selves to exterminate prelacy, and to re-establish that form of polity which, from numberless associations, they regarded with the utmost reverence, and which they were prepared to defend with the most ardent zeal. The limits to which we must be confined, render it impossible to give even a faint sketch of the part which they acted in the civil commotions that terminated in the execution of the king; but it may be evident, from what has been already stated, that the feelings of the people must have been strongly excited, and it cannot be matter of wonder, that, accustomed as they were to consider their cause as the cause of God, almost constantly employed in those exercises of devotion in which they implored his blessing upon it, and stimulated by the homely but energetic addresses of their beloved pastors, many of them yielded to the fervour of a heated imagination, and were influenced by what, when the causes which produced it have ceased to operate, must appear to be the wildness of enthusiasm. This was the unavoidable effect of the circumstances in which they were placed, it was the excess into which the weakness of our nature, under these circumstances, could scarcely fail to be betrayed; but we must penetrate through it to appreciate their character, and we shall find, that the great body of them were actuated by the most heroic attachment to freedom, and by the firmest determination not to bow their necks to the crushing oppression of the most savage despotism. During the period which elapsed between the death of Charles and the restoration of his son, they split, as might have been anticipated, into parties, and there was certainly, amongst many of those who assumed the appellation of protesters, a degree of fanaticism which bewildered their understandings, and which, when aggravated, as it afterwards was, by the horrors of persecution, did lead to the most lamentable departure from duty and from humanity; but this, under a gentle administration, would have gradually yielded to the milder spirit of their brethren, whilst the activity and earnestness which distinguished their ministry might have remained. Charles the Second, although he declared his purpose of supporting the religion established by law, in language, about the meaning of which no honest. man could hesitate, and which, if it were intended to deceive, fixes indelible infamy both upon the king and the men who advised him, soon directed against presbytery the fury of an iron government; he abolished its judicatories, and by virtue of his prerogative, forced episcopacy in a form much more obnoxious than it had previously assumed in Scotland, upon a nation penetrated with the conviction, that submission to it was impiety, and little disposed to venerate authority which had not scrupled to contaminate itself by having recourse to the meanest dissimulation, and by forming an union with the basest apostacy. We must read the history of the dire persecutions, must read the shocking details which, in sad abundance, have been transmitted, and which are so authenticated that prejudice and scepticism must admit their reality, to have an adequate conception of the profligacy, the cruelty, and the vile oppression which prevailed in Scotland; the heart sickens at the dismal narration, and we must have extinguished every feeling of humanity and patriotism, if we do not sympathize with the unhappy Presbyterians and Covenanters, who were tortured, because they would not abjure a cause implicated with the freedom of their country, and, as they were satisfied, with the eternal salvation of its inhabitants. It is to a considerable part of this melancholy period that the work now before us relates; the author, after a concise and fair sketch of the earlier stages of the Reformation, entering fully upon what happened between the Restoration and the sixteen hundred and seventy-eight, or upon the miseries in which he saw those whom he venerated involved, and of which he was doomed to have an ample portion. We have given this short view of the history of the Covenanters, because we conceive, that, without attention to it, we cannot justly esti mate the merit and tone of Kirkton's book, and many of the sentiments and peculiarities of opinion which it contains. He was himself a Covenanter, and, from being a minister, he took an active part in the events which he witnessed. His work, upon this new atheism; so Scotland found godliness withered under their shadow, and wickedness overspread the land first and last. They had a sting for no man but a puritan or a presbyterian; beside, they knew well that the bishops, having perjured themselves gels did,-endeavour to corrupt mankind most solemnly, would do as the fallen anby involving all Scotland in their own sin, that so their personal sin might be excuse hade also seen a curse attend almost all the bishops' persons and families, and all that were active to introduce them were plagued as these that rebuilt Jericho, and such as these they loved not. It was also found by experience, that as episcopacy is a branch of popery, so it led alwayes to the root, and therefore bishops were looked at the people of Scotland were heart enemies as the papists harbingers. So the body of to bishops; and even those of the ministry who joyned with the bishops in their pretended synods and presbyteries, protested themselves enemies to episcopacy, protesting they believed what they did might well consist with the principles of a presbyterian, and they kept themselves in place only that they might be in condition to oppose the bishops' course, which they alleadged the ministers turned out could not so well doe." count alone, would be interesting, because he must have been acquainted with circumstances which later his torians might overlook; and because writing from what was passing before him, he could scarcely fail to give a true delineation of the feelings and manners of the era which he records. But he does much more than this ;he displays a vigorous and an observable as being the sin of the times. They ing mind;-he narrates the events which he was anxious to transmit in language, natural, perspicuous, and