When it is said, in one of the letters, that the Marquise de Nadaillac was celebrated by the Abbé Maury, down comes the editor upon us with the pedigree and performances of le susdit Abbé, in a note which fills a quarto page. So, because it is said that the Prince de Ligne had a handsome country-house; presto, forth comes another note of half a page, to tell us how the said prince lived, and how he was buried. In pursuance of this plan, we have, in detail, the biographies of Count O'Donnell, Count Razoumofski, Professor Wyttenbach, Mr. Fellenberg, Christo pher Gottlob Heyne, General Suvarrow, Angelica Kauffman, General Pichegru, &c. together with selections from the obituary of a respectable miscellany;' an elegant circumlocution, which is equalled only by that in which we are admonished not to confound the consular personage at Teno with Mr. Israel Tarragano, the English consul of the Dardanelles.' The author's remark, that 'the country-houses about Moscow are delightful,' gives occasion to his brother to inform us that the largest shoots of asparagus are reared there in winter, in hot-beds.'-p. 155. One is at a loss to discover what connexion there is between a club-house at Stockholm, and the custom of locking the pew-doors in churches; but so it is. After having observed that this subscription-house is, in a manner, necessary, because there are no taverns in Stockholm,' he proceeds :- By the by, (now you talk of a gun,) Dr. Thomson, in his account of the churches at Stockholm,' (what an odd association!) has this remark ;-the pews are all locked, and the Swedes never ask you into any of them; so that if you go into a church you may stand in the passage.' The latter part of the sentence reminds the editor so strongly of what he has often witnessed in the churches of England, that he cannot but think it a fortunate discovery to find it ascertained, on respectable authority, that this antichristian custom, whether it be a fragment of the feodal edifice, or a corner of the temple of aristocracy, in this most liberal and enlightened age, is not originally British, but derived and appropriated from the frozen regions'! We think that, by all means, the sextons and vergers of the fashionable churches in the metropolis should forthwith be informed that the custom of taking a shilling for admission into a pew, is an antichristian fragment of the feodal edifice,-or, to say the least, a corner of the temple of aristocracy: they would no doubt receive the hint with thankfulness, and reform their practice. Geography also comes in for its share of the commentary. One of the letters being dated from Pharsalia, the editor informs us that this is the plain near Pharsalus. See Dio. Cass. Plut. in Pomp. et Caes. Lucan, &c. Appian. Civ. Sueton. in Caes.' 'A griesly band! Nor is there any lack of orthographical and ety mological remarks, of which one instance may suffice. An ingenious friend suggests that the Comte de Potocki's name should be written Potocki, and pronounced Potozki; the ski of the Polish answering to the us or ensis of the Latins. In female names, however, "ski mutatur in ska ;" so that it is Mr. Potozki, Mrs. Potozka.' p. 54. If this be not precious fooling, we know not where to look for it. In a word, we are seriously displeased with the editor for having swelled the volume to an unnecessary bulk, by annotations for the most part as useless as they are cumbersome; which are never original, and frequently impertinent, hanging like a dead weight upon the elegant and interesting correspondence of his brother. The letters themselves want nothing to set them off. They discuss a variety of topics, if not with much depth of thought, or purity of style, yet in a pleasing, unaffected, and manly manner; and convey a higher eulogium upon the acquirements and principles of their writer, than the laboured and pedantic commentary of the editor. We are, however, willing to attribute his misplaced ostentation of learning to an ill-judged zeal for his brother's reputation, and a natural anxiety to present these Remains to the public in the form which he judged to be most complete. In publishing them at all, he has certainly done an act of justice to the character of a distinguished scholar, by exhibiting a lively picture of his superior mind and of his warm and excellent heart. **We were about to enter upon the Appendix,' which contains a variety of documents relative to the loss of the journals and drawings to which we alluded in a former page; when the appearance of some publications on the subject by Lord Elgin and Dr. Hunt determined us to devote a separate Article to the consideration of this much agitated affair. ART. XII. 1. The Life of Philip Melancthon, comprising an Account of the most important Transactions of the Reformation, By F. A. Cox, A. M. of Hackney. 