of statesmen, the arrogance of aristocracies, or the anarch will of Kings be followed, discontent, jealousies, and vindictive feelings must ensue.

It is unnecessary to touch upon the question of female suffrage, more than to state that upon the principles advocatedove, Womanhood has as good a right as manhood to the vote. In a country where a woman sits on the throne, why should not women take part in elections for members of parliament? FRANK GRANT.

NOTES, WHICH THEY WHO RUN MAY READ.

THE TEN HOURS' ACT.-A judgment of the Court of Exchequer has rendered what was won so hardly, a mere nullity. If Lord John Russell lazily suffers the North to be thrown into something approaching to insurrection, rather than offend manufacturing capitalists by hastening the passing of a new bill, he is more foolhardy than most people take him to be. He must be quickened-and the workingmen of Lancashire need not be told that they can quicken him.

THE TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE.-The Times' sneers at the phrase, because its proprietors know, notwithstanding their pretended indifference, that their monopoİy would be broken by the million and a quarter of these Taxes being removed. There is no more important reform than this; and all true reformers should back up, by subscriptions-be they ever so small-the " Newspaper Stamp Abolition Committee," by remitting what they can afford to the Secretary, "J. D. Collett, 15, Essex Street, Strand," or to the Treasurer, "Francis Place, Brompton Square.' The Committee are in communication with Mr. Ewart, R. Cobden, W. J. Fox, and other Members of Parliament, who have pledged themselves to exertion for securing the abolition of these obnoxious imposts. They have already expended considerable sums on tracts, handbills, &c.

ROBBERY OF THE CHURCH COMMISSION FUNDS.-The Bishops have not only suffered an underling to purloin £7000 or £8000 of the public money; but have made whining excuses for the thief, and lauded his former honesty! By the same rule ought not every thief to be praised for his former honesty,' and tenderly treated in gaol?-for have not all thieves been honest? Will Lord John have the sense and resolution to take the management entirely out of the hands of the lawnsleeved lords? Who expects Bishops to have brains sufficient for the correct management of such a trust-even if they willed it?

BURNING OF THE DEAD.-The words look startling; but they are sensibly put together, for all that. An Association has been formed, at the "City of London Mechanics' Institute, Gould Square, Crutched Friars," to attempt to carry out this salutary practice of the ancients. They propose to erect an edifice for the "Funeral Pyre," in the neighbourhood of London-to attain a method of decomposing the dead by fire in a quarter of an hour, with "elegance and innocuousness" and to establish a "Garden of Memories," for the reception of urns, tablets, monuments, &c. The entrance fee is one shilling, and W. H. Newman is the Secretary. Their measure is philanthropic in the highest degree, and deserves the adherence and support of every man of intelligence.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL TRACT SOCIETY.-A company of intelligent and energetic Reformers have associated themselves under this name, at the "Literary Institution, John Street, Fitzroy Square," and are actively engaged in their great work. The Labour Question, the People's Charter, the Abolition of Capital Punishments, the Separation of the Church from the State, the Temperance Movement, Direct Taxation, and Financial Reform, are among the subjects on which they propose to circulate information-in the most effective form-the form in which bold Luther sent forth his intellectual arrows against ecclesiastical corruption, and stout Cobbett attacked political abuse and delinquency. Help, although it be in the smallest coin, will be gladly received by the Secretary, W. Sandilands. ample ought to be followed in Manchester, Birmingham, and all our large towns, THOMAS COOPER,

The ex

To Correspondents.

Correspondents will please address, "Thomas Cooper, 5, Park Row, Knightsbridge, London." "YOUNG ENGLISHMAN,' Blackburn.- he knew anything about My Lord,' or the real circumstances of the meeting, he would not be so indignant; but would think 'his Lordship' deserved still more contemptuous treatment.

W. W. S., Newcastle-on-Tyne.-Reading the best authors, thinking, and trying to write-are sure recipes.

T. T. CAMPBELL, Wolverhampton.-The word organic should have been inorganic, in his letter in last number. I am sorry for the misprint; but these errors are often unavoidable, from haste in the printing.

CHAS. DRYDEN. His lines unfold promise: some additional care, as to the mechanism of verse, and his hopes may be realised.

J. D., Aberdeen.-Obliged by his admonition: it shall not be given in vain.

G. B. His present communication is respectfully declined; yet a little compressure of his thoughts into fewer words may make his future favours acceptable.

