even at the seventh hour, and we are rejoiced to relate that the labourer is (though called so late) in expectation of receiving the same reward as those who bore the burden and heat of the day. Mrs. Wentworth returned, to pass the night beside the bed of death. Eva said to her at intervals that night, Do not let the weakness of my dying frame, or even the wandering of my intellect, (if I should wander) induce you to think that God has deserted me, that I have not an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast. The body may fail, the workings of the soul are invisible, but I feel that the everlasting arms are under me, though I may not always be able to express my feeling. Remember this, when I am no longer able to utter it; and let the thought that this was my declaration, while yet the power of speech remained, be your consolation. At another she said, Death is a very different thing from what we read of in Évangelical Magazines. I have read of many who departed in triumph, who exclaimed continually, Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?' whose spirits were almost glorified while yet in the flesh. I feel none of this no ecstasy, no enthusiasm. Death is an awful thing! how awful, none but the dying can tell I tremble, but I hope; triumph becomes not a dying sinner, who casts herself with fearful confidence on the mercy of God. The waters of Jordan are cold to the foot of the passenger, but God will be with me there, and the waters shall be a wall on the right hand and on the left.' Towards morning she slept, and Mrs. Wentworth approached nearer the bed, to watch her countenance; she wished to accustom herself to the change produced by sleep so closely resembling that which must soon be produced by death. When she awoke, a female friend who had sat up along with Mrs. Wentworth inquired how she found herself? She answered, Perfectly calm.' "It was explained, that the question referred to her bodily feelings; her answer was given with more than usual strength of tone. I am so little accustomed to think of my bodily feelings that when I hear the inqui ries of a friend, I can only conceive that they mean, how my soul is faring?' A few moments after, she said to Mrs. Wentworth, I die a monument of the power of religion. What could the whole world do for me as I lie this moment? could it restore my withered youth, or heal my broken heart? could it suggest a single hope to brighten the dark road I am about to travel? Oh what a difference between the powers of this world, and the powers of the world to come! Men might pity me, but never could imagine that they are objects of pity to me. My feet stand on the threshold of the house of many mansions, and worlds could not bribe me to look back for a moment; and this the religion of Christ has done for me. Oh how little consolation could I derive at a moment like this from gay religions, full of pomp and gold'-from a religion that promised nothing but temporal power or splendour to its professors-from any religion but that of the heart and of grief? Amid the darkness of my earthly prospects, the cross brightens by the contrast. I lie here a helpless dying wretch; the world views me, and passes by on the other side; but he, the divine Samaritan, had pity on me, and the wounds of my spirit are healed." 6 ART. 6. Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, Bishop of Landaff. Written by himself, at different intervals, and Revised in 1814. Published by his Son, RICHARD WATSON, L.L. B. Prebendary of Landaff and Wells. 8vo. pp. 456. Philadelphia. Abraham Small. New-York. Kirk & Mercein. HE Christian world has not yet spection of his son. To say that we have Treased to deplore its recent loss in been pleased and edified by the perusal the death of Dr. Watson, the celebrated Bishop of Landaff,-whose talents and piety have acquired for him a more honourable distinction, than the possession of any mitre could confer. The memory of this patriarch prelate is so generally and justly revered, as well in this country as in England, that any authentic sketch of his life could harldly have failed to be well received by those who have long been accustomed to venerate his learning and his virtues. Happily the task of compiling his biography was not left to incompetent hands. Less than two years before his death, Bishop Watson revised and completed the memoir before us, which has been published under the in of this volume, would be but a feeble expression of the rare gratification which we have derived from it. The amiable views of life which it discloses, are calculated to conciliate the most morose, and the elevating and cheering prospects of religion which it unfolds, to invigorate the most despondent. To all who can procure the work we earnestly recommend, not merely the reading, but the study of it. For the benefit of those who may not enjoy that opportunity, we shall give a brief outline of the history of its author, and shall introduce ample extracts from his narrative and correspondence. Bishop Watson informs us that, from an early age, he was in the habit of writ |