Universal Church gave and gives them, merely because they reject a usurpation which the Universal Church knew not, may hereafter add and take away from the column of truth whatever it will. It is therefore a power which can be most successfully opposed by the lovers of primitive antiquity, and opposed in a manner which will not justify those who mistake the reverse of wrong for the right. And this leads us to remark, that in an edition of Miss Reed's Narrative, republished in London, the circumstance of Miss R.'s religion being, before and after her residence in the convent, that of the Episcopal Church, is made a pretext for a violent attack upon the Church of England, which is accused of preparing the mind for Popery by her admission of ceremonies and her rejection of non-episcopal ministrations. Now with regard to this last, we may observe, that it is no longer a practical question. Into the abstract inquiry of the possible validity of nonepiscopal orders under certain circumstances, it is now unprofitable to enter. The early Reformers admitted the apostolicity and excellence of Episcopalian government, but pleaded an imperious necessity, which some English writers allow, and consequently relax in their case a demand of rigorous conformity. We believe that in thus yielding to the law of need, they admit no more than in some similar cases even the Church of Rome allows; but this necessity has long ceased, and with the necessity the license granted by the Church. The continental Churches might long since have conformed to the apostolical model; the Dutch Church might, at a very early period, have obtained orders from the neighbouring Episcopate of Denmark and Sweden, or, no doubt, from England; the French Church might have done so, possibly since the Regent's administration, certainly in the reign of Louis XVI. Switzerland, like Holland, has possessed an opportunity of completing their Reformation on the episcopal standard for centuries. Surely those Churches who have not embraced these opportunities must now be regarded as estranged from truth, rather than debarred from a privilege. Nor let them complain if we refuse to violate those good and holy customs which their own Reformers admitted and commended. Our adherence to them is far, very far, from encouraging the objects of Popery; they afford us sure ground to rest upon in our controversy with Rome, whereas the dissenting and continental Churches stray into a comfortless latitudinarianism, with which an expert Romanist can readily deal. We present a bolder front to our adversaries when we say, and offer to prove, that " Iwe have no such customs, neither the churches of God." We have heard a wish expressed in France for the foundation of a national Church upon the English model; and we doubt not, whatever be the sneers of our antagonists, that the visitations of Bishop Blomfield and Bishop Luscombe will advance the cause of sound religion: a Reformation founded upon the principles of that which took place in the Church in England, but modified according to the dispositions, habits, and manners of the people, is the only one, we are convinced, which will ever be successful on the greater portion of the continent of Europe. ART. II.-The Classic and Connoisseur in Italy and Sicily: with an Appendix, containing an Abridged Translation of Lainzi's History of Painting. By the Rev. G. W. D. EVANS. In Three Vols. 8vo. London: Longman and Co. 1835. Pp. 1445. If, as some will have it, the present age may not inaptly be styled the age of book-making, it would seem to be indebted for this epithet at least as much to books of travels as to any others. There is scarcely any region, however remote or inaccessible, whither our rambling countrymen have not penetrated, and of which they have not favoured us with a description. Not a few of these wanderers, however, are still content to tread the beaten track; and of the many Trips, Tours, Journals, Diaries, &c. with which the press continually teems, no inconsiderable portion is devoted to the description of Italy and Sicily— countries, one would have thought, described already even to satiety. So, indeed, seems to have thought the author of the work now before us: and yet it is from the very multiplicity of books that have been written on this hackneyed subject that he derives his plea for the manufacturing of one more. This, 'which looks a little paradoxical at first, appears so no longer, when we find that the writer's object is to condense the various accounts of his predecessors, and thus to furnish a more full and accurate description of those interesting countries than has yet been given in any single work. Such, as we learn from a modest and well-written preface, was the object which the author kept constantly in view during a tour through Italy and Sicily; nor do we think it too much to say that he has executed his task with great taste and judgment. The author crosses the Alps by the Mont Cenis; visiting Turin, Genoa, Pisa, &c., in his way to Florence; the attractions