It might be made a subject of much consideration, how far a fiction of this kind is lawful or expedient. But we have not time at present to enter on that question. The book resembles in its character, with the difference of being in prose, Professor Millman's Martyr of Antioch, and those who have been gratified with that work may safely expect to be pleased with this. It is unquestionably, the production of a man of genius and imagination; and bears also the marks of much appropriate study of the history and manners of the periods illustrated so that the reader may here gather much infor mation as well as amusement.

We cannot now add to these few remarks, farther than to give our readers a better idea of the book than description can convey, by selecting one or two passages.

Salathiel is tempted by a Sorcerer, who offers to reveal to him all the secrets of nature, and the discoveries of after times. The use of gunpowder, the loadstone, the steam engine, and other inventions of modern days, are thus vividly sketched.

"What if I were to tell you of wonders, such as it has not entered into the mind of the world to conceive; yet, which are before us every hour of our lives, are mingled with every thing, are grasped in our insensate hands, are trodden by our careless feet? See these crystals"-he scraped a portion of the nitre exuding from the wall;" in these is hidden a power to which the strength of man is but air—to which the mighty bulwarks round us are but as the leaf on the breeze-at whose command armies shall vanish, mountains shake, empires perish, the whole face of society shall change;-yet, by a sublime contradiction, combining the greatest evil with the greatest good-the most lavish waste of life and happiness, with the most signal provision for human security and civilization!" "Look on this metal," said he, pointing to some of the leaden ornaments of the balcony; "and think what is the worth of human judgment. Who would give the pearl or the diamond, the silver or the gold, for this discoloured dross? Yet here is the king of metals-the king of earth: for it can create, subdue, and rule all that earth produces of nobleness and power. Within this dross are treasures hidden, more than earth could buy-truth, knowledge, and freedom. It can give the dead a new life, and give the living a new immortality. It can stoop the haughtiest usurper that ever sinned against man into the lowest scorn. It can raise the humblest son of obscurity into pre-eminence; and, even without breaking in upon the seclusion that he loves, make him the benefactor of the human race, and set him forth crowned to every future age with involuntary glory. It can flash light upon the darkest corners of the earth; light never to be extinguished. It can civilize the barbarian: it can pour perpetual increase of happiness, strength, and liberty, round the civilized. It can make feet to itself that walk through the dungeon-walls; wings that the uttermost limits of the world cannot weary; eyes to which the darkest concealments of evil are naked as the day; intellect that darts through the universe, and grasps the mightiest mysteries of nature and of mind! But in it too is a fearful power of ruin. Holding the keys of opulence and empire, it can raise men and nations to the most dazzling height. But it can stain, delude, and madden them, until they become a worse than pestilence to human nature.

While he spoke, his form assumed a grandeur commensurate to his lofty topics; the power of his voice awoke with the awaking power of his mind. My faculties succumbed under his presence, and I could only exclaim: "More of

those wonders; give me more of those noble evidences of the supremacy of man!"

"Man!" said my strange enlightener; "look upon him as he is; and what more helpless thing moves under the canopy of heaven? The prey of folly, the creature of accident, the sport of nature; the surge whirls him where it will; the wind scorns his bidding; the storm crushes him; the lightning smites him. But, look upon man, when Knowledge has touched him with her sceptre.”——He fixed upon me eyes, from which I thought that the very lightnings gleamed. The circlet round his brow seemed to quiver and sparkle with inward lustre; the golden serpent that clasped his robe seemed to writhe and revolve. I felt like one under its fascination. A sense of danger thrilled through me, yet mixed with a dreamy and luxurious sense of enjoyment. The air was heavy with fragrance; and I sat listening in powerless homage to a lip moulded by beauty

and disdain.

"Man, the sport of nature!" said he; pointing to a bead of dew that hung glittering on a leaf of the vine. "Say, man the sovereign of nature! With but so feeble an instrument as this dew-drop, he might control and scorn the wind and the wave! Or would you defy the storm in darkness; without sun or star speed through the unknown ocean; and add a new world to the old? Within this fragment lies the secret." He struck off a brown splinter from the stone of the balcony. "Or would you behold regions, to which the stars that now blaze above our heads are but the portal; kingdoms of light never penetrated by mortal vision; generations of worlds? By what splendid influence think you that the miracle is to be wrought? Even by this dust." He took up a few grains of the sand at his feet, and poured them into my robe. vol. iii. pp. 363–368.

