more efficacious for peace than that of any enrobed in clerical silk, or dignified by lawn sleeves; the strife as to what the Liturgy means had not been settled to this day. But her sceptre happily beats asunder the uplifted and threatening crosiers; her crown overshadows the conflicting mitres, and a voice which St. Paul would have silenced, as he tells us, in any of his "churches," opportunely determines throughout all England what may be held for legal, if not for spiritual, regeneration! The very next year of grace, however, protrudes the shadow of the Triple Crown over the entire scene! The strife about Regeneration is doubtless, among the chief disputants, for ever hushed! Already that respecting true Ecclesiastical Supremacy is far louder. The silenced Puseyite parties to the former, we can only here add, were up to the very month of the Papal movement stoutly disputing that supremacy of her Majesty-which the Pope at once and so valorously puts down. What, than this concurrence of strifes ecclesiastical, could be more propitious to his pretensions, or demonstrate more happily the congeniality of his spirit with that of these parties!

P. S. While writing the above, the public papers have confirmed our anticipation-that the manner in which the late Papal movement should be dealt with, will be a leading topic in the ensuing session* of Parliament. We will subjoin, therefore, that Dr. Southey, in his popular " Book of the Church," states the intent of the "Statute of Præmunire" exactly as we have done. "It struck at the root of his (the Pope's) power, by making it highly penal to procure from him any instrument in diminution of the authority of the Crown." (Vol. ii. p. 1.) Our view of its practical effect down to the present day is confirmed by the humorous "additional chapters from the History of John Bull," in the number of Blackwood for January. "I find it a main inconvenience that I am not allowed," says a supposed member of the Ministry, "to write direct to Peter (His Holiness) whenever I have occasion to know the last quotations of indulgences, holy water or pardons!" and that "Squire Bull had long ago expressed his determination that none of his servants should hold direct intercourse with Peter." This writer insinuates that the Prime Minister himself will be found in "a scrape" connected with the incipiency of this business; and truly enough concludes: "It is easier to open a negotiation with Peter than to get out of one. The difficulty is not to catch the lobster, but to force him to leave go after he has fastened on you with his claws." *Now, the present.-ED.

ART. X.-NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

University Education. By HENRY P. TAPPAN, D.D. New-York: George P. Putnam.

1851.

A Memorial concerning the Recent History and the Constitutional Rights and Privileges of Harvard College, presented by the President and Fellows to the Legislature, January 17, 1851.

These publications we select from a large number which have lately appeared in different States of the Union, as indicating the interest which is beginning to be felt by the American people in questions relating to liberal education. These questions, we are happy to perceive, are no longer regarded as subjects of mere speculation, which concern retired academics alone, but as matters of general importance which are intimately connected with the well-being and the progress of society. In all ranks of life there is beginning to be felt a demand for a higher and fuller education-an education which, in some better sense than has hitherto been realized, shall train the faculties of the youth of the country and prepare them to discharge worthily the offices of life in the midst of our free institutions. We accordingly find that the subject of collegiate education and the interests pertaining to it are now coming to be almost universally discussed, not in the circles of educated men alone, but in gatherings of the people, in meetings for public reform, and in the Legislatures of States. These topics occupy a prominent place also in the periodicals and the higher newspapers of the times, and are made the basis of works which win for themselves a permanent and honorable place in the literature of the age.

Of this character is the work of Dr. Tappan on University Education, whose title we have given above. It opens with an able and learned review of the origin of Universities and Colleges on the Continent and in Great Britain, together with a brief exposition of their early organization and the changes through which they have passed. From topics like these the author passes to the Colleges of the United States, which are to a considerable extent formed after the model of those of Great Britain. He points out their peculiarities and dwells at length upon the defects in their organization, and discusses several of the plans for their reform which have lately been proposed, especially those which are contained in the Report submitted by President Wayland to the Corporation of Brown University, and in that prepared by Mr. Kelly, on the organization of the University at Rochester. Dr. Tappan expresses a warm sympathy in most of the views contained in both these Reports, so far as they go; but is of the opinion that they both fall short of the true end to be accomplished, inasmuch as they combine the College and the University in one institution. This he regards as the great error belonging to all our American Colleges, and proposes as the most effectual mode of improving our higher education, that a new class of institutions be created, superior to the Colleges in the instruction which they shall impart, and more liberal in the organization they shall adopt;-institutions which shall be truly worthy to be called Universities, at which young men may linger until their desire for knowledge is fully satisfied, and in addition to all general acquisitions, they

have thoroughly accomplished themselves in the particular art or science which they intend to pursue in life. The views which Dr. Tappan thus develops are scholarlike, liberal and comprehensive, and indicate a mind fully alive to the magnitude and importance of the questions he is discussing, and eagerly desirous to devise some method by which the liberal education attainable in the United States may be as generous and elevated as that which has ever been offered to the youth of any land.

