The British Quarterly Review, Volume 53, January and April, 1871

Abbott, Rev. Edwin A., Bible Lessons, Part II., 154.

Abbs, Rev. John, Twenty-two Years' Missionary Experience in Travancore, 297.

Ainger, Rev. Alfred, Sermons preached in the Temple Church, 316.

Alcott, L. M., Little Women, 157.

Alford, Henry, D.D., Truth and Trust: Lessons of the War, 318.

American Press, The,; Influence of the Press on Civilization, 1, 2; Raymond's Life, 3; The Newspaper in America, ib.; Reviews, 5; Want of a Comic Periodical, ib.; Roman Catholic Organs, 6; Religious Journalism, 7; The Princeton Review, 8; Superiority of the Independents and Presbyterians in Theological Authorship, 9; General Criticism of the American Press, ib.; Inferiority to that of England, 10; Corruption of the English Language, ib.; Scurrility and Personality, 10, 11; Absence of Anonymous Editorship, 11, 12; Low scale of Morality, though improved of late, 12; Great Power of the Press, and the responsibility which each power involves, 13.

Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vols. XVII. and XVIII., 151.

Attwell, Henry, A Book of Golden Thoughts, 140.

Barham, Life and Letters of Rev. R. H., by his Son, 209.

Baring-Gould, S., The Origin and Development of Religious Belief—Part II., 142.

Barlowe, Master John, The Bruce, 140.

Barnes in Defence of the Berde, 140.

—— Albert, The Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century, 147.

Barni, Jules, Napoléon 1^er, et son Historien, M. Thiers, 218.

Barrett, G. S., The Revision of the New Testament, a Lecture, 320.

Beauvoir, The Marquis de, a Voyage round the World, 123.

Beecher, Henry Ward, The Plymouth Pulpit, 320.

Belcher, Lady, The Mutineers of the 'Bounty' and their descendants, 115.

Bennet, Rev. James, The Wisdom of the King, 320.

Bentley Ballads, The, 209.

Berkeley's Works, Professor Fraser's Edition of, 256; England's Neglect of her Philosophers, ib.; Berkeley's Historical Position not sufficiently recognised, 257; Mr. Fraser's Picture of him at College, 258; Two earliest books, 259; Berkeley at Court, ib.; Interest in Social Morality, 259, 260; Rapid Church Preferment, 260; He starts for the Bermudas to found a College, ib.; Stops at Rhode Island, and remains there some years, ib.; Writes his 'Alciphron,' 261; Dr. Johnson, ib.; Close of Berkeley's active life, 262; Founds a Scholarship at Yale College, 263; His life as Bishop of Cloyne, ib.; Belief in Tar-water, ib.; Removal to Oxford, 264; Death, ib.; Berkeley's Philosophy, ib.; Views of two classes of his Critics, 265; Too much founded on his Early Writings, ib.; The true Key to his Philosophy, 266; Its relations to Locke and the English Mystics, 266, 267; Three Stages of Development, 268; 'New Theory of Vision,' ib.; 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' 269; The Abstract Idea of Matter, 270; Something more than mere Sensations, ib.; Associations, 271; Deficient Perception of Ethical Relations, 272; The 'Siris,' ib.

Bingham, Hon. Cap., Journal of the Siege of Paris, 291.

Bible, The Holy, arranged in Paragraphs and Sections, 154.

Blackburn, Henry, Art in the Mountains, 129.

Blackmore, R. D., Lorna Doone, 139.

Blunt, Rev. J. H., A Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, 146.

Bonapartism, The Downfall of, 218; Analogy between the Imperialism of 1804 and that of 1852, 219; The latter hopelessly collapsed, 220; The Strange Revolution in Literature, 221; The Mutual Hatred of French and Prussians in the Emperor's Favour, 222; His Relations, real and supposed, to Religion, 222, 223; The Second Empire rendered possible by the strength of the Napoleonic Idea, 224; Causes of the Empire's Decay, ib.; Reaction against the Despotism of the Capital, 226; Rottenness of Paris Life, ib.; Ignorance of itself and of other Nations, 227; M. Leclercq's Views, 228; 'Papiers Secrets,' 229; Management of Money, 229, 230; 'Cabinet Noir,' 230; The Emperor warned by Persigny, ib.; Lanfrey's account of Napoleon I., 231; The Erckmann-Châtrian Novels, 232; General political knowledge assumed in them, and with reason, 233; Impossibility of Predicting the Future of France, 234.

Bonar, Horatius, D.D., Life and Truth, 317.

Boorde, Andrewe, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, 140.

Braund, J. H., History and Revelation, 152.

Bray, Mrs., The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes, 116.

Brevia, Short Essays and Aphorisms, by the author of 'Friends in Council,' 310.

Broadus, J, A., D.D., A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, 148.

Brougham, Life and Times of Lord, 297.

Brown, J. B., First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth, 314.

—— —— Misread Passages of Scripture—Second Series, 319.

Brunel, Isambard, The Life of I. K. Brunel, 294.

Buchanan, Robert, Napoleon Fallen, 303.

Bulwer, E. (Lord Lytton), King Arthur, 304.

Bungener, F., St. Paul: his Life, Lectures, and Epistles, 152.

Bunting, Memorials of the Rev. W. M., 120.

Burn, R., Rome and the Campagna, 127.

Burton's History of Scotland, Vols. V., VI. and VII., 161; Important place held by Scotland in English History, ib.; Character of Mr. Burton's Books, 162; Period treated of in the Present Work, ib.; Mary Stuart, ib.; Elizabeth's Policy, 163; Murray, 164; James 1st, 165; The Reformation in Scotland, 166; James as King of the three Kingdoms, 168; Effects of the Union in Scotland, 169; Restoration of Prelacy, ib.; Policy of Charles I., 170; The Covenant, 171; Outbreak of Civil War, 172; Westminster Assembly, 174; Execution of Charles, 175; The Scotch overcome by Cromwell, ib.; The General Assembly Dissolved, ib.; Masterly Policy of Cromwell, ib.; Subsequent History, 176; Estimate of the Book, ib.

Capper, John, The Duke of Edinburgh in Ceylon, 298.

Chamberlayne, T., The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis; and other Poems, 133.

Clarke, C. C., The Riches of Chaucer, &c., 141.

—— —— Tales from Chaucer in Prose, 141.

Coinage, Report from the Royal Commission on International, 14; Nature of the Question, 14, 15; Mr. Jevons's Investigations, 15, 16; Convention entered into by Four Countries, 16; Importance of England's joining in it, 17; Plan proposed to facilitate this, 17, 18; Comparison of the Amount of Gold Coinage in different Countries, 19; Charges at the Different Mints, 20; Precedent for Change in English Coinage, 21; Small proportion of the Gold brought into the Country Coined, ib.; Summing-up, 22.

Colborne, P., The Measure of Faith; and other Sermons, 319.

Collins, Mortimer, Marquis and Merchant, 309.

Conder, G. W., Tender Herbs, 317.

Cordery, J. G., The Iliad of Homer, Translated, 304.

Cotton, Memoir of Bishop, 295.

Courthope, W. J., The Paradise of Birds, 133.

Cowper, Poetical Works of, Edited by W. Benham, 134.

Creasy, Sir E. S., History of England, Vol. II., 113.

Crowfoot, J. R., Fragmenta Evangelica, 93.

Cubitt, James, Church Design for Congregations, 129.

Cunningham, General, The Ancient Geography of India, 302.

Dale, R. W., The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church, 318.

Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 299.

Deane, Life of General, 118.

Diary of a Novelist, 136.

—— of the French Campaign of 1870, 273.

—— of the Besieged Resident in Paris. 291.

Dixon, W. H., Her Majesty's Tower, Vols. III. and IV., 292.

Duncan, P. M., The Transformation of Insects, 126.

Duplessis, G., The Wonders of Engraving, 128.

Early English Texts, 176; Importance of Studying the Early English Language and Literature,176, 177; Efforts made to Facilitate and Promote such Study, 177; Early English Text Society and its Publications, 178; Theological Works, 179; Romances, 180; Fourteenth Century Texts, ib.; The 'Vision of Piers Plowman,' ib.; Mr. Toulmin Smith's edition of 'English Gilds,' 182; 'Early English Alliterative Poems,' ib.; Arthurian Romances, 182-185; The 'Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry,' 186; 'The Wright's Chaste Wife,' ib.; Furnivall's 'Babees Book,' 187; 'Book of Quinte Essence,' ib.; Religions Books, ib.; Condition of the Society, ib.; Its Important Objects, 189.

Eiloart, Mrs., From Thistles—Grapes? 137.

Episcopal Church, Parties in the, 189; Diversities in Opinion and Practice existing in the Church, 189, 190; Dr. Hook's Representation of High Church Views, 190, 191; Those of the Evangelicals, 191; Broad Churchmen the only Men who maintain Clerical Liberty, 192; What Stanley says, ib.; General Spread of a Measure of High Church Feeling, 193; Some little Influence Acquired by Convocation, ib.; Alleged Catholic Revival, 194; Boldness of the Ritualists, 195; Youthful Energy of the Party, ib.; Their Practical Wisdom, 196; The 'Twelve Days' Mission,' 197; The Power of Individuals Utilized, 198; The Advance of the Party Favoured by Circumstances, ib.; Also, by Controversies, 199; By the Fear of a Separation between Church and State, 200; Almost entire Extinction of the 'High and Dry' School, 201; The Anglican Clergyman of To-day, ib.; Contempt for Law, 203; Decline of the Evangelical Party, 204; Causes of that Decline, 206; Approaching Crisis in the Establishment, 209.

Episodes in an Obscure Life, 306.

Erckmann-Châtrian, Romans Nationaux, 218.

Established Church in Wales, The, 72; Principles involved in the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, ib.; Mr. Gladstone's Attempt to escape from applying these Principles to Wales, 73; Influence of England on the Religious History of Wales, 74; The Church Establishment since the Reformation, 75; Its Failure, 77; The Appointments of Englishmen to Welsh Bishoprics, 79; Testimony of two Welsh Clergymen on the subject, 79, 80; Fathers of Welsh Methodism, 80; Effect of the New Movement on the Church, 81; Primary Cause of all the Evils, 84; Comparison of the Established Church with Nonconformists during this Century, ib.; Church Accommodation, 85; Number of Attendants, 87; Schools, 89; Preponderance of Nonconformists in Welsh Literature, 92; The Eisteddfod, ib.; Exceptional Scarcity of Crime in Wales, 93.

Fair France, 125.

Foreign Protestant Pulpit, 318.

France, Alsace and Lorraine, 273.

Francillon, R. E., Earl's Dene, 306.

Fraser, A. C., The Works of Bishop Berkeley, 256.

Fraser-Tytler, C. C., Jasmine Leigh, 309.

French, The late F. W., Things Above, 320.

Froude, J. A., History of England, Vols. VIII.-XII., 126.

Future of Europe, The, 273; The Progress of the Race Interrupted, 274; The Fault not all on One Side, ib.; Prussia's openly avowed Desire of Domination, 275; Excuses made for her Conduct; ib.; Bismark's Ground that of Political Expediency, 276; His False Reasoning, ib.; Prussia will not stop short in her aggressive Career, 277; Her want of Money, ib.; National Character, 278; Prussia's Absorption of all Germany into Herself, 279; The King made Emperor, 280; Despotic Constitution of the Empire, ib.; Austria must also be Absorbed, 281; Holland in Danger, 282; Relations between Prussia and Russia, ib.; What Prussia may do in Turkey, 283; Change of Proportion in the Powers of Europe, 284; Decrepitude of Austria, ib.; Ruined State of France, 285; Effects of her Prostration upon Europe, 286; Isolation of England, 287; Difficulties to be encountered by her, ib.; Duties of her Government, 287, 288.

Gilbert, W., Martha, 307.

Gledstone, J. P., The Life and Travels of George Whitefield, 297.

Gogerly, Rev. G., The Pioneers, 297.

Greg, W. R., The Great Duel, 292.

Hamilton, The late James, D.D., Moses, the Man of God, 153.

Hampden, Some Memorials of Bishop, 296.

Hare, A. J. C., Walks in Rome, 302.

Harold Erle, 307.

Heraud, J. A., The In-Gathering, 134.

Hinton, J., Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions, 301.

Hood, E. Paxton, the World of Moral and Religious Anecdote, 140.

Hoole, C. H., The Shepherd of Hermas, Translated, 151.

Hoppin, Professor, the Office and Work of the Christian Ministry, 316.

Hutton, R. H., Essays, Theological and Literary, 311.

Ingoldsby, 209; Value of this kind of Writing, 209, 210; Barham's Clerical Life little touched on, 210; Character of his Humour, and his Superiority to others in this Respect, 212; His attacks on Superstition, 213; The 'Ingoldsby Legends' adapted to Young Readers, 214; Deficiency of Poetry in Them, ib.; Hook, 215; Anecdotes, 216.

Interests of Europe in the Conditions of Peace, The, 273.

Jacox, F., Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts, 150.

Jeafferson, J. C., Annals of Oxford, 294.

Juvenile Literature, 154, 309.

Kaye, J. W., The Essays of an Optimist, 140.

Kay Spen, The Green-Eyed Monster, 309.

Keshub Chunder Sen, The Brahmo Somaj, 148.

Landels, Rev. W., D.D., Beacons and Patterns, 318.

Lanfrey, P., Histoire de Napoléon 1^er, 218.

Leathes, Rev. S., The Witness of St. John to Christ, The Boyle Lecture for 1870, 149.

Leclercq, Emile, La Guerre de 1870, 218.

Letters on the War, 291.

Lewis, Rev. W. H., D.D., Sermons for the Christian Year, 319.

Louis's own Account of the Fight, 218.

Low, Lieut. C. R., The Land of the Sun, 125.

M'Combie, The late W., Sermons and Lectures, 320.

MacDonald, G., The Miracles of our Lord, 152.

Macduff, J. R., D.D., Memories of Patmos, 153.

Mackennal, A., Christ's Healing Touch, and other Sermons, 319.

MacLeod, A., D.D., Christus Consolator, 148.

Macmillan, Rev., H., The True Vine, 318.

Malmesbury Papers, The, 23; Importance of the Period Comprised, ib.; The Father of the First Earl, 25; Friendship with Handel, ib.; Almack's Rooms Designed, 26; Fashionable Amusements, ib.; Court Dress, 28; The Pantheon, 30; England a Hundred Years Ago, 31; Old London, 32; Paris, ib.; The First Earl, 34; His Diplomatic Embassies, ib.; The Editor of the Books, 35.

Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of, 23.

—— —— Letters of the first Earl of, his Family and Friends, 23.

March, Rev. D., D.D., Night unto Night, 154.

Mariette, 138.

Martin, Samuel, Rain upon the Mown Grass, and other Sermons, 150.

Mateer, Rev. S., The Land of Charity, 297.

Matson, W. T., Poems, 134.

Maverick, A., Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years, 1.

Meade, Lieut. the Hon. H., A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand, 299.

Melville, Henry, Sermons, 318.

Michelet, Jules, La France devant l'Europe, 273.

Mourin, E., Les Comtes de Paris, 54.

Muller, F. Max, Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. III., 139.

Murray, Rev. J., The Prophet's Mantle, 318.

My Little Lady, 307.

Newman, Professor F. W., Europe of the near Future, 273.

O'Flanagan, J. R., The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland, 288.

Oliphant, Mrs. John, 136.

Oosterzee, Rev. J. J. Van, D.D., The Theology of the New Testament, 145.

Palestine, Explorations in, 36; Purposes and Plans of the Exploration Society, ib.; Early Operations, 36, 37; The site of Capernaum Decided, 37; Ai and Cana, ib.; Synagogues Examined, 38; Tombs, ib.; Temples, 39; Topography of Jerusalem, 40; The old Walls, 44; Site of the Temple, 45; Jewish Archæology, 49; A Museum for the Antiquities Discovered, ib.; Inscriptions, 50; The Moabite Stone, 51; Light thrown by it on Early Writing, 51, 52; Natural History and Geology, 53; Importance of continuing and Encouraging the Society's Work, 53, 54.

Paley, F. A., Religious Tests and National Universities, 235.

Parker, Joseph, D.D., Ad Clerum, 148.

—— —— The City Temple Sermons, 316.

Parr, Louisa, Dorothy Fox, 308.

Pope, The Works of Alexander, 303.

Porter, Noah, D.D., The American Colleges and the American Public, 302.

Present Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology, 144.

Prussian Aggrandisement and English Policy, 273.

Pulpit Analyst, The, 154.

Rae, W. F., Westward by Rail, the New Route to the East, 123.

Rees, T., D.D., History of Nonconformity in Wales, 72.

—— Rev. W., The Church of England in Wales, 72.

Religious Tests and National Universities, 235; Why Disabilities have so long been Retained at the Universities, ib.; Desires on different sides for their removal, 237; Objections brought against it, ib.; Ineffectiveness of Tests, 239; Needless in connection with Sinecures, ib.; Principles recently adopted regarding Education, 240; Importance of the connection between the Universities and Elementary Education, 240, 241; Clerical Fellowships and the effects they Produce, 241; Evidence given before the House of Lords, 242, 243.

Richardson, F., The Iliad of the East, 136.

Robinson, Wade, Loveland., and other Poems, chiefly concerning Love, 133.

Rothschild, C. and A. de, The History and Literature of the Israelites, 143.

Rowlands, Rev. D., Sermons on Historical Subjects, 317.

Ruskin, John, Fors Clavigera, 310.

Schmid, C. F., D.D., Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 145.

Schmidt, A., Elsass und Lothringen, Nachweise wie diese provenzen dem deutschen Reiche verloren gingen, 273.

Scrutator, Who is responsible for the War?, 273.

Seeley, Professor, Lectures and Essays, 114.

Sermons, 316.

Sewell, E. M. and S. M., Yonge, European History, 116.

Shairp, J. C., Culture and Religion in some of their Relations, 149.

Shalders, E. W., Sermons for the Times, 320.

Shand, A. J., On the Trail of the War, 116.

—— A. I., Against Time, 135.

Sieges of Paris, The Early, 54; Comparison of Paris with other Capitals, 55; Its History, 56; Sudden rise in importance, 57; Attacks by the Northmen, 58; Rivalry with Laon, 59; Great Siege of Paris by the Northmen, 60; Abbo's account of it, 61; The Siege Raised, 65; Further Ravages, 66; Second German Invasion, 67; Its Results, 69; Analogies with the War in our Time, 71; Future Fate of Paris, 72.

Six Months Hence, 137.

Stanford, Charles, Symbols of Christ, 317.

Stapleton, A. G., The French Case truly Stated, 273.

Strauss, D. F., Krieg und Friede, 273.

Stubbs, W., Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, 291.

Swainson, C. A., D.D., The Athanasian Creed, and its usage in the English Church—A Letter to Dean Hook, 143.

Tappan, The Life of Arthur, 120.

Taylor, Rev. W. M., The Lost Found and the Wanderer Welcomed, 317.

Tennyson, A., and Arthur Sullivan, The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens, 130.

Thistleton, Rev. A. C., The Story of Job, 319.

Tholuck, A., D.D., Hours of Christian Devotion, 153.

Thompson, J. P., The Theology of Christ from His own Words, 145.

Tourguéneff, Ivan, S., On the Eve, 308.

Tregelles, S. P., The Greek New Testament, 93; Value of the Work, ib.; The Author's previous Writings, 94; The MSS. he has followed, 95; His Text Compared with Alford's, 97; His Labours interrupted by Illness, 98.

Trench, W. Stewart, Ierne, 305.

Trollope, J. Adolphus. A Syren, 135.

——, Anthony, The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, 138.

Two Months in Palestine, 125.

Tyerman, Rev. L., Life and Times of Wesley, 119.

Vaughan, C. J., D.D., Christ satisfying the Instincts of Humanity, 316; Half-Hours in the Temple Church, 317; Counsels to Young Students, ib.

Vera, 305.

Victor Hugo, Napoléon le petit, 218.

Victory of the Vanquished. The, 139.

Vince, Charles, Lights and Shadows in the Life of King David, 319.

Wadsworth, Charles, Sermons, 318.

War Correspondence of the Daily News, 291.

War of 1870, The, 98; Possible Results of the War, 98, 99; Its Causes, 99; Sketch of its History, 100; French Scheme and Movements, ib.; Speedy Organization of the Germans, 101; First Battle, 102; Woerth and Forbach, 103, 104; Gravelotte, 105; Insane scheme made for MacMahon, 107; Sedan, 109; Surrender of Metz, 110; Revival of the French Spirit under Trochu and Gambetta, ib.; Wonderful Defence of Paris, 111; Blame attaching to Prussia, 112; Lessons of the War, ib.

War of 1870-1, 243; The Last Half of the Great Drama, 244; Proceedings after the Disaster of Sedan, ib.; Investment of Paris, 245; Trochu's Scheme of Defence, 245, 246; Gambetta's Balloon Journey and Efforts in Collecting Troops, 246; Doings of the Germans, 246, 247; Effects of the Fall of Metz, 247; The promising movements of D'Aurelles de Paladines, ib.; His Failure and its Causes, 248; Change in the German Plans, 249; Their Superiority in Generalship, 250; Was Trochu Incompetent? 251; Chanzy's Brilliant Actions, ib.; Reinforcements obtained on Both Sides, 252; Bourbaki's rash Scheme, 252, 253; Chanzy's Defeat, 253; Bourbaki's attempt at Suicide, 254; Progress of the Siege, 255; Famine, ib.; The War Ended by the Fall of Paris, ib.; The Future of France; ib.

Wardlaw, Gilbert, The Leading Christian Evidences, 147.

Watson, Albert, Cicero, 118.

Wedgewood, Julia, John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century, 119.

Wesley, The Poetical Works of John and Charles, 135.

White, John, Sketches from America, 126.

Wickham, The Correspondence of the Right Hon. W., 117.

Williamson, Rev. A, Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia, 121.

Wylie, Rev. J. A., Daybreak in Spain, 125.

---

Art. I.—Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years. Progress of American Journalism, from 1840 to 1870. By Augustus Maverick. Hartford, Connecticut: A. S. Hale. 1870.

There is no country in the world which so finely illustrates the diffusive spirit of modern civilization as America; for, though in other lands human nature seems to rise to a greater height in individual instances, and to stand out in more picturesque relief, it is the nation which has excelled them all in equalizing the rights, the enjoyments, and the intelligence of man. Many circumstances have contributed to this happy result. America has been clogged by none of the mischievous remains of feudal institutions, and but little affected by those violations of political economy, older than the age of reason, which have checked the free and natural development of European communities. Its provisions for popular education were from the first singularly wise, liberal, and ample; there was no legislation to restrict all civil and social advantages to the members of a single religious sect; and no taxes on knowledge or artificial monopolies of any kind, to prevent the people from having access to that full variety of opinions, inquiries, and statements of fact, which is necessary to intellectual advancement. Above all, it was born old, with all the elements of European civilization to start with, and equipped with a complete literature, in which it would seem almost impossible to find place for any great genius, and with the best English works placed within every man's reach, at less than a tenth of their original cost. Taking these things in connection with the boundless material resources of the country, it is not by any means difficult to explain the magical rapidity of its advances in wealth and population, the signal prosperity it has already enjoyed, and the extraordinary power and greatness to which it is evidently destined.

The development of the press, like the improvement of the means of civilization, is a certain sign of the relative advancement of a nation. We use the term civilization here to signify not so much the development of some elevated and delicate parts of human nature, such as art, philosophy, or politeness, as that of political liberty and social progress; and in this sense the progress of the press becomes historically the most constant and faithful indication of the general progress of a nation. The truth of this proposition becomes evident, from the close connection that exists between the press and the public, from the action and reaction, the efflux and reflux, from the true corporate unity which brings into the press the life-blood of the country. We depend upon the newspaper for distributing knowledge, as well as creating it; it is an instrument by which the opinions and feelings of the people may be guided and developed, as well as communicated and ascertained. It is in fact an essential element in the peculiar spirit and tendency which characterizes our modern civilization. Still we are far from holding that it is a perfect instrument, or free from very serious drawbacks. Eminent men like Lamartine speak of it in terms of extravagant eulogy, predicting that before the century shall have run out journalism will be the whole press, the whole human thought, and that the only book possible from day to day will be the newspaper; a great English novelist speaks of it as a link in the great chain of miracles which prove our national greatness; and Bulwer Lytton calls it the chronicle of civilization, the great mental camera which throws a picture of the whole world upon a single sheet of paper. These somewhat rhetorical representations are very common, but they are far from exact or truthful. We suspect that the newspaper tends in all countries to ignore, more or less, all knowledge that will not render its teaching popular; that its chief figures are often the wicked, the worthless, and the shallow; and that its pictures, though generally faithful, are often false, distorted, and narrow. De Tocqueville liked the liberty of the press, rather from the evils it prevented, than from the advantages it created; and Montalembert represents Liberty as saying to the Press, like the unhappy swain—'Nec cum te nec sine te vivere possum.' John Stuart Mill has two objects of hatred; Puritanism, with its positive creed and aggressive zeal, and the ascendancy of the middle classes, through the newspaper press, with all their mediocrity and bigotry. He has always protested, in the interests of his great idol, individuality, against 'the régime of public opinion,' against the various 'usurpations upon the liberty of private life,' against the moral intolerance of society, carried on through, the newspapers. Amidst these various estimates of the press we are disposed to take a middle course. It may sometimes be wielded by unworthy hands, for unworthy purposes; its liberty may run into licence, and the rules of good taste and propriety be violated; its policy on public questions may be unscrupulous and unprincipled; but we remember that modern progress would have been impossible without it; that the people are not its slaves, but its patrons and critics; and we would lay no other restraint upon it than the invisible fetters imposed by the intelligence and good feeling of its readers. Whether, then, we consider the amount and quality of intellectual force put forth in it, the character of mind acted on by it, and the wide area over which it operates, especially in England and America, where it has the greatest expansion, we cannot but regard it as a subject for sincere congratulation that its influence has been exercised so uniformly on the side of public safety and public morals, that there has been a gradual improvement of late years in the moral tone of newspaper management, and that it has succeeded in creating and fostering a healthy and independent public opinion on all the questions of the age.