One more passage we quote, in which the language of prophecy is made to issue from a maniac's mouth.

come.

"I told you," said he, with a sudden return to calmness, "that this day would And to tell you so, required no spirit of prophecy. There is a time for all things; long-suffering among the rest; and your countrymen had long ago come to that time. But, one grand hope was still to be given; they cast it from them! Ages on ages shall pass, before they learn the loftiness of that hope, or fulfil the punishment of that rejection. Yet, in the fulness of time, shall the light break in upon their darkness. They shall ask, Why are we the despised, the branded, the trampled, the abjured of all nations? Why are the barbarian and the civilized alike our oppressors? Why do contending faiths join in crushing us alone? Why do realms, distant as the ends of the earth, and diverse as day and night,--alike those who have heard our history, and those who have never heard of us but as the sad sojourners of the earth,---unite in one cry of scorn? And what is the universal voice of nature, but the voice of the King of nature?" I listened in reverence, to language that pierced my heart with an intense power of truth, yet with a pang that made me writhe. I longed, yet dreaded, to hear again the searching and lofty accents of this being of unwilling wisdom. "Man of terrible knowledge," said I, "canst thou tell for what this judgment shall come?"

His mighty brow was stooped in solemn fear, and his features quivered, as he slowly spoke." Their crime? There is no name for it. The spirits of Heaven weep when they think of it. The spirits of the abyss tremble. Man alone, the man of Judea alone, could commit that horror of horrors."

He paused, and prostrated himself at the words. Then rising, rapidly uttered "Judge of the crime by its punishment. From the beginning Israel was stubborn, and his stubbornness brought him to sorrow. He rebelled, and he was warned by the captivity of a monarch, or the slaughter of a tribe. He sinned more deeply, for he was the slave of impurity; then was his kingdom divided; yet a few years saw him powerful once more. He sinned more deeply

still; for he sought the worship of idols. Then came his deeper punishment, in the fall of his throne, and the long captivity of his people. But even Babylon sent back the forgiven to his throne.

"Happy, I say to you, happy will be the hour for Israel---for mankind---for creation; when he shall take into his hand the records of his fathers, and in tears and prayers ask---What is that greater crime than rebellion? than blasphemy? than impurity? than idolatry? which not seventy years, nor a thousand years of sorrow have seen forgiven; which has prolonged his woe into the old age of the world---which threatens him with a chain, not to be broken but by the thunderstroke that breaks up the universe!"

"And still," said I, trembling, and subdued before the living oracle--" still is there hope?"

"Look to that mountain," was the answer, as he pointed to Moriah. Its side, covered with the legions advancing to the assault, shone and wavered in the sun like a tide of burning brass. "It is now a sight of splendid evil!" exclaimed he. "But upon that mountain shall yet be enthroned a Sovereign, before whom the sun shall hide his head, and at the lifting of whose sceptre heaven and the heaven of heavens shall bow down! To that mountain shall man, and more than man, crowd for wisdom and happiness. From that mountain shall light flow to the ends of the universe; and the government shall be to the Everlasting!" vol. iii. pp. 403-406.

From these splendid passages our readers will see that the work we have thus briefly noticed has no kindred with the circulating-library trash of the day. Whether it be of the allowable, or of the inexpedient class of fictions, we do not at present inquire. In reading it, we could not help wishing that talent so great might be devoted to the still higher and more appropriate task of preaching the Gospel of Jesus to a lost world. Will Mr. C. forgive us if we say that, however, such a production as the present may secure for him the admiration of his fellow-mortals, yet a day is coming when to have turned one poor sinner to Christ will be a far greater joy than to have been the author even of such a splendid work as Salathiel?

Lectures on the Points in Controversy between Roman Catholics and Protestants (with a single exception,) delivered in Tavistock Chapel, Drury Lane, 1827-8. London: Nesbit. 1828.

