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his sleep-as he had the habit of doing his utterances indicated some rapt contemplation of spiritual things.

It is a matter of regret that Mr. Erskine's maturest thoughts on religious and theological subjects have never been given to the world. During the last thirty years he has published almost nothing, and it is general

fully examining all its chief positions, and then only putting them aside when he had deliberately established in his own mind that they were untenable. He followed, we believe, very much the same course with the "Ecce Homo," only not in the end finding himself so entirely out of harmony with its author. He had, in short, that kind of rare candour and freeness in theology ly understood that the earlier productions which was capable of treating almost every- of his pen inadequately represent his later thing as an open question, and was ever phases of opinion. For some years past he fully prepared and inclined to go over had been most anxious to supply this defect, again by any new path and re-test once and over and over again he strove to give a more the grounds of his old convictions. full exposition of his views; but partly perNothing was more alien to him than that haps from his mind being, as we have alsort of stolid fixity which never alters a ready intimated, overcharged with thought train of thought, or looks at a great truth on the subjects which he wished to discuss, from more than one point of view. We are partly from some growing subtlety and renot prepared to say, indeed, that he did not finement in his speculations to which exoccasionally carry this tendency of his mind pression did not readily lend itself, but most somewhat to excess. He was a little apt so of all, in all probability, in consequence of to overload a subject with his thought, that the great decay in his physical vigour, he its outline became confused and indetermi- never could satisfy himself with anything nate, at least to others, and perhaps to him- which he was able to produce. One short self also, for expression seemed sometimes fragment, indeed, of great value, on what to fail him when he was most anxious to he called "The Spiritual Order," and anbring out his meaning. This was, no other on "The Divine Sonship," were put doubt, the natural result, not of originally in type shortly before his death. But with deficient mental power, but a singularly these exceptions, we suspect that the accustrong, active, and curiously versatile mind | mulated results of long years of brooding becoming over-informed with its own thought. His life had heen given almost exclusively to meditation, and it had been too little exposed to the wholesome, modifying, and corrective influences of an acquaintance with affairs which would have given a practical direction to its powers. Even with these drawbacks, however, one was able to see how noble and salutary had been the effect of that style of religious thought to which he gave himself up. All this mental activity in theology, all this keenness and unrestingness of speculative faculty, never seemed in any degree to end (as with so many men it does end) merely in the intellect, but told with immediate and pervading effect upon his character. The result was a combination with his great mental power of a sort of saintly purity and beauty of religious feeling which we should imagine almost unexampled. More than any one else whom we ever met with, he fulfilled the idea of what Novalis called "a God-intoxicated man." God's love to men seemed to be constantly in his thoughts, and it was difficult for him to open his lips or put his pen to paper without some outpouring of an ever-present consciousness on this congenial theme. Even in dreams his mind appeared always to run upon the same topic, and during the last weeks of his life, we have heard that whenever he spoke through

meditation must have perished with him. The only hope is that as he was in the constant habit of imparting his ideas to his friends in conversation, some of these may yet be able to reproduce his reasonings and conclusions in a more or less perfect shape.

The essential character of Mr. Erskine's mind was that of a thinker. He was not in any proper sense of the word a learned or even a very widely read man. No one, however, could fail to recognize in him a man of true and fine culture. He was, we believe, an excellent Greek scholar, and he had all that most valuable cultivation which results from mingling in the best society. In early life he had studied for the Scottish Bar, and he passed advocate so far back as 1810. Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherfurd (who was almost contemporary with him), and others of the same coterie were among his earliest associates. At a later period he was on terms of great intimacy with Thomas Carlyle, Edward Irving, John McLeod Campbell, Dr. Ewing the spiritualminded and liberal Bishop of Argyle and the Isles, and his near relative, the late accomplished Lord Manor. At Paris and Geneva, too, he had a circle of highly cultivated friends. And to the last, some of the best minds both of England and of his own country used to find their way to Linlathen and to his lodging in Edinburgh. In

