But their influence is weakened by the impression, whether just or not, that, in their triumphs at the advance of liberty, they are only recording the interested verdict of a party.

What character such a feeling as we have spoken of, would have given to the great work of Gibbon, it is useless now to conjecture. He evidently had none of it. As a politician and a man his sympathy was all on the side of absolute power. There is no inconsistency between classical enthusiasm and a discriminating judgment in these matters. The sternest republican, like John Wesley among the English ruins, may be deeply moved as he gazes on the ruins of Rome. But this need not make him regret, nor teach others to regret, the removal of the most stupendous curse which the world ever saw. The Roman empire was a vast and monstrous creation of ambition. It was ravenous and grasping; unfaithful in its covenants, and revengeful in its triumphs. Its armies rolled over the nations like millstones, grinding them to powder. Its banner cast a deadly shadow over the world for ages, beneath which everything refined and excellent withered as soon as it grew. It was savage in its infancy, wild and lawless in its growth, corrupt and degraded in its fall. The ancient world is not destitute of examples, both of men and nations, infinitely more worthy than the Roman of a just and rational admiration. Its fate resembles that of the cities of the plain; the foundations of its guilty greatness sunk beneath it, and the dead sea of ignorance and barbarism covered the ground where it stood.

It will be seen from what we have said that we do not consider Belisarius entitled to peculiar regard. True, he must be tried by the standard of his own times, and perhaps he may claim to be called the Last of the Romans. He undoubtedly sustained for a time the sinking fabric of Roman greatness, but he has left no other impression on the history of the world. Our author dismisses the subject of the result of his victories in a page and a half. His claims, therefore, are wholly personal; and in his private character we can discover nothing great. Grotius has commented on his seizure of certain fortresses as an act of perfidy in his public capacity; his submission to his wife, the detestable Antonina, is too well known to be repeated; and Lord Mahon has not succeeded in restoring the interest which misfortune always throws round the brave.

We intend to convey no censure on Lord Mahon, by what we have just said. His work is a manly and unpretending es

say on a difficult historical subject. We mean simply to express our hope and firm belief, that histories will hereafter be written more in the spirit of Christianity. The religion of Jesus Christ is only another name for improvement. It affords us just measures of the value and importance of all earthly and heavenly things. The historian, who would retain his influence in the ages to come, must employ them, and give up those old standards which the world will sooner or later outgrow. When great violations of duty are no longer invited nor rewarded by misplaced applause, the unholy ambition will also expire for want of that which now feeds its flame; and we wish that those who are now living might not taste of death, till they see usefulness the measure of greatness, and the man who does most in the service of others the most honored among men.

ART. V.-1. Sermons Preached in England. By the late Right Reverend REGINALD HEBER, D. D., Lord Bishop of Calcutta. London. John Murray. 1829. 8vo. pp. 392. 2. Sermons Preached in India. By the late Right Reverend Reginald HebeR, D. D., Lord Bishop of Calcutta. London. John Murray. 1829. 8vo. pp. 310.

Or the character of Bishop Heber, as a man, a Christian, and a christian prelate, we could say nothing which would increase the interest that has been universally taken in it. There are volumes of eulogy in the fact, that his death was deeply mourned by the whole English nation, as a public loss, and that the mourning was sincerely and generally participated in by ourselves, with whom he had no other connexion than that which unites every good man with his kind.

We wish that we could speak as highly of his sermons as we might of his character; but we cannot. We confess that we were disappointed in them ; and we will venture to assert, that if they become popular, it will be because he wrote them, and not because they are of high value themselves. They are certainly much above mediocrity, and take a respectable rank among the volumes of English practical divinity; but few will ever think of placing them with the first sermons in the language. Though not absolutely unconnected in their trains o

thought, yet they are greatly deficient in that clear method and arrangement which is one of the most indispensable requisites in sermon writing; and though there is a vein of good sense running through them, the mind of the intelligent reader very seldom arrested by passages which task its attention, or set its powers at work. Diffusiveness seems to us to be the reigning characteristic of their style; and hence arise the breathless and almost endless sentences which abound in them more than in any other sermons with which we are acquainted.

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The poetical taste and talent of their author, might decidedly be inferred from passages which here and there occur, even if we did not know that he was a poet. These passages, by the beauty of their allusions and illustrations, form an occasional happy relief to the general dryness which pervades the volumes. The first sermon in the volume containing the discourses preached in England, opens with an instance in point. The sermon is entitled, Time and Eternity.

