tion from a bad servant, a silly governess, and a common acquaintance.

"In the Barring Out, the errors to which a high spirit and the love of party are apt to lead, have been made the subject of correction; and it is mischievous characters appear the most active and hoped that the common fault of making the most ingenious, has been as much as possible avoided, Unsuccessful cunning will not be admired, and cannot induce imitation.

"It has likewise been attempted in these Stories to provide antidotes against ill-humour, the epidemic rage for dissipation, and the fatal propensity to admire and imitate whatever the fashion of the moment may distinguish. Were young people, either in public schools or in private families, absolutely free from bad examples, it would not be advisable to introduce despicable and vicious characters in books intended for their improvement. should be early shocked with the representation of real life they must see vice, and it is best that they what they are to avoid. There is a great deal of difference between innocence and ignorance."

Now if Mrs. S. C. Hall has correctly represented Miss Edgeworth's theory, it must certainly be opposed to the practice of the sacred writers, who in all their narratives, from the murder of Abel by his brother Cain to the betrayal of Christ by Judas, are careful to represent vice in all its hideous deformity, as a lesson and a warning to mankind. We in our homely simplicity thought that the Bible was an authority on this point, but it appears we were mistaken the Evangelists are to be superseded, and Miss Edgeworth is to be the modern apostle. Mrs. Hall treats us to a new and mysterious kind of study, which she calls "Bible Readings;" what it may mean we are somewhat at a loss to determine, but we have a dim suspicion that "Bible Readings" must be the Bible treated after the fashion of "The Family Shakspere and "The Family Pope"-with all the improper passages omitted! If this style of abbreviation be what Mrs. Hall recommends, it certainly is a novel view of the Scriptures to set before the youth of England; and one, we should say, not very likely to be generally adopted in this free and enlightened country, seeing that children would learn at church what was denied to them at home. If, therefore, Miss Edgeworth ever entertained the sentiments attributed to her, she must have gone considerably out of her way not only to insult the sacred writers, but to stultify herself; but our readers will probably be surprised to hear that, so far from inculcating any such doctrine as that put into her mouth, Miss Edgeworth laboured nearly all her life to expound and illustrate the very reverse! "It grieves us" to say that Mrs. Hall, while professing to be a disciple of Miss Edgeworth, has absolutely not studied the lucid writings of that accomplished teacher! We have now before us an edition of Miss Edgeworth's "Tales for Children," published in 1845; prefixed to it is a preface, which from the date may reasonably be inferred to be the declaration of this gifted writer's confirmed and latest opinions. In this preface, our view of the question under discussion is stated in such emphatic terms, that we have much pleasure in laying the entire passage before our readers. It would, indeed, have been remarkable, if after devoting almost every one of her stories to the exposure of some human vice or defect, Miss Edgeworth should have held doctrines entirely subversive of her own practice: the following is this wise woman's own statement of the views and pur-livered :poses inculcated in her writings ::

But in

We fearlessly assert, that in no story of the same length by a respectable English author, is there represented such an extent of unmitigated, low-lived, vulgar villany, as in Miss Edgeworth's tale entitled The False Key, in which juvenile readers are made acquainted with the lowest and most degrading kind of vices-falsehood, drunkenness, theft, and burglary. Jack Sheppard is not more revolting in its details; and yet the Art-Journal recommends Miss Edgeworth's Stories, without qualification, as the very best in the language! Now the principle is either right or wrong;-if right, "Stratagems" must be commended; and if wrong, Miss Edgeworth must be condemned. Here are two horns of a dilemma, and the Art-Journal may impale itself upon whichever it chooses. The fact is, that Miss Edgeworth acted upon a principle well established and recognised, and which we have seen she defended in 1845-about three years before her death. The quotation we have given so clearly establishes our position, that in mercy we will add nothing more, but simply leave the public to decide whether it is the author or the reviewer of "Stratagems" who has committed an error in judgment.

Having now entirely disposed of the objections and mistakes of the Art-Journal, we proceed to place lance in rest, in fair tournament and honourable combat against that potent antagonist, the Athenæum, whose opinion is thus de

"The right feeling which pervades the book "In the story of Tarlton and Loveit are repre- (Stratagems) causes us to regret that its writer sented the danger and the folly of that weakness of should have made the mistake indicated by the mind, and easiness to be led, which too often pass title. To exhibit the deformity of vice is not the for good-nature; and in the story of the False Key best way of inculcating virtue particularly are pointed out some of the evils to which a well-where uncorrupted minds are concerned. The educated boy, when he first goes to service, is exposed, from the profligacy of his fellow-servants.

