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    STATE OF THE WEST INDIES.*

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    OWEN MEREDITH'S NEW POEM.*

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    Untitled Article

    and by the cross-lu ? ht of various contexts , do we catch their meaning va-uely , and it may be incorrectly . But tins want of objectiveness affects the treatment of the subject generally , preventing the cosmopolitan student , from extracting from the work its lull lessons and advantages . We are left to ourselves to discovers most cases what of the facts mentioned are the specialities ot bcottish religious history and life . They are given in their places , but are not explicitly distinguished from those features which are commonly characteristic of all the reformed countries of Europe . As jurymen sitting upon the hook , we have to allege iio want of testimony , plainly and amply given ; but for our purposes we should have liked and benefited by more summing up and comment . This cannot be alleged as a fault against the writer , but it cannot but be ah inevitable deduction from the value and popularity of his book out of Scotland . . - . .. Praiseworthy industry , workman-like care in compilation , lucid and unpretending narration ; and , above all , a degree of candour rarely found in aiiy clerical camp , are the points which call lot the jnpst marked praise . Scotland has never been very keenly interested in the religious history of its pre-reformation ancestors . The Bannatyne , Maitland , and Spalding Clubs have disinterred much authentic and interesting matter , about the old days of the monks of Melrose , who " Never wanted l > eef nor ale , : long as their neighbours' lasted ;" of Michael Scott of Balmearie , Thomas the rhymer of Ercildoune , visits to Scotland of Mxtsxs STtvitrs , -and other legates ,. &c . The dark and more distant era of the Culdees has been illuminated Jby much new light ; and Dr . , Daniei , Wilson has built up a very full archaeology of pre-historie times . In spite of all this erudition and its fruits , Scottish scholarship has , for the most part , been arrested in its backward researches at the barrier of the Keformation . In Scottish ecclesiastical history , there are no pre-refoi-mation parallels to our Bede , Ansejlji , Lanfiianc , Becket , Boniface , Bead yvAEDiiirj !! , Occam , and Wtcliefe . Although , accord ingly , Mr . CtrJsrJsriNGHAM makes very diligent use and citation of the republished remains of early Scottish history > he compresses all he has to say on the centuries before the Reformation into about a sixth of his whole space . On Druids , Culdees , the rise of monachism , disputes about papal supremacy , the foundation of universities , early liteiary churchmen , the development of simony and other corruptions / he is painfully concise and meagre . But the motive of this is obvious . He had to consult the tastes of his own reading fellow-countrymen ; and the price of this cursory treatment of the Catholic times is paid , in about six hundred pages devoted to the rise and growth of the Reformation , using that expression in jts largest sense , as denoting the struggle that commenced with Patkick Hamilton , and ended oil the day -. when " BonuieDundee " fell dead at Killiecrankie . John JKnqx , of course , is made much of ; and Mr . Cunningham , with ourselves , evinces a great historic regard , but little personal love for him . Anything more inherently dry than . the whole history of , the long •' troubles" in Scotland , history does not know . There . are , indeed , bright though rare exceptions . The soul of the reader is waked from its . torpor when the tedious argumentation of church courts , and kings , queens , or regents' council-chambers is alternated by the sharper and surer argumentation of the unsheatned blade at the fights of Xiangside , Philiphaugb , Dunbar , and Bothwell Brig . : Mr . Cunningham te not eloquent , and does not rise to any higher flight when these gleams of interest occur ' . ; nor even , when the pathetic stories of some of the martyred reformers would , if anything" could , provoke some pathos and involuntary fire . . The silent but significant eighteenth century is treated well and with great candour . Principal Robertson , leading the Moderate party in the Assembly , is a portrait . more \ yithin Mr , Cunningham ' s powers , than the old Marshal of JGtUstavus Apoi-pntrs routing- the Ill-fated Montkose on the bnnlcs of the Ettrick , or Olivek Cbom"WELL riding through the blood and bones of the Scots slain at Dunbar . The Church of Scotland had two fights to wage last < century- —one with Ebeneizeb Ekskine and revived Covenanting Puritanism ^ one with David Hume and revived Philosophic Pyrrhonism . Both her fights were arduous , and she carries the hardly cicatrized scars of both on hor . face still . It is , indeed , then , a very high commendation that we are enabled to give Mr . Cunningham when wo avow that , to our eyes , he ha . s narrated the recent contests of his Church with wondrous candour and liberality . His hook altogether , if it will not suit tine lounging- study chair , will grace the shelf of tl » o library , where reliable books of reference stand , If not brilliant or striking , it is sound , good , nnd conscientiously compiled .