The great development of the American press has taken place during the last thirty years, keeping pace exactly with the advancing prosperity of the country. A large number of new and powerful processes, as well as influences of a more general kind, were converging towards this result. The education of the people, the progress of legislation, the discoveries of science, the inventions of art, conspired to make literature, especially in the newspaper form, a prime necessity of American life, and to place it within every man's reach on easy terms; while every improvement made in the art of communication and travel still farther contributed to its growth, and increased its utility. So it has come to pass that America is the 'classic soil of newspapers;' everybody is reading; every class is writing; literature is permeating everywhere; publicity is sought for every interest and every order; no political party, no religious sect, no theological school, no literary or benevolent association, is without its particular organ; there is a universality of print; the soldiers fighting in Mexico or in the Southern states are printing the journal of their exploits on the battle-field; the press is seizing on the whole public life and upon so much of private life as through social irregularity, or individual force of character, or national taste, necessarily emerges into publicity; fostering on the one hand the worship of the almighty dollar, but establishing a strong and wholesome counterpoise, by stimulating that zeal for public education, that enthusiastic spirit of philanthropy, and that truly munificent liberality by which the American people have been always distinguished. As we have already intimated, the modern development of the press is just thirty years old. There was no telegraph before 1843; no fast ocean-steamer to carry news from the old world for some years later; and no Associated Press to organize the supply of intelligence. The first American newspaper was printed at Boston, in 1690, fifty years after the appearance of the first English newspaper; in 1775 there were only 34 newspapers; in 1800, 200; in 1830, 1,000; and the latest statistics give no less than 5,244 as the total number of journals published in the United States, of which 542 are daily, 4,425 are weekly, and 127 are monthly.

Our common idea of the American newspaper is that of a print published by a literary Barnum, whose type, paper, talents, morality, and taste are all equally wretched and inferior; who is certain to give us flippancy for wit, personality for principle, bombast for eloquence, malignity without satire, and news without truth or reliability; whose paper is prolific of all kinds of sensational headings; and who is obliged, in the service of his advertising customers, to become enthusiastic on the subject of hams, exuberant in the praises of hardware, and highly imaginative in the matter of dry-goods. Perhaps this representation might apply, with some degree of correctness, to a portion of the newspaper press, especially that published in the country towns and villages; but we shall immediately see that American literary enterprise, especially in the great cities, is not to be judged by such unworthy examples. The work of Mr. Maverick, which appears at the head of this article, supplies a large amount of information concerning American journalism, connecting its more recent development with the name of Henry J. Raymond, a well-known Republican politician, who founded the New York Times, one of the most respectable and powerful newspapers in the States. We cannot say much for the book, on literary grounds: it exhibits nearly all the worst qualities of Transatlantic journalism itself—flimsiness, personality, and haste; but its information is very interesting and acceptable to European readers. The facts of Raymond's life may be supplied in a few sentences. He was born in 1820, at Lima, in the state of New York; he graduated at the University of Vermont; he went to New York city in 1840, and was introduced to newspaper life by Horace Greeley; he passed ten laborious years on the Tribune, and the Courier and Inquirer; and in the year 1851 he may be justly said to have opened a new era in American journalism, by establishing the Times, a daily paper, which carried temperance and dignity into political discussion, banishing all personalities, and maintaining a high critical and moral tone, which was all but unknown before that period. Like most American journalists, he engaged actively in politics, becoming in 1849 a member of the New York Legislature, and afterwards speaker of the House of Representatives, and Lieutenant-Governor of the State; and in 1864, member of Congress. He was a sincere and upright politician, who always staunchly opposed the slave party in the United States, but lost popularity and credit, by his exceedingly foolish and unfortunate championship of President Johnson, through all his remarkable freaks of obstinacy and eccentricity. On returning home from his office, on the night of the 18th June, 1869, he dropped down in the hall of his house, in a fit of apoplexy, and died five hours afterwards, without recovering consciousness. He was in his fiftieth year. Henry Ward Beecher said, in the funeral oration at his grave, that Raymond 'was a man without hate, and, he might almost say, without animosity; his whole career had been free from bitterness;' and Horace Greeley bore this high testimony to his professional ability;—'I doubt whether this country has known a journalist superior to Henry J. Raymond. He was unquestionably a very clever and versatile, but not powerful writer; and excelled especially in newspaper management.' We shall have occasion to refer again to his services as a journalist.

In proposing to give some account of the American press, both secular and religious, we have to remark that the first great stimulus given to newspaper enterprise in America was by James Gordon Bennett, the well-known editor of the New York Herald, which was established in the year 1834. This able journalist was born in 1800, at Newmill, Keith, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parents. He was originally designed for the priesthood, and had passed through a portion of his preliminary training in the Roman Catholic College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, but ultimately abandoned the prospects of a clerical life, and emigrated to America, in his nineteenth year—as he said himself—'to see the country where Franklin was born.' There he formed an early connection with the press, but it was not, as we have said, till 1834 that he founded the Herald. We are all more or less familiar with the moral and intellectual characteristics of this newspaper—unsparing personality, intolerable egotism, and sleepless hatred of England; but we are not so foolish as to imagine that the Herald became popular and successful because Americans are fond of personal abuse, or private scandal, or of the ceaseless denunciation of this country. These offences against good taste and right feeling existed long before the publication of the Herald. The secret of its remarkable success lay in the vigour and tact with which Bennett laboured day and night to furnish ample and early intelligence of events in all parts of the world, without regard to cost and labour. Mr. Maverick tells us that 'all the old and heavy-weighted journals, which lazily got themselves before the New York public, day by day, thirty years ago, were undeniably sleepy,' and that 'the ruthless Bennett shocked the staid propriety of his time by introducing the rivalries and the spirit of enterprise which have ever since been distinguishing characteristics of New York newspaper life.' The Herald was successful, then, because Bennett made it his business to present his readers with fresh, ample, and correct news. No editorial eloquence, no skilful flattery of national prejudice or party feeling, could have atoned for any shortcoming in this respect. The other newspaper managers were soon compelled to imitate his energy and skill in the supply of news, and Mr. Maverick has informed us how effectively his example was sometimes followed, by his rivals. On one occasion, before the days of the telegraph, the leading New York journals despatched reporters to Boston, to obtain an early account of a speech by Daniel Webster, who was then in the plenitude of his fame. Two reporters represented each journal; but Raymond alone represented the Tribune. On their return home by the steamer the other reporters passed the night in convivial pleasantries; but Raymond was busily engaged all the time, in a retired part of the vessel, writing off his report for a batch of printers who were on board with their 'cases' of type; so that the entire report, making several columns of the Tribune, was prepared for being printed on the arrival of the steamer at New York, at five o'clock in the morning. The feat was a remarkable instance of newspaper enterprise. The Hudson River steamboats afterwards regularly carried corps of printers with types, from Albany to New York, to prepare the speeches of legislators for next morning's journals. Carrier-pigeons were employed to convey the latest European news from Halifax or Boston to Wall-street; and pilot-boats made long voyages, in stormy weather, to meet Atlantic steamers in search of early news. In election times pony-expresses were appointed by rival journals to carry early intelligence of results; as, in railway times, 'locomotive engines were raced on rival lines of railroad in the interest of papers which had paid high prices for the right of way.' Sometimes a little of that 'smartness,' which is so popular in America, was displayed in these newspaper rivalries, as when, on one occasion, the Tribune reporter ran off to New York on a special engine, hired expressly for the Herald, and thus succeeded in publishing an early and exclusive edition of some important news.

The success of the Herald led Horace Greeley to found the Tribune, in 1841. We can see at once that, like Bennett and Raymond, he was greatly endowed with that species of sagacity which divines at a glance the capabilities of a new project or speculation. Greeley was the son of a New England farmer, and came to New York a poor penniless boy. His earlier essays in newspaper management were total failures; but the Tribune was remarkably successful from its very commencement. It eschewed the coarse and violent style of the Herald, and pursued a far more generous and enlightened policy on public questions, while it almost rivalled the business-like energy of its earlier contemporary; but it ultimately injured itself by its championship of socialism, and a host of other secular heresies. For, though Greeley was of a remarkably practical turn of mind, at least in the management of his own business, he was a great theorist, committed to every recherché novelty in faith and life, a moral philosopher, after a fashion of his own, sincere and liberal in his ideas, with deep sympathies for the working classes, advocating their rights, and seeking their elevation, while he did not fear to expose their follies and their faults. The Tribune became, under his management, the organ of socialism and spirit-rapping, woman's rights, vegetarianism, temperance, and peace principles. It seemed, in fact, the premature harbinger of the 'good time coming,' adept in all the cant of reform, and familiar with the whole philosophy of progress, a very clear vein of sense being perceptible to critical minds, in the elegant sophistry with which it vindicated its own course, and tried to overwhelm all objectors. It attempted, in fact, to turn to account the remarkable tremour of the public mind, which arose from what was seen or said between 1845 and 1855 of mesmerism, electro-biology, spirit-rapping, Swedenborgianism, and psychology; but we are glad to know that the Tribune has greatly improved in its general views, and comes more into accord with common ideas on these curious subjects.

It was the disgust and disappointment of the public with the socialistic heresies of the Tribune, as well as with the shameless and indecent personalities of the Herald, that led to the establishment of the Times, in the year 1851. It took rank at once as a dignified and able journal. Its influence was exercised from the first on the side of morality, industry, education, and religion; and to use the words of an eminent English journalist, now at the American press, 'it encouraged truthfulness, carried decency, temperance, and courtesy into discussion, and helped to abate the greatest nuisance of the age, the coarseness, violence, and calumny, which does so much to drive sensible and high-minded and competent men out of public life, or keep them from entering it.' No one, certainly, has ever done more than Henry J. Raymond for the elevation of the American newspaper. We cannot justly overlook the substantial services done in the same department by the New York Evening Post, under the management of its veteran editor, William Cullen Bryant, the poet; by the New York World, a new paper distinguished by the talent, incisiveness, and dignity of its articles; and by the Nation, managed by Mr. Godkin, an Irishman, once connected with the London press, and which stands upon the intellectual level of the best European periodicals.

We are indebted to Mr. Maverick for a tolerably full account of the present position of New York journalism. There are 150 newspapers published in that city, of which 24 are daily papers, two of them published in the French language, and three in the German. The remainder are weekly journals, of which eighteen are in German, one in Italian, and two in Spanish. There are no less than 258 German newspapers in all America, the largest number being published in Pennsylvania. There are eighteen religious newspapers published in New York. We have the following information in reference to the literary and mechanical arrangements of the daily press:

There is much literary ability displayed in the daily and weekly journals of Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and other leading cities. The Boston Post is a leading paper in that city. It is answerable for all the paradoxical absurdities of the famous Mrs. Partington. The Washington National Era, like the National Intelligencer, of the same capital, has a high position, as a literary and political journal. It was through its columns that Mrs. Stowe first gave to the world her 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' just as Judge Haliburton first published 'Sam Slick, the Clockmaker,' in the pages of a Nova Scotian weekly newspaper.

It is a remarkable fact that the Americans have never produced a Quarterly worthy of the name, except the 'North American Review,' which is certainly below the intellectual level of the four or five English reviews which are reprinted in New York every quarter within a fortnight of their publication in England. It was said, in explanation of the fact that the French had never succeeded in maintaining a review on the plan of the English Quarterlies, that their opinions and parties change so often, and the nation was so volatile, that they could not wait a quarter of a year upon anybody. But this explanation will not apply to the Americans. The 'North American Review' has always had on its list of contributors the very best names in native literature, such as Longfellow, Everett, J. R. Lowell, Motley, Jared Sparks, Caleb Cushing, George Bancroft, and others. Yet its success has been very partial. Its literary position ought to have been far more decided. The 'Atlantic Monthly' holds a deservedly high place in American letters, with such authors as Emerson, Holmes, and Mrs. Stowe among its principal contributors; but its influence has always been thrown into the scale against Evangelical Christianity. 'Harper's Magazine,' published in New York, is an illustrated monthly for the fashionable world, with a circulation of 150,000 copies. 'Bonner's Ledger' has pushed its way into the front rank of weekly magazines, by its romances, its essays, and its poetry, from such writers as Parton, Beecher, Everett, Saxe, Bryant, and many others. The sporting world has its Wilkes' Spirit of the Times; the advocates of woman's rights have the Revolution, in the hands of Susan B. Anthony and E. C. Stanton; the grocers have a Grocers' Journal; the merchants a Dry Goods Reporter; the billiard-players, a Billiard-cue; and the dealers in tobacco, a Tobacco Leaf. The advocates of Spiritualism and Socialism have a large number of journals in their service. But, strange to relate, the Americans have not a single comic periodical like our 'Punch.' Mr. Maverick says that, in the course of a dozen years, many attempts have been made to establish such a print, but without success. 'Vanity Fair' was the best of the class, but its wit and its pictorial illustrations were equally poor and trivial. All the comic papers that flourished for a few years were only remarkable for the immense amount of bad wit they contained, for a wilderness of worthlessness, for an endless process of tickling and laughter; with only an occasional gleam of genuine humour and imagination. If the Americans have failed in producing such a periodical, it is not from the want of literary men possessed of the vis comica, for Oliver Wendell Holmes, James R. Lowell, Shelton, Butler, and Saxe are first-rate humourists. The English comic papers can command all the abounding talent of men like Douglas Jerrold, Albert Smith, W. M. Thackeray, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Thomas Hood, F. Burnand, and a host of other satirists. The Americans, however, have never had a Tenniel, a Doyle, a Leech, a Du Maurier, or a Keene, to throw off, week after week, the most amusing and instructive of pictorial satires. All they have hitherto done in this department is to copy with tolerable taste and skill the best cartoons and wood-cuts of 'Punch' and our illustrated magazines. Perhaps America has yet to find its Bradbury and Evans. It is evidently most in want of a publisher. After all, there is hardly anything the Americans need more than a good comic paper, to moderate the intensity of their politics, to laugh down the extravagant follies of American society, to measure the strength of their public men, to register their blunders, and expose their hollowness, to watch over the caprices of fashion, to criticize the press itself, with its coarseness and scurrility, its disgraceful advertisements, and its downright fabrications; taking good care to keep free from those sins which so easily beset satirists, rancour, obscenity, and attacks on private character. They need a satirical journal, just to apply to all things the good old test of common sense; and when uncommon wit is allied with common sense in branding any custom or habit as evil, it must be very deeply rooted if it cannot be overturned or modified. Besides, the Americans, as a hard-working race, need a refreshing humour to relieve the strain upon their mental and physical energies. Emerson remarked of Abraham Lincoln, that humour refreshed him like sleep or wine; and a nation so eager in all kinds of work deserves the innocent relaxation that comes from literature in its most sparkling and pleasing form.

The volume of Mr. Maverick makes almost no allusion to an important department of the American press, which demands some notice at our hands, viz., that which ministers to the intellectual and moral wants of the Irish Roman Catholic immigrants. There is no city of any magnitude which does not possess its Catholic organ. New York city is the proper centre of the Catholic press, but Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Boston, Charleston, and St. Louis have each their weekly paper for the Irish population. Intellectually, these papers are very inferior, and so illiberal that almost every question is viewed from the single standpoint of creed, race, or country. The liberal policy of a free and progressive state has hardly produced the slightest effect upon them. It is a very remarkable fact that in America, as in other countries, journalism is not wielded in the service of Romanism with any freshness and power, except by converts from Protestantism. We find Brownson's Review, the Freeman's Journal, the Shepherd of the Valley (now discontinued), and the Catholic Herald, in the hands of perverts, just as in Europe the Tablet was founded by a convert from Quakerism, the Dublin Review is in the hands of an Oxford pervert, and the Historisch-politische Blätter of Munich was founded by Professor Phillips, and maintained in great scientific efficiency by Yarke, both converts from Lutheranism. The Irish press in America is very ultramontane. It seems drunk with the very spirit of religious servility, mad with the hatred of liberty, and adopts the strictest Roman Catholic doctrines, following them out to their extremest consequences, with a rudeness and arrogance of style, approaching to vulgarity. Orestes Brownson says that the Pope is nowhere so truly Pope, and finds nowhere, so far as Catholics are concerned, so little resistance in the full exercise of his authority as in the United States. No European editor, except Veuillot, ever wrote in the style of Brownson himself, who is intellectually without a peer among Romish editors; for he takes the strongest and most unpopular ground as the very foundation of his ecclesiastical and political theories. Veuillot shocked the good sense and liberal feeling of Europe, by defending the Inquisition and the St. Bartholomew massacre; but Brownson despises all prudential considerations, in claiming for his church the right to put heretics to death, for he holds that this is punishment, and not persecution. The Shepherd of the Valley held that the question of punishing heretics was one of mere expediency, and declared that in the event of his church gaining the ascendancy in America, there would be an end of religious toleration. The Pittsburgh Catholic censured these outspoken utterances; but the Boston Pilot rebuked its Pittsburgh contemporary for its censures, declaring that the Shepherd of the Valley said nothing that was not true; yet saying itself, with marked inconsistency, 'No Catholic wishes to abridge the religious rights of Protestants.' It is in perfect consistency with such ultramontane ideas that these Irish newspapers uniformly take the side of royal despots in great national struggles, and deny all sympathy to revolutionary leaders except those of Ireland. Though they usually cry out lustily when any step in American legislation or any popular combination manifests even an appearance of hostility to Catholic interests, they actually had the audacity, in 1859, to defend those royal miscreants of Italy, who rioted in the misery of their subjects, and of whom it was truly said, 'They kept one-half of their people in prison and the other half in fear of it.' They sympathised with the Poles in their last insurrection, because their oppressor was a schismatic; they had no sympathy with Hungarians, or Italians, or Spaniards, because their oppressors were Catholics. The Boston Pilot—the most popular journal of the Irish—forgot its rôle so far in 1848, as to take a liberal view of the European revolutions. The result was that the Univers, in giving an account of Catholic journalism in America, excluded the Pilot from its list of the orthodox; the clergy, moreover, condemned it; and it was obliged to express its penitence for such an error of judgment. The Pilot, after all, is more reasonable and less fanatical than most of the Catholic papers, and is specially copious in its reports of Catholic news. All these Irish newspapers are, without exception, bitterly anti-English in their tone and spirit. One might suppose that having escaped from misery and poverty, and launched upon a new career of prosperity and contentment, the Irish could afford to forget England; but, like their teachers at the press, they are strong in historical grudges, and their hatred to this country is as much theological as political. The Irish-American journalist delights in copying into his paper the abuse of England, collected from all quarters of the world, and in times of war or rebellion depreciates our triumphs and magnifies our misfortunes. The Catholic clergy have found it hard to control the opinions of a portion of their Irish countrymen, who, though sufficiently submissive in spiritual concerns, have shown a disposition to assert an independence of clerical control in matters affecting the interests of Ireland. Sometimes, indeed, the clergy have been led to humour this national feeling, as when they were in the habit of attending the 'Tom Moore Club,' at Boston, though it had been more than suspected that the favourite poet had died out of the pale of the church. At length the Shepherd of the Valley pointedly condemned their appearance at the annual banquet, on the ground that the poet was ashamed of his country's religion during life, and that English preachers performed the obsequies at his grave. The appearance of Thomas Francis Meagher in America, after his escape from penal servitude in Australia, greatly perplexed the bishops and clergy; but the mot d'ordre went forth, and all the Catholic newspapers in America, with a single exception, assailed him with the greatest bitterness, for his enlightened opinions upon religious liberty, and upon the relation between Church and State. Thousands of the Irish, notwithstanding, rallied round Meagher; and the Irish-American was established, for the vindication and enforcement of his principles. There are a few other organs of Irish nationality, including the Irish People, of John Mitchell, published in America, but, with the exception of the People, they are all contemptible, in every point of view. You find in their pages column after column of windy jargon and tawdry rhetoric, which would consign an English editor to a madhouse. This gaudy and ornate style, with a profusion of florid imagery and Oriental hyperbole quite overpowering, seems to characterise every Nationalist journal. It is these papers that have inflated the Fenian bubble. We pity the deplorable ignorance of the Irish masses, their misguided enthusiasm, and their preposterous pertinacity in the pursuit of visionary ends; but we have no language too severe to apply to their intellectual leaders who pursue their ignoble calling from a mercenary calculation of the profits to be derived from bottomless credulity. We fear that the Irish press generally has succeeded in imparting an education to the emigrés that can serve only to nurture hatreds, which, like curses, too often come home to roost, and that some considerable time may be expected to elapse before all the appliances of American civilization and Christianity shall succeed, as they most certainly will, in the assimilation of such intractable materials.

Our notice of the American press would be incomplete without some account of that ample supply of religious literature which is furnished by thousands of weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals. The religious newspaper is almost peculiar to America, and is far superior to any similar publication in England. The English paper is more ecclesiastical and less religious; the American, while equally strenuous and careful in the advocacy of denominational claims, supplies much of what we usually obtain here from the Sunday Magazine and the Family Treasury. The literary superiority of the religious press over the secular in America arises mainly from the fact that its conductors and contributors are mostly clergymen who have been graduates of colleges, and are possessed of a considerable amount of classical culture and training. Every denomination has a large number of weekly organs. The two leading newspapers of the class are the New York Independent and the New York Observer, the former an organ of the Congregationalists, and the latter of the Presbyterians. The Independent was originally conducted by the Rev. Dr. Bacon, the Rev. Dr. Thompson, and the Rev. Richard Storrs, jun.; it afterwards passed into the hands of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who wielded it with great power and efficiency in the anti-slavery cause; and it is now managed by Theodore Tilton in company with several others. It contains a great variety of religious, political, and general news, devotional and literary pieces of great merit, together with foreign and domestic correspondence, written with an excellent spirit. Mr. Beecher has established, and conducts, the Christian Union, another religious paper, which is rapidly rising to popularity and power. The Advance, a religious paper published in Chicago, and conducted by Dr. Patten, is one of the best of the religious papers of America. The Observer is one of the oldest and best established papers, once exceedingly Conservative in its views of slavery, but always distinguished by sound judgment, good taste, and fair culture. The Methodists are well represented by the Christian Advocate and Journal, and the Baptists by the Examiner and Chronicle. The monthly organ of the American Tract Society has a circulation of about 200,000, which it owes to its catholic character and its extraordinary cheapness. The quarterly literature of the American churches is of a very high character. The Bibliotheca Sacra is the great organ of New England theology, and the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review is the leading representative of the Calvinism of the Westminster standards. These are the two most powerful reviews. The Bibliotheca Sacra is published at Andover, the scene of the learned labours of Moses Stuart, the biblical expositor, and was established twenty-seven years ago. It differs from the Princeton Review and all British reviews in publishing the names of its contributors, and it has succeeded in gathering to its pages a vast amount of the most versatile talent from nearly all the Congregational Colleges of America. Its most original contributor in the domain of metaphysical theology is Professor Austin Phelps, of Andover, whose articles on 'The Instrumentality of the Truth in Regeneration,' and 'Human Responsibility as related to Divine Agency in Conversion,' published within the last two or three years, prove that much of the genius and spirit of Jonathan Edwards still exists in New England theology. Another eminent contributor, Professor Park, of Andover, who is also its principal editor, has been frequently in collision with Dr. Hodge, of the Princeton Review, on points of Calvinistic divinity. Professor Bascom has been recently publishing in its pages a series of articles on 'The Natural Theology of Social Science'—a subject hitherto left too much in the hands of secularists—and has succeeded in lifting it with advantage into the higher sphere of theology. The articles of this review are generally marked by a high style of ability and a scientific thoroughness: and are, many of them, worthy of being reproduced, as they have been, from time to time, in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review. The spirit of its management is exceedingly liberal. We observe, for example, that it recently published an article on 'Christian Baptism,' from the professor of a Baptist College, in conformity with a plan adopted by the conductors of securing from representative men of different sects and schools of thought, articles unfolding distinctive, theological opinions, and exhibiting with something like scientific precision the exact peculiarities of meaning attached to the terminology of the respective schools. The Princeton Review is the oldest quarterly in the United States. It was established in 1825 by Dr. Charles Hodge, the well-known commentator on the Epistle to the Romans, who was then, and still is, a Professor in the Princeton Theological Seminary; but it was not till 1829 that it ceased to be a mere repertory of selections from foreign works in the department of biblical literature. It is, beyond all question, the greatest purely theological review that has ever been published in the English tongue, and has waged war in defence of the Westminster standards for a period of forty years, with a polemic vigour and unity of design without any parallel in the history of religious journalism. If we were called to name any living writer who, to Calvin's exegetical tact, unites a large measure of Calvin's grasp of mind and transparent clearness in the department of systematic theology, we should point to this Princeton Professor. He possesses, to use the words of an English critic, the power of seizing and retaining with a rare vigour and tenacity, the great doctrinal turning-points in a controversy, while he is able to expose with triumphant dexterity the various subterfuges under which it has been sought to elude them. His articles furnish a remarkably full and exact repository of historic and polemic theology; especially those on 'Theories of the Church,' 'The Idea of the Church,' 'The Visibility of the Church,' 'The Perpetuity of the Church,' all of which have been reproduced in English reviews. The great characteristic of his mind is the polemic element; accordingly we find him in collision with Moses Stuart, of Andover, in 1833, and with Albert Barnes in 1835, on the doctrine of Imputation; with Professor Park, in 1851, on 'The Theology of the Intellect and the Theology of the Feelings;' with Dr. Niven, of the Mercersburg Review, in 1848, on the subject of the 'Mystical Presence,' the title of an article which attempted to apply the modern German philosophy to the explanation and subversion of Christian doctrines; with Professor Schaff, in 1854, on the doctrine of historical development; and with Horace Bushnell, in 1866, on vicarious sacrifice. In fact, a theological duel has been going on between Andover and Princeton for nearly forty years, the leading controversialists of Andover being Stuart, Park, Edward Beecher, Baird, and Fisher, and those of Princeton, Hodge, the Alexanders, and Atwater.[1] Hodge has contributed one hundred and thirty-five articles to the Review since its commencement; Dr. Archibald Alexander—a venerable divine, who resembled John Brown, of Haddington, in many respects—contributed seventy-seven; his son, Dr. James Waddel Alexander, twice a Princeton Professor, and afterwards pastor of the wealthiest congregation in New York, contributed one hundred and one articles; another son, Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander, the well-known commentator on Isaiah, contributed ninety-two, mostly on classical and Oriental subjects; and Dr. Atwater, another Princeton professor of great learning and versatility, contributed sixty-four on theological and metaphysical subjects. The articles in the Princeton on science, philosophy, literature, and history, have generally displayed large culture and research. The review of Cousin's Philosophy, in 1839, by Professor Dod, was one of the most remarkable papers that appeared on the subject in America, and was afterwards reprinted separately on both sides of the Atlantic. Another theological quarterly of America, is the New Englander, published at Newhaven, Connecticut, and representative principally of Yale scholarship. Nearly all the leading names in New England theology, such as Bellamy, Hopkins, Emmons, Dwight, Griffin, Tyler, and Taylor, among the dead, and Bushnell, Beecher, and Bacon, among the living, are associated with the venerable University of Yale. Tryon Edwards (the great-grandson of Jonathan Edwards) is one of the contributors to the New Englander. The professors and graduates of the college are its principal contributors. Among them are to be found the distinguished names of Dr. Noah Porter and President Woolsey. The former has recently contributed to the New Englander, a series of valuable articles, just reprinted in a small volume, on 'The American Colleges and the American Public;' an able discussion of the fundamental principles of University education. The Mercersburg Review is the quarterly organ of the German Reformed Church, and has been conducted, from its commencement, by Dr. Niven and Professor Schaff, the well-known historian. The Baptists have their Christian Review, the Methodists their Methodist Quarterly Review, the Lutherans their Evangelical Review, the Episcopalians their Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review, and the Unitarians their Christian Examiner, which reflects from time to time the vicissitudes of Unitarian opinion. There is one fact suggested by this review of the American religious press, viz., that Episcopacy holds a very inferior place beside Independency and Presbyterianism in theological authorship. We all know how greatly things are changed, even in England, since Dr. Arnold deplored, and all but despised, the culture of Dissenters, for we have Dean Alford, but the other day, confessing in the Contemporary Review, 'Already the Nonconformists have passed us by in Biblical scholarship, and ministerial training.' But in the United States, the palm of theological scholarship has always rested in the hands of Congregational and Presbyterian divines. The best theological seminaries, the ablest theological reviews, and the most original as well as extensive authorship in the various branches of theology, belong to the two denominations referred to.

