His long life served therefore to illustrate the mutual relations of the Congregationalists, the Separatists and the Baptists. Nor is this all; for Mr. Backus was, perhaps, more than any other man in his day, the champion of the American Baptists. His published writings were thirty-six in all, many of them being single sermons or essays. His principal work, and that by which he will be remembered, is his history of the Baptists, especially in New England. This work was published in three volumes, as the material was collected, and the means attained, in the years 1777, 1784 and 1796. The three volumes are dissimilar in appearance, and are seldom found now, except on the shelves of some antiquary. They contain invaluable stores of information laid out in a right honest and earnest manner, though with no nice regard to method, in no very elegant style, and with no pretense whatever to philosophical analysis. A new edition of them, with carefully prepared notes, appendices and indices would be welcomed by all who desire to know the past as well as the present, and so to forecast the future. Over past, present and future, alike, presides One Being, who justly claims our trust and faith, as He makes Himself known through Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and forever.

We are glad to know that the great body of the Baptists hold to this Divine Head in sincerity and truth. Nor is this all which we have in common with them. They maintain with us the parity of Christ's ministers and the completeness of a church within itself for all its necessary work, dependent only on the grace of God. They reject with us all those schemes by which men seek to consolidate the churches into a vast ecclesiastical commonwealth under the rule of Conferences, Conventions or Synods. They stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made his people free, and will not be entangled again by any yoke of bondage. It is probably owing to their influence that in Eastern Connecticut, out of the few large places, there is scarcely to be found a Methodist Society and not one Episcopal parish that has attained much vigor or has the promise of rapid growth; while in much of this region Baptist churches are planted not only in the cities and villages,

but on the rugged hill-tops, and in the green valleys of the whole country-side. We are content that it should be so. We remember that Baptists and Independents stood shoulder to shoulder in the armies of Cromwell, fighting for "the good old cause" of England's rights. We remember that they suffered together in the days when a false king gave his people as a prey to harlots and sycophants. We recall with pleasure the noble stand which Backus and his coadjutors took in the war of our Independence, not withholding themselves from the ranks of freedom because of the grievances of which they justly complained.

We observe with delight the growing love of all good learning, which shows itself at Suffield, at Providence, at Newton, at Rochester. We thank God for the gifts and graces showered so abundantly on Wayland and Sears, on Williams and Kenrick, as well as on the multitudes of Baptist pastors and teachers through the land. We feel no jealousy of their zeal or their successes, but, (by God's help,) will emulate their labors for Christ. Meanwhile we pray for the whole church on earth, under whatever name;-"Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sake, I will now say Peace be within thee."

ARTICLE IV.

THE FINE ARTS; THEIR PROPER SPHERE, AND THE SOURCES OF EXCELLENCE THEREIN.

BEFORE the principle, on which depend the right execution and the just criticism of works of. art, can be reached, it is necessary to be known that our minds are affected in a different manner when we view any specimen of them, such as a painting, from that in which they are when we view the subject itself represented by the painting, for instance' a human figure, or a landscape; as well as in what the difference consists.

A marble or bronze statue of the living human figure, of the natural color of the material, and exquisite in form, symmetry and expression, conveys to the mind a vivid feeling of pleasure, unalloyed by any feeling of an opposite kind derived from the thought that the object before us is not living, and is of a material alien from life. But if, instead, we have before us such a figure, of similar materials, or of wax, equally perfect in execution, but colored so as to represent exactly the human countenance and body,-while we may have the same admiration of the exquisite work, this has inseparably joined to it disgust, from the thought of the apparent body not being real, and of its material.

Or take a case closer still. The drawings for the newly invented instrument, the Stereoscope, are usually well executed, and afford pleasure when looked at by the naked eye, as specimens of art. Suppose that, after having examined with satisfaction such a drawing, representing human figures engaged in some animated employment, and colored to resemble life, we place it in the instrument,-instantly the feeling is changed, and, while we wonder at the transformation of a picture on a flat surface into a scene having many of the

characters of reality, we revolt from the galvanized, corpselike appearance of the figures, even more than from the colored statue. The very same picture, which at one moment gave us pleasure, at the next almost conveys disgust, and this in consequence of the scene represented being made to appear more real.