J. ALLINSON.-The feeling of his verse does honour to his heart; but a greater perfection of manner, and better acquaintance with correct forms of expression, must be sought by him. W. B., STOCKPORT.-His reasoning is not new to me: it does not- and I say this respectfullyalter my views respecting Phonotypics.

"YOUNG CHARTIST," RYTON.-He will find his question answered in my "Eight Letters to the Young Men of the Working Classes."

N. WARNE. Is not the first desideratum more readers and of a higher character? Will not libraries of the higher grade follow after?

MARY HOOD; H. T. H.; J. ATHOL W.; ARCHIBALD C.; J. J., Manchester. Their poetry is respectfully declined.

JOHN GOODISON. -Bishop Burnet's History of his own Times' must be read by every one who wishes to obtain a complete knowledge of the period in which he lived. Some of his statements are questioned; but his general veracity is established.

W. B., Stockport; S. L., Leeds; AMYNTOR; JAMES ELLIS; W. W., Birmingham; and several others, write generally respecting the advisableness of a PROGRESS UNION; but their communications being of the same purport with those already published, it is not necessary to print them.

Lectures, in London, for the ensuing Week.

SUNDAY, Feb. 24, at 7, Literary Institution, John-street, Fitzroy Square. "Life and Character of Sir Isaac Newton "-Thomas Cooper. At 7, Hall of Science, (near Finsbury Square, City Road.) "Lamartine, Louis Blanc, and the French Revolution of 1848"-Walter Cooper. MONDAY, Feb. 25, at half-past 8, Mechanics' Institute, Gould Square, Crutched Friars. "Chemistry"-Robert Williamson. At a quarter to 9, Finsbury Hall, 66, Bunhill Row. "Present and Future, for Europe-War or Peace!"-Dr. Webb. At half-past 8, Pentonville Athenæum, 17, Chapel Street. "Shakspere "-W. Beaver. At a quarter past 8, Literary Institution, Carlisle Street, Edgeware Road. "Ghosts and Apparitions"-Dr. Sexton. At 8, Finsbury Mechanics' Institute, Bell Yard, City Road. "Life and Genius of Milton"-Thomas Cooper.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27, at 8, Hackney Literary and Scientific Institution. "Importance of cultivating Habits of Observation"-Robert Hunt.

SHAKSPERE. Those who deny that Shakspere was a learned man, should prove that Plato was translated into English in the time of Queen Elizabeth, for the celebrated soliloquy, 'To be or not to be" is taken almost verbatim from the Philosopher.—Preface to Langhorne's Plutarch."

MORAL POWER.-As the operations of the mind are in all cases much more noble than those of the body, so are the things that we compass by the faculties of our reason and understanding of much greater value than those things that we bring to pass by corporal --force.-Cicero.

OLD INSTITUTIONS.-When the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to preserve nothing but the burden of them. This is superstitiously to embalm a carcase not worth an ounce of the gums that are used to preserve it. It is to burn precious oil in the tomb; it is to offer meat and drink to the dead, not so much an honour to the deceased, as a disgrace to the survivors.-Burke.

HONESTY. Though an honest discharge of one's duty may, for the time, offend those it opposes; yet it will, at last, be justified and admired even by the very men who suffer from it.-Pliny's Epistles.

THINKINGS, FROM THOMAS CARLYLE.

PROPERTY IN LAND.-Men talk of 'selling' Land. Land it is true, like Epic Poems and even higher things, in such a trading world, has to be presented in the market for what it will bring, and as we say be sold :' but the notion of 'selling,' for certain bits of metal, the Iliad of Homer, how much more the Land of the World-Creator, is a ridiculous impossibility! We buy what is saleable of it nothing more was ever buyable. Who can, or could, sell it to us? Properly speaking, the Land belongs to these two: To the Almighty God; and to all His Children of Men that have ever worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it. No generation of men can or could, with never such solemnity and effort, sell Land on any other principle: it is not the property of any generation, we say, but that of all the past generations that have worked on it, and of all the future ones that shall work on it.