We shall now proceed, as briefly as possible, to make some observations of a critical nature upon the intellectual and moral character of the American press generally. It is not, certainly, in any spirit of national superiority that we point to the undoubted fact that, notwithstanding the great expansion of newspaper literature in the States, the wide diffusion of popular education, and the circulation of English books of the best kind at a mere nominal cost, the Americans have as yet produced nothing representatively like our London Times, or Punch, or the Athenæum, or the Illustrated London News, or the Saturday Review, or the Art Journal, or the Edinburgh and Quarterly. They have not even produced a single great newspaper writer like Captain Stirling, of the Times, Albany Fonblanque, sen., of the Examiner, or Hugh Miller, of the Edinburgh Witness, for Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, though capital editors, are all greatly inferior to these men in that art of scholarly, dignified, and tasteful leader-writing, which gives such a power and charm to London journalism. Newspaper writing is, perhaps, the most difficult of all writing; there is none at least in which excellence is so rarely attained. The capacity of bringing widely-scattered information into a focus, of drawing just conclusions from well-selected facts, of amplifying, compressing, illustrating a succession of topics, all on the spur of the moment, without a moment's stay to examine or revise, argues great intellectual cultivation. The articles may not be of a lofty order, or demand for their execution the very highest kind of talent, but the power of accomplishing it with success is very uncommon, and of all the varieties of ways in which incompetency is manifested, an irrepressible tendency to fine writing is associated with the greater number of them. De Tocqueville says that democratic journalism has a strong tendency to be virulent in spirit and bombastic in style. It certainly runs the risk of lawlessness, inaccuracy, and irreverence, with much of vehemence, and with little taste, imagination, or profundity. One serious charge we have to bring against the American newspapers is, that they have sorely vulgarized and vitiated the English language. We are aware that many of them imagine the language of their country to be the standard as to idiom, pronunciation, and spelling, and any English variation from their golden rule as erroneous and heterodox; but such critics are entitled to no consideration whatever. If men of education at the American press refuse to study the style of the great authors who fixed and purified the language of our common forefathers, so that we may have one and not two languages spoken on opposite sides of the Atlantic, let them at least imitate such writers of their own as Washington Irving, Horace Bushnell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose pure and native English is wholly free from all the corruptions and affectations of phrase which overrun American newspapers, simply because it is beautifully modelled upon the most elegant and polished writers of English literature. In fact, the Americans have always been greatly in need of a critical organ, like the old Edinburgh Review, to purify the literary atmosphere from the clouds and mists of false taste which deface it, to stand censor on books and newspapers, a recognized authority in the literary republic, for whose quarterly judgments readers might look with interest, and authors with trembling. The North American Review, though written with great spirit, learning, and ability, and abounding in profound and original discussions on the most interesting subjects, has never filled the place of the Edinburgh, and, indeed, its own style is not free from the common sin of affectation. It is pleasant to think of William Cullen Bryant, the poet, hanging up in the office of his newspaper—the New York Evening Post—a catalogue of words that no editor or reporter is ever to be allowed to use.[2] Let us hope that the literary men of America, of all classes, will seriously aim at the formation of a purer, chaster, and juster style of writing, for what they have hitherto produced has been defective in taste rather than in talent.

Another great sin of American journalism is its intolerable personality, violence, and exaggeration. This was the disgrace of our own English press at no distant period. Cobbett was a great sinner in this respect, He had much to do with raising the intellectual, and lowering the moral, reputation of the modern newspaper. The wide diffusion of enlightened views on politics and religion is attested, however, in a remarkable manner among ourselves, by the moderation of tone which we now see in journals which, about twenty years ago, were remarkable for their scurrility and violence. It is no longer a recommendation to an English newspaper to be known as an assailant of the Royal Family, the aristocracy, the bench of bishops, or parsons. Several publications that, a few years since, professed atheism and secularism, have become extinct, and the quondam organs of Chartism and fierce democracy have been obliged to become respectable. But many of the American newspapers are much worse than the English were a quarter of a century ago. With us, faction has become less mischievous and shameless; unfounded accusations less common and less malignant; invectives more measured and decorous; not merely because the evil passions which required to be fed with the abuse of individuals have calmed down, but because the British press is now guided by the principle of attacking public opinion, not private characters, measures, not men; and its quarrels are usually governed by the laws of honour and chivalry, which proscribe all base advantages. Put an American newspaper cannot assail another newspaper without mentioning the editor's name, and calling him coward or rascal. If you cannot answer your opponent's objections, you caricature his appearance, or dress, or diet, or accent, as Bennett is in the habit of treating Greeley; and if you are foiled by his wit, you recover your advantage by stabbing his character. No allusions become too indecorous for your taste; no sarcasms too bitter for your savage spite; and no character pure enough to be sacred from your charges and insinuations. The American editor pursues his antagonist as if he were a criminal. The New York World lately devoted four columns of its space to illustrate by quotations the amenities of American journalism. The majority of the papers seem to subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages which spring from an utter contempt for the restraints of decency and candour; and we are strongly of opinion that this work of cruel intimidation is pursued with unrelenting eagerness, not from the influence of angry passions or furious prejudices, but in the cold-blooded calculation of the profits which idle curiosity or the vulgar appetite for slander may enable its authors to derive from it. We are not prepared to endorse all the strong statements made by infuriated rivals concerning the proprietor of the New York Herald; but he leaves us, in no doubt, himself, as to the light in which he regarded his own frequent chastisements. Immediately after James Watson Webb had severely whipped him in the streets of New York, the whole affair was recounted, in the Herald with a sensational circumstantiality that had an evident eye to business, though we cannot overlook the remarkable good humour with which Bennett treated the whole affair:—

Imagine the London Times degraded to the condition of its responsible editor rejoicing in his own personal chastisement! American journalists fight like their French brethren. They never dream of explanations. Bullets and bowie-knives are the natural sequel of such recriminations as disgrace their newspapers. This extreme violence is part of the loose political morality so common there. Americans seem to be taught almost from their infancy to hate one-half of the nation, and so contract all the virulence and passion of party before they have come to the age of reason; but before their newspapers can be said to enter upon the course of real usefulness which is open to them, they must have come to believe that political differences may exist without their opponents being either rogues or fools. Jefferson said in his day that the scurrility of the press drove away the best men from public life, and would certainly have driven away Washington had he lived to suffer from its growing excesses. James Fenimore Cooper, the celebrated novelist, had a horror of newspapers, and instituted actions at law against a host of them for literary libels. He once remarked, 'The press of this country tyrannizes over public men of letters, the arts, the stage, and even private life. Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it is gradually establishing a despotism as ruthless and grasping and one that is quite as vulgar as that of any Christian state known.' This view of the case is certainly serious and suggestive. Party violence may be carried to a length that defeats itself, for it may harden public men against all newspaper criticism whatever, to the great injury of public affairs, and thus lower the estimation and disturb the course of public opinion. Nowhere are fools more dogmatic than in politics, and nowhere are wise men more doubtful and silent; but American party writers have no respect for the Horatian maxim, 'in medio tutissimus'—the secret of that moderation of opinion which has distinguished the most genial and sagacious men in our political world. They must really learn to cultivate a love of truth and justice; they should seek to attain the power of holding the scales steadily, while the advantages or disadvantages of every question are fairly weighed; they should stamp upon their professional life the impress of personal rectitude and honour, and not wait—to copy the tone of the old apologies—till a higher standard of public morals, and a more intelligent cultivation of political and literary inquiries, shall have raised for them a new class of readers. It is the prerogative of genius to create the light by which it is to be understood and appreciated; but the working talents of a country, which are identified with its immediate interests, ought at least to rise a little above the surrounding level.

We are led, from this point, to notice another defect in American journalism,—the absence of the anonymous usage, which is, indeed, mainly answerable for the scurrility and violence already referred to. The British editor is usually unknown to the public; the French journalist subscribes his name at the foot of his articles; but the American editor publishes his name and address boldly at the top of his newspaper. The effect of this custom is to identify the authority of the journal with the personal influence of the editor; it tends to a habit of deciding questions on personal grounds, and to a far too marked superfluity of the tu quoque argument. The object of the American journalist is not so much the instruction of the public as the political advancement of himself, for journalism usually forms the first stage in the course of an ambitious politician, or a rising statesman; and the American usage is certainly very well adapted to this end. Our anonymous habit limits the discussions of the press and abolishes egotism, while it certainly tends to debar personalities. It has been remarked, as a suggestive fact, that personality is the common vice of the only free press in the world, which ignores the anonymous principle; and that in England, under a contrary usage, personality is little known, always reprobated, and, indeed, in cases of flagrant personal attacks, the authorship is usually but thinly disguised. It is absurd to defend the American habits as manly and ours as cowardly; for their habit tends to make writers far from circumspect or considerate of the feelings of others. But, in fact, the publicity in which American journalists delight is only akin to the publicity of American life generally. The British public would not tolerate the intrusion of the press into private or family concerns; yet one New York paper published, in the panic, of 1857, the name of every gentleman who bought a silk dress for his wife, or gave a dinner-party to his friends. Other newspapers criticize the dress and appearance of ladies at balls and cricket parties, the personality of their praise being almost as offensive as at other times the coarseness of their vituperation.

We confess that we do not entertain a very high opinion of the morality of the American press, though we admit there has been a sensible improvement within the last thirty years. Emerson made the remark, in his 'English Traits,' that the London Times was an 'immoral institution,' on the ground we presume, of its frequent changes of opinion. We are far from defending the leading journal in its policy of tergiversation—for there can be no doubt it ever fights on the stronger side, upholds no falling cause, and advocates no great principle—but it was never yet bought with bribes or cowed by intimidation. It has sometimes shown that it is conducted on principles superior to mere money considerations, for, during the Railway mania of 1845, when its advertising sheet was overrun with projected lines of railway, realizing to the proprietors the enormous sum of from £2,839 to £6,687 per week, the Thunderer turned its fire on these projects, and lost nearly £3,000 in a single week. We do not charge the American press with any flagrant changes of policy or principle, for we believe it is, in these respects, sufficiently consistent. But we deplore the absence of high moral purpose, as well as independence in its discussions of public questions. The American people demand a large amount of flattery; they have come almost to loathe the wholesome truth; they must be pampered with constant adulations, so that no one will venture to tell them their faults, and, neither at home nor abroad, dare moralists venture a whisper to their prejudice. This is a serious drawback. America wants more writers of the class who are said to prefer their country's good to its favour, and more anxious to reform its vices than cherish the pride of its virtues. Besides, we strongly suspect that the American journalist is very careless about the truth. We mean the truth of fact, which is part of the historic disposition of the age, as opposed to all that is sensational. He resembles the French rather than the English journalist in the tendency to regard good news as more important than correct news. The English journals make it their business to present their readers with news and not advice, with facts and not opinions, so that they can form opinions for themselves, and the power of our press is thus enormously increased, but only on conditions that effectually prevent the arbitrary exercise of it. The American writers for the press have followed our example in some degree, but their disposition to provide startling and sensational intelligence is too often manifested at the expense of truth. Mr. Maverick gives an account of a number of disreputable hoaxes played by the newspapers upon the public of America, which were justified, we presume, to the consciences of the authors by the observation of Lord Bacon—'A mixture of lies doth ever add pleasure; doth any man doubt that if there were taken from men's minds vain opinions, nattering hopes, false valuations, and the like, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things?' The 'Moon Hoax,' which was published in the New York Sun in 1835, was one of the most skilful and successful of these literary frauds. Successive numbers of that paper contained a pretended extract from the pages of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, under the title of 'Great Astronomical Discoveries latterly made by Sir John Herschel, LL.D., F.R.S., at the Cape of Good Hope.' The paper had a remarkable air of scientific research, such as might deceive all but the most learned and wary. The Herschel telescope was represented as affording a distinct view of lunar roads, rocks, seas, cascades, forests, houses, people, and monsters of various shapes. The 'Roorback Hoax' was a shameless attempt to injure the character of J. K. Polk, when he was a candidate for the Presidency, by representing him as possessing forty-three slaves who had his initials branded into their flesh. The deception was wrought by simply adding to a sentence in Featherstonehaugh's Travels in America four lines of the hoaxer's own, recording the disgraceful lie referred to. We confess that we cannot recognise the morality of a transaction which Mr. Maverick records in the history of the New York Times, without apparently the slightest suspicion of its dishonesty. When the New York Herald got hold of the single survivor of the ill-fated Atlantic steamer, Arctic, which was lost in September, 1854, an assistant on the Times succeeded, by means of an adroit pressman, in purloining an early copy from the Herald press-rooms, and actually published the Herald's report an hour earlier than that journal. We cannot understand what Mr. Maverick means by representing the Herald as 'playing a trick to keep the news from the other papers,' unless the Herald was actually bound to supply its contemporaries gratuitously with the exclusive news it had obtained from the survivor at its own sole expense. The transaction seems to us merely a clever specimen of American 'smartness.'

But we must draw these observations to a close. We cannot but admit that the press of America, with all its defects, is an engine of great power. It is on this ground we desire for it a close approximation to those intellectual and moral qualities which have given British journalism such an influence over the affairs of the whole world. In fact, two such nations as America and Britain, working in the same language, should be always learning from each other; for the eager energy of the one should push forward the occasionally lagging progress of the other, and our matured caution restrain their hasty inexperience. America is great in all that leads to immediate and available results. She has given us several of the greatest mechanical inventions of the age; she has far excelled us in the theory and practice of religious liberty, as well as in the more liberal recognition of denominational brotherhood among the religious sects; while she has furnished a noble example of public spirit in the support of religion, missions, and education. Let us hope that in time she will equal, if not surpass us in a periodical literature, which, if even still more intensely political than ours, will display a breadth and strength of thought, together with a wisdom and dignity, which will add immensely to its power. There is one aspect of Transatlantic literature which already contrasts favourably with our own, and that is its generally cordial recognition of Evangelical Christianity. With the exception of the German and French newspapers, which chafe under the restraints of a Christian country, and scoff at Judaic sabbaths, Pharisaic church-going, and tyrannical priestcraft, there are no newspapers of any position in the States that are avowedly anti-Christian; and there is less disposition than formerly, on the part of the American press generally, to exclude all reference to distinctive Christianity. It was considered a remarkable circumstance at the time of the American revival that several newspapers, notorious for a thinly disguised infidelity, and for a most undisguised enmity to Evangelical religion, should not only publish the most ample reports of the movement, but commend it in a way that has had no parallel in English journalism, even before the tide of public opinion had turned decisively in its favour. It is the common custom still for American newspapers to print the sermons of popular preachers, and to publish a large amount of religious intelligence. The press is also intensely Protestant, and has contributed to the growth of that enormous assimilating power by which American Protestantism has absorbed generation after generation of the Roman Catholic emigrants. The statistics of the Propaganda declare that one half of the whole number has been lost to the Church of Rome; and the explanation is, that they can no more escape from the influence of American ideas than from the effects of the atmosphere and climate.

It becomes, therefore, a matter of the greatest consequence that the literary guides of a nation with such a destiny as America, should understand the responsibilities under which their power is exercised. They should take care, above all things, to use their influence not to materialize the mind of society, by obtruding material concerns too much upon the attention, to the neglect of those moral and spiritual interests which constitute the very foundations of its greatness. This is a real danger, for, as De Tocqueville remarks, the tendency of modern democracy is to concentrate the passions of men upon the acquisition of comforts and wealth. They cannot be ignorant that the most clearly marked line of social progress over the whole world is coincident with the line of the Christian faith; that wherever true religion has had free access to the centres of human action, a palpable advance has been made in knowledge, liberty, and refinement; while poverty, injustice, and licentiousness, which are the ulcers of a depraved society, have in that degree been checked and healed. They must understand that honesty is the grand necessity of the world at this time, in its politics as well as its theology, in its commerce as well as its science. Let these things be understood by the leaders of American thought, and we cannot but anticipate a proud future for their country. It is a subject of just congratulation to England that her children have stamped their character on a vast continent, and, that instead of discontented colonies subjected to her caprice, she can now point to a great people, with all the best life of the ancient nations throbbing in their veins, flourishing exactly in proportion to their freedom, and trained, through all their bloody disasters which almost threatened to ruin their work, to build a stronger rampart, and to reclaim a broader shore for posterity. The interests of humanity demand that a nation so strong in all the material elements of civilization, and manifesting such an impetuous disregard of limit and degree in all its enterprises, should be equally strong in its intelligence and its Christianity.

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Art. II.—Report from the Royal Commission on International Coinage. 1868.

Although during the deplorable struggle between Germany and France public attention has been of necessity mainly directed to the conflict, yet it is impossible, for many reasons, to do otherwise than regret this concentration of interest. The last session of our Parliament was fertile to an unusual degree in measures of public utility and importance; but it is not too much to say that the difficulties incurred by several of these measures in their passage through both Houses would have been greatly enhanced had the engrossing events which have recently agitated all Europe occurred at the time. The only satisfaction which can be obtained in contemplating, even from a distance, the misery inflicted on such countless thousands, arises from the hope that when the last echoes of the strife have faded away, a peace, firm and durable—durable because based on sound principles—may link together those nations who are now suffering from the effects of the struggle. Till this is the case, the evils arising from the war will not be confined to those actually engaged in it. Meanwhile, it is really no slight misfortune that many subjects, not unimportant to the country, should fail to obtain the attention which they would otherwise have received, in consequence of the superior interest of the central European crisis.

Professor Jevons' remarks at the late meeting of the British Association at Liverpool, on the manner in which points of importance were thus swamped, will not readily be forgotten by those who heard them. Among other subjects, the Professor instanced that of an international coinage, which, after having received considerable and careful attention, had receded for a time from that prominence which it deserved.

In this country, the question has been considered from two points of view—the one taken by those who are desirous to adopt a universal system of coinage, as well as a universal system of weights and measures; the other, by those who are aware of the present and increasing deterioration of the gold coinage of the country, arising from the number of coins deficient in full weight which are now in circulation.

Neither of these points have escaped the notice of the active mind of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer (Right Hon. R. Lowe). He has become aware that many of the gold coins now in circulation are below the legal tender weight; that the opportunity of a considerable re-coinage might be made use of to assimilate the weight of gold in the sovereign to that contained in twenty-five francs, and that in doing this the expense incurred in the coinage of gold might, by means of a seigniorage, be spared to the country.

To explain these points, it will be well, in the first place, to refer to a report of the then Master of the Mint, and Colonel Smith, late Master of the Calcutta Mint, in reply to the question put by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

To put it in another shape. The person who thinks it worth his while to convert his gold bullion into coin, according to this plan, is to pay for the expense of manufacture, and is also called upon to contribute to a reserve fund, by means of which the natural deterioration of the coin he has caused to be put into circulation is to be provided for.

The coinage of gold in this country is—and it is well to explain this point at the outset—entirely gratuitous as far as the Government is concerned. That is to say, any person possessing gold bullion of the required purity of standard, may, if he chooses, take that bullion to the Mint. And, in due time, the officers of the Mint will return him—weight for weight—an equal quantity of gold coin. In due time, however, means in practice, a considerable delay; and delay in money matters means loss of interest. Hence, it arises, that in the natural course of events, no private person takes gold bullion to be coined, himself. But he carries it to the Bank of England. Now, that great corporation, among other duties to the State, has this particular charge. It is bound to buy all gold bullion of standard fineness offered to it, at the rate of £3 17s. 9d. per oz. These payments are made in bank notes; and as bank notes are immediately exchangeable for sovereigns, the result is, that any one possessing gold bullion of the Mint standard, can at once and immediately turn that bullion into gold coins for the slight cost of 1¹/2d. per oz., or something less than ¹/2d. for every sovereign. This is really buying a sovereign at cost price, for the mere manufacture of a sovereign costs fully a ¹/2d., as will be mentioned further on. What is more, the payment, small as it is, does not accrue to the Government, but is retained by the Bank of England, and is considered as being only sufficient to compensate that institution for the trouble and expense of the operation, including the loss of time, and consequent loss of interest incurred. No provision is made to include the loss by wear, which, though imperceptible at the moment, accumulates in process of time to a large amount. Investigation shows that 100 sovereigns lose 8d. a year by fair usage. If the amount of British gold coin in circulation amounts, as it is supposed to do, to eighty millions, sixty-eight being whole sovereigns, and twelve millions in halves, the annual loss would amount to £35,000 from deterioration due to wear alone. The charge for manufacturing sovereigns is not high when all that has to be done is taken into consideration. Great precautions have to be taken in the process to secure the needful quality. Each bar has to be brought to the required standard. Careful assays are made, and great exactness in the weight of each coin is, of course, essential. All these points cannot be attended to without considerable expense. Again, the great amount of valuable property in the shape of coin and bullion necessitates vigilant watching. The total charge is estimated at ¹/2d. each sovereign. Half sovereigns are, in proportion to value, more expensive to strike than sovereigns. They also wear more rapidly. This arises from greater rapidity of circulation, and also from the fact that, weight for weight, each half sovereign presents a greater surface for abrasion than a sovereign. After making careful calculations, the Master of the Mint and Colonel Smith arrived at the conclusion that a charge of £1 13s. 6d. for every £100 coined would be sufficient to cover all expenses. That is to say, that if an arrangement were made with a contractor to undertake to manage the Mint, and to keep the gold coinage in good repair, he would require, to hold him harmless from loss, to be paid about £1 13s. 6d. for every £100 in the average proportion of sovereigns and half sovereigns put into circulation. And this sum is at the present time lost to the community.

It is characteristic of the manner in which public questions are handled in this country, that throughout the report, to which is attached the name of an official in such high place as that of the late Master of the Mint, continual reference is made to the investigations, not of a public officer, but of Mr. Jevons, Professor of Political Economy in Owen's College, Manchester. Mr. Jevons, being desirous of ascertaining the condition of the gold currency, made inquiries of bankers and other suitable persons in all parts of the United Kingdom, requesting them

Mr. Jevons' inquiry was, as he describes it, made in a private manner, but it was, beyond question, conducted most efficiently and thoroughly. And there is no reason to doubt that he has rather under-estimated than over-estimated the case when he states, that about 45 per cent. of the sovereigns and 62 per cent. of the half-sovereigns now in circulation in the country are lighter than the legal standard. If this statement appears excessive to any one, he can easily verify it for himself. He has only to go to his banker, in whatever part of the United Kingdom he may reside, and ask him to provide out of the gold in his till—out of the ordinary circulation of the locality—100 sovereigns of full weight. Then, if he inquires how many sovereigns have been picked over to obtain this number, he will—within those reasonable limits of variation which every similar calculation is liable to—find that Mr. Jevons' statement gives a correct idea of the ordinary circulation.

But Mr. Lowe, as will have been observed, did not confine himself to the actual deterioration of the existing British gold circulation. His thoughts took a wider range—'a coin which would have the advantage of an international circulation' occurred to him as a possible thing—and, further, that the British sovereign, reduced to an exact equation with twenty-five francs of gold coin of France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, &c., might be such a coin. The question of the desirability of an international coinage has frequently been discussed. From some of the remarks which have been made on Mr. Lowe's speech, it might have been imagined to be only a recent idea. But this is far from being the case. Much attention was drawn to the point in 1851. The difficulty then experienced in comparing the value of the articles produced in different countries and shown at the Great Exhibition, naturally suggested the idea of a coinage common to all nations. The International Statistical Congress then took the matter up at their meetings at Brussels, in 1853, and at Paris, in 1855, and at London, in 1860. This last-named meeting was held under the presidency of the late Prince Consort, and his address on its opening was the last public speech delivered by him. In it are to be found these words, which show that the importance of the question of international coinage had not escaped the notice of the Prince:—'The different weights, measures, and currencies, in which different statistics are expressed, cause further difficulties and impediments. Suggestions with regard to the removal of these have been made at former meetings, and will, no doubt, be renewed.' Before this meeting separated, an international commission was formed to report on the question. Further consideration was given to it at Berlin, in 1863. In December, 1865, the idea was put into practice. A formal convention was entered into by France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland; and those four countries established an international currency among themselves. The French Government followed up the subject by giving official notice of this convention, inviting this country, with many others, to send commissioners to attend a conference 'for the purpose of deliberating upon the best means of securing a common basis for the adoption of a general international coinage.'

The Spanish Government has recently given notice of being willing to join the Convention (Nov., 1869), and the pattern pieces of the twenty-five franc coin have already been struck at the Paris mint.

This brief résumé of what has actually been done by several other nations, suffices of itself to show that the question deserves, as Mr. Lowe has stated in Parliament, very careful consideration.

Four nations, with more than sixty-six millions of inhabitants, already possess an international coinage. That is to say, any merchant in the furthest point to which the Convention extends knows at once, if he takes up a paper with the prices current at Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, or any of the great centres of commerce, what those prices mean, and how nearly they correspond with his own. Other nations besides France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, are prepared to join in this uniform coinage. It is not unlikely that the sixty-six millions may be more than doubled shortly. Will it not be a great disadvantage to the thirty or thirty-two millions inhabiting these islands to be outside this great confederation?