of which latter place detain him a considerable time. He then passes on to the Eternal City, where the relics of departed grandeur, the treasures of ancient and modern art, and the superstitious observance of Popery, by turns excite his admiration and disgust. He then proceeds to Naples, an abode which he finds no less attractive than Rome itself; whether he saunters through the Museo Boronico-the depository of those numberless curiosities and works of art discovered at Herculaneum and Pompeii; or whether he rambles over the Phlegræan Fields, or ascends the neighbouring Vesuvius, or visits the disinterred Pompeii, and the majestic temples of Pæstum. Having feasted his eyes with these charming scenes, he takes a sparonara (a sort of roomy undecked boat), in company with five others; crosses over to Stromboli; ascends to its ever-blazing crater, and, after a three days' detention on the island by contrary winds, arrives, in spite of the dogs of Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis, safely at Messina-not without enjoying, during the passage, a glorious view of the gigantic Ætna— "Soaring snow-clad through his native sky At Messina our traveller and his compagnons de voyage hired a cook and a number of mules, (for Sicily, albeit, prolific of scientific men, has as yet produced no Macadam), and proceeded by way of Cefalù and Termini to Palermo-that city which the Sicilian poets describe as set like a beautiful pearl, in the "Conca d'Oro;" the name they give to the mountain belt, by which it is almost surrounded. Thence our tourist journeys on through Monreale, Alcamo, Trapani, Marsala, and Sciacca, to Girgenti; passing in his way the Temple of Segeste and the enormous ruins of Selinunte. An examination of the site of Agrigentum, with its stately temples, crowning the southern edge of the elevated platform on which the city stood, affords employment for several days. He then directs his steps to the interior of the island, the "Umbelicus Siciliæ," as Cicero calls it; that "fair field of Euna," where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis Thence our tourist traverses the desolate Leontine Fields, in his way to Syracuse; and, after a careful survey of the site, rather than of the remains, of that celebrated city, pays a visit to Catania and the summit of Ætna. He then crosses over into Italy; retraces his steps to Rome; and, traversing the Apennines by the Loreto road, visits Bologna, Ferrara, and Venice-the latter still interesting, even in its decline. Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, conduct him, by easy stages, through the heart of Lombardy; and the Pass of the Simplon gives him the last glimpse of Italy. From this rapid sketch of the route pursued by our traveller-and, while we cast our eyes over it, we can easily imagine how it happens that scarcely any tourist, of either sex, can refrain from furnishing some record of such a tour; for we much doubt whether we ourselves could visit such interesting scenes without oftentimes exclaiming in the words of Tasso from this rapid sketch, it will be perceived that it was his object to describe all that is usually deemed most worth seeing in Italy and Sicily -a task in which, we repeat, we think he has been most eminently successful. Our limits will not allow us to corroborate this opinion by quoting from the work itself so largely as we could wish. From the title prefixed to it we were led to expect a somewhat detailed account of the Florentine, Vatican, and Neapolitan galleries; nor were we disappointed in this expectation. We subjoin the following remarks on Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola, as a specimen of the manner in which the author contrasts the observations of different tourists. "The Madonna della Seggiola unites the most opposite graces; there is a refined elegance joined to a diffident simplicity, with a gentle tenderness pervading the whole expression of her figure, which realizes all one's conceptions of that mother, from whom the meek and lowly Jesus derived his human nature." Such is Matthew's opinion of this famous picture. Moore, however, appears to have regarded it with a less favourable eye. He tells us that he visited the Pitti in company with an English country gentleman, who greatly admired the picture in question, so long as he fancied it represented a mere peasant with her child; but that, on being told it was meant as a representation of the Virgin, he forthwith changed his tone, professing that he thought the figure utterly destitute of that dignity, which a woman, conscious of being the object of divine favour, would naturally feel. This story may well be doubted. How any English country gentleman, even though, like the one in question, he should know as little of painting as his pointer," could have reached the heart of Italy—a country where Madonnas are as plenty as blackberries”— without at once recognising the subject of such a picture, it would be difficult to imagine. The truth seems to be, that Moore was determined