increased bulk of his velvet-cushion.' This said cushion, it seems, besides the claims of a five and thirty years' familiar intimacy, possessed the charms of antiquity. It was reported to be one of the oldest cushions in the three kingdoms.

Report said that it had seen many vicissitudes, and travelled through successive ages, that it had been swept by the tunic of a Pope's nuncio had descended to the pulpit of one of the first puritans-had been expelled by some of the second puritans, as an impious adjunct to the simplicity of primitive worship had risen again with the rising fortunes of the monarchy--and, after many chances and changes, had climbed the mountains of Westmoreland, to spend the years of its grand climacteric in the quiet and unambitious pulpit of the vi carage.'

Upon this venerated companion of his labours the good Vicar pould often hold self-converse, and his frequent exclamation was, O that I could but see the history of my cushion!' Little suswecting, however, the connexion there was between this mysterious expansion of its bulk and the fulfilment of his favourite wish, it was with confusion and dismay that, putting his hand on it, instead of finding it yield, as usual, to his touch, he felt some resistance to his pressure.' A thousand indefinite fears of Popish conspiracy and assassination agitated his mind, but his resolution was soon taken.

In the dusk of the evening he mustered courage to enter the church alone, to seize the supposed organ of conspiracy, and to carry it to his own study. But, when there, what was to be done with it? There was one bosom which shared all his joys and sorrows. He had a wife who was the pillar of his little fabric of worldly comforts. Their two heads, laid together, rarely failed to hit upon a contrivance for every daily emergency; and, at length, after a much longer conference than usual, it was resolved, at once and heroically, to unbowel the cushion. The solemnity may be conceived with which the aged couple seated themselves to the task of ripping up their velvet friend with a view of tearing from the womb those plots on which the destiny of the nation might be suspended. But how shall I describe the amazement and the joy with which he, and therefore she, saw inscribed at the head of a large roll of paper, which soon met their eager eyes,- "My own history." It scarcely occurred to our ecclesiastic, that velvet cushions cannot ordinarily either think or write-for having just begun to study the new system of edu cation, he did not know to what perfection it might have been suddenly brought. Nor did it at all occur to him, that his above-mentioned philosophisings on the cushion had been often listened to with profound attention by a thin, queer, ill-looking, dirty, retired sort of man in the next village, who was said by the country-folks to be either a conjurer or an author. The wish of his heart was granted to him-a history of his velvet cushion-and little recked he whence it came, or who was the historian. Another candle was instantly

lighted, his glasses polished, the sofa wheeled nearer to the fire, and he began to read the memoir wbich follows.' pp. 7-9.

In the ensuing chapters the Velvet Cushion gives a narrative of its own changeful history, occasionally interrupted by the comments of the aged Vicar, and the assenting responses of his good lady. The idea is happy, though by no means original: onr readers may easily pursue it for themselves. We have, however, very decided objections to the construction of the work, as designed to be a vehicle for the expression of any party opinions on controverted points of grave importance. As a literary expedient, indeed, for the purpose of giving plausibility to sentiments of a doubtful nature, nothing could be better adapted. The old artifice of a dialogue between A and B, one the representative of the author, and the other a tame, unmeaning respondent, whose replies just serve to hang arguments and ridicule upon, has become too stale and palpable to be adopted by a man of superior abilities; a tale of a tub, or a tale of a cushion, would answer the same end much more effectually; only it must have been observed how easily such a weapon might be turned against the cause in which it was drawn, and the history of a Roman Catholic cushion, or a Presbyterian gown be made, in the hands of a competent writer, to serve the cause of Popery, of Dissent, or even of Infidelity. But it is on the ground of fairness that we object to such a work, and we have reason the more strongly to object to it, because it does not con→ fine itself to the defensive. It is a masked battery which unprevoked has opened its fires alike upon enemies and neutrals ;upon all in fact without the pale of an endowed Establishment. We object to it, on account of the skilful entanglement of good and evil, of truth and error, of sentiments which command assent and admiration, and positions erroneous or absurd, which such a work was likely to contain; and however dexterous a stratagem it may be thus to line the ramparts with truths against which we dare not point our arms, intermingled with feeble and provoking assertions on the side of the enemy, such a mode of warfare is neither manly nor ingenuous.

But as both in political and literary warfare success is the test by which the generality are disposed to judge of talent and of motive, we will concede to our Author all the advantage of the plan of his work, to which his readers are certainly indebted for much entertainment. If, indeed, their entertainment were one primary object, we believe that in lieu of gravely entering upon the discussions to which this work will furnish occasion, we should do better to occupy our pages with ample quotations from it, but the importance we attach to the subject, and certain peculiar features of the work itself, dictate a notice of its

contents not less respectful to its Author. We think we shall not wrong the Church to which he dedicates this little history, if we receive the sentiments it contains as no unfavourable specimen of the average degree of information and candour, which those of its members possess, who stand most forward as the advocates of scriptural truth and practical religion, in relation to the great body of the Dissenters.

With respect to this very term 'Dissenters,' we must observe at the outset the strangely lax and indefinite sense which it has lately been found convenient to attach to it. We have been gravely referred to etymology for the meaning of a word, which, in its historical application, had no such unrestricted import, We are sorry to find our Author give into this improper mode of speaking. To confound Independents, Methodists, and Socinians, under the broad name of Dissenters, simply because they do not belong to the Established Church, may suit the purpose of a party, but it cannot certainly serve instead of argument. With equal justice might an Episcopalian be styled a Dissenter in Scotland or in Canada. We know that in vulgar language, a Protestant in many parts of the kingdom means a member of the Established Church, in distinction from a Roman Catholic, and the word Dissenter may in the same places mean nothing more than a meeting er. But we do not expect this want of precision from a Velvet Cushion which, dating its existence in the days of Queen Mary, must have been well-informed as to the religious body, one of no mean consideration in history, who, under the name of Protestant Dissenters, have always manifested themselves to be more Protestants than Dissenters in defence of the common doctrines of the Reformation, and the faithful depositories and advocates of those very doctrines at a time when they were no longer to be heard from the pulpits of the Establishment.