The values of the gold in the pound sterling and in twenty-five francs approximate very closely. To enable this country to join the confederation, it would be needful for the values to be equalized. This must be done in one of two ways.

Either the amount of gold contained in the proposed coin of twenty-five francs must be increased by twenty centimes to make it the equivalent of the English full-weight sovereign. Or, the weight of gold in the English sovereign must be diminished to make it equal to that contained in the 25-franc piece. The Royal Commissioners on International Coinage appear to have entertained an aspiration—it can hardly be termed a hope—that the former plan would be adopted; but it can scarcely be looked for. The inconvenience to the nations who have already joined the Convention would be so great as to preclude the idea. The other alternative alone practically has to be considered. It amounts to this: that 2d. in value should be taken out of every sovereign. But to do this without due compensation would be to alter every existing contract. A seigniorage to be charged on all bullion taken to the mint to be coined, is proposed as a method of bridging over this difficulty. To effect this such a charge or seigniorage would have to be proportionate to the amount of bullion subtracted from each sovereign.

It is desirable to trace out what effect such a charge would have. It would be—

The sovereign, thus diminished in weight, would still possess exactly the same purchasing power—within the limits of the country—as it previously had. Beyond those limits, as shown by the practice of the French mint authorities, it would still retain its value. It would not be, as the present sovereign now is, undervalued in consequence of the mint charges of other nations.

An objection may be, and has already been, made to the alteration—that such a change would be unfair to all those creditors who had made contracts in the old coin, and would be repaid in the new. This objection is sufficiently disposed of by the fact that, as mentioned before, the purchasing power of the new coin will be equal to that of the old.

If any doubt existed, a further security might be given under all circumstances, by adopting the plan recommended by Colonel Smith, the late Master of the Calcutta Mint. His proposal is, 'that the new sovereign shall be changeable for gold bullion at the present price.' This would cause the value of the new coin to remain equal with that of the present coin, exactly as the value of the existing silver coinage is maintained. The present shilling, even when of full weight, is by no means worth its weight in the metal of which it is made. The pound troy of standard silver is, and has been in England, since 1817, coined into sixty-six shillings. The value of the shilling, thus debased, is maintained at the proper level by the coin being limited, as a legal tender, to 42s. by tale. The result is obvious. Silver of the value of something like 18s. does service for 20s. What is more, this has been the case for years, and no one has ever been injured by it. And the same effect would surely follow if Colonel Smith's plan were carried out. If the holder of 100 sovereigns were to desire to convert them into gold, he would take them to the Bank of England, who would give, as now, a certain quantity of bar gold of standard fineness, at £3 17s. 10¹/2d. per oz. The sovereign would, to a certain extent, become a 'token' coin; that is to say, each sovereign would, as the shilling is now, be worth something less than the stamped value. But it would, within the limits of the convention, that is, within the limits of the civilized world, be current exactly to the extent of its nominal value; and any one desiring to employ it beyond the limits of the Convention would be placed in exactly the position in which he is now, by simply taking his gold coins to the Bank of England and exchanging them for bar gold. A further advantage would arise from this diminution in weight of the sovereign. As the sovereign is worth a fraction over ten rupees in India, it follows that the internationalization of the English sovereign, and the reducing it by about twopence, to make it equal with twenty-five francs or five dollars, would immediately rectify the present difference between the British sovereign and the 10-rupee piece; and the rupee, the British florin, and the Australian florin would, in the international scheme of coinage, ultimately become absolutely identical, so far at least as gold coinage is concerned.[4]

Any alteration of coin in so backward a country as India would have to be introduced with great caution; but the advantage of assimilating the currency to that of this country cannot be doubted. There are great disadvantages in allowing coins, nearly identical in value, to circulate together; and if the 'sovereign' remains at the present value, what Mr. Jevons anticipates may not be unlikely to happen.

The extent of the populations employing the 20-franc piece as their principal gold coin, has already been mentioned. Some persons may say, 'It is true these nations more than double in number the persons whose basis of accounts is the pound sterling; but still there may be more "sovereigns" in existence than 20-franc pieces.' Now, it is by no means as easy to enumerate the coins in a country as to make a census of the inhabitants. You may count the dwellers in the poorest hovel. But you cannot count the coins hidden under the hearth, or in the end of the stocking. It is, however, by no means clear that the amount of British gold coin in existence is as much as that circulated by several other nations. Sovereigns, so far from preponderating, appear to be in an absolute minority. At the Paris Conference of 1867, the amounts of the gold coinage of Great Britain, France, and the United States were stated as follows:—

France, from 1793 to 1866, of the   value of	£262,444,160
Great Britain, 1816 to 1866	187,068,290
United States, 1792 to 1866	169,107,318	[5]

It is, of course, impossible to state with certainty what proportion of coins struck at any mint at any time remain in existence afterwards. Some coins are called in, some are lost, others find their way to the melting-pot: it is impossible to say how many continue to circulate. One thing, however, is certain, that whatever casualties of this nature any coins are exposed to, British coins feel to the fullest extent. The rapidity of circulation in Great Britain tends to great deterioration from wear and tear. The absence of seigniorage causes our coinage to be relatively undervalued in proportion to other gold coins.[6] Even supposing British coins to remain current as long as those of other nations, they are certainly less numerous. They are probably far less frequently hoarded. The coinage returns from 1851 to 1866 inclusive show the relative proportions even more clearly than the earlier statements. Our Mint was less fertile during that time, than either the Mints of France or the United States.

years 1851 to 1866.
Great Britain struck in gold coins	£91,000,000
The United States	131,600,000
France	197,400,000
	420,000,000

The amount of gold coin in a country is very far from being an indication, either of its wealth or of its business transactions; but these figures suffice to show that the sovereign does not hold the pre-eminence frequently ascribed to it. Even if the proceeds of the Sydney Mint are added in, the sovereign will still be found in the minority. The Sydney Mint was established in 1855. The coinage has been as follows:—

Years.	Coinage.	Average per annum.
7 years 1855 to 1861	£ 8,438,162	£1,205,451
5     "    1862 to 1866	11,889,838	2,377,967
	£20,328,000

And it must not be assumed that all these Australian sovereigns are in circulation now. An imperfection in the process of refining incident on carrying on that operation in a new country, left a certain portion of silver at all events in the earlier mintages, and this circumstance is believed to have made these coins favourites with the 'melters.' Sir A. Donaldson, formerly Colonial Secretary, and Colonial Treasurer to the Government of New South Wales, gave evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Sydney Branch Mint, appointed in 1862; and, after stating that he believed that a considerable number of the Australian sovereigns have reached England, added, 'as a matter of fact, I think they all find their way to the refiner.' Mr. W. Miller, of the Bank of England, when examined before the same Committee, 'understood that upwards of 2,000,000 were sent to this country some time ago, and that they have been melted.' This was before the proclamation making these coins legal tender in this country. They have probably been less frequently melted since that proclamation. But it cannot be assumed that the whole twenty millions are still in circulation. Even including all of them, the sovereign would not be the preponderating coin as far as number is concerned.

Mr. Hendriks, a very eminent statistician, who has paid much attention to questions connected with the coinage (vide Journal of the Society of Arts, February 14, 1868), has given to the public the grounds upon which he bases his opinion that, although the sovereign and the dollar may be more widely diffused than the Napoleon, there are now current in the world twice as many Napoleons as sovereigns, four times as many as half-eagle or five-dollar pieces, and about one-third more than sovereigns and half-eagle pieces together. This writer has also made the following calculations, showing the relative importance of the United States, England, and France, as the chief manufacturing countries of coinage since 1792. The object of the division of the results into separate periods is to show the altered condition since the gold discoveries in California and Australia.

PERCENTAGE OF THE COINAGE OF THE THREE NATIONS TO THEIR TOTAL COINAGE.
	Years	Years	Years
	1792 to 1851.	1861 to 1866.	1792 to 1866
United States	181/3	311/2	271/3
England	482/3	211/2	301/3
France	33	47	421/3
	100	100	100

In further commenting, in the pages of the Economist, on these statistics, Mr. Hendriks observes:—

As some persons may say, 'Other nations need a larger gold coinage than we do, because their paper money and banking systems are not like ours; but their coinage is no proof of the extent of their business transactions,' it is best to mention that the united export and import trade of the European countries alone, who have already joined the Monetary Convention, or have signed preliminary treaties of adherence thereto, amounts to no less than five hundred million pounds sterling per annum at the present time, or to nearly one-fourth more than the aggregate exports and imports of the United Kingdom. It will now be desirable to mention the charges made for coining, or seigniorage, at the principal mints. In England no charge is made; but the 1¹/2d paid to the Bank on each ounce of standard gold bullion, amounts to about 0·1605 (say 3s. 2¹/2d.) per cent. In France it is different. When gold is carried to the mint there, coin is returned for it, with a certain deduction. This deduction is about ¹/4 per cent. Beyond this there is some delay, practically, before the coin is returned. On an average the loss of interest on the money, caused by this delay, amounts to about ³/4 per cent. Altogether, the charge is about 1 per cent., or more than six times the charge now made in England. In Prussia the charge is ¹/2 per cent., and the delay is about the same as in Paris. In America and India it is about the same.[7]

It appears from these statements that there is nearly a universal consensus of practice in charging a seigniorage. There is also a nearly universal consensus of opinion on the part of the leading authorities in political economy (such as Adam Smith and J. S. Mill) that such a seigniorage, when moderate, really enhances the value of the coin to the extent of the charge. If, therefore, this opinion is correct, it follows that the gold coinage of England, where no charge is made, will be depreciated—that is, will not obtain its real value in those countries where a charge is made. It is not difficult to show that this is the case in France; and if in one country where a seigniorage is charged, it follows, of course, in all of them.

A British sovereign of full weight contains about equal intrinsic quantities of pure gold with twenty-five francs twenty centimes.

The reason for this must be that the British coinage is gratuitous. A sovereign may be regarded from two points of view—as a certain weight of gold of a known fineness, manufactured into a uniform shape by the officials of the mint, and as the current coin of the realm. At present no charge is made for the process of manufacture. The question to be decided is this, Is the coin, plus the process of manufacture, worth more than the same weight of gold before that process is performed? It appears that it is even worth less in France.

If the intrinsic value of the pure gold contained in the sovereign is considered, it is equal to 25·2079 at par; but the Mint tariff giving the price of purchase makes it only 25·12 at par, a deduction of about nine centimes on each sovereign. In estimating it thus,

It appears by this that the pound sterling is practically undervalued 2d. in France; one penny about in the intrinsic worth of the gold; and another, the cost of coining the metal, including the loss for delay in so doing.

Any alteration in the standard of the coinage is, beyond doubt, a measure which should not be carelessly undertaken. Those opposed to such a measure have stated that the standard had remained unchanged in this country for more than a century and a half. Great weight has also been attributed by some persons to the resolution of the House of Commons of 20th October, 1696, and passed again in the same words on the 12th June, 1822, 'That this House will not alter the standard of the gold and silver coins of this kingdom, in fineness, weight, or denomination.' A solemn declaration beyond doubt; but notwithstanding this, several changes have at various times been made in the currency of the realm.

In 1696, the year of the 'Resolution' silver was the sole legal tender.

In 1717, silver ceased to be the sole standard, and the double, or alternative standard of gold or silver, was adopted. This change was made under the advice of Sir Isaac Newton.

In 1774, silver was restricted, as a legal tender, to sums under £25 by tale, and above £25 by weight, but gold remained a legal tender without restriction.

In 1783, both gold and silver, without any restriction, became legal tender.

In 1797, bank notes were made legal tender. The effect of this change is well known.

In 1798, silver was made legal tender as in 1774.

In 1817, gold alone was made legal tender, silver being debased and restricted as mentioned before.

In the face of these alterations it is impossible to appeal to history for a proof that it is not lawful to make any desirable change.

But some objectors say, If the British Mint no longer coins gratis, gold bullion will no longer make its way to this country as freely as it now does. At the present time England is the great bullion exchange of the world, because it is the country where the mint charges are lowest. Deprive this country of this advantage, and the stream of bullion will be directed elsewhere. If this argument is of any validity, of course all, or at least the greater part, of the bullion which has already reached this country, must have found its way to the Mint. But what is the real fact? That not so much as the ninth part of the gold bullion imported into this country within the last four years, has been coined into British money.

The following figures are taken from the Statistical Abstract for 1869:—

COMPUTED REAL VALUE OF THE REGISTERED IMPORTS OF GOLD AND SILVER BULLION, AND SPECIE, INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM.
	Gold.	Silver.	Total.
1865	£14,485,570	£6,976,641	£21,462,211
1866	23,509,641	10,777,498	34,287,139
1867	15,800,159	8,020,888	23,821,047
1868	17,136,177	7,716,418	24,852,595
			£104,422,992

AMOUNT OF GOLD AND SILVER MONEYS COINED AT THE ROYAL MINT.
	Gold.	Silver.	Total.
1865	£2,367,614	£501,732	£2,869,346
1866	5,076,676	493,416	5,570,092
1867	496,397	193,842	690,239
1868	1,653,384	301,356	1,954,740
			£11,084,417

Looking at these figures, it will scarcely be argued that the fact of gratuitous coinage at the Royal Mint is of any power in attracting gold bullion to this country.

The charges made on coining in other countries amount to large sums in the aggregate. It is desirable to show what these sums are.

It has been calculated that, upon each million pounds sterling worth of gold coin delivered, the charge (including adjustment for loss of interest in the fixed delays for delivery) amounts in all

England to	£ 1,605
France	10,490
United States	15,000
Australia	13,330
India	13,330[8]

It is of itself a sufficient answer to those who think that the imposition of a seigniorage might prevent bullion from being brought to this country for coinage, to note what has taken place where such a charge is made. Both France and the United States have coined considerably more gold during the sixteen years mentioned above than this country. Yet the charge in the United States is nearly ten times that in Great Britain. The coinage at the Mint of Sydney has nearly doubled, yet the charge in Sydney is nearly as high as in the United States. The returns for the years 1867-1868 have not, as far as we are aware, yet reached this country. But considering the great and progressive increase in the Sydney coinages, it is highly probable that the coins struck in Australia during those years have greatly exceeded those minted in London.

To sum up:

It is at present open to this country to join the International Monetary Convention already in force between several of the principal European States.

It is probable that this Convention will shortly include the most important powers of the civilized world.

The population of the countries which have already given in their adherence to this Convention, greatly exceed in number the inhabitants of the British Islands. Their trade is more important in value than our own.

The disadvantages of being outside such a Convention are very great.

In joining it, a seigniorage would have to be charged on all British gold coinages.

A similar seigniorage is always charged on the coinages at the Sydney Mint; and the coinage at the Sydney Mint is now large and increasing—in the last two years probably more than that of the English Mint.

This seigniorage is no disadvantage to anyone. On the contrary, it possesses several advantages. At present, the last holder of a light sovereign is exposed to loss. This is unfair, as probably the last holder has done nothing to cause the coin to be light.

Were a seigniorage imposed, the first holder, the man who thinks he can gain something by causing the coin to be minted, would have—as is fair—to provide against the depreciation. Further, the first holder would have to pay for the work he has done; i.e., the manufacture of the coin—a charge now defrayed by the country.

It is clear that the absence of a seigniorage is not the cause which attracts gold to England, as barely the ninth part of the bullion imported finds its way to the Mint.

It is also clear that alterations, one at least of far more importance than the imposition of a seigniorage, have at former times been made in the status of the currency of the country.

To conclude, in the words of an early pioneer of British commerce, 'The exchanges practised in England, and principally in London, are confined within a narrow scantling, being but as a rivolet issuing out of the great streame of those exchanges that are used beyond the seas.'

Thus wrote 'that eminently deserving author,' Mr. Lewes Roberts, the 'delineator' of the Merchant's Mappe of Commerce in 1638. The 'true dimensions of our English traffique' even then excited his limited admiration and wonder. He could only imagine either that this commerce was 'at its full perfection, or that it aymes higher than can hitherto, by my weake sight, be either seen or discerned.' To us, 'the full streame' of that trade seems but 'a petty rivolet,' and we only wonder how, with the complicated and varying systems of money then in practice, with measures of length and quantity differing in almost every place of importance in Europe, any commerce could be kept up between differing nations. It is no longer needful to note now, as it was then, that different weights and measures were to be found in the principal cities even of the same country. It is no longer needful to bear in mind, as it was then, that there was a difference of exchange between places close to each other, and within the same territories. Commerce now would not bear such fetters. The vigour of the early days of trade surmounted those obstacles as the rush of a mountain stream drives it unhindered over rocks that vainly bar its course. In these times affairs approach what has been termed the stationary state. As the stream expands, the current becomes more gentle. As facilities for trade become greater, a smaller obstacle suffices to turn that trade from its course. It is now far more easy to give a vessel the option of discharging her cargo in one port or another, in one country or another, than it was then. Increased opportunities of intercourse render any change of the line of traffic far less difficult now than at any previous time. A smaller difference in profit renders such alterations of destination more desirable and more necessary. The course of commerce has just been compared to that of a stream—as dashing rapidly down the mountain glen, or slowly moving through the rich and level plain. Is it permissible to carry on the simile still further?—to watch how, as in Holland, a trifling artificially-produced change of level is sufficient to divert the scarcely perceptible flow of the almost stagnant flood—to add the waters of the Rhine to the Yssel, or of the Waal to the Lech? So as a general extension of wealth brings all countries more closely to one uniform condition, is it not needful to remove those obstacles which may cause similar diversions of our trade? Is it not needful to take a step onward, and to supply our own people with those advantages which are now possessed by many—will soon be possessed by almost all civilized nations? Among such advantages, to provide a coinage which, while entailing no expense on the country, either at its creation or for its maintenance, may be truly international in character, and aid the streams of our commerce to maintain their course around the globe.

---

Art. III.—(1.) Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury. Edited by his Grandson, the Third Earl. 4 vols. Second edition. London: 1845.

(2.) Letters of the first Earl of Malmesbury, his Family, and Friends, from 1745 to 1820. Edited, with Notes, &c., by his Grandson, the Right Hon. the Earl of Malmesbury, G.C.B. 2 vols. London: 1870.

From 1745 to 1820—this was the lifetime of James Harris, afterwards first Earl of Malmesbury; and such is the period over which the subject-matter of these two works extends. A more memorable period is not to be found in the annals of this country, or even in the long and more momentous history of Europe. It bridges the chasm which separates the old world of Europe from the new. It shows us that elder world in its last stage; it also shows us the beginning of that new and better order of things amongst which we now live. In the earlier period of those seventy-five years, we see the thrones of Louis the Fifteenth, of Frederick the Great, and Catherine of Russia, standing high above the heads of a crushed and miserable people, who counted for nothing either in their policy or in their pleasures. The simple facts of that old régime of royal absolutism now read like a monstrous dream. Vice and despotism in the palace, license and intrigue at the Court, penury in the cottage, and degradation everywhere, such is hardly an exaggeration of the general condition of the Continent at that time, and simple truth as regards France, who then, as since, boasted her leadership of civilization. As is always the case in analogous periods, the people themselves had sunk into a moral torpor. There were no national movements or aspirations. Religion, freedom, and the thirst for military conquest, are the three great motive powers of humanity. But all of these were then dead or in abeyance. Humanity had settled on its lees. Even mental philosophy, which so often flourishes in such dead times of a nation's history, threw its teachings into the scale in favour of an ignoble life; and while a pitiless Scepticism robbed men of heaven and all their religious beliefs, Materialism bade them "eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die" for ever, like the trees of the wood and the beasts of the fields. While Philosophy robbed man of his moral freedom and a future life, Royalty denied him his personal and political liberty and plundered his pockets. In truth, the whole upper crust of society had become heartless, debased, and corrupt, while beneath was a seething mass of suffering, ignorance, and savagery. And so the upper crust, with king, priests, and nobles—crowns, croziers, and coronets—gave way and fell into an abyss of devouring fire, like that which burst up of yore beneath Sodom and Gomorrah, devastating the corrupt Cities of the Plain. The old world of Europe was cast into the furnace, and all things became new—Providence overruling the wrath of man to its own wise and merciful ends.

All history is an ennobling study, alike in its events and its examples; but life is short, and it is the French Revolution that commences the period of history of deepest importance to the present age. Beyond that chasm, so rudely severing the old world of Europe from the new, lies the realm of the historian; on this side begins a drama of opinions and events constituting by far the most useful field of study in secular and political knowledge. Changed since then, and still changing, as are the territorial arrangements of Europe, the conquests of Napoleon contributed greatly to the rise of the principle of Nationality which is now the great power at work in the alteration of boundaries and the shaping of kingdoms. It is true, Napoleon meant to conquer only for himself and for France. He sought to found a vast empire, with vassal kingdoms under the rule of his brothers and relatives. But in establishing this empire, he swept away a great deal of the obstructive rubbish of the former time. By expelling the Germans from Italy, and also by creating a titular King of Rome, he paved the way for the subsequent aspirations and movement of the Italians in favour of nationality and independence, which have at length borne their full fruits in the establishment of a free and united Italy. In like manner, by sweeping away a whole host of petty princedoms in Germany, he simplified the subsequent course of events towards a unification of Germany; while the iron despotism which he exercised in that country first compelled all Germans to feel the tie of brotherhood, in the glorious uprising of the Fatherland in 1813 against the foreign foe. Poland, too, during the ascendancy of Napoleon, temporarily (but only for the great conqueror's own purposes) regained in part its old existence, thereby keeping alive the hope for renewed independence; a hope which, improbable as our expectations may seem, we think will yet be realized amid the great trouble, and changes impending over the Continent. But still more memorable, and worthy of thoughtful study, are the times of the French Revolution, from the influence which they have produced upon the current of political, social, and religious thought, in subsequent times. A whole flood of new ideas, principles, and opinions was then poured upon the world. Some of these were wise and good, others were detestable, but nearly all of them were given to the world in so crude a form and in so savage or ruthless a spirit, as to make them as a whole so repulsive that even yet some of their excellencies are but little known or acknowledged. Every one recognises, however, the vast influence which that grand and terrible Revolution has exercised upon the whole current of subsequent thought; and if Europe has yet to undergo one more great upheaving of democratic revolution (as we believe it has), we may rely upon it that some of the more extreme and, at present, all but forgotten dogmas of the first revolution will again appear on the scene; including, we regret to say, that terrible development of infidelity and materialism, against which even Robespierre himself, with his firm belief in the Supreme Being and a future life, was unable successfully to contend. That storm of blasphemy and utter scepticism, in its worst features at least, soon blew over—and let us trust that such will be the case again; but any one who has watched the turn of thought on the Continent, and in Germany even more than in France, must expect any new outburst of democratic revolution to be accompanied by a manifesto of infidelity and an attempt to banish religion from the fabric and principles of society, in a manner only too similar to that which formed the worst feature of the first French Revolution.

The first Earl of Malmesbury was in public life, for the greater part of the time holding the highest diplomatic appointments abroad, during the whole course of these momentous events. From a vantage-ground enjoyed by few men either of this or any other country, he beheld the Courts and peoples of Europe both before the deluge and after it; and although he withdrew from public office before the termination of the great war with France, he continued to the end to be confidentially consulted by the Ministers of the time. The first of the two works whose titles are prefixed is by far the most valuable and important. All the leading men of the day—monarchs, statesmen, and generals—figure constantly in the diaries and correspondence. The work has been quoted with advantage to history by some of our ablest writers, and not least so by Lord Stanhope, in his 'Life of Pitt.' It constitutes a mine of historical and political facts; and though published too late to be made use of by our chief historians of the French war and of the immediately preceding times of the Empress Catherine and Frederick the Great, its value is fully recognised by the writers of the personal and political memoirs which have recently issued from the press. The second of the works on our list is of a lighter character, in which the incidents of fashionable life mingle largely with matters of State and Parliamentary politics. The one work shows us the grand movements of the time, the other gives us the bye-play. The latter, to which we chiefly confine our remarks, is a selection from private letters received by three generations of the Harris family. They are confidential exchanges of intelligence and ideas, in which the hopes and fears, the expectations, disappointments, and impressions of our ancestors are given in the very words in which they were described. The noble editor of these letters calls them 'waifs of the past,' but they possess a twofold interest, firstly, as illustrating the opinions and social habits of that past time; and secondly, they are reliable indications of what public feeling was at their date with regard to politics, society, and the general condition of our own and foreign countries:—

The chief recipient of the earlier letters in this collection was Mr. James Harris, the father of the first Earl of Malmesbury. The Harris family had lived quietly on an estate in Wiltshire from the middle of the 16th century; and Mr. James Harris first broke through the hereditary sameness of existence by becoming one of the most distinguished scholars of his day. Besides 'Philosophical Treatises,' he published a work on grammar, called 'Hermes,' which the accomplished Bishop Lowth styled 'the most beautiful example of analysis produced since the days of Aristotle,' and which obtained so high a reputation that it was afterwards translated and published by command of the French Directory in 1796. He was member of Parliament for Christchurch, which seat he held till his death, in 1780; was made a Lord of the Treasury in 1763, and in 1744 he became Secretary and Comptroller of the Queen's Household. When he first took his seat in the House of Commons, John Townshend asked who he was, and on being told that he had written on grammar and harmony, replied 'Why does he come here, where he will hear neither?' His literary talent and high personal character procured for Mr. Harris a wide circle of friends and acquaintances among the leading men of the times; and owing to the influence he thus acquired he was enabled to launch his son, afterwards the first Lord, early into public life. The present Earl (who edits these letters), speaking of the 'fêtes and social intercourse in the venerable city of Sarum,' where his great-grandfather resided, observes regretfully 'how much less of cliques and class categories then existed among the nobility and their neighbours than in the present day.'

