The rage for experimenting on Society which has seized France and which will infallibly expose her to many disasters and perils-may possibly have the effect of striking out some useful ideas by which the world will become wiser, and which our cautious conservatism would have been slow to discover. May we profit alike by her successes and her failures-adopting without prejudice all her wisdom, and in no spirit of unkindness disowning and avoiding her folly!

ART. IV.-MEMOIR OF WILLIAM ELLERY

CHANNING.

Memoir of William Ellery Channing, with Extracts from his Correspondence and Manuscripts: in 3 vols. London. J. Chapman, 1848.

Ir is to be regretted that these volumes have not appeared, till the expectation directed towards them has almost expired by mere lapse of time. The impatient curiosity for some immediate memorial of the great and good, on their removal from this world, often presses hard on their biographer, and demands from him a haste, by which, were it conceded, literature would permanently suffer. In the present instance, however, the author's claim for time appears to have been inordinate. Neither in the materials themselves, nor in his treatment of them, is there anything to explain a five years' delay. The few facts which mark, at long intervals, the course of Dr. Channing's uneventful life, were too recent and patent to require research for their collection. The manuscripts, from which copious extracts are given, appear to have presented no arduous problems of revision, and to have needed only the labour of the scissors. The correspondence is of so reflective a character, so prevailingly engaged with sentiments rather than with persons, that the task of selection must have been unusally free from delicate perplexities. However, here are the volumes at length. They are the production of one who has evidently obtained a clear perception of the image he undertakes to present; and who has taken conscientious and elaborate pains to render it distinct to his readers. His success is unquestionable. Perhaps it might have been obtained upon easier terms. A lighter and freer hand might have adequately sketched a portrait, whose outlines in themselves are singularly expressive; and which preserves an identity not to be mistaken, in however many lights you place it. The memoir accomplishes its purpose, partly by narrative, following the common order of time; partly by analysis, resolving the life of Dr. Channing into its several functions, and sepa

rately describing him in his domestic, ministerial, and social capacities; partly by citation from his papers, arranged not only in each of these two orders, but sometimes according to a method altogether abstract and impersonal, so as to exhibit his thoughts on Religion, Human nature, Christianity and Society. So complicated an apparatus is thrown away in the exhibition of a character peculiarly simple, an experience free from vicissitude, and an intellect but little versatile. Dr. Channing's writings are, to a singular degree, the expression, in a dogmatic or expository form, of his own nature and affections, and awaken in every reader, an autobiographical interest. The Memoir is but the prolonged note yet lingering in our ear from the receding tones of his own voice. It is all the more sweet and welcome for that; only, with its special aids from memory and love, it need not have been struck on so many instruments, and thrown into such elaborated chords.

Channing's life, beginning in 1780, was almost coincident with the independence of his country. No sooner was the sovereignty of Great Britain shaken off, than a series of considerable men were ordered upon the stage, as if to inaugurate the new republic, and enrich it with the elements of a civilization specially its own. Adams was ready to secure it the honour of statesmanship; Story, to create its jurisprudence; Allston, its art; and Channing, its moral literature. Colonial life indeed is not favourable to professional eminence and intellectual pursuits and a society sufficiently advanced to supply its highest offices from its own citizens approaches the termination of its colonial existence. Such men ensure the era of self-government and self-government again favours the appearance of such men. The immediate period of transition however, at which Channing was born, though propitious to the ambition of grown men ready to occupy the field, was not favourable to the training of his first years. To the Revolution he owed it, that, in his manhood, he could speak to two nations ;-that, in his childhood, he was poorly cared for by one. Times of political anxiety and convulsion are unfriendly to home life. The current interests are pitched too high for its tranquillity. The topics of table-talk are not light enough for young and mirthful lips. Children are in the way; and being once fed, dressed,

protected, and sent off to church or school, are otherwise ignored. A generation whose cradle has been rocked by revolution may work its way up to strength and self-subsistence; but with great suffering to the gentler and more dependent spirits. They open best in a time of peace and evenness, when children are the ornaments of home, the measure of duty, the refreshment of care, the symbols of hope. Such was the nature of William Ellery Channing: and, notwithstanding the sterling worth of his parents and connections, it is impossible not to feel that in the notions and ways prevalent in the society of Newport, Rhode Island, he found but an ungenial nurse. His father, a lawyer in full practice, and barely able to do justice to the claims of his large family, followed rather the usages of the time than the kindliness of his nature, in keeping his children at a respectful distance. His mother, of whom a good deal is said without leaving a very distinct impression, seems to have been a shrewd and lively woman, using the license of a good conscience with something of the sharpness of a censor, and with more of the strength to conquer troubles, than of the sweet art to smooth and charm them. Though William,-the third child,-is said to have been "an idol from the first," this seems to imply rather admiration of his loveliness, than sympathy with the peculiar endowments of his nature for his mind evidently followed a solitary course, and was never domesticated with the influences around it, except with the wild sea-beach and shaded glens of the island. Of his nature, it was a law that nothing should have power over him, except on condition of its being beautiful and being good: and he was thrown by birth upon a Society, of which one half appears to have been gross and profane,-the other stiff-necked and Puritanical, with the free heart all on one side, and the dutiful will upon the other. Both of them necessarily acted as repulsions to him,--the genial spirit without purity, and the dull habits of religion without its ideality. He was like a poet-child doomed to live with a Franklin, and eat the dry powder of his precepts as antidote against the poisons of the world. It is no wonder that his mind was early driven inwards upon itself; was led to seek in books its first taste of genuine sympathy; and found a kindling joy in the stern but noble companionship of the Stoical CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 41.

2 D

moralists. From the many traces of a gentle and generous boyhood, we select the following anecdote, related by himself :—

“I can remember an incident in my childhood which has given a turn to my whole life and character. I found a nest of birds in my father's field, which held four young ones. They had no down when I first discovered them. They opened their little mouths as if they were hungry, and I gave them some crumbs which were in my pocket. Every day I returned to feed them. As soon as school was done, I would run home for some bread, and sit by the nest to see them eat, for an hour at a time. They were now feathered, and almost ready to fly. When I came one morning, I found them all cut up into quarters. The grass round the nest was red with blood. Their little limbs were raw and bloody. The mother was on a tree, and the father on the wall, mourning for their young. I cried myself, for I was a child. I thought too that the parents looked on me as the author of their miseries, and this made me still more unhappy. I wanted to undeceive them. I wanted to sympathise with and comfort them. When I left the field, they followed me with their eyes and with mournful reproaches. I was too young and too sincere in my grief to make any apostrophes. But I can never forget my feelings. The impression will never be worn away, nor can I ever cease to abhor every species of inhumanity towards inferior animals."-I. 37.

In the following narrative, the mirror is held up to the early experience of many a thoughtful mind; and an insight gained into the many gradations of unreality by which the passage is treacherously smoothed from perfect veracity of heart to utter pretence :

"His father, with the view of giving him a ride, took William in his chaise one day, as he was going to hear a famous preacher in the neighbourhood. Impressed with the notion that he might learn great tidings from the unseen world, he listened attentively to the sermon. With very glowing rhetoric, the lost state of man was described, his abandonment to evil, helplessness, dependence upon sovereign grace, and the need of earnest prayer as the condition of receiving this divine aid. In the view of the speaker, a curse seemed to rest upon the earth, and darkness and horror to veil the face of nature. William, for his part, supposed that henceforth those who believed would abandon all other things to seek this salvation, and that amusement and earthly business would no longer occupy a moment. The service over, they went out of the church, and his father, in answer to the remark of some person, said, with