3. "The professional men of America are dissatisfied."

4. "The merchants are dissatisfied."

5. (interrogatively) "Are the mechanic and farming classes satisfied? No, not even they."

These classes include, we believe, about all the different orders of society in this country, since we have no gentlemen, technically so styled. These, then, are the premises, presenting, it will be acknowledged, a very melancholy picture. Now what is the highly logical conclusion, as stated by Miss Martineau on the last page of her work?—

"No peculiarity in them is more remarkable than their NATIONAL CON

We have now done with Miss Martineau for the present. Worthless as these volumes really are, we do not feel that the time devoted by us to their examination, has been altogether misemployed. She came to this country under some peculiar advantages. She was a woman!-it entitled her to our respect. She was an Englishwoman,-it challenged our good-will. She laboured under some physical disadvantages, it at once interested our sympathies, and secured her our confidence. She undoubtedly saw much, though, by no means, so much as she would insinuate, of the best society in this country, and saw it, too, when all restraint was unsuspiciously laid aside, in the sacred privacy of domestic life. What her return has been for all the undeserved hospitality she enjoyed, let many passages in her volumes, to which we have not thought fit even to allude, give the reply.

Considering the character of the sentiments of her work, it does not seem worth while to waste time in remarking upon her style; although we might fairly observe, as she does, when, speaking of the American women, she talks of their "pretension to mental and moral philosophy,"—" the less that is said on that head, the better."

ART. IX. GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF PELAGIUS, AS A REFORMER.

THOSE Who have extensively surveyed the course of human opinions; who have seen them always in a state of change-those received with enthusiasm to-day, rejected to-morrow, and forgotten next day; who have seen them all, even the grossest errours, which have been exploded, re-appear again after certain intervals, have been led to doubt the common sentiment with regard to the progress of the human mind. They fear that we are moving without advancing, that we are, in fact, only coursing in a circle, and that human reason is only revolving in a very eccentric orbit, and merely brings back, at very irregular periods, the forgotten opinions, errours and absurdities, of past times.

It is acknowledged, on all hands, that reason is weak. Suppose it is. This is a reason that her progress should be slow, that she would make few new acquisitions; but not that she should perpetually embrace errour and absurdity. Were she anxious only for truth, she would build only on principles known and acknowledged; she would be assured of the safety of all her steps as she proceeded; or if she ventured to advance from things doubtful, she would give no more certainty to her conclusions than she found in her premises; she would know some things as certain, others as doubtful; some things as beyond her knowledge, and others as beyond her powers; she would have truth, conjecture, and mystery, but not errour. But it is notorious, that in the most important of her inquiries, human reason is under the influence of our corrupt passions; and it is on these subjects that she runs into needless errours and criminal absurdities.

In the exacter sciences, where there is no room for bias, where the subject is perfectly abstract, and is built on selfevident axioms, and where the slightest inattention leads so directly to glaring absurdity,-in these, no doubt, there has been great progress. In the natural sciences, reason has been compelled to quit its vagaries and build on facts; and these sciences have advanced.

But in what is termed mental philosophy, it has taken her something more than eighteen hundred years to correct

the errours with which she first set out. Here she has had full swing for her subtleties; and, perhaps, she never acquitted herself more ably, than when she disproved the existence of the universe and herself. It is truly astonishing what discoveries some of these philosophers have made by looking into their own minds. One has lately found that the desire of happiness is the ultimate object of all human action- the only motive which sways all men, the pious and the wicked-that the apostle Paul, in his labours, and the murderer, in taking life, have the same object in view-that the Saviour of the world gave up his life from the same motives from which Judas betrayed him.

In theology, a subject infinitely beyond her powerswhere she has the instructions of infinite wisdom-where she has nothing to do but to interpret them, her vagaries have been the wildest and the most eccentric. Here she has digressed at every possible point. Divines have used every effort to rein her in; but she is constantly taking the bits in her teeth, and always makes destructive work, before she stops.

But if any where reason has erred shamelessly, and made the wildest mistakes, it has been in the science of government and her efforts for the amelioration and advancement of Society.