Mr. Harris was passionately fond of music and art, and wrote treatises upon them, which indicate a more lively and sympathetic nature than would he inferred from the dry philosophy of his other works. His wife moved much in society, and appears to have possessed a similar taste for the fine arts. The best artists of the day were visitors at their house in Salisbury. The family went frequently to the theatre, and in the letters we find critical observations on most of the new dramas of the time. There are two letters from David Garrick, asking permission to bring out at Drury Lane a musical pastoral, called 'Damo and Amyrillis,' which, the editor says, 'was in Mr. Harris's hands,' but which, there seems to us reason to believe, was actually composed by him. As might be expected of a musical family, they attended the concerts and the opera, and by-and-by we read of 'the great house in the Haymarket,' and Italian singers come to the front. Then, as now, the Opera was a perilous venture, and both the managers and singers occasionally came to grief. Of one of the favourite singers of the day we read as follows:—

A close friendship existed between Mr. Harris and Handel, who left him, by will, his portrait, and all his operas in manuscript. The very first letter in this collection has a touching allusion to the great musician, whose intellect had been affected by his labours, and who had become very eccentric. The Countess of Salisbury, a relative of Mr. Harris, writes to him thus (in 1745):—

In the next letter, the Rev. W. Harris writes to Mrs. Harris thus:—

Handel recovered from the mental affection; and five years later (1750) we find the Earl of Shaftesbury writing of him as follows:—

Music appears to have held a more prominent place in public amusements a century ago than is generally imagined; and when Giardini undertook the management of the Opera 'at the great house in the Haymarket' in 1764, Mrs. Harris opines that he will meet with no small difficulty, because the 'greatest part of the orchestra, and almost all the dancers, are engaged at the play-houses.' Giardini—a Piedmontese violinist and composer, who, after residing thirty years in England, went to Russia, where he died in 1793—came to grief in this operatic venture, and afterwards started an Opera in 'Mrs. Cornely's' rooms. Indeed, the Haymarket house, great as its celebrity became in the present century, was by no means a famous place in those times. In the same year (1764) we read in one of the letters, 'Almack is going to build some most magnificent rooms behind his house—one much larger than that at Carlisle House,' i.e., Mrs. Cornely's. This latter was the favourite place of resort at that time, and for many years afterwards. It was a place where subscription-concerts were held (one series mentioned in 1764, consisted of twenty-one concerts, of Bach's music, Cocchi's, and Abel's, for five guineas), where the Opera for some time had its seat; and also where masquerade parties and other fashionable entertainments were held. In 1770, we read of 'fifteen or sixteen young men of fashion and fortune giving a masquerade at Cornely's, to 800 people;' and in the following year we have a full account of a masquerade given at the same place by 'the gentlemen of the Tuesday Nights' Club.' Mrs. Harris, writing to her son (the future Earl) at Madrid, says: 'Mr. Charles Fox has offered to supply us with tickets. Your sisters and I mean to go; 'tis the only masquerade I wish them to go to. I shall try my utmost to persuade Mr. Harris (her husband) to accompany us. One difficulty is in the way; that is, no gentlemen are admitted in dominos.' Mr. Harris could not be persuaded to join the fashionable assembly, but Mr. Fox—who had just commenced his official career, as a Lord of the Admiralty—was, at that time, more at home in such parties than in Parliament. Mrs. Harris was greatly delighted with it. The following is part of her account of it:—

Mrs. Cornely's rooms soon became the object of a jealous, and let us hope unfounded, attack. Giardini had opened an Opera there, which was 'greatly injuring that of Mr. Hobart's in the Haymarket;' and the latter gentleman 'informed against them' as an unlicensed house. There was a strong party on either side, 'harmoniacs' and 'anti-harmoniacs,' and the latter party brought forward scandalous charges. Only a week after the above-mentioned masquerade, Mrs. Harris writes thus:—

There is a wonderful want of logical sequence in these few lines; and as to whether the scandalous charge was true or false, Mrs. Harris apparently was as little in a position to judge as we are now. Mrs. Cornely was originally Mademoiselle Pompeiati, a singer. She hired Carlisle House, in Soho-square, and established balls and assemblies by subscription. This place of fashionable resort, however, as well as its mistress, quickly thereafter declined in reputation. In 1774, we find Mrs. Harris writing:—'I went to Carlysle House, which Bach has taken for his concerts; the furniture, like Mrs. Cornely, is much on the decline; but, in my opinion, the place is better for the concert than Almack's.' Bach soon left these rooms, and opened a place of his own, splendidly fitted up. But even he was not allowed to carry on his performances without opposition, although of a different kind from that which proved fatal to Mrs. Cornely. 'Lord Hillsborough, Sir James Porter, and some others (writes Mrs. Harris) have entered into a subscription to prosecute Bach for a nuisance, and I was told the jury had found a bill against him. One would scarce imagine his house could molest either of these men, for Bach's is at the corner of Hanover-street.'

Amateur theatrical performances were in those days in great vogue among the upper classes, and usually took place in the country residences of the nobility and gentry in the winter months—during the Parliamentary recess, when even members of the Ministry (notably Mr. Fox) took part in them. Winterslow House was the famous place for these amateur performances. The ordinary audience consisted of the servants of the house and the neighbouring townspeople, as well as a select circle of visitors, which on one occasion included the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, the Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Pembroke, Lady Charles and Lord Robert Spencer, Lord Dunkellin, Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, &c. At the close of one of those performances at Winterslow House (in January, 1774), in which Mr. Fox and another member of his family acted, a lamentable accident occurred, which destroyed the greater part of the mansion. Mrs. Harris writes of it next day as follows:—

Amateur dramatic and operatic performances were a frequent amusement at Mr. Harris's house in Salisbury. Miss Gertrude, the elder daughter, was an adept in such performances, and, moreover, retained this taste throughout the whole of her long life. This lady afterwards became the wife of Mr. Robinson, younger son of Lord Grantham. She lived, in the London world, to the age of eighty-five, preserving to the last her faculties and cheerful character. She used to give private theatricals at her house, in which Lord de Grey, Mr. F. Robinson, Hugh Elliott, and Canning were the chief actors—Canning writing the prologues and epilogues, which are still extant. In the letters we find frequent allusions to the performances in Mr. Harris's family residence; but we shall content ourselves with mentioning one of them, which aroused the satirical ire of some provincial Juvenal, whose poetic outburst serves to show the great, indeed too great, change between the notions on such subjects then and now. Mrs. Harris, in a letter to her son, thus alludes to a rehearsal of the piece, which a few days afterwards was performed, as usual, to an audience of the townsfolk and the visitors at the house:—

The satirical verses which this lady performance called forth appeared in the Bath Journal (Nov. 17, 1774), entitled 'On the Ladies at the Close of Salisbury, now acting Elvira;' and Mrs. Harris opines that 'they were sent from some vinegar merchant in Salisbury who could not get admitted to the performance. The verses are as follows:—

If the anonymous 'vinegar merchant' could have been transported into the present time, how much more would he have been shocked by the 'change which time affords!' Could he now take a trip to London (so serious a matter a century ago, but made so quickly and cheaply now by means of a return ticket by rail), what would he think of the state of matters in our theatres? It was only in private theatricals that ladies donned the male costume a century ago, and they were always draped with the strictest propriety. But what do we see in London theatres now? Not only in the so-called 'burlesques' does the main 'fun,' such as it is, consist in the transposition of the sexes—men taking female characters, and women the part of males—but the costumes of the female performers, rich and picturesque as they usually are, are devised expressly to make a prodigal display of the person, a minimum of clothes apparently being the acme of perfection kept in view by the theatrical costumiers, and by the ladies themselves. The female figure is now so prodigally displayed that a handsome girl, especially if she has well-turned legs, is sought after on that account alone. 'My shape is my fortune, sir, she said!' would now be the burden of the song of these demi-nude demoiselles of the stage. To such a pitch has this new method of attracting audiences been carried, that this class of performances, or rather exhibitions, are now known in theatrical parlance as 'leg-pieces.' It is impossible not to see what a demoralising influence such performances must have upon the rising generation, indeed upon the whole audience. It is a lamentable sign of the times: it is a symptom of degeneration, of corruption, of a fatal laxity of manners. The relation between the sexes is becoming seriously deteriorated; and woman, instead of being peculiarly an object of respectful regard or chivalrous admiration, tends to become simply an object of pleasure, seeking to please at any cost. Most rightly did the Lord Chamberlain recently issue his fiat against the short skirts of the ballet-dancers: but the fiat has been vain, as all such injunctions in this 'free' country must be when public opinion refuses to support it, or at last allows itself to be overpowered by the crowd of playgoers who delight in such spectacles. A gangrene of selfish and demoralising pleasure is now eating into the heart of this country; and we fear the social malady will not be checked save by the advent of some terrible national calamity—let us hope not so terrible as that by which our neighbour France is now being purged as by fire.

Before quitting the lighter and gossipy items to be found in these letters, let us say a word or two about the rich Court costumes of the period. We need not speak of the dresses of the ladies; for although the fashion of those dresses has changed, indeed is ceaselessly changing, in richness and costliness female attire at the present time is quite on a par with what it was when George the Second was king. But a notable change has taken place in the full dress of the men. Probably only a minority of our readers can remember the time when colour disappeared from the evening costume of gentlemen: it is nearly forty years since coloured coats, with white or coloured silk or velvet waistcoats vanished from the private dinner-party and ball-room—though the taste for colour is now reviving. Warren, in Ten Thousand a Year, dresses his hero Gammon for the evening in blue coat with metal buttons, white waistcoat, and black trousers—and such was a quiet evening dress of that time. In the long interval since then, there has been a monotonous reign of simple black cloth. The change in the Court or gala dress has been still more striking. Apropos of this change, a philosophic writer has remarked, that whenever any class abandons its distinctive costume, it is a sign of decadence and coming extinction. There is some truth in the remark, but it is partial truth only. It ignores the fact that the peculiar source of distinction for each class, and especially with the nobility, who are or ought to be the leaders of the nation, varies from age to age with the spirit of the times. It might as well be said that our nobility verged on extinction three centuries ago, when they ceased to wear mail and to lead their retainers to the field. No doubt the French Revolution, with its levelling doctrines, and the principle of social equality (not new in this country), tended to abolish the 'bravery' of dress previously distinctive of the nobility; but the change was far more due to the gravity of the times, the sober spirit natural during a most critical period of the country, and of the economy rendered necessary throughout the community at large by the heavy costs of the great war with France. Indeed, the fact that a corresponding change took place in the gala dress of the middle classes serves to show that there was nothing exceptional or peculiar in the diminished finery of the aristocratic costume. All classes alike felt the sobering influence of the time, and then, as in all such cases, a corresponding change took place in costume.

Firstly, then, as to the gala costume of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George III., who certainly cannot be suspected of too great a devotion to fashion or the frivolities of dress. In a Drawing-room in St. James's in 1745, the Prince of Wales wore a light-blue velvet coat, laced with silver, and the sleeves of it brocade—as was also his waistcoat. On another occasion he 'had on a crimson damask laced with silver, very rich and handsome.' Again, the Countess of Shaftesbury, writing to her cousin, Mr. Harris, in December, 1754, 'enlivening her epistle with a detail of the birthday finery' at Court, says: 'The Prince of Wales looked as blooming as his clothes; they were a blossom-coloured velvet, with gold and lace down before; the waistcoat and cuffs a rich white-and-gold stuff. Prince Edward's was a yellow and silver velvet, with a silver lace before, turned up with white and silver cuffs, and the waistcoat the same.' She adds: 'My lord's clothes and mine were both admired. His was a very rich scarlet and gold velvet coat—waistcoat and breeches the same; and mine a gold stuff with purple spots on the ground, and coloured sprigs of flowers that looked like embroidery.' On a similar occasion, 'Lord Kildare was unexceptionably the finest of any gentleman there: his coat was a light-blue silk, embroidered all over with gold and silver in a very curious manner, turned up with white satin, embroidered as the other; the waistcoat the same as his sleeves.' His Majesty (George II.), however, by no means set the fashion in gala dress. Even at Drawing-rooms, we read, 'he dressed in his usual way, without aiming at finery of any sort;' his usual costume being a deep-blue cloth coat, trimmed with silver lace, and waistcoat the same. At another Birthday Drawing-room, 'the King was dressed in black velvet; the sleeves of his coat and his waistcoat were red, embroidered with gold.' The last time his Majesty's costume at Drawing-rooms is mentioned is in 1754, six years before his death, when we find the following curious statement, that 'his Majesty had told Mr. Shutz [the fashionable German tailor of the day] he would have him bespeak him a very handsome suit, but not to make a boy or a fop of him;' and as the result of this consultation with his tailor, his Majesty appeared in brown, very richly laced with silver, and turned up with a blue cuff laced, and a blue and silver waistcoat.' We read of 'very mortifying disasters' happening at some of these Birthday Drawing-rooms. On one such occasion, the Countess of Salisbury writes:—

As might be expected, there were flirtations, runaway matches, and mésalliances in those days, as they are still. One of the beauties immortalized by the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and whose portrait is preserved at Holland House, gave rise to much gossip by marrying a 'player:'—

Gretna Green, on the Scottish borders, although it has now relapsed into the obscurity natural to such a poor little hamlet (although it still gives name to a railway station), was a famous place in those days in connection with runaway matches; indeed, it was so even within the memory of the present generation. A century ago, we often read of lovers having 'gone to Scotland.' Among others—

Whatever amount of what is commonly called 'scandal,' and which merits a worse name, there may have been in our aristocratic circles in the latter half of last century, there is but little trace of it to be found in these letters. But in one of Mrs. Harris's letters to her son, giving him the talk and gossip of the town, there is a mysterious-looking allusion to some such matrimonial scandal, which reads as follows:—'Lady S—— B—— is in lodgings at Knightsbridge. She says her husband [whom doubtless she had deserted] is a most angelic man; but her attachment for the other is so great, she must live with him.'

What was the 'Pantheon' in those days? Whatever else it was, it appears to have been a sort of assembly-rooms for balls and dances; and, though frequented by persons of rank and of the highest respectability, its doors were not impregnable against the entrance of 'soiled doves' and doubtful reputations—whose presence, however, was against the rules of the place, for, as the following embarrassing incident to one of Mrs. Harris's daughters shows, they were liable to be turned out. Mrs. Harris thus writes of it to her son:—

The domain of personal incident crops up richly and interestingly throughout these volumes, and comes freshly and truthfully upon us in the correspondence of the hour. Whether we read of Lady ——, who ran away with her footman John, and sent back her fine clothes, 'because she would no longer have any need for them;' or of the deep gambling and other queer affairs of Charles Fox in his dissipated youth; or of the sayings and doings of the notorious Wilkes, who so shocked society, or of his duel, in which he bore himself so honourably, the epistolary narrative is full of naïveté and interest. The second marriage of Lord Coventry (whose first wife was the elder of the beautiful Miss Gunnings) must have been what is now called 'good fun.' The marriage party was all assembled in stately magnificence; but his Grace of Canterbury was from home, and the licence did not arrive! But the party was equal to the emergency—'so it was agreed that they should eat the dinner, rather than it should be spoiled. So to dinner they went [at the early hour then in fashion], and sat all the afternoon, dressed in their white and silver, expecting every moment the express from Lambeth, but nothing came. The same reason held good for eating a supper as for eating the dinner; and in short they supped and sat till after two, and then, by mutual consent, dismissed the parson, and all retired.' Two hours afterwards (4 a.m.) the express with the licence arrived, and the ceremony went off with due éclat in the forenoon. We may remark that it is comforting to find in these letters of the day a guarantee for the genuineness of many of the excellent bonmots and repartees which have taken their place in our anecdotical literature in connection with the more or less famous men of that period, and which sparkle pleasantly across the pages of these volumes.

But quitting the domain of purely personal incident, let us glance at some passages in the letters which throw curious light upon the England of our forefathers in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Here is a picture of Cambridgeshire which looks strange now, and which indeed startled the writer thereof, Mrs. Harris, when she and her husband went on a visit to their friend the Dean of Sarum's parsonage in that locality. She says that the country is the most disagreeable she ever saw; and talking of the Fens, says that the herds of cattle which feed on them in the summer months are up to their bellies in water even in the dry season:—

Were anyone to light upon this passage in an isolated form nowadays, he would conclude without hesitation that it was an extract from some Indian diary—the use of the word 'natives' completing the resemblance. Here we have the Indian plague of mosquitoes existing in full severity in England, and also the use of mosquito-nets around the beds at night, exactly as in India. Nay, there is still another point of resemblance—namely, in the use which the Cambridgeshire 'natives' made of the cow-dung: drying and using it as fuel, as is the common practice of the natives of our Eastern Empire.

In the letters which relate to the events of the Rebellion of 1745, and the march of the rebels into the heart of England, we have ample proof alike of the general ignorance of places now well known to every one, and of a want of the means of information in regard even to the great events taking place in other parts of the kingdom, which read strangely in these times when every morning we can know from the newspapers the very way the wind is blowing in every quarter of our island. The Highland army marches to and fro in its daring enterprise, although several separate armies (Wade's, Ligonier's, the Duke of Cumberland's, &c.) are on foot to meet or catch them: indeed, as we read in these letters, 'more troops are in England than ever was known before,' yet notwithstanding, the hardy light-moving Highlanders get through them all into the heart of England, and quite as easily back again. We cannot help thinking that the English generals had not much stomach for their work. They were astonished and something more by the sudden and total rout of Sir John Cope's army, and by the daring and marvellous rapidity of the rebels' march; and it must be allowed that even in their retreat, the Highlanders gave a good account of any force that tried to bar their passage. As the noble editor incidentally observes, General Wade (who was posted in the north of England to stop the southward march of the rebels) only became famous after the rebellion was over; and his marching and counter-marching to catch the rebels was of a very helpless character indeed.

Smuggling, as well as rebellion, profited greatly by the roadless character of England in those days. Mr. and Mrs. Harris, on returning home one night from Heron Court, then the property of their friend Mr. Hooper, had great difficulty in getting over Ringwood Heath, an adjoining waste land, about five miles in length—'the vile heath,' as Mrs. Harris calls it—even with 'the assistance of two servants riding before.' Heron Court now belongs to the Malmesbury family; and the editor, in a foot-note, states that until the beginning of the present century there were no roads but smugglers' tracks across those heaths. They were a favourite place for contraband transit from the south coast; and he mentions that all classes aided in carrying on this traffic. 'The farmers lent their teams and labourers, and the gentry openly connived at the practice, and dealt with the smugglers. The cargoes, chiefly of brandy, were easily concealed in the furze bushes, that extended from Ringwood to Poole, and in the New Forest for thirty miles.' We suspect that the impossibility of carrying on such operations nowadays has had much more to do with their cessation than the improvement in the morality of the age. Look at the customary frauds in making returns to the income-tax, and then say whether the middle-classes are a whit more honest in fiscal matters now than they used to be when smuggling was rife.

How vastly London has changed and grown since the last century need not be said, and the contrast between then and now, meets one almost in every page of these lively letters. There was no Rotten-row, or the fashionable rides in the Park, which make so gay a sight now in the summer afternoons; and the whole district north of the Park knew nothing of the noble streets and terraces which now occupy the space. Mrs. Harris speaks with delight, almost rapture, of the sweet rural beauty of a 'ride to Paddington of a July morning.' But with all our knowledge of the change which has come over the British metropolis since that time, it is startling to find that some nameless Dick Turpin or Claude Duval could ply his trade with impunity even within the courtly precincts of St. James's. In February, 1773, Mrs. Harris writes that 'a most audacious fellow robbed Sir Francis Holburne and his sisters in their coach, in St. James's Square, coming from the Opera. He was on horseback, and held a pistol close to the breast of one of the Miss Holburnes for a considerable time. She had left her purse at home—which he would not believe. He has since robbed a coach in Park Lane.' In these letters, too, there is the earliest mention which we have met with of the tiny member of the finny tribe which now confers a greater popular renown upon Greenwich than even its world-famous Observatory or its magnificent Hospital, and which for a generation has caused that place to be the honoured scene of the annual Ministerial banquet at which our rulers meet together to congratulate one another upon the approaching close of the Parliamentary session,—the famous 'whitebait dinner,' which within the last two years has fallen into abeyance, perhaps never to be revived. Mr. Harris, the founder of the family and father of the first Earl Malmesbury, was then (1763) a Lord of the Admiralty; and Mrs. Harris describes a 'most agreeable expedition on the Thames,' which she had with a party in the 'Admiralty barge.' After seeing Woolwich and all its military wonders, the lady says:—

Let us now quit old England for a moment to take a passing glance at the Continent. As we have already said, the 'Diaries and Correspondence' of the first Earl of Malmesbury are a rich mine of political information and personal anecdote concerning the leading Courts of Europe; but we must here confine our few gleanings of this kind from the newly published 'Letters,' and content ourselves with some sketches of the state of matters in France, in the period of decay and rottenness which preceded the outburst of the terrible but life-reviving Revolution. Young Mr. Harris (afterwards the first Earl), then only in his twenty-second year, is passing through Paris in November, 1768, on his way to assume a diplomatic post at Madrid, and thus he writes of the French capital:—

Turning from fashion and infidelity, the young diplomatist in another letter describes the political aspect of affairs; remarking, inter alia, that the Government 'are now expending the revenues of the year 1771 [three years in advance!] at the same time that the people are labouring under the greatest necessity; garden stuff and bread, the chief nourishment of the lower class in this country, being raised in price one-third since last winter, and the greatest appearance also that there will not be a sufficient quantity of either to supply the winter.' But Court life and pageantry went on quand même. Seven years later, a Dr. Jean takes up the correspondence from Paris. Speaking of the Anglomania then prevalent, and which mingled with the Court gaieties, he writes that the 'young Queen' (Marie Antoinette) has made herself unpopular by 'a little misunderstanding in etiquette' between her and the princes of the blood, and also by her great predilection for everything that is English. And he describes a horse race, 'which is now become a very frequent and frequented amusement.' Most of the cavaliers in the concourse were 'badly imitating the English mode of riding;' also 'ladies of fashion, clad in boots and leather breeches, astride on their horses!' The Queen, with all her court, were upon the stand at the starting post; and the race was 'managed by English grooms (jackés as they call them) and English horses.' The same correspondent also gives a description of a bal paré in 'the most decorated room perhaps in the world,' the Opera House at Versailles. He says that Lord Clive, who was present, 'declared that Asiatic display of riches appeared but as tinsel to the brilliancy of the French court on that occasion.' 'The room,' says Dr. Jean 'was filled by between three and four thousand people, dressed in the richest, and at the same time the most fancied, taste imaginable. The show which French ladies always make above those of other nations added much to the spectacle. The ornaments of their head-dress, and their robes, so disposed and varied, composed a most beautiful tout ensemble. In regard to their persons, to be sure, they seemed to be almost all of the same family, from the similarity of their complexions, and the unity of their dress. It appeared to me an assembly of houris.' He describes the Queen as 'very majestic, and at a distance very handsome,' also with a remarkably fine hand and arm; and he adds that she gives life to almost all public amusements, and 'is very familiar with those who are in favour,'—an amiable though perhaps not dignified trait which brought her sad woe in the end, in consequence of the calumnies set on foot against her by her base and contemptible relative, the Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalité.

A romantic incident connected with the French Revolution happened to Lord Malmesbury in 1793, when the French nobility and clergy were flying from the sanguinary proscriptions of the Reign of Terror. He was walking one day on the pier at Brighton (not then the scene of gaiety and fashion which it is now), when a French fishing-boat approached the pier, and one of the crew jumped out with a baby in his arms, and addressed him. The poor fisherman said that a lady, known and beloved by himself and his comrades, had thrown the baby into their boat, entreating them to save its life by carrying it to England, whither, she said, if she were spared, she would follow it. They had accordingly stood over for Brighton, to entrust the infant, as the lady desired, to the first Englishman they met. Lord Malmesbury at once took charge of the helpless little exile, and had it conveyed to Lady Malmesbury at his house. In a few weeks, the mother, after many hair-breadth escapes, found her way to England, and knowing where the child had been landed, soon discovered its place of refuge. The baby became a handsome and fascinating woman, and, as Madame Alfred de Noailles, was for many years a leader of fashion in the first circles of Paris. When Lady Malmesbury was at Paris in 1816, we find her writing of Madame Alfred as 'our daughter;' and his quondam protégé, in all her letters to Lord Malmesbury, used to sign herself 'Leontine Harris.'

Although tempted to linger longer over these interesting letters, our narrowing limits warn us that we must leave untrod a large portion of the field which they present, alike for gossiping and for sage historical reflection. But ere we close, we must say a few words as to the leading members of the family whose correspondence has now been given to the world. Of Mr. James Harris, who, though not himself ennobled, may justly be regarded as the founder of the Malmesbury family, we have already spoken. He was a literary man of fine tastes, a member of Parliament, and a subordinate member of several Administrations. He does not appear to have had the brilliant abilities of his son, the first Earl; but he had a pleasant and healthy temperament, a perfect rectitude of nature, and a sound sagacity, which qualities have since been hereditary in the family. There are only a few letters of his in this collection, but in almost every one of these, brief though they are, there is some remark or other which shows his shrewd and healthy common sense, whether in great matters or little ones. When a motion was made in the House (1770), to restrain revenue officers from voting at elections (a disfranchisement only recently removed), Mr. Harris writes that it was 'a rather tedious debate, full of that patriotic commonplace which nobody believes that talks it, nor anyone else but a few dupes in the provinces.' When we were on the eve of war with Spain, in 1770, about the Falkland Islands, he writes:—'It moves me to indignation that two respectable nations, naturally made for friends, should take to cutting one another's throats for a paltry island, not better than Bagshot Heath, and which if it were merged in the ocean, would be no loss to either. Let it be with nations as with individuals: if ye can help it, don't quarrel at all—'tis more conformant to your social nature; but if ye must quarrel, for heaven's sake let it not be for trifles, for objects of the lowest contempt.' But when this Spanish difficulty was happily got over, to the general satisfaction of the country, which, he says, 'does not wish a war, whatever wicked patriots may endeavour;' he adds, 'None make such audacious use of the word people as these do—a word which often means no more than themselves, and their ignorant or interested followers.'