The feeling of repugnance, produced by a statue or a painting, whenever the representation has so many of the characters of reality as to force the thought of reality on us, shows, that in seeking gratification from a work of art, the mind does not intend to deal with the real object, as being directly there presented. The same appears from the pleasure received from a good uncolored engraving, which suggests the real figures or scene, with feelings appropriate, while yet the tints are utterly discordant from those of the real objects, and could not be attached to them in imagination, without extinguishing all sympathy. Yet this circumstance does not disturb our thought; nor, indeed, is the discordance readily noticed, and, even when attention is drawn to it, the notice is unaccompanied by any feeling of distaste or incongruity. It appears, then, that, by a law of the mind itself, the distinctive feeling, to which a work of the Fine Arts gives rise, does not depend on the sug gestion of Sameness or Identity in the representation with the real object;-that, on the contrary, the nearer the approach to this, the more is the end frustrated by feelings destructive of it; and that there must be something in the work, which, at the moment of observation, destroys the thought of Sameness or Identity, to allow it to convey the satisfaction which gives it its characteristic value.

What produces the conjoined and coexisting Sameness and Difference, which we thus see to be called into play in the examination of a work of art, is no doubt made up of many particulars, arising out of the sphere of the artist's labor, and the nature of the material which he uses. We shall quote several passages from Coleridge's Literary Remains and Table Talk, both to confirm the foregoing observations, and to suggest principles for solving the difficulty at which we have arrived:

"Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, is the mediatrix between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is therefore the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation; color, form, motion, and sound, are the elements which it combines, and it stamps them into unity, in the mold of a moral idea."

"Philosophically, we understand that in all imitation two elements must coexist, and not only coexist, but be perceived as coexisting. These two constituent elements are, Likeness and Unlikeness, or Sameness and Difference; and in all genuine creations of art, there must be a union of these disparates. The artist. may take his point of view where he pleases, provided that the desired effect be perceptibly produced,—that there be likeness in the difference, difference in the likeness, and a reconcilement of both in one. If there be likeness to nature, without any check of difference, the result is disgusting; and the more complete the delusion, the more loathsome the effect. Why are such simulations of nature, as waxwork figures of men and women, so disagreeable? Because, not finding the motion and the life, which we expected, we are shocked as by a falsehood; every circumstance of detail, which before induced us to be interested, making the distance from truth more palpable. You set out with a supposed reality, and are disappointed and disgusted with the deception; whilst, in regard to a work of genuine imitation, you begin with an acknowledged total difference, and then every touch of nature gives you the pleasure of an approximation to truth. The fundamental principle of all this is undoubtedly the horror of falsehood, and the love of truth, inherent in the human breast."

"Imitation is the Mesothesis of Likeness and Difference: the Difference is as essential to it as the Likeness, for without the difference, it would be a copy, or fac-simile. But, to borrow a term from Astronomy, it is a librating Mesothesis; for it may verge more to likeness, as in painting, or more to difference, as in sculpture."

"Painting is the Mesothesis of Thing and Thought. A colored wax peach is one thing, passed off for another thing,-a practical lie, and not a work appertaining to the Fine Arts,-a delusion, not an imitation."

"It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter, to tell him that his figure stands out of the canvas, or that you start at the likeness of the portrait. Take almost any daub, cut it out of the canvas, and place the figure looking into or out of a window, and any one may take it for life. Or take one of Mrs. Salmon's wax queens or generals, and you will very soon feel the difference between a copy, as they are, and an imitation of the human face, as a good portrait ought to be. Look at that flower vase of Van Huysum, and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots! The last are likest to the original; but what pleasure do they give? None, except to children."

In these observations, this profound analyst of consciousness both points out the difference between the copy, or fac-simile, of a natural object, and the imitation of it according to the rules of art, as intimated by the natural feelings, and places