early life, we have heard that his unaffected culminated in the raising up in the Church cleverness and gentle playfulness of fancy of a few great thinkers and men of genius, gave an irresistible charm to his society, one or two great orators, and one or twɔ and even in his later years he had always great saints, its worser influences culmian abundant flow of conversation on sub-nated in bigotry, fanaticism (heat without jects quite apart from theology. Most of light), conventionalism, mediocrity. What his fine companionable qualities, indeed, he with the poor culture offered by the Scotretained to the end of his life, and along tish Universities, and what with the national with them all the simplicity, humility, and tendency to fervour and to bare logic endaffectionateness of a child. Though a great ing ever in extremes, it could scarcely, perconverser, he was never engrossing in con- haps, have been otherwise. The result, versation. Though a great theologian, he however, was that within the Evangelical never knew what arrogance or dogmatism movement two antagonistic forces were was, nor did his mind ever seem to contract found to have sprung up. These could not, any tinge of narrowness from being much of course, long dwell together; and so, by concentrated on one subject. proceedings almost worthy of the old Star Chamber, such men as Edward Irving, Scott of Manchester, and McLeod Campbell of Row, were driven forth from the Church. Even Chalmers, who remained to the last, found at length how uncongenial were the elements with which he had to contend, and died, there is some reason to believe, of a broken heart. It is scarcely necessary to add that after the disgraceful proceedings towards his friends Irving and Campbell, Mr. Erskine's connection with the Church of Scotland may be said to have terminated. In the later years of his life he might frequently, indeed, be seen worshipping in a Presbyterian Church, but for a long period before his death he had been in communion with the Church of England.

Before concluding, we may just allude to the relation in which Mr. Erskine stood to the Church of his own country. The subject is curious and rather instructive. It is well known that about the beginning of the century a strong reaction had begun to take place against the selfish, worldly policy and utter want of earnestness in religion of the old Moderate party of the Church of Scotland.

This movement was at first led by Dr. John Erskine, a son of Erskine of Carnock, the great Scottish lawyer and author of the "Institutes," and a man of great ability both as a man of business and as a writer on theology. (He was nearly related, by the way, to the family of Mr. Thomas Erskine.) On his death, about 1803, his place was taken by the late Sir Harry Moncrieff, a clergyman Since printing the above we have received of great practical energy and the most remarkable sagacity, a man, too, of old family an estimate of Mr. Erskine from one who and possessed of immense influence, both knew him intimately, and who is in the by character and position, throughout Scot-highest degree qualified to delineate his character, which we cannot deny ourselves land. Chiefly by the efforts of this remarkable man, the Evangelical party gradually the pleasure of giving to our readers: became dominant in the Church of Scotland. In endeavouring to express in a few Though called by this name, the Evangeli- words the impression made by an intercourse cals in Scotland represented a somewhat of some years with Mr. Erskine, the most different class of minds, and a different appropriate seem those of Marcus Aurelius, style of thought to the English Evangelical-Life is a journey in a strange land." He ism of the present day. The leading men seemed always a foreigner in this world, among them had thoroughly enlarged views, good sound culture, and very liberal tendencies, so much so that all the best minds in Scotland, in particular every one connected with the rising Whig party, completely sympathized, if they did not absofutely identify themselves, with the movement. After a long struggle of more than thirty years, Evangelicism attained a majority in the General Assembly. Its success, however, may be said to have been its ruin. In proportion as it became numerically strong, it tended ever more and more to intellectual weakness, and just as the more generous influences of the movement

speaking its language as an unfamiliar idiom, and never wholly at home in any of its customs. Eighty years had not naturalized him here, nor delivered him from the home-sickness with which he yearned after a fuller vision of things divine than that allotted, except in rare moments, to this stage of our being. One never could with him wholly escape the feeling that he belonged to a different spiritual climate. To some, perhaps, this aloofness from ordinary life was seen only in the result of intensifying a very peculiar individuality, and sheltering it from all those influences which make men common-place. All those doors

