be the slightest doubt that efforts such as these will contribute more to the advancement of "Historical Theology," than any thing which we are at present doing in England.

We beg also to acknowledge the receipt, in sheets, of the first volume of the "Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of the New Testament," by Professor Schott, of Jena, and Professor Winzer, of Leipsic. The present volume embraces, together with some learned " Prolegomena," the Epistles to the Thessalonians and Galatians" argumentis quippe idoneis evincere licet, has omnino fuisse omnium, quæ ætatem tulerint, Pauli Epistolarum antiquissimas." So says D. Henry Augustus Schott in his Preface; and, when we have leisure and space, it will give us sincere satisfaction to undertake an examination of the present and future labours of himself and his colleague.

ILLUSTRATIVE WORKS.

In this department, which we may very fairly include as at least a beautiful auxiliary to theological literature, it is impossible not to notice the continuation of "The Landscape Illustrations of the Bible," published by Mr. Murray, a series in which every number seems striving to outdo the finished elegance of its predecessors. The "Illustrations of the Bible," after original paintings by Westall and Martin, although, from the smallness of the price, 1s. a number, somewhat rude and coarse in comparison, are yet full of spirit and vigour. “The descriptions of the plates," are committed, in the two works respectively, to the able care of Mr. Hartwell Horne and Mr. Hobart Caunter.

There are several other works now lying before us, which we should be glad to mention with the encomium which they deserve; if we had more room, and if their contents would not draw us too far from the theological subjects, to which in these brief notices we must chiefly confine ourselves. Among them we can now only enumerate "Conder's Geographical Dictionary, Ancient and Modern,' "The Existence of other Worlds, peopled with living and intelligent Beings," by Mr. Alexander Copland; a little, but, for young people, an amusing, and instructive work, called "The Accidents of Human Life;" and then,—to make a leap from small to large, from light to important,—a very magnificent publication, "On the extinct monsters of the ancient earth, the Ichthyosauri and the Plesiosauri," "with twenty-eight plates," which, by the way, we cannot but think decidedly superior in taste and execution to the letter press: nor can we refrain from expressing the pleasure we have derived from a perusal of Mr. Anstice's very ingenious and elegant Prize Essay on the Effect of Foreign Conquest upon Literature and Arts of the Romans.

the

In conclusion, there is a single remark which we would make once for all. For the works forwarded to us by authors or publishers we feel obliged; but we would wish them always to come unheralded, untrumpeted, and unattended by recommendatory or propitiatory remarks. We cannot abstain from saying, that the strongest temptation which we experience, either to pass a book over in silence, or to treat it with severity, is to find it accompanied with a letter begging for a favourable review.

London: C. Roworth and Sons, Bell Yard, Temple Bar.

THE

BRITISH CRITIC, Quarterly Theological Review,

AND

ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD.

OCTOBER, 1834.

ART. I.-Deontology; or the Science of Morality. From the MSS. of Jeremy Bentham; arranged and edited by John Bowring. 2 vols. London and Edinburgh. 1834.

WILL even our classical readers understand, from the above title, the object of these volumes? We greatly doubt it. For we have actually met with one distinguished scholar, who, not having read the book, was grievously puzzled by the announcement of a Treatise on Deontology. His eye was caught by the four last syllables; and he immediately began to think that the public were about to be enriched by some profound and original speculations relative to ontological or metaphysical science, ast applicable to the science of morals. But then he was utterly at a loss to find out a use for the preliminary syllable. We relieved him from his perplexity by reminding him of the Greek, Tò déov, TOU SÉOVTOS; and then he of course instantly perceived that the world had met with an instructor, whose object was to enlighten it as to all that is fit or proper to be done: in a word, that we had before us an exposition of the Utilitarian system of ethics.

The Utilitarians, we presume, will feel neither contempt nor resentment for this blundering surmise of our friend; for they themselves heartily despise all classical erudition. We are here told by their great patriarch, that classical literature is the walk "wherein grows the lotus, which has fixed the footsteps of so mauy a young adventurer to those regions of unfruitful beauty, "and made him drink oblivion of every noble distinction."-(Vol. i. p. 113.) His own magnanimous neglect of this pernicious weed is abundantly manifested in this posthumous collection of his thoughts. The learned sages of ancient times, he informs us, by whatever name they called their own sageships, were "called by others wisest of men (σopiora); wise men (oo); or "lovers of wisdom (20000); and held their heads aloft, and "poured out their streams of sophistry." From which it appears

that, according to the Utilitarian grammar, σodita is the superlative degree of copos; and not, as our schoolboys usually imagine, a noun substantive, implying wisdom-mongers, or quack doctors of wisdom. (Vol. i. p. 40.) Another stupendous example of brave ignorance occurs in the second volume, p. 84. The writer (either Jeremy Bentham or his redacteur) is quoting Horace; which he does after this fashion :

"Sperne voluptates; docet empta dolore voluptas:"

of which sentence he gives the following portentous translation: -"Spurn pleasures: purchased pleasure teacheth pain."!!! Well might he go on to exclaim, "Silly is the precept; sadly "silly, if taken to the letter. But no such silly notion had the poet in his head. No such silly notion did he mean to incul"cate." And then he adds, "Horace was thinking of the verse, "not of the morality. And when the option is between truth "and rhythm, between serving and pleasing, extraordinary in"deed must be the poet who makes any other choice than was "made by Horace." Alas! the mighty master might have learned, from many a well-flogged lad, that there was, here, no conflict between truth and rhythm; that morality, as well as verse, was in the thoughts of the poet; and that Horace was, in this place at least, as Utilitarian as heart can wish. For thus, in fact, did he indite,

"Sperne voluptates; nocet empta dolore voluptas :"*

a line which the experience of the youngster might, probably, put into English thus:" Eschew the pleasure of gorging upon plums; for the pleasure of eating plums is dearly purchased "by a fit of the colic." We have here, certainly, an excellent deontological maxim. It harmonizes admirably with what the poet said elsewhere; Utilitas justi prope mater, et aqui. Here, undoubtedly," is the principle of utility set up in express terms, "as the standard of right and wrong." But the words of Horace, as above cited and translated by the wise man, harmonize with Deontology, or with any other scheme of ethics, just as little as they harmonize with grammar. They are little better than so much stark staring nonsense.

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After this, it will surprise nobody to find that Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and all the whole tribe of wise men who chattered about the good and the fair, are consigned over to a state of literary reprobation. While Xenophon was writing "history, and Euclid giving instruction in geometry, Socrates "and Plato were talking nonsense, under the pretence of teach"ing wisdom and morality." Again:-" A man thinks not so

* Hor. lib. i. epist. ii. line 55.

"highly of Plato as he deserves. What is the consequence? Nothing. A man thinks more highly of Plato than he de66 serves. What is the consequence? He goes and reads him. "He tortures his brain to find a meaning where there is none. "He moves heaven and earth to understand a writer who did not "understand himself, and he crawls out of that mass of crudities "with a spirit broken by disappointment and humiliation. He "has learned that falsehood is truth, and that nonsense is sub"limity." In short, nothing is so much wanted as an "Index "Expurgatorius of the books which have bewildered and betrayed "mankind." But then, the compiler of it "must be a writer of "sufficient eminence to give law to men's opinions." And who would be so well entitled to promulgate the prohibitory canon as Pope Jeremy I.? Whether any such document has been found among his papers, we are not informed. If not, the world must look to his successor in the chair of infallibility, Pope James I.,* for this greatest of all benefactions. When this is once accomplished, we may hope that the Catholic faith, now delivered to the sages, will, in all times to come, be kept whole and undefiled. For whoso keepeth it not, without doubt he shall blunder everlastingly.

That such a consummation is devoutly to be wished, is evident from the " visions of glory" which brighten the meditations of the Deontologist. Until the day arrives when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of his discoveries, " vast mischiefs and "miseries will continue to walk abroad," and to carry havoc and devastation in their march. But when once the true faith shall have established its predominance, then shall the ungracious clamours of honour, and glory, and dignity, be silenced; and martial renown shall become an astonishment, and a hissing, and a curse. "The period will assuredly arrive, when better in"structed generations will require all the evidence of history to "credit that, in times deserving themselves, human beings should "have been honoured with public approval in the very propor"tion of the misery they caused, and the mischiefs they perpe"trated. In that better and happier epoch, the wise and the "good will be busied in hurling into oblivion, or dragging forth "for exposure to universal ignominy or obloquy, many of the "deeds we deem heroic; while true fame and the perdurable glories will be gathered round the creators and diffusers of "happiness." We have all of us, indeed, heard, that a day shall come when the wolf and the lamb shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock, and dust shall be James Mill, Esq. author of an Essay on Government, &c. &c. &c.

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† Vol. ii. p. 255, 256; 307, 308.

the serpents' meat; when men shall hurt and destroy no longer; when the people shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. How this is to be brought about has, of course, been a subject of But now deep and reverential meditation with thoughtful men. the mystery begins to clear away. The vision tarrieth no longer. A little leaven has now been cast into the social mass, whose healthful fermentation must, eventually, correct and purify the whole. In other words, the sages of Deontology are the salt of the earth. They, and they only, are in possession of the element which is to purge society of its festering corruption. The Utilitarian faith is the great life-giving principle which is to regenerate the world.

Now the Utilitarian faith is this: that those actions are moral which tend to produce the greatest possible happiness, and those actions immoral which have a contrary tendency; that virtue is the preference of a greater remote good to a less adjacent good; that vice is only a false moral arithmetic; that the ablest moralist is he who calculates best; the most virtuous man, he who most successfully applies right calculation to conduct; that moral sense and right reason are nothing more than empty and pompous forms of ignorant dogmatism; that it is idle for a man to get into an elbow chair and talk about duty, because every man who hears him is thinking about interest; that ought and ought not are phrases without meaning, except with reference to pleasure or to pain; that if any man were to act always with a correct view to his own interest, he would secure to himself the greatest obtainable portion of felicity; and that if every man, acting correctly for his own interest, obtained the maximum of obtainable happiness, mankind would reach the millennium of accessible bliss, and the end of morality, the general happiness, would then be accomplished; that the only purpose of an intelligent moralist is to prove that the immoral act is a miscalculation of self-interest, and to show how erroneous an estimate the vicious man makes of pains and pleasures; that unless he can do this he does nothing, and that if he can accomplish this he has achieved every thing; for that it is in the very nature of things impossible that any man should not pursue that which he deems likely to produce to him the greatest sum of enjoyment.

This, if we have succeeded in representing it correctly, is the substance of the genuine Utilitarian verity; and, heretics that we are, we must plainly confess that we are as yet wholly unworthy to receive it. To us it has the appearance of an immense lever, whose power might be irresistible if it had but a fulcrum, For