On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
hourly office . Another is at issue with us in church government ; another in the simplicity of his heart walks abroad in a plain and unusual garb ; one has owe trivial distinction ; another , auother—what of that ? Are not all our neighbours ? £ t is our part ; , therefore , to love and esteem them all . Pass we beyond the pale of our faith ; there are beings , God
in his mercy grant there rnay be fewsuch , who can peruse the simple and artless narrative of our Redeemer ' s sufferings , and can perceive there nothing hut the traces of deep-laid villainy and successful imposture ; agaiust these men let us use those arms only which Christ has chosen should be employed in his
service , those of mild , of tender , of persuasive expostulation , that so if we fail in convincing their reasons , we at least may touch their hearts . There is said to exist—I have heard it , but 1 scarcely can credit the assertion—there is said to exist a reasonable soul who can look out on this wide and variegated world , and can discern there no marks of a creative
power , who not only lives as if there were no God in the world , but actually believes there is none . O ' . if ever Christian charity , that expression of a thousand secret and nameless meanings , had a field to exercise itself in , here is one before it now . Trusting in this alone , taking this single guide to our footsteps , let us go forth and seek to restore that unhappy wanderer to the paths of life which he has madly abandoned . "—Pp . 108—111 .
Untitled Article
GENERAL LITERATURE . Art . V . —hives of Eminent British Lawyers . By Henry Roscoe , Esq ., Barrister at Law . Pp . 428 . ( Lardner ' s Cabinet Cyclopaedia ) There are almost as many ways of writing lives as as of living , and in both cases there are various kinds and decrees
of perfection and deficiency , ot success and failure . No life , in the world or on paper , can wholly fall short of its objects if a love of tiuth and fairness be the leading principle ; and neither can effect as much as it might do , if grace and the power to interest be wanting . In
biography , lhe latter requisite is usually supplied by the subject ; for the greater proportion of written lives relate to men whose existence abounded in incident , or whose previous celebrity has secured the favourable prepossessions of the reader . The adventures of discoverers by land and sea , of admirals and gene-
Untitled Article
rals , captivate the imagination of all ; domestic histories interest the affections of all ; and even the distinguishing characteristics of mind and life of philosophers and scientific men , originate in principles common to all , and recognized by all ; so that the biographer of such men has only to be careful of his
own fidelity , to be assured that his labours will be more or less interesting to the public . But there is a class of men whose lives are not thus universally interesting ; and who ought to be described differently , according to the different purposes which the description is designed to answer . That class is the lawyers .
The legal career of such men interests their professional brethren ; and the philosophy or the domestic detail of their lives may charm general readers . These may be so blended as to render the narrative generally acceptable ; but to do so is no easy matter ; and there is no hope that any but the profession will care for the biography of a lawyer , as a mere lawyer . It is not iii the choice
of the biographer whether the life he takes in hand afford a variety of incident or not ; but it is in his power so to delineate the features of mind , so to mark the principles od which it was formed , to exhibit the influences to which it was exposed , and which in its turn it exercised , as to point out its re * lation to the universal mind , and establish a brotherly interest in every individual heart . Where this is done as it
may be done , clearly and faithfully , an affection may be created in the heart of the poet or the mechanic for the most thorough-bred lawyer that ever passed his days among parchments , and his nights in dreams of precedents and pleadings . Where political is united with legal eminence , a never-failing hold on the interest of the public is afforded to the biographer ; and the fault is in himself , and not in his subject , if his narrative be dry , or only partially attractive .
The volume before us forms a part of a series of popular works ; and therefore we know that it is designed for general readers . From its contents we should have inferred that it wa « intended for the profession . We find little beyond the legal lives of the great men de .
scribed in it ; and that little is so encumbered by a perpetual reference to authorities , that it appears as if the writer feared to give scope to his own faculties of comparison and inference in making himself master of his subject , or to his powers of description in presentiug it to
Untitled Article
Critical Notices . — Mhcvllimeons . 405
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 405, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/45/
-