The Memorial of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, though of a different character, is still an index not the less significant of the interest which this general subject is awakening in the public mind. At the session of the Legislature of Massachusetts for 1850, a bill was reported to the House of Representatives by a Committee of which the present Governor of that State was chairman, providing for important alterations in the organization and the course of instruction of the University. The general design of these alterations, as alleged by the Committee, was to connect the teachings of the University more closely with the pursuits and interests of the people, and thus to draw to its several classes a larger number of the young meu of the State. The bill however, as we think unfortunately, provided that the members of the Corporation shall be elected by the Legislature, and shall go out of office, in succession, after certain terms of years. It is in opposition to the passage of this bill, which is still under the consideration of the Legislature, that the Memorial of the President and Fellows was prepared. It reviews the history of the College, presents the nature of the trusts which at different periods it has assumed, and argues with great skill and force against the changes which are proposed to be made by the Legislature.

But it is not so much to the particular questions at issue as to the general interest which the subject to which they relate is every where awakening, that we desire to call attention. And we do this the more earnestly, from the fact that Colleges, several of them under the auspices of our own denomination, are springing up in different parts of the country. The plans which have been proposed for these new Colleges, we regret to perceive, have been framed with too little reference to the experience of past generations, and too little regard for the wants which are every where felt in society around us. They are constructed far too generally after the old models,-making immense outlays for buildings and grounds, but doing little or nothing for libraries or apparatus, and generally leaving their instructors to starve on the precarious income to be derived from students, a large part of whom are to be dependent on charity for their means of support. To all persons who are thus engaged in founding or building Colleges in our new States, we particularly commend the works which have lately appeared upon the subject of University edu cation. No step should be taken in this matter without a careful review of past mistakes.

The questions to which we have referred are by no means confined to our own country. They have been raised on nearly the same grounds and are now discussed in nearly the same spirit in England and Scotland. The complaints of the University system in England are even louder than in the United States, and the plans for reform are pressed with far greater earnestness, though, we suspect, with less prospect of success. A recent number of the London Athenæum, in setting forth the defects of the education given at the University of Oxford, has the following striking paragraph. It is undoubtedly strongly stated, but it well illustrates the manner in which the subject is beginning to be viewed in England :—

So far as the business of the real world is concerned, it may be doubted whether a youth educated in a tenth-rate private school is not better informed than the ms

jority of those who leave Oxford with the usual academic honors. The college programme ignores modern life and the world in which we live. A man may obtain the highest distinction of his University without knowing a single word of French, German, Spanish or Italian; without having read a single author of the countries in which these languages are spoken; in utter ignorance of their history, geography, arts, politics and opinions; who is entirely unacquainted with the history of our own country-with the master-works of our arts-with the stores of our glorious literature with the origin and progress of our national manufactures! A person may be senior wrangler of his college, who has never read Magna Charta-who knows no difference between a Roundhead and a Cavalier-who has never heard of the Bill of Rights-of Shakspeare, Dante, Milton, Calderon, Corneille, Voltaire, Macchiavelli, Goethe or Gibbon. He may confound Watt with Columbus, and fancy Spinoza the inventor of the spinning-jenny; he may believe California to lie on the coast of Coromandel, and confound the Holy Roman Empire with the French Republicyet carry away with him the best testimonials of his University.

If this be even a remote approximation to the truth, the University man in England bears in his diploma a certificate of less knowledge of every kind-that of the Latin and Greek languages alone excepted-than is quite sure to be found in the head of a graduate of any one of our respectable Colleges. We are not surprised that the "University question" in Eng land is one of the great questions of the times, and is mingling itself with so many of the plans of public reform.

