o but too possible that
Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion.
But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the
spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye,
and rehearsing something very like the treacherous proposal of the late
Seceders, viz. the spectacle of one party performing much of the difficult
duties, and another party enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a
most unfair mode of recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the
infirmities of many in these days, such a spectacle would give probably a
fatal bias to that system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This
would move the sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested
against the theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party
even complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that
any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their own
religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the Christian
tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the example of an
establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more fervent in their
Christian exertions than they could be when liberated from that contrast.
The religious spirit of both England and Scotland under such a change
would droop for generations. And in that one evil, let us hope, the
remotest and least probable of the many evils threatened by the late
schism, these nations would have reason by comparison almost to forget the
rest.

* * * * *

SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT

What could induce you, my dear Eusebius, to commit yourself into the hands
of a portrait-painter? And so, you ask me to go with you. Are you afraid,
that you want me to keep you in countenance, where I shall be sure to put
you out? You ask too petitioningly, as if you suspected I should refuse to
attend your _execution_; for you are going to be _be-headed_, and soon
will it be circulated through your village, that you have had your _head
taken off_: I will not go with you--it would spoil all. You are afraid to
trust the painter. You think he may be a physiognomist, and will hit some
characteristic which you would quietly let slip his notice; and you
flatter yourself that I might help to mislead him. Are you afraid of being
made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes
this vagary?--well, we shall all kn