His menials lead the life of slaves, And that bowing down, bowing down, Bowing down, bowing down; That bowing down, bowing down, Is the way to rise in London town.' But there are better things-dew drops on flower leavessmall distillings of a poetical mind-the fruits of moments when Dr. Mackay had not said to himself, "Now, I will be exceedingly instructive ;" and when therefore he does teach, and right poetically too. "The Seven Angels of the Lyre" is an angelic lyric. "Ino nursing Bacchus," has much of classic beauty; and there is a fresh gladness in the poem on learning to swim which brings round us the remembrance of the ocean breezes. "The Ivy in the Dungeon" is a specimen of these "better things:" "THE IVY IN THE DUNGEON. "The ivy in a dungeon grew "It grew, it crept, it pushed, it clomb— "It reached the beam-it thrilled-it curled- It looked upon the sun and stars. It caught the breath of morns and eves, "By rains and dews and sunshine fed "Upon that solitary place Its verdure threw adorning grace. And now we must dismiss these two books. We shall as suredly meet Dr. Mackay again: he is too good, because too true, a man to neglect the gift that is in him. We will pardon him a hundred volumes of moralities, and he may tack the oldest saw he pleases to the end of each stanza if he will now and then give us such a volume as he can give. We set out by joining in his protest against the separation of science and philosophy and religion from poetry; but the thing is not possible. They are poetry whether in verse or not, and words however arranged can make no poetry without them. It may seem strange to say that the present age is more poetical than that which has just passed away; and the more so when we remember that Byron, Scott, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, Crabbe, Bowles, Campbell, and many others, brightened the past and are no longer with us, and yet we do say so; and though we cannot match so brilliant a roll of names-though there are few on whom their mantles have descended-yet it is as a trophy to them that we repeat, again and again, our age is a more poetical one than theirs: for we have learned their lessons-their words have sunk into the hearts of the nation, and, like seeds of sweet flowers, have borne a fragrant harvest. There is more truth among us-truth in religion: the blessing of God has so far rested on us that we are more rightly distinguishing between the essential and the non-essential. There is more love and peace even in the midst of the convulsions which have agitated, and do still agitate, our Church. There is more love of and care for the poor-more communion of feeling among the various classes of society. We are sundered widely enough from each other yet, but we are nearer than we were. There is more appreciation of beauty-beauty of form and colour and combination. Our taste as a nation is rising: in what we build, and what we invent, and what we wear, there is evidence of our growing and improving taste. Need we speak of the advance of material philosophy-of the glimpses into more astounding truths than science had hitherto taught of the higher standard of morals accepted by society? All these things bear their testimony to our advance: it is a better, a truer, and therefore a more poetical age than the last. He, however, who is wise will not allow his satisfaction to evaporate in mere idle congratulation. Writers like those whose works we have been reviewing have taught us nothing if they have not taught us that we are to co-operate in the work of progress. They are at their post: let us be at ours. The merchant in his counting-house, the poet in his study, the scientific discoverer in his laboratory, the seaman on his deck amidst the ocean, the minister of Christ in his pulpit, the sovereign on his throne, the statesman in his cabinet-all have their appointed parts in this great work. It is something to know our duty, but this will avail us little if theory be all. ART. V. Quakerism; or the Story of my Life. By A LADY, who for Forty Years was a Member of the Society of Friends. Dublin: S. B. Oldham. 1851. THE late William Cobbett was, undoubtedly, a man who dealt rather extensively in strong epithets. We all know what he thought of Yorkshire-how he devoted it to the very nethermost Gehenna, and what appellation he pressed on the very os frontis of the late Edward Baines. The like favour he bestowed upon our outwardly placid and self-righteous friends, the Quakers. They happened to offend the great Saxon writer of the Political Register, and this offence instigated Cobbett to look a little more narrowly and searchingly into their tenets and their way of life. After a severe inquisition into their manners-that is to say, their morals and customs he solemnly pronounced them to be a set of grave hypocrites and sleek imposters. "The Quakers (said William Cobbett) are nothing more nor less than UNCIRCUMSISED JEWS !" In this epithet Cobbett unquestionably manifested a spirit of injustice. He