'There is an ancient fable told by the Greek and Roman Churches, which, fable as it is, may for its beauty and singularity well deserve to be remembered, that in one of the earliest persecutions to which the christian world was exposed, seven christian youths sought concealment in a lonely cave, and there, by God's appointment, fell into a deep and death-like slumber. They slept, the legend runs, two hundred years, till the greater part of mankind had received the faith of the gospel, and that church which they had left a poor and afflicted orphan, had “kings" for her "nursing fathers, and queens" for her "nursing mothers." They then at length awoke, and entering into their native Ephesus, so altered now that its streets were altogether unknown to them, they cautiously inquired if there were any Christians in the city?"Christians!" was the answer, we are all Christians here!" and they heard with a thankful joy the change which, since they left the world, had taken place in the opinions of its inhabitants. On one side they were shown a stately fabric, adorned with a gilded cross, and dedicated, as they were told, to the worship of their crucified Master; on another, schools for the public exposition of those gospels, of which so short a time before, the bare profession was proscribed and deadly. But no fear was now to be entertained of those miseries which had encircled the cradle of Christianity; no danger now of the rack, the lions, or the sword; the emperor and his prefects held the same faith with themselves, and all the wealth of the east, and

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all the valor and authority of the western world, were exerted to protect and endow the professors and the teachers of their religion.

'But joyful as these tidings must, at first, have been, their further inquiries are said to have met with answers which very deeply surprised and pained them. They learned that the greater part of those who called themselves by the name of Christ, were strangely regardless of the blessings which Christ had bestowed, and of the obligations which he had laid on his followers. They found that, as the world had become Christian, Christianity itself had become worldly; and wearied and sorrowful they besought of God to lay them asleep again, crying out to those who followed them, "you have shewn us many heathens who have given up their old idolatry without gaining anything better in its room; many who are of no religion at all; and many with whom the religion of Christ is no more than a cloak of licentiousness; but where, where are the Christians?" And thus they returned to their cave; and there God had compassion on them, releasing them, once for all, from that world for whose reproof their days had been lengthened, and removing their souls to the society of their ancient friends and pastors, the martyrs and saints of an earlier and a better generation.

'The admiration of former times is a feeling at first, perhaps, engrafted on our minds by the regrets of those who vainly seek in the evening of life, for the sunny tints which adorned their morning landscape; and who are led to fancy a deterioration in surrounding objects, when the change is in themselves, and the twilight in their own powers of perception. It is probable that, as each age of the individual or the species is subject to its peculiar dangers, so each has its peculiar and compensating advantages; and that the difficulties which, at different periods of the world's duration, have impeded the believer's progress to heaven, though in appearance infinitely various, are, in amount, very nearly equal. It is probable that no age is without its sufficient share of offences, of judgments, of graces, and of mercies, and that the corrupted nature of mankind was never otherwise than hostile or indifferent to the means which God has employed to remedy its misery. Had we lived in the times of the infant church, even amid the blaze of miracle on the one hand, and the chastening fires of persecution on the other, we should have heard, perhaps, no fewer complaints of the cowardice and apostacy, the dissimulation and murmuring, inseparable from a continuance of public distress and danger, than we now hear regrets for those days of wholesome affliction, when the mutual love of believers was strengthened by their common danger; when their want of worldly advantages disposed them to regard a release

from the world with hope far more than with apprehension, and compelled the church to cling to her Master's cross alone for comfort and for succour.

Still, however, it is most wonderful, yea rather by this very consideration is our wonder increased at the circumstance, that in any or every age of Christianity such inducements and such menaces as the religion of Christ displays, should be regarded with so much indifference, and postponed for objects so trifling and comparatively worthless. If there were no other difference but that of duration between the happiness of the present life and of the life which is to follow, or though it were allowed us to believe that the enjoyments of earth were, in every other respect, the greater and more desirable of the two, this single consideration of its eternity would prove the wisdom of making heaven the object of our more earnest care and concern; of retaining its image constantly in our minds; of applying ourselves with a more excellent zeal to everything which can help us in its attainment, and of esteeming all things as less than worthless which are set in comparison with its claims, or which stand in the way of its purchase.' pp. 1–5.

The fable is well told, and the remarks occasioned by it are judicious. Altogether the passage may serve as a favorable specimen of the Bishop's sermons. To criticise them, however, in any point of view, either as literary performances, or as practical discourses, intended to produce certain moral effects, was not our main object in undertaking the present notice of them. We particularly desired to gather from them the author's sentiments and impressions respecting christian missions in the East Indies. From his situation and opportunities, we considered him as one of the very best of witnesses on this subject. In that country he held, though unhappily but for a few years, the highest ecclesiastical office in the English Church. He was confessedly diligent and able in the discharge of its duties. He was fair, candid, moderate and upright in his opinions and decisions. had too much sagacity to suffer himself to be greatly imposed upon; too much coolness to impose upon himself, and an integrity which could not permit him to impose upon others. On all these accounts, it struck us, as soon as we saw these volumes, that the statements concerning the condition and progress of Christianity in India, which he probably would give in them, might be relied upon with a great degree of security. These statements, though not so particular as we could wish, are nevertheless interesting, and, considering their source, valuable. We

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