petition to him, of which the following is a translation by his Excellency the Protector himself.

'A PETITION FROM BIARNE THORLEVSEN

• Sheweth that, in the year 1805, my wife, Thorunn Gunnlaugdatter, was sentenced to two years' labour in the Icelandic workhouse, only for the simple thing of stealing a sheep, which, besides, was nothing at all to me. The separation, which took place accordingly, occasioned that I was compelled to take a young girl as my housekeeper, who otherwise much recommended herself by her ability and fidelity. The consequence of these circumstances was, that the girl produced two little girls, after each other, whose father I am. We were then separated by order of the magistrates; and in this manner must the education of two innocents, but, at the same time, right handsome little girls, remain neglected, unless she as mother, in conjunction with me as father, is not hindered from following the irresistible dictates of nature, in the care and education of the children. But this cannot be done if we are not allowed to marry, and I humbly beg Mr. Bishop Videlin's declaration ; so much the more so as I am convinced of the justice of my cause. I also commit my life and worldly happiness to your Excellency's gracious consideration, with the confidence and attachment of a subject. BIARNE THORLEVSEN.

This petition was referred to the bishop, who accordingly inquired into the affair, and finding that the wife was not so fond of her husband as of her neighbour's mutton, and wished to be separated from him, pronounced a divorce accordingly, and Thorlevsen was thus enabled to marry his housekeeper.

Jorgensen's reign was terminated by the arrival of the Honourable Alexander Jones, Captain of the Talbot sloop of war, who, upon the representations of the Danish merchants, thought it incumbent upon him to send both the Danish governor and Jorgensen to England, restoring the former authorities under the Stiftamptmann Stephenson, till the pleasure of the British gỗvernment should be known. By his orders the new flag was struck, the battery destroyed, the guns taken off the island, and the confiscated property restored. Jorgensen, soon after his arrival in England, was sent on board the hulks for having broken his parole: after remaining in this confinement twelve months, he was placed in a comparative state of liberty at Reading; where he amuses himself with writing books, in one of which, by way of recommending himself to the English gentleman to whom it is dedicated, he says he is descended. in a direct line from those ancient and warlike tribes who trampled on Rome and Britain. The Dane needed not have reminded us of this; for our arrears to his ancestors have been paid off at Copenhagen. Should you,' he says in an address to the reader, 'happen to be one of those reptiles who pleasantly enough style themselves critics, and who, without giving the world any thing of their own,

apply

apply their worthless talents in pulling to pieces other men's writings, then I frankly confess I expect no mercy from you. But, lest you should be conceited enough to think that any thing you could say would give me the least uneasiness, I must now inform you I am not of a humour to treat you with the least respect, and that censure from such a person as you would be more welcome to me than your dull praise.'

But Mr. Jorgensen comes before us not in his literary character, but as the usurper, according to Sir George Mackenzie and Captain Jones's Icelandic eulogist, or, as he would have it, aud, we verily believe, the Icelandic people also, his Excellency the Protector of Iceland; and in this capacity we should most cordially approve of all that he did, had he been an Icelander himself, or any thing but a Dane. Being a Dane, there can be no excuse for his hostility against Denmark. Sir G. Mackenzie charges Mr. Hooker with partiality to Jorgensen; but, as we think, without sufficient foundation; because, while his own statement is decidedly in favour of the measures of his friend Mr. Phelps, he gives, upon every point, the counter statement of the Danish governor. And surely Sir George, who went to Iceland with letters from Count Trampe, the governor, who inhabited his house at Reikiavik, and who dedicates his work to him, is quite as likely to be biassed by his acquaintance with that gentleman, as Mr. Hooker by his knowledge of the spirit and personal qualities of Jorgensen.

Before these transactions, a privateer had the barbarity to plunder these poor islanders; similar depredations had been committed by Baron Hompesch under the British flag, upon one of the Feroe islands. In consequence of these circumstances and of the representations of Sir Joseph Banks, whose name is honoured by the Icelanders as it deserves, (for by his interference such of their countrymen as were prisoners, have been released and supplied with money till they could find means of returning to their own country,) an order in council was issued February 7th, 1810, declaring that the Feroe islands and Iceland, and the settlements on the coast of Greenland should be exempt from all hostilities on the part of England, and permitted to trade with London or Leith; and that the people when resident in his Majesty's dominions, should be considered as stranger-friends, and in no case treated as alien-enemies. A way has thus been opened for bettering the condition of Iceland, 'provided,' says Mr. Hooker, 'the Danish government has compassion enough upon the most injured of its subjects to permit the humane intentions of his Majesty's ministers to be carried into effect; but should this not be the case, (and such seems more than probable from the late decrees of Denmark, strictly prohibiting on pain of death, all intercourse with

the

the British,) then will the state of the nation be more wretched than ever, unless England should no longer hesitate about the adoption of a step to which every native Icelander looks forward as the greatest blessing that can befal his country, and which to England herself would be productive of various advantages, the taking possession of Iceland and holding it among her dependencies.' In this opinion Sir G. Mackenzie, differing as he does from Mr. Hooker concerning the revolution, entirely coincides, being convinced that the only effectual mode of relieving the Icelanders, is to annex the island to the British dominions. Fish and oil, he says, might immediately be obtained to any amount; the quantity of hides and tallow might soon become considerable; and roads, which increased industry might soon provide, would render the exportation of sulphur an important branch of trade. But it is not to the commercial interests of Great Britain that we would appeal. A people whose history is more innocent than that of any other nation under heaven, inhabiting the most forlorn of all countries, poor but yet contented, and amid their privations, cultivated by letters to a degree which might make wealthier countries ashamed, are at this moment exposed to the severest sufferings of want, be-cause they are dependent upon Denmark, and Denmark is at war with Great Britain. Their industry is suspended, because it is rendered useless; the revenues which supported their schools are cut off, and unless some speedy and effectual relief be afforded there is less danger of their falling into barbarism, than of their extinction as a people: for they labour under all the diseases which are produced by unwholesome diet; and of the children a very small proportion live through their infancy for want of proper food.