"In the Birth-day Present, in the History of Mademoiselle Panache, and in the character of Mrs. Theresa Tattle, the Parent's Assistant has pointed out the dangers which may arise in educa

method has the defect of presenting the poison for the sake of the antidote."

Now it appears to us that though this doctrine is expressed with epigrammatical skill, it is quite opposed to the inferences to be drawn from practical observation of every-day life. The

"Call all things by their names. Hell call thou
Hell;
Archangel call Archangel; and God, God,"*

The reviewer speaks of "uncorrupted minds." If he means minds unacquainted with the nature of vicious actions, then we labour under the disadvantage of not being aware of the exist

book under review was, we imagined, intended | We prefer to for " young people" somewhat advanced in juvenile literature, not for mere spelling infants; for children who know something of what is being done around them in the world, and who constantly hear their parents and friends speak The fact is that children are not so foolish and of the deeds good, bad, and indifferent, which ignorant as some critics imagine. We have are being practised in every civilized commu- known many children who, in proportion to their nity. The young folks who we hope will profit years, and without being subjected to any unby the story, are those who have already read in usual external corrupting influences, were as their school-books about "Richard murder-subtle and mischievous as any of our political ing the Princes in the Tower"-" The murder diplomatists, and capable of a degree of equivoof Darnley by his own wife"-" The atrocities cating slyness which would have enraptured the committed during the slave trade;" and other soul of a Jesuit or a Talleyrand. abominations too common and notorious to be concealed from children who read anything. Surely if children can bear being dosed with such horrors as these, the more diluted and ordinary form of wickedness given in "Strata-ence of such minds in any "reading children" gems"-especially with its wholesome tonic that ever came under our observation. We moral-cannot be too strong for their digestion. certainly do not know where they can be found Are we in this newspaper age to treat young out of-Arcadia; and as that is a locality which people as if they knew nothing of life, and we have not yet visited in this work-a-day nothing of the vices of mankind? We may be world, we must leave to the Art-Journal and the sure that if we do not put such knowledge be- Athenæum. the monopoly of facts and informa fore them in a proper light, they will soon find tion to be gathered in that exclusive and charmit out for themselves, and perhaps make use of ing region. We do not believe that there is in the "poison" without resorting to the "anti-this metropolis a clever child between ten and fifdote." How can a horror of vice be thoroughly teen years of age, who is not well versed in the inculcated without painting its wiles and conse- details of recent terrible murders; and the more quences in dark colours? Every one knows deep the crime the more widely diffused is the that the ancient Greeks excited in their children knowledge of its particulars. an aversion to drunkenness, by exposing their slaves in a state of drunken degradation; and yet the Greeks are not branded as deficient in wisdom or sound practical plans of plans of action,

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In the Holy Bible, the portions which most fascinate and benefit children, are the stories of "Esau and Jacob," and Joseph and his Brethren ;" and yet where can we find depicted a career of wanton depravity-consisting of semi-murder, semi-adultery, and entire falsehood-more calculated to shock the feelings of an "uncorrupted child"? To produce this effect was one of the main purposes of the narratives! If a Mosaic Athenæum had existed at the time these stories were written, it would probably, under the head of Our Library Table, have treated their patriarchal author to a very curt notice, praising his ingenuity and deprecating his judgment; and yet he happened to know thoroughly what he was about, and to understand what would benefit human nature!

To render vice unattractive, it is necessary to paint its consequences in bold relief, and with strong lights and shadows. Falsehood should not be handled with dandy delicacy, as though it were something too shocking to be mentioned to ears polite and uncerrupted. We discard the notion that wickedness is to be lightly

touched upon, as

though it were writ

In honeydew upon a lily leaf,
With quill of nightingale; like love-letters
From Oberon sent to the bright Titania."

Children naturally feel insulted when they are treated like fools incompetent to judge between right and wrong. To be reserved in giving them information, is to make them more sly and disagreeable in the pursuit of it; and children very soon discover when there is a want of completeness and candour in the mode of their tuition. To keep them in the dark is to leave them to self-enlightenment, with all its uncertainty and mischievous inquisitiveness. If, in teaching children, we were to adopt the views of the Art-Journal and Athenæum, we should be instrumental in rendering them deluding and deluded members of society. It is, however, fortunate for the entertainment and rectitude of our young friends, that the reviews we have named occasionally abandon their own doctrines, and, with the most complacent equanimity, applaud works written deliberately upon the principles which we are now defending, and which they have attacked.

"Stratagems" is intended to illustrate the following aphorism on its title-page, from Archbishop Tillotson:-"Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out: it is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention on the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good."

