education, as effected by means of schools? Of course no wise or religious man in his senses could dispute the truth, that men are placed upon earth for the purpose of being educated. This is not the point. It is not education, in the abstract, that can be, or ever is, objected to-all must allow, that beings born in sin, and heirs of corruption, stand in need, as they grow up, of guidance and instruction, to teach them to flee from evil, and to follow after that which is good. The popular delusion upon the subject of education, which reigns far and wide in this generation, seems to lie in the matter of practice. It appears to be, the taking for granted that a vast mechanism of school instruction, from which every affectionate feeling and finer sentiment is necessarily absent, which knows absolutely nothing of any discipline for the conscience, and can, at the best, give birth only to marvellous specimens of precocious cleverness-" scholards," as they are admiringly called by their parents-is, necessarily, that precise mode of Christian training which is good for the body and the soul, and which alone is worthy of the name of Christian education. The error, if an error, and we commend these sentiments of his Prussian Majesty especially to the notice of the ruling authorities of the National Society in this country, is a grave practical error, the consequences of which cannot be otherwise than widely felt, whether for good or for evil it will not be expected that we should pronounce. This, however, we will venture to say, that no wise Christian, fearing God, ought to be easy in mind, if he has charged himself with the responsibility of deciding that the National School System is, as a practical instrument, the true way to provide that Christian education, which none but infidels and scoffers will deny that the children of Christian parents stand in need of. We should be the last persons to quarrel with the judgment of any person who, after maturely considering the matter, should decide in favour of the National School System; but, at the same time, we cannot forbear to throw out the inquiry, which those concerned will answer for themselves, Has this practical question been ever examined with a degree of care bearing any kind of proportion to the precious interests confided to the tender mercies. of the system? Rather, has it ever had a thought bestowed upon it as a point open to rational doubt? Christian education is needed.-Who doubts this? But where is the practical sequence, that National Systems supply Christian education, or anything like it? Yet THIS it is, which is taken for granted, and that without any examination at all. Now, maugre the extraordinary perfection to which national education has been carried in Prussia, this very monarch bears testimony:

"In every monthly report from the provinces of the monarchy, I am forced to read, to my great sorrow, that the jails are more and more crowded. If I see not the fruit of national education of the people, then can I place no confidence therein."-Pp. 85, 86.

Under ordinary circumstances, such a testimony would shake the faith of most men, even in their most favourite schemes. But whether the fascinations of the National System will, notwithstanding, have power to overrule all doubts and misgivings in the minds of its votaries and upholders, remains to be

seen.

The King's words again are certainly prophetic: "The greatest danger of our times may be looked for in the simultaneous advance of intelligence and pauperism;" whether they may be permitted to operate as a warning in this country, God's good providence can alone determine.

It is time, however, that we bring these extracts to a close. We feel that no apology will be required for their length; they carry their own commendation, as the sentiments of a deeply thoughtful and religious Christian, and the practical judgment of one who, in an exalted station and during an eventful life, earned a degree of experience which falls to the lot of extremely few.

His great work, the union of the Lutheran and Calvinistic communions, under the assumed title of the Evangelical Church of Prussia, it appears, according to Dr. Eylert's narrative, was not brought about without considerable opposition. The measure, to all appearance, originated in the strong sense that the king entertained of the evils of religious division, which led him to attempt to apply what he judged would be a remedy. Of the nature of this royal and fatherly care for the religious well-being of his people, we shall take the earliest opportunity of giving our readers the best information we have been able to obtain, and propose very shortly to present them with an abstract of the Liturgy, of which his Majesty himself was the chief compilerthis being the document that forms the basis of that ecclesiastical something, whatever it may be, which is now styled the Evangelical Church of Prussia."

