The deceit practised upon Jacob by Laban in imposing Leah upon him in the place of Rachel, suggests some exquisite reflections:

* And it came to pass in the morning, behold it was Leah! and he said unto Laban, What is this that thou hast done unto me?" Did I not serve thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thor beguiled me?

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Listen, I pray you, to the stories of the disappointed in marriage, collect all their complaints, hear their mutual reproaches; upon what fatal hinge do the greatest part of them turn?They were mistaken in the person." Some disguise either of body or mind is seen through in the first domestic scuffle; some fair ornament, perhaps the very one which won the heart-the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit falls off. It is not the Rachel for whom I have served, why hast thou then beguiled me? Be open, be honest; give yourself for what yon/are; conceal nothing, varnish nothing; and, if these fair weapons will not do, better not conquer at all than conquer for a day. //When the night is passed 'twill ever be the same story, And it came to puss, behold it was Leah! godto yus bgor 7979 197„ob excellences w which portion of Hesh and blood;, when the dream is over, and we awake in the morning, it matters little whether 'tis Rachel or Leah. Be the object what it will, as it must be on the earthly side, at least, of perfection, it will fall short of the work of fancy, whose existence is in the clouds. In such cases of deception, let no mantiéxclaim, as Jacob, does in this,) What is it thou hast done unto me! for 'tis his own doing, and he has nothing to lay his fault on, but the heat and poetic indiscretion of his own passions to tend In his sermon on Paul before Felix, after relating the apostle's triumphant refutation of the Jews who accused him, Sterne breaks out into this fine exclamation dont biqro odt I

beguiles itself

If the heart in its choice, and imagination will give

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There was, however, still one adversary in the court, though silent, yet not satisfied. Spare thy eloquence! Tertullus! roll up the charge! A more hotable orator than thyself is risen uputis AVARICE, and that too in the most fatal place for the prisoner it could have taken possession oftis in the heart of the man who judges him!' as nodren wobeiHe is treading on the confines wi !omated to gout oft ei alevit confines which separate eloquence from bombast, but keeps within the boundary.. His character of Shimief which he considers to have been that of a time-serveris in mote questionable taste, though still levincing an unusual poiver and felicity of expression: vino od mng of dr In every profession you see a Shimet following the wheels of the fortunate through thick mire and clay Haste, Shimei haste! or thou wilt be undone for everi Shimei girdeth up his loinsy and speedeth after him. Behold the hand which governs everything takes the wheels from off his chariot, so that he who driveth, driveth on heavily. Shimei doubles his speed, but 'tis the wind over a sandy desert, and the brary way; he flies like the place thereof shall know it no more.

VOL. XCIV. NO. CLXXXVIII.

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Stay,

Stay, Shimei! 'tis your patron, your friend, your benefactor; 'tis the man who has raised you from the dunghill, 'Tis all one to Shimei. Shimei is the barometer of every man's fortune, marks the rise and fall of it, with all the variations from scorching hot to freezing cold upon his countenance that the smile will admit of. Is a cloud upon thy affairs? See it hangs over Shimei's brow. Hast thou been spoken for to the king or the captain of the host without success? Look not into the court calendar, the vacancy is filled up in Shimer's face. Art thou in debt? though not to Shimei, the worst officer of the law shall not be more insolent. What then, Shimei, is the guilt of poverty so black, is it of so general a concern, that thou and all thy family must rise up as one man to reproach it? When it lost everything, did it lose the right to pity too? Trust me, ye have much to answer for; it is this treatment which it has ever met with from spirits like yours which has gradually taught the world to look upon it as the greatest of evils, and shun it as the worst disgrace.

There are not many pages so striking as those we have quoted, but there is much of the same description, which pleases at the outset and finally cloys.

21

Gray mentions among the characteristics of the sermons of Mr. Yorick, that he seems often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience. It is chiefly at the opening of his discourses that he manifests this disposition. He takes for his text the verse from Ecclesiastes, It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting; and his first words are, That I deny. But let us hear the wise man's reasoning upon it, for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter for a crack-brained order of Carthusian monks, I grant; but not for men of the world." After proceeding for a page or two in the same strain, it appears that he is speaking in the name of the sensualist, and that it is only an artifice to startle the wondering reader. Such arts are as much below the dignity of genius as the solemnity of the pulpit. His tricks to astonish, and the exaggerations of his rhetoric, attracted additional notice by their strangeness when they were new, but they have been almost fatal to his permanent reputation; and no writer in the language of equal excellence has suffered so much from the want of a continuous faith in the power of sense, simplicity, and nature que

The lives of men of genius have been constantly a deplorable 'struggle with circumstances. It was otherwise with Sterne. He started in manhood with a happy home, a competent income, a profession which more than any other placed him above the strife and anxieties of the world. He had married the lady of his choice; no misfortune had ever visited him; he was blessed

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blessed with a sanguine disposition and extraordinary talents. With every opportunity to use his gifts he had likewise the rare felicity of leisure to enjoy them, Yet with these multiplied advantages there is no more melancholy history, and it can only be read with mingled feelings of pity and indignation. For years the most popular author of his day, and ranking still among the geniuses of his country, he has curiously verified the singular prediction which Eugenius, in Tristram Shandy,' made to Yorickor, to translate fiction into fact, which Hall Stevenson made to Sterne :The fortunes of thy house shall totter; thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it; thy faith questioned, thy works belied, thy wit forgotten, thy learning trampled on.

b

ART. II. The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. By the Rev. W. J. Conybeare and the Rev. J. S. Howson. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1850.

