lar persons in disregard of the common herd, and anxiously attentive to their minute occasions, so far as to prescribe a lodging for Whitefield, or preserve his horse from stumbling, we ascribe to him the weak fondness and narrow understanding of human nature."*

The memoirs of Mrs. Ramsay are followed by what are technically termed her 'religious exercises.' Miss Laurens, at the age of fourteen years and seven weeks, (the time is mentioned with a particularity, which can be extenuated only by her youth,) drew up and subscribed a solemn form of dedication to God, which it seems was intended to be left for the perusal and edification of others. Deliberate resolutions and solemn vows afford often great assistance to our virtue, but committing them to writing, for the inspection of our fellow creatures, must encourage spiritual pride, and tend to corrupt the purest motives.

There are many internal evidences, that these exercises, though so long concealed, were designed for the inspection of others. In our view, nothing can be more vain, than the recounting of what are usually termed our religious experiences. There is something too sacred in the intercourse between the devout soul and its Maker to be exposed to the eyes of others: such ostentation, we think, is plainly forbidden by our Saviour, in his injunction respecting private devotion. With such an intercourse, "a stranger should not intermeddle." Nor should we, without much hesitation, commit them to writing, even for our own private inspection, lest we should dwell upon them with self-complacency, and perhaps mistake the transient emotions of the affections for that temper of habitual devotion, which constitutes the perfection of Christian piety: perhaps regard, with superior satisfaction, the flashes of the imagination, in comparison with the steady light of reason, refined, enlarged, and sublimed by religion.

There are many reasons, why Mrs. Ramsay's religious exercises should never have been published; though we do not doubt the purity of her mind, and the sincerity of her devotion, since we ascribe the improprieties, which appear in her writ

• Ibid p. 108.

ings, to causes, whose operation is not incompatible with her virtue, yet were we often disgusted with the indelicacy, the gross familiarity, the folly, and the extravagance, which appear in them. These indeed are heavy charges, but a few extracts will show, we think, that they are justifiable.

What then are we to think of the delicacy of such effusions as these?

"I often cry to my beloved in the longing of desire, come quickly, come quickly, for I long to be with thee. How slowly the minutes roll: how leisurely the hours move, which keep me from my God. I long for evening to undress."" p. 86.

Mrs. Ramsay, it appears, was a firm believer in the Supreme Deity of Christ; but how, on any principles, much less on hers, can the following language, with which the book abounds, be justified?

"Dear Jesus, faithful friend, when they are telling of the agreeableness of this party, that set, and the other amusements, I long to get away from them, to sit at thy feet, to hear thy precious voice, and have communion with thee. They know not the pleasures of the way or the sweetness of thy love;-No, dear Christ, nothing below thyself can satisfy an immortal soul, or give it content." p. 9 93.

"Nothing," says one, whom we have already quoted, "more ennobles and refines the mind, than an unabating love of God, the stronger the better, so it be manly and decent; operating by a reverential dependence upon his protection, a full confidence in his mercy, and a perfect acquiescence in the dispensations of his providence, as believing them to terminate ultimately in our good; but as this affection is overstrained by enthusiasts and devotees, in a language unsuitable to it, when they talk of the soul pouring forth in pious breathings and transports, with their dear Lords, and sweet Jesuses, they leave nothing noble or heavenly in it; but court the Almighty in the same sentiments they would court a mistress, and mingle their own passions, those too not of the purest kind, in their idea of the most holy."* Though we do not view the person of Christ in the same light in which Mrs. Ramsay considered it, yet such language is, in our opinion, altogether distant from that deep rev* Light of Nat. pur. Vol v. p. 108.

erence and that chastised affection, with which his name and character are ever to be regarded.

Of nonsense we give the following as a specimen:

"The fondness of the most enraptured lover, the tenderness of the dearest friend, is perfect hatred compared with the love of Jesus: all the ideas that we can form of things sweet, amiable, and engaging, are mere deformity to the beauties of Emanuel." p. 96.

These exercises abound with instances of the grossest extravagance.

In page 79, Mrs. Ramsay says, "My past life has been one continued course of impiety, and my most holy things have been unrighteousness." In page 92, she thus writes: "O my soul, that thou, the vilest creature in the world, the very chief of sinners, and a hell-deserving wretch," &c. In page 122, she calls herself the vilest and most complicated of sinners.

