steam engine was a machine, and that they could make one. But capital failed. We have before alluded to the attempts to introduce a more modern style of farming,-an up-hill work, in which the disinterestedness of the improvers is suspected, and every failure is looked upon by the peasantry as a judgment against them. Interference with the earth, their ancient ally and friend, is peculiarly repugnant to Breton feeling, and deemed almost profane.

The following passage will show in what spirit the improvements of the French farmer are met. It is a dialogue between an old Breton peasant, the patriarch of the neighbourhood, and an improving French gentleman-farmer, who had reclaimed a large tract from the sea, by shutting it out with a dyke. The dyke did not please his old-fashioned neighbour. A report got about of a compact with evil spirits, and it was called le Môle du Diable. The farmer, for his own protection, and to prevent its being injured by them, had all the new works baptized' by the parish priest-the dyke, and the drained land, and his own new house. To the surprise of the peasants, the improvements stood the holy water without moving; but the people were not a bit more reconciled to them.

"You were one of those," (he says to the old peasant,) "who maintained that I should never succeed in enclosing the bay."

، ، It is true, sir."

"Eh bien, père, you see that you are out. The sea herself has furnished me with rocks and sand to wage war with her; and she has produced a child stronger than herself; and now the dyke laughs at her."

"Men say that it is a sin for children to make a mock at their parents,” answered Carfor.

"However, you see that I have done as I said."

"The old man shrugged his shoulders, as if to express his doubts; he was silent for a moment; then stretching out his hand to the shoulder of the farmer, with a gesture at once respectful and familiar,——

"You are strong, Sir," he said; "but le bon Dieu is stronger than you; le bon Dieu had said to the sea to go as far as there;" and he pointed to the hillocks. "Some day he will find out that the sea does not obey him, and then your dyke must give way to the will of God."

"And how do you know, father, whether le bon Dieu has not himself given me this bay?"

، The peasant shook his head.

"Monsieur, le bon Dieu ne vend pas son bien," said he, gravely; "this is land stolen from the sea, and stolen goods bring no luck."

-The farmer is a little nettled; and talks of the money he has put into circulation, and the various benefits to the neighbourhood which would result from his improvements: Mais ces hommes ne comprennent rien.'

"We understand," answered Carfor, "that when the rocks begin to move, the grains of sand are crushed. Rich men like you are always awkward neighbours for the small folk. The country was made for the country-folk, and towns for the gentlefolk; and if these come into the

country, there will soon be no place for us. Before, when this bay belonged to the sea, the sea lent it to us for eight hours in the day; we could bring our carts over it, to go to the beach to pile up our sea-weed. Down in the corner there was some coarse grass, which our sheep browsed; now you have made a ditch all round it, and said to the sea, and to us, who were its kinsmen and friends, You shall not come here any more, this belongs to me. And you wonder that we are not satisfied. We poor people do not like these changes, because there is never a change without taking from us a bit of our little place under the sun. If we used to like better to see the water than the corn, it is because the sea was always a better neighbour than the bourgeois." -Souvestre, p. 435.

The old quarrel, so hard to adjust, but so certain in its issue, between the improver, and the poor man of his day, to whom it is small comfort to be told, what is perfectly true, that returns will come to some one, and to him, if he can but wait. The story goes on to relate, that the sea did prove stronger than Monsieur, and in the course of an equinoctial night washed away his dyke, and destroyed everything. When he comes down to view his losses, there is the old Breton standing on the ruined dyke, looking out on the sea, comme pour la complimenter de sa victoire.' The cause of improvement had not much to hope for in the neighbourhood after this.

But this might happen anywhere; habit, and distrust of improvements, and suspicion of the disinterestedness of improvers, are not confined to Brittany. There is something deeper at work beneath; Brittany is really not France, any more than the outlandish names on its map, its Plouha, and Poullaouen, and Locmariaker, and Guipava, and Lannilis, are French. It is little more to France, than a nursery for some thousands of good soldiers and sailors, and a causeway for the road to Brest. Opposite in character to the people, and uncongenial in feeling, the Frenchman is not at home in Brittany; he feels as a stranger, and is felt as such. They hate England, it is true. Englishmen, besides being strangers and enemies, are Saxon heretics; Souvestre talks of the little village girls dancing with triumphant glee over the unconsecrated graves of a shipwrecked Saxon' crew:-but they have not forgotten that they once had wars with France. When the Duke de Nemours visited them, two years ago, the names of Breton victories over the French were not forgotten, on the triumphal arches under which he passed. Brittany hangs on to France, because it cannot well do otherwise, but like a mass of extraneous matter, which will not assimilate, dead and heavy and unsympathizing. As a part of France, she is not doing her work; a national character that ought to tell on the whole country, resolute, steady, serious, and slow, apprehensive,full of quiet deep fortitude,-seems thrown away. The field of European civilization, is not, of course, the only, or the highest

field for these qualities; but if the advance of human society is to be considered as a providential dispensation, it is one field; and they are missed, they have not found their place, when they are not there. Brittany is like a nation which has failed in its object, and been beaten; while her neighbours are in the heyday of success, hopeful and busy, she keeps apart, contented with her own isolation, stagnant, almost in decay, and looks on with melancholy listlessness amid the stirring of the world. Her time may be yet to come; now, with so much that is striking in individual character, amid genuine and deeply-felt influences of the Church, as a country she languishes, aimless, without any part to play; a study for the summer tourist, a curious contrast to that he has left behind. Yet she may remind him also, if he be wise, of times when the present, if it had as much of man's heart, had less of his feelings, and his reason; a witness, like those times, of that perplexing truth, the vanity to each individual man of the wonderful and magnificent order of things in which he lives-of the very short and passing interest he has personally, in that which, for society, and as a system, has such high-wrought perfection and value.