In her story the authoress has represented a wicked Indian girl full of plots and treacheries for the ruin of her mistress; but so far from

* FESTUS.

gaining the object of her desire, she suffers for her duplicity, and meets with a tragical end. The contrast to this bad character in the book, and the heroine of it, is a little English girl, who commits one fault, and deeply and sincerely repents of it. pains have been taken to show the beauty and Far greater happiness of Virtue, and the hallowing influence of Remorse, than to depict the mere “ deformity of Vice:" it must, however, be considered essential to the entertainment and instruction of all readers, that Vice and Virtue should be brought into the same antagonism in a story as in actual life. Imagine children set to read tales in which all the characters were virtuous! We can fancy "how very soon-how very tired they would be!" and how "stupid" they would consider their books and their preceptors. Children are seldom wrong in their opinions of a book written expressly for them: their young literary instincts rarely mislead them; and we will therefore crave permission to call in a jury of tiny people to decide the point in dispute. Bravi little friends! While we have you on our side, the philosophers and critics may be as captious and dogmatical as they please!

So far from the aim of this small work being "a mistake," we consider it to be the result of a deliberate intention, and of a principle carefully and studiously worked out that of "representing the poison and its antidote." It is professedly a discourse upon moral poisons, and the omission of one of a particularly virulent description would have been the mistake-something like the play of "Hamlet," with its chief character omitted" by express desire."

In future the Athenæum and the Art-Journal will stand pledged to the strange and novel doctrine, that any work intended for young people which depicts a course of depravity and its fatal and mischievous consequences, is necessarily wrong in principle. We shall see whether this judgment will be an established precedent in the Courts of Literature. If so, a great part of the Bible and half our literature for children must be disfranchised; but after all, no such disastrous consequences need be dreaded from the consistency of these journals, for, as we remarked before, they have already taken considerable pains to approve of books written upon the principles which they so recently condemned.

chastise the malefactor who kills the body-that can at best but live for a few years-is it not a far more urgent duty to punish those who teach a false doctrine that condemns its victims to eternal death? indifference such as prevailed in a certain school of Between this and the opposite extreme, of a moral tion on the assumption that nothing beyond the the last century-which grounded the rule of tolerasphere of the physical senses is certain enough to justify any censure or check on matters of opinion— how vast is the interval! In some intermediate space of that interval the point of reconciliation between vital convictions and just liberty of conscience still remains, we apprehend, to be authentically settled."

The obvious meaning of this passage is, that persecution for the sake of religious doctrine is still an open question, to solve which would involve the human mind in the most uncertain mysteries; and that it is not to be treated with that indignant contempt which in all ages bas animated the protests of the Apostles and our great Christian Reformers:that it is possible a course of homoeopathic doses, or slight galwith benefit to humanity, and that no recognized vanic shocks of persecution might be attended power has yet established "anything to the contrary notwithstanding."

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the establishment of Christianity eighteen hunWe are primitive enough to have heard of dred years ago, and we thought that its divine Founder, in his sermon on the Mount, had cution for all time. However much His precepts authentically settled" the question of persemay have been disregarded, we are quite content to leave the question to be decided by His authority and that of the Church of England. In the thirty-nine articles we find the following dictum ought not to enforce anything to be believed for respecting the power of the hurch. thetit necessity of salvation." *

is so utterly opposed to the idea of persecuting The common sense of the nineteenth century for conscience's sake, that, if the Athenæum entertains any doubt on the subject, let it attempt cution, and the people of England will soon let it to establish in any degree the practice of perseknow whether the theory is "authentically setof uttering such elementary truisms as those tled " or not. We are sorry that the necessity which have formed the substance of our remarks has been forced upon us. Now that we are tilting with the Athenæum, mous for "its steps in the right direction ;" we The Athenæum is fawe do not think it irrelevant to call the attention hope it will take no more strides in the wrong. of our readers to the following strange para-We have entered into this discussion with no graph, in its review of "The History of the Inquisition," the author of which is totally unknown to us. The Editor discusses the subject of religious persecution, and remarks:

"Again, any full discussion of the principles on which the pursuit of heresy is sustained or attacked, leads directly into some of the widest and most insoluble questions that can occupy the human mind. It has been argued, for instance, on the one hand, that the extirpation of doctrinal error, quoad sacra, is an inevitable consequence of any real belief in the truth of a given creed. If I am bound, it is said, to

feeling of personal retaliation, and we trust that all our remarks will be considered as the worthy companions of sincerity, good-nature, and honourable controversy. Nothing but a regard for truth and justice has prompted us to bring our rough quarter-staff into collision with the polished rapiers of our contemporaries.

N. C.

*Article xx. "Of the Authority of the Church."

ZENOB I A.

(From the Italian of Metastasio.)

"Voi che oscurar vorreste

Con maligni ragioni

La gloria femminil, ditemi voi

Se han virtù più sublime i nostri eroi."