MANY of our readers are aware that for some time past lectures have been delivered at the above-mentioned episcopal chapel, by some of the most devoted clergymen of the day, on the points of controversy between the Protestant and Roman-Catholic Churches. We are happy to add, that these services have been generally well attended, and we devoutly hope and pray, that it may be eventually found that our excellent brethren have not laboured in vain, or spent their strength for nought. At the

same time we are not quite sure that some of the preachers have given to their selected subjects all the labour and reading which such subjects require from every clergyman of our church, and specially from the professed controversialist. It may perhaps be said, that most of the respected individuals who undertook this important task were men much engaged in religious societies, or in pastoral duties, and that an earnest and affectionate appeal to the heart was likely to do more good than learned research or critical accuracy. Possibly, too, it may be replied to us, that, the greater part of the members of the Church of Rome in this and the sister country belonging to the lower orders, any thing not quite popular would have been above their comprehension. We are not unwilling to admit that there is much that is specious, and something that is true, in such remarks. At the same time may we be allowed to say, that we would have had the lectures such as should have been read at Rome with terror and alarm as to their consequences, accompanied with admiration of their talent and research? The London clergy, when they unite together in a work like this, ought certainly to produce a series of sermons that shall be read and prized to the end of time. Such were the works of the great fathers of our Reformed Church. Men, whose names to this day are never heard within the Vatican without producing an effect. Some of the sermons now under consideration are worthy of the successors of the Reformers they discover extensive reading, an accurate perception of the points of difference, the best method of stating their several subjects, and the fine combination of very superior talent, with great theological intelligence and unaffected and fervent piety. If we might venture to make a suggestion or two in reference to future lectures on similar subjects, we would recommend some such course as the following, which we cannot but hope, would, under the blessing of Heaven, be productive of the most important consequences. Let a committee of inquiry be formed consisting of half a dozen of the most pious and intelligent of our London clergy, and the same number of devoted and well-informed laymen, well conversant with the present state of Popery in Ireland and on the continent, if possible men who have travelled and seen the existing state of things in both places. Let such committee ascertain, after a very full examination of evidence, obtained by an extensive correspondence as well as their personal knowledge, some four or six of the most prominent and popular of the prevailing errors of the Church of Rome; and then select some four or six of the best qualified clergymen to undertake these subjects with a special reference to the existing state of things, and be this

point specially noted, with a still greater regard to the intelligent Catholic who may read the course of lectures, than to the number of half-papists who may personally attend upon their delivery. Not that these latter should be neglected; by no means! Yet would we that while the learned simplicity, of which we have spoken elsewhere, shall cause the major part of such sermons to be perfectly intelligible to the meanest capacity; their richness and elegance, their variety of illustration, and depth of reading, their strength of argument, and other indications of research and talent, should make them interesting to minds of the highest order and cultivation. And we may rest assured that many such are watching our proceedings with a very vigilant eye.

Let it not, however, be supposed, that we mean for one moment to assert, that even such sermons could do any good without the grace and Spirit of God. No, verily without Christ the church can do nothing. Yet were it a most unfair, not to say a most absurd inference, from this admission to conclude that such a subject might be treated in a poor, tame, commonplace manner, no matter how much so, if but a spirit of piety pervaded the whole. A controvertial sermon on a subject so grand as the great Protestant question should cost a man many months hard reading, and close application, as well as earnest prayer. A series of such sermons, by men of superior minds, and devoted hearts, would, under God's blessing, produce a lasting impression upon the educated and higher orders of the Papists; while an abridgment, containing principally the more popular matter, or rather the same matter in a more popular dress, might, with manifest advantage, be circulated among the lower orders of that communion.

We offer these suggestions to the friends of the Reformation; and to the society more especially interested in this question. Were they to appoint a committee so constituted, and that would so act, we believe time would shew that, under the smile of Heaven, they had not consulted together in vain.

But it is time that we introduce some of the preachers to the notice of our readers. Our limits will not allow us to make extracts from the whole; and we are the more anxious that this may be marked, lest some most respectable and able men, from whose sermons we do not quote, should imagine themselves treated with disrespect. Far be it from us so to treat any of the faithful servants of our blessed Lord. And we have been particular in making our observations general, that we might not give unnecessary pain to any individual. Nor do we hesitate to say, that among the present course of lectures, not a few will be found which will be read with delight, and quoted as autho