whatever may be calculated to work out the abolition of slavery, do not find themselves warranted to break off Christian intercourse with the above-mentioned American churches, simply because of the fact, that amongst their members slave-holders are to be found. That slave labour, as compared with free, is, in an economical point of view, unprofitable, seems almost as capable of being clearly demonstrated, as it is, that slavery in the abstract, and as it exists in the slaveholding American states, is an inhuman, unscriptural, and accursed thing. The entire abolition of slavery is what every one, actuated by right principles, most earnestly desires, and is ready to promote, by all available, rational, and Christian means. In his concluding chapter, in which he ably sums up his impressions and opinions of the political and religious condition of the United States, amongst other excellent reflections upon slavery, Mr Lewis has the following :

"We have no hesitation in pronouncing slave-holding a sin, and calling on all slave-holders to abandon it: we have as little in pronouncing those men foolish and unwise who would proscribe and cast out of the church those who, like Abraham, have been born and bred to the evil have seen it practised by the best as well as the worst men from their youth up,-have been visited as yet only by scattered rays of that light which has fallen in all its fulness on British Christians, the result of twenty years' moral agitation against the trade, and twenty years more against slavery itself. Men coming out of moral evil are to be dealt with very differently from men returning to it, even as men coming out of doctrinal error are in a different moral position from men falling into it. We are wont to make this distinction, having regard to men's imperfect light; and assuredly, if we desire to do men good, and lead them by the hand out of sin and darkness of any kind, it is by dealing with them as we would desire to be dealt with in like circumstances, remembering the slowness of our own moral perceptions, whilst we grieve at their tardy convictions of rectitude and justice. But, while urging these views, which I think must commend themselves to every man's conscience, I am compelled to express my regret at the uncertain sound yet uttered by the Presbyterian churches of America, and at their extreme timidity and slowness in taking any part in this great question, even that part to which they are called in vindication of the violated privileges of their own church."

We earnestly recommend Mr Lewis's book to the perusal of our readers. We regard it as a valuable acquisition to our sources of information upon many of the most important matters connected with the condition and prospects of the United States of America.

158 The Character and Tendencies of our Weekly Literature. [JULY

ART. II.-1. Chambers' Information for the People. Edited by W. and R. CHAMBERS. 2 vols. Edin. 1842. 2. Cyclopædia of English Literature. Edited by R. CHAMBERS. 2 vols. Edin. 1843.

3. Chambers' Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts. Vol. I.

1844.

THE world has been ringing for the last thirty years with Lord Bacon's noted apothegm, Knowledge is power,' as if it had not merely been the terse expression of important truth, but the bold enunciation of some new and original proposition, fitted like a sudden trumpet-peal to shake the slumbers of a dormant age. Now, the words are doubtless true and good, worthy of him who uttered them, but no reader of Scripture will deem them new. Two thousand five hundred years before his Lordship's days, Solomon had said, 'A wise man is strong,' and in various similar forms of expression, had set forth the power which knowledge gives to its possessor. The British philosopher had merely the credit of throwing into an abstract form the concrete and more personal proposition of the Jewish king.

Certainly we have no objection to a truth or maxim because it is Lord Bacon's, even though not announced in Scripture. But we cannot help prizing it the more, and honouring it with double ho nour, when we can trace its authorship to Scripture, and read it in the Divine record as the declaration of the God only wise.' And in these days, when men are bent on tracing every thing to its source, we think it not amiss, at the outset of an article like the present, to point out the true origin of a proverb so familiar, which thousands are in the habit of parading as a gem of human intellect, who would have spurned it aside as trite and trivial, had it been presented to them as the ancient utterance of Divine inspiration. We have no doubt that it was out of that mine of deep and various wisdom, the Proverbs of Solomon, that Bacon extracted this fragment of fine gold; and we have as little doubt that he would have been the first to point out his authority, and acknowledge his obligation, had he thought it possible that a time would come when men, in their ignorance of the wisdom that is from above, and their boastful preference for that which is of the earth, would either overlook or question the fact.*

But our present business is not with the mere parentage of an aphorism, nor with its exposition and defence. We have something

*At p. 786 of the first volume of the Information for the People, the proverb, Wisdom is profitable to direct,' is quoted in a foot note. Bacon's adage is set down as parallel. But though there may be some similarity between the two expressions, there is a far more striking resemblance in the passage to which we have referred above, and which occurs in chap. xxiv. 5.

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higher and more important in view. We have to examine into the character and tendency of that knowledge which of late years hast sprung up with such amazing vigour, and spread itself with such breadth over the face of the land, or rather we might say, of the world. Of that knowledge we know no better type or exponent than these volumes of Chambers' which head this article. Respecting them, first of all, we have a few words to say. We do not pretend to have examined them with that thorough minuteness which would justify us in entering on a particular criticism of their contents. Nor do we hesitate to say, that it would require something more than the most careful perusal could furnish to enable us to sit in judgment upon them in all their parts. It would require an amount of information of which few are in possession. There are many men fitted for reviewing a single book upon a single subject. But there are few indeed fitted to criticise volumes which embrace almost every department of science, scholarship, and philosophy. It is no light matter to review an encyclopedia. Its general character may be ascertained, -its 'principles scrutinized, its calibre measured, its accuracy tested, but to go deep into the minutiae of its manifold details, is a feat which not one in ten thousand could accomplish. Such we profess to be the case with the works before us. They are far too various and extensive to admit of an attempt at minute criticism in a satisfactory way within the compass of a single article, or by the pen of a single individual; and therefore we do not profess to enter on this field at all. Nor is it necessary for the purpose which we have in view.

