the immediate interference of God. Why, we again ask, was not the whole cure completed off hand, as it were; for surely then the intention of Providence would have been promptly understood, and the great benefits derivable from such a divine manifestation would have been more general and certain?

But when we consider more narrowly the whole circumstances of these cases, we shall certainly not find that the doubts and suspicions first impressed upon our minds are in the slightest degree diminished. The reader will not fail to observe, that the three persons who were the subjects of this supposed miraculous agency, resemble each other in two very remarkable points-they were females-and they were each afflicted with scrofula: at least the nature of their complaints justifies the inference, that in each of those patients there was a scrofulous taint from birth. Now, it requires but little knowledge of the world in any person to enable him to discover, that there is almost uniformly connected with a scrofulous frame, a very early maturity of all the mental qualifications; as if Nature, having predestined those unhappy beings to a short mortal career, resolved also to abridge the usual term of development which she has fixed for the rest of her productions. Premature endowments, therefore, are ordinarily found to distinguish scrofulous youth. Now this precocity, as we all know, almost always begets pride and confidence in such children, who cannot but feel the greatest complacency at the favourable contrast which they exhibit in comparison with their less intelligent, but more healthy companions. But the delicacy of their physical structure is not more remarkable than their exquisite sensibility; hence they are generally characterized by great susceptibility of emotion-great promptitude in adopting impressions. From the peculiar circumstances which necessarily attend their education, they are denied the advantages of that experience of privation which all other children possess; and hence they become, more or less, nothing better than mere creatures of imagination. They know but little of human nature who will be surprized at the terrible combustion, which the smallest spark of enthusiasm kindles in such minds. There is no possibility of measuring the power of the fancy over the body. Medical history exhibits a series of facts in proof of the truth of this observation, which would make Mr. Irving and his generation hide their heads in shame, at the little favour which they possessed with the great Author of miracles. A village surgeon-nay, an ambitious farrier-has often done infinitely more wonders than Mr. Irving can ever expect to imitate. Dr. Hunter once turned a piece of bread into mercury-and absolutely cured by its agency a complaint which nothing but mercury could remove-but he took care, in the first place, to secure the patient's imagination on his side. We could multiply such examples, and soon satisfy the world that poor Mr. Irving is but a clumsy operator after all. His miracles cannot take: they are

presumptuous piracies, which, by all the laws of property, belong to the human imagination alone, and no more.

As regards Mr. Irving and his flock, we do not feel so philanthropically ardent as to desire to take much more trouble about them; but when we contemplate the extent of his delusions, and consider them as a sign of superstitious credulity in this enlightened time, our reflections are bitter indeed. For what have we got rid of popery for what have we confiscated the sacred property of our ancient temples, and with it the patrimony of the poor? Was it to make room for mere mountebanks and merry-Andrews of the pulpit? We forget how many times we have read in the books of travellers, illustrations of all sorts of the superstitious degradation into which the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the world were said to be uniformly plunged. St. Januarius in one place, and St. Anthony in another, ruled the brute population in the most diverting manner. Now we have always thought that great allowance should be made for the foolish, or, if you will, evil customs, which are of long standing in any country, and which necessarily continue to be observed, without examination, by those who successively adopt them. Hence we may say, that, under such circumstances, superstition ceases to be a crime, that chief ingredient of all guilt being absent-malice prepense. But what shall we say of a nation like ours, which has signalized itself so eminently by a triumphant renunciation of all irregular influences that present themselves in alliance with, or under the sanction of religion; what shall we say of such a nation, such a people, when they relapse into a blind and superstitious credulity? They have no prejudices to mislead their judgment; they have no national habits to justify their errors; they sin with deliberation; they have no excuse for their crime.

Just as we were about to dismiss the Morning Watch,' at least for the present year, our eye lighted on the name of no less a personage than Missionary Wolff himself, who, after all his wanderings, has at last, it seems, consented to end his days in the quiet retreat which Mr. Irving has provided for religious lunatics. Alas! how changed is the Rev. Joseph from the Hercules we once knew him! How little, a few years ago, did we expect that the glorious promise which Joseph and his "Georgiana" held forth, would terminate in that disastrous result which is forcibly depicted in the following ominous passage, from the pen of Mr. Irving :

""Mr. Wolff has ceased to have any connexion with the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, and set out from Malta, where he has left his wife (Lady Georgiana) and his child, trusting to such casual resources as shall be raised up for him."