To remedy these evils nothing more is required than to take them under the protection of Great Britain, and let them govern themselves. A tenderness toward the court of Copenhagen is all that can prevent this, and how has that court deserved it at our hands? Is it for its edicts denouncing death against any of its subjects who shall be detected in trading with England? for its execution of the burning decrees? for its treatment of Romaña and of those Spaniards who, being less fortunate than their noble leader, are still lying in Danish prisons? Is it for its assent to the treaty of Tilsit, or its share in the armed neutralities? Or must we go back to those old obligations in the days of the Vikingr, of which Mr. Jorgensen has so happily reminded us, and through respect to the memory of Sweyn and Canute, give as little offence as possible to their successors?

If ever there was a country deserving the admiration and gratitude of the world, it is Great Britain at this momentous time. And if the historian whose task it may be to record her struggles and her

triumphs,

triumphs, should be destined to relate, that while she stood forward alone against the most formidable tyranny which ever yet assailed the liberties of mankind, her rulers found leisure to think of the distresses of a forlorn and suffering people, and to provide for their welfare, without one selfish view-they who shall peruse the tale, will feel such an act as neither the least memorable nor the least glorious of those which will render her the light and the example of all ages to come.

ART. IV. The Antiquities of the Saxon Church. By the Rev. John Lingard. Two Vols. 8vo. Newcastle.

THIS is the work of a catholic priest, a man not unequal to his undertaking either in intelligence or research, but abounding in all that professional bigotry, which, after being suppressed in this country for a season by fear and caution, is now directing its attacks against the protestant world with a confidence excited by the possession of independence and the hope of power.

Ever since the appearance of Mr. Gibbon's great work, it has become a kind of fashion to decline the plain path of argumentation, and to make history an insidious channel for the conveyance of controverted principles. The style of the present volume proves our author's intimate acquaintance with the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and his sagacity has unquestionably suggested to him the adoption of a manner so attractive in itself, and so well adapted to the indolence and levity of modern reading. Under another form, it is really a controversial work. It was manifestly not the author's object to give a simple narrative of the Anglo-Saxon church, which during the whole of this period was unquestionably more or less dependant upon Rome; but to exalt the character of Augustine and his followers, to sink that of the primitive British churches, to prove the marriage of the secular priests a mere usurpation, to extol the monks and their patrons, to identify the most extravagant tenets of his own establishment with the doctrines of the Saxon church, and finally, to insult and vilify the church of England, and the most venerable of her prelates, for their departure from the faith and discipline of their ancestors. This plan, at once bold and crafty, which is carried on with little art or disguise, will suggest a few reflections.

It appears, in fact, to be a sort of argumentum ad verecundiam. Transubstantiation, we are told, was the authorized doctrine of this period; it was the religion of Odo and Duustan, and of all the pious and learned men who then adorned the cloisters and cathedrals of England. On this assumed fact the author descants so triumphantly,

triumphantly, and with so much self-complacency, that out of tenderness to his feelings we are for the present disposed to concede it to him:-be it then, that transubstantiation was the faith of our Saxon ancestors. Who were they? A set of pirates just emerging from barbarism, and scarcely capable of comprehending their own wretched systems. Yes, it is to the faith and practice of such an age that we are to be recalled,--to give in exchange for the cloudy sophistry of Scotus the luminous metaphysics of Locke, Clarke and Paley, and in a period when all the operations of intellect have been analized with an exactness, and carried to a perfection, unknown in former ages, to resign our understandings to the authority of dreaming priests who were hardly acquainted with the first principles of scientific reason.

Equally unimportant is it to us whether the marriages of the Saxon clergy were canonical or not:-they were natural and nécessary, and therefore scriptural. But married or unmarried, why are the secular clergy of the church of Rome itself, to be for ever sunk in the comparison with their cloistered brethren? Why are the frozen and torpid virtues of the one to be preferred to the active and laborious exertions of the other? To the zeal and well-directed endeavours of many of these men we are willing to pay every tribute of applause. Unintelligible as their public ministrations are to the generality; in private instruction and admonition, in constant and vigilant inspection of their flocks, the secular clergy of that church have, in many instances, been a pattern, and perhaps a reproach to ourselves. They have done the work of evangelists-they have been instant in season and out of season: but these virtues have descended upon them in succession from an higher antiquity, and from a purer fountain than the institutes of Gregory or Benedict. Take the monastic life in its most favourable aspect; its abstractions and mortifications, its watchings, meditations, together with its everlasting round of tiresome forms-what is it but a waste of devotion, a solitary and self-chosen path? Surely, unless the members of that church were given up to a reprobate taste in religion, some.portion of their applause would be transferred to men whom they might justly commend-to the humble and devout Fenelon, to the intrepid and heroic Belsunce, and to the confessors and martyrs of the Gallican church during its last awful trial. We have been provoked by the petulance of the author to express a warmth to which we have not been accustomed-and we would challenge a comparison between the meddling and secular spirit, the pride and cruelty of his heroes Odo and Dunstan, not merely with the seculars of his own church, but with the learning and moderation of Parker, or the sanctity of Secker and Porteus, each of whom he insults. Could any thing short of the rancour and bigotry of his

church