which these, and other more crying injuries, were forgotten, when they were once more in warmer latitudes, and in sight of home. Of the more crying injuries, of the cruelty and injustice and wanton tyrannies of their savage and brutal captain, we cannot now speak. And it is, perhaps, needless; for the book speaks of them in the way it ought, and the book, we trust, and we believe, will before long be read by every ship-master and sailor in our service, as well as by every merchant on shore.

Mr. Dana's design in publishing this volume has been, to use his own words, " to present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is, the light and the dark together;" with the further design, by the pictures he presents of the condition, character, and treatment of the sailor, to excite in his behalf a rational interest in the minds of our community at large. He cannot but meet with success. It is a volume, which, while as a picture of a common sailor's life it is painted with a Daguerrotype minuteness, it is at the same time, and for that reason, more absorbing in its interest than any work of fiction we are acquainted with, relating to similar scenes. Everything is told. When we closed the volume, we seemed as much at home on board the Pilgrim and Alert, as if we had ourselves taken the voyage. The crew are to us familiar faces. Harris and "Chip "the carpenter are acquaintances. California, with its ports, lies in the mind clear as our own South Shore. We know the whole process of curing, shipping, and packing hides, and think we could go through it without a blunder. So with the daily routine of life at sea, that of a family seems not now more familiar. All this is told in a style of captivating simplicity, with not a single example, from beginning to end, of writing for effect. It is injured neither by art, nor affectation; but runs on in an easy, natural flow, bearing along the reader to the last page without his having once thought of style, whether the author has any or not. The volume owes its charms very much to this Robinson-Crusoe simplicity. It is like the "yarn" of an agreeable story teller. What with this, and the stirring nature of the events described, we think Mr. Dana will fail in one purpose he seems to have cherished, that of diminishing the attractiveness of a sailor's life by telling the naked homely truth. He has told his story too well. He has made the witchery of the sea more a witchery than ever, and this notwithstanding Capt. T., Cape Horn, and the hides.

each man his fair share of sweetening and tea leaves." When we consider what the quality of the tea purchased for sailors would be, - poor souchong, or even bohea, it is easy to conjecture the flavor and strength of a wash made of a pint of it to three gallons of water.

We think Mr. Dana will find that he has succeeded not only in producing a picture of sea-life, which will be acknowledged as true to nature and fact, but as much also in the other part of his design, that of exciting a new and deeper interest in the community in behalf of the sailor. Every reader of his book will be made both to love and pity the common sailor; his virtues, his vices, his exposures, his neglects, his wrongs, are so described, as to enlist on his side the compassions, and the active efforts of those whose sympathies are capable of being roused at all. Nothing can be plainer, than that he in many ways suffers needlessly. A little more liberality on the part of owners would provide him with those comforts, cheap and few, for the want of which we must think life is often sacrificed; and a little more attention on the part both of owners and society in general to his moral and religious interests, would soon raise him to an equality at least with his fellow-men. We can see no reason, in the nature either of his duties or his peculiar condition, why the sailor should be a sinner beyond all other sinners. But, on the contrary, there seem to be many advantages in his position, especially when bound on long voyages in calm latitudes, - for making large attainments in knowledge, human and divine. It is a pity, indeed, when so much time hangs heavy on his hands, if no other occupation can be found than picking oakum, or "holystoning" the deck. A captain or a mate might be a teacher and a preacher to great purpose. From what Mr. Dana tells us, he would be sure of willing hearers and learners.

In the concluding chapter of the volume, Mr. Dana" offers his views of what may be done for seamen, and what is already doing," a chapter remarkable for its spirit of moderation, for a calm and candid consideration of questions, on which the reader would have held him excused, if he had manifested some little excitement. He has shown more self-command than we fear many of his readers will, in the judgments they will form, and the language they will use. Throughout the volume, indeed, nothing is more striking, when speaking of hardships and abuses, than its freedom from exaggeration, and unreasonable complaint. The tone is more frequently one of extenuation and apology.

No work of the day is destined, we think, to a wider circulation than this, or to effect more for the best interests of that interesting class, toward whom the author has called forth the warmest sympathies of his readers.

Lives of Eminent Unitarians; with a Notice of Dissenting Academies. By the Rev. J. W. TURNER, Jun., M. A. London. 1840. 12mo. pp. 417.

A BOOK, which, from what we have read of it, well deserves a reprint in this country. It would serve to bring Unitarians of the present day into better acquaintance with their ancestors, a set of men well worth knowing. It contains twenty lives, from Biddle, born in 1615, to Micajah Towgood, born in 1700. A volume on a similar plan, made up of lives of American Unitarian worthies, is a good work for some one to undertake. The lives of Buckminster, Thacher, and Abbot, are already written, and as a part of any such volume ought to be accessible to all.