through which stereotyped forms of thought | latter, and relieved the intensity of his bent enter the mind were with him closed; he of mind with a play of gracious pleasantry dwelt in the region where conventional impossible to recall without a smile. It did notions shrivel away from the realities be- not need wit to kindle that susceptible and neath them. The whole vicissitude of his delicate power of amusement, a very bad life was spiritual; he passed through scenery joke was quite as much enjoyed as a very that no eye but his could discern, and the good one, and perhaps the action which joys and sorrows of his soul alike took their now recalls the most individual aspect of his rise in heights inaccessible to those around character is the little push with which he him. This outward universe was to him no would claim response to some exquisite more than a parable of the true Cosmos drollery which ir his opinion, his hearer ever before his eye, where all things great was not sufficiently enjoying. His memory and small were held in their places by the will always remain with his friends as a spiritual gravitation of love, and he was for proof that it is possible to believe in the ever struggling to utter his impressions of invisible universe in exactly the same sense spiritual laws to him far more unquestiona- as we believe in the visible. To remember ble than those by which the outer world is his sense of God in contrast with what ordered. They were to him truly, to use makes up the faith of other men is like an expression common of late years on his turning from sunlight to moonlight, and lips, the dynamics of salvation," the fixed, the contrast is a sort of demonstration of ascertainable principles of harmony with that in which he believed. When we are which man was to be set right; and laws of tempted to think of the things that can be nature had little interest for him, except so weighed and measured as including the far as he could trace in them illustrations boundaries of certainty, the recollection of of the other laws. It was not everyone that struggle to pour out the results of inwho was ready for this sublimation of all communicable experience, will recall us to earthly interests, but that remarkable sense the conviction that beyond these limits is a of humour, which was a feature of his char- region where a man may lay hold of realities, acter equally distinctive with his thirst after that one man among those we have known the unseen, formed common ground with knew hardly any realities elsewhere. many who might have been repelled by the

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FROM time to time India gives forth slight indications of the gradual introduction of European thought into her intellectual circles, and by the presrnt mail we perceive several noteworthy instances of this progress towards civilization. A native lady of Calcutta, one Ranee Surnomoyee, has given £500 to the London Missionary Society for the building of an Anglo-Vernacular School. Now, as this lady is a Hindoo of the Hindoos, her gift denotes a freedom from bigotry that might be taken as an example for imitation by many ardent Christians. That is, provided she did not make this donation in the spirit of the late Begum Sumroo, who built and endowed places of worship for Hindoos, Mahommedans, Roman Catholics, and Protestants alike, in order that her soul might be saved, whichever faith proved to be the true one. Again, we see that a Mussulman gentleman has sued for the restoration of his wife, who had left him on becoming a Christian, and the court ordered the lady to return to her disconsolate husband. A great advance surely on the times when a Mussulman, similarly situated, would have got rid of his offending spouse by poison, or by other forcible means, instead of desiring to get her back to live with him. But, on the other hand, how the missionary element would have fermented in

those past times, had it been ordained that a Christian convert should continue to cohabit, against her will, with a follower of the Prophet! These indications tend to prove that native ideas are becoming slightly Europeanized; but what shall we say to the following? The Gaekwar of Barodo, on his visit to meet the Duke of Edinburgh, will be escorted by a regiment of natives, equipped in the Highland kilt! Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery; but, on the other hand, the sublime borders on the ridiculous, and we rather fancy that the latter will predominate in the appearance of these petticoated Aryans, with their very attenuated legs.

Pall Mall Gazette.

THE Secretary of State for India announces, at the request of the Governor-General of India, that the Government of India offers a prize of 5,000l. for machinery or a method suitable for the separation of the fibre and bark of the Rheea or China-grass from the stem, and for separating the fibre from the bark. Dried stems and specimens of the fibre will be supplied on application to the Secretary to the Government of India in the Home Department.

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CORRESPONDENCE- -SAINT DOMINGO.
PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1870.

MY DEAR MR. LITTELL,

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The Black Man, or Haytien Independence, by M. B. Bird, for nearly thirty years a Wesleyan missionary in Hayti, published in 1869. The latter gives the only connected account I have seen of the expulsion of Geffrard, the book being otherwise a compilation of not much value; nor have any of the others much value. I knew all of these authors with the exception of Dhormoys. The only ruler that Hayti has ever had, with any real progress in him, was Boyer.