Perhaps it would have been more germain to the matter, if Mr. Irving had stated exactly what the truth was-to wit, that the Reverend Joseph was dismissed by his employers for extravagance: and he certainly appears to have completely understood the notorious gullibility of our English philanthropists. Some extracts from

his recent journals appear in the 'Morning Watch,' which would be sufficient, we should think, to satisfy any reasonable mind, that the pretensions of the author to a birth in a lunatic asylum, were far from being unfounded. Joseph begins by noticing, with great disapprobation, the extreme fastidiousness of the Society in presuming to find fault with the scale of his expenses. Lady Georgiana ought to have been thought of, and the satisfaction of seeing in their service a titled missionary, should have been a sufficient compensation to them for the most prodigal expenditure of their money. There are some very awkward statements in the Reverend Joseph's journal, which have struck us as being very well worthy the attention of the English public. He says, under date of Alexandria, February 7, 1831:

"On our arrival at Jaffa, we found above twenty cases of the Bible Society, put there by Mr. Jowett eight years ago-the Bibles were half eaten by rats.-I took them, for which I was obliged to give 47. sterling to the consul."

Again the missionary complaineth:

""On our second arrival at Cyprus, I found above ten cases of Arabic and Turkish, and Italian and Hebrew Scriptures, sent there to the English consul by the Reverend Mr. O'Connor, twelve years ago, which had not yet passed through the custom house: they were half eaten by the rats. I took possession of them, and distributed, gratis, several hundred of them,' (what the deuce—though half eaten by the rats!!)" in the mountains of Cyprus, and then at Alexandria."

Speaking of the missionaries in Greece at the period of the battle of Navarino, the unceremonious Joseph boasts as follows:

"In the year 1828, I went with Lady Georgiana to Beyrut, after the battle of Navarino, when all (the) missionaries ran away from Beyrut, as Nicolayson, Bird, Goodall, and Smith.""

Ran away! What, missionaries run away? Verily, they did, according to Joseph, who even, a little farther on, ventures to assert that these devoted apostles of the faith presumed to go out without any Bibles. He also complains that "they established no school at Jerusalem," as he did; that "they had not fed the as Lady Georgiana did, nor did they send to Geneva a poor Greek boy, as Lady Georgiana did, at her own expense: they had not to support a padre Michaele, suffered to starve by Jowett: they had not to support a pious missionary, Mueller, ill treated by Mr.

poor,

of the Church Missionary Society. The question," continues Wolff, "farther may be started, why did Nicolayson not spend so much? Answer. This man, with his spectacles, spent (his time) quietly at Safet, learning Hebrew of a Jew, until he was roused by the battle of Navarino, which frightened him out of his wit: then he married Mrs. Dalton, went to Malta, got ordained in Germany, returned to England, for the purpose of reading a book on baptism, comes to Malta, spends (his time) quietly at Floriana, till I roused him to

go to Algiers!!" Joseph is a bold fellow, all must allow, but if there be a particle of truth in his statements, what an outrage on common sense and religion must the missionary system be! The only consideration that detracts from the importance of such curious facts as Joseph thus casually communicates, is the character of the witness himself, who has, in the course of this very brief journal, exhibited a degree of ingratitude, treachery, and turpitude, that deserve the contempt of every good man, whatever be his religious opinions. Let the reader only pause for a moment on the following paragraph from Woolff's Journal:

