"For, as the tree, whose roots are buried in the earth, though assaulted by a thousand tempests, knows not to be rent asunder, and defies the storm; so likewise, the prayer implanted in the soul, and from thence arising, spreads wide its luxuriant foliage, elevates its aspiring head, and laughs unhurt at the impotent assailer." p. 31. Here again we must step in to the defence of the original, which says nothing whatever of the prayer's "luxuriant foliage," nor of this indecorous "laugh," which Mr. Boyd has conferred upon it :-but there is no end to his adscititious graces ;-he seems indeed to think that, as a Translator of Saints, it is but right for him to deal in such works of supererogation; but we are sorry to tell him, that—unlike the superfluities of those pious persons-his overdoings are all of the damnatory description. We are next presented with extracts from Gregory Nazianzen, and again doomed to suffer under perpetual metaphors, from the joint stock of the Saint and his Translator :-not that we would have Mr. Boyd set us down as foes to metaphors; we are only unreasonable enough to require that they should have a little meaning in them; that they should condescend to be useful as well as decorative, and, like the thyrsus of the ancients, carry a weapon under their foliage. St. Gregory, in the Funeral oration upon Cæsarus, says, that the tears of his mother were "subdued by philosophy "-dangvow EITTWμévois ”δάκρυσιν εἱττωμένοις pocopia-but this is too matter-of-fact for Mr. Boyd, who renders it, "her tears are dried by the sweet breezes of philosophy" (p. 121), and in the very next page, the twin metaphors of which he is, as usual, delivered, agree, it must be owned, rather awkwardly together, and lead us to think he has formed his taste for eloquence upon the model of a certain noble and diplomatic orator, who is well known to deal in this broken ware of rhetoric, such as "the feature, Sir, upon which this question hinges," etc. etc.-The following is Mr. Boyd's imitation of that noble Lord, in what may be called the Metaphoroclastic style 4 Such, O Cæsarius, is my funeral tribute. These are the first fruits of mine unfledged eloquence, of which thou hast oft complained that it was buried in the shade." p. 122. Seriously, if this learned gentleman had taken the trouble of consulting his Suicerus upon the word anagɣaí, he would not, we think, have spoiled this truly scriptural figure by interpolations so tasteless and so wholly unauthorized by the text. About the middle of this Peroration, we find the following passage. "Will he adorn no more his mind with the theories of Plato and of Aristotle, of Pyrrho and Democritus, of Heraclitus and Anaxagoras, and Cleanthes and Epicurus, and I know not how many disciples of venerated Academe and Stoa?" p. 134. The original text of these last words is—καὶ εκ οἶδ ̓ οἷς τισι των έκ της σεμνῆς τοῦς καὶ ἀκαδημίας—“and I know not how many from the venerable Porch and the Academy." What could induce Mr. Boyd to translate this passage so strangely? We hope it was only affectation; though we own we cannot help fearing-in spite of all his Greek-that, like the worthy French gentleman who looked for Aristocracy and Democracy in the map, he took these said "Academe and Stoa" for two venerable persons that kept school in Athens. We shall next give an extract from St. Gregory's Panegyric upon his deceased friend St. Basil, as a specimen not only of Mr. Boyd's best manner of writing, but of that unfatherly indifference with which, like a wellknown bird, he deposits his own offspring in the nest of another. The words of the original are simply these:-"What joy is there now in our public meetings? what pleasure in our feasts, our assemblies, or our churches?"which small sum of words this munificent translator has, out of his pure bounty, swelled to the following considerable amount. "Alas! what joy can we now experience in the feast, what intercourse of soul in the public meetings? Whom shall we now consult? Shall we seek the next eminent? There are none. He hath left a chasm in the world, and there is no one to fill it up. Where then, shall we wander, and how shall we employ the vacant hours? Shall we bend our steps into the Forum? Ah, no; it was there that Basil smiled upon his people. Shall we return into the Church? Ah, no; it was there that he fed us with the bread of life." p. 190. In the 192d page, he is equally sui profusus;—thus, 1 "When I peruse his expositions of the sacred page, I stop not at the letter, I rest not at the superficies of the world; but, soaring on renovated wings, I ascend from discovery to discovery, from light to light, till I reach the sublimest point, and sit enthroned on the riches of Revelation. -of which last extraordinary image Mr. Hugh Stuart Boyd is sole inventor and proprietor;-indeed not a tenth part of this "Extract" is to be found in the original; and the Saint may be truly said to sink under the obligations he owes to his translator. St. Gregory is almost the only Father who has thought it not beneath his dignity to write verses ;-there are some by Tertullian; but the poems under the name of Lactantius are, in general, we believe, rejected as spurious; and one of them is supposed to have been written by that most jovial of bishops, Venantius Fortunatus.