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and whose title to the throne must be derived from principles which they themselves denounce as democratical. We profess rather a modified admiration of the whole affair. It was good so far as it went, but no further: nor was the point to which it proceeded, and where it rested, a very advanced one upon the road towards sound government and permanent national prosperity. Debates in parliament about the exclusion bill had revived in the public mind some attachment to several selfevident truths, which formed the mere alphabet of politics amongst the statesmen of the Commonwealth. The reign of James the Second had realized what the exclusionists foretold would come to pass, should the sceptre of these realms ever pass into the hands of the Duke of York. That sovereign, however, we feel persuaded might have enslaved his people, and even filled himself with the plunder of their property, as well as of their liberties, had he only been discreet enough to have let the Church alone, and have admitted the aristocracy to a convenient portion of the spoil. But never was the axiom of antiquity better illustrated, that Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. He laid his hands upon seven prelates, and found them seven plagues full of wrath and indignation, as to the results of their prosecution, against both his person and descendants. The peerage, too, began to tremble for its privileges and monopolies, as well as for that Terra Incognita of abuses covered over with the ermine and minevor of their order. They found a violent tempest of odium rising up, which they perceived it would be impossible to resist altogether, but from which it was equally evident they might gather no inconsiderable harvest of advantage, were they to put themselves at the head of it. Their conduct, with some brilliant exceptions, came to be regulated accordingly. The genuine nature and spirit of an oligarchy broke out whenever it could with any chance of success or safety. On the 28th of January, 1689, the Commons declared that James, having endeavored to subvert the constitution, had abdicated the government, and left the throne vacant. The Earls of Nottingham and Clarendon put the question whether a regency would not be preferable; and this motion was only lost by fifty-one to forty-nine; whilst the Lords exchanged the word abdicated for the term deserted, as a softer or more ambiguous term, and left out the most important clause in the vote of the Commons, that the throne was vacant, by a majority of fifty-five to forty-one! Seeing, however, in a short time that the spirit out of doors would be here too strong for them, they made a merit of necessity, and yielded ultimately as they did in the late Reform Bill. They bent like willows before the popular gale; yet contriving to retain their advantageous position, they soon assumed their

natural attitude, and grew up into greater influence than ever. Their shadow ultimately overclouded the land; and the predominant character of government from that hour down to the death of George the Fourth, became more and more aristocratitical. The law,-church,-navy,-army,-corporations,-imbibed no other principle, and developed no other result. Taxation itself, of course, came to be subjected to similar influences: so that, although we most cheerfully and gratefully admit the blessings of the glorious Revolution in having annihilated the preposterous doctrines of divine right and non-resistance, except indeed along the banks of the Isis, where they still linger, we also regret most sincerely, that France, as a neighbor nation, not possessing a moiety of our intelligence or favorable circumstances, should have nevertheless shot before us in the political race, in having more completely separated than we have done, her church from the state, and prostrated into the dust those prodigies of feudalism,-an hereditary aristocracy and the so called rights of primogeniture.

Dr. Vaughan has added to his useful and laborious work a very convenient index and chronological table. In fact the whole book is written but for one simple purpose; and that is to diffuse useful knowledge upon sound principles amongst our middle classes. That it is admirably calculated for this end we entertain no manner of doubt: indeed, we imagine that there can be but one opinion on the point, even amongst those who on ecclesiastical and political subjects may not, generally speaking, happen to agree with our author. We therefore venture to recommend it strongly and cordially. It is written, as all such works ought to be composed, in the spirit of a Christian,—a scholar, -and a philosopher. His sympathies and associations are powerful ones; but they never, or at least very rarely, gallop away with his judgment. His remarks on the twenty eventful years from 1640 to 1660 form a good specimen of the candid and impartial manner in which he sums up the leading facts of an important period, letting in the lights of reflection from opposite quarters, and maintaining his own perfect self-possession amidst conflicting statements, or the most agitating opinions. We had intended to have extracted several paragraphs from these pages, but shall content ourselves with only one, to the following effect:

The liberties secured in the early days of the Long Parliament, as they were in no respect greater than the people of England were qualified to use with safety and advantage, were such as an enlightened and virtuous patriotism might well have demanded: but they were liberties wrung from the grasp of a monarch who betrayed the strongest inclination to seize upon them again at the first favorable moment; and all hope of amicable adjustment being thus at an end,

the struggle became one for mastery, more than for accommodation; and to the power from whose proceedings the contest derived that dangerous character must the evil which ensued be imputed. Thus we see in these results, that not to concede in time is to create the necessity for further concession; that in enlightened communities the great security against popular violence is to abstain from acts tending to justify popular indignation; and that it is as vain as it is unjust to expect that men should act with sobriety when we have been conducting ourselves towards them in a manner which could hardly fail to goad them into excess.'-p. 561.

