it, and to provide a literature for this country, which, if it cannot expel the present from the market, may at least supply the wants, and prevent the infection of the sounder part of the population, Some steps to this end have already been taken, and we trust they will be followed up. Instead of being alarmed at the assertion so cunningly made in order to drive truth out of the world, that every science and art should be cautiously kept apart, and religion and politics be confined to one province of their own, let it be boldly maintained that religion and politics have no such separate province that they are the lords and masters of the whole range of science; with a right to interfere and overrule the moment, though not before, their laws are impugned in any part; and demmanding to be recognised in all-to have their names proclaimed and their decrees registered in all-in allegiance to their paramount authority. We cannot indeed bring men to believe, true as it is, that to write is not to be wise-that to read is not to learn-that literature is no proof of enlightenment. Talking much, we know from the highest authorities, is a sign of folly; listening greedily to the idle talk of others is no great symptom of sense; and whether we hear with ears or eyes, and talk with tongue or pen; it matters little. But we may by great exertions construct a fresh literature less mischievous than the present-a new river, instead of the ditch-water of the Thames. We may at least fumigate the press; and for this purpose every book written should be imbued and impregnated with sound principles, both religious and political. Poetry, history, philosophy, travels, novels, reviews, newspapers, grammars, every thing should contain in them the great truths, which it is required to inculcate on the human mind. Horne Tooke and Cobbett wrapt up their democratical poisons in syntax and etymology. The Jesuits made even the Gradus ad Parnassum a disseminator of popery. Give me the making of your ballads, said a keen observer of mankind, and I care little who makes your laws. And it is because we have neglected these simple lessons, that boys can scarcely find a history of the day which does not make them admire rebellion and despise obedienceor a book on morals, which does not set religion aside-or a poem, which is not a pander to some silly sentiment, or some vicious passion. We have thrown together a few observations, which have occurred in examining the rise and progress of the Alexandrian philosophy. No system of philosophy falls from the clouds; it is the growth of time and circumstances, and preceded by many symp toms often slight, and at first sight fanciful, but to a careful observer, VOL. LXVI. NO. CXXXI. I observer, very real. It was when a belief in a definite system of revealed religious truth had been destroyed by popular licentiousness, by the bad policy of kings, by the extravagance of rationalism, by the corruptions of the professed teachers of the truth, and the dissensions of those who rebelled from it-that reason fell back on a new religious creed, invented by itself; full, if we trust to those whose principles had overthrown the old creed, of the grossest superstition and absurdity. Doubt and scepticism had left the human heart without anything to satisfy its cravings, and the human intellect without foundation or support; and both heart and intellect fell prostrate under a new system of doctrine, which, before any one would acknowledge it, was compelled to take the form of the old. It gave again to the educated few the very truths which the sceptic and the sophist had covered with ridicule; but gave them stripped of the only authority, on which they could legitimately be embraced the authority of a definite revelation, committed to the guardianship of a Church. Its spirit entered into the popu lace as well as into philosophers; and instead of atheism, it engendered a blind superstition. Magic, astrology, divination, fanaticism-which received, with open arms, the first madman or impostor, who pretended to communicate with heaven-suc ceeded to popular irreligion. Those centuries, like ours, had in abundance their Irvings, and Southcotes, and Thoms, and Bryans, and Owens, and Matthews, in the persons of their Alexanders* and Apolloniuses, and the whole bigoted and credulous train, who first embraced Christianity without due allegiance to the authority of the Church, and then fell away into the ranks of the Gnostics. The circumstances which preceded the growth of this spirit were the same as in our own day-luxury-commerce-manu factures a commixture of people-accumulations of the populace in large cities-habits of lawlessness and self-indulgence-the destruction of old institutions, civil as well as religious-the breaking up of great hierarchies-the creation of ill governed schools-the substitution of instruction for education-the diffusion of general information in the place of sound practical knowledge-the encouragement of physical science in opposition to a deep philosophy-the spread of habits of criticism, and disputation and scepticisin-civilization (so called) mistaken for improvementthe encouragement of literary men apart from religious principles, or positive duties-the unregulated increase of books, and an universal adulation and subjection of mind, not to the legitimate authority of truth, but to a tyrant, or to fashion, or to public opinion; as a parasite submits to the master who feeds him, or a *Lucian, vol. ii. p. 207. popular popular demagogue fawns upon his mob, and yields without struggle to the pressure from without. And now in Europe, exactly in proportion as these causes have operated, Christianity is giving way beneath an invading pantheism. In Germany, in France, even among educated men in England, whose education has not been carried on in the great schools of the Church, or on the principles of the Church, pantheism is an avowed creed. Among the dregs of our population, though under no classical name, the same spirit is working. Socialism is a vulgar pantheism; and that it will gain ground, and prevail to a considerable extent, we cannot doubt, any more than that a seed will thrive in a soil well fitted for its reception. Whether Providence has in store for us any aid to meet and expel it-any resuscitation of his Churchany wide-spreading calamity, which may rouse men from their dreams, and throw them back on the realities of the Church-or that Church will be left, amidst the flood, a small and narrow ark, still holding the truth committed to it above the waters, and in the face of the world, though few receive it-it is not for us to prophesy. But man cannot be an atheist: and when atheism is excluded, and the truth which comes from God is rejected as false, what remains but to fill up the void by a system invented by man, and, in flying from a catholic religion, to fall down and worship an idol ? ART. IV.