167

ART. VI.-1. A Letter on submitting to the Catholic Church. Addressed to a Friend. By FREDERICK OAKELEY, M.A. London: Toovey.

2. The Plea of Conscience for seceding from the Catholic Church to the Romish Schism in England. A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, Nov. 5, 1845. By W. SEWELL, B.D. Fellow of Exeter College, &c. Oxford: J. H. Parker. 1845. 3. The Schism of certain Priests and others, lately in Communion with the Church. A Sermon, by the Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, Perpetual Curate of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge. London : W. J. Cleaver. 1845.

4. Notes of the Church. A Sermon preached at Brompton. By the Rev. W. J. IRONS, B.D. Vicar. London: Rivingtons. 1845. 5. The English Church not in Schism. By the Rev. W. B. BARTER, M.A., Rector of Burgclere. London: Rivingtons.

1845.

6. Letter by the Rev. Dr. PUSEY. Reprinted from the ENGLISH CHURCHMAN.' Oct. 20, 1845.

Ir is with deep pain that we commence some remarks on the secession of Mr. Newman, Mr. Ward, and Mr. Oakeley, with several others, from the communion of our Church.

To the first-mentioned name, of course, does the whole importance of this movement attach. Mr. Newman has, for the last ten years, had a position and influence which must make such a step on his part a heavy blow indeed to the Church. He has been loved, admired, looked up to. Over his circle of friends, and over that larger ground which his authorship covered, his mind has irresistibly won. Everything that he has written has told. His books have made their way to person's hearts. We can point to no one who has had the influence he has had amongst us; and now he has left us; has transferred himself and his name to another communion, and instead of being a witness for the English Church, become a witness against it.

To take a final leave of Mr. Newman is a heavy task. His step was not unforeseen; but when it is come, those who knew him feel the fact as a real change within them, feel as if they were entering upon a fresh stage of their own life. May that very change turn to their profit, and discipline them by its hardness! It may do so, if they will use it so. Let nobody complain. A time must come sooner or later in every one's life, when he has to part with advantages, connexions, supports, consolations that he has had hitherto, and face a new state of things. Every one knows that he is not always to have all

that he has now: he says to himself, What shall I do when this or that stay, or connexion, is gone?' and the answer is, that he will do without it.' Undoubtedly, of all a person's losses, that of a superior on whom he has been accustomed to rely, is the greatest. It is felt in a hundred different turns of thought and feeling; many secret appetencies miss their accustomed object, and a general sense of inward safety, security, and peace is disturbed. The mind likes a patron. He is felt far beyond the reach of his own personal presence; he is perpetually at the call of imagination, to do what we want him, to encourage an effort, to praise an idea, to smile and look pleased with us, to sympathise with and back up our likings and dislikings. He is our running argument, and in fancy confirms and warrants all our different mental acts, tastes, or discoveries. How would he approve of this or that, that I am thinking of?-the mind says unconsciously to itself; and thus its succession of ever-issuing thoughts, its whole course of sentiment and temper, enjoys a definite support, feels an unseen observer, is soothed by unconscious commendation. The time comes, however, when this is taken away; and then the mind is left alone, and is thrown back upon itself, as the expression is. But no religious mind tolerates the notion of being really thrown upon itself: to say that it is thrown upon itself is only to say, in other words, that it is thrown back upon God. It is thrown back upon a something invisible within, it is made to do without a particular medium which it enjoyed before, and is brought into immediate contact with its own nature and hidden life. It is natural, it is religious in persons to lean upon a support which Providence puts in their way; but it may be true also that they are entering into a higher stage of life, when it is removed, and they are obliged to do without it. The child-like temper, that courts encouragement or reposes in sensible approval, amiable and reverential as it is, has to yield, perhaps, to a purer, harder disinterestedness, that is able to go on in its course by itself. Secret mental consolations, whether of innocent self-flattery, or reposing confidence, over; a more real and graver life, begins. Let them see in the change a call to greater earnestness, sincerer simplicity, and more solid manliness. What were weaknesses before, will be sins now; they have crossed a line, and have left the pleasures, security, liberties, and indulgences, of a former state behind them.

It is another painful reflection, in confronting the fact that Mr. Newman has gone from us, that we have not only lost him, but are placed at once in a totally different relation to him. He was amongst us; he is now external to us; we look at him as an object out of our sphere and home. To us and to the English Church he is now a past, and not a present person. He has