6

The works before us are, we believe, among the best of their class, containing able, comprehensive, clear, well-written treatises upon almost every subject worth knowing. The Cyclopædia of English Literature' is a very valuable book, and one of no common research. The Information for the People' is perhaps still more valuable, containing a vast amount of information,-information well-arranged, well-digested,—most extensive in the stretch of its circle, yet withal remarkably compact and concise. Similar remarks apply in a considerable degree to the Miscellany of Tracts,' and to the Journal,' only these two latter works comprise a great deal of lighter, less profitable, and more questionable information.

Can we then accord them unqualified commendation, and hand them over to our readers with an unrestricted certificate of excellence, as works worthy of the highest shelf in their library, and containing all that they or their children need to know? We fear not. There are serious drawbacks in the way. It is to these we have now to advert. We shall endeavour to do it as calmly and fairly as we can. The matter is really a momentous one. It concerns millions. There are eternal issues involved in it. It demands, therefore, a full and

VOL. XVIII. NO. II.

M

honest scrutiny. These works are circulating wide and far, pervading every circle of human life, and going forth as messengers of science to many a nation, both of this and the other hemisphere. They cannot fail to exercise a mighty influence in moulding the minds of multitudes. They are telling not only upon the intellectual and moral, but upon the spiritual state of the community. They are likely to tell on coming generations. They have already originated a new kind of literature. They have struck out a peculiar path in which others are following, some with less and some with greater success. They are the type of a peculiar kind of popular literature, which is not only modelling the tastes and stimulating the miscellaneous reading of our day, to an extent which may well excite our apprehension as to its solidity and depth, but is also exercising an extensive, though perhaps at present imperceptible influence upon the mental, the moral, the religious condition of the community.

We do not condemn them as containing positive error, far less immorality. They They are strictly moral; nor do they contain aught directly in opposition to religion. In general their statements with reference to sacred subjects are fair and candid; nor do we know of any thing in them like the sneer of the sceptic, or the misrepresentation of the partizan. Were we to confine ourselves to their positive characteristics we might not have much to complain of. But we have their negative qualifications to examine; and it is here that our complaints begin. It is not so much as to what they do contain that we have to speak, as of what they do not contain. They may not be positively injurious, but they are in many things defective.

In taking up this subject, and turning the attention of our readers to it as one of vast moment, we trust that we shall not be understood as if referring solely to the works before us, or the other volumes of the same adventurous publishers. These are, as we have already remarked, only a specimen or type of a very extensive and augmenting class of works issuing from the weekly or monthly press, and exercising a mighty, though perhaps unseen, influence upon the minds of millions.

Now, in so far as these have tended to supersede novel reading, and substituted more solid fare, instead of the light, frothy, pernicious stuff evacuated from circulating libraries, in the shape of tales, romances, or such like, we rejoice, and count it as something gained. Considered merely in the light of a substitute for a novel, we may safely say that the Information for the People' is not a thing to be despised. The man who snatches poison out of the hand of a fellow-mortal, is certainly to that extent a benefactor, and entitled to some thanks. He has hindered some evil, even if he should have done no good. But in ascertaining the positive good conferred, other elements must be taken into consideration, and we must see

what is the nature of the substitute by which he has beguiled the reluctant hand to part with the poison. This is the point before us; but even apart from this there are some facts which claim attention, ere we receive the statement that these works have to any great extent eradicated lighter and more deleterious reading. It is rather singular that the demand for novel-reading seems to keep pace with the demand for the other to which we are referring. Not only are the new novels eagerly snatched at and devoured, but all the old novels have been republished in cheaper forms; and The Peoples' Editions,' of these have, we believe, obtained a very wide circulation. We are persuaded that novel-reading never was at a greater height than it is at this moment. The souls of a hungry world are roaming every where in quest of something to fill up the dread vacuum within, and ease the gnawing pain, which, like a cancer, is eating into the very vitals of the inner man. If mere science and literature could have satiated the famished spirit of the world, then we might have expected it to have been quieted long ere now. If these could have superseded the novel or the newspaper, then, long ere this, both romance and politics would have fallen into utter disrepute, if not oblivion. not oblivion. But the diseased appetite is not so easily fed. It craves without ceasing, and recks little what garbage is presented, provided it be only sufficiently stimulating to induce a momentary oblivion of the deep-seated malady within; and mere scientific information, however various and new, cannot accomplish this. It neither can operate with sufficient pungency as a stimulant, nor can it serve as an opiate when its stimulating effects are done. The diseased organs demand exciting food, and hence the novel and the newspaper are still as necessary as ever.

If the useful information communicated, possessed of itself a rectifying power, so as to act at once as medicine and as food, such would not be the result. The disordered functions of the soul would be gradually restored to health; and thus both the natural hunger would be appeased and the unnatural appetite put to rights. But the malady is far too deep to be reached in such a way. "This ineradicable taint of sin," is something for which these human remedies are altogether unavailing. Hence it is that the increase of these works of useful knowledge gives us but little ground to hope that lighter reading will vanish away. In many cases the former seem to act in the very opposite way, creating a mere vague undirected taste for reading, which gratifies itself on any works which may help to fill up the the tedium of a solitary hour.

Granting, however, that the inanities of the novel and the politics of the newspaper, have been superseded, in some degree, by the soberer and more solid works of the scientific class, still the question remains, what positive good have these latter accomplished; what