were distinctly visible, but all vestiges of the dreadful carnage are obliterated. The rains of heaven have washed away the bloody stains, and the remains of those who fell are no longer to be seen. But the remembrance of the dreadful scene still exists indelibly fixed in the minds of the survivors. Of this contest the inhabitants still speak with horror. They were surrounded by nearly eight hundred thousand men, who brought into action more than a thousand pieces of artillery. The villages around them were daily sending up their flames to heaven, and nothing was heard but the roar of cannon, and the shrieks of the dying. Every house, tower, and public edifice was covered with spectators, looking with intense anxiety for the result of these tremendous conflicts. In the smoking villages they thought they saw their own approaching ruin. Wounded men were hourly brought into the city, till almost every house was converted into a hospital. The number of these soldiers only added to the misery of the inhabitants; their pro visions were nearly consumed, and with difficulty could they satisfy the wants of the moment. As day after day rolled away they looked in vain for the result of the terrific conflict. Famine begun to stare them in the face as the French troops pressed into the town; but at length the final hour arrived, and the retreating French left the city amid one of the most awful scenes of carnage that the sun ever beheld. The bridge. that crossed the Elster was the only passage for the troops. Towards this the allies directed a battery of cannon, until it was choked with dead. At last it was blown up, and twenty thousand Frenchmen who reremained behind were compelled to surrender. A French cavalry officer informed the writer that he crossed the bridge when this battery was sending forth its deadliest fire upon it. The dead and dying were then piled up to the parapet, and over them he eventually forced his way, the feet of his horse occasionally sinking down between the bodies, as when passing through a marsh!" REVIEW. An Only Son; A Narrative by the Author of "My Early Days." 12mo. Westley and Davis: Lon don. 1831. WE are indebted to those writers who employ their talents in the cause of virtue and religion, and who fearlessly expose the errors and vices of the age. Among these the author of the work before us deservedly ranks. The narrative is, we believe, fictitious, which will, with some, obliterate all its merits. The objection to the trash which, under the appellation of Novels, issues from the circulating library, is not that the narrative is fictitious (an objection that might apply to some portions of the Sacred Records), but because it is made a pander to the passions, by giving them a fascinating aspect; because it transports the reader into the regions of romance, and indisposes him for the sober realities of life. And, finally, in the catastrophe vice too often obtains the meed of virtue, while in the detail the appreciation of the morality of actions evinces that the Gospel standard is not that of the writer. Parents cannot be too vigilant in guarding against the introduction of such works to their youthful charge; but it is not the part of wisdom to be carried away by mere sounds, or to deal indis criminate censure or approbation. We envy not the feelings of that man who can see no moral beauty in Parnell's Hermit. The excitement produced by works of fiction have been objected to them, even when the moral they inculcate is unexceptionable. This censure is, to say the least, too indiscriminate. A work which, drawing its moral precepts from the Gospel, excites to obedience to the divine commands, by enkindling in the heart a love to religion, cannot produce an excitement unfriendly to virtue. What other excitement than that to filial piety can be produced on the mind of a young female by reading Elizabeth, or The Exiles of Siberia? It has been objected to religious novels, that "the doctrine they pretend to teach is, for the most part, obscured by the mists of human opinions." If this objection have any force, it would banish from our libraries moral every and devotional book, not of our own sect or opinion, which of course we should say was not human, but derived from the bible. Such is our apology, if any be required, for not closing our pages against extracts from works of fiction, when such extracts appear calculated to promote our object. We have not sought out for them, but when they have been sent to us we have not rejected them merely because they conveyed instruction in the same manner as the fables and parables of the ancients.