infested the coffee-houses of London, and gloried in a tyrannical sway which their skill with small-sword or bullet gave them over the frequenters of the place. Such nuisances would now be hanged for the first murder they committed, The race is extinct A duel is a rare occurrence at the present daya proof of the extending prevalence of a higher morality and intelligence, which not only disapprove that, solecistic custom, but have taken the place of the ignorance and insolence of a less advanced social intercourse, and thereby diminished in a great degree the causes of duelling. Drunkenness, grossness, gambling, lampbreaking, and the watch-house, are no longer reputable. Voluntary institutions of benevolence and charity are numerous, and every day on the increase. But even these expose a lamentable outnumeration of the benevolent, who give or act, by the selfish who neither act nor give, in humanity's cause.

The barbarisms of England's social system have by degrees been giving way before the prevalence of intelligence, and the irresistible power of justice and benevolence. A legislation.doing justly and loving mercy, if not walking humbly, (for this comes later yet), began to dawn towards the end of the eighteenth century. A Chatham arose to avert a savage vengeance from our brethren of America; a Burke to undo the iron grasp of a merciless avarice which wrung from the Hindoo "the very opium in which he forgot his oppressions and oppressors;" a Wilberforce to wage a thirty years' war with that grand felony the African Slave Trade, to hurl it from its place, and to live to see younger senators, trained in his school of benevolence, seal the doom of the slavery itself to which the detestable traffic ministered. Acts of Parliament, with "no drop of alloying self in them," purely for a just or merciful end, either to originate a positive good or to remove a hurtful barbarism, have occasionally appeared, and given promise of yet better things to come. views are subverting national prejudices, and a fairer allotment of political rights has been the natural consequence. The effect of civilization on a nation's political morality, and the state of its parties, would come to be treated of here, but the subject is too extensive, and would require a separate discussion.

Just

There have been epochs in the onward course of civilization. Discoveries, such as the art of printing, have been made by the faculties of man, which have given a powerful impulse to it. The Reformation, the early fruit of the press, rescued Christianity from that load of imposture and darkness, which, in the barbarous ages of popery, obscured and nullified it; and gave a beginning at least to that religious liberty, without which there can be no practical Christianity. In a sermon preached at St Paul's Cross by the Vicar of Croydon, at the time of the first spread of the art of printing over Europe, he said, " we must root out printing, or printing will root out us." The invention was attributed to the devil, and those who read printed books were certainly devoted to hell. We cannot allow that even the Reformation did more than commence a progress of religious improvement; and have always protested against the assumption of some reformed churches, that the Reformation at once introduced a perfect system either of religious knowledge or of Christian instruction. It took place in an age which we have already viewed as ignorant and barbarous. Its authors and champions had imperfect views of external creation, and of the moral and intellectual nature of man; they were of course extremely ignorant of the relations which subsist between these, and of the nature and distinction of the laws by which the world is governed. They were credulous and superstitious, yet proceeded to the enterprize of interpreting the Scriptures; they affixed senses, and established systems, which the letter, "which killeth," seemed to their ignorance to warrant; many points of which the whole scope and spirit of the Sacred Volume, not less than a sound philosophy of man and things, disowns; but which, because adopted by endowed churches, to this day chain down both conscience and reason; while, in the face of the Divine command " to search and try," and in entire departure from the principles and claims of the Reformation itself, these established institutions jealously guard an imperfect theology, and enforce it, not, it is true, by the inquisition and the furnace, but by an inquisition not less searching-an unsparing dispensation of the odium theologicum, in the form of popular reproach, patrimonial injury, and, when attainable, as it probably never will be again, civil prosecution and punishment. We hold that all forced religious creeds are worse than negatively useless, they are positively hurtful. They present religion in the company of associations which induce men either to cast it off, or concede to it a hypocritical observance. This were true even of the soundest interpretations, but is especially so of unenlightened and erroneous. The consequence is, that religion does not advance, neither does it pervade or influence society, or produce any practical fruit; and it will continue in its present nullity, till religious opinion is as free as it was claimed to be by the Reformation, and till a sounder philosophy is applied to its standards.

Phrenology offers the desiderated philosophy, and its discovery is destined to be held the greatest of all the epochs of human advancement. It opens a view, however remote, of the true golden age of human society. It will supply the element of harmony so lamentably wanting in human discussions, religious, political, and civil; which, instead of leading to enlightened co-operation for human good, are endless useless controversies, fierce contentions, and the outlet of the worst passions. Inter

preted empirically, and without the aid of a sound philosophy of human nature, the Sacred Volume itself is seen in a different light from each of the endless varieties of endowment and combination which exist in the human faculties; while a blind SelfEsteem weds every interpreter to his own views as absolutely right, and inspires him with a hatred of all others, and of their authors, in the very worst use of Destructiveness. In politics, a legislative measure is rarely proposed without raising a perfect hurricane of opposition and denunciation, as if it were the most monstrous of errors, the greatest of crimes; while scarcely a plan or project, civil, municipal, economical, or even ornamental, is brought forward, without tearing to pieces the ties of courtesy and good neighbourhood, and presenting a variety, inconsistency, and often absurdity, of human thinking, with a loss of time, labour, and money, that render social improvement the most arduous, almost the most hopeless, of all human attempts.

