so often forcing itself upon our observation in looking into some modern chapels. Here the greedy proprietor allows the pewrenters scarcely a passage sufficiently capacious to let them pass to their seats: the aisles, for which nothing is paid, being narrowed to inconvenience itself, that the pews, for which something is paid, may contain the greatest possible number of sittings. Hence the benefits of attending religious worship in public are sold by the inch, and at such a rate as to exclude the greater part of that class of the community which is the most numerous and the most in need of public instruction. The price of a sitting is too great a demand on their income, to expect them to incur the expense. And as to the number of gratuitous seats in these chapels, they are so few as scarcely to deserve any notice in the

account.

We feel that these are considerations of themselves strong enough to support the necessity of resorting to the measure proposed by Dr. Middleton, of providing the community with a parish church, instead of leaving them to the tender mercies of builders, or other adventurers in chapel speculation.

Among these evils, we must reckon the increase of sectaries. But non-conformity is still Christianity. And it might have been some consolation to set against the grief of seeing our people driven from the church, to observe, that they were still "men fearing God and working righteousness." But we dare not indulge this qualified regret at the increase of dissenters. We have an infinitely greater evil to lament. In the vastly increased inhabitancy now covering the parish of Marybone, we see only four dissenting places of worship risen during the many years it has been forming. In other parts of the town as well as in this, even in those where the greatest number of dissenting meetings have been of late years built, the numbers who have joined the dissenters would be almost lost in the calculation, were we to ascertain the whole amount of absentees from the worship of the church of England. It is not to dissenting places of worship that we must go in search of them. Those structures are too small, and too few, to contain the thousands that are missing. So that the vast numbers unprovided with the means of worshipping God according to the forms of the established church, are not to be considered as so many added to the stock of dissent; but to that of atheism. There can be no doubt, that in many parts of London, and other crowded towns, there are entire streets of immortal beings living in the sullen neglect of public worship, and scarcely cognizant of the being of a God.

What a frightful consideration is this, at a period in which the principles and morals of the labouring classes of the com

munity are known to be such as to indicate an advanced state of disaffection; while all the vehicles of information to which they usually resort are constantly feeding that disaffected state of mind with such materials as have a tendency to produce an explosion! It is a heart-breaking truth, that the mass of our artisans and manufacturers are gone from our religious assemblies. They indeed still congregate on a Sunday; nor are they without their ministers. But the public-house is their place of assembly; and the editors of our Sunday newspapers their ministers: ministers, it is to be feared, whose doctrines find a more willing reception where they are disseminated than takes place where those of a higher origin are taught.

It may not, however, be too late for the adoption of measures tending to recover these deluded, and therefore dangerous beings. But no half measures, in so advanced a state of the evil, must satisfy us. We think with our author, that a parish church is the only effectual supply to the want created by an increased population. This brings along with it a system of moral police, the inspection of schools, the catechising of youth, and many other great engines of moral improvement, unknown to the modern chapel system; though this, by the instructions of many able, active, and pious clergymen, to which it gives employment, may be, and no doubt is, the means of effecting many most important purposes.

pro

Before we dismiss this momentous subject, we will take the liberty of suggesting to those who are desirous of serving their country in its religious concerns, not to lose sight of a measure formerly in use, but which does not seem to have sufficient minence in our modern plans of reform,-we mean the division of a large parish into smaller ones, when the population is overgrown. There is a certain limit to which the parish boundary ought to be confined, in order to make the force of its ministry, and of its police, felt at the circumference, as well as at the centre of its inhabitancy. If the parish be too large to admit of this, it will indeed afford good incomes to those who obtain its pecuniary appointments; but, as to moral improvement, parochial authority will be only like " a whale prone on the flood:" a huge mass stretching its inertness over many a rood, while irregularities of every name, fearless of its control, sport themselves over its unwieldy bulk.

That the force of example may not be wanting here, we will mention the instances which former times have left us for our imitation in like circumstances. Out of the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, three other parishes have at successive periods been taken, viz. St. Paul, Covent-garden; St. James, Westminster;

and St. George, Hanover-square. Out of the parish of St. Dunstan, Stepney, were taken the four parishes of Christ-church, Spitalfields; St. Matthew, Bethnal-green; St. George in the East; and St. Ann, Limehouse. The parish of St. George, Bloomsbury, was taken out of that of St. Giles in the Fields. The parish of St. Luke, Old-street, was taken out of that of St. Giles, Cripplegate. St. John, Horslydown, is a parish taken out of that of St. Olave, Tooley-street. The parish of St. George the Martyr, Queen's-square, was taken out of the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn: its present church was formerly a chapel of ease to St. Andrew's, Holborn; but was constituted a parish church when the parish was formed. These precedents, we trust, will be followed, wherever an overgrown population requires the extension of those means of instruction, on the administration of which, the stability of nations, and the comfort of the individuals who compose them, materially depend.

ART. XXII.-Things by their right Names. A Novel. By a Person without a Name. London. Robinson. 1812.

