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    ^ he Dissenters coalesced Church , as tfaey bft 4 be / ore done in the time of Eli ^ aheth . Even many Roman Catho-Jjcft , and tide Supreme Pontiff himself , disapproved of James ' s measures . But be was bent on his own puin , and remonstrance or advice only rendered him the more determined * For h long time the nation submitted with comparative patience , because at Jainea ' t death the crown would revert to a sincerely Protestant ruler . But ¦ orheja a direct male heir to the throne was born , and it seemed probable that I * # paoy would be confirmed in the land , the most stauneh Tories perceived that their duty to their Prince contravened their duty to their God . They were at no loss to choose to which allegiance to adhere . There might be a natural and very sore struggle between interest and duty , but the latte * prevailed . The husband of the Princess Mary , William , Prince of Orange , was invited over from Holland to secure the Protestant succession . The cold intellect , unimpassioned sagacity , and unalterable resolution of that prince saved the country from spiritual bondage , and , almost without bloodshed , placed the constitutional liberties of England beyond all serious danger . In the last hour , deserted by those in whom he most confided and by his own daughter , James also was untrue to himself , and after much deceit and vacillation , fled the country . Thus far has Mr . Macaulay told with impartial truth and glowing eloquence the story of the illustrious achievements , the crimes , the follies , and the disasters of our ancestors . The world awaits with impatience the completion of his great national monument .

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    with the members of the Established i 14 * 9 THE Lfi ABER , [ No . 298 , Saturday , J , j i ,. ju . w . r in ' 1171 X 71 ' " ' ' ' ' ' "" ' ' ' ¦ --- ' - ¦ ---- ' ¦¦¦ " * ^