I should be glad to assist your friend, Commodore Green, to some knowledge of the changes in the government of St. Domingo; but if he means secret changes, I can do little for him, as no connected history of either part of the island has been published, bringing down affairs later than the departure of Boyer in 1844. The books Toussaint was a little black Bonaparte of wonrelating to the history previous to that time, are, derful talents, it is true, and desirous of advancfirst, Histoire de St. Domingue, by Pere Charle- ing Hayti, but always with the condition that voix, published in 1730; second, L'Histoire de he should be absolute master of it. He knew la Revolution de St. Domingue, par Pamphile no other method than that of the old French de Lacroix, which is the best account extant of planters, which he essentially kept up, hence the revolution commencing with the insurrection his deportation caused little regret. Christophe of the blacks in 1791 and ending with the final was a small Peter the Great, who imported a expulsion of the French by Dessalines in 1804; sort of civilization which died out as soon as the third, Histoire D'Haiti, par Thomas Madison, foreigners, who came with his paper and powfils, who brings down events to the acecssion of der mills and Lancasterian schools, died or Boyer; fourth, Etudes sur L'Histoire D'Haiti, went away. Boyer was a man of large powpar B. Ardouin in nine volumes, which closes ers of organization, finished education, minute with the expulsion of Boyer in 1844. With re- knowledge of the Haytien and Dominican chargard to changes since that date the history has acter, and ruled the whole island for twenty-one not been written, nor, as was said by Milton about the wars of the early Britons, is it better years, during which time it made sensible progress in agriculture and commerce and the peoworth writing, than the history of the "quar-ple made substantial, though not rapid, progress rels between kites and crows." All, since that in civilization. No war, nor important insurdate, has been, as Wordsworth untruly said of rection, took place during his time, except the the French revolution, "perpetual emptiness, revolution gotten up by dissatisfied partizans in unceasing change." There has been no pur- his old age, which drove him out of the country. pose in these changes, except the unconscious, The island has been retrograde ever since and underlying one of bringing the people down to will so continue until taken in hand by us. The that state of disorganization which makes it per-books I have mentioned can probably be found fectly clear that it is time they were taken care in the Boston library, but those relating to affairs of by somebody else. Guerrier succeeded to since 1844 will give little satisfactory informaRiviere, Pierrot to Guerrier, Riche to Pierrot, tion. Soulouque to Riche, Geffrard to Soulouque, Salnave to Geffrard, and Saget to Salnave, and all, with two exceptions, from the same cause. ruler, for the time being in power, was unable to supply all his ambitious followers with place and money; the outs became discontented, conspired against those in power, took their place, and were themselves put out by other needy successors. The exceptions to this process were Guerrier and Riche who died in office of drunkenness and debauchery shortly after their accession. In the Dominican part, the course has been very similar in cause and effect. The A sudden rapture lived in every vein; My heart leap'd up to greet the glad newchanges, I think, have been quite as numerous as in the Haytien part. The only printed books And dreams of childhood danced about my brain within my knowledge which throw any light on In whispers of the summer! these changes on either side of the island are first, L'Empereur Soulouque et son Empire, par Gustave D'Alaux, whose real name was Max Raybaud, French Consul-general at Hayti, published originally in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1851 and collected into a volume in 1856; second, The Dominican Republic and the Emperor Soulouque, by Brittannicus, alias, Theodore Henniken, (a Scotch mahogany cutter of Santiago, who furnished Washington Irving with some valuable notes for his life of Columbus), published in 1852; third, "Sous Les Tropiques," par Paul Dhormoys, published in 1864; fourth,

The

THE CUCKOO.

BY THE LATE WILLIAM LEIGHTON,

I HEARD the cuckoo at the evening's close
Trill its low calls from out a bower of blossom;
And, at the sound, a trill of joy arose

And trembled through my bosom.

comer;

Could I translate that thrill of joy to men

To weary struggling souls could I but show it
In sweetness and in tenderness - ah, then
I might be deem'd a poet!

New Monthly Magazine.

SIGNOR G. BIRON has edited, at Bologna, a treatise on popular rhymes composed in 1382, by Antonio da Tempo, a Paduan judge.

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