he never meant to do? for not writing a "Fourfold State," or a "Whole Duty of Man," when he merely intended an ethical essay ? No one has ever expressed in terms of more entire conviction, or piercing eloquence, his belief in the radical depravity of human nature. But he dees not protrude the doctrine in every page. This could only have been desired by the merest slaves of system. That part of the essay devoted to a review of the literature of ancient and modern times, might, we think, have been objected to with greater justice. It applies far too stern and rigid a standard. Would not even the "Paradise Lost" shrink from angelic criticism? But here Homer, Virgil, and Lucan are tried, not by their own law, the law of nature, but by the measure of a light in which they were not permitted to walk. Homer's heroes are the very men of Homer's age-sublime and sanguinary barbarians-what else could they have been expected to be? The traits of justice and of generosity, of pity and mildness, which they exhibit, are often given them by the pure grant of the poet, and in some measure serve to counteract the ferocious lessons taught by their vices. It will never do to apply the standard of Heaven's own purity to the two old works of a Pagan poet, and to complain that a "Greek gazette" breathes not a gospel spirit, and contains not the essence of a gospel morality.

The same harshness of tone characterizes his view of Modern Literature. We surrender to him Pope's "Essay on Man," et hoc omne genus, also the spawn of playwrights and the odes of demi-reps, on which he passes so sage and solemn a sentence. But we are not so willing to give up our belief in the Christianity of Addison and Johnson. True, they were not quite orthodox ; but neither was Milton, whose genius Foster deems "worthy to have mingled with that of the angels who proclaimed the coming of Christ upon the

plain of Bethlehem; to have shamed to silence the muses of Paganism, or softened the pains of a Christian martyr." True, they were not professed theologians, and did not protrude the peculiarities of the Gospel into miscellaneous and desultory papers; but neither has always Foster himself. With regard to the private characters of the men, they had their faults-who wants them? But they were sincere believers, and died in the faith of Christ. And more, they shrank not, in spite of Foster's assertions, from expressing their convictions of the truth of religion, on every proper opportunity, and in defiance of the scorn of a sneering and skeptical age. Dr. Johnson's impressions, especially, were profound as death; and, in his last moments, he recommended a volume of sermons as fullest on the doctrine of propitiation. How long will it be till Christians understand the meaning of the words, "He that is not against us, is on our part ;" and," the greatest of these is charity?" We blush for those wretched trammels of sectarianism which induced a mind like John Foster's to cast cold-blooded doubts upon the religion of two such men, merely because they differed from him in this jot and yonder tittle of their creed, or because their mode of articulating their faith was more lax and less accurate than his own.

The "Essay on Popular Ignorance," is, in point of style and execution, decidedly the worst of all his productions. Clumsy in structure, cumbrous in style, obscure in purpose, and spasmodic in movement, it requires almost a martyr's patience to read it through. "He has run," said Hall, "a race after obscurity, and gained it." But if we look within the rough and awkward outside, we will be richly rewarded by its perusal. We will admire its benevolent intent, its grasp of thought, the thunders of indignation which are heard from its cloudy tabernacle against the kings, and priests,

and statesmen, who have kept the people in the bondage of ignorance; and will view with interest even the gigantic gropings of his mind amid the gloomy subject, like those of the Cyclops in the cave, or of Samsom stretching at the pillars. We will admit, however, that his tints are too uniform and too sombre; that he allows not sufficiently for that wild natural knowledge which (like the unconsolidated ether of the heavens) has been diffused at every period, in the shape of common sense, or fine superstition, or floating poetry; that he expects too much from the accumulation of mere unassimilated, unkindled, unbaptized information; and that he overrates the influence and responsibility of governments in the matter, forgetting that the primary end of all such institu tions is to manage the temporal concerns and provide for the temporal wants of their subjects; that, in the wants and diseases of the spiritual nature, "the patient best ministers to himself;" that the exact value of mere mental education, as a means of morality and happiness, is not yet settled, and that the difficulties connected with its mode and management have always been so numerous and formidable, as to explain, if not excuse the reluctance of many of the ablest and wisest of state-physicians to intermeddle with a case so delicate and perilous. The book has been lately re-written and re-printed. We mention this for the purpose of noting Foster's character as a redacteur of his own works. He reminds us in it of some huge animal walking backwards. Expressions originally clumsy, are rubbed down and left in a state of more awkward and helpless clumsiness than before; unmusical periods are torn into harsher discord; obscurities are blotched into more hopeless obscurity still; his intricacies he deems he has clarified, when he has cast them into other and more perplexed arrangement. Some of his finest illustrations he spoils by addition; some of his strongest expres

sions he emasculates by subtraction; and leaves the whole uncongenial business with a shrug, half of chagrin, and half of ludicrous gratitude, that if he has made it no better, he has not left it much worse than it was before.

He published, so far as we are aware, but one sermon, if sermon it can be called, which is, in fact, an essay with a text at top. This was his celebrated discourse on Indian Idolatry. We never so fully saw its merit as when listening a while ago to some missionaries professing to give an account of Hindooism. In their hands, it became simply ludicrous and silly, instead of being an object of grave scorn and hatred; and the farce was completed by their holding up a specimen of an idol, which was received with a shout of laughter. But Foster grapples with the real and comprehensive character of the system. While treating with all the austerity of his colossal contempt the multitudinous fooleries of its mythology, he concedes to it the possession of a certain sublimity, springing from its antiquity, its prevalence, its power, and the splendour, as of mingled blood and fire, which surrounds its temples and confirms its reign. By proclaiming its possession of such attributes, he desires to awaken against it efforts commensurate with its greatness, and an animosity profound as its age. We never make sufficient exertions to oppose an enemy we despise. We must fear ere we can foil the foe. Nor can that system be purely ridiculous and contemptible which has gathered around it the grandeur and the associations of centuries, which chains to its throne millions of immortals, which has "established castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through immemorial tracts of time," and "barriers of uttter abhorrence " between various classes, which have remained unbroken for ages, and cemented its foundations by many and many a Ganges of human blood. Poor expedient for kindling ire

against "an ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate "religion like this, the exhibition of one of its idols to a gaping and laughing audience! It was not, besides, giving the system its due. The idol which, here, in the grasp of an enemy, and held up in its naked absurdity, before an audience of enemies, was merely ridiculous, would, were we to change the scene, and see it the centre of a million flashing eyes, surrounded by the pomps of its ceremonial, overhung by the canopy of its burning heaven, mirrored in its gigantic stream, and perfumed by the incense of its swarthy adorers, become infinitely more respected, as well as infinitely more the object of terror and hatred. The half of this sermon is written in Foster's best style, is dipt in the deepest dye of his philosophy, and radiant with all the poetry of his nature. His picture of war is the best we have read, not excepting that very different one in Gulliver; but who can hope, in a sermon or sentence, to describe adequately the profound and prodigious thing, war? As easily have collected all the blood of Borodino or Waterloo in a basin. In the latter half he entangles himself with supposed objections, urged by fatalists against missions, as if one who had drunk the "coal-black wine" of that miserable delusion, were to be reasoned with any more than a wild beast or a maniac. Foster fighting with a fatalist, reminds us of

"Whole ocean into tempest tossed,

To waft a feather or to drown a fly."

He is the author, moreover, of a very long and very characteristic Preface to Doddridge's "Rise and Progress." We admire particularly its introduction, wherein he muses. on a library in a peculiar and most impressive style, spreading the genius and the gloom of his mind over the place where a silent people have fixed their abode, filling the pop