A great variety of the most plausible schemes has been invented in former ages, and most of these have been tried and tested by one of the most learned and polished nations of Europe; but they have signally failed. But notwithstanding we begin to see the re-appearance of similar views of the vast powers of Government in reforming and refining man We see that he is again promised a happiness, which would soon make him wretched, and a liberty which would soon overturn the government which should confer it. The opinions, plans and projects for the advancement of society which are now so common, have been known, tried and forgotten long ago. They certainly have not the merit of originality. Were it possible to make one of our ardent reformers a little acquainted with history, we think it would be somewhat mortifying for him to see that, though he has appeared to progress so fast, he has not been moving forward; that he has only been walking on the great tread-wheel of innovation, and bringing round the exploded and forgotten opinions, projects, and errous, of preceding generations.

Great judgement has been used in selecting the most thorough reformers for the new mission to the children of our land, which has lately been undertaken. That no doubt is a most important part of the community; they will soon be the great actors on the stage, and it is important that the foundations of their education should be deeply laid; that men should be sent to them qualified for their work. The minds of this class of the community are not yet shackled by other systems; they are almost wholly unbiassed, and of course most open to truth, and it seems proper to consider the facility with which they imbibe the new system a great argument of its correctness. We are credibly informed that the children in some places have resolved with a good degree of unanimity, that both parental and civil governments are an usurpation,

We think that the Reformers themselves have as yet hardly completed their system of emancipating the human will from the yoke of authority which is crushing it. No doubt when they come to consider, that the commands of one Great Being are vastly more numerous and difficult than those of parents and civil rulers united, and that He too is the one who has commanded children to obey their parents and the powers that be-no doubt they will see that as yet they are far from carrying out the great principles of emancipation to their legitimate results. Perhaps however this is to be left for the children to do, and we have little doubt, if they can be persuaded to take the two first degrees in this new mystery, that they will have little hesitation about the third. It has been very common for projectors to bring forth schemes which amount to much the same thing; but it is very rare that any one, who has tasted the blessings of civilization, has been bold enough, in plain terms, to advance the doctrine that civil government is an usurpation on the rights of man. The advocates of reform have of late been extremely industrious, and seem to be highly elated at the noble prospects before them. They have experienced little opposition, and their anticipations we think are very rational.

If they are permitted to go on unopposed, and as they say, overturn and overturn and overturn, there is no doubt they will soon bring about their millenium of fanaticism, anarchy, and confusion. But as our introduction seems to be carrying us from our subject, instead of conducting us to it, we shall drop it here and address ourselves immediately

to our task. We propose to examine the character of Pelagius as it appears in his methods of discovering truth, his means of propagating it, and his skill in defending it.

There can be no doubt that his discoveries were almost entirely original. The Church had used the Scriptures about four hundred years without ever dreaming of this system, and probably, had it not been for Pelagius, it would have been a long time before she would have heard of it. On the great subjects of the fall of man-the imputation of sin -human ability and innate depravity; on the nature and necessity of grace, and all kindred subjects, the system was perfectly new it was directly the reverse of the old one, -a positive denial of every leading doctrine which hitherto had been held by the church.

But the good man was for a long time too modest to advance any claims to originality; he did not even pretend that he had discovered a new philosophical method of explaining the doctrines which the church had always held— much less, that the old way of explaining them, made them a great deal worse than infidelity itself. He made no pretensions to any thing new or original, and preferred even to adhere to the old language on these subjects. But he did not give up his own opinions, nor could he be justly charged with keeping them back. On the contrary he taught them most industriously and perseveringly-and though he adopted the old language, he was far from being guilty of teaching the old doctrines-he had the ingenuity to use the same terms to deny and undermine these doctrines which the church employed in expressing them, and inculcated the new system by using the same terms by which the Church taught the opposite.

It was doubtless a very bold step in Pelagius to attack a system which the word of God had been teaching to the Christian Church for about four hundred years, and especially to substitute another of his own in its room. Should he pretend to derive this new scheme from the unassisted lights of reason, he would be charged with unparalleled presumption. After the united wisdom and researches of the finest philosophers of antiquity, for ages had failed to discover a doctrine which should be able to enlighten and purify the race, and God himself had furnished the system, shall an individual arise and pronounce it a failure, and pretend by his own reason to perform a work which all