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    INHERE is in the new poem by the so-named Owen Merechth , a dash , a daringy and nn occasional felicity , both of thought and diction , which will undoubtedly go for to make it the chief pootieul production of the season . Once get over the startling novel ty of the measure , nnd wo meet with much tl > at is really attractive . Here wo are startled with a grace or an elognnce- —there we aro waylaid with a bold figure , simile , or metaphor—in another place , a , eago reflection , or a piece of worldly wisdom , an apt description or » real philosophical formula ; nnd every whore a life of soul and heart

    and mind , which . certifies that a living seer is pouring his genuine prophecies through those wild and vagrant and too often careless verses , arid reaching in ourselves the sacred sources of thought and feeling" . • • • . The metre , however , will be objected to ; It consists of a lilt of anapestic and . other feet , which will sqarcely be regarded as grave enough by those who have accepted the usual heroic couplet as the most suitable vehicle for an epic argument .. . We can recollect , however , when the charming measure of " Christabel" was objected to on similar grounds , notwithstandingthe melody that was inseparable from all Coleridgean verse . Mr . Meredith has certainly tuned his lines to his ear , and frequently given a grandeur to their swing-. The variety which he has sought and found is infinite , and sometimes beautiful . He has "but one fault—that he has evidently written it with tod ; much ease , and has indulged in the facility of ' rhyming-, and not thought it worth his while to bestow critical revision on the false , imperfect , or too frequent . Wherever we have " world , " we are sure to have ' " furled " or " hurled , " though ' . would be hard to say what the " furling" the " hurling " had to do with the subject matter . Undoubtedly , the pen should have been put through such couplets . Old Spenser , in the infancy of rhyming-, ;' . might- 'take . ¦¦ such licence ; but our . language has since multiplied its resources , and the indolence is unpardonable which neglects to avail itself of them . This conception of the character of the chief person in the drama , whose good and evil sensibly influences all that is good and evil in the destinies of his associates , is a powerful one , and in its embodiment is colossaL That of the heroine is also more than an ordinary ideal , and stands out in most effective relief . They are both exponents of strength , intellectual or emotional , and have stamped the impress of * their might on the burning page . Neither of them would have been proper to an ancient epic , they are too subtle , too individual ; but they are precisely the characters for a modern novel , for a novel in verse , like the present . Cannot we find in this a sufficient justification why the author has rejected the usual heroic couplet , and preferred a lighter measure P . It would have been unwise to have set his composition to the organ—he has chosen instead the : piano for his instrument , and arranged his score accordingly . His work will suit many , and we think prove extensively popular ;

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    TX 7 ITENEViER we meet with on . opinion , more than commonly VV absurd , we expect to find it based on practical experience— - on something seen and misunderstood . Such has been the case with nearly all that has been written concerning our West India possessions ^ from the time when Slavery was abolished to the present hour . . All of us hate Slavery . Most of us believe that it is so radically contrary to th . e laws of human nature and the primary dictates of religion , that no fear of pecuniiiry loss . to the sugar planters , or of political and commercial-entanglement to ourselves , . ought to have stood iu the way of emancipation for a moment ; and yet , such is our ignorance of the social state , of the West Indies , that a few designing mien have almost succeeded in convincing us that the abolition of negro slavery , one of the noblest corporate siejs ( o be found in the world's annals , has been a failure—an injury to the slaveowner , without benefit to the slave—in fact , a romantic blunder , only to bo excused as we excuse the Crusades , on account of the noble spirit of self- 'Sacrifice that actuated the blunderers . That the-facts " are not so , hns always been known to n few advanced liberals , who have carefully examined the statements of those whose interest it was to deceive . Had it not been for their influence' ,, and that of a small knot of Tories belonging- to the religious body called Evangelical , the results of this great act of restitution would have been entirely unknown . As ifc is , the ignorance both in Parliament and country is very dense . The time would bo wisely spent , if some one of our professional thinkers , whoso aim and whose lot is , if they are faithful to their high calling " , to direct the world in its progx'css towards a higher and , more nerfect civilization , would give us an extended history of the fsxigar islands from that time when the first slave ship landed its cargo to the present era , when freedom has been established for upwards of a quarter of a century . Such a work as we suggest should enter fully into detail ; ifc should take ua to the hunting grounds , where the free men of tho wilderness were captured , and give us a picture of the horrors of the middle passage—should detail what was the kind pf life endured by these human chattels before tho Homo Government interfered to protect thorn from their masters' cruelty—and how , as one by ono the burthens of thq slave wore lightened , these owners of human proT perty from time to time protested against such intermeddling of the State with vested interests and tho rights of capital . Informntiou on all those matters is to bo had , but to the general rendor it is not accessible , for it lies buried in Anti-Slavery reports , Parliamentary Blue-books , and party pamphlets , long- sinco forgotten , where nbno but students over think of prying . Englishmen ought to know those things , that , they may lully estimate the importance of the great Act of 1834 ; but as they aro not usually exact or careful analysts of huinnn nature , they find »» notwithstanding TJnoJo Tom's Cabin and The White Slavo , Wra to believe that the . owning of slnyea is tho hardening-and brutalismg thing- all experience lias proved it to bo .

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    404 The Leader andSaturday Analyst . |^ pril ss , 1 S 60 .

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    * Zuoilo , By Owbn Merepitii . Chapman and HnlU

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    ? Slavorv and Fraodo ** in tho JBritM Wosp Indict . By Cuaiueb Pusvon , M . P . Inrngmnns .

    State Of The West Indies.*

    STATE OF THE AYEST INDIES . *

    Owen Meredith's New Poem.*

    OWEN MEREDITH'S NEW POEM . *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 28, 1860, page 404, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2345/page/16/