Strive and Thrive. By MARY HOWITT. Boston: James Munroe & Co. Hope On, Hope Ever; or the Boyhood of Felix Law. By MARY HOWITT, author of "Strive and Thrive." Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1840.

THESE little books rank with Miss Edgeworth's, and Miss Sedgwick's "Home." No child can read them without improvement. The first we think the better of the two. The early history, indeed, of Felix, and especially of his father, Andrew Law, is every way admirable — simple, affecting, beautiful; but on Felix getting to London, and the introduction of Mrs. Waldegrave upon the scene, the little story of real life suddenly shoots up into

a romance.

Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington in the Revolution of the United States of America. By M. Guizor. Translated from the French. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1840.

We

We are too late in our notice of this essay to offer any criticism upon it. Its merits are now generally understood. will only say that it seems to us to constitute an admirable" first class book " for our higher schools, and for the careful study of the young in commencing or pursuing a course of American history.

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

JANUARY, 1841.

Α

ART. I. The Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. By A MEMBER OF THE HOUSES OF SHIRLEY AND HASTINGS. Third Thousand. London: 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 488 and 554.

THE rise of Methodism was one of the most natural events in the world, as natural as the rising of the sun, as light after darkness, spring after winter, calm after storm, life after death; as natural as the Reformation of the sixteenth century; as the English, the French, or American Revolution. When corruption and abuse in civil or religious administration have risen to a certain height, then in due time come resistance and reform. Human nature, in even its most degraded state, will bear only to a certain point; it then rises and seeks redress, proclaims its wants, and strives for their satisfaction. No want is deeper; not that of civil liberty, not that of a pure and primitive doctrine, than that of the soul for reality in its religion; for a religion that shall be not only a round of forms, not only a cold and dry proclamation of truisms, not only a creed and a service, but a real principle of faith, hope, and love, which shall dwell in the heart, lift it above the world, and place it in intimate communion with the Father, after whom it yearns, and for whose salvation all its instincts cry aloud; that shall satisfy and fill the desires, resolve the doubts, answer the questions, of the existence of which every soul is conscious. But at the beginning of the eighteenth century, no such religion was to be found within the pale of the English Church. It was among the Dissenters; but it was not in the Church. Yet there were in the Church men, as well as churchmen; those who, beside her doctrine and VOL. XXIX. 3D S. VOL. XI. NO. III.

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her ritual, both which they honored and loved, wanted something more. They felt, at least, that if the truth was in the Church, it was buried beneath the many folds of form; it was not an accessible, living, saving truth; it was cold, distant, inaccessible, or dead. If not dead, it must be received and exhibited in a quite different manner, or the souls of men must pine and die. The Church, without a real and earnest religion, was not enough. Methodism grew naturally out of this feeling of dissatisfaction with the religion of the Church. Those who before had become dissatisfied with her hierarchy, and her service, had long ago withdrawn, and composed the great body of Dissenters. Those, who could not allow her theology to be pure and primitive, had also left her ranks, and constituted that small minority of the Dissenters, who held to the strict unity of God. But, though these malcontents had taken their departure, others remained, who, while they believed her doctrine, and acknowledged the authority of her clergy, and loved her services, loved religion more. The Wesleys, John and Charles, with Whitefield, were of this number, and were the first to come out and give utterance to a feeling, which, as soon as their voices were once raised, was responded to throughout the kingdom and the Church. They found religion for themselves, and as soon as they found it, they began to exhibit and proclaim it to the world, that others might share their joy. And their peculiarity, as reformers, lay in no novelty of doctrine, or organization. They forsook, in the outset, neither the doctrine nor the order of the Church. They did not dream of founding a new sect. They simply believed with the heart, and what they believed with the heart, they preached as if they so believed. This was original Methodism; it was not Calvinism, nor Arminianism, nor Church-of-Englandism. It had nothing to do with doctrine. "The only Methodism I desire to know," said Whitefield, "is a holy method of dying to ourselves, and of living to God." It was religion of the heart, living faith, the faith of a soul that realized its own nature, destiny, duty, and danger, and was earnest that other souls should do the same; a faith, that uttered its convictions not in the smooth and well turned periods of an academic discourse, but in those burning words, however homely or rude, which with most power could reveal the soul to itself, and rouse it to lay hold on the hope set before it. Afterwards, Methodism took the forms of a peculiar institution; but those forms entered not into the