The said Velvet Cushion, after expressing a sort of lingering attachment to its native religion, and the awe and delight with which it found itself first introduced into the sacred edifice, a Catholic church, proceeds

The vast Gothic arches, the solemn light, the general air of majesty all inspired the most lofty ideas of the Being to whom the temple was dedicated. And here, Sir, as I am likely to say a few hard things of Popery presently, I wish by way of set off, to remind you good Protestants, that you owe to Popery almost every thing that deserves to be called by the name of a Church. Popery is the religion of cathedrals-Protestantism of houses-Dissenterism of barns.

We mean nothing disrespectful to our Author in saying that we have no doubt that when he penned this last sentence, he felt something of the satisfaction inspired by the idea of having said

a good thing. The different parts of it are so musically and antithetically disposed, that the ear is at first cheated into a belief that they include more than the Author meant to express, or the reader can detect. That Popery is the religion of cathedrals, we may be disposed to believe in a sense even more comprehensive than was intended to be conveyed. We have never attended the cathedral service without having been conscious of this impression; and while we have joined (for we have not refused to join) in the solemn service, we have felt that in point of affecting grandeur, it was only inferior, though still very inferior, to the service of the mass book. The truth of the remark has, however, heen pressed upon us still more forcibly by a knowledge of the moral atmosphere which, with very rare exceptions, is found to surround a cathedral, We will not pursue the subject. The real friends of the Church, the pious members of it, must have observed, with deep regret, that Popery is, indeed, the religion of cathedrals. But in what sense Protestantism, allowing that term to designate the Episcopal Church, can be said to be the religion of houses, we are at a loss to conceive-that very Establishment which forbids its members to assemble for public worship in houses;—which denounces as unlawful conventicles all houses used for religious meetings, which have not been consecrated by peculiar rites, and dignified with the name of Church. But it is obvious the Author was at a loss how to frame this branch of the contrast. To have said that Protestantism is the religion of churches, would indeed have been the truth, but that sort of truth known by the name of truism, which is to be dreaded by a writer of antitheses more than that which is false. But the point of the epigram is, that Dissenterism (is the religion) of barns.' We are persuaded that our good friend the Velvet Cushion, did not intend, in the pride of his gold tassels, to reproach Dissenters with their unoffending poverty. If, in obscure villages, where there is no temple, no sanctuary devoted to God, or none in which the poor and hungry may be fed with Divine knowledge, the simple inhabitants have been glad to meet in a barn to hear from the lips of a Dissenting teacher the words by which they may be saved,-what if there be there no gilded altar and no cushioned desk,-no Gothic arches and no deep pealing organ;-what if it were a place as rude even as that concerning which Jacob said "This is no other than the gate of heaven"-will it be denied that that Divine presence, which gave to the second temple a glory far transcending the gold and the cedar, and even the typical Shekinah of the first, might possibly communicate to the bare walls of a barn, a sanctity which no decorations and no rites could supply? But if the NarFator means to intimate that it is characteristic of the genius of

Dissenterism to prefer, for the purposes of public worship, barns to houses, or houses resembling barns to more convenient edifices, we must inform him that Dissenters partake too much, in common with their brethren of the Establishment, of the infirmities of human nature, not to carry their love of ease, and, in too many cases, their love of display, into the circumstantials of religion: or if, in any cases, they have manifested a contented preference for the rude and incommodious structures in which their poorer fathers worshipped, we are persuaded that a candid clergyman will be inclined to pardon in them an attachment founded on the same principle which binds the more favoured frequenters of arched aisles and fretted roofs, to the institutions and forms of their ancestors.

Nothing would be easier than to contrast with this wellsounding sentence a variety of opposite assertions. For instance; a Dissenter might say, Popery is the religion of forms; Protestantism, of services; Dissenterism, of principles :-or the devotion of Popery is that of the confessional; of Protestantism, that of the altar; of Dissenterism, that of the closet:or again; Popery is the religion of tradition; Protestanism, of authority; Dissenterism, of reason. And as there would be at least as much truth in these assertions as in that on which we have been animadverting, it would not be difficult to give them a plausible resemblance to axioms, by representing the studious care which the Established Church has taken to render her public acts and ordinances prominent and impressive, and the stress which she lays upon external forms, while Dissenterism appears to be occupied more solicitously in awakening the principles and training the habits of her members, with less respect to time and place, to arts and modes, than Episcopacy can approve. But we deprecate all those arrogant assumptions of superiority which this style of oracular predication involves; and would content ourselves with simple statements and clear arguments, such as may become plain men and plain Christians.

We turn with pleasure from this subject to the good Vicar's remarks to his pious lady upon Popery, which are truly admirable, and breathe an excellent spirit.

"I think, my dear, it is difficult to speak too ill of Popery as a religion." "I should think it is, my love," she answered.

"It was at once," he added, "superstitious, formal, cold, and cruel. Above all, it did not teach men to fix their hopes and affec tions upon that Saviour who has been, my love, all our hope for near fifty years." The mention of these fifty years insured her consent to any proposition of the speaker. "And, then," said he," the errors of the Church were perpetuated by their own practices. This blessed book," and he raised his hand, and reverently brought it down again upon the sacred volume as he spoke, "this blessed book, which