themselves, heart-broken and humbled, into the arms of religion, abandoning all their worldly wealth, for sackcloth, prayer, and mystic raptures? Are there not, in fact, a thousand circumstances in which the reaction of the passions produce the most extraordinary transformations, and the most tragical events, in the lives of both men and women? But you are ignorant of the immense resources produced by partial or mutual annihilation, which, playing on the human passions, if skilfully managed, either by combining, opposing, subduing, or exciting them, more especially when, perhaps, thanks to a powerful auxiliary, those passions become redoubled in their ardour and in their violence.'

Such is the bill of fare of the forthcoming volumes; which, we sincerely hope, we shall not be under the necessity of perusing.

All our readers will naturally say, after reading this faithful analysis of the work, 'Hitherto we have seen nothing but the Jesuits; where is the Wandering Jew, who gives its title to the work?" We cannot answer the question, except by a supposition, a surmise; for the Wandering Jew appears but once in his real character, without acting, and in the few events in which, we imagine, he acts a part, it is under a sort of incognito. But then we find, not only a wandering Jew, but also a wandering Jewess; not, indeed, pursuing together, so as to alleviate their mutual fatigues and hardships, their endless journey; but always marching in opposite directions, without ever meeting; and only once casting a glance at one another, at the beginning of the work, in the Prologue,' from which we now give some extracts, to make our readers acquainted with the descriptive and imaginative genius of our author.

'The polar sea surrounds with a circle of eternal ice the inhospitable shores of Siberia and North America; the extreme limits of Asia and America are separated by Behring Straits. September is now at its close; and the shortening gloomy days are succeeded by long stormy nights. The dark blue sky, intersected by lines of violet, is hardly illumined by the sun, whose disk level with the horizon feebly shines on the dazzling gleam of the snow, which extends over immense steppes. To the westward, this inhospitable desert is bounded by a rocky coast, of rugged and gigantic description; at the foot of which lies the frozen ocean. ... No human being seems able to explore the solitude of these regions of frosts and tempests, famine and death;-yet strange, the snow which constantly covers the deserts at the extremities of the two continents, is marked by footsteps of human beings! On the American shore, the marks of footsteps, small and light, clearly bespeak the traces of a woman, who has bent her course towards the rocks just described as overlooking the snowy steppes of Siberia, while on the Asiatic side, the same impression, but larger and deeper, betrays the heavy march

of a man, who has also directed his journey towards the Straits. One would suppose that this man and woman, thus arriving from opposite quarters, at the extreme points of the two continents, had a hope of gaining a glance at one another, across the narrow sea which separates them.'

Eugene Sue is too good-natured to disappoint them, though he seems not to know them; and repeatedly asks, who they are? He immediately produces an aurora borealis, much superior to any that ever was seen; and at the same time, in spite of the Alpine mountains of ice, he creates a mirage, which has the desired effect. On the Siberian cape, a man, on his knees, was extending his arms towards America, with an expression of deep despair; while, on the American promontory, a young and beautiful woman replied to the despondent attitude of the man, by pointing to heaven.' Then, again, our author asks, Whence came, and who are these two creatures? and he closes his prologue, discarding them altogether, until in the epilogue, at the end of the first volume, the man alone is re-introduced in the character of Wandering Jew, to make a speech.

We greatly suspect that, though he is not mentioned, it is the same personage who seeks, all over the world, the members of Rennepont family, and delivers them their medals;—who, when General Simon, being ordered, at the battle of Waterloo, to carry a battery with his cuirassiers, just when the artilleryman was applying the match to a cannon, in front of which stood the general, placed himself at the mouth of the cannon, and after the discharge was not a bit the worse for it ;-who, having been strangled and buried by the Thugs, in India, some time afterwards crosses the path of his murderers, to their utter consternation;-who, in fine, is the invisible promoter of the supernatural incidents crowded in the work. As to the woman, the wandering Jewess, there is little doubt that she is the identical beautiful lady who brought the codicil at the meeting in the house, in Francis Street.

It is time to conclude our observation; and we cannot dismiss the work without expressing our concern at seeing, every day, advertised in the newspapers, translations, not only of this insane publication, but also of the other works of the same author,―works of an equally, and perhaps still more objectionable character. We were in hope that the morbid appetites of our neighbours would not find any one, in our country, disposed to a deplorable rivalry. In this we have been disappointed; and, as public journalists, we feel bound to caution our readers against the poison, both moral and intellectual, of which they are so urgently invited to partake. Were not the works in question obtaining a wide circulation amongst us, we should not have so

far deviated from our ordinary practice, as to notice them. It is certainly discreditable to our modern literature, that such publications should be reproduced, at a time when we boast of the progress of reason, and of the advance of religion among us.*

Art. IV. The Philosophy of Christian Morals. By Samuel Spalding, M.A., formerly Student of the University College. London: Longman. pp. 430.

WHEREVER civilization has supplied materials of history, we learn that man's inward nature has not failed to be an object of his curious and inquiring thought. This nature, as developed in consciousness and in outward act, is capable of being an index to his destiny on earth, and beyond the present scene. Man has a glimpse of his destiny even in the savage state. The most barbarous tribes have not confounded all sense of moral distinctions. Even to them there is a right and a wrong. Among the most degraded of the Africans, who to cursory observation might hardly seem to show any consciousness of a moral nature, we still find a certain dread of supernatural power, though it may be expressed wholly in such superstitious fears as that of offending the rain-maker; and we see a lingering gleam of the doctrine of immortality in their custom of calling over the dead.