WE are sometimes as much encouraged to give our readers some account of a work by the novelty of its design, as by the merit of its execution, for notwithstanding the observations of Demosthenes, we cannot help thinking that the "ri xavoy" is a question τι καινον” which cannot be too frequently asked by a Reviewer. The censure cannot extend to those who must be privileged" to hear,” because they are expected " to tell some new thing." Having therefore heard the title which we have copied above, we thought it would be inconsistent with the faithful discharge of the office which we have assumed to omit taking some notice of a work which from its title we conjectured to be rather extraordinary. It is in fact so long since we have been accustomed to hear of things by their right names, that we scarcely knew what to expect. Our first conjecture was that it might be a collection of those scattered definitions with which our political language has lately been enriched-a dictionary for the use of young gentlemen beginning the career of patriotism. Or supposing it to be merely a lexicon of verbal refinements, we were inclined to expect no small acquisition to the unlearned and unfashionable world. We have really arrived at such a learned and refined elevation above our

forefathers, even in our common and domestic affairs, that our very hand-bills would have been unintelligible half a century ago. Our ancestors had no Dioastrodoxon-no Panharmonicon-no Eidouranion-noTherapolegia-no Purorganon-no Pantherion. "Omnia Græce," said Juvenal, and we are not inferior to Rome in this borrowed plumage. In consequence too of the large stock of exotic terms which we have imported, we have been obliged to discard many others whose homely and indigenous appearance would disgrace the splendor of their foreign companions. Our very advertisers pour upon us the sublime and beautiful, from the gentleman who " familiarises the seasons" by his "voluminous and liberal" orrery, to the showman who calls our attention to "the most elegant collection of wild beasts ever offered to the notice of the public."

Another effect of the refinement of our language is the unmerited reproach of obscenity which it has brought upon some of our old writers. Their language (for it is of the indelicacy of the language only that we speak) was at the time of their writing as inoffensive as that which modern delicacy would substitute in its room, and now appears coarse only because it is threadbare. No words meet with so abrupt a dismission as those which are destined to convey ideas repugnant to delicacy. A writer or a speaker accustomed to polished society will be studious to convey his meaning when it borders upon indelicacy in terms as little used by the vulgar as possible; and these newly-invented terms becoming common are banished in their turn by the same sense of decency which gave them birth. It is, in fact, to a certain extent, more with grossness of language than of sentiment that delicacy is offended. But out of this delicacy there arises considerable danger to morals. He that would produce substantial reform must endeavour to direct the bent of this delicacy to things and realities rather than to words and images, and instruct us to dash from our lips those golden cups which present us with the poisonous essence of medicated debauchery.

Innumerable instances might be adduced, if we were not sure that they must suggest themselves to the mind of every reader at all acquainted with the language of the times to which we refer. Those, therefore, who condemn the gross language of those writers, would do well to remember the rule of the poet,

"Judicis officium est ut res ita tempora rerum quærere ;" and we may add with respect to some of these writers, "Quæsito tempore tutus erit."

Many words too in our language, although they are commonly used, have entirely changed their meaning: who would now

think of recommending his work (as Sheppard does his Touchstone) to the "favourable censure" of the reader? Of complimenting the church on the number of its "painful and excellent preachers?" Or what writer on agriculture would tell us with the translator of the Countrye Farme, that " to lay any dung to vines is a damnable thing?"

Of the writings of those times, however, perhaps the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer alone are read by those who are wholly unacquainted with the language of that period, and we would suggest with all that reserve and reverence which should accompany our footsteps when we tread upon sacred ground, that some slight verbal alterations would render them more intelligible by removing those words, which, in the course of time, have either lost or changed their meaning: as for example,

"I prevented the dawning of the morning;" and in the Common Prayer," Prevent us in all our doings.""He who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way."-" Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection."-"How long will ye seek after leasing?" a term which in those parts of England where it has any meaning signifies gleaning.

To come however to the work before us, which is not a dictionary, but a novel. It is said in the title-page to be written by a person without a name," who tells us, that he has chosen the form of a novel in order to meet the taste of the age, though he might have taught the science of calling things by their right names," in periodical essays, in weekly sermons, in evening lectures, in a poem, a play, a pamphlet, all equally well:" of this we have no doubt: whatever channel he had chosen for imparting his thoughts to the public, we are satisfied we should have had no reason to doubt the goodness of his intentions, and the useful tendency of his labours. We are obliged to him also for having called to our recollection the nervous language of Jeremy Collier.

"As good and evil are different in themselves, so they ought to be differently marked. To confound them in speech is to confound them in practice. Il qualities ought to have ill names to prevent their being catching; indeed, things are in a great measure governed by words. To gild over a foul character serves only to perplex the idea, to encourage the bad, and to deceive the unwary. To treat honour and infamy alike is a sort of levelling in morality. I confess, I have no ceremony for debauchery; for to compliment vice is but one remove from worshipping the devil.”

Some idea of our author's plan may be collected from the passage which we here extract.