Since writing the foregoing paragraph, we have read an article in the January number of the Bibliotheca Sacra, and also one in the February number of the New-Englander, on the same general subject. The former is a well-reasoned and beautiful essay on the character and influence of "the college and the theological school," setting forth the true end of all liberal education, vindicating this education from the aspersions which have been cast upon it, and commending it to the unfailing support of the patriot and the Christian. The article is from the pen of Prof. Edwards of Andover, and is marked by the just and earnest thought and the nervous and finished rhetoric which always characterize his writings. The paper in the New-Englander was written by Professor Porter of Yale College, and is devoted to a review of several of the works which have recently appeared upon College education, among which is President Wayland's Report. It is mainly an apology for the collegiate system as it now is, and though containing many just and valuable suggestions, which ought never to be overlooked in any consideration of the question at issue, it is yet characterized too much by special pleading, and is often, as it appears to us, somewhat needlessly flippant in its allusions to the views which it attempts to overthrow. The tone of the article however plainly evinces the disappointment and chagrin which the writer feels at the manner in which these views have been received, and the strong apprehensions under which he labors, lest they shall at length prevail in the college systems of the country.

The First Church in Providence not the Oldest of the Baptists in America; attempted to be shown by S. ADLAM, Pastor of the First Church in Newport, R. I.

The author of this pamphlet represents it as owing its "origin to a controversy going on since 1847, between the churches of Providence and Newport, as to priority of age;" and states that "having become pastor of the latter church" near the close of 1849, he found it necessary to satisfy himself where the truth really lay in the matter. In the investigations which he entered upon for this purpose, he appears to have come to the conclusion, that the truth is to be found on neither side of the question

which had hitherto been raised, but in a view entirely at variance with all which had before been presented in relation to it. In a word, he has ascertained that both parties are wrong, and that the right is wholly different from the ground contended for by either; for his conclusion certainly conflicts with the position of one as decidedly as with that of the other. All this is, without doubt, entirely possible, and those who read the pamphlet before us will see that it is also made to appear in a high degree plausible and probable. We only submit, that it is not a part of the old controversy," but one that is entirely new.

The facts are, as we understand them, that there has in reality been no "controversy" whatever between the church in Providence and the church in Newport, concerning priority of age, or concerning any other subject, but that the question having arisen in the Warren Association, whether the date of the planting of the church in Newport should be changed in the records of the Association from 1644 to 1639, it was referred by that body to a Committee, who reported in favor of the latter date. The report of this Committee-which was published as a part of the Minutes of the Association-was a few months since made the subject of a thorough examination and review, by the pastor of the First church in Providence, and was shown to be entirely unsatisfactory and futile as an historical argument. This "Review" was submitted to the Association at its annual meeting in September last, and has since been published. It was made the subject of a passing notice in the January number of this journal. The Report of the Committee maintained that the First church in Newport was founded in 1639. The "Review" of that report contended that this date is unsupported by historical facts, and that the true date cannot be earlier than 1644. In this state of the question appears the pamphlet of Rev. Mr. Adlam, in which, leaving all inquiry concerning the origin of the church in Newport, the writer turns his attention to the church in Providence, and attempts to show that, instead of dating back to 1639,-an epoch almost coeval with the first planting of the town,-it is really entitled to no earlier date than 1652; a view which, to us at least, was at its first announcement altogether novel and unexpected.

Thus, it will be perceived, is raised quite a new question. We have no thought at this time of entering upon the discussion of it, but we deem it an act of justice to the author, that we present a brief outline of the argument on which he rests a conclusion thus at variance with all that history and tradition have taught us, concerning the origin and early progress of the venerable church in Providence.

He attempts to show, 1st. That the present First church in Providence was not founded by Roger Williams, and that it was not the original church of the town, but a body that seceded from the original church, and formed a separate organization in 1652; maintaining as its distinctive article of faith the "laying on of hands," as a rite indispensable to church membership. 2d. That the original church, after a changeful and somewhat precarious existence of nearly seventy years, at length became extinct, or to use the author's favorite expression, "lost its visibility," about the year 1715; leaving no records or memorials of any description whatever, by which its history may be traced, or its decline and extinction explained. 3d. That the present church, still maintaining its distinctive doctrine, soon became the leading, and at length the only church in the town; and that about the year 1770, during the ministry of Rev. Dr. Manning, it laid aside its "six principle" character, and adopted the practices which it now maintains. The conclusion from the whole is, that the present First church in Providence dates from an origin later than that of the First church in Newport, and is therefore not entitled to the distinc