* The sparkling conceits of Gregory's style are much more endurable in verse than in prose; and his similes are sometimes ingenious, if not beautiful. But we do not think Mr. Boyd has been very happy in his selections, either from this Father's poetry or the prose of St. Basil, whose pathetic remonstrance "to a fallen Virgin "+ would have furnished more favourable specimens of saintly eloquence than any composition throughout this volume. Mr. Boyd's notes consist chiefly of rapturous eulogies on the grandeur, brilliancy, and profoundness of his originals ;-on the "most super-eminent sublimity" of Plotinus (p. 291); and the "fascinating" and "enchanting Loves of Daphnis and Chloe (passim). He has detected too, some marvellous plagiarisms; for instance, that Milton, in saying "Gloomy as night, must have pilfered from St. Basil, who, it appears, has said “dark as night;"-unless, as Mr. Boyd candidly and sagaciously adds, "both Basil and Milton have borrowed the idea from Homer's vuxti oixás." p. 237. 66 The construction of this gentleman's English is not always very easy or elegant; as may appear from such sentences as cherishing in the minds of men him honoured there." (p. 123.)—“it thrills with a poetic ecstasy, of which the offspring is reflection sapient." (p. 240.)-having made mention of the prayers which for demoniacs are offered." (p. 16.) But it is time, we feel, to bring this article to a conclusion;-hic locus est somni.If we could flatter ourselves that Mr. Boyd would listen to us, we would advise him to betake himself as speedily as possible from such writers as his Gregories, Cyrils, etc.—which can never serve any other purpose than that of a vain parade of cumbrous erudition—to studies of a purer and more * Whose works, written chiefly "inter pocula"-as he confesses in his dedicatory epistle to Pope Gregory-may be found in the Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. viii. It is a sad proof of the rapid progress of corruption, to find the head of the Christian Church, in a few centuries after the death of Christ, thus openly patronizing such frivolous profligacy. There are several very touching passages throughout this letter, particularly that beginning πῶ μὲν σοὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἐκεῖνο σχημα; κ. τ. λ. Fenelon says of it, “ On ne peut rien vou de plus éloquent que son Epitre à une vierge qui était tombée; à mon sens c'est un chef-d'œuvre." Sur l'Eloquence. He will profitable nature, more orthodox in taste as well as in theology. find, in a few pages of Barrow or Taylor, more rational piety, and more true eloquence, than in all the Fathers of the Church together; and if, as we think probable, under this better culture, his talents should bring forth fairer fruits, we shall hail such a result of our councils with pleasure,—and shall even forgive him the many personal risks he has made us run, in poising down our huge folio Saints from their shelves.* SIGNS OF THE TIMES. + It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. Know'st thou Yesterday, its aim and reason? But man's " large discourse of reason" will look "before and after;" and, impatient of the ignorant present time," will indulge in anticipation far more than profits him. Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with present splendour-but paints yet more glorious triumphs, on the cloudcurtain of the future. The case, however, is still worse with nations. For here the prophets are not one, but many; and each incites and confirms the other-so that the fatidical fury spreads wider and wider, till at last even a Saul must join in it. For there is still a real magic in the action and reaction of minds on one another. The casual deliration of a few becomes, by this mysterious reverberation, the frenzy of many; men lose the use, not only of their understandings, but of their bodily senses; while the most obdurate, unbelieving hearts melt, like the rest, in the furnace, where all are cast, as victims and as fuel. It is grievous to think, that this noble omnipotence of Sympathy has been so rarely the Aaron's-rod of Truth and Virtue, and so often the Enchanter's rod of Wickedness and Folly! No solitary miscreant, scarcely any solitary maniac, would venture on such actions and imaginations, as large communities of sane men have, in such circumstances, enterlained as sound wisdom. Witness the long scenes of the French Revolution! a whole people drunk with blood and arrogance-and then with terror and cruelty and with desperation, and blood again! Levity is no protection It is to this clever article, I presume, that Lord Byron alludes in the following terms, in one of his letters to his friend and biographer, Mr. Moore. "I have redde thee, dear M-, on the Fathers, and it is excellent well. Positively, you must not leave off reviewing. You shine in -you kill in it; and this Article has been taken for Sidney Sinith's, as I heard in town, which proves not only your proficiency in parsonology, but that you have all the airs of a veteran critic at your first onset. So, prithee, go on and prosper." Moore's Life of Byron, Vol. i. Letter 219. The Rise, Progress, and Present State of Public Opinion in Great Britain.-Vol. xlix. page 439. June, 1829. against such visitations, nor the utmost earnestness of character. The New England Puritan burns witches, wrestles for months with the horrors of Satan's invisible world, and all ghastly phantasms, the daily and hourly precursors of the Last Day; then suddenly bethinks him that he is frantic, weeps bitterly, prays contritely-and the history of that gloomy season lies behind him like a frightful dream. And Old England has had her share of such frenzies and panics; though happily, like other old maladies, they have grown milder of late; and since the days of Titus Oates, have mostly passed without loss of men's lives, or indeed without much other loss than that of reason, for the time, in the sufferers. In this mitigated form, however, the distemper is of pretty regular recurrence and may be reckoned on at intervals, like other natural visitations; so that reasonable men deal with it, as the Londoners do with their fogs-go cautiously out into the groping crowd, and patiently carry lanterns at noon; knowing, by a well-grounded faith, that the sun is still in existence, and will one day re-appear. How often have we heard, for the last fifty years, that the country was wrecked, and fast sinking; whereas, up to this date, the country is entire and afloat! The "State in danger" is a condition of things, which we have witnessed a hundred times; and as for the church, it has seldom been out of "danger" since we can remember it. All men are aware, that the present is a crisis of this sort; and why it has become so. The repeal of the Test Acts, and then of the Catholic disabilities, has struck many of their admirers with an indescribable astonishment. Those things seemed fixed and immoveable-deep as the foundations of the world; and, lo! in a moment they have vanished, and their place knows them no more! Our worthy friends mistook the slumbering Leviathan for an island-often as they had been assured, that Intolerance was, and could be nothing but a Monster; and so, mooring under the lee, they had anchored comfortably in his scaly rind, thinking to take good cheer -as for some space they did. But now their Leviathan has suddenly dived under; and they can no longer be fastened in the stream of time; but must drift forward on it, even like the rest of the world-no very appalling fate, we think, could they but understand it; which, however, they will not yet, for a season. Their little island is gone, and sunk deep amid confused eddies; and what is left worth caring for in the universe? What is it to them, that the great continents of the earth are still standing; and the polestar, and all our loadstars, in the heavens, still shining and eternal? Their cherished little haven is gone, and they will not be comforted! And therefore, day after day, in all manner of periodical or perennial publications, the most lugubrious predictions are sent forth. The king has virtually abdicated; the church is a widow without jointure; public principle is gone; private honesty is going; society, in short, is fast falling in pieces; and a time of unmixed evil is come on us. At such a period it was to be expected that the rage of prophecy should be more than usually excited. Accordingly, the Millennarians have come forth on the right hand, and the Millites on the left. The Fifth-monarchy men prophesy from the Bible. and the Utilitarians from Bentham. The one announce that the last of the seals is to be opened, positively, in the year 1860; and the other assure us, that "the greatest happiness, principle," is to make a heaven of earth, in a still shorter time. We know these symptoms too well, to think it necessary or safe to interfere with them. Time and the hours will bring relief to all parties. The grand encourager of Delphic or other noises is -the Echo. Left to themselves, they will soon dissipate, and die away in space. Meanwhile, we too admit that the present is an important time-as all present time necessarily is. The poorest day that passes over us is the conflux of two Eternities! and is made up of currents that issue from the remotest Past, and flow onwards into the remotest Future. We were wise, indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and, by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us then, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters, and deeper tendencies, more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer. Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches, and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning, abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster. The sailor furls his sail, and lays down his oar, and bids a strong unwearied servant, on vaporous wings, bear him through the waters. Men have crossed oceans by steam; the Birmingham Fire-king has visited the fabulous East; and the genius of the Cape, were there any Camoens now to sing it, has again been alarmed, and with far stranger thunders than Gama's. There is no end to machinery. Even the horse is stripped of his harness, and finds a fleet fire-horse yoked in his stead. Nay, we have an artist that hatches chickens by steam—the very brood hen is to be superseded! For all earthly, and for some unearthly purposes, we have machines and mechanic furtherances; for mincing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep. We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils. What wonderful accessions have thus been made, and are still making, to the physical power of mankind; how much better fed, clothed, lodged, and, in all outward respects, accommodated, men now are, or might be, by a given quantity of labour, is a grateful reflection which forces itself on every one. What changes, too, this addition of power is introducing into the social system; how wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor, will be a question for Political Economists—and a much more complex and important one than any they have yet engaged with. But leaving these matters for the present, let us observe how the mechanical genius of our time has diffused itself into quite other provinces. Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiri |