PROGRESS OF PUBLICATION.
UNDER the title of Finsbury Lectures, Mr. Fox, the Unitarian teacher, is delivering a series of discourses on "Morality as modified by the various Classes into which Society is divided." The Lectures are taken down as extemporaneously delivered, and published from the re- porter's notes. Of these pamphlets three are before us—No. I. treat- ing of the Morality of Poverty; No. II. of Aristocratical and Political Morality; No. III. of the Morality of the Mercantile and Middle Classes. The plan of the lecturer is the same in all : he does not in- vestigate what ought to be the conduct of every class, and then proceed to lay down a moral code for its guidance ; but, examining the influences to which each class is exposed, and the practices springing from them, he exhibits in masses the respective vices and virtues. Mr. Fox's method of composition is to select a branch of his subject ; present it vividly, by a succession of the most striking points belonging to it, until a mental picture is impressed upon the mind ; and when the whole matter is exhausted and the interest worked up to a climax, he sud- denly closes, and proceeds to another branch ; which is treated in the same way. The character of the three Lectures is very similar, though modified by the lecturer's knowledge of the matter in hand, and may be termed philosophico-rhetorical. As a whole, the lecture on the Morality of Poverty is best, and that on Aristocracy the least happy : it is obvious that the moralist knows the one from observation, but paints the other from speculation. The part, however, which ap- pears to us as displaying the most depth of thought, is the IlIvourable picture of the mind of the Middle Classes : those passages which ex- hibit the most searching observation, are some on the genius of fin.- mulism, as it shows itself in the Churchman, the Wesleyan, the Cal- vinist, and even the Rationalist.
Previous page