PUFFERY.-Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which now perambulates London Streets; which my friend Sauerteig regarded justly as one of our English notabilities; "the topmost point as yet," said he, "would it were your culminating and returning point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach !"-The Hatter in the Strand of London, instead of making better felthats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels; sends a man to drive it through the streets; hoping to be saved thereby. He has not attempted to make better hats, as he was appointed by the Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he could very probably have done; but his whole industry is turned to persuade us that he has made such! He too knows that the Quack has become God. Laugh not at him, O reader; or do not laugh only. He has ceased to be comic; he is fast becoming tragic. To me this alldeafening blast of Puffery, of poor Falsehood grown necessitous, of poor HeartAtheism fallen now into Enchanted Workhouses, sounds too surely like a Doom'sblast! I have to say to myself in old dialect: "God's blessing is not written on all this; His curse is written on all this!" Unless perhaps the Universe be a chimera;-some old totally deranged eightday clock, dead as brass; which the Maker, if there ever was any Maker, has long ceased to meddle with ?-To my Friend Sauerteig this poor seven-feet Hat-manufacturer, as the topstone of English Puffery, was very notable.

THE ETERNAL FUTURE.-What went before and what will follow me, I regard as two black impenetrable curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human life, and which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations have already stood before them with their torches, guessing anxiously what lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity many see their own shadows, the forms of their passions enlarged and put in motion; they shrink in terror at this image of themselves. Poets, Philosophers, and founders of states, have painted this curtain with their dreams, more smiling or more dark, as the sky above them was cheerful or gloomy; and their pictures deceive the eye when viewed from a distance. Many jugglers, too, make profit of this our universal curiosity: by their strange mummeries they have set the outstretched fancy in amazement. Å deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one once within will answer those he has left without; all you can hear is a hollow echo of your question, as if you shouted into a chasm. To the other side of this curtain we are all bound: men grasp hold of it as they pass, trembling, uncertain who may stand within it to receive them. Some unbelieving people there have been, who have asserted that this curtain did but make a mockery of men, and that nothing could be seen because nothing was behind it; but to convince these people, the rest have seized them, and hastily pushed them in.

CHARACTER OF THE ESTABLISHED CLERGY.-Who does not see that these men are more ministers of the government, than ministers of the gospel; and that by flattering the authorities and favouring the dominion of princes and men in authority, they endeavour with all their might to promote tyranny in the commonwealth, which otherwise they should not be able to establish in the church. This is the unhappy agreement we see betwixt church and state.-John Locke.

BLUEBELL AND PRIMROSE.
Bluebell and primrose, sister flowers,
Your native home is Eden's bowers:
You are but exiles here!

Blest be the breeze that blew you forth,
O'er lakes and mountains, the cold north
To beautify and cheer!

The sun once rose in vapours furled,
Eager to see our new born world,

And gazed through clouds of dew:
A rainbow then bestrode the hills,
And stained the rivers, lakes, and rills,
And tinged you with its hue.

To pluck you from your green retreat-
Or, any thing so fair and sweet-

I love you far too well!

Preserving influences to bless,

And cheer us through life's wilderness-
Still deck the mossy dell!
Southwick.

THOMAS BELL.

THE KINGLIEST CROWN.
Ho! ye who in a noble work
Win scorn, as flames draw air,-
Who, in the way where lions lurk,

God's image bravely bear,

Tho' trouble-tried and torture-torn-
The kingliest crown's a crown of thorn!
Life's glory, like the bow in heaven,
Still springeth from the cloud;
And soul ne'er soared the starry seven,
But pain's fire-chariot rode:
They' battled best who've boldliest borne:
The kingliest crown's a crown of thorn!
As beauty in Death's cerement sleeps,
And stars bejewel darkness,
God's splendour lies in dim heart-deeps;
And strength in suffering's starkness:
The murkiest hour is mother of morn :
The kingliest crown's a crown of thorn!
GERALD MASSEY.

SONNET, TO SPENSER.

Sweet Bard, who for the weary soul of man
Did'st plant a garden, watered by clear stream
And fountains chiming to an endless dream
Of worthy knighthood in the realm of Pan,
Half cunning-faced, and all his hoofed clan-
Of cruel ladies, who did gentle seem
In tower or flowery island, by the scheme
Of subtle wizard and swart Sarazan-
Thee have I not forgot in this late day

Of worldly thought by over labour bred;

And when the jarring h.urs have passed away,
Awake or sleeping, often am I led

To that fair spot where still the fountains play,
And every daily care is banished.