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    CHAHACTERS IN LITTLE DORRIT . Little JDorrit . By Charles Dickens . No . I . ~ Bradbury and Evans . Among the varied circle of Elia ' s friends one is amazed to find a murderer —not a man who murders in a fit of passion—not a man who , stung by some injury which the law is powerless to avenge , takes vengeance into his own hands ; but a cool , calculating , cruel villain , who murders f or money , and da . es it for a certain gaiety de cceur . That the " geptle HUia " should have admired such a man , and called him friend , sounds like a paradox . It is perfectly true , however , as may be read in Talfourd ' s " Final Memorials of Charles Lamb ; " and in an article published by the British Quarterly Review , No . XVI ., where more particulars of this man may be read—particulars which belong to romance , so unlike the ordinary experiences of life are they . Wainwright ( the murderer ) was sentenced to transportation for fraud j a friend visited him in Newgate , and the lieviewer thus records part of the conversation . " ' I do not / said our friend , intend to preach to you—that would be idie » but I ask you , Mr . Mainwright , as a man of sense , whether you do not think your courses have been , to say the least , very absurd ? ' ' No / replied the exquisite . ' No . I played for a fortune , and I lost . They pay me great respect here , I assure you . They think I am in for ^ 10 , 000 , and that always Creates respect / 'Well but / said the other , if you look back upon your life and see to what it las brought you , does it not demonstrate the folly of your proceedings ? ' 'Not a bit / replied he . I have always been a gentleman r-always lired like a gentleman—and I am a gentleman still . Yes , sir , even here in- Newgate , I am a gentleman ! The prison regulations are , that we should each in turn sweep the yard . There are a baker and a sweep here besides myself . They sweep the yard ; but , sir , they have never offered vie the broom . ' *" There is a character for a novelist ! Dickens has long known all particulars of this " tlandy murderer , " and at last has resolved on portraying him in a fiction . The Rigaud of "Little Dorrit , " although he leaves us to be tried for the murder of his wife , will escape , and figure through many of the twenty numbers—at least , we hope so . Another character , full of promise for the future , is Mrs . Clennam , the clear , hard , rigorous Calvinist , stern , of face and unrelenting of heart , making her religion a weapon of offence , a pretext for the indulgence of tyranny . Dickens always takes up some great abuse as the target for his satire . He has never , we believe , taken up one more urgently needing reform than that of the " bitter observance of the Sabbath , " as we understand it , in England and Scotland . The following is in his best manner : — Jt was a Sunday evening in London , gloomy , close , and stale . Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance , sharp and flat , cracked aud clear , fast and slow , made tho brick and mortar echoes hideous . Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot , steeped tho souls of tho people who wore condemned to look at them out of windows in dire " despondency . In eveiy thoroughfare , up almost every alley , and down almost every turning , some doleful bell -was throbbing , jerking , tolling , aa if tho Plague were in the city and the dead-carts were going round . Eveiything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people . No pictures , no unfamiliar animals , no ra , ye plants or flowers , no natural or artificial wonders of tho ancient world—all Slkpo wtyb , that enlightened strictness , that the ugly South sea goda in the British uaeuxn might have supposed thonmelves at homo again . Nothing to seo but greets , streets , streets . Nothing to breathe but streets , street , streets . Nothing to change the brooding mind , or raiae it up . Nothing for tho spent toiler to do , but to oonipare tho monotony of hie seventh day with the monotony of his six days , tnmk what a woavy life he led , and make the best of it—the worst , according to the probabilities . ¦ M- ' ^ A . iu * 5 L * PPy * lw * e , bo propitious to tho interests of religion aud morality , Mr . Artnur Clennatn , newly arrived from Marseilles by way of Dover , and by Hover ooaoh the Blue eyed Maid , sat in the window of a cofteohouse on Liidgato Jtlill . J . en thousand lesponuible houses surrounded him , frowning as heavily on the atraeta tliey composed , aa if they were every one inhabited by the ten young injmof the Calenders story , who blackened their faces and bemoaned their « PH « W a every night , Fifty thousand loirs surrounded him where people lived so iwyholeaomoly , th « , t fair water put into their prowded rooms on Saturday night , wou /« bo corrupt on Sunday morning ; albeit my lord , their country morabor J ™ amazed that thoy failod to eloop in oompany with their butoher ' s meat . Miles of oloso wells and pits of houaos , whore tho inhabitants gasped for air , stretched far away towards every point of tho compaBa . Through the heart of the town a deadl y sower ebbed and flowed , in tho place of a fine fresh rivojr . What aaoular want could tho million or so of human beings whoso daily labour , nix days in the woek , lay among these Arcadian objects , from tho sweet sameness of which they had no escape between the cradle and tho grave—what secular want could tttyyjpospibly hove upon their seventh day ? Clearly thoy could want nothing but ** wiwsont policeman . -