8vo. pp. 587. London; Gale and Co. 1815. 1 2. The Life of the Right Rev. Father in God, Jeremy Taylor, D. D. Chaplain in ordinary to King Charles the First, and Lord Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, By the Rev, Henry Kaye Bonney, M. A. of Christ's College, Cambridge, Prebendary of Lincoln; Rector of King's Cliffe in the county of Northampton, &c. &c. 8vo. pp. 381. London: Cadell and Davies. 1815. THIS HIS is an age of biography, good and bad, either of inconsiderable men lately deceased, and to serve the purposes of a party, or, as in the present instance, of great men long since removed to a better state, whose conduct and tempers may be properly pro posed posed as a lesson and a reproof to our own times. If the portraits now before us are not, in point of execution, far above mediocrity, they are, however, faithful copies and striking likenesses of their respective originals. Never, perhaps, was there an era in the church of England when the study of such examples would have operated more beneficially than at present; rent asunder as it is by two great contending parties, the breach daily widening, animosities daily inflamed, and charity almost extinguished by controversial rancour. In this melancholy state of an establishment, which, besides the great duty of brotherly love, has many reasons arising out of prudence and policy to keep her at unity within herself, we earnestly recommend the attentive perusal of these two volumes. In them the reader will be brought to the acquaintance of two divines who flourished in times far more turbulent than our own; men of the clearest understandings, the sweetest tempers, the most profound erudition, the greatest integrity, slaves to no party, bigots to no system of doctrines, yet, for these very reasons, disquieted in their lives, dragged into controversy against their very natures, assailed by the malice of every party in its turn, and indebted, excepting that most inconsiderable of all parties, the wise and good, to the calmer estimate of posterity for applause, or even for justice. Such is the tax which, in the rage of religious controversy, will ever be levied upon genius and virtue of the highest order, and such the legacy which their possessors have to bequeath to wiser and more peaceful times. The reason of this hard fate, which is almost universal, must be sought for in human nature, and can only be exposed by an examination of some of its modes. Religious controversy has for its object propositions which can only be proved by moral evidence-many of them expansions of simple principles, and not always depending, by necessary consequence, upon each other. Now the effect of such systems on different tempers and understandings will respectively be dogmatism and diffidence, the latter of which dispositions is not qualified to fit out the leaders, or even the followers, of a party. Dogmatism, on the contrary, is equally adapted to the circumstances of both. This quality sometimes arises out of a native stubbornness of temper, and sometimes out of mere mediocrity of intellect. Men naturally set a high value on every thing which has cost them dear; and thus pertinacious students of slow understandings become the greatest of all dogmatists: though a temper impetuous at once and pertinacious is sometimes united to an understanding of the highest order. This union took place in Luther, in Knox, and in Calvin. Fortified by flattery, impatient of contradiction, or even of discussion, seeing far into a subject, and persuaded that they see much farther, such men naturally assume a station at the head of respective hosts; while their toiling and implicit followers wrangle and write, tire synods synods and spin out folios, in perfect assurance not only that their own tenets are true, but that every shade of distinction in the expositions of others is heretical and damnable. Such is the odium theologicum, the parent of persecution. But should it so fall out in the counsels of Providence that a man appear in the ranks like Melancthon or Taylor, while he incurs the superior hatred of his adversaries by the certainty of the strokes and the depth of the wounds which he inflicts, his independence and reserve, his distinctions and admonitions are ill received by the dulness or bigotry of his friends. And if, to a clear and penetrating intellect, be superadded a calm temper, a certain contempt of dulness, more especially of heated dulness, together with a quick sense of the ridiculous, neither the love nor the discernment of truth will atone for the possession of those inconvenient and dreaded qualifications. For the same qualities, Bossuet, whose dogmatism was that of the heart, not of the head, called Melancthon a