His son, the first Earl of Malmesbury, was perhaps the ablest diplomatist whom England has produced; certainly he was second to none in the long roll of distinguished men who have served the State as ambassadors and ministers in foreign countries. There is an anecdote of his boyhood, narrated by his relative Lord Shaftesbury, which perhaps may be taken as an indication of the courage and self-reliance which the youth was afterwards to display in a very different form. As his mother was walking one day with some friends before her house in the Close at Salisbury, she descried some one climbing up the spire of the cathedral; and having obtained a glass the better to observe so perilous a feat, she immediately dropped it, exclaiming, 'Good heavens! it is James!' The astonished lady had discovered her only son upon the apex of the tallest steeple in Great Britain. Of his life at Oxford, he himself (taking a retrospect in 1800) gives a poor account, either as regards learning or amusements. He says that the set of men with whom he lived were very pleasant, but very idle fellows. 'Our life was an imitation of high life in London: luckily, drinking was not the fashion; but what we did drink was claret, and we had our regular round of evening card parties, to the great annoyance of our finances. It has often been a matter of surprise to me how so many of us [Charles Fox, Lord Auckland, Bishop North, and others] made our way so well in the world, and so creditably.' From Oxford he went to the University of Leyden; and as he became a favourite with our Minister at the Hague, young Harris had ample opportunities of mingling in the court life, and also of studying carefully the political affairs of Holland—a knowledge which he was afterwards destined to turn to most valuable account. In the following year (1767) he made a journey to Prussia, Poland, and Paris; and in 1768, although only in his twenty-second year, he was appointed secretary of embassy at the Court of Madrid. In this post, an opportunity arising, the youth greatly distinguished himself; for, having been temporarily left chargé d'affaires, he undertook upon his own responsibility the critical affair of the Falkland Islands, which he conducted so admirably as to win the praise of both political parties at home; and the issue, so honourable to England, at once established his diplomatic reputation, and obtained for him in the following year the post of Minister at Berlin, where Frederick the Great, although past his prime, reigned in the full vigour of his tyrannical and eccentric genius. Next, after a few months in England in 1776, when he married, he was sent to St. Petersburg as our minister at the Court of the Empress Catherine, whose shameless passion for 'favourites' affected even her policy, and where he had a hard battle to fight, owing to the Empress's ill-will to England, although his esprit and remarkable conversational talents made him personally much more liked by the Empress than any of his diplomatic rivals. It appears to have been a costly office, and diplomatic salaries at that time were so inadequate that on leaving Russia he had diminished his private fortune to the extent of £20,000.

The severe climate of Russia broke down his health, and he returned to England in 1782, having previously received from the King the Order of the Bath, in acknowledgement of his services at the Russian Court. But two years afterwards he was despatched to the Hague, at that moment the scene of the most active political operations and manoeuvres; the Stadtholder being then threatened with deposition, and Holland with subjection to France. In this emergency, Sir James Harris matured a bold plan of an Anglo-Prussian alliance and an intervention on behalf of Holland; a project which Mirabeau, the French agent at Berlin, when he got wind of it, scouted as absurd, et seulement la conception personelle de cet audacieux et rusé Harris, but which completely succeeded—freeing Holland from her peril, and winning high fame for its bold projector, who was created Baron Malmesbury, and received honours from the King of Prussia and the Stadtholder. Lord Malmesbury now enjoyed the almost unbounded confidence of his Government in all matters relating to foreign politics, and was entrusted with all the most important missions. In 1793, he was sent to Berlin, and in 1796 and again in the following year he was sent to France to endeavour to negotiate a peace with the French Directory. We cannot do more than simply mention those important missions; but we cannot refrain from noticing a mission of a very different kind which befel him in 1794, when he received orders 'to ask of the Duke of Brunswick his daughter in marriage for the Prince of Wales.' Lord Malmesbury had little hope of this union turning out well, but he had no discretionary power in the matter, so he married her Royal Highness by proxy, and brought her over to England. The Prince of Wales never forgave Lord Malmesbury for his share in this affair, which was certainly hard upon his Lordship, especially as he had no end of difficulties with the German princess, as well as with some of the ladies of the Court, who had reasons of their own for hating Prince George's fiancée. Here is his Lordship's account of the first interview between the Princess and her royal betrothed:—

Soon after the Earl's last diplomatic mission to France, in 1797, he was seriously attacked by deafness, in consequence of which infirmity he thought it right to decline all further State employment either in the Cabinet or abroad; but during the lives of Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Portland, he remained in the most intimate political confidence of those Ministers and their principal colleagues. Indeed, during the greater part of the war with Napoleon, every scrap of important news received at the Foreign Office appears to have been forwarded to him; and in 1814 he was consulted by Lord Liverpool's Government on the readjustment of Europe, and the arrangements relating to Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Prussia, were principally suggested and settled by him. During the closing years of his life (he died in 1820, at the age of seventy-five), he passed most of his time in London and at Parkplace, his seat near Henley, receiving at his house constantly, and with the same pleasure, the rising generation of statesmen and literary men, as he had shown formerly in associating with his own distinguished contemporaries. He early appreciated the high talents of Mr. Canning, Lord Grenville, and Lord Palmerston, and used his influence with the statesmen of the time to draw special attention to those illustrious men who have now become memorable in English history. He was the guardian of Lord Palmerston, and by his influence obtained for him his first official appointment.

Two portraits of the Earl are given in these volumes: one taken in the early part of his career when he was simple Mr. Harris, the other when he was full of years and honours, at the age of seventy. Both are handsome faces, but though the first has the advantage of youth, with a look of esprit and lively courage, the second is really the finer and nobler head—a phenomenon only observable in rare cases, where high intellect is united with goodness of heart and a well-balanced temperament. His grandson, who edits these works, and who—in consonance with the principles of life so wisely and admirably laid down by the first Earl, with special reference to the nobility, but whose beautiful precepts are applicable to all spheres of life—has devoted himself from youth to the public service, and has twice been the Foreign Minister of England, appends some true remarks as to the difference in the work and responsibilities of diplomatists which has been created by the progress of civilization and the great change in the political condition of the nations of Europe. But the result of those changes has been to lessen the responsibility and lighten the labour of our Ministers abroad, and the contrast serves only to heighten the well-won reputation of the diplomatist whose 'Letters and Correspondence' have supplied materials for this article. The cynical but pre-eminently sagacious Talleyrand, speaking simply of Lord Malmesbury's intellectual powers and knowledge of human nature, apart from those high personal qualities by which he was distinguished, said, Je crois que Lord Malmesbury était le plus habile Ministre que vous aviez de son temps. C'était inutile de le devancer, il fallait le suivre de près. Si on lui laissait le dernier mot, il avait toujours raison. And as is shown alike by his official career, and by his private correspondence, we may well apply to the first Lord Malmesbury the epithet by which M. Thiers has so truly characterized Mr. Pitt—'ce pur Anglais.'

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Art. IV.—The Explorations in Palestine. Publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund, viz.—

(1.) Report of Preliminary Meeting, 1865.

(2.) Captain Wilson's Expedition, 1866.

(3.) Meeting at Cambridge, 1867.

(4.) Annual Meeting, with Lieutenant Warren's Report, 1868.

(5.) Statement of Progress, January 1st, 1869.

(6.) Lieutenant Warren's Letters and Reports, with Lithographed Plans.

(7.) Lieutenant Warren's Notes on the Valley of the Jordan, and Excavations at Ain es Sultan (Jericho.)

(8.) Dean Stanley's Sermon on the Exploration of Palestine.

(9—15.) Quarterly Statements I. to VII., April, 1869, to October, 1870.

(16.) The Recovery of Jerusalem. Edited by the Honorary Officers of the Palestine Exploration Fund. With Fifty Illustrations. Richard Bentley.

The Palestine Exploration Society was established in 1865, for the accurate and systematic investigation of the archeology, topography, geology, physical geography, and manners and customs of the Holy Land, for Biblical illustration. The universality of interest belonging to Palestine, and the inefficiency of individual efforts at exploration, made the step advisable; while the success of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem in 1864 at once suggested the scheme and gave encouragement to its promoters. In the original prospectus of the Society it was proposed to excavate at Jerusalem for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of the Temple enclosure, the position of the tombs of the kings, the site of the Tower of Antonia, &c; to examine other important sites, such as Gerizim, Samaria, Jiljilieh (probably Gilgal) and the mounds at Jericho; to collect materials for a work on manners and customs comparable to Mr. Lane's 'Modern Egyptians;' to effect an accurate survey of the Holy Land; to determine levels and sites and the course of ancient roads; to investigate the geology of the country, especially in the Valley of Jordan and basin of the Dead Sea; and lastly, to apply the same energy and ability to the study of the botany, zoology, and meteorology of Palestine, which naturalists have given to those of the forests of South America and the rivers of Africa. The time is come when we may ask how much of this programme has been carried out, and what amount of light, if any, is being thrown on the Scriptural history. Three years ago, we touched upon the subject;[10] but the Society was then in its infancy, its work only just begun, and the publication of results confined to one or two small pamphlets. We now have at least enough reports to make a thick octavo volume, and these so packed with technical details that they will have to be spread out into three volumes more before their information can be grasped by the ordinary reader. We have, moreover, now before us the book called the 'Recovery of Jerusalem,' which is partly such an expansion and partly a comment on the work, with a trifle of new material.

The active work of the Society commenced in December, 1865, when Captain Wilson, E.E., and Lieutenant Anderson, E.E., with Corporal Phillips, as photographer, landed at Beyrout, to probe the country from north to south. Captain Wilson was the intelligent officer who had surveyed Jerusalem the previous year, and given us a map of that city, as accurate and reliable in every particular as any map to be had to-day of the city of London. This first expedition, in the course of six months, traversed Palestine from Damascus to Hebron, constructing a series of maps of the entire backbone of the country, excavating at Tel Salhiyeh (near Damascus), at Kedes (Kadesh Naphtali), and Mount Gerizim; examining remains of ancient synagogues, copying old inscriptions, collecting materials for about fifty plans, with detailed drawings of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and tombs, and tracing the ancient system of irrigation of the Plain of Gennesareth. The report of this tentative expedition was in favour of Jerusalem as the headquarters of any future exploring party, since that city promised to prove the greatest mine of discoveries, and to yield the quickest results. Accordingly, in November, 1866, we find Lieutenant Warren, R.E., at work in Palestine, at first with only Sergeant Birtles for his assistant, but afterwards with several corporals as well, and with permission to engage a number of native labourers, according to the amount of excavation going on. Lieutenant Warren spent two months in survey-work east and west of Jordan, and then concentrated his energies on Jerusalem, where he laboured at shafts and galleries almost incessantly, till he was invalided home, in May of the year 1870.

Although the operations at Jerusalem, besides being the more extensive, are also the more interesting in character, it may be well to look, first, at the results of Captain Wilson's expedition, and in connection with that officer's work, to consider the later labours of Warren, where they are of the same kind. First, with regard to the survey-work: it is marvellous that we have never yet had a decently correct map of the land in which all Christians are so much interested. The Admiralty have given us correct charts of the coast-line, but in the interior of the country hundreds of sites remain to be verified, and hundreds to be discovered; while the east of Jordan is almost a terra incognita, and the maps of it scarcely more than creations of the fancy. It is as though in England we were acquainted with but the line of the Great Northern Railway and the towns within a little distance of it on either side, and in Wales knew only the position of three or four of the principal towns. The Wilson exploring party fixed for the first time the exact latitude and longitude of nearly seventy places between Damascus and Jerusalem, determined many sites, ascertained heights, and recorded the features of the ground along which they passed. Lieutenant Warren has obtained the latitude and longitude of many scores of places, fixed the height of some hundreds, and surveyed so much ground that the committee are able to announce the map of Palestine, on the scale of one inch to the mile, as 'now approaching completion.' Much of this work was done in the dangerous country east of Jordan, where life is not safe without an escort, and the sheikh who bargains to protect you is ready to sell you to the next chieftain who thinks your friends can pay a ransom.

Connected with the surveying is the settlement of topographical questions. We have seen an old book which professed to give the latitude and longitude of every place visited by the Scriptural kings, prophets and apostles, with their relative positions and distances from one another in miles. Such information, if reliable, would be of great value, for there is so close a connection between history and geography that in some cases the first cannot be understood without a knowledge of the second; and in most cases the geographical or topographical knowledge will at least assist us to realise the history.

In this department our knowledge is still scanty, though good service has been rendered by the explorers. The site of Capernaum, which has been fixed in three different places by Egmont, Robinson, and De Saulcy, and which Dean Stanley regarded as utterly lost, has been fixed by Wilson with very small chance of error, where Sœwulf placed it in the beginning of the twelfth century, viz., at Tel Hum,[11] on the north-western corner of the lake. The determining circumstance was the discovery of the irrigation of the plain of Gennesareth, as described by Josephus,[12] and its connection with the Tabighah Fountain, whereas attention had previously been fixed on the Round Fountain. It is confirmatory of Wilson's view, that while at the Round Fountain there are no ruins, except some small foundations which may have been anything, Tel Hum possesses extensive ruins, including those of a synagogue. Two miles north of Tel Hum—at Kerazeh, a spot indicated by the Rev. G. Williams, in 1842, and indeed by Pococke, as early as 1740—Lieutenant Anderson identified Chorazin, by the presence of extensive remains, including those of a synagogue. Of no less interest is the discovery of the scene of the destruction of the herd of swine. Lord Lindsay, Mr. Elliott, and others had been on the eastern shores of the lake, but their accounts were mutually contradictory; and Dean Stanley, after rewriting his note on the place again and again, had been obliged to scratch it out altogether. It now appears that there is only one place—namely, Khersa, about half way between Wady Fîk and Wady Semakh—which fulfils all the conditions required by the Biblical narrative. The hills which everywhere else on the eastern side receded from a half to three-quarters of a mile from the water's edge, here approach within forty feet of it; not, indeed, terminating abruptly, but presenting a steep, even slope. The 'Dictionary of the Bible' places the scene at Gadara, now Um Keis, a place from which the swine would have had a hard gallop of two hours before reaching the lake.

We have also in these publications an admirable paper by Captain Wilson, 'On the site of Ai and the position of the Altar which Abram built between Bethel and Ai;' and another by the Rev. Dr. Zeller, Protestant clergyman at Nazareth, on 'Kefr Kenna.' As the old Hebrew names of places commonly cling to the spot under some Arabic disguise—the hill of Dan, for instance, being now Tel el-Kadi (both Kadi in Arabic, and Dan in Hebrew, being equivalent to 'judge' in English)—it is doing good service to collect Arabic names. Great care, however, is needed in this work, for the same wady may have different names in different parts; two or three hills, a fountain, and several ruins may all have one name—that of the district; and the traveller may misunderstand the Arabic answers to his questions. Mr. Layard tells a story of a traveller, who published, for the benefit of those who might follow in his footsteps, a little vocabulary, but whose own ignorance of the language is shown by the fact that several places on his map are marked with the word Mabarafsh. The fact was, that when the traveller asked his guide the name of a place the man answered Mabarafsh—'I don't know,' and down went this name on the map. In the same traveller's vocabulary 'nose' is put down as snuff; for when he wanted the word for nose he had probably raised his hand, and the Arab supposed he wanted 'snuff.' Under these circumstances, it must have been very satisfactory to Lieutenant Warren, after making a list of 150 places visited or seen on the east of Jordan, to find that wherever Robinson had been before him there was substantial agreement in the spelling. Lieutenant Warren and Dr. Chaplin, of Jerusalem, also obtained many names in the course of a tour from Jisr Damieh to Jisr Mejamia and back; and the former has given us a list of thirty-four Tels in the Jordan valley. More work of the same kind will have to be done, as there is much confusion in the spelling of names; besides which there exist many unnamed cities and ruins on both sides of the Jordan. South of Ammân (the ancient Rabbath-Amman, and afterwards Philadelphia, 2 Sam. xi. and xii.), Lieutenant Warren came upon a piece of elevated country, about four miles square, literally covered with ruins of temples and houses.

The synagogue at Capernaum was only one out of nine synagogues examined in the district north of the Sea of Galilee, and the investigation was so thorough that the plan of the building was made out, and careful drawings made and measurements taken. The result has been to dissipate the idea that the synagogues were barn-like structures, and to prove that they had considerable architectural pretensions.

For particular description and measurements our architectural readers must be referred to Captain Wilson's paper in Quarterly Statement No. II. These synagogues date either from the Christian era or the centuries immediately following. Mr. R. Phené Spiers, M.R.I.B.A., says, from the third to the sixth centuries, inclusive. The Rev. George Williams, of Cambridge, assigns them to a period prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, both because the depopulation of the country after that event made it almost impossible that they should have been built subsequently, and because the style of ornament so much resembled that of the tombs of the kings (so-called) at Jerusalem. In that case they may have been trodden by the feet of Christ; and the ruins of Capernaum may be remains of the very building concerning which the Jewish elders said, the centurion is worthy—'for he loveth our nation, and hath built us the synagogue.' Yet Dr. Robinson, whose ears and eyes seemed to be open to hear and see all that was really to be heard and seen in connection with sacred topography, did not mention these various ruins till his second journey in 1852, giving then only a brief account of them, while previous to that year there had been no account of them at all.

Another admirable paper of Wilson's, also illustrated with plans, is 'On the Remains of Tombs in Palestine.' Rock-hewn tombs appear to be the earliest in date, and are the tombs most commonly met with, the softer strata of limestone, especially the white chalk in some districts, being well adapted for excavation. Sometimes a natural cavern is made use of, sometimes a square or oblong chamber is cut in the rock, while in a third class one entrance leads into a number of sepulchral chambers; and in all these cases loculi or resting-places for the bodies are either sunk in the surface of the rock much after the manner of a modern grave, or driven into the rock-face like a small tunnel or pigeon-hole. In the so-called tomb of Joshua at Tibneh, after passing through a chamber with fourteen loculi, a smaller one is reached which has only one loculus at its extreme end, an arrangement not noticed elsewhere; the face and sides of the porch are nearly covered with niches for lamps, and round the door are traces of plaster. The tombs of the kings at Jerusalem come into this class, and are described, as well as the tombs of the prophets, the tombs of the Judges, and a large tomb discovered by Lieut. Warren in the Kedron valley. Masonry tombs, which constitute the second class, are few in number, and confined to the northern portion of the country. It is possible that at Tel Hum, where the (basaltic) rock is so hard as to make excavation difficult, this form of tomb was commonly used. If the tombs in which the demoniac lived were of this description, their disappearance is not at all surprising. Besides these two classes of tombs, and their subdivisions, sarcophagi are sometimes found, those at Kedes (Kadesh Naphtali, the city of refuge in the midst of Canaanite strongholds) being the most elaborately ornamented. The material is hard white limestone, almost marble, and the workmanship is excellent: the usual design on the sides is a garland held up in two or more loops by nude figures, with some device over each end and a bunch of grapes hanging from the bottom. Two sarcophagi have been shipped to England by Lieut. Warren, and were exhibited, with other articles, at the Dudley Gallery in the summer of last year.

A paper in these Quarterly Statements, which has greatly pleased the architects is that on the ruined temples of Cœle-Syria. In the summer of 1869, Captain Warren (we are glad to notice his promotion) was obliged to take his party to the Lebanon in consequence of their having suffered severely from fever in Jerusalem. While there they occupied themselves in investigating the ruined temples of Cœle-Syria and Mount Hermon, and the exhaustive manner in which the work was done, places us in possession of so much information that we may be said to have previously known nothing at all on the subject. The extremely careful tracings (fifteen in number) sent home by Captain Warren are to be seen at the office of the Fund; but two of them, selected by the advice of Mr. Fergusson, are given to subscribers with Captain Warren's complete and detailed account of the temples in Quarterly Statement No. V. The temples of Cœle-Syria date from Roman times, and the inscriptions found on them are mostly Greek. The small temples about Mount Hermon appear to be somewhat more ancient, their architecture being of the Ionic order. On the summit of Hermon stands the ruins of a sacellum, i.e., a rectangular building without a roof, which has nothing in its construction in common with the temples on the west below, and which probably had to do with a different and more ancient form of worship. Captain Warren's investigations led him into a discussion of the question of the orientation of heathen temples. It had been surmised by Dr. Robinson and several other writers that the temples about Hermon were turned towards it as to a kibleh, so that the worshippers might face it when they prayed; but now that the directions and angles are taken, it is found that they all have their entrances more or less towards the east, and in no case does the entrance or any side of the building face direct upon the summit of Hermon. The Jewish tabernacle and afterwards the temple at Jerusalem faced the east—according to Josephus—in order that when the sun arose it might send its first rays upon it; according to some of the Jews of the present day, in order that the priest might watch for the first dawn of day in offering up the morning sacrifice.

The principle which accounts for the eastward aspect of the temple at Jerusalem, accounts also for the southward aspect of the synagogues of Galilee: as that was open to the east, so they were open to the temple. It would be a crucial test of this theory to examine the remains of a synagogue said to exist near Beersheba, the only ruin of the kind which is not due north from Jerusalem.

The mention of temples reminds us that on Mount Gerizim numerous excavations were made under the direction of Lieut. Anderson. Within the ruins known as the 'Castle,' the foundations of an octagonal church were laid bare, probably the church known to have been built there by Justinian. On the eastern side of the church is an apse, on the northern side the main entrance, and on each of the others, doors leading to small side chapels. In the interior are the piers of a smaller octagon, apparently intended to carry a dome. The church and castle were found to be built on a rough platform of large stones laid together without mortar, and of this—which may possibly be the platform on which the Samaritan Temple stood—the 'twelve stones,' fabled to have been brought up by the tribes from the bed of the Jordan, form a portion. No trace of large foundations could be found on the southern portion of the small plateau on which the castle stands. Close to the Holy Rock of the Samaritans a number of human remains were dug up, but no clue could be obtained to their age or nationality. The study of the synagogue remains of Galilee, as well as the temples, mosques, churches, tombs, inscriptions, aqueducts, castles, theatres, ruined cities and general aspect of the country, is much facilitated by the series of 350 photographs taken by the two expeditions, which are most of them beautifully executed and very many of them taken for the first time.

We must now follow Captain Warren to Jerusalem, where the longer course of the operations supplies us with larger results for criticism; and the reason for the more extended labours is a reason for our devoting more space to their consideration; it being simply the paramount interest of Jerusalem and the richness of the field Scripturally, historically, and archæologically. The ground on which the city of Jerusalem stands is included in a fork between two ravines, whose point of union is to the south-east of the city, near the Well of Joab, and which, if we trace them backward, may be said to clasp the city, the one on the south and west, the other on the east. The eastern ravine is known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat or of the Kedron, the westernmost as the Valley of Hinnom. On the north side they run up to the level of the northern part of the city; so that Jerusalem is not an isolated hill, but the southern tongue of a great plateau which stretches away northward. This table-land is one of the highest in the country, and Jerusalem is about 2,500 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, while the Dead Sea, only twelve miles to the east, is 1,300 feet below the same. Of the cities of Palestine, Jerusalem alone is thus entrenched with deep ravines—a mountain fastness, with natural defences on every side except the north; and to this circumstance she owed in a great measure her early strength and subsequent greatness. After Joshua's conquest, the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine, who elsewhere lingered only in the plains, were, able here to maintain a position in the hills;[13] and Joshua, Barak, Gideon, and Saul passed away without seeing the Jebusites conquered. When David became king of all Israel, it was necessary to fix his capital farther north than Hebron, and no city appeared so suitable as Jebus, both on account of its strength and its central position, and perhaps also from the circumstance that it was partly in the tribe of Judah, to which David belonged, and partly in Benjamin, the tribe of Saul. So strong was the citadel that the blind and the lame were thought sufficient to defend the walls; but the steep ascent was climbed by Joab, and David 'took the stronghold of Zion.' Before David's time the men of Judah and the men of Benjamin had gained some partial successes at Jerusalem, and perhaps before the Israelitish invasion the city had experienced varied fortunes in the wars of the aboriginal tribes among themselves. But in the 3,000 years since David's time, how eventful has been its history! From David to Nebuchadnezzar, from Nebuchadnezzar to Pompey and Titus, from Titus to the Crusaders, from Saladin to Sultan Suliman, who built the present walls in 1542, the sieges have been no fewer than twenty; while the city has been four or five times sacked or utterly destroyed.

It is very much in consequence of the repeated destruction of its walls and buildings that its topography has become so much obscured. This could hardly have been the case with any other city of which we had such full descriptions, nor with Jerusalem if ravines had not run through the city as well as round it; the débris has found its way into these intramural valleys, from which its removal was difficult and perhaps inadvisable. The description which Josephus gives of the city is as follows:—

It would be easy from these descriptions to trace an ideal map of Jerusalem with its ancient hills and valleys; but such a map would not correspond by a long way with Jerusalem as it is now. The city, as enclosed by its walls to-day, approximates to the form of a parallelogram whose eastern and western sides run north and south, but whose western side as a whole stands more southerly than its eastern side as a whole. From outside the Damascus Gate, near the middle of the north wall, a very marked valley traverses the city, deepening as it runs southward, and terminating by a junction with the Kedron valley outside the south wall, near the Pool of Siloam. The half of the city to the west of this valley is the higher of the two, and is itself highest at its north-western part; the half of the city to the east consists of the Haram esh-Sherêf—a raised platform about 1,500 feet from north to south and 900 feet from east to west, and of about an equal space of streets and houses. The Haram is the southern portion and is separately enclosed with walls, though its entire east wall and two-thirds of the south are coincident, so far, with the walls of the city. The one valley from Damascus Gate gives us two hills within the city; but according to Josephus there were four, and even if we suppose that Bezetha, the 'new town,' last added to the city, was afterwards excluded from it by a narrowing of the compass of the walls, we must still find a second valley to give us a third hill. In the part of the city to the north of the Haram area a valley runs down from Herod's Gate in the north wall towards St. Stephen's Gate in the east wall; but the narrow ridge on the north-east side of this valley is connected with the high ground outside the city, and can hardly be of itself the third hill we are in search of. There must have been a valley then which has become obliterated—in fact, Josephus tells us that the Maccabees did fill up a valley, to connect the city with the temple, in the second century b.c. But inasmuch as the valley is not now apparent, it has to be supplied from conjecture, and in consequence we have had a mass of topographical controversy unequalled for its extent, its confusion, and its bitterness. The valley from the Damascus Gate is usually identified with Josephus's Tyropœon valley or valley of the cheesemakers; but some writers bring a valley across from the Jaffa Gate, which is near the middle of the west wall, into this north-and-south valley, and call it the Tyropœon from Jaffa Gate to Siloam. The valley from Damascus Gate, again, is often made to send off a branch to the east across the Haram platform, cutting it sometimes near its northern wall and sometimes farther south than the dome of the rock or Mosque of Omar, which stands on a smaller platform near the centre of the larger. It is disputed, also, which is the valley of Hinnom, which the valley of Kedron, whether Hinnom was not on the east of the city, and whether Gihon did not come down through the middle of the city.