far from devoid of energy; and he does so in general, as his editor admits, with a candour, which, consider ing his situation, reflects the highest credit upon him as a man and a historian. He has not, indeed, escaped from the influence of prejudices, which he would have been more than a human being had he surmounted: he sometimes gravely details, as matter of fact, what modern writers would reject as the delusions of superstition;-he views his opponents through too dark a medium, attributing to them occasionally worse motives than those which actually swayed them; whilst he speaks with natural partiality of the friends with whom he acted, painting, in the fairest colours, the merit which they had, and reluctantly admitting,-now and then not admitting at all, the errors and the faults of which they were guilty. His book, therefore, should rather be considered as supplying valuable materials for history, than as history itself, as it would be unsafe to form, from it alone, our opinions of the age to which it relates, or of the men of that age. The following account of the state of the public mind as to episcopacy, at the period of the Restoration, will give some idea of the nature of the work. "Episcopacy hade never been popular in Scotland, not in the dayes of ancient ignorance; but since the Reformation, in regarde Scotland was reformed by a sort of missionaries from Geneva, bishops were alwayes looked at with a frown. Indeed, the people of Scotland (leaving the arguments from Scripture and the testimonies of Jerom to schollars) used much to insist upon a sort of popular concrete arguments. The bishops hade almost all been both patrones of sin and paterns of profaneness; if a man in repute turned bishop, it was ob served he changed both frame and practice to the worse; and, as Beza had foretold, bishops would introduce epicurisme and and We should have had much pleasure, had our limits admitted of it, to present to our readers several more extracts, but we must go on to pay a little attention to the manner in which the secret History of the Church of Scotland has been given to the public. It might have been very naturally supposed that the manuscript having fallen into the hands of some admirer of the Covenanters, he was anxious to favour the world with a document which he conceived likely to disseminate his admiration. But the case happens to be far otherwise. Mr K. S. is one of the old school in respect to the Reformation in Scotland,-he is quite satisfied that Knox was a licentious man, and as a preacher, was "almost totally devoid of sound doctrine, solid learning, and common sense," and that those who succeeded him were ignorant and deluded, and not very well principled, enthusiasts. To establish all this, he has not known was the contemptible tale of scrupled to repeat what he might have slander, not believed even when it was audaciously published; and when he does not go this length, he gives the lie to the author whom he has very splendidly printed and adorned, by collecting examples of the absurdity and bad taste of the men whom Kirkton venerates; and has certainly so contrived his commentary, that we rise from the perusal of it, if we have not sufficient information to detect its unfairness and its fallacy, with opinions just the opposite of those which Kirkton was anxious to establish. He has, in one word, if we may venture to use the expression, mistaken the outer garment of the Covenanters for the Covenanters themselves, and because it is not quite so fashionably shaped as a polished man, such as he is, would have it to be, he concludes that neither moral worth, political integrity, nor true piety, can be found under it. Whilst we give Mr S. credit for his diligence and research, we are astonished that he has wholly overlooked those recent works which have detail ed the history of the Reformation and the Church of Scotland, and investigated the biography of the Father of both; had he perused them, he would probably have withheld some of his quotations; he would have avoided some errors into which he has fallen; and he would, unquestionably, in various other respects, have been better qualified for the task which he has undertaken. In his biographical notice of Kirkton, he speaks of this covenanting divine with little respect; and he has prefixed to the history two sermons, to show the wretched, and not very decent style of his preaching. There are, no doubt, passages in these discourses which could not be delivered to a modern audience; but there is a vast deal more good sense than we find in many discourses of the bishops who lived about the same period; and whether we be right in this or not, we cannot see what end was to be served by swelling the volume with the sermons. Of Kirkton we will form our opinion from his history; and if it establish, as it unquestionably does, the respectability of his talents, it follows, that any peculiarity in his mode of preaching must be ascribed, not to deficiency in him, but to the taste, bad enough we allow, of the age in which he lived. There is added to the history an ac count of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, by one of the persons who were engaged in it. This atrocious deed, to which the tergiversation and the cruelty of the primate instigated some furious men driven to desperation, must be viewed with abhorrence; and, let it not be forgotten, that there is decisive evidence of its having been so viewed by the great body of the Presbyterians. In relation to Sharp, we have only room farther to say, that the feeble attempt to vindicate him, made by the editor of Kirkton, is just about as hopeless as it is unnecessary; for we do think that the Episcopalians need not scruple to resign the archbishop to the richly deserved censure of the Covenanters, his primacy having been more fatal to Episcopacy than it was even to Presbytery. We cannot close this article without a few words in relation to the Tales of my Landlord, so much connected with the present subject, and to the deep interest excited by which we suspect that we owe the publi cation both of Kirkton's history, and of the commentary so