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What the father joined and put together, partly by military compulsion, partly by the force of his own royal authority, joined to the influence justly due to his well-known character for piety, and partly by the pressure of a powerful executive government, it is in no way surprising that the son should desire further to strengthen, by an alliance, and intercommunion if possible, with the English Church. The true character of the proposed union, to which the mission of Bishop Alexander is designed to minister, will appear more clearly when the Prussian Liturgy comes under consideration in its details. In the mean time, we feel sure that no thoughtful Christian can feel otherwise than the warmest sympathy for a monarch so circumstanced as the late King of Prussia, and will be disposed to accept, with becoming thankfulness, the striking testimony which his conduct bears to the value of so precious a blessing as Unity of Faith and Worship. That so religious and

well-intentioned a ruler should have failed to arrive at the truth that unity of faith, as being the gift of God, and uniformity of worship, as being an outward symbol expressive of the inward communion of the saints of God, and their peculiar privilege, is incapable of being bestowed by princes, will be lamented as the natural result of the unhappy circumstance of his position. However deeply he felt the misery and wretchedness of the state of religious division that prevailed in his dominions, he failed to discern that these are evils to which it is beyond the power of kings to administer a remedy. The firm and determined ruler, it is true, can certainly, as he has done, lay his subjects under the necessity of observing an external uniformity in their worship of God, and so far succeed in bringing about an outward appearance, not very dissimilar from that external uniformity which is the legitimate spontaneous expression of the living unity of heart and soul that belongs to the true communion of the saints. But God alone can so renew the heart of man, as to create within it those feelings which are the living soul of an external uniformity. And if it shall further appear, that a moral training in the bosom of the Catholic Church, in subjection to the authority of God as vested in the Bishops and other officers and pastors of the Church, is, under God, the only means which can nourish and foster this living soul of Christian unity in the bosom of the people; it may in the same degree be augured, that the forced outward combination of elements so diametrically at variance with each other as the so-called Evangelical Church of Prussia now contains, is destined, at no very distant day, to give manifest proof, that though man may devise and be governed in his devices by the deepest and most sacred motives, yet that the counsel of the Lord, and that only, shall stand. In the mean time, we cannot close this part of our subject without expressing our warmest gratitude to Mr. Hope, for having been foremost to show, beyond the reach of doubt, that such acts of intercommunion as Bishop Alexander has been commissioned to enter into, are canonically impossible. Doubtless it is a scandal that a Bishop of the Church should set aside the obligations to which he is bound by the most solemn vows, and still more a scandal that there should be a semblance of authority directing him so to do. Deep ought to be the sorrow of all who love the Church and her hierarchy, that such things should be; yet it will, at the same time, not be forgotten that such sorrow is for the sad position in which distinguished individuals are thereby placed. The Church herself is incapable of being permanently compromised by acts, the responsibility of which belongs exclusively to the individuals concerned in them, and in which she is precluded, by circumstances, from taking any formal legislative share.

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The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, as connected with the Fine Arts. By SIR CHARLES BELL, K.H. Third Edition, enlarged. London: Murray. 1844. Pp. 265.

THESE Essays were first published in the year 1806, when the author had left Edinburgh, and fixed his residence in London. A second edition appeared in 1824; but the author, as we learn from a prefatory notice by his brother, the late Professor Bell, resisted every call for a new impression, until he should have had an opportunity of verifying in Italy the principles of criticism in art, by the study of the works of the great masters in painting and sculpture. With this object in view, he visited the continent in 1840; and on his return recomposed the whole work for a new edition, introducing considerable additional material from his journal. But before he could give the work its final revision, death arrested his labours; and he expired at Hallow Park, Worcestershire, April 29, 1842.