* The work at the head of this article was presented to us for our notice: a review of its contents will be our justification, and an answer to objectors. Robert Earnshaw, who is the hero of the tale, is made to relate his own history its introduction is no less interesting than instructive. : My natal spot was the farm-house of Thorncroft, about a mile from one of the principal towns of the county of Devon. My father's name was Richard-mine Robert-Earnshaw. To the business of a woollen draper, in Emy father added agricultural pursuits, which he prosecuted with pleasure and success. By the time he attained mature manhood, his honest exertions had rendered him comparatively independent. He was thus enabled to obey the impulse of affection, cham, a maiden whom he had long loved, and to offer his hand to Katherine Beeand whose only patrimony was her many virtues. It was to be expected that a union uninfluenced by chance, caprice, avarice, or vulgar passion, would be productive of pations of the wedded pair were fully felicity. It was so. The mutual anticirealized, and the birth of a son imparted a livelier zest to domestic enjoyment. For his own good purpose it hath pleased Providence to temper the cup both of joy and of sorrow to his creatures. A feeble frame, sinking under the ailments of infancy, darkened the delight of the parents in their little boy. The cares of an anxious nurse impaired the delicate constitution of his mother. The family removed from E- and fixed their residence at the farm-house. There my brother died, and there was I born, soon after the day of his interment. from robust. The diseases of childhood Though not by nature sickly, I was far crowded upon me ere I had collected strength to sustain their pressure with firmness. Nothing short of a miracle, it was thought, could have borne me through. Maternal tenderness, living but for the helpless, was the instrument by which that miracle was effected. I was only five years of age when I lost my mother. Other impressions of the period have faded; remembrance of this event remains permanently graven on my memory. from my cot, half asleep, to a chamber dimly lighted, and was placed by the side of a bed, on which a female, pale as the sheets, reclined, supported by pillows. She kissed me often and often, and her fast-flowing tears dropt through the aperture of the night-dress on my bosom. I sobbed aloud from sympathy, and some person in attendance removed me gently from the room. To this scene succeeded confused images of death and mourning— I recollect that I was carried at night a dream of blackness-a crowd-a coffin and a hearse. The mildest of all the faces that looked upon my childhood I was destined to see no more. Illness fell upon me shortly afterwards, and, young though I was, I attribute it to a sense of my bereavement. The breast of a child may be the seat of strong emotions. Sadness, on the cheek conscious of few summers, is not always as fugitive as an evening cloud in June. For a week or two after my mother's dissolution, I was consoled by hearing that she was gone on a distant journey, and would assuredly come back. They supposed I would very soon forget her. They were mistaken. I continued to number the days which were to elapse ere her return. At last I was told that God had taken her, and that she would never come home again. I went and hid myself in the garden, and wept bitterly and I continued indulging in solitary grief until bodily malady deadened the poignancy of mental affliction. Two years subsequently I found a carnelion heart she had worn, a trinket that had captivated my young fancy. I told no one of the discovery, but suspended it by the shirt ribbon around my neck; when I knelt in prayer I pressed it between my palms, and invoked an artless blessing on the memory of her whom it had once adorned. There are few misfortunes incidental to humanity more productive of present and future ill than that which had befallen me. He alone can appreciate the value of such a protectress as mine was, who, like me, has been deprived of her while life is in its bud. She had cheerfully ministered to all my wants-had submitted to my peevish caprices without a murmur-had devoted herself to the patient task of correcting childish waywardness, without verging on unkindness. Had she lived, I would have imbibed the first lessons of rectitude from her gentle lips. She would have been to me a counsellor, a confidant, a mediator. Under her pruning hand not a thorn of inquietude would have grown up beneath our roof.-Why dwell repiningly on what cannot now be realized? It was ordained that her spirit should pass to "Him who gave it," ere the evil days came, or the years drew nigh in which earth's weary pilgrims declare they have "no pleasure in them."