Pyrrhonist; and it was the torment of that admirable man through life to suffer almost in equal proportions from the bigotry of friends and enemies. Yet it is that pyrrhonism, falsely so called, in other words diffidence and modesty, which has saved the christian world from becoming universally, what in too large a measure it has been, a scene of bloodshed. Nothing but want of power prevents the dogmatist from being a persecutor. He is certainly right his antagonist as certainly wrong truth is to be supported, wholesome severities to be exercised-power passes over to the opposite party-persecution is retorted, and thus universal submission, the effect of power, and not of truth, can alone ensure peace to the world. The authority of the church of Rome is grounded on no other principle—that of Calvin wants only the same facilities to take the same course to universal dominion, for calvinism and popery are alike dogmatical. Meanwhile it might occur to fair tempers, or to good understandings, that moral truth is incapable of that certainty which belongs to mathematical demonstration-that from the incurable diversity of human opinion, revealed truths themselves are capable, as they appear to different minds, of being very differently apprehended. We are not now speaking to persons who suppose themselves to have received a specific revelation of divine truth-they are in a state far above the influence of human reason: but it might be supposed of those who are bigoted without fanaticism, that they would sometimes inquire, what peculiar faculty of discovery belonged to themselves, or what guarantee they possessed for the exclusive property of truth, which appertained not to other men of equal understanding, equal industry, and equal honesty. It is fairly supposable (experience warrants the supposition) that five men, equally gifted in all these ways, may understand and attach as many different senses to the same proposition. Yet the truth, if it is found by either, can can remain only with one. Where is the evidence to ascertain, where is the authority to decide the point? In this case it cannot be fatal to mistake-it must be criminal to condemn. This consideration does not tend to pyrrhonism, but to peace; it applies as much to the heart as to the head; it leaves a sufficient degree of assurance to act upon, (for we often act on very low moral probabilities,) nay to act upon with vigour and decision; but it subdues first the dogmatizing, and next the persecuting spirit. One, for example, may see in Holy Scripture the doctrine of primitive epis copacy, with sufficient evidence to impose on himself an obligation of acting accordingly, but not with evidence to judge, much less to persuade his brother who cannot perceive the same. To illustrate these remarks, and to prevent the misapplication of our principle, we may compare the characters of two men equally acute, sagacious and good-tempered, equally exposed in their turns to calumuy and detraction,—we mean Erasmus and Melancthon. Perhaps both of these great men saw with equal clearness the corruptions of the church of Rome, both perhaps felt with equal force the coarseness, the rude language and the impetuosity of the first reformers. Both were men of taste and elegance, as well as loyers of peacebut Melancthon was an hero, and Erasmus a coward. Erasmus would sacrifice truth itself for ease and personal safety. Melancthon, with all his diffidence, had fixed a limit to concession, which neither terrors nor sufferings would allow him to pass. No convictions of conscience-no sense of the dignity which ever accompanies a bold avowal of unpalatable truths-could induce Erasmus to part with the applause of the great, and the society of the accomplished. Melancthon made one of the noblest sacrifices, that of taste and elegant literature, to a cause which he embraced with sincerity, but not with bigotry; and the man whom Leo, and Sa dolet, and Bembo would have received with open arms, who might have reposed in the sunshine of Italy, and enjoyed all the delights of wealth and learned ease, was content to associate himself in the perilous profession of reviving truth with a set of German profes→ sors, and to teach the unsophisticated truths of the Gospel for a poor stipend to a crowd of German boys. So far then is the temper which bigotry slanders under the name of pyrrhonism from leading to a vacillating conduct, or to dereliction of principle. It sees distinctly, reasons calmly, decides firmly-but judges impartially and charitably. While we are on the subject of pyrrhonism imputed to Melancthon, it is difficult to avoid animadverting on the abusive application of the principle which has been made by Mr. Bayle in his able and penetrating analysis of the character of this great man. "Let |