With the progress of civilization, the grand problem of man's moral nature and destiny becomes a necessity of his intellectual life. Its solution is perpetually attempted, never lost sight of, ever renewed in various forms. In the absence of revelation, we find this problem, in some of its cases, forming the main element of the speculative philosophy which marked the development of mind in the great historic nations. We see it attending the civilization of the East, the Grecian, the Roman. It is successively reproduced in every one of the systems of philosophy which were the only sources of a rational religion then within the reach of mankind, with the exception of the Hebrews alone. It appears floating on the surface of each system, and is found in their inmost and most mystic depths. It may

The foregoing article was written for our March number; and, since its reception, Eugene Sue has resumed the publication of his work, and realised our anticipations. It is an abominable, and, at the same time, stupid production; but it seems that nothing else can, at present, gratify the taste of French readers. All the daily papers imitate and emulate the Constitutionel.' The principal organ of the government, the Journal des Débats,' is now publishing, in its feuilletons, a novel, equally immoral and disgusting; and one of the proprietors has just been rewarded with a peerage, in addition to the £480, allowed by the government monthly to the other proprietors. In the doctrinarian system, to govern a people, it is to enslave and to corrupt them.

be traced through the Zend-avesta, the school of Plato, of Aristotle, of Zeno, of Epicurus, of the Eclectics. From the precious remains of antiquity which preserve to us the attempts of man to solve the vast and mysterious problem of his destiny, we might frame a catalogue of all the questions most interesting to our race. What is man? What is the moral economy of the world in which he dwells? What estimate are we to form of his present condition? of the strange moral anomalies which he presents to our contemplation? What are man's duties on earth? Is that which is visible the whole of man? When death has changed his countenance, and all consciousness seems fled-when the body is dissolved, and nothing remains of it but 'ashes to ashes and dust to dust,' what views are we to entertain of man? Has the thinking conscious principle really perished in the wreck of the material frame, or does it survive the ruin, and retain its noblest faculties in some new mode of existence? What is that existence? Is it a more immediate contact with the Power that made the universe? What is the nature of the unseen world? Is it a state of retribution? What are the destinies of the beings who inhabit it? How shall man be assured of finding, on that unknown shore, the elysium of bliss on which all minds but the most debased and grovelling have, in moments the most free from earthly passions, loved to dwell?

Of these momentous questions, Christianity offers the only authoritative solution. It is true, indeed, that before the Christian era, and where the Jewish scriptures were unknown, man's inward nature had already borne testimony in favour of a morality in its main substance harmonizing with that of revealed religion; and the one power that formed all and upholds all, had not wholly escaped the eye of reason penetrating through the dark veil of polytheism: nor was immortality, as a fond and pleasing dream of the spirit, unknown to man. But as there was no adequate and unappealable authority to give weight to the more spiritual and elevated speculations of philosophy, she had nothing to encourage her to aim, on the grand scale, to be the regenerator of mankind. Either from policy, or a lingering and sincere vassalage to opinion, she was compelled to descend too much to established prejudices and exist ing superstitions to prove an effective reformer of ideas and of morals. Socrates, who talked so sublimely of the Deity, ordered a sacrifice to Esculapius. Philosophy could not establish Theism, nor fix in the popular mind any practical conviction of an hereafter, nor stem that flood of atheistic licentiousness which came in with the last ages of the Roman civilization.

Since Christianity, then, has set at rest the most practical part of all the great questions relating to man's destiny, may we not

conclude that, in reference to these subjects, the vocation of philosophy has long since wholly ceased? We have, now, a religion which no progress of civilization, no advancement of the human mind, no political or ecclesiastical revolutions, have been able to dislodge from the basis of evidence on which it stands, and it appears gradually tending, by visible advances, to the final occupation of the whole earth. For, to use the language of Jouffroi, the great ornament of the school which is regenerating philosophy in France: Christianity has too strong a foundation in truth ever to disappear as paganism did: its destruction was but a dream of the eighteenth century, which never will be realized.' We have a religion which, various as are the opinions respecting its relation to the civil power, its modes and forms, and certain parts of the grand whole, presents to the vast and overwhelming bulk of the millions who acknowledge it as their faith, (if we may judge from their public Confessions,) to Catholic, Greek, and Protestant, one and the same broad outline, one and the same general scheme, one substantial response to the questions of deepest interest to mankind. Ought we not, then, at once to discard altogether, for the future, the attempt to throw any light upon the subject of man's moral nature and destiny by the aid of philosophy?

There are those who would reply in the affirmative; and no doubt from the best intention, that of enhancing the value of Christianity. Men are to be met with of acknowledged personal excellence, and not destitute of education, who do not see the importance of philosophical inquiries into the fundamental laws of man's moral nature, with a view to general ethical principles and system. Such men, however, are seldom of an order of mind greatly to influence opinion. To persons of a more reflective cast, it becomes something more than a mere luxury of the intellect-it is a kind of necessity, to ponder and revolve in thought those moral phenomena which have, for so many ages, occupied the attention of the master-spirits of the earth. While Christianity has given to us, with a voice of authority, practical rules of life adapted to every degree of civilization, the task is still left to human reason to inquire, as it may be able, into the rationale of the relations which subsist between those rules and the nature of man. There must be fundamental laws of man's moral being, as of his physical constitution; and these laws cannot but be in real harmony with the testimony of a revelation from heaven, correctly understood. Moral philosophy may be defined, an attempt to trace to general principles what is described in scripture as the work of the law written on the heart.' This law, it will be remembered, is there spoken of as the proper guide of pagans; their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts in the mean while accusing or else