The fate of the valleys determines the fate of the hills, and we are perplexed to know which was Mount Zion, which Moriah, and which Akra, nothing seeming to be certain except that the modern Zion (the western hill) is not the ancient Zion, that the Temple (and therefore Moriah) was somewhere within the Haram enclosure, and that the hill to the east of the present Kedron valley is the Mount of Olives. The position of the hills and valleys determines the course of the streams; for the brook Kedron presumably followed the valley of that name, the Pools of Gihon were in the valley of Gihon (if there was a valley of Gihon); and when Hezekiah 'brought the upper watercourse of Gihon straight down to the west side of the city of David,' the direction of the new channel depends on the position assigned to 'the city of David, which is Zion.'[15] On the position and contour of the hills, again, depends the direction of the ancient walls; for these would in general follow the brow of the hill, except on the north side, where the ground made no descent, while Zion appears to have been separately enclosed, so as to need a siege by itself. Until we know the direction of the walls, we know not where to look for the gates and towers, nor for the sepulchres of the kings, which were most of them within the city of David;[16] nor for the Holy Sepulchre, which was outside the gates. A grand point also is the exact site of the temple, which carries with it that of Antonia, which Josephus says was at the junction of the north and west cloisters, and may also help us to find Solomon's palace, and to determine the position of the king's gardens. It must be evident that, while these points remain unsettled, the history of Jerusalem, from David's age to that of Titus, must lack for us the definiteness and vividness which are so essential to its complete understanding. Of theories we have had enough—they are guesses not without a certain value, but guesses almost in the dark—facts are wanted, to test and correct the theories; and these facts the Palestine Exploration Committee promised to supply.

Captain Warren saw that two courses were open to him, in his endeavours to recover a first thread of the old topography—(1) to obtain the contours of the ground as they existed in olden times; (2) to dig about the supposed site of some remarkable building, in hopes of finding its remains. Both these methods were adopted; and although excavation is not allowed in the sacred places, and the work has been crippled elsewhere for want of funds, enough has been ascertained to settle several disputed points, and to alter the conditions of controversy for time to come. First, as regards the hills and valleys, the Tyropœon valley, which it was conjectured might contain thirty or forty feet of débris, is found, by excavation, to be filled up in some places to nearly one hundred feet; and instead of presenting an even slope, its western side is nearly level, the final descent being very steep, and the lowest course of the valley being inside the Haram, about sixty feet east of the south-west angle. The Kedron valley is found to contain sixty or eighty feet of loose stone chippings and other débris, forming a sloping bank, with an inclination of about thirty degrees, and having its base resting against the western slope of Olivet. One effect of this accumulation has been to alter the bed of the stream, so far as there is now any stream at all, pushing it forty feet to the east, and raising it thirty-eight feet from its old level. At what must have been the ancient bed of the brook the remains of a masonry wall were touched; between that line and the east of the Haram several other walls were encountered, and at last progress up the hill was stopped—at a point fifty feet east of the Haram—by a massive masonry wall, into which Warren drove a hole five feet, and then had to give up the business. A contribution from M. Clermont Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, affords Mr. Warren an argument in favour of the identity of Kedron and Hinnom. There have always been several reasons for considering the Virgin's Fount, in the Kedron, to be the same with En Rogel, where Adonijah was saluted as king, though many place it at the Well of Joab, lower down. Near to En Rogel was the stone of Zoheleth (1 Kings i. 9), and near to the Virgin's Fount M. Ganneau discovers a rock called Ez Zehwele; so that the statements of Joshua xv. and xviii., which make the border between Judah and Benjamin to pass Zoheleth to En Rogel, and thence up the valley of Hinnom, seem to identify Hinnom with what is now called Kedron. As the Kedron has three names to-day in different parts of its course, there would thus far be no objection to a fourth, but the statements in Joshua seem to us to point to some valley more westward than that now called Kedron. The principal reason for tracing the Tyropœon from the Jaffa Gate arises from Josephus's description of the valley as an open space or depression within the city, 'at which the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end.' This was held to be more applicable to a valley running from the Jaffa Gate than to that from the Damascus Gate when the slope is so gradual that the rows of houses now run across it without interruption, besides which it probably had formerly a wall on either side of it. Mr. Lewin[17] speaks positively as to the Tyropœon commencing at the Jaffa Gate, and says it can be traced thence to the Haram by the rise of ground which is still very perceptible on the right hand, as you walk down the street from the gate to the Haram. He makes this valley the boundary of the high town on the north, and puts his first wall on the southern brow of it. It is difficult to see on this hypothesis how the hill of the high town could be 'in length more direct' than the eastern hill, as Josephus says it was; or how the corresponding rows of houses could meet any more readily than near Damascus Gate. However, Mr. Warren, after excavation, tells us that 'a very decided valley runs down from the Jaffa Gate to the Tyropœon, near Wilson's arch;' and he found under the causeway leading westward from Wilson's arch, vaults and chambers, and a secret passage, at a depth which serves to confirm his view. There is no disputing facts, though it seems to us still questionable whether this valley is any part of the Tyropœon of Josephus. The valley running south-east from Herod's Gate, in the north-east part of the north wall, proves to be longer and deeper than any theorist had imagined, running into the Kedron at a point between the north-east angle of the Haram and the Golden Gate, and being filled in with more than 100 feet of débris. The Pool of Bethesda, which is 360 feet in length, is imbedded in this valley, and stretches across it, having its ends formed by the rocky sides of the valley, and its sides built up of masonry; and since it is found lined with concrete, it must have been a reservoir, and not the fosse of Antonia, which Robinson supposed it to be.[18]

The valley which Simon Maccabeus filled up[19] is made by Mr. Lewin to coincide with the northern half of what is usually called the Tyropœon—the part from Damascus Gate, down to near Wilson's arch. Other writers identify it with a supposed branch of the Tyropœon, curving to the east across the Haram. Josephus tells us that when Pompey beseiged Jerusalem he took up his position on the north of the temple, in the only part where an assault was practicable; and that even there the temple was defended by high towers, and a trench, and by a deep ravine. The position which various writers give to this ravine depends upon their idea as to the site of the temple. Mr. Fergusson[20] thinks that the valley of the Asamoneans was a 'tranverse cut, separating the hill Bezetha from the Akra or citadel, on the temple hill.' Mr. Thrupp[21] allows a valley on the north side of the temple, and reminds us that traces of a valley debouching into the valley of Kedron, near the middle of the eastern wall of the Haram, and which seemed to have been artificially filled up, were detected by the late Dr. Shultz. Shultz identifies these traces as those of the valley filled up by the Asamoneans; but Thrupp holds him to be mistaken in doing so. Mr. Sandie[22] puts forth the recognition of such a valley as the special characteristic of his view of ancient Jerusalem; but he places it south of the dome of the rock. He moreover identifies it with 'the ravine called Kedron' (τὴν Κεδρῶνα καλουμένην φάραγγα), which Josephus tells us was overlooked by the north-east wall of the temple,[23] and by which he does not mean the valley of Kedron, since he always calls the latter 'Kedron' simply. Mr. Lewin, again, makes this ravine to be 'the slip of ground between the temple and the city wall, reaching from Bethesda on the north to Ophla on the south,' i.e., the eastern side of the present Haram platform, which is, or was, the west bank of the present Kedron valley. It is difficult to see how this could have been a ravine at all; but Mr. Lewin translates 'so-called Kedron ravine,' and seems to think the expression implies that Josephus did not consider the term 'ravine' quite legitimate. Even if this were so, the illegitimacy of the designation might result from the circumstance that what was once a ravine had since been filled up by the Maccabeans and by Pompey.[24] But we must come to facts.

First of all, Captain Warren tells us that there was no ravine south of the dome of the rock, for 'the crest of the rocky spur runs from the north-west angle of the Dome-of-Rock platform in a south-east direction to the triple gate in the south wall; and at these two points, and in the line between them, the rock is at the surface.' Secondly, in December, 1868, when the displacement of a stone by the rains enabled Captain Warren to descend beneath the surface of the Haram, he found a souterrain running east and west, in the line of the northern edge of the Mosque platform, the southern side of it being scarped rock, on which the wall supporting the northern edge of the Mosque platform is built, but the rock itself appearing to 'shelve down rapidly to the north.' In the following month Captain Warren ventured to suggest on plan (lithographed plan 32) the possible course of a valley coming from the Gate of the Inspector in the Tyropœon, and running past the north-western corner of the Dome-of-Rock, out eastward through the Birket Israil (Pool of Bethesda). The souterrain may, as Captain Warren observes, be claimed by one party as the ditch on the northern wall of the temple, and by another as the northern ditch of Antonia; and the valley—which owes its depth in one part of its course to what is doubtingly called a 'natural or artificial ditch'—will of course be claimed as that of the Asamoneans.

It is thus, in our opinion, rendered probable that the ground to the west of that valley which runs from Damascus Gate constituted the old town, the φρούριον of David's time, the upper market-place of the days of Josephus; that the dome of the rock and the space to the south of it represent the old Temple-hill; that to the north of this was the valley of the Asamoneans; that between the latter and the valley from Herod's Gate was the city of David, or Zion,[25] and that north-east of the last-named valley was Bezetha. The name Zion got transferred to the Temple-hill, or was made to include it, before or during the times of the Maccabees, probably after the filling-up of the intervening valley, and in the early centuries of the Christian era was transferred to the western hill, which, after the Akra was cut down, was the highest hill of the city.[26] Certainly there is still room for some controversy on these points, and Captain Warren contributes something to the discussion, in a long paper on the 'Comparative Holiness of Mounts Zion and Moriah,' in which he argues that Zion was considered holy when the ark was there, in David's time; that after the ark (and the holiness) were transferred to Moriah, the name Zion got transferred also, and that Josephus refrains from using the term Zion because he is aware of this confusion.

If the Tyropœon valley extended from Damascus Gate southward, and the city of David was on the eastern side of it, north of the temple, then the water which Hezekiah diverted from its course, and brought down to the west side of the city of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), and yet into the city of Jerusalem (2 Kings xx. 20) was probably brought in at Damascus Gate, and ran towards the Kedron, either on the west side of the temple, or by the Maccabean valley, on the northern side. In the southern half of the Tyropœon valley, outside the west wall of the Haram, Captain Warren has found, at a depth of seventy or eighty feet, a rock-cut aqueduct, twelve feet deep and six feet wide, with round rock-cut pools at intervals, and shafts which indicate that pure water was drawn from it. As Hezekiah brought the stream down from 'the upper watercourse of Gihon,' this discovery has a direct bearing on the question of the position of 'the upper pool,' and of 'Gihon, in the valley,'where Solomon was anointed king; but as the upper part of the Tyropœon has not been excavated, it remains uncertain whether the water came in by Damascus Gate or Jaffa Gate, and consequently what position of Zion is favoured by the finding of this aqueduct.

The search for the old walls of the city has only been partially carried out. Here, again, we have Josephus's explicit description, and the usual differences among the commentators.

'The city of Jerusalem was fortified with three walls, on such parts as were not encompassed with unpassable valleys; for in such places it had but one wall.... The old wall began on the north at the tower called Hippicus, and extended as far as the Xistus, a place so called, and then, joining to the Council-house, ended at the west cloister of the temple. But if we go the other way westward, it began at the same place, and extended through a place called Bethso to the Gate of the Essenes; and after that it went southward, having its bending above the fountain Siloam, where it also bends again towards the east at Solomon's pool, and reaches as far as a certain place which they called Ophlas, were it was joined to the eastern cloister of the temple. The second wall took its beginning from that gate which they call Gennath, which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia. The beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus, whence it readied as far as the north quarter of the city, and the tower Psephinus, and then was so far extended till it came over against the monuments of Helena (which Helena was Queen of Adiabene, the daughter of Izates); it then extended farther to a great length, and passed by the sepulchral caverns of the kings, and bent again at the tower of the corner, at the monument which is called the monument of the Fuller, and joined to the old wall at the ravine called Kedron.'[27]

As many writers make the northern part of the first wall to have run from the Jaffa Gate eastward, Captain Warren spent some time in excavating in the Muristan, a large open space in the city, the old burial-place of the Knights Hospitallers; but he found 'nothing but confusion in the shape of old walls running at one another in all directions.' At Wilson's arch, however, near the Haram wall, and nearly due east from the Jaffa Gate, he discovered an old city gateway at a great depth. If we could find traces of the tower Hippicus we should come upon the first and third walls together, and similarly the gate Gennath would put us on the line of the first and second walls. The theories of some writers compel them to put Hippicus at the Jaffa Gate, where they think they see its representative in the present Castle of David. But we agree with Mr. Fergusson, that the remains called Kasr Jalud at the north-west corner of the city suit better with Josephus's description. To this point Captain Warren has not yet been able to give much attention; but the so-called Gennath Gate was examined both by Wilson and by Warren, and pronounced by the former to be of comparatively modern construction, by the latter to be ancient, 'especially as its style is Roman.' The gate rests in made earth.

The Damascus Gate is built of two very different styles of masonry, one of them apparently very old; and it suits the views of several writers, who differ as to the course of the first wall, that this gate and the portion of wall immediately east of it should be part of the second wall of the city.[28] At the Damascus Gate excavation brought to light 'a very ancient wall ten feet six inches in thickness, built with bevelled stones similar to those of the Jews' Wailing Place;' but the wall would seem to be built out of old materials, since stones of more recent date were found among them; and at the foot of the wall lay a stone with a Templar's cross on it.

The third wall has probably almost or quite disappeared, for when Hadrian was re-erecting the walls in a.d., 136, he would not think it necessary to go out so far; the population had diminished, and to construct armour without, so disproportionate to the shrunken body within, would have been simply ridiculous. If any part of the third wall remained, we might suppose it to be at the northern part of the present east wall; but here excavation shows that there has been 'no destruction of extensive buildings so far north as St. Stephen's Gate,' that the wall itself is 'of no very ancient date,' and that 'of the city wall to the east, the north-east angle of the Haram area is the first sign from the northern end of anything ancient in appearance.'

Perhaps there is here a little room for error; for where the rock is high, the absence of much débris may not imply that there has been no great destruction of buildings; but simply that the rubbish has found its way to the valleys or was not suffered to accumulate.

South of the Haram wall, the hill, which is now chiefly occupied by small vegetable gardens, in terraces of six to ten feet high, must have been at one time covered with houses, for every shaft sunk brought to light remains of buildings, drains, scarped and cut rock, and antiquities of various dates. A cavern cut out of the rock, appears to have been at first a dyer's shop and afterwards a stable, while early Christian glass and pottery was found in a drain above it. Tradition relates that St. James was cast over the outer wall of the temple enclosure, and that 'a fuller took the club with which he pressed the clothes, and brought it down on the head of the just one.' This hill is frequently identified with Ophel, where Jotham and Manasseh built (2 Chron. xxvii. 3; xxxiii. 14; Neh, iii. 26, 27; xi. 21), though whether Ophel referred to the whole of the swelling hill or to a tumour-like tower in some part of it was not certain.[29] In this district Warren has discovered a massive wall, from twelve to fourteen feet thick, which abuts on the Haram wall (but does not bond into it) at a point twelve feet six inches west of the south-east angle of the Haram, which runs first of all sixty feet due south, and then takes a bend to the south-west, in which direction it runs for 700 feet, and then ends abruptly. The wall is still from forty to sixty feet in height, and the rock is scarped for thirty feet below it, while solid towers of masonry are found at intervals along its course. This discovery will have to be taken into consideration by those who bring the south wall of the city up from Siloam, and make it join the third wall at a point 600 feet from the south-west angle of the present Haram, and therefore more than 300 feet from the point where this wall abuts. The curious rock-cut connection which Warren found between the Virgin's Fount and a shaft opening from Ophel, would seem to be a device for supplying the inhabitants of this district with water, in a secret way; reminding us of the work of Hezekiah, and possibly being of the same date.

A question of paramount interest is the site of the successive temples of Solomon, Zerubabel and Herod. It is universally allowed that the temple stood on that hill which we call Moriah, and within the present sacred area; but while Josephus describes it as a square of 600 feet (1 stadium), in the side, the dimensions of the Haram are, according to Catherwood, 1,520 feet on the east side, 1,617 feet on the west, 1,020 on the north, and 932 on the south. The way being thus open for conjecture, we have had the usual differences of opinion, and the temple has been variously placed at the south-west angle, the centre of the area, the southern half of the area, the northern half, or has even been made coincident with the entire Haram. A few shafts and galleries would probably settle this question, and in showing us the foundations of the temple, give us the key to most of the old topography; but unfortunately the reservation made by the Turkish Government has compelled Captain Warren to labour only outside the enclosure. Still, as there was reason to think that one or more of the Haram walls or angles might coincide in position with those of the temple, there was room for discovery by exterior examination. The theory of Catherwood and of De Vogüé, that the whole of the area belonged to the temple, may be dismissed as being inconsistent with the measurements of Josephus. The discovery of the transverse valley and of the prolongation of the valley from Herod's Gate appear to be fatal to Williams's view, that the temple stood in the northern half of the Haram and stretched all across it.

A favourite theory is that of Fergusson, Lewin, and others, that the temple occupied the south-west angle of the area, its south and west walls coinciding with those of the Haram for a distance of 600 feet from the corner. The chief positive evidence for this view consists in the fact that the south-west angle is the only right angle of the present walls, that some of the stones existing in that part of the wall to-day are so immense as to justify Josephus's description of stones 'immovable for all time' and that the spring stones of an arch discovered by Robinson in the western wall, commencing about forty feet from the south-west angle, would be in the centre of the great Stoa Basilica of the temple. This cloister, according to the Jewish historian, was on the south wall, overhanging the valley, and communicated by steps with the upper city.[30] The arch of Robinson was often assumed to be the first of a series, and 'Robinson's bridge or viaduct' was attributed by Lewin to Solomon, and identified as that which was broken away by the followers of Aristobulus, in Pompey's time.[31] Signor Pierotti had scratched up a few feet of earth, and not finding any trace of a pier, declared that there could not have been a bridge. The excavations of Capt. Warren have shown that the south-west angle of the Haram is buried for about ninety feet, while in the Tyropœon valley the rock from the western side rather rises than falls until it is within 200 feet of the sanctuary wall, and then shelves down very rapidly. The actual pier of an arch has been discovered, with three courses of stones in situ, twelve feet two inches in thickness, commencing at forty-one feet six inches from the wall, within a few inches of the span assigned by Robinson. The length of the spring-stones is given by Wilson as fifty feet, and the pier is found to measure fifty-one feet six inches, and has its northern end eighty-nine feet from the south-west angle, nearly corresponding to the spring stones. The stones of the pier are precisely similar to those of the south-west angle, and presumably of the same age; but the inference that they are therefore of the age of Solomon is checked by the next discovery. Stretching between the pier and the sanctuary wall is a pavement, on which some of the fallen voussoirs of the arch are resting, but underneath the pavement are twenty-three feet of débris, covering two older voussoirs, which have crushed into the arched roof of an aqueduct which may be older still—the aqueduct previously spoken of in connexion with Hezekiah. These historical strata seem to yield evidence as follows:—

1. The winding rock-cut aqueduct was constructed.

2. The west Haram wall was afterwards built, the aqueduct arched over, and a bridge thrown across from the Haram area to the western side of the valley.

3. The arch of the bridge fell (two voussoirs still remain), smashing in part of the arch of the aqueduct.

4. Débris began to fill up the valley, a pavement was constructed upon it, which still remains, about twenty feet above the top of the aqueduct; and shafts were constructed at intervals from the pavement down to the aqueduct, in order to obtain water readily. Another arch was built.

5. The arch fell, and now rests upon the pavement.

6. Débris began to fill up the valley over the fallen arch, the pier of which standing out was removed, all except the three lowest courses.

7. Houses were built on a level twenty feet above the pavement.

8. These houses fell into ruin and the débris accumulated to its present level, viz., forty-five feet above the pavement.

No remains of any second arch of the supposed viaduct have been found; but three arches with a staircase to west would have sufficed to bridge the gulf, and there does exist a colonnade in ruins in continuation of the line of Robinson's arch. It is part of the view which places the temple at the south-west angle, that the three other gates and roadways mentioned by Josephus as connecting its west side with the city and suburbs[32] should be traceable between Robinson's arch and a point 600 feet from the south-west angle. The first of these gates—apparently the most northern—'led to the king's palace, and went to a passage over the intermediate valley.' It is remarkable that at a distance of 600 feet from the south-west angle we have a causeway which crosses the valley, while from this point the western wall no longer follows the same direction, but inclines slightly to the westward. This causeway commences with an arch nearly as large as Robinson's, discovered by Dr. Barclay, of the United States, measured by Captain Wilson, and known as Wilson's arch. This arch is now found to be in a perfect condition and elevated 120 feet above the lowest part of the valley, while the causeway to west is a succession of vaults on vaults, and is about eighty feet above the rock. The passage—the way to the king's palace—has also apparently come to light in the form of a secret tunnel, which has been traced westward for 250 feet, at which point it is under the house of Joseph Effendi, and is used as a cistern.

Of the two intermediate gates, the southern should be by calculation 264 feet from the south-west angle of the Haram area; and at 270 feet there is in the Haram wall an enormous lintel, which was first brought prominently into notice in this century by Dr. Barclay, in his 'City of the Great King.' The bottom of the lintel is five feet five inches above the surface of the ground, and Warren has ascertained that the sill is about thirty feet below the lintel, while the road up to it seems to have been by a causeway raised forty-six feet above the rock. We have, then, in the western portion of the Haram wall two bridges and one gate; but the most persevering search has not been rewarded by the discovery of any second gate between the two bridges. Moreover, the spring of Wilson's arch is seven feet above that of Robinson, its pier is for the first nineteen feet built up of rough blocks (that of Robinson's of smooth stones), and the voussoirs are of a style said to be of the later days of the Roman empire; though, like the more southern arch, it appears to have had a predecessor on the same spot.

Of the new evidence furnished by the explorations, the balance seems, after all, to tell against the south-west angle as the site of the temple. It has already been stated that the original bed of the Tyropœon valley comes out through the south wall of the Haram, about sixty feet from the south-west angle; and it is only stating the fact in other words to say that for sixty feet the south wall is carried up the slope of the modern Mount Zion. In the other direction, if we measure off 600 feet from the south-west angle, to find the south-east corner of the temple, the wall at that point rests on the highest part of Mount Moriah, which is not cut by the south front at all. An examination of the lithographed plan, No. 14, makes such a position seem an unlikely one for the original wall; for it would be more like building in the valley than on the hill, would take more material, and be destitute of symmetry. Next, the rock-cut aqueduct running down the Tyropœon has one of its pools half cut through by the west wall; and the north part of the aqueduct, roofed with flat slabs, appears to be older than the south, which is vaulted; everything favouring the conclusion that the aqueduct originally followed the course of the valley, and that when the wall was built the part of the aqueduct lying outside of it was left intact, and new lines of arched passage built to connect the older portions. Unless, therefore, the aqueduct is of pre-Solomonian age, the west wall was no part of Solomon's Temple at least, though it may have been included in Herod's.

Add to all this, that the stones at the south-west angle resemble those at the north-east, and that a temple in the south-west angle would not face due east, and the evidence in favour of this position is by no means conclusive.

The courses of stone in the south wall usually run from three feet six inches to three feet nine inches in height; but between the Double Gate and the Triple Gate there is a course described by Captain Wilson, from five feet ten inches to six feet one inch high. Captain Warren found that this course, with some breaks, is continued to the south-east angle, and thence runs north along the east wall for twenty-four feet. The length of this course in the south wall is 600 feet; and the coincidence of this number with the measurement of the temple cloisters, is enough to suggest that we may here have a clue, especially since, through the rising ground under the Triple Gate, this is the first course of stones which could be carried uninterruptedly through from east to west. Captain Warren, following this clue, not only found, after numerous examinations underground, that a perpendicular dropped from the most westerly stone of this course would pretty well divide the wall into two parts of different character, but that the rough stones to the west of this line resemble those at the north-east angle, thus far favouring the conclusion that these were the parts added by Herod.[33]

The Triple Gate is in the middle of this six feet course of stones, thus agreeing with the description of Josephus, that the south front of the temple had 'gates in its middle,' an expression which some have tried to reconcile with the existence of the Huldah and Triple Gates, at about equal distances from the angles and from one another, or have construed as applying to the Huldah Gate alone, which is, however, 365 feet from the south-west angle.

Under the Triple Gate the rock, as already stated, is highest, and notwithstanding that the slope is greater to the east than to the west, there would thus be an appearance of symmetry in the wall which it could not have if standing entirely west of the Triple Gate. It is worth notice also that at the Huldah Gate, where, on this view, the temple would terminate to west, the wall of the city, coming up from the south, now abuts, indicating that the south-west angle of the Haram is less ancient than the original city wall at this part, and the city wall less ancient than the south Haram wall east of Huldah Gate.

Again, the wall of Ophel, which commences at the south-east angle, and thus favours the view we are considering, runs sixty feet south, then 700 feet south-west, and terminates abruptly at a point nearly due south of Huldah Gate (see lithographic plan, No. 30), to which, it would seem possible, its return course may have run. Even Fergusson's argument for the south-west angle—that the south wall of the platform which now surrounds the Mosque of Omar runs parallel to the south wall of the Haram, at a distance of exactly 600 feet, and for a length of 600 feet—is nearly as much in favour of the south-east angle; and Lewin's argument that Josephus's πύλας κατὰ μέσον must refer to a double doorway, and therefore to the present Huldah Gate, is balanced by Warren's discovery that originally the so-called Triple Gate was a double tunnel.

It is often urged that the sub-structures known as Solomon's stables, in the south-east corner of the Haram, are of too slight a construction to bear the cloisters of the temple, and too modern, as well as too slight;[34] but the floor of these vaults is on a level with the six feet course of stones previously mentioned—above which level few stones remain in situ—and any previous sub-structures would not have survived the destruction of the east and south retaining walls. Between the Triple Gate and the south-east angle is the postern known as the Single Gate, with its sill on a level with the sill of the Triple Gate, but itself of modern construction. Below this gate, and below the vaults within the Haram, at this corner, Warren discovered a passage for carrying into the Kedron some liquid, and yet wholly distinct from the water channels under the Triple Gate. Underground Jerusalem so abounds in aqueducts and passages that it would not be of much force to urge that this channel conveyed the blood from the altar: yet the suggestion may be set against any similar one in favour of another site.

Finally, on this point, at the south-east angle, which some had thought to be modern, the foundations are about eighty feet beneath the surface, the stones are in situ, and some of them have Phœnician masons' marks painted and chiselled on them. That the stones are in situ is proved by the circumstance that a small depth of débris, which had been shovelled away to make room for the lowest tier, still remains close by, and has its layers sloping inwards. That the wall is ancient is thought to be evidenced by the Phœnician characters, which seem certainly to point to pre-Roman times, and possibly to the time when Solomon engaged the workmen of Hiram, King of Tyre, to build the temple.

Still, neither is the evidence conclusive here. While the stones at the north-east angle differ from those at the south-east, and there are several breaks and irregularities in the masonry of the east wall, Phœnician marks—though too much blurred to be deciphered—are found at the north-east angle also; the south-east angle is not a right angle, but measures 92 deg. 5 min. at the surface, and 92 deg. 25 min. at the foundation; at 105 feet from the corner there is a break in the character of the masonry; only the first 120 feet of wall are in the same straight line, and then there is a bend to the north-east.

The platform, called the Haram area, is nearly on one level all over, and near its centre is a second platform, about eighteen feet higher, on which stands the Mosque of Omar, covering the Sakhra, or sacred rock of the Mahometans, which measures sixty feet by fifty or fifty-five, and is said by them to be a morsel of Paradise. Thrupp and Falconer suppose it to be the rock or part of the rock on which stood the tower of Antonia; Fergusson maintains it to be the Holy Sepulchre, over which Constantine built a church, and Professor Willis identifies it with the threshing-floor of Araunah, and therefore with the site of the temple. As this rock is the highest point of Mount Moriah, and contains a cave with an opening to a deeper recess which has not been explored, it was sure thus to suggest itself as the place of the altar whence, according to the Talmud, the blood and offal of the sacrifices were drained off to the Kedron. As excavations have not been permitted within the sacred area, it has not been possible to put this theory to any test; nor can Warren's accidental discovery of souterrains along the northern edge of the platform, and of a natural or artificial ditch crossing beyond its north-west corner, be considered as settling the point either way. It may be worth a thought that the summit of Moriah may have been a 'high place' for heathen worship before it occurred to David to build a temple for God; that on that very account it would perhaps be avoided by the builders of the temple; and that if Araunah worshipped on any high place at all, his threshing-floor would not be on the same spot.

Captain Warren is never forward to theorise, but as a provisional hypothesis during his earlier excavations he favoured the south-east angle as the probable site of the temple; and now, after three or four years of investigation, while he has come to no conclusion, he inclines to a position nearly coincident with the Dome-of-Rock platform. As Josephus states the stones in Solomon's Cloister—the eastern side of the temple—to have been twenty cubits long and six cubits high, and Warren has not found any stones of these dimensions at any point where he has explored, he naturally thinks the cloister may be in the part he has not explored, viz., a space of 600 feet between the Golden Gate and the south-east angle, where a wide Mahometan cemetery makes operations very difficult.

One of the objects of the Palestine Exploration Fund is to improve our knowledge of Jewish archæology, about which we have known next to nothing. The discoveries in Assyria show us what may be expected; 'for not only have we been able (says Mr. Layard) through the discoveries of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and others (Mr. Layard might have added his own name), to read their written history, and trace their connection with other nations and races, but by the aid of the sculptures we can almost learn the details of the private and domestic life of the Assyrian people—their dress, their arms, and their religious ceremonies.' If similar discoveries could be made in Palestine, the greatest light would be thrown upon the political and domestic history of the Jews, and most important illustrations of the Holy Scriptures would be obtained. Such discoveries are indeed considered unlikely, since the Jewish law forbade the representation of the human form in sculpture or painting; but the Jews did not always scrupulously observe their law; besides which, the objection does not relate to the discovery of pottery, glass, coins, metal work, remains of architecture, &c. It must be confessed, indeed, that the legendary golden throne of King Solomon, with its eagles, and lions, and doves, has not been found, and the sceptres of the kings of Judah and Israel have not even been searched for by the explorers; moreover, most of their labour has been expended in uncovering massive structures, which cannot be brought home; yet still, when Mr. Macgregor returned from Jerusalem, he brought with him nine cases of objects incidentally lighted upon by the excavators, and in the summer of 1869 the Society was able to open a Museum of Palestinean Antiquities. The collection included lamps, pottery, glass, coins, weapons, tesselated pavement, sculpture, sarcophagi, geological specimens, and a collection of stone weights; besides photographs, and tracings, maps, and models. Three glass lamps, of curious construction, with several brigs of red pottery, and a cooking dish, glazed inside, were found in the rock-cut chambers and passages leading from the Virgin's Fountain up through the hill of Ophel. The whole of the ground of Ophel, between the south Haram wall and the Pool of Siloam, has been built over, and lamps of a particular type have been found there—two of them with Greek inscriptions—and in no case has any known Arabic pottery been found. On the other hand, at the Birket Israil—so-called Pool of Bethesda, where Warren dug through thirty-five feet of rubbish, and brought up a piece of the concrete bottom—the pottery is totally different. It is in many cases highly glazed, and has patterns on it, and when it is unglazed it has bands of red or brown, or other marks, very similar in appearance to the specimens of pottery found at Athens and Melos; and yet among this there came to light two pieces of glazed jars with raised Arabic or Cufic inscriptions, one of them being the usual invocation to Allah.

Some of the pottery found is older than the south-east portion of the Haram wall, for on the rock there rests an accumulation of eight or ten feet of a clay mould, which, from its slope, appears to have been cut through for the purpose of laying the stones on a solid foundation, and this clay abounds in pottery, broken into fragments. The rock at the south-east angle is very soft for the first two or three feet of depth, and at three feet to the east of the angle a hole was found scooped out of it, one foot in diameter and one foot in depth, in which was a little earthenware jar, standing upright, as though it had been purposely placed there. Warren suggested at the time (February, 1869) that the purpose may have been religious or superstitious, and that in such cases inscriptions might be found upon the pottery, if the jars were properly cleaned. The suggestion has borne fruit in his own experience. Among the fragments of pottery which for a depth of about two inches covers the rich loam overlying the rock at the south-east angle some handles of jars were observed to have a stamp on them, and on this account some specimens were collected. After his return to England, in 1870, Captain Warren, getting these out, and dusting the mud off them, observed Phœnician letters, some of which have since been read by Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, as lemelek Zepha (to the king Zepha), and which exactly resemble those of the Moabite stone, of which all the world has heard. The significance of this discovery will be better understood after we have considered that of the Moabite stone itself.

The paleographical results achieved by the Palestine Exploration Fund, when viewed by the side of the many and varied works in other departments, may seem to be small; but Mr. Deutsch, when speaking at Oxford,[35] was not wrong in desiring his hearers to count the latter, but to weigh the former. In a minaret near Nablus, immured upside down, is an inscribed slab that once belonged to a synagogue, which, though it does not seem to have been seen by Robinson, was copied by Shultz in 1844, and published by Rödiger; and again copied by Wildenbruck, and published by Blau. Finally, in 1860, it was copied and explained by Rosen, whose work left that of his predecessors far behind. Yet even he does not give all the characters, nor are they so accurately reproduced as would seem to be absolutely necessary in the case of the oldest known Samaritan monument; nor has he been able more than to conjecture as to the reading of the very beginning of the tablet. A photograph, taken under Captain Wilson, has rendered everything clear, and it turns out that, owing to the difficulty of the position in which the decipherer is necessarily placed, it was utterly impossible to perceive certain marks on the stone itself which are quite clear in the photograph. The tablet itself exhibits ten lines, the first eight of which contain the Ten Commandments, according to the Samaritan recension, in an abbreviated form. The ninth forms a portion of the celebrated Samaritan interpolation after the Ten Commandments (from Deut. xxvii. 2—7; and ix. 30)—'And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan ... on Mount Gerizim ... and thou shalt build there an altar unto the Lord thy God.' The last line contains the formula from Exodus, of frequent use in Samaritan worship, viz., 'Arise, O Lord; return, O Lord!'[36] Another photograph gives the famous inscription on the lintel of a ruined synagogue at Kefr Birim, in Galilee, with greater clearness than is represented in M. Renan's lithograph, taken from a cast, and is even clearer than the original itself, certain blurred characters of which it was next to impossible to distinguish on the glaring white surface. The gist of the inscription is a prayer for 'peace upon this place and all the places of Israel,' and an indication of the builder's name. In addition to these, some dozens of inscriptions have been copied—in the north of Palestine by Wilson; at Jerash and in the Lebanon by Warren; and in the Haram area and elsewhere by Mr. E. H. Palmer. Ancient characters have been ferreted out, and copied from the walls of Sidon; and a seal, bearing the inscription, 'Haggai, son of Shebaniah,' and dating as far back as the Maccabean period, has been found under the buried pavement near the south-west corner of the Haram. The red-paint characters at the south-east angle of the Haram were examined by Mr. Deutsch on the spot, and pronounced to be partly letters, partly numerals, and partly special masons' or quarry signs. Some of them were recognisable at once as well-known Phœnician characters; others, hitherto unknown in Phœnician epigraphy, Mr. Deutsch had the rare satisfaction of being able to identify on absolutely undoubted antique Phœnician structures in Syria, such as the primitive sub-structures of the harbour at Sidon. Similar marks at the north-east angle afford evidence that the stones of the Haram wall were shaped at the quarry, inasmuch as the paint in one instance has run, and the trickling is upwards with reference to the present position of the stone. Evidence to the same effect is furnished by the marginal drafts, which, present no appearance of pattern or design when the wall is regarded as a whole, but only when each stone is taken by itself.

The paleographic discovery of paramount interest is that of the Moabite stone, with a memorial inscription in what is known to scholars as the 'Phœnician' character, and belonging, there is little doubt, to the first half of the ninth century b.c. In August, 1868, the Rev. F. A. Klein, a Prussian clergyman, in the service of the Church Missionary Society at Jerusalem, in the course of a journey from es-Salt to Kerak, had the good fortune to be shown this monument at Dhibân near Arnon, the old border of Moab. The stone was lying among the ruins, perfectly free and exposed to view, the inscription uppermost, and was in excellent preservation. Mr. Klein ascertained it to be one metre thirteen centimetres in height, seventy centimetres in breadth and thirty-five in thickness, rounded at the upper and lower corners,[37] and containing thirty-four lines of writing. Circumstances prevented his copying more than 'a few words from several lines at random;' and when afterwards M. Clermont-Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, Captain Warren, of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and others, interested themselves to obtain 'squeezes,' the Arabs resented the action of foreigners, quarrelled among themselves, and lighting a fire about the stone poured water on it and broke it to pieces. An Arab employed by M. Ganneau, who when the quarrel arose was engaged in taking a squeeze, tore off the wet impression in rags, and springing on his horse managed to escape, though not without a spear wound in his leg. Through the energy of Captain Warren and M. Ganneau better squeezes were afterwards obtained of the larger fragments, and at a later date the fragments themselves came to hand, so that of 1,000 letters which it is estimated the stone contained, 669 have been recovered.

While the materials remain imperfect, it is impossible to obtain a complete translation of the inscription, though various attempts have been made. M. Ganneau's second translation of June, 1870, differs widely from that which he put forth five months previously; but then his only copy of certain parts of the stone was certain torn rags (lambeaux frifés et chiffonnés), and his method of procedure with the fragments of the stone is thus described:—'La plus grande partie de ces morceaux, même les plus minimes, peut être mise en place facilement, en tenant compte de la correspondance horizontale et verticale des séries de caractères: il suffit de procéder comme pour déterminer la position géographique d'un point par l'intersection des lignes de longitude et de latitude.'[38] Translations have also been attempted by Professor Schlottman, of Halle, Professor Nöldeke, and in this country by Dr. Neubauer; while Mr. Deutsch has consistently asked scholars and the public to exercise patience and wait till the full materials for a translation should come to hand. The general drift of the inscription, however, is clear enough. It appears to be a contemporaneous record from the Moabite point of view of 2 Kings i. 1, set up by King Mesha, commencing with a brief record of himself and his father, commemorating warlike successes over the Israelites, explaining how he rebuilt and improved a number of well-known Moabite cities, and finishing apparently with some further reference to war. The names of Israel, Omri, Chemosh, occur up and down, and the monarch seems to have conceived himself under the special guidance of his god, who was thought to signify his will that this or that city should be attacked, and who was obeyed implicitly. Historically, therefore, the monument is interesting, since it is an unexpected record of a nation now passed away, and adds a trifle to our knowledge.

Paleographically, the stone is of far greater value, and happily of nearly as much value in its mutilated condition, as it would have been if perfect. It is the very oldest Semitic lapidary record of importance yet discovered, the most ancient specimen of the alphabetic writing still in common use amongst us—a century and a half earlier than any other inscription in the same Phœnician character, and three centuries earlier than any other such inscription of any length. Its significance in this respect is, however, only in process of being studied, and uniformity of opinion has not yet been arrived at. The names of the Hebrew letters are all significant of certain objects—aleph, bêth, gimel, daleth, for instance = ox, house, camel, door, &c.; and it has been maintained by Semitic scholars that the letters themselves were originally slight and abridged representations of the visible objects, the resemblance being more clearly seen in the older Phœnician than in the later Phœnician, the Assyrian or square character, and archaic Greek.[39] Mr. Deutsch, who was so careful in the matter of translation, was bold to express himself here, and to assert from the evidence of the Moabite stone that 'the more primitive the characters the simpler they become; not, as often supposed, the more complicated, as more in accordance with some pictorial prototype.'[40] This view is controverted by Professor Rawlinson, in the Contemporary Review for August, 1870, and, as it appears to us, successfully; for while the later characters in some instances present a greater complication to the eye, they are far simpler to the mind as soon as you imagine yourself engaged in writing them and exerting the volition separately for each stroke. 'In samech for instance, apparently the most complicated of the later letters, a gradual diminution in the number of strokes may be traced from first to last. Originally the letter was written like an early Greek xi—thus, (), with four distinct strokes; then the four were reduced to two by changing the three horizontal bars into a zigzag, which could be written without taking the hand from the paper, and adding a vertical bar beneath it; finally, the vertical bar was attached to one end of the zigzag, and thus made a continuation of it, so that a single continuous stroke sufficed for the whole letter.... In like manner, the original zain required three distinct strokes, two horizontal and one oblique ( ), which were subsequently represented by the form still in use (Z), a form producible by a single effort, without any removal of the pen from the paper.'

And so with regard to the pictorial origin of the letters. The early bêth differs from the later solely in having a pointed head instead of a rounded one. But the object which bêth was intended to represent was a tent, the earliest 'house' of pastoral man; and this had in primitive times the simple triangular form, Δ. Thus the early bêth more resembled the object than the later one. The early daleth is a simple triangle; the later has the right side of the triangle elongated, and the other two generally rounded into one. But daleth, 'door,' represented the opening of a tent, the form of which was like that of the tent, triangular. For other instances we must refer our readers to Professor Rawlinson's paper and the plate which accompanies it, merely remarking in the way of adverse criticism that the square letters of the Old Testament present a difficulty, since, while they are confessedly of later origin, such letters as bêth, gimel, zain, ain, kaph, shin, are less simple in the sense explained, than the older. The Moabite stone also throws light on the question of the time at which writing was introduced into Greece, the Greek alphabet of the earliest inscriptions (circ. b.c. 650-500) resembling that of the Moabite stone more closely than it does any later alphabet; so that Mr. Grote's opinion that letters were unknown to the Greeks of Homer's time, and Hesiod's, is in danger of being proved incorrect.

It is remarkable that a stone measuring three feet six inches in length and with thirty-four lines of writing on it should have escaped notice until the year 1868; but since Irby and Mangles visited Moab in 1809, scarcely any European traveller has passed near the spot where this monument was found; so that it has been said that the chief value of this discovery is in the prospect it affords of future successful exploration. It should be remembered that the Arabs are now aware of the price Europeans are willing to pay for such relics, and would no doubt bring others forward if they knew of any existing. Mr. E. H. Palmer, who was in the country in the spring of 1870, is probably right in his conclusion that above ground at least there does not exist another Moabite stone. But there are more fishes in the sea than have ever yet been caught; and if a few intelligent men accustomed to dealing with lawless Arabs could be sent out to Moab to conduct excavations, they might, if liberally supplied with money and other resources, obtain antiquities of great value, inscriptions possibly included. Dean Stanley points us also to 1 Sam. xv. 12, describing Saul's victory over the Amalekites, where it is said, 'Saul came to Carmel, and behold he set him up a place' (מַצִיג which is from the root נָצַג, to set, to put; in the Hiphil to make to stand, and which might be translated pillar or trophy)—the Dean points to this to show the possibility of even Jewish inscriptions coming to light.

To return to the characters at the south-east angle of the Haram—on the wall and on the handles of the jars or vases. The letters on the pottery are like those of the Moabite stone; whence the age of the jars is inferred to be about the same, and their origin Phœnician: the position of the pottery shows it to be of nearly the same age as the wall, and hence the antiquity of the wall is deduced; the wall itself shows Phœnician marks, and so the builders are believed to have been Phœnicians. This seems to us a little too hasty. The Moabite stone gives us the Moabite alphabet of King Mesha's time, which proves to be identical with that of old Phœnicia. Judea was geographically as near to Phœnicia as Moab was, and probably used the same alphabet, a supposition confirmed by the discovery of vase handles at Jerusalem with letters like those of the Moabite stone. It seems gratuitous to conclude that these vases were among the contents of a museum or were ever the property of Phœnicians, when the evidence goes to show that the language inscribed on them was common to all the races of Western Asia. Only for want of a better name has it been called 'Phœnician;' and Mr. Deutsch had already suggested the term 'Cadmean,' while Sir Henry Rawlinson had ventured the prediction that, should any early monument be found at Jerusalem, its inscription would be in this character. The Phœnician character was probably the only cursive character used by the Semitic nations, and the Hebrew character, Sir Henry believes, did not exist till after the return from the captivity. The vase handles therefore show us the kind of letters used by the Hebrew prophets, and the Cadmean masons' marks neither prove nor disprove the Phœnician origin of the Haram wall; but the identity of the vase-handle letters with those of the Moabite stone rather than with the alphabet of Assyrian tablets and gems, or of the inscription on the tomb of Eshmunazer (circ. b.c. 600) indicates the great antiquity both of the pottery and the south-east Haram wall. On this point we may add that we have compared (from the photographs) the letters of the vase-handles with those of the Moabite stone, and find the identity very apparent in the case of the tau, shin, kaph and mem.

The work promised by the Fund in the departments of natural history and geology still waits for want of means; though notes have been made on the occurrence of basalt, trap, hot springs, &c., and among the things sent home have been an occasional animal, a small collection of Coleoptera, a book of dried flowers from Moab, and some specimens of rock. In its zoology and botany, as well as in its human history and arts, Palestine has felt the influence of Africa, Asia and Europe; the heights of Lebanon and Hermon, the depths of Gennesareth and the Dead Sea, assist to make its natural history cosmopolitan. It is curious that the Clarias, a strange-looking fish of the Siluroid family, found by Tristram in the Lake of Galilee, and in one of the fountains near its shores, should be identical in species with a fish found in the Nile; thus far confirming Josephus, who says that the fountain of Capharnaum in Gennesareth produced a Nile fish, and on that account was thought to be a vein of the river of Egypt.[41] But the words of Linnæus are almost true to-day: 'We know more of the botany and zoology of farther India than we do of those of Palestine.' Of the geology we are in equal ignorance, although the depression of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea invites attention as being the most remarkable on the face of the globe, and constituting, in the opinion of Sir R. Murchison, the key to the entire geology of the district. Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Tristram, and a few other gentlemen, if sent out and supported for some years, would probably astonish us by the results of their investigations. In meteorology the Society has made a commencement, by sending out instruments and publishing tabular statements of barometrical readings, temperature, rainfall, &c., observed at Beyrout, Nazareth, Gaza, Jaffa, and in the Lebanon. With all this work on hand, they have also begun the exploration of the Tih—the Wilderness of the Wanderings—sending out Mr. E. H. Palmer, a most accomplished Arabic scholar, formerly of the Sinai Ordnance Survey, who appears to have made some discoveries, but whose full statement is not yet before us.

We had intended to detail the difficulties under which the explorers have done their work, but the list is too long: counting every shade, from the laziness of the native workmen, to the whizzing of native bullets; from the thermometer at 110 degrees to attacks of fever and dysentery; from slips in scaling mountains, danger from falling stones, risk of choking in narrow aqueducts and sewers—we had noted not less than fifty instances.

We are bound to say that the Society has made a good beginning; that it has done fully as much as could be expected under all the circumstances, and with its inadequate funds; and that if it be not well supported for another five years it will be to the lasting disgrace of England. In its scientific and its religions aims, in its practical and its unsectarian character, it suits the present age; supplying facts for theorists, illustrating points of Scripture history, and confirming the general truth of the Bible.

Besides the completion of the work at Jerusalem, much remains to be done, not only in natural history and geology, but in the observation of manners and customs, exploration at other cities, such as Jezreel, Samaria, Hebron, Bethshan, Nazareth, and excavation of the mounds scattered over the face of the country. There will probably never be a better opportunity than the present: for the visit of the Prince of Wales to the Holy Land removed some prejudices, the Turkish Government is favourable to the enterprise, and the work is actually begun. We conclude this review of the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund by heartily endorsing the appeal of Mr. Deutsch at the annual meeting in 1869. 'We, as humble votaries of science, would, in the name of science, urge you to continue that in which both religion and science may join. And let me remind you of one thing. There are ruins enough in the City of Sorrows. Do not add fresh ruins. Do not leave there broken shafts, abandoned galleries; and let it not be told in Gath that this England, the richest, proudest, and most Bible-loving country in the world, undertook one of the greatest undertakings, and abandoned it—for want of money.'

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Art. V.—The Early Sieges of Paris. Les Comtes de Paris; Histoire de l'Avènement de la Troisième Race. Par Ernest Mourin. Paris: Didier et Cie.

Robert der Tapfere, Markgraf von Anjou, der Stammvater des Kapetingischen Hauses. Von Dr. Phil. Karl von Kalckstein. Berlin: Löwenstein.

The events of the last few months have, in a special way, drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the marked periods of the world's history. And it is not the least wonderful phænomenon of this autumn of wonders that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whether we look back to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of the Pope's temporal power is really a greater event than any possible result of the war between Germany and France. Yet such is the greater immediate interest of the present struggle, such perhaps is the instinctive attraction of mankind towards the more noisy and brilliant triumphs of the siege and the battle-field, that the really greater event, simply because of the ease with which it has happened, has passed almost unnoticed in the presence of the lesser. The world has seen the Papacy in several shapes; but the shape of a Pontiff, spiritually infallible, but politically a subject, and the subject not of an universal Emperor but of a mere local King, is something which the world has not seen before. What may come of it, no man can say; but we may be pretty sure that greater things will come of it in one way or another, than can come out of any settlement, in whatever direction, of conflicting French and German interests. Still, at this moment, the present fate of Paris unavoidably draws to itself more of our thoughts than the future fate of Rome. But it is well to keep the two cities together before our eyes, and all the more so because the past history and the present position of those two cities have points in common which no other city in Europe shares with them in their fulness, which only one other city in Europe can claim to share with them in any degree.

The history of Rome, as all the world knows, is the history of a city which grew into an Empire. It grew in truth into a twofold, perhaps a more than twofold Empire. Out of the village on the Palatine sprang the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Pontiffs. From Rome came the language, the theology, the code of law, which have had such an undying effect on the whole European world. Amidst all changes, the city itself has been always clothed with a kind of mysterious and superstitious charm, and its possession has carried with it an influence which common military and political considerations cannot always explain. And from the Old Rome on the Tiber many of these attributes passed—some were even heightened in passing—to the new Rome on the Bosporos. From the days of Constantine till now, no man has ever doubted that, in the very nature of things, Constantinople, in whatever hands, must be the seat of empire. To Western eyes this seems mainly the result of her unrivalled geographical situation; over large regions of the East the New Rome wields the same magic influence which in the West has been wielded by the Old. The City,[42] the City of the Cæsars, is in Christian eyes the one great object to be won; in Mahometan eyes it is the one great object to be kept. By the Bosporos, as by the Tiber, it is the city which has grown into the Empire, which has founded it, and which has sustained it.

Now of the other capitals of Europe—the capitals of the more modern states—one alone can claim to have been, in this way, the creator of the state of which it is now the head. Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, are simply places chosen in later times, for reasons of caprice or convenience, as administrative centres of states which already existed. Vienna has grown from the capital of a Duchy into the capital of something which calls itself an Empire; but Vienna, as a city, has had nothing to do with the growth of that so-called Empire. London may fairly claim a higher place than any of the cities of which we have spoken. It was only by degrees, and after some fluctuations, that London, rather than Winchester, came to be permanently acknowledged as the capital of England. London won its rank, partly by virtue of an unrivalled military and commercial position, partly as the reward of the unflinching patriotism of its citizens in the Danish wars. But London in no way formed England, or guided her destinies. The history of London is simply that the city was found to be the most fitting and worthy head of an already existing kingdom. But Paris has been what London has been, and something more. Paris, like London, earned her pre-eminence in Gaul by a gallant and successful resistance to the Scandinavian enemy. It was the great siege of Paris in the ninth century which made Paris the chief among the cities of Gaul, and its Count the chief among the princes of Gaul. Its position first marked it out for the rank of a local capital, and, through the way in which it used its position, it grew into the capital of a kingdom. But it did not, like London, simply grow into the capital of a kingdom already existing. The city created first the county, and then the kingdom, of which it was successively the head. Modern France, as distinguished both from Roman Gaul and from the Western Kingdom of the Karlings, grew out of this County of Paris; and of the County of Paris the city was not merely the centre, but the life and soul. The position of Paris in the earliest times is best marked, as in the case of all Gaulish cities, by its place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was a city, not of the first, but of the second rank; the seat of a Bishop, but not the seat of a Metropolitan.[43] Lutetia Parisiorum held the usual rank of one of those head towns of Gaulish tribes which grew into Roman cities. But it never became the centre of one of the great ecclesiastical and civil divisions; it never reached the rank of Lyons, Narbonne, Vienne, or Trier. Twice before the ninth century, the discerning eye, first of a Roman and then of a Frankish master, seemed to mark out the city of the Seine for greater things. It was the beloved home of Julian; it was the city which Hlodwig at once fixed upon for the seat of his new dominion. But the greatness of Paris, as the earliest settled seat of the Frankish power, was not doomed to be lasting. Under the descendants of Hlodwig Paris remained a seat of royalty; but, among the fluctuations of the Merovingian kingdoms, it was only one seat of royalty among several. It was the peer of Soissons, Orleans, and Metz—all of them places which thus, in the new state of things, assumed a higher importance than had belonged to them in Roman times. But, as the Austrasian House of the Karlings grew, first as Mayors, and then as Kings, to the lordship of the whole Frankish realm, the importance of the cities of Western Gaul necessarily lessