The undertaking of the Nestorians was analogous in many respects to the experiment tried by the Romish Church at the fall of the Western empire. As the vast political fabric which had so long buttressed her spiritual authority sunk from beneath her, she found herself environed by a confused medley of Goths and Vandals, who were hardly yet emancipated from the habits of barbarian life. Clinging with a natural tenacity to those forms and institutions, around which clustered so many proud associations, she labored to impress them upon the new social structure which was emerging from the ruins of the past. For two centuries all her efforts were directed to this end; and all her efforts were thrown away. The youthful life and vigor of the nascent civilization, springing up around her, refused to be grafted on the old and unsympathetic stock. The Church rapidly sunk into barbarism, and she was only saved from utter extinction, by bowing to the inexorable law, and shaping herself by the altered conditions of society. All the differences between the Grecian and the Gothic architecture, are said to have had their origin in the different materials that were presented for the builder's use. But the contrast between the glittering Pentelican and the coarse sandstone of the Rhine is not more marked than that between the civilization of the fifth century and the civilization of the fifteenth, and the framers of the spiritual temple were forced to follow in the track of the stone-cutters and masons. The Church of Cyril and Augustin was as little like the Church of Loyola or of Luther, as the Basilicas of Constantine were like the stately magnificence of Strasburg and Rouen. All outward and visible organizations, how. ever proud, however venerable, are the creatures of Accident and Time. Ideas alone are eternal and immutable. It is the glorious and distinguishing peculiarity of the Christian systema peculiarity indeed, to which the Nestorians displayed a lamentable insensibility, but which raises it far above all other systems that it is stamped with the characteristics of no age or nation, that it adapts itself to all earthly relations, and blends with all social organizations, elevating all, purifying all, mold. ing all by its subtle influences, and breathing into all its lifegiving spirit!

"The world's round mass

It doth pervade, all forms of life it shares,

The institutions that like moments pass,
Are but the shapes the masking Spirit wears."

Had the Nestorians not set themselves in opposition to these obvious and necessary laws, had they not labored to perpetuate at Pekin forms that could flourish only in the latitude of Bagh

dad, in a word, had they recognized that the Church was for man, and not man for the Church, that the great tide of human regeneration sweeps on, unruffled by the fluctuating fortunes of sects and parties, that the soul of the humblest believer, endowed as it is with those lofty faculties which link it to an invisible world and an immortal existence, has a destiny nobler than that of the proudest hierarchy, we should not now be asking the miserable question whether any traces of their labors are yet remaining, but the vision of the prophet would be fulfilled, and amid the multitudes who have come from the North and the South to sit down in the kingdom of the Lord, we might point to the pilgrims from the farthest East, and exclaim, "Lo, these from the land of Sinim!"

ART. II.--MEMOIR OF REV. OLIVER ALDEN TAYLOR.

Memoir of the Rev. Oliver Alden Taylor, A. M., late of Manchester, Massachusetts. By Rev. TIMOTHY ALDEN TAYLOR, A. M. Boston: Tappan & Whittemore.

HUMAN life is a progressive development. When one steps upon the stage of time, he commences filling a blank; and is every day, hour, moment, writing it out, till he passes off the stage and the curtain falls; when he signs and seals it. That is his character, fixed, unchangeable, indestructible; no hand of friendship can add or erase a line. The only worthy object of publishing it to the world, is to extend a knowledge of its excellencies and perpetuate its remembrance.

The volume before us is the work of fraternal affection. It has become common of late to write or edit memoirs of one's family friends. We had once some misgivings as to the propriety of the custom except in extraordinary cases, and feared it might work evils in the republic of letters; but the more we reflect upon it, the less we regret it. It is the working of bereaved affection; and the working of bereaved affection is always graceful. It is weaving the wreath of evergreen to enliven the winter of the grave, enshrining the dust we love. The marble moulders, but the memoir lives in the family for generations. Besides, who so well qualified to draw a living

portrait as he who best knew and most appreciated the subject, especially if the private or interior life is to be disclosed? True, the partial affection of parent, child, or brother, may warp the judgment and throw an unnatural halo around the memory of the deceased; but so may the cordial affections of one not of the family; and none but the warm hand of friendship would undertake the arduous task, unless the subject were a character of public interest; and thus, if we wait for the cool, disinterested hand, we shall have only the published lives of giants,— of heroes and statesmen, which the commonalty may read with admiration, but with little desire, because with little expectation, of imitating them. Who thinks of making the movements of Goliath the model of his own? Besides, in family biographies, of one excellence we may usually be certain, that the best of the subject will be developed; and this is what we most need ; for if we are influenced by the characters with which we are conversant, we should have the best, and the best traits brought before us. An exhibition of defects is of little use farther than furnishing beacons of warning; and objects of warning are not so powerful to influence to goodness as the charming allurements of virtue. The delightful character of Doddridge wins more to godliness than the abhorred character of Thomas Paine deters from infidelity. Then the tender love, the warm glow of the bleeding heart, diffuses itself through every line it dictates, spreading a charm over the whole work, awakening an interest and exerting a power over the sympathies, which no stranger pen could impart. Who would have had the characters of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, or of Mary Van Lennep, sketched by any but a mother's hand? We are aware that this practice, if encouraged, in an age like ours, when everybody wields the pen, may greatly increase the number of published memoirs, and as the stream swells, much froth may float on the surface; but the evil will work its own cure; we would not, therefore, deprecate the accumulated results. For we regard biographical literature as of inestimable value. There is probably no class of literary productions which exerts a more deep or wide-spread influence over the reading public, including the learned and unlearned, than truthful delineations of personal character, displaying the features of the individual life, the palpitatings of the individual heart and mind. Here are the richest mines of thought, not only for the intellectual and moral philosopher, and for those who would touch the more obvious springs of human action, and move the masses either by popular writing or popular eloquence, but also for the earnest. cultivators of personal and domestic virtues. Here is nature