This is gross barbarism, and it is reserved for Phrenology to remove it. This it will do by ascertaining the human faculties, observing their relation to each other and to the external world, and thereby establishing practical principles in human affairs, about which controversy will nearly cease, and by fixing standards of right judgment, the only sources of and warrants for prompt and beneficial action. Legislation itself will become, in an increasing ratio, an easier task, till in a very high state of civilization it will well nigh cease. New laws and changes of laws imply positive evils to be cured, or impediments to good to be removed. In the three last sessions of Parliament, how many notices were given of changes to be proposed. If every change shall be beneficial, there will be the less reason for changing again; till at last legislation will come to be confined to changes rendered necessary, not by existing institutions of long standing and obstinate growth violating the moral sentiments and intellect, but by the unfettered and natural progress of human affairs. In the golden age, an existing law, we shall suppose, is to be repealed, or a new law enacted, by a legislature which we assume to consist of thoroughly educated and generally informed practical men, free from the selfishness and barbarism of party spirit and personal ill-will, without admixture of the empty vanity of personal display, with no pride of caste, or leaning to what are called interests, above all, unfettered by pledges to a constituency less enlightened than themselves, and animated by a single-hearted love of their country and their species;-what would be the course of such a legislature? First, we take it, they would announce their intention so long before the actual discussion of the new law, as to afford ample time to all who think it might affect them injuriously to bring forward their objections, with the reasons thereof; by which means the legislature would be put in possession of every information necessary for a comprehensive view of the measure. Secondly, by a judicious division of labour, which requires a numerous body for committee details, all the light attainable from the best qualified persons would be systematically shed on the subject, and conflicting interests investigated, Thirdly, with the whole details, purified and concentrated, before them, the entire body would then discuss the principle of the new law with its practical consequences. Speeches on the principle and consequences would be brief, when these were not impelled by a puerile love of approbation, but were moved by justice and benevolence, and guided by knowledge and reflection. Differences would be easily reconciled when intentions are pure and straight-forward, and the grand object, the public good, the same in every bosom. The standard of the decision would then be, Is Conscientiousness satisfied? Is Benevolence at ease? Is Veneration respected? Do Comparison and Causality promise, as the result, the general good? Is there no sacrifice of any of these to the inferior sentiments, and most decidedly none to the animal propensities? Legislation like this would provide amply for the legitimate enjoyment of all the faculties, inferior as well as superior, and would tend to provide the necessaries, comforts, and even the luxuries and refinements of life for the entire population.*

One word, in the close of all, on the refinements and luxuries of genuine civilization. It is a great but almost universally prevalent error to conclude that these refinements and luxuries necessarily enervate and corrupt a people, and lead to their downfall. Abuse of these pleasures alone has these ruinous consequences; in other words, the use unregulated by the moral sentiments and intellect. This was the corruption of the ancients. It is said that the Americans of the United States, for some time after the achievement of their independence, acted on the error now alluded to, and maintained so rigid a simplicity that their very theatres and ball-rooms were refused ornament. Captain Basil Hall saw the ball-rooms at Washington little more than rough-cast, and, probably erroneously concluding them finished, referred the phenomenon to the exemplary Spartanism of the metropolitans. But this absurd and puerile pe. dantry is no longer prevalent in the Union. It arises from ignorance of the human constitution-from having yet to learn that there is a special faculty, and one of the Creator's best gifts, which delights in ornament, elegance, and even splendour. To gratify that faculty his own works are full of adornment superadded to utility. He enamels the plains and paints the lily beyond the glory of the most glorious of earthly kings. He gives majesty to the woods and melody to the groves. He gems with countless orbs the azure of the heavens, and deepens the blue of the sea. He purples the mountains with all the graduated beauty of aerial distance; and of this the most splendid paintings in the saloons of wealth are but a feeble imitation. He horizons the morning sun in living gold, tempers the setting ray with a curtaining of gorgeous colours, and ordains an effulgence at noontide too intense for human gaze. If He that made the eye sees, that made the ear hears-He that created the faculty of Ideality designed it for its own legitimate enjoyment, an enjoyment truly boundless. It follows as a consequence of the Divine arrangement, that the pleasures of taste and refinement, under the regulation of the moral sentiments and intellect, cannot do harm; for evil cannot come of the right exercise of any faculty; to deny that exercise is an ignorant er

Phrenology disowns all such fetters. Its precept is the Christian precept, " Use without abusing." It is the philosophy of perfect freedom, of enjoyment regulated only by right feeling and sound judgment. It is in beautiful harmony with Seripture in this as in many other points. Yet the precept to" use all things as not abusing them" is forgotten by the strict adherents of some religious sects; who, while they indulge in some pleasures which suit their own taste, abjure and censure others in which there is no difference in moral principle; and thus become censorious, unsocial, and decidedly unjust. When in their company, which is an exceedingly irksome position, we feel fettered with a constant dread of touching their sores, and encountering their grave looks and solemn reproofs. This sanctimonious mummery is irrational and intolerable; it is pharasaical selfconceit and uncharitableness. There is no sin in the eye of Phrenology, or Christianity either, but abuse of the faculties: their legitimate use a benevolent Creator has made boundless in variety and delight; and, be it never forgotten, the higher the moral rank of the faculty gratified, the higher is the real gratification.