—1. First Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. 1839. 2. Statistical Report on the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among the Troops in the West Indies. Prepared from the Records of the Army Medical Department and War-Office Returns. 1838. 3. Ditto, ditto, for the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean, and British America. 1839. 4. Ditto, ditto, for Western Africa, St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Mauritius. 1840. PA ARADOXICAL as it may appear, it is certain that a man's health, nay life, is nearly as much in the keeping of those of whom he knows nothing as in his own. Of the three influences mainly acting on it-himself, society, and external nature-the first bears on it most intensely, the second most covertly, the last most constantly. Moral culture may teach the individual so to curb his passions and appetites as to develop all the forces of his organisation in their most healthful scope, or its neglect may set them loose as the deadliest instruments of self-destruction. The social system acts upon us not only through its fashions and customs, but by the power of government; and an ill considered impost indirectly affecting the food, the habitation, or the clothing of the community, shall send more to their graves than ever fell by sword or spear. Climate is always so greatly ameliorated by civilisation that we may safely say that it forms no exception to the general fact, that all the sources enumerated as influencing life are greatly modifiable, so that, though we may not believe with M. Quetelet in the perfectibility of our race, we may yet be sure that all its numerous ills may be immeasurably lessened. Nothing is truer than that the mortality of a kingdom is the best gauge of its happiness and prosperity. Show us a community wallowing in vice, whether from the pamperings of luxury or the recklessness of poverty, and we will show you that there truly the wages of sin are death. Point out the government legislating only for a financial return, regardless or ignorant of the indirect effects of their enactments, and we shall see that the pieces of silver have been the price of blood. It is only by such large surveys as are contained in the parliamentary documents now before us that the state of the public health can be ascertained. And admirably do these Reports show it. Many a peccant and cankrous sore, eating into the core of the body politic, is there laid bare; and many an evil which would have remained latent until it had gathered strength to sweep like a pestilence over our land, is here detected and exposed to those who have the power at least to prevent it. The Military Reports are the most valuable gift, as to the effects of climate, which ever has been made to medicine, and reflect the highest credit not only on Major Tulloch, under whose especial auspices they are produced, and on his assistant, Dr. Balfour, but on those offices, whatever they are, in which such minute particulars have been so accurately kept, as to allow, at a moment's notice, the production of such a mass of valuable results, as we now have. Other nations may have possessed an extent of territory equal to that of the British empire, but ours is the first which has put forth for the benefit of mankind so noble a monument as this. Besides arranging and collecting the enormous mass of materials implied in the returns of the British army for twenty years, Major Tulloch has added a series of observations on the influence of heat, electricity, soil, culture, moisture, in a word, on the circumstances determining climate in all parts of the globe, which are models of industry and research, and invaluable as records. The Report of the Registrar-general is the first of an annual series exhibiting the social state of England; and let us frankly own, own, that whatever may be the objections to certain parts of the registration bills, this, the registration of deaths, ought to be retained. Politics and party should not be allowed to interfere with public health-and public health is not ascertainable nor remediable unless such a search into all which affects it is presented to the nation. We understand that though the original bill required the registration of deaths, it did not require that the causes of death should be mentioned; and this has, we believe, been the sole work of the registrar-general. To him we are also indebted for a new weekly bill of mortality for the metropolis, which is in every respect immeasurably superior to the old one. In the detail he has been ably assisted by Mr. Wm. Farr. We remark that an earnest pledge to further Mr. Lister's object has been put forth by the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and by the Society of Apothecaries, together with an injunction to all members of their respective bodies over England to do the like; and on the whole, we rejoice to find that all classes, lay and clerical, have promptly answered the demands of the registrargeneral in matters in which all are alike interested. In the abstract of deaths Mr. Lister has entered into minute details, exhibiting enumerations of the deaths of persons of each sex at every successive year of age; thus collecting a large mass of accurate particulars, which will apply with greater certainty to the purposes of insurance than those we had hitherto possessed. The discrepancies existing among sets of tables, hitherto serving as data in the enormous money transactions connected with life insurance and annuities, are, as exhibited in a late Parliamentary return, and excerpted in the registrar-general's report, quite shameful. Of course the value of Mr. Lister's returns will increase annually; and a mean, derived from quinquennial or decennial observations, will probably leave nothing on this head to be desired. In the present report Mr. Lister has divided England into twenty-five districts, for the purpose of comparing town with country, agricultural with mining and manufacturing districts, elevated with low situations, the maritime with the inland,'-with the view of furnishing better material for the use of benefit and friendly societies;-the actuary for the national debt having stated in 1833 that the difference of mortality in different districts was utterly unknown, and that tables for the use of the poorer classes, in reference to sickness and mortality, could not at that time be constructed for want of accurate information. Considering how extensive and how necessary these systems of mutual support among the poor are, we agree with Mr. Lister in the principle |