There are some persons, who would pronounce this to be humility; we believe it to be mere affectation and cant. Mrs. Ramsay, had she seriously reflected, must have known it to be false, when she wrote it. There can be no sin, where there is not a transgression of a law or an omission of a duty. That she was chargeable with many deficiencies and many violations of the divine law, we have no doubt: for the purest of human characters sometimes sin, and often are deficient in their duty; but if she was really as bad as she professes herself to be, she must have been one of the very worst of women; she must have violated every one of the ten commandments; she must consequently have been a thief, or an adultress, or a slanderer. On the contrary, she seems to have been, and without doubt was, distinguished for her moral purity. How Mrs. Ramsay, with a consciousness, to adopt her own language, of her "vile hypocrisy," could speak with feeling of the comforts of religion, still more how she could address the Deity in that bold language of affection and familiarity, which she often uses, we have no conception.

That her husband knew such representations, as Mrs. Ramsay makes of her "sinfulness," to be false, is evident from his own acknowledgment, page 126, where he says, "after twenty four years of wedded life, and a distinct recollection of all

the scenes thereof, the editor cannot ascertain, what was really intended by the sin so repeatedly confessed and resolved against under the definition of the easily besetting sin of the subject of these memoirs. Of any habit of acting wrong, of any propensity to it, or even of any such deliberate act, there is no recollection." In a note, page 123, he attempts an apology for what he thinks may appear to some to be extravagant. He says that such language is warranted by the descriptions of human depravity given in holy writ, and refers us to Gen. vi. 5, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, was only evil continually;" and also to 2. Timothy, i. 15, where St. Paul calls himself the chief of sinners. What the connexion is between the wickedness of the antediluvians and Mrs. Ramsay's character, we are wholly unable to discover. With respect to St. Paul, he undoubtedly spake thus of himself in reference to his violent conduct towards the Christians under the immediate impression of the feelings which the remembrance of this conduct produced. In his defence before Agrippa, he appeals to the Jews with whom he had lived, for the rectitude of his conduct, and boldly avers that he had lived in all good conscience before God unto that day. But admitting St. Paul to be what he here describes himself; in the most literal sense of the terms, we see no connexion between St. Paul's character and Mrs. Ramsay's, nor any reason upon the principle, which the editor intends here to assert, why christians of all sizes, characters, and talents, should not acknowledge themselves, like the apostle, "in bodily presence weak, and in speech contemptible;" or why, at least, every Christian should not fall into the obvious absurdity of calling himself the vilest of sinners. Humility and every other Christian virtue must be perfectly consistent with truth: though we should not think more highly of ourselves, than we ought to think, yet should we think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

To the diary are subjoined many of Mrs. Ramsay's letters, some of which display her good feelings, and her deep interest in the improvement and happiness of her children and friends. Upon the whole, the memoirs of Mrs. Ramsay may be read

with much profit and pleare. We could wish however for her own credit, and the credit of religion, that her religious exercises, on account of the objections we have made to them, had never been exposed to public view; but notwithstar ng these objections and remarks, we estimate highly her virtue and pie ty; since by the highest authority, we are charged to judge of others by their fruits, by their habitual temper and their ordinary deportment.

ARTICLE 3.

The resources of Russia, in the event of a war with France; with a short description of the Cossacks. Second edition, corrected and improved; with an appendix, containing a sketch of the campaign in Russia. Boston, Munroe & Francis, 1813: pp. 196, 8vo.

THIS work is not without interest and usefulness. The author has had the singular good fortune, which seldom occurs to a prophet, to see and record the fulfilment of his own predictions. As the work of a Russian, we should have expected rather more richness of detail and fulness of materials, both in the resources and the sketch of the campaign. We are far from being surprised or displeased at the expression of national partialities; it is but fair however to mention, that the reader would be at no loss to determine, from the complexion of this work, the country of its writer. This partiality is perhaps still more natural, when we consider the gratuitous abuse, that has lately been heaped upon the Russians, in the infamous travels of Dr. Clarke, and the credulity, with which his grossest falsehoods were received and sanctioned by the English reviewers. Americans have themselves suffered sufficiently from the impertinence and ignorance of English travellers and reviewers, not to be surprised at the irritation, which similar injuries have excited in Russian feelings. The honor of Russia, however, found so able an advocate in the American Reviewer of Clarke, that it is needless for us to enter the lists. Neither shall we undertake to point out every passage, in which the author of