accounted for the fact. This led to an interesting portion of the lecture, which our limits prevent us from enlarging upon, viz. the Philosophy of Human Speech. When the capacity of the vocal organs in man is considered, we must admire the exquisite skill they display, and their adaptation to our peculiar condition. Language may almost be termed an element of thought; it is the great medium of communication between mind and mind; so great and glorious, that we are almost induced to think the Deity has expended the chief part of his inconceivable power, wisdom, and goodness upon it. Seeing then, that speech, and its product language, are the most eminent means of knowledge, and the principal organ of human improvement, it appears a matter of surprise that those who would limit human attainments, repress the aspiration of the mind, and erase every feature of the divine likeness from the soul of man, have never objected to our learning to talk, and systematically striven to raise up a race of dumb men; such beings of course would be more easily ruled than others. Various periods of our history furnish us with instances of the attempts of tyrants to restrain human thought; but they have failed. There is One greater than the tyrant man!— the great Creator of all things, whose tender regard for his creatures, knows not geographical or political boundaries, acknowledges not the principles of sects and parties; but extends itself to every one who is of an humble and contrite spirit. The Lecturer was loudly applauded; it occupied nearly two hours in delivery, and contained a vast variety of curious illustrative facts.

TEMPERANCE AND TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

Remarks on a "REPLY" to an article with the above title, in the Miscellany for July: in a Letter to a Friend.

"Doubtless YE are the men, and wisdom shall die with you."

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I willingly yield to the request which you, in conjunction with many others have made, that I would give my opinion on the temper and spirit of the anonymous "Reply" against which you express so much indignation. Your well-known benevolence and rigid ad herence to temperance in all things, render you a proper person to complain of the production alluded to, since no suspicion can be entertained, in your case, of sinister motives. I shall endeavour, as briefly as possible, to convey my sentiments of the cowardly libeller, and leave him to that neglect he so justly merits and is sure to receive.

I am aware that several persons, whom I highly esteem, and who profess for me the strictest friendship, are connected with the Luton Temperance Society, under whose auspices the "Reply" is issued, and they may be supposed, on that account, to have levelled the bitter attacks which it contains. But, while I must think they have acted injudiciously, in allowing themselves to be at all implicated in the affair, I fully acquit them of possessing the spirit which the "Reply" breathes. That "Reply" is the dark production of one mind, with which I am sure my friends can have nothing in common, but their adherence to total abstinence principles. The writer of the foul charges against honest and christian men, of course feels what he has advanced;

but those whom he has drawn into a silent acquiescence with his views, must not be condemned with him. I know not who he is; but were he my own brother, I should unflinchingly say, "for me you can have no friendship; the diabolical features you have endeavoured to imprint on my character, prove you to be a deadly foe; henceforth no more than the name of relationship can exist between us.' The more I reflect on the determined effort of the " Reply" to ascribe my strictures on total abstinence to the worst possible motives, the more I feel obliged to confess my conviction that, a cruel, hard-hearted, unchristian temper originated it. What hatred breathes in every line! How gladly would

he make me a mere heathen sensualist if he could!

You will keep in view the precise object I contemplate in these observations. I am not about to shew the futility of the arguments of total abstainers, or to defend my own against that system. Be assured, I have no enmity to any plan which is intended to promote human happiness, and I should not have been angry if all my reasons for not espousing this system had been overthrown. Had the writer of the "Reply" untwisted the thread of sophistry I might ignorantly have weaved, and then said, Sir, you are a person of weak intellect, and not capable of grappling with us, while I might have been sorry to stand so low in his estimation, I should have felt he had a right to repel and confute me if he could. Remember then, I am not opposing abstistinence; the spirit of the "Reply" is all I have to do with. A man may question the strength of my understanding, and leave me a good man still; but the reply attacks the motives of conduct; it levels its envenomed arrows at the heart!

I wish you also to bear in mind that I am not about to criticise the "Reply" as a literary production. To animadvert on its faults in this way, would be something like the Quixotic trick of mistaking a windmill for a well-mounted cavalier. Of course the writer before us lays no claim

whatever to the character of a literary man, engaged, as he. most probably is, in the humbler duties of life; I shall therefore say nothing of the innumerable errors of style and composition with which his production is disfigured, or of the inflated bombast of its descriptions, or the mock-pathetic of its complaints. All these are faults by which many sermons are accompanied, which yet confer much benefit on those who hear them. Leaving then, the arguments and the literary characteristics of this piece, I shall proceed to detect and analyze its spirit.

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You well define, my dear Friend, the glaring sin of this Reply," when you mention its constant attribution of motive; the writer does not judge from documents before him, or from the plain deductions of reasoning, but locks at once into the heart, and, claiming the attribute of omniscience, cries, " I know the secret spring of your conduct!" Allow me to appeal to the printed statements before me, and this will most clearly appear. In the few well-meant obserservations on total-abstinence, in the Miscellany, the writer expressly stated his belief that the motives of the advocates of that system were good, while he dissented from the prin-` ciples on which the system was built. I think any candid reader of that paper will see that no unfriendly spirit characterized it. I can answer for this, that none was intended. Every unprejudiced person must perceive that its simple object was to promote temperance, and to find out the best methods of doing so. In this examination, the total-abstinence plan came under review, and the writer expressed his dissent from it. But woe to the man who will not pronounce the Shibboleth of a party! As Wolsey said, "I and my king," I first and my king afterwards; so has it proved with this verbose pryer into the hearts of others. His motto should be, "tee-totalism first, temperance next," since for finding fault with his method of preventing intemperance, we are treated as adversaries, although we have expressed our abhorrence of intoxication. O rare integrity!

to lose the end in the means! But I will bring forward the statements of this red-hot zealot, that you may judge for yourself.

In the commencement of his remarks, this writer calls those who differ from him, "opposers of public good, to whom it is more congenial to condemn, than impartially to examine; as if none but himself and his companions could consult public utility, and there were no method of promoting the general happiness, but tee-totalism. A little further, the writer in the Miscellany is compared to Judas, who pretended to care for the poor; and it is insinuated that he commented on total abstinence, like Judas, "to serve a purpose of his own selfish motives." In the fifth page, just to shew the animus of the writer, he falls foul on the Miscellany itself, calling it, in a strain of imbecile satire, "some three-penny periodical, printed in good clear type, with convenient space at the bottom of each page for private memorandums." What harm has the little magazine done him, that he should endeavour to turn its good qualities into defects? Why, it has shewn the glaring inconsistencies of his favourite system, and he hates its fair and well-printed page on that account. But this is nothing compared with what follows; as the eye of the man becomes more accustomed to the sight of his uncharitable insinuations, he pours forth others still more malicious. the sixth page, it is broadly affirmed that we cannot entertain the views of the writer "because we love a sup"; the plain English of which is, we are not induced to differ from tee-totalers by conviction, but by our love of drink! Hardened by this brave attack on the sacredness of character, he says that the writer in the Miscellany has made a "confession of his love of the debasing drinks, which create the drunkard's thirst;" a confession which this replier has himself invented, since no sentence is found in the Miscellany at all like it. Then, to crown the whole he begins to shed tears and says, "piteous indeed is that member of a

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