"Jan. 31.-The Syrian, Maronite, Chaldean, Roman Catholic, Greek, and Abyssinian churches believe that the Lord Jesus Christ glorifies himself, in every age, by leaving in the church the Spirit of prophecy and miracles. Protestants alone deny this fact. Yea, Jews and Mohammedans are not such infidels as the Evangelical party in England are. Jews and Mohammedans have never limited so much the power of God as the Protestants, and especially the Missionary_Societies, do. I foresee great, very great, judgments coming over the Protestant churches. They may succeed in converting some among the savages, who have no books, but certainly they will never be the instruments of the conversion of the Jews. There is no such godless nation in the world as the Protestants: they have more confidence in their steam-boats than in the power of God. The Turk, when he perceives an earthquake, he exclaims, This is of the Lord :' the Protestants ascribe it to some cause in the atmosphere. The Arab, on seeing a comet, concludes that the decrees of the Lord are issued upon his creatures: the Protestant laughs at it. The Syrian Christian lays the hands upon the sick person: the Protestant, smiling, declares it to be superstition."-pp. 10, 11.

6

Now, however little we may be disposed to eulogize the labours of the Society for promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, we are not the less prompt to denounce the paltry traitor who, fed by their bounty, and deriving all of consideration and respectability that he ever had, from their liberality, turns upon his benefactors, and aims an assassin dagger at their life. May the honest and upright, the benevolent and truly charitable heart of England be warned by the example of such profligacy, and never again be betrayed into the fatal folly of nursing in its bosom the reptile, that would thus return the poison sting of malice for all the caresses with which it had been cherished.

ART. III.-Narrative of the Ashantee War; with a View of the present State of the Colony of Sierra Leone. By Major Ricketts, late of the Royal African Colonial Corps. 8vo. pp, 221. London: Simpkin & Co. 1831.

WHILST we are waiting, with no slight feeling of curiosity, for the publication of the Messrs. Landers' account of their late expedition to the Niger, it will not be uninteresting to take some preliminary sketches,

as it were, from those parts of Africa, with which their discovery of the course of that important river is likely to make us more intimately acquainted. If they have correctly ascertained that the Niger, which discharges itself into the gulf of Biafra, is the same as that which rises among the western mountains of the Gold Coast, and not very far from the peninsula of Sierra Leone, it will be at once seen, by looking at the map, that they have done more for the improvement of British commerce in that region of Africa, than all their enterprsing predecessors put together. The river is, probably, navigable for small vessels, at least for such vessels as the neighbouring tribes are accustomed to carry on their traffic in with each other, from its mouth to within some few miles of its source, thus forming a semicircle which encloses the whole coast of Guinea, the country of the Foulahs, the Denkeras, the Ashantees, the Fantees, the Warsaws, and other powerful tribes, and furnishing the means of easy communication with the celebrated city of Timbucktoo, with the districts of the Soudan, and possibly, by means of the lake Tschad and the rivers that contribute to it, with the teeming plains even of Abyssinia. This view of the consequences of Messrs. Landers' expedition may, perhaps, be too sanguine: but we are not without hopes that in the course of a few years it may be realized, as we may observe that many secondary instruments appear to have been for some time put in motion by Providence, for dispersing the clouds of darkness which have hitherto brooded over the interior of Africa, and for rendering it accessible to the footsteps of civilization.

It is the principal object of Major Ricketts' narrative to detail the events of that protracted series of hostilities, in which our colony at Cape Coast has been engaged against the numerous and savage tribe of the Ashantees, for nearly nine years; that is to say, from 1822 to 1831, as the war begun in the former period can scarcely be said to have been brought to a termination until the month of April in the present year, when the Ashantees finally submitted to the terms of peace which we had prescribed. We shall not deem it necessary, however, to harrow up the mind of the reader by dwelling long on the scenes of atrocity, by which that painful war has been so peculiarly distinguished. It is our purpose rather to detach from the narrative, as far as we can, the habits of the people who occupy those regions with which, as we trust, the fearless spirit of British commercial enterprize is about to render us more familiar. The information thus collected will be new to many, and to some it may afford hints for the adoption of such precautions, as are best calculated to provide for their safety and success, in commencing an intercourse with tribes who are yet, for the most part, little removed from the savage wildness of their native woods, though, like those woods, they are manifestly capable of being brought, by proper treatment, to a high degree of cultivation.

The British settlements already fixed on the western coast of