to say something new upon the subject; and this was no such easy matter; for the merits of the work having been duly appreciated already, novelty was only to be had at the expense of absurdity. So just is that observation of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that " a man who thinks he is guarding himself against prejudices by resisting the authority of others, leaves open every avenue to singularity, vanity, selfconceit, obstinacy, and many other vices-all tending to warp the judgment and prevent the natural operation of his faculties." By way of rendering the work more attractive to the amateur, the author has added, in an Appendix, an abridged translation of Lanzi's History of Painting; in which the lives of all the great masters are given nearly at full length. The following extract from the life of Raphael may serve to give some idea of the elegance of this translation. Speaking of Raphael's exquisite talent for expression, Lanzi goes on to say Nature, as I have already remarked, had endowed him with a liveliness of imagination, which, transporting him in idea to the scene he was about to represent, however fictious or remote, and thus making it in some sort real and present, rendered him capable of conceiving and of entering fully into those very emotions which the personages of the story must themselves have felt; nor did this vivid conception of his subject ever desert him till he had portrayed the emotions in question with that air of reality which he had either observed them assume in the countenances of others, or with which he had invested them in his own mind. This rare faculty, so seldom met with even among poets, and so much more seldom among painters, no one ever possessed in a more eminent degree than Raphael. His figures seem to be actually inspired with the different passions of love, desire, fear, hope, and joy seem actually under the influence of anger, or else possessed with a spirit of placability, lowliness, or pride, just as best accords with the subject in hand: insomuch that the spectator, on regarding the countenances, the expressive looks and gestures of his figures, oftentimes forgets that they are but the work of art; he finds his own feelings excited, chooses his side, and fancies himself an actor in the scene before him. There is yet another delicacy of expression to be found in his works; and that is the felicity with which he depicts the various gradations of the passions, whereby a man may perceive at once whether they are only just commencing their career, whether they are on the increase, or whether they are already on the wane. He had, in his intercourse with the world, observed these varied shades of passion, and on all occasions he knew how to transfer to the canvass the observations that occurred to him. His very silence is eloquent; and every actor "betrays his feelings by his looks:" "Il cor negli occhi, e nella fronte ha scritto." The slighter movements of the eyes, the nostrils, the lips, or the fingers, serve to indicate the first emotions of passion; the more violent and animated gestures express its intensity; and what is more, these gestures assume a hundred different shapes, without ever offending against the laws of nature, and conform themselves to a hundred different characters, without ever transgressing the bounds of decorum. His heroes look and act like heroes; his ordinary men, like beings of a lower sphere; and what neither tongue nor pen could ever hope to describe, that Raphael contrives to express by a few strokes of the pencil. In vain have numbers endeavoured to imitate him his figures appear as if under the real impulse of mental feeling, while those of others, with the exception of Poussin and some few more, look as if conscious of acting a part, like players upon a stage. In fact, in this exquisite delineation of the various passions of the mind, consists the grand merit of Raphael. And if it be acknowledged that this quality, called expression, constitutes the most difficult, the most philosophical, and the most sublime walk of art, who then shall dispute the palm with him? : We must not omit to notice that the body of the work contains a detailed account of the Easter ceremonies at Rome, followed up by a review of the principal points of conformity between Popery and Paganism; for though (after the admirable treatises of Middleton and Blunt,) much of novelty cannot be expected on such a subject, yet is it a subject that cannot be too frequently or too prominently brought forward; especially now that Popery seems as if it were once more about to rear its horrid head amongst us. ART. III.-1. Corrected Report of the Proceedings at the Public Meeting held at Freemasons' Hall, December 3, 1835, for the Relief of the Distresses of the Irish Clergy. London: Rivingtons; Hatchards; Seeleys; Nisbet and Co.; Roake and Varty; Parker. 8vo. 1835. Pp. 29. 2. Report of the Proceedings of the Committee appointed January 3, 1833, for receiving Subscriptions for the Relief of the Distresses of |