preposterously. attached to it. The title of this fascinating work exempts the author of it from the obligation of accuracy, as to the history upon which his tale is founded, and we do not think that he is amenable at the bar of criticism for the colouring spread over the incidents so admirably interwoven in his story, provided no other charge can be brought against him. But all tales, whether historical or not, ought to have a salutary tendency; if they be calculated to mislead our moral judg◄ ment, they cannot be too severely censured. Upon this score we cannot acquit the author of the Tales of my Landlord. He has certainly, as is indeed admitted by friends and foes, sought to hold up to ridicule the whole body of Covenanters, and to invest their opponents with a gallantry and generosity of spirit which are very apt to captivate general readers. Now, as the Covenanters, with all their faults, did resist despotism, and their earthly persecutors did what lay in them to entail it upon their country, there is some danger that we associate the cause of the Presbyterians with the men who supported it, as he has painted them, and may thus vastly undervalue the freedom which it is our duty, and should be our happiness, to revere. But we do not regret that the Tales. were published, because we are persuaded that the curiosity which they have excited, and which graver works would not have raised, graver works alone now will satisfy; and although, no doubt, many readers of the Tales will, after getting a new novel, think no more of the Covenanters, yet there are not a few who will seriously inquire what they actually were, and how they really conducted themselves. We anticipate from this inquiry the happiest results; for whilst the errors and crimes of some of the Covenanters will be discovered, their merit upon the whole will be duly appreciated, and, what is of much more consequence than any opinion respecting them, the view of the misery and oppression to which they were subjected, will kindle that pure love of liberty to which we owe our invaluable constitution, and which we must cherish in the rising generation, if that constitution is to be transmitted to our children. The Lament of Tasso. By Lord BYRON. 8vo. Murray, London, 1817. THERE are few situations more affecting, or more calculated to impress the mind of a poet, than that which Lord Byron has made the subject of this short effusion. A bard who ranks with the greatest of modern times, shut out from the world, nature, and liberty, in the abode of frenzy, among beings who retain the human form, but in whom the divine image within is almost wholly obliterated and all for love, too daring, inspired by an object raised so high by fortune, as never to admit a thought of her becoming his,-present a concurrence of events that must awaken the deepest interest. Some recent critics, in the course of indefatigable researches into Italian literary history, have raised doubts, whether this hopeless despised passion, was really the grand source, or even any source, of the miseries of Tasso. Without investigating this question, we shall only say, that the reigning belief, be it true or false, is the only one to which a poet can poetically adhere; and it was, therefore, out of the question for Lord Byron to admit any doubts on the subject. According to this belief, the situation, without any aid from fancy, affords full scope for that intense force of sensibility, those deep and solemn reflections, which form the reigning tone of Lord Byron's composition. The poem consists of a soliloquy of Tasso, when thus abandoned, as it were, by all nature, and left alone in this dreadful solitude. The beginning is forcible, though somewhat hard: "Long years!-It tries the thrilling frame to bear And eagle-spirit of a Child of SongLong years of outrage, calumny, and wrong; Imputed madness, prisoned solitude, Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain With a hot sense of heaviness and pain; And bare, at once, Captivity displayed Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate, Which nothing through its bars admits, save day And tasteless food, which I have eat alone There is something more pleasing in the farewell which he takes of the long and pleasant task that the Jerusalem had afforded him; and extreme delicacy in the manner in which the name of Leonora is first introduced. "My pleasant task is done :My long-sustaining friend of many years! If I do blot thy final page with tears, Know, that my sorrows have wrung from But thou, my young creation! my soul's me none. child! he is immured appear to be described with an energy truly extraordinary: "This vast lazar-house of many woes? Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind, Nor words a language, nor ev'n men mankind; Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows, And each is tortured in his separate hell For we are crowded in our solitudesMany, but each divided by the wall, Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods; While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all, Who was not made to be the mate of these." The following description of the gradual preparation of the principle of love within his heart, and its sudden unfolding at the view of the object, appears drawn with extraordinary interest. "It is no marvel-from my very birth My soul was drunk with love-which did pervade And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth; Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said Returned and wept alone, and dreamed again The visions which arise without a sleep. And with my years my soul began to pant With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain; And the whole heart exhaled into One Want, But undefined and wandering, till the day I found the thing I sought and that was thee; And then I lost my being all to be wants the interest arising from nar Upon the whole, this little piece rative, and from any detailed picture of female attractions; but within its Absorbed in thine the world was past limits it contains as much that is pleasing and affecting, as any other composition of this distinguished poets |