as it is; the mind laid bare, dissected, so that we can see the internal organism, the working of the little springs and levers which influence every-day life. We behold one in capacities and circumstances similar to ourselves; and what he has done or suffered, we feel that we can also do or bear.

We regard biography as an instructor of human nature, much superior to history. The latter exhibits little more than those bolder and more masculine features of mind, whose violent ragings heave up the mountain ridges and peaks which mark the progress of nations. We learn little more than these, manifested in diplomatic wiles, in fearless resolve and daring acts, when tracing the doings of legislatures and cabinets, or in perusing the bloody records of war. Indeed, from the lives of such men as Julius Cæsar, Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington, Burke, or Chatham, as they appear on the page of history, we should scarcely suspect there was such a place on the globe as "Sweet Home." That such are not the most important human qualities to be recorded for imitation, it would be useless to waste words in proving. The inner soul, the deeper throbbings of the heart yet remain undisclosed. The connubial, parental, filial, and fraternal affections, every day sympathies, reciprocal joys and griefs, also exalted aspirations and pure hopes, too sacred to be known save to the individual heart, which play like spicy breezes along both the lowly and elevated pathways of life, breathing into families and nations an imperceptible spirit of gladness, as the unseen influences of air, light, and dew mantle the fields of May with green and bloom, should also be spread before us. The first may be compared to those mighty streams which seam our country, whitened with sails and burdened with steamboats, hissing and dashing along, teeming with travelers, or loaded with the nation's products. The others may be likened to the ten thousand rills leaping down our hill-sides, and the countless springs bubbling up in our valleys, along our meadows and plains, furnishing drink for man and beast, moistening the earth's surface, and carpeting it with vital beauty. What a deficiency, were there no water save that which flows in the channels of commerce! What a barren, desolate scene would society present, were no other human affections cultivated than those which flash and glare on the pages of history.

In addition, then, to these last, we need the exhibition of the finer feelings, the delicate and graceful workings, the more spiritual breathings of the soul, which sooth and refine; an enforcement of the less noisy and yet more fragrant virtues which bloom by the fireside, giving a charm to the slightest incidents

of domestic intercourse, and lightening the drudgery of domestic toil. Not only the philosopher, but all who would understand the complex, yet regular but fitful movements of the heart, need to penetrate the interior chambers of the soul; must watch the playful humors, the mild and placid joys, the gushing sympathies, the touches of tenderness, the still yet passionate loves, which show man to be all but angel, and point to that noble destiny for which he was created, but from which he has fallen. Novels and tales which portray the interior of the mind are greatly admired, and denominated delineations of character, and pictures of life. But biographies are sketches of character and pictures of life, which though perhaps not so gorgeous or startling, are nevertheless more real; for they are not the crea tions of the fancy, but the daguerreotypes of the heart. Then, we repeat, let biographies be multiplied; not only of the great, but also of the obscure; if one has evinced any striking excellence, if he has suffered patiently, resisted oppression nobly, struggled with poverty and triumphed over difficulties manfully, or exemplified those affections which sweeten life, let the precious gold be coined and pass into general circulation. Especially let the memory of the righteous be thus embalmed, not only because they are stars in the upper firmament, whose serener beams may allure us thither, but because they are the best examples of those finer and more delicate feelings and affections, gracing life and manners, of which we have spoken. To exemplify a kindness, affection, sympathy, and, we may say, refinement, such as Christ evinced, we must be like Christ. To exemplify a spiritual elevation, a delicacy, purity, and tenderness, such as Angels evince, we must be like Angels. Religion not only purifies the affections which specially belong to her province, but gives grace and beauty to the whole soul. So long as lovers of romance will invent pictures of human life, let the lovers of truth present pictures of actual life, the living heart radiant with joy, throbbing with love, cheerful with hope, or braced to endure. They will inspire imitation and give energy to survivors still wrestling on the arena of life.

Besides, biographies furnish rich repositories for the future investigators of history, or for those who hereafter would paint the present age in its minuter lights and shades. What would we not give for the private lives, the every-day thoughts and affections, of Alexander and Themistocles; to enter the homes of Demosthenes and Cicero; sit around the fireside of Virgil and Lucretius; to see Cato and Seneca in their undress? What would we not give for the diaries of some of the mothers and daughters of the ancient great; for the memoirs of some of