(partially at least) like the tocsin, to summon good and conservative citizens to the defence of the commonweal against the sudden outbreak of a few; but in times of general disaffection, they serve rather as a signal of revolutionary violence, and ring the knell of things that be. There is here a rendering visible and audible, to some extent, of that invisible and half speechless ecclesia which is composed of those on whose tendencies, Goethe (we believe) says, the future principles of their country depend― the young men under twenty-five. We have here a name given to what before had scarcely dared to name itself, (whose existence was at most but a conspiring, a breathing together in silence)-and it is called "Revolution." Boldness is thus imparted to the timid, and a smaller or larger amount of vanity is by degrees enlisted in the service of agitation. Ethics and style left out of question, we have been struck with the analogy between the revolu tionary bearings of "Yeast," and that of some of Rousseau's works. There is a similar suggestion of social and mental uneasiness, and similar indefiniteness in the attempt to prescribe for them.

Convinced as we are, that all mental fermentation leads to truth, and that the earnest purpose to act out acknowledged principles, will lead to something even better than speculative truth, we are not dissatisfied with these characteristics of the age, and would hail the additional impulse which such works as "Yeast" supply. Public attention may be directed to many subjects of a more debasing interest than that of the present work. The very recognition of strong intellectual and moral forces as alive and active in our day, is an advance upon the self-seeking and materialism of a past age. The speculations and doubts may not be new, for the elements from which they are evolved have existed for years or for centuries; but it is really a new thing to see them producing such earnest and stirring effects. The impulse has infused something like life into the ghost of at least one Church-dashing its colourless cheek with a hue, which, if offensive in colour as approaching the scarlet of a still more vigorous community, is surely preferable to the cold and whitewashed propriety that has been compelled to make way for it. Movement, even that of the crab, or of the severed centi

pede,-in opposite directions,-is a function and auxiliary of life; while rest, as in the theory of some of the ancient sages, is akin to corruption and death.

There are still more important services which such a living picture of the warring elements of the day may render to the cause of Truth. One advantage, at least, falls to the lot of polemical fiction generally, and to this work in particular, which is not enjoyed by controversial essays in the usual form. The latter may present abstract premises from which logical argumentation may draw conclusions, wearing a plausible appearance of correctness; and yet, as applied to reality, they may be untrue on account of fallacies inherent in the abstraction with which they commence. But, as exhibited by the novelist, they must be wrought into the very fibre of humanity, if they are to be the life of his Fiction. This is true of all philosophical prose-poetry, and in the present instance there is a peculiar benefit arising from the form. In this work we are repeatedly called away from abstract dogmas to the practical interests which they involve. Opinions which appear mutually exclusive, and, as viewed from the antagonist position, are incredibly absurd,-when viewed in connection with the wants and weaknesses which inclined men to embrace them, are seen to possess at least a unity of origin. Theories may differ to almost any extent; but trace them back to their fountain-head, and the men who entertain them are found nearly to resemble each other. It is not hostility only, but hearty agreement which meets us in these and similar pages. Contrasted doctrines, in their intensity of opposition, might seem to belong to beings of different race; but they are here presented in that original nearness from which they have diverged with a gradation so gentle that the eye of the on-looker can scarcely trace it.

Amid all the heartburnings of the present day we may even assume that there is a better mutual understanding between the intelligent individuals of contending parties than there would be between any of them and the men of a past age. We are beginning to know why we quarrel, and this is half-way, at least, to a reconciliation. The grounds of controversy are becoming more comprehensive. The controversies themselves are, therefore, necessarily

falling back upon the elements in which they originate; and these are nearly the same in all men. More than this, the reason of difference being found to be, not in objective truth but in subjective tendencies, the binding chains of mental slavery are being snapped even for the most bigoted. By-and-by we may hope to see the time when he who puts on the fetters of an unreasonable creed, will be quite convinced that it is he himself, and none other in heaven or earth, by whom he is so trammelled; and, thus enlightened, he cannot but be virtually free.