-Pp. 1-6. This is drawn to the life; and while it gives a no less true than animated picture of that conjugal happiness which is founded in love and esteem, it also teaches the evanescent nature of all sublunary enjoyments. Nothing could be more natural and affecting than the writer's description of his infantile feelings upon the loss of his mother. After her death the care of him devolved, of course, upon his surviving parent. The pious parent, to whom is intrusted the cultivation of the youthful mind, from the first dawning of intelligence, should watch the temper and disposition as they are developed with the growth of his infant charge, that he may foster the dispositions that are friendly to virtue, and give that direction to those traits in the character that expose to temptation as will make them subserve the grand end of education, the moral improvement of intellectual power. A proper admixture of kindness and firmness is required, to every insure success in this arduous but pleasing task; the first draws forth the affectionate feelings of the child, who will receive with pleasure instruction so imparted, the second insures respect to the authority of the parent; and thus he would steer clear of the Scylla and Charybdis upon which parents too often splitan improper indulgence on the one hand, or a stern and rigorous exercise of authority on the other. Unfortunately for the subject of this narrative, his father did not adopt this happy medium; he did not make sufficient allowance for the buoyancy of youth, which should not be crushed, but only rightly directed. The father, by endeavouring to avoid a weak indulgence, erred on the side of severity, and thus, with the very best intentions, he, in frustrated his object by destroying that affectionate confidence which should exist between a parent and a child: neither was his method of imparting religious instruction adapted to recommend it to the playful, volatile mind of a child; it gave some measure, religion a repulsive, instead of an inviting aspect. After the death of the mother of our hero, a middle aged maiden, sister of his father, assumed the superintendence of the household, upon whom, principally, devolved his early education. To preserve me from the chance of being contaminated at a public school, I was submitted to a course of domestic instruction, that my ideas might be properly fixed ere I came in collision with my fellows. "Train up a child," said my father, "in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it."—It is a golden maxim, but I think its meaning was strained with respect to me. By my aunt Rebecca I was initiated in the rudiments of education. I displayed capacity, and she put it unsparingly to the proof. I had scarcely learned to read with fluency, when my memory, which was susceptible, was plied with incessant tasks. With her originated the first mistake in the system of tuition to which I was subjected. I was, as I have observed, of a cast highly imaginative. Narrative, stirring or marvellous, possessed for me an irresistible charm. I could not withdraw myself from a book of battle, or adventure, until I had travelled it through. Legends of the supernatural were equally attractive. This craving appetite for intellectual excitement, prudently directed, might have led to the most solid and beneficial acquisitions. It might have contributed to form the historian, the geographer, or the natural philosopher. But open gratification was denied it, and the indulgence it illicitly provided was prejudicial or profitless. An old female servant secretly regaled me with fireside stories of ghosts and goblins, that made me the sport of the most ridiculous terrors; and she procured for me fairy tales, and books of a similar class, the perusal of which begot an aversion to the sobriety of truth, and especially to the studies to which I was lawfully restricted-these were a few school-books, the Scriptures, the various Catechisms of our faith, and the writings of eminent divines. While I reverence the pious auxiety that toils to stamp religious impressions on the unwritten mind, I would bid the guardians of youth beware, lest by a well-meant, but uncalculating, zeal, they defeat or counteract their object. Unless, perhaps, to those sons and daughters of labour, whose only source of information is the infrequent lesson at the Sunday-school, experience tells me that the Bible should not be presented to the young eye as the symbol of drudgery. The weakness of humanity, apparent in the oldest and best, should be recognized and kindly encountered in those for whom the portals of existence have recently expanded. They should be taught to esteem an acquaintance with revelation as the first of rewards, instead of a penance for idleness, or a dull trial of recollection. It should be ever accessible-frequently in their hands to whose example they look up; but not obtruded like an arithmetical treatise, nor the retention of its precepts enforced by corporeal chastisement. Error, in this respect, has been productive of much mischief; and many have lamented that, to their dying day, they were sensible of the ill effects of a thoughtless and involuntary familiarity with the inspired volume. Still greater abstinence is required with Catechisms and religious works adapted to the grasp of matured understandings. To the unripe pupil they present but an unmeaning assemblage of alphabetic signs; and, if it he wished that he should learn to comprehend them with pleasure in an after hour, they should be admitted to form a portion