"Before Sir Charles Bell's time," observes his brother, "the nerves, which pervade every the minutest part of our frame, seemed, in the studies of anatomists, a mass of inextricable confusion and a subject of hopeless obscurity; but he believed that in the works of the Creator there is nothing imperfect or unnecessarily complex, and that the solution of this apparent confusion was not beyond the reach of human inquiry. In tracing the causes of movements in the countenance, and in the frame of the body, under the influence of passion or emotion, he engaged in a very careful inquiry into the origin, course, and destination of the nerves; and subsequent investigations led him to those fundamental truths, hitherto unperceived, by which he, and those who have followed in his course, have revealed to the medical world the beautiful simplicity of this part of the animal economy. To the physiologist it will be particularly interesting to trace in this work the steps by which the author was led to the comprehension of that most intricate portion of the nervous system, the class of nerves which he has named 'respiratory;' a subject so difficult, that it was long before his views were acknowledged by the medical profession.”—P. v.

Sir Charles Bell's design in these Essays, as announced by himself in the introductory one, "On Expression," is to direct attention to the characteristic forms of man and brutes by an inquiry into the natural functions, with a view to comprehend the rationale of those changes in the countenance and figure which are indicative of passion. He thus brings into close juxtaposition, and establishes intimate relations between, subjects which might appear to have little in common, and to be naturally incapable of contracting any alliance; namely, Anatomy and the Fine Arts. "I am not without hope," he observes, "that a new impulse may be given to the cultivation of the Fine Arts, by explaining their relation to the natural history of man and animals, and by showing how a knowledge of outward form, and the accuracy of drawing which is a consequence of it, are related to the interior structure and functions." And he further

points out the intimacy of relationship between these two subjects, when he says, "Anatomy, in its relation to the arts of design, is, in truth, the grammar of that language in which they address us."

In the Introduction, which is somewhat miscellaneous in its topics, Sir Charles Bell replies to the opinion of Winckelman, that genius for the fine arts is mainly determined by climate; as though the inhabitants of Greece were indebted to their climate for the perfection of form and love of beauty.

"It is strange," he says, "that Winckelman should give so much to the influence of climate, seeing that where the olive still ripens, in the long summer of Greece, there exists not a vestige of those virtues which were the admiration of the world; and centuries have passed without a poet or a philosopher appearing in the country of Homer and Plato."-P. 5.

Institutions, he observes further on, much more than climate, influence the faculties of man; and he concludes, that small states are more favourable to intellectual development and the cultivation of taste, than the great kingdoms of modern Europe, with the more than barbaric magnificence and riches of their courts.

Excellence in the Fine Arts must now be attained under conditions different to those under which the ancients worked.

"If the arts of design bear no relation to that which has the greatest influence on mankind; if they stand related neither to religion, nor to the records of history, nor to the progress of empire, they must be ever, as a dead language, associated with ancient times; and with us, nothing more than a handmaid to domestic ornament and individual refinement and enjoyment."P. 10.

Religion is the highest inspiration of art; and the anthropomorphism of ancient Greece must yield the palm to the sublime and tender incarnations of Christianity.

"What we see in the churches of Italy, and almost every church, is the representation of innocence and tenderness in the Madonna and Child, and in the young St. John. Contrasted with the truth, and beauty, and innocence of the Virgin, there is the mature beauty and abandonment of the Magdalen. In the dead Christ, in the swooning of the mother of the Saviour, and in the Marys, there is the utmost scope for the genius of the painter. We see there, also, the grave character of mature years in the Prophets and Evangelists, and the grandeur of expression in Moses. In short, we have the whole range of human character and expression, from the divine loveliness and purity of the Infant Saviour, of angels and saints, to the strength, fierceness, and brutality of the executioners. There, also, we may see the effort made, the greatest of all in imitation of the ancients, to infuse divinity into the human beauty of that Countenance, which, though not without feeling, was superior to passion, and in which benevolence was to be represented unclouded by human infirmity. Thus did religion, at a later period, tend to restore what it had almost destroyed on the overthrow of Pagan idolatry."—P. 13.

Sir Charles Bell's first Essay treats of beauty as residing in the permanent form of the head and face, in contradistinction to expression. Beauty, in the strict sense and primary use of the