was too hard upon the Hebrews, and too complimentary to the Quakers! If we ever had any doubt as to this matter, the book before us would have served to dispel it. The great political writer we have already named spoke in his wrath; and his assertion, however correct it might have been in principle, lay justly open to suspicion. Not so the assertions of the authoress of the work whose title stands at the head of this notice. She was born and bred a Quakeress, married a "Friend," became the mother of "Friends," and during forty years remained a member of the community. After much hesitation she was at length driven from it by her conviction of the absurdity and impiety, the hypocrisy and the tyranny, by which alone the great imposture is upheld. She departs, however, from the old companions of her ancient faith, not in anger, scarcely in sorrow she leaves them in love: she turns from them in gladness at the way she has herself taken, and as she stands by the altar of the Church of England she beckons to those whom she still loves straightway to follow her. If, in delineating Quaker life, she inflicts some pain on the ancient fraternity, or rather on the ancient sisterhood-(for the Quakers, as a society, bow to the distaff, kiss the slipper, and are abject slaves to a petticoat government)—it is done in the spirit and with the skill of an experienced surgeon who is ambidexter, cuts determinedly right and left, appears to have little feeling, and who wounds only that he may the more effectually cure. It must be acknowledged, however, by the way, that many of the social pictures drawn in this book are as applicable to any and all other societies as to those of the Quakers. Many of the errors, crimes, and even apparent peculiarities, are common to poor humanity in general. Dressed in drab they are, perhaps, more striking and singular; but the same faults are to be found beneath lace and lawn as well as beneath broad cloth. With this we have little to do, except incidentally. The book abounds with other matter for which the Quakers are alone chargeable. Since they were a society, they never were so thoroughly and fearlessly exposed as they are here. Never had community so complete, so clever, and so comic a censor. Since the era of the foundation of the first city to the present time, never were the follies of men more skilfully handled with intent to cure. From the day of the building of Enoch to this, the peculiar age of great cities, the errors of the unwise were never so pleasantly dealt with as we find them here, in the volume to which we now address ourselves. The authoress is descended from an ancient and noble English family which emigrated to Ireland in the reign of Charles II., and settled on lands which are still the property of the descendants of the original purchasers. The father of the writer was a merchant and landed proprietor-the mother a lady of strong sense and as strong affections. "Six brothers and sisters of us were assembled round a hearth where love dwelt refinement was with and about them: wealth served to help taste and not to spoil it. The home was implicitly a happy one. The lady is evidently puzzled now to think how such sensible persons as her parents, who lived on familiar terms with the bishop and dean-who frequented the very best general society, and to whom the absurdities of Quakerism were a long, and constant, and intelligible annoyance-could remain in membership with such a brotherhood of mixed silliness and wickedness. The lady's wonder would cease could she remember how strong are the fetters of a custom early enjoined upon and long borne by us; and how reluctant men are, while differing from those they love, to cast off the bonds which once united both. Besides, it is clear that the brotherhood could not afford to lose so wealthy a member as the father of our authoress. His little orthodoxy was winked at because of his great riches. The still greater heresies of the wealthy merchant's wife were patiently endured for the same reason. Had they lacked the metal which moves more than mares, according to the proverb, they would long, ere they died, have been cut off from a community which cannot away with infidelity in a sinner with a light purse. When a very young girl, our authoress was first sent to a school, not kept by a "Friend," but by a sensible Protestant lady: here she remained three years, a day scholar, attending her studies in a common-sense dress of neatness, but going to meeting in drab and chilly plainness. These first meetings struck her, young as she was, with their inanity. She brought nothing from them that was of any worth; but she read the Bible at home, and at stolen hours got instructed into the delicious mysteries of Sir Charles Grandison and the Modern Philosopher. The shade of George Fox must have shuddered in disgust at so ill a preparation! The matter was hardly mended when a "Friend" governess was procured to reside with the little student and her sisters at home. Of course, she |