of his regular intellectual aliment only when he has gained strength to digest them. mode in which I was instructed indisposed me subsequently to serious reading and reflection; and the temporary value of my acquirements may be surmised from the fact, that I conceived the word "heinous," which occurs in a question of the Shorter Catechism, to have some indefinable relation to tin! The Similar observations may be applied to attendance on the public ordinances of religion. While the guides of the rising generation are bound to point the way to the temple of prayer, they should carefully abstain from any exercise of authority that might lead those under their charge to consider it a "house of bondage." I have yet to deplore the injudicious conscientiousness which compelled me, in a precarious state of health, through every vicissitude of the seasons, to spend six hours of the Sabbath in the chapel of the Rev. Jeremiah Thorpe, hungry, cold, or drowsy; my thoughts "wandering over the mountains of vanity,” unable, and unwilling, to follow the exhortations and arguments of the preacher. The system of management, under which I vainly repined, was altogether uniform. Even in matters so trifling as my amusements, I was not left to the slightest use of my discretion. I was treated precisely as if I had no will. Toys were purchased, play-ground allotted, and companions selected, contrary to my inclinations. I was obliged to receive the sons of the Rev. Jeremiah Thorpe, boys with whom I had no common bond of union, as the exclusive partners of my leisure. If I complained, I was debarred for the time from recrea tion of any kind. My father, persuaded that he barely performed his duty, was immovable.-Pp. 10-15. These excellent reflections display an intimate knowledge of human nature, and claim the serious attention of every parent and instructor of youth. We have, from our own experience, long been of the sentiment that the introduction of the Bible into schools, as a common reading book, the younger classes reading in the New Testament, and the elder classes in the Old Testament, from the latter containing words more difficult in their pronunciation, without any regard to the subject matter of the books, detracted from that feeling of reverence towards the holy Scriptures with which they should be approached by every believer in Divine Revelation, but more especially by the youth. The associations which a boy attaches to his school books are any thing but reverential he generally fancies that he is sufficiently conversant with their contents; and this notion he is too apt to extend to the Bible, when it has been degraded into a mon task book, a notion pregnant with consequences injurious to his future welfare. The rigid discipline under which our hero was placed, with respect to his amusements, was not less injudicious than the means adopted for his religious instruction. A parent has the negative right of preventing his child from associating with other children, whose habits and conduct he thinks are opposed to morals and religion; but unmixed com evil only can be the result of forcing a child to associate with those with whom he can have no common bond is repulsive, it invests religion with of union. Such austerity of conduct gloom, and creates a distance and reserve between the child and its parent. When the energies and vivacity of a youth are fettered, instead of being directed into a right channel, he will long to get from under a control that seems arbitrary and tyrannic, will watch every opportunity to evade it, and indulge in those pursuits which the vivacity of the imagination paints in seductive colours. Such was the effect that the misdirected education of young Earnshaw had on him. There was no want of affection on the part of the father, for he was doatingly fond of his boy; but he had imbided the mistaken notion that, by letting such affection appear, he would lose his parental authority. He made every provision that his son might receive a classical education, and if he was not always fortunate in the choice of tutors, that was more his misfortune than his fault. At the last academy to which the son was sent he formed an intimacy with one of the scholars, named Frank Rodney, the son of a country gentleman, whose seat was in the vicinity of Thorncroft, and who was destined for a military life. This intimacy was attended with important consequences to young Earnshaw. After his return home Rodney invited him to spend a few days at the family mansion. Earnshaw's father, with some reluctance, gave his consent sent to the visit. The Rodneys seemed a happy family; take the following description: The nervousness, which as usual accompanied an introduction into a new sphere of society, was speedily dispelled by the reception I experienced at St. Aymers. The glad abundance of fruits and flowers which diversified the foliage of plant and tree, ministered less to the benignity of this sylvan paradise than did its bright |