of the municipal laws in 1808, not only the jurisdiction, but even the moral influence of the nobility ceased, a circumstance which carried with it immense injury to their pecuniary interests; their private property in the towns being lowered in value by decrees and resolutions apparently originating in public motives, but really springing from a spirit of retaliation and malice. To prevent injustice being done to the nobility, the revised law of 1831 protects their rights and influence in the small towns belonging to their domains, by requiring their sanction in all such municipal transactions as claim also the consent of government.

Every impartial reader will thus see the true tendency of the Prussian government. Indeed, there is neither fear nor need of a revolution in the Prussian dominions so long as there are millions of citizens, well drilled in the use of arms, to counterbalance a comparatively small standing army, taken from the midst of them, and continually returning home to them; so long as government has made it her first care and duty to promulgate knowledge and a spirit of thinking, even among the lowest of her subjects; in a word, so long as government seeks her own security in the moral and civil refinement of society, and the king follows out these principles in accordance with the exigencies of the age, and does not approve of the adage of the Jesuit-General Ricci: sint ut sunt, aut non sint!

Art. VIII. My Life. By an Ex-DISSENTER. London: James Fraser. 1841.

IN N almost every page this Ex-Dissenter furnishes convincing evidence of his personal ignorance of all the religious bodies he attempts to describe, and of the incorrectness of the information he has gathered from others. There is a great show of an intimate acquaintance with the principal leaders of the nonconformists of the last and present generation; and the writer would fain have it believed that the motives by which Dissenters are actuated, and the conduct they are pursuing, are fairly exhibited in what he calls his Life, by one who has been brought up in their communion, and who has at length abandoned their principles in disgust. His readers of the Episcopal Church may be misled by this gross and false assumption; they may imagine that they are perusing a veritable storyand that simple facts, such as the writer himself witnessed, are

brought forward for the purpose of exhibiting the Dissenters of the nineteenth century in their true character. But there is not a Dissenter of any denomination, whether minister or layman, who has taken up the book, and for a few moments dipped into its pages, that has not detected the imposture, and who is not able to convict the anonymous biographer of a mean and disingenuous attempt to make a miserably constructed fable the vehicle of the basest slander, not only against individuals, but against large communities of his fellow subjects and fellow christians;-if, indeed, in courtesy, we may venture to call him a christian, who, being an author by profession, enlists his pen on any side of any question that he may be hired to maintain, -who writes libels for pay, and secures himself from merited infamy by writing without a name.

A few of our readers may remember the Velvet Cushion, the controversy which it produced, and the number of editions it rapidly passed through. Its reverend author was well known. His object in writing this historical fiction he openly avowed; the beauty of the story and the unaffected, unexaggerated piety with which it was invested, gained easy credence to its statements, and as if by magic, multitudes of thoughtless and romantic people were captivated into the persuasion that Charles the First was a martyr, and the Church of England the only true church upon earth. One of the writers who replied to the Velvet Cushion, affixed to it the appropriate name of Legend; and happily defined a legend to be a story invented and told for the benefit of the Church.' 'Your legend,' he proceeded to observe,' was in great request in the days of popery;' and then, after a few caustic remarks, he thus exposes the author and the object of the Velvet Cushion. 'It was reserved as a novelty of the nineteenth century, for a clergyman of the 'Church of England to construct a tale which goes over the 'ground of history, from the last age of popery to the present day, misstating and discoloring almost all its facts, with the 'certain effect of keeping alive intolerance against the Catholics ' and of exposing to derision and obloquy the various classes of 'modern Dissenters. This tale I call a legend, for its author expressly avows that he wrote it in the character of an 'open and ardent champion of the Establishment,' which he deno'minates his mother.'

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That Fraser, and those with whom he is associated in obtaining, at any price, atrocious libels against the Dissenters, and in support of the Established Church, had this legend in view when the tempting thought of My Life, by an 'Ex-Dissenter' offered itself to their cupidity and intolerance, is evident from a sentence in an editorial puff of the work which was published in the Globe of February 17th. Since

the Velvet Cushion' of the Vicar of Harrow, no book has appeared of this class of publications, so likely to attract attention and lead to controversy, as 'My Life;' and we 'look to its appearance with much interest, not to say anxiety.' But the Vicar of Harrow was not of their council,-nor do we believe that there is a clergyman, who is anything better than a mere hireling scribe, who would lend himself to such a deception as that attempted to be imposed upon the public by this Ex-Dissenter. Mr. Cunningham put forth his fiction for just so much as it was worth, and no reader was misled, except by the ingenious sophistries of the writer, derived from the distorted facts and fables he had strangely blended in the narrative. But the narrative itself claimed to be no more than a modern novel, while its moral and religious purpose was not concealed; it was not possible to misapprehend the nature of the tale. When, however, great and grave questions are to be discussed, we think the combatants should take their ground in the province of reason, and at the furthest distance from the airy regions of fiction and romance; we did not at the time approve of the unfair species of warfare resorted to by the Vicar of Harrow, when as the champion of the Church he substituted fiction for fact, and imagination for argument. But had he proceeded to impersonate a lie, had he ventured to publish an autobiography which was the pure invention of his brain, and to have palmed it upon the world as his own proper history, and a faithful narrative of the changes which time and circumstances had produced in his mind and principles, breathing a remorseless and malignant rancor against his so-called former associates and fellow-worshippers, and affecting the phrases and feelings of a devotion beyond even the rapturous effusions of the seraphic doctors of the Romish church ;-had the Velvet Cushion been marked by these characters of atheistic impiety, its author would have been execrated, and the work itself would have fallen into immediate and deserved contempt; that is, both would have experienced the fate of My Life, by 'an Ex-Dissenter.' There is a trickery practised by this literary hack about town, which is soon seen through by the attentive and unprejudiced reader, and which, when it is discovered, excites the most unqualified disgust; for instance, when the author appears to be quoting from some document or extant work of the Dissenters-though occupying several pages in the form of resolutions said to have passed at a public meeting, the whole turns out to be a mere fabrication invented for the purpose of detraction and falsehood.

