litPrKrlJ Oltanings. A DEFMICE OP THE LATITUDINARIAN DIVEIES OP THE REVOLU-
TIONARY ERA.—" The second season of the Reformation, though treated now with unmerited disparagement, was not less worthy of admiration than the first. High Churchmen may be ashamed of an Archbishop who pro- posed a scheme of comprehension; Evangelicals, of a preacher who ap- plauded the Socinians ; and Coleridgians, of a theologian who was no deeper in metaphysics than the Grotian divines' ; but neither the Erastianism, thelharity, nor the common-sense of a Tillotson would be at all unsuitable at this moment to a church openly torn by dissensions, and really held to- gether only by dependence on the state. It has been a current opinion, per- severingly propagated by adherents of the Geneva theology, that the spread of Arminian sentiments was equivalent to a religious decline, and co in. rent with the growth of a worldly laxity and selfish indifference of c The allegation is absolutely false. In literature, in personal characteristic,' and in public life, the Latitude-men and their associates in belief hes; honourable comparison with their more rigorous forerunners. There is net only less of passionate intolerance, but a nobler freedom from an emuv Gm' prudence, in the great writers of the second period, than in the Bet vesm — of the first ; and there is more to touch the spruiqs of disintereatednesa° s— elevation of mind in Cudworth and Clarke than in Calvin and Boca. Nor did the return of ethical theory weaken the sources of religious action The very enterprises in which evangelical zeal most rejoices,—missions ts. the heathen, and the diffusion of the Scriptures,—were not only PrOUCU,„d but set on foot in new directions and with more powerful instrumentaliti ' the very midst of this period, and by the very labours of its most distin • ed philosophers. The Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, were both born with the eighteenth century ; and while the latter addressed itself th natives and slaves of the American provinces, the former first made the Scriptures known on the Coromandel coast. It was Boyle who, of all me, of his age, displayed the most generous zeal for the multiplication of the sacred writings himself procunng their translation into four or five laid. For tiiirty years he was governor of a missionary corporati0n. yet the complexion of his theology is sufficiently indicated by the fact that he bought up Pococke's Arabic translation of Grotius (De Veritate Christian, Relagionss,) and was at the cost of its wide distribution in the East. And who that has ever read it can forget Swift's letter to the Irish Viceroy (1,0vd Carteret) introducing Bishop Berkeley (then Dean of Derry,) and his pro- ject for resigning his preferment at home in order that, on a stipend of 100/. a }rear, he might devote himself to the conversion of the American Indians ? The imperturbable patience with which the good Dean prosecuted his oh. ject, the self-devotion with which he embarked in it his property and jiye, the gratefulness with which he accepted from the Government the promise of a grant, and the treachery which broke the promise, and after seven years compelled his return, make up a story unnvalled for its contrast of saintly simplicity and ministerial bad faith. These and similar features of the time superfluously refute the arbitrary and arrogant assumption, that no piety can be living and profound except that which disbelives all natural religion, no gospel holy which does not renounce the moral law, no faith prolific in works unless it begins with despising them. There was, how- ever, still a defect in this gospel of conscience."—From "Studies of Chris- tianity," by James Martineau.
IDEALISM iiO ART.—" We may now come to an understanding on the significance of the phrase Idealism in Art. Suppose two men equally gifted with the perceptive powers and technical skill necessary to the accurate re- presentation of a village group, but the one to be gifted, over and above these qualities, with an emotional sensibility which leads him to sympathize intensely with the emotions playing amid that village group. Both will delight in the forms of external nature, both will lovingly depict the scene and scenery; but the second will not be satisfied therewith : his sympathy will lead him to express something of the emotional life of the group ; the mother in his picture will not only hold her child in a graceful attitude, she will look at it with a mother's tenderness ; the lovers will be tender ; the old people venerable. Without once departing from strict reality, he will have thrown a sentiment into his group which every spectator will recognize as poetry. Is he not more real than a Teniers, who, admirable in externals, had little or no sympathy with the internal life, which, however, is as real as the other ? But observe, the sentiment must be real, truly expressed as a sentiment, and as the sentiment of the very people represented; the ten- derness of Hodge must not be that of Romeo, otherwise we shall have such maudlin as the "Last Appeal." Let us have Teniers rather than Frank Stone; truth, however limited, rather than spurious idealism. The mind of the painter is expressed in his pictures. Snyders and Landseer are both great animal painters, both represent with marvellous accuracy the forma and attitudes of animals; but Landseer is a poet where Snyders is merely brutal. Landseer paints his dogs, sheep, and stags with the utmost fidelity; he does not idealize them except in that legitimate style of idealization which consists in preseding the highest form of reality : he makes his animals express their inner-life ; he throws a sentiment into his groups. Snyders does nothing but represent dogs tearing down wild boars, or ani- mals in a state of demoniacal ferocity ; Landseer makes us feel that dogs have their affections and their sorrows, their pride and their whims."— Westminster Review for October.
ADVENTURE WITH A GRIZZLY BEAR—" When I write the word grizzled, I sin led to a vivid remembrance of a very narrow escape that I once had from one that I had wounded when out shooting alone in California. On that occasion I had to run a considerable distance, with the bear in doss pursuit, before reaching a tree, my only chance of preservation. No sooner, however, had I sprung and clambered up to the second branches, than I perceived Bruin had reached its base, and moreover, was on the point of climbing up after me. Fortunately the tree was an awkward one for him on account of its slender trunk, but was nevertheless climable and strong enough to bear his weight. Without a moment's hesitation, and with all the deliberate impetuogity. of desperation, I commenced loading my double.barrel piece, balancing myself meanwhile astride a branch, with legs depending and my left shoulder leaning what the trunk. I had not a moment to lose, the tree shook violently with the efforts of my grizzly enemy to ascend ; and no sooner had I capped my charge, than up he came with stealthy. but savage strides. He was within two feet only of me when I fired straight into his skull, upon which b, fell half reelingly to the ground, and died within five minutes."—Cbnacal- lis's New .El _Dorado. Famcca Cooximr LN THE Dm° ruas.—" After breakfast the work of trim- flesh, converted into a harricot with the assistance of wild vegetables, and till noon, when wriet ming the logs and washing the gold proceeded briskly assembled to dinner, which, instead of raw materials, consisted of a saven..s dish of stewed squirrels, a 'pan' half full of transmogrified deer's and bear. some yam-like cereal called potatoes, grown and supplied by the Indiat,g all this had been dished up and manceuvred by one of the Frenchmen, IT, as it turned out had been a ranch, or restaurant keeper near Downieville. in California. We appointed him forthwith to be inspector and purvaneyroe.r general of our commissariat, and intrusted him with all the duties d sponsibilities of the cuisine, at a salary to be made up amongst '.15 of ten dollars a day, which, strange to say, he agreed to. So much for Irenca enterprise—the fact is, that Frenchmen love the comfortable, and cony' quently make bad pioneers—they are better adapted for following iii the wake of explorers than for constituting such themselves, and In"e arcluem like this hero, prefer cooking for them to sharing the risk, and more rejoice undertakings which the English and Americans plunge after and regj 1 nut I can compare them only, in the wilderness, to so many cats in ste
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