FOSTER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ECLECTIC REVIEW. THE Eclectic Review was

commenced in January 1805, on strictly Protestant principles, affording a common ground where Church- men and Dissenters might meet in unity ; all topics of discipline and church-government, on which differences might arise, being excluded from its pages as a fundamental principle. Notwith-

standing the difficulty of handling many temporal questions, and leaving out an essential element—as part of Examinant's history,

and the whole of the STUARTS—the compromise was maintained until it was found impracticable to continue it ; and the Eclectic be- came the avowed advocate of the Congregational, that is, we be- lieve, the Voluntary principle. JOHN FOSTER, well known generally, and rather famous among a large class of religionists, for his Essays on Decision of Character,

contributed to the Eclectic from 1806 until growing age and failing memory compelled him to discontinue composition, in 1839. Du- ring that long period, however, his contributions varied in number: from 1806 till 1818 he was a frequent writer, but for the last twenty years of his connexion with the Review his contributions were fewer and more irregular. In the whole, he furnished one hundred and eighty-five papers ; of which fifty-nine are reprinted in the present collection, as a memorial of his genius. The anonymous editor has omitted what may be termed specimen extracts with their introductions, but has made no other alteration. These omissions seem to have been considerable; and they are in many cases proper enough : they, however, injure the article regarded as a means of superseding the book, and in some cases seem to have been made without a due consideration of the context. Occa- sionally, there are passages whose argument evidently refers to something in the extract, the drift of which the reader has to sup- pose.

Josue FOSTER'S contributions to the Eclectic Review differ from some late collections of periodical writers in being more strictly what they profess. In structure always, and mostly in their en- tirety, they are reviews of the books whose title stands at the be- ginning. Sometimes—as in the case of Fox's History of James the Second, the general character and career of lite man, beyond his capacity of author, may be exhibited ; sometimes the subject of the book reviewed may be considered in a wider extent than is con- tained in the work itself; digressions may be made from the book or the author, to the principles which the one represents or the characteristics of the age or sect with which the other was con- nected; and sometimes argument, or exposition of Joust FosTga's opinion, overrides mere criticism : but the title is never made the starting-point for an essay on some cognate subject, or, as M AC A UL AY has it, "a fiction to bring the article into court "; nor does the reviewer to any great extent use the book as a theme on which to construct another production.

It follows as a necessary consequence, that these contributions must, as wholes, be more deficient in the freshness that arises from original observation or long study of a subject ; without one or both of which no " great article" can be written, even had Joust FOSTER - possessed, which he does not, the more striking and showy qualitiea of some of his competitors in periodical literature. He has not the wit, or worldly sagacity, or pith-reaching acumen of SYDNEY SMITH; nor the wonderful analytical power, vivacious style,. and philo- sophical criticism of JEFFREY; whilst the brilliancy of MACAULAY he would riot perhaps have aimed at, even had it been attainable. But he had a sound judgment in the estimation of men and things, a sensible and not unfrequently a searching criticism in the appre- ciation of literary merit or intellectual qualities ; as well as the faculty of personifying without affectation the character and (as it were) the conduct of the book—he presented its story and matter reduced. BM religious views will to many impart a novelty in the mode of treatment, by bringing things to a religious touchstone, which they have not been accustomed to see so tested, and by handling Church-religious publications in other than a literary view —SYDNEY SMITH'S Sermons or PALEY'S Life, for example. The animus of the odium theologicum frequently gave spirit and dry jocularity to his delineations of the professing Christian ; but a solid, just, and rather ponderous sense, was the true characteristic of his mind and style ; and this imparted a kind of heaviness to his writings, where the thoughts had not sufficient novelty and weight to sustain themselves without assistance. Hence, much of his composition seems overlaid with commouplaces; part of which is to be ascribed to the very nature of a review, that must of ne- cessity dwell upon points of minor or temporary interest, to convey information to the contemporary reader, and part perhaps to the circumstance of the reprint not having received the benefit of the author's revisal.

In point of interest, these volumes cannot lay claim to the attrac- tive powers of the great triumvirate of the Edinburgh Review; but they will not be devoid of attraction to the intelligent reader. Apart from their intrinsic merit, they carry us back to a time just passed, and have an effect similar to reminiscences of youth.

As regards variety the articles are sufficient ; though it is probable that their intrinsic character, rather than any other quality, was regarded in selecting them. In history and politics, there are several papers on Fox, who seems, in despite of his laxities, to have been a great favourite with Mr. FOSTER; a notice of WINDHAM'S celebrated speech upon cruel sports ; and the works of various persons of less celebrity. In biography, or, as treated by the reviewer, perhaps personal character, we have BEATTIE, Lord KAMES, BLAIR, HOME, FRANKLIN, CHATTERTON, WHITEFIELD, HORNE TOOKE, and several others less well known. Direct religious topics are not over-obtruded, but they are sufficiently numerous ; and there is a good variety of miscellaneous subjects. The books mostly belong to a remoter date, but some come down to contemporary publications—as LANE'S work on Modern Egypt. Our extracts must be confined to such passages as are at once short and capable of independent presentation. This precludes the exhibition of any bog-sustained argument ; but it also uecessi- totes a selection of the more pointed and condensed passages. Such is this account of the late Mr. TITTLER'S composition. DESCRIPTION OF A PERFECT STYLE.

Lord Woodhouselee is an able and practised thinker, possessed of ample stores of learning and general knowledge, well acquainted with the history, the schools, and the questions of philosophy ; a discriminative judge of character; and writing in a style which we deem a finished example of what may be called transparent diction. It is so singularly lucid, so free from all affected rhetoric and artificial turns of phrase, SO perfectly abstracted, with the excep- tion of a law term or two, from every dialect appropriated to a particular sub- ject, that we have never %dosed thoughts through a purer medium. It is so pure and pelfect, that we can read on a considerable way without our attention being arrested by the medium ; it is as if there were nothing, if we rosy so ex- press ourselves, between us and the thought. And we are made to think of the medium, after some time, only by the reflection bow very clearly we have apprehended the sense, even when relating to the uncouth subjects of law or the abstruse subjects of metaphy sics. By this pure and graceful diction, we are beguiled along with the author, through several prolix and unnecessary details, without being indignant, till we are past them, that be should hese occupied himself and us with things too inconsiderable to deserve a fifth part af the space they fill.

THE TRUE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS.

Metaphysical speculation tries to resolve all constituted things into their general elements, and those elements into the ultimate mysterious element of substance; thus leaving behind the various orders and modes of being, to con- template being itself in its essence. It retires awhile from the consideration of truth as predicated of particular subjects, to explore those unalterable and universal relations of ideas which must be the primary principles of all truth. It is not content to acknowledge or to seek the respective causes of the effects which creed every part of the creation, but would ascertain the very nature of the relation between cause and effect. Not satisfied to infer a Deity from the wise and beautiful order of the universe, it would descry the proof of this sub- lime fact in the hare existence of an atom. To ascertain the laws according to which we think, is a gratifying kind of knowledge; but metaphysical specula- tion asks :chat is it to dila. and shut is that power which performs so strange an operation : it also attempts to discover the nature of the connexion of this mysterious agent with a corporeal machine; and of the relation in which it really stands to that external world concerning which it receives so many millions of ideas. In short, metaphysical inquiry attempts to trace things to the very first stage in which they can, even to the most penetrating intelli- gences, be the subjects of a thought, a doubt, or a poposition ; that profound- est abstraction, where they stand on the first step of distinction and remove from nonentity, and where that one question might be put concerning them, the answer to which would leave no further question possible. And having thus abstracted and penetrated to the state of pure t ntity, the speculation would come back, tracing it into all its modes and relations ; till at lett meta- physical truth, approaching nearer and nearer to the sphere of our immediate knowledge, terminates on the confines of distinct sciences and obvious realities.

The following, from the characteristics of BLAIR'S Sermons, is a nice piece of criticism ; but we think it goes further than the author r;.viewed.

A CHARACTERISTIC OF SERMONS IN GENERAL.

In the second place, there is no texture in the composition. The sentences appear often like a series of little independent propositions, each satisfied with its own distinct meaning, and capable of being placed in a different part of the train, without injury to any mutual connexion or ultimate purpose of the thoughts. The ideas relate to the subject generally, without specifically re- lating to one another. They all, if we may so speak. gravitate to one centre, but have no mutual attraction among themselves. The mind must often dis- miss entirely the idea in one sentence, in order to proceed to that in the next ; instead of feeling that the second, though distinct, yet necessarily retains the first still in mind, and partly derives its force from it ; and that they both con- tribute, in connexion with several more sentences, to form a grand complex scheme of thought, each of them producing a far greater effect, as a part of the combination, than it would have done as a little thought standing alone. The conaequence of this defect is, that the emphasis of the sentiment and the crisis or conclusion of the argument comes nowhere ; since it cannot be in any single insulated thought, and there is not mutual dependence and cooperation enough to produce any combined result. Nothing is proved, nothing is en- forced, nothing is taught, try a mere accumulation of self-evident propositions, most of which are necessarily trite, and some of which, when they are so many, must be trivial.

There are some very able reflections, in an article upon Fox, on the necessity of private morality to a successful public character; but they are too long for our columns. Instead of them we will take a description of his eloquence. The writer has been sketching

BURKE. FOX'S ORATORY.

Yet this very auditor, if he had wished to have a perplexing subject lumi- nously simplified, or a vast one contracted, according to a just scale, to his understandiog—if he had wished to put himself in distinct possession of the strongest arguments for maintaining the same cause in another place—if he had been anxious to qualify himself for immediate action in an affair in which he had not yet been able to satisfy himself in deliberation—or if he had been desirous for his coadjutors in any important concern to have a more perfect comprehension of its nature, and a more absolute conviction as to the right principles and measures to he adopted respecting it, than all his efforts could give them—he would have xi:died, beyond all others, to draw Fox's mind to bear on the subject. For ourselves, we think we never heard any man who dismissed us from the argument on a debated topic with such a feeling of satis- fied and filial conviction, or such a competence to tell why we were convinced. There was in the view in which subjects were placed by him something like the daylight—that simple clearness which makes things conspicuous and does not make them glare, which adds no colour or form, but purely makes visible in'pertectimi the real colour and form of all things round; a kind of light less amusing than that of magnificent lustres or a thousand coloured lamps, and less fascinating and romantic than that of the moon, but which is immeasurably preferred when we are bent on sober business and not at leisure or not in the disposition to wander delighted among beautiful shadows and delusions It is needless to say that Fox possessed, in a high degree, wit and fancy ; but super- lative intellect was the grand distinction of his eloquence: the pure force of sense, of plain downright sent.e, was an great that it would have given a cha- racter of sublimity to his eloquence, even if it bad never once been aided by a happy image or a brilliant explosion. "The grandeur of plain sense " would not have been deemed an ato,urd phrase by any man who had heard one of Fox's hest opeechce.