Since this article was written, a lengthy criticism on Dr. Vaughan's work has appeared in the Church of England Quarterly Review, and is to be followed, it seems, by another, on the second volume, in the next number of that Journal. The writer of that article-feeble in everything except in his rancorous bigotry-has not only shown himself capable of descending to any form of misrepresentation, but of stating, once and again, as true, what he must have known to be false. Our proofs of this serious charge we may perhaps adduce on a future occasion, as we have for some time thought, that Dissenters might not be the worse for being made a little more aware than they are, of the unscrupulous enmity with which their literature is too commonly regarded by the reverend personages who affect to represent the spirit of the Church of England.' If what our authors have to expect from Churchmen, is, for the most part, this reckless hostility, or, what to them will perhaps be even less acceptable, an utter neglect of their productions, the need of a more effective patronage of Dissenting literature among ourselves ought to be sufficiently obvious. As to the critic adverted to, we have reason to know that this is not the first time he has called on the public to admire his zeal for the honors of Episcopacy;' and should he in this instance experience some inconvenient handling for his pains, he will be aware that it is not the first time such a lot has befallen him.

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Art. II. The Theory of Horticulture; or, an Attempt to Explain the Principal Operations of Gardening upon Physiological Principles. By JOHN LINDLEY, Ph. D., F.R.S. 8vo. Longmans.

HORTICULTURE has in the main been followed as an art; its most successful processes have been the result either of casual observation, or of innumerable trials and mistakes, and its principles not in general more than mere statements of the facts thus arrived at. The conditions that are necessary to healthy vegetation are obviously discerned, and provided for, when the plant and the cultivator are both of one clime, or when the exotic species are hardy and adapted to universal culture, as the rye and the potatoe. Moreover, he need not be deterred from the boldest experiments in his attempts to render the growths of the earth more serviceable. Much, therefore, has been done for the improvement of both native and acclimatized species. They have been increased in size and modified as to their qualities, forms, and colors. The peach, poisonous in its native soil, has become the delicious fruit we find on our tables. The celery and carrot, have lost the noxious qualities which they possess in their natural state. The cabbage, cherry, and apple, which we probably owe to the Roman occupation of Britain, have all become what we find them, by cultivation; being barely esculent as nature produces them. Few of the most valuable of vegetable products are indigenous to the countries where they are most useful and most esteemed, but have followed the migrations and conquests of various tribes of the human family. The grape, wherever the region may be which owns it as a native, was spread originally by the Greeks; and the introduction of the most precious of the farinaceous grasses, the wheat, and also of the cotton-tree, were among the blessings which the great Ruler ordained should more than compensate the regions overrun by the Romans and Arabs, for temporary misery. It is, of course, in the cold climates least endowed by nature, where want and necessity constitute the wholesome discipline of a race formed for enterprise and success, that tillage and culture will be most studied. And they have this advantage over countries more spontaneously fruitful, that a hot climate can be imitated in a cold one, with infinitely greater ease than in the reverse case.

Were we to be content with those foreign species that easily become adapted to our climate, horticulture might remain as it is, and leave everything beyond to the larger and less refined operations of field cultivation. While the desire of novelty and enjoyment exist, this need not be feared, and the attempt now,

we think, first made, in a way likely to be generally useful, to raise horticulture to the rank of a science, impatient of mere empirical maxims, and studious to fortify the wisest of its traditions by the knowledge of the vital laws which they unconsciously imply, is no more than might have been expected from the present advanced state of vegetable physiology. There is already available to the cultivator a great mass of well ascertained principles, without perplexing him with scientific_refinements, as yet perhaps only conjectural and likely to be for ever too subtile for the worker in gardens to apply. What he needs is, not a treatise upon botany, nor a series of speculations upon 'the possible nature of the influence on plants of all existing 'forces, nor an elaborate account of chemical agencies inappre'ciable by his senses and obscurely indicated by their visible ' results; but an intelligible explanation, founded on well ascer'tained facts which he can judge of by his own means of obser'vation, of the general nature of vegetable actions, and of the 'causes which, while they control the powers of life in plants, ' are themselves capable of being regulated by himself. The 'possession of such knowledge will necessarily teach him how 'to improve his methods of cultivation, and lead him to the discovery of new and better modes. It is very true that ends ' of this kind are often brought about by accident, without the 'smallest design on the part of the gardener; and there are 'doubtless many men of uncultivated or idle minds, who think 'waiting on providence much better than any attempt to im'prove their condition by the exertion of their reasoning facul'ties. For such persons books are not written.' That the amount of such knowledge is very small even among writers on horticulture we have the testimony of one well able to judge. We shall attempt to increase the demand for the volume whose title stands at the head of our article, by referring a few of the ordinary processes of horticulture, to the physiological principles which they serve to develop. If much has been achieved by the force of accident and mere rational empiricism, we may confidently expect results far greater, from perseverance and observation, when enlightened by science. 'The enormous 'difference that exists between the skill of the present race of gardeners and their predecessors can only be ascribed to the 'general diffusion that has taken place of an acquaintance with 'some of the simpler facts of vegetable physiology.'

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Nature universally employs some degree of soil or bottom heat, as a stimulus and protection to the excitability of the tissues of plants. The soil in all climates has a temperature something higher than the surrounding atmosphere. This of course is owing to the impact of the solar rays. All plants have free internal communication between their extremities, by innumer

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