To us, however, the most nauseous portions of the work are those where the writer endeavors to imitate the devotional and pathetic style of the Velvet Cushion. In the scene which is

intended to be very effective, the interview between the dying rector, Mr. Seymour, and Mr. Rawston, the dissenting hero of the story, we did not expect to be startled with a palpable plagarism from a dissenting work, namely, a Review of the Life of Rowland Hill, in Ward's Miscellany. It is a passage which the writer of the review took down from the lips of Mr. Hill as he delivered it in the desk at Surrey Chapel many years since, when he accidentally dropped in to hear him on a Friday morning. Thus it is that truth may be made to lend her voice to the propagation of falsehood. Till we read this, we had some idea that Mr. Seymour and Mr. Rawston were real persons, and that the Ex-Dissenter might have faithfully portrayed a real

scene.

'Mr. Rawston,' continued the excellent Mr. Seymour, who appeared less oppressed, and rose in his bed as he spoke, 'a mere professor of religion is like a butterfly-all surface; if the 'breath of heaven breathe upon it, it is driven hither and 'thither. But the christian is like the dove, a strong-pinioned bird; she may meet the thunder-storm in her course, but she 'will tack about and tack about, and give even the winds to 'know that she has a nest-a home; that her heart is there, ' and that she must gain it.' This is verbatim from Mr. Hill. The Ex-Dissenter has altered it for the worse. That is, he has added a few unnecessary words. Perhaps he extracted the passage in haste, and was afraid of being detected in the felonious act.

One capital artifice of this disingenuous writer is, to describe dissent as associated with all that is plebeian, coarse, and vulgar, while the Church is the church of the aristocracy, the refined, the wealthy, and the great. This may be all true, but as an argument, considering the nature of christianity, it betrays on the part of its author more zeal than knowledge-more worldliness than piety. Besides, it is a two-edged sword, which the Dissenter can use with much greater effect than the Churchman. As the Ex-Dissenter has given his account of the circumstances connected with the ordination of a Dissenting pastor, we have no objection to place in juxta-position with it the proceedings at the consecration of Bishop Howley, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, to the see of London.

'The true dissenting placard' is a simple announcement, which, with the exception of the fictitious names, contains nothing ludicrous, and nothing more than the occasion seemed to require. We leave our readers to form their own opinion of the latter, which was published in all the newspapers of the day.

'On Thursday next, June 14, THE REV. WILLIAM HAWTHORNE will be ordained

to the office of Pastor of the INDEPENDENT CHURCH AND CONGREGATION

assembling at the

INDEPENDENT CHAPEL AT
When

The Rev. MR. JUGG, of Wimborne, will ask the usual
Questions and give the Charge,

The Rev. MR. SNIBB, of London, will offer
up the Ordination Prayer,

The Rev. MR. TWIGG, of Salisbury, will preach
to the Church; and many other
Ministers will be present to

assist in laying on hands;
and in the Evening,

The Rev. DR. BOLD, of Liverpool, will

Preach to the Church and Congregation.

Service to begin in the Morning at eleven, and in the Evening at half past six.

N.B. There will be an excellent ordinary at the 'GOLDEN EAGLE,' at one o'clock, and a Tea Party in the Vestry and Chapel Ground at five o'clock. Tickets to the Dinner, three shillings and sixpence, and to the Tea, eighteen pence, or four shillings and sixpence to both.'

'There is something,' says the author of 'THE Book of THE DENOMINATIONS,' 'very affecting in the following account of 'the consecration of the Bishop of London, Dr. Howley, now Archbishop of Canterbury, Oct. 3, 1813, when viewed in connexion with the awful communication of the Holy Spirit, which 'was at that time, and under those circumstances, vouchsafed ' to him.'

Yesterday Dr. Howley was consecrated Bishop of London, at Lambeth Palace, by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her majesty having signified her intention of being present at the ceremony, arrived at the Palace at twelve o'clock, accompanied by the Princesses Augusta and Mary. They were received at the entrance of the Grand Hall by his Grace and Mrs. Manners Sutton, who conducted them through the grand chamber and grand lobby to the principal dining room, where they remained a short time, and proceeded through an elegant suite of apartments to the gallery over the Chapel, which was fitted up in a very elegant manner for the occasion. The procession moved from the guard-chamber, a little before one o'clock, to the Chapel, in the following order,

Porters with staves,

Livery servants of Doctors and Bishops, two and two,
Archbishop's livery servants, two and two,

Servants of Doctors and Bishops out of livery, two and two,