*

THE appearance of a work like that which stands at the head of our pages, besides its own intrinsic, merits, is useful, as reminding us of the present condition of the branch of knowledge to which it is a contribution, and of which it is a landmark. Its chief characteristic undoubtedly consists in this, that it is la result-to some it may perhaps appear even an exaggerated result

of that union of history and geography which has been so happy a change in the study of both those noble sciences, and not least in their relation to the greatest of all histories the most instructive of all geographies-that of the Bible. We do not underrate the other aspects in which the joint labours of Mr. Howson and Mr. Cony beare may be viewed, or the substantial gain to our theological literature from any work conducted with the fairness, the courtesy, the learning, and the high moral and religious tone -which pervades these volumes. But the authors would probably themselves admit that it is in the geographical branch of their undertaking that the most solid addition has been made to our existing means of realising and understanding the Apostolical age, and will not complain if we take this opportunity of considering the previous history, the leading principles, and the probable results, of the progress of Sacred Geography, as thus brought before us in what is at least in this country-its latest development. smod rqqsd a dia bonnant ir beunte sil In its widest sense, the term of Biblical Geography would inPopique bo It is a curious fact, that an abridgment of this work into Dutch has already appeared Paulus, voorgesteld door Nicholas Beets. Oil b922310

970

2 A 2

clude

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clude all the countries from the primeval cradle of the human race in Central Asia to the graves of the Apostolic martyrs beside ther Appian Way and beneath the shade of the Vaticana But for any practical as well as compendious treatment of the subject,al large portion of these regions must be struck off our list. Mesopotamia, and even Egypt, though closely, associated with the patriarchal history, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, though hallowed by the footsteps of Apostles, yet, have been so much more conspicuously the scenes of other histories than that conil tained in the Sacred Volume, that, although the study of their physical features is indispensable to a complete knowledge of the Biblical narrative, and has, as such, been profitably pursued in the work now before us, yet the writers on these countries are of j a separate class, and the results to be looked for are of a different↑ kind. Layard and Rawlinson, Champollion and Lepsius, Leakej and Chandler, though valuable, auxiliaries to Biblical topographys and history, must, in any discussion of the subject as a whole, ber viewed as incidental rather than as necessary contributions to thei main course of our investigations.to roteid oft ni at0979_tustroq It is to the geography of Arabia and of Palestine with the countries, we have just named as its eastern, southern, and i western outskirts, that we now wish to call the attention of our readers; and not the less because the course of events in thei Turkish Empire is probably bringing us to the eve of a greato change in our relations to these regions, geographical as well) as moral, scientific as well as political. It may be that the curtain which for the last fifty years has been partially held:2 up, from the Holy Land,, is about to be drawn, round it again more closely than ever; or it may be that it will be entirely renti asunder, never more to be closed. In either case it is well for uso to know what we and our fathers have done, or, ought to hayeo done, in the most instructive and wonderful, regions of the earth. It may be interesting, in either case, for some of the hundreds for so, they may now be reckoned who have tra versed the wilds of Arabia and Syria, to see in a compendious form the results of the vast literature which has grown up round that marvellous journey, to be reminded, if only by names and dates, of those days of glorious, recollection-witho Egypt and its monuments receding in the distance, and the Desert. with its manifold wonders, unfolding before them and the wil derness melting into the hills of Palestine and the glory of Palestine fading away,' into the common day of Asia Minor and o Constantinople yet still with gleams, in, the scenes of apostolical I labours and of ancient councils, to lood ysbomo odt bearst to anotquido

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uno From that imperial palace whence we came

9

On

On this journey itself, so dramatic in its unity and progress, so romantic and inexhaustible in its details, we do not enter! Its general results may be approached with less enthusiasm perhaps, but also with less diffidence and difficulty.o as low as Tribing -29. Jail two to doute od term enoiyor 9291lt to moitroq ogrel Even in its merely outward and natural aspect, the geography of Syria and Arabia contains elements of interest not to be sur passed. The Isthmus of Suez, the bay of Issus, as the connecting range of Sinai, as one of the most!

links of vast continentations and, above all, that myse

remarkable of geological

terious cleft to which there is no parallel on the face of the earth, the deep fissure along which the Jordan flows through its three lakes, with the battlefield of geographical speculation în1 the valley of the Arabaho all these would make us turn gladlys to any researelles in those parts, even though they had been as barren of human interest as the interior of Africa and Augus tralialo But to this singular conformation of the country wes have to add the fact that it has been the scene of the most im portant events in the history of mankind; and not only so, but that the very fuet of this local connexion has produced a reflux of interest, another stage of history, which intermingles itself with the scenes of the older events, thus producing a tissue of local" associations unique not only in magnitude of interest and length of time; but also in its extraordinary variety and complexity. T Greece and Italy have had, and always will have, a geographical' interest of a high order. But they have never provoked a Cruzs sadeg and; however bitter may have been the disputes of anti quaries about the Acropolis of Aliens or the Forum of Romeļu they have nøver, as at Bethlehem and Jerusalem, become matters of religious controversygrounds for interpreting old prophecies or producing new ones cases for missions of diplomatists, for the war of civilised nations, for the fall of mighty empires

ob

In proportion to the interest of Sucred Geography has been the amount of tmaterials which elucidate it. We must, with dued reverence, give the first place to the Scriptures themselves! From Genesis to the Apocalypse there are even when not intendingo nay! even when deprecating, any stress on the local associations of tire events recorded constant local allusions, such as are the natural result of a faithful, and, as is ofter the ease in tlie Biblical narrative, of a contemporary history! There is, besides, 'one docus” ment in the Hebrew Scriptures to which, we imagine, no parallep exists in the topographical records of any other ancient nution. I Ins the Book of Joshua we have what haye without (offence - be termed the Domesday Book of the conquest of Canalans efTensl chapters of that book/ave devoted to astescription of the country, ΠΟ

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