    Jtr- Arthur Clennam Bat in the window of the coffee house on Jmdgate Hffl counting one of the neighbouring bells , making sentences and burdens of sonai out of it i » apite of himself , and wondering how many sick people ifc might be the death of in the course of the year . As the hour approached , its changes of measure made i % more and more exasperating . At a quarter , it went off into - condition of deadly lively importunity , urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church , Come to church , Come to church ! At the ten minutes it became aware that the congregation would be scanty , and slowly hammered , out in low spirits . They won ' t come , they it > orit come , they wont come ! At the fiyo minutes , it abandoned hope , and shook every house in the neighbourhood for three hundred seconds , with one dismal swing per second , as a groan of despair . ¦¦ ? ? ' Thank Heaven ! " said Olennam , when the hour struck , and the bell stopped But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays , and the procession would not stop with the bell , but continued to march on . " Heaven forgive me , " said he , " and those who trained me . How I have hated this day !" There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood , when he sat with his hands before him , scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with the poor child by asking him in its title , why he was going to perdition ?^—a piece of curiosity that he really in a frock and drawers was not in a condition to satisfy—and which , for the further attraction of his infant mind , had a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep . Thess . c . iii . v . 6 & 7 . There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood , when , like a military deserter , he was marched to chapel by a picquet of teachers three times a day morally handcuffed to another boy ; and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or two of inferior mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh . There was the interminable Simday of hi * nonage ; when his mother , stern of face and unrelenting of heart , would sit all day behind a Bible—bound / ike her own construction of it in the hardest , barest , and straightest boards , with one dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain , and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves—as if it of all books ! were a fortification against sweetness of temper , natural affection , and gentle intercourse . There was the lesentful Sunday of a little later , when he sat glowering and glooming through the tardy length of the clay , with a sullen sense of injury in his heart , and no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament , than if he had been bred among idolaters . There was a legion of Sundays , all days of unserviceable bitterness and mortification , slowly passing before him . This miserable child goes from home , r . nd returns a man , The interview with his mother is told in very pregnant sentences : — Arthur followed Mm up the staircase , which was panelled off into spaces like so many mourning tablets , into a dim bedchamber , the floor of which had gradully so sunk and settled , that the fireplace was in a dell . On a black bier-like sofa in this hollow , propped up behind with one great angular black bolster , like the block at a state execution in the good old times , sat his mother in a widow ' * dress . She and his father had been at variance from his earliest remembrance . To sit speechless himself in the midst of rigid silence , glancing in dread from the one adverted face to the other , had been the peacefulest occupation of his childhood . She gave him one glassy kiss , and f our stiff fingers muffled in worsted . Thil © inbi'ace concluded , he sat down on tke opposite Side of her little table . There was a fire in the grate , as there had been uiglit and day for fifteen years . There was a kettle on the hob , as there had been night and day for fifteen years . There was a little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire , and another little mound swept together under the grate , as there had been night and day for fifteen years . There was a smell of black dye in the airless loom , which the fire had been drawing out of the crape and stuff of the widow ' s dress for fifteen mouths , and out of the bier-like sofa fox * fifteen years . " Mother , this is a change from your old active habits . " " The world has narrowed to these dimensions , Arthur , " she replied , glancing round the room . "It is well forme that I never set my heart upon its hollow vanities . " The old influence of her presence and her stern strong voice , so gathered about her sou , that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and reserve of his childhood . We hope that this dreary , hut truthful , picture of English life will form a prominent part in the new story . Of Little Dorrit herself we as yet only get the vaguest of glimpses . AfFery and Flintwinch may turn out characters ; but at present we rather dread to think of what Miss "Wade will become . It is , however , too early to form more than the vaguest guess as to either the conduct of the story or the nature of the actors ; and , in the case of 8 popularity so unparalleled as that of Dickens ' , criticism is taken out of our hands by the public . Thirty-five thousand copies having been sold within the first week , how can we poor critics hope to be heard .

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    BROWNING'S MEN AND WOMEN " . Men and Women . By Robert Browning . 2 vols . Chapman and Hal ) . ( second notice . ) The reader of these volumes will assuredly feel himself in the presence of a powerful and original mind , which is not what he oftens fuels when turning over volumes of verse . But , although Browning has thought much , he gives it forth at white heat , and fuses his thought into the mould of verse , he does not commit the great mistake of pouring it cold into the mould—nor does he forget , to use his own language , that—Song ' s our art : Whoreas yon ploaso to speak those naked thought * Instead of draping them in sights and sounds . True thoughts , good thoughts , thoughts fit to treasure up I But why such long prolusion and display , Such turning and adjustment of the harp , And taking it upon your breast at length , Only to speak dry words across its strings ? He can argue in verse , but even in argument he does not forgot that hp ' , a poet . Sec , ns an example , how admirably he argues ngninst the iwt'twisrn of the Romantic School , in these words , spoken by the painter monk , * \ dippo dippi : — First , every sort of monk , tho black and whito , 1 I drow them , fat and lean : thon , folks at church , i From good old goesipa waiting to confess Thoir cribs of barrel-droppings , candle-endo , —

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 8, 1855, page 1182, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2118/page/18/