W. MOY THOMAS.

CONSERVATISM. O my Conservative friends, who still specially name and struggle to approve yourselves Conservative,' would to Heaven I could persuade you of this world-old fact, than which Fate is not surer, That Truth and Justice alone are capable of being conserved' and preserved! The thing which is unjust, which is not according to God's Law, will you, in a God's Universe, try to conserve that? It is so old, say you? Yes, and the hotter haste ought you, of all others, to be in to let it grow no older! If but the faintest whisper in your hearts intimate to you that it is not fair,-hasten for the sake of Conservatism itself, to probe it rigorously, to cast it forth at once and for ever, if guilty. How will or can you preserve it, the thing that is not fair? Impossibility' a thousand fold is marked on that. And ye call yourselves Conservatives, Aristocracies :-ought not honour and nobleness of mind, if they had departed from all the Earth elsewhere, to find their last refuge with you? Ye unfortunate! The bough that is dead shall be cut away, for the sake of the tree itself. Old? Yes, it is too old.-Carlyle. LIBERTY.--To be a MAN is at all times in all countries, a title to liberty; and he who doth not assert it deserves not the name of a Man.-Major Cartwright.

VOTING BY BALLOT.-The author of the law, by which votes in the Roman Senate were taken by ballot, was one Gabinius, a tribune of the people. It gave a very considerable blow to the influence of the nobility, as in this way of balloting it could not be discovered on which side the people gave their votes; and took off that restraint they before lay under, by the fear of offending their superiors.—Melmoth's Pliny.

TRUE SELF-INTEREST.-They who have been so wise in their generation, as to regard only their own supposed interest at the expense and to the injury of others, shall at last find, that he who has given up all the advantages of the present world, rather than violate his conscience and the relations of life, has infinitely better provided for himself, and secured his own interest and happiness.-Bishop Butler.

CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY,

ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS'S 'LEBEN JESU.'

A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIvered at thE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848-9, AND 1849-50,

BY THOMAS COOPER,

Author of The Purgatory of Suicides.'

III. THE MIRACLES.

(Continued from last number.)

THE national legends of the Jews attributed miracles of all kinds to Moses, Elijah, and others, the fore-runners of Messiah; and the believers in the Messiahship of Jesus, therefore, naturally expected miracles from him. The Four Gospels narrate numerous instances of his miraculous power; yet, two things are remarkable: first, that a couple of general notices excepted (Acts, 2 ch. 22 v. and 10 ch. 38 v.) the miracles of Jesus appear to be unknown in the preaching and epistles of the apostles, and every thing is built on the supposed fact of his resurrection: secondly, Jesus himself censures the seeking for miracles, refuses to comply with the demands for a sign, and declares that no sign shall be given to that generation but the sign of the prophet Jonas. Whether we ought on these, as well as on other accounts, to doubt the authenticity of the numerous histories of miracles in the Gospels, a close examination only can enable us to decide. 1. The Demoniacs, it was agreed, should be the first class of miracles, to which our attention should be directed. In the Fourth Gospel, be it observed, there is not one instance of this class of miracles, while in the first three Gospels the demoniacs are represented as the most frequent objects of the curative powers of Jesus. Many modern divines attempt to lessen their difficulties by contending that Jesus only complied with the prevailing notions of his time and country, while addressing himself to the cure of the demoniacs. But he so often, in his parables and general discourses, speaks of the power of evil spirits over man, as to leave us in no doubt that he really partook of the prevailing notions of his time on the subject of demoniacal possession. The Jewish view, formed after the captitivity, was that the fallen angels of Genesis (6 ch.) the souls of their offspring the giants, and of the great criminals before and after the deluge, frequently attached themselves to human souls, and inhabited human bodies. Whether this were the popular view in the time of Christ does not appear from the Gospels, where the demons are merely stated to belong to the household of Satan. The word 'lunatic' is sometimes used to denote the persons dispossessed of demons, by Christ. They are, in other words, persons whose nervous system is deranged, epileptics with sudden falls and convulsions, and maniacs whose self-consciousness is disturbed and who act with fury against themselves and others. Methods of cure, in conformity with their idea of the nature of the disease, were adopted by the Jews-for even Jesus himself is stated to admit that the Jewish exorcists worked these cures (Matth. 12 ch. 27 v.) These methods consisted of adjuration in the name of God, or of angels, with certain forms said to be derived from Solomon. Fumigations, roots, stones, and amulets, traditionally handed down as used by him, were also in use. It is not at all unlikely that these methods had a frequent curative effect in such cases: the disease really lying in the nervous system, by exciting a belief in the patient that the demon could not retain his hold before a form of conjura tion, it might often effect the cure of the disorder.