Essential unity amid external diversity meets us everywhere. Puseyism and modern Catholicism are not slow to lay exclusive claim to that human adaptation which is the sine quà non of a true religion. The challenge is therefore given on no objectionable ground, and the contest may be waged honourably, according to the established laws of chivalric encounter. The author of "Yeast" has given an estimate of the relative value of some Protestant and Catholic doctrines, judged by the test of human adaptation, in which not a few of the thinking men who have left the Church of England for that of Rome, would probably coincide. The doctrine of Purgatory, for instance, is examined in this light (p. 136); and Humanity and Common Sense being the judges, it is found that this offensive tenet of Romanism has rather the advantage over doctrines respecting a future state held by soi-disant orthodox Protestants. The result of examinations like this, will probably not prove favourable to either party in the end, but to an enlarged view of truth on the part of all. Revolutions in opinion often tend in the very opposite direction to their apparent course. The world advances very much after the fashion of that relative of Mr. By-ends in John Bunyan's Dream,-who got his money by looking one way and rowing another;-as witness our political progress in the last twenty years. The thunderstorm comes up against the wind, and its destructive and purifying effects will be manifested where the unwise had least expected them.

There is, in fact, unity of direction in the movement, where it is by no means suspected, or most heartily denied. Dead forms in Church and State are roused by a vivifying spirit into unlooked-for vigour; and their influence is far

from being wholly, or even chiefly, reactionary. Like the resuscitated comrades of the "Ancient Mariner," when the spell of the Silent Sea was broken, they arise to startle the living with a somewhat ghastly co-operation. Kinsmen, between whom theological controversy has opened the widest and deepest chasm of difference, are found to be working together in the ministry of change, if not of reconstruction; and we might hear the separatist on one side, not unfrequently taking up his parable in the words of Coleridge :

"The body of my brother's son

Stood by me, knee to knee

The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me."

In conclusion, we note the leading truths which such a display of modern controversy brings to light for the benefit of both Conservatives and Liberals in theological and ethical parties; the reductio ad absurdum on the one hand, of a large class of opinions that have been in honour; and on the other hand, the eagerness with which the absurdest tenets are received and submitted to, when they seem to accord with the high destiny of man,-as reminding the friends of enquiry and spiritual liberty, that the very emancipation of the human mind which we so much covet, is only desirable in order that the pure statutes of principle and holy reason may be followed without let or hindrance; and that, while we decline to accept any result of compound fallibility which may be palmed upon us as " orthodoxy," we are bound to observe with a daily increasing and thrice religious earnestness, those commands of the individual conscience which are to every human being practically and undeniably infallible. The moral of "Yeast," as of all records of revolution, is, in fact, the shaking of the things that are to be removed, and the stability of those eternal things which must remain. And God will speed the right.

ART. III. THE AMERICAN FUGITIVE SLAVE

ACT.

1. A Bill to amend the Act entitled "An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and persons escaping from the Service of their Masters."

2. A Letter to the Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, &c., &c., in reply to his Apology for Voting for the Fugitive Slave Bill. By Hancock.

3. Speeches of the Hon. Daniel Webster.

4. Horace Mann's Reply to the Hon. Daniel Webster's Letter. The "Liberator," June 14th, 1850.

MANKIND are very familiar with the proposition that a despotic government, in order to exist with any degree of security, must be a strong government: but they are less familiar with another proposition, equally true, and that is, that a liberal and popular government, in order to preserve these its special attributes of character, must be a strong one alsc. There is a vague impression that an unlimited monarchy requires force to support it, because it is opposed to the natural sense of justice among men, because it is opposed to individual and social rights, and rests upon a basis, for which there is no foundation in principle or in the nature of things, but which consists of simple external power, the right of the strongest: whereas, that a constitutional and liberal government, one resting ultimately on the consent and conviction of the people themselves, is strong in itself-rests on its own principles and character, and requires little or no external power to sustain it. The despotic government is understood to represent the will of one or of a few, as against the many: while the liberal government is regarded as the expression merely of their own will by the many themselves. The first, consequently, requires a force to supplement that of the one, and make it more than equal to the many, who are understood to be in perpetual opposition to the central power: the last demands no force to maintain its