1831.] [ 305 ] 



DUBLIN SAINTS. 



LONDON is a kind of universe, and embraces in its vast circumference a 

 variety of worlds. There is the fashionable world, the literary world, 

 the theatrical world, the musical world, the sporting world, the mercan- 

 tile world. The Irish capital can with propriety be said to contain only 

 two the worlds of politics and religion. As to Fashion, her dominions 

 scarcely extend to a dozen drawing-rooms. Literature, notwithstanding 

 the University and Lady Morgan, must be admitted to sway a barren 

 sceptre. The Drama hides her diminished head. Commerce sits with 

 folded hands, and sighs over her " occupation gone/' The sporting 

 world is represented in the single person of a gallant officer, who in- 

 dulges six couple of beagles in an hebdomadal airing round the squares. 

 The man of pleasure and man of business are alike inanimate. With 

 the two exceptions we have stated, all the pursuits and pastimes of 

 society are as tame and languid as if the " Castle of Indolence" stood on 

 the banks of the Liffey, and diffused over the surrounding city its 

 drowsy influence. Beaus, scholars, critics, merchants, sportsmen are 

 sunk in the same torpor ; and no characters are up and stirring but the 

 Politician and the Saint. 



Here therefore are two aspects in which Dublin requires to be con- 

 sidered each of sufficient importance to claim separate attention. 

 Things secular however should wait on things spiritual ; and accord- 

 ingly we dedicate the present paper to the " Religious World." 



One word we must premise. Let it not be supposed, that, because the 

 fashionable world means a circle whose business is fashion ; and the 

 literary world a circle whose business is literature ; the religious world 

 must therefore mean a circle whose business is religion. Or if such be the 

 only definition that will content the reader, let him beware at least of 

 this that he annex to the word fl religion," no other ideas than Bible 

 societies, and Jew societies, foreign missions and home missions, tracts, 

 conventicles, and floating-chapels ; otherwise the good understanding 

 that should ever subsist between writer and reader will be broken such 

 and such only being the import of the term when we predicate it of the 

 Saints of Dublin. 



There is then a large and influential circle in the said city, which calls 

 itself, and is called " the religious world." In this circle nothing is read 

 but tracts, missionary reports, the Christian Examiner and the Evan- 

 gelical Magazine : no preacher is tolerated who has not settled to the day 

 and hour the commencement of the millemum, returned from a mission 

 to Madagascar, or squared his doctrines to the strictest rules of supra- 

 lapsarian Calvinism. In the draAving-rooms of this circle quadrilles are 

 as abominable as hazard -tables, and no conversation is permitted save 

 on the topics which Milton's fiends discussed so learnedly in Pande- 

 monium 



" On providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 

 Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, 

 And found no end in wandering mazes lost." 



The ball is turned into a prayer-meeting no music now, but Songs of 

 Sion, or the Olney Hymns no entertainment but the lecture of the pet- 

 saint of the family, or the reigning apostle of the season. The theatre is 

 anathematized even the flower-shew has been denounced sin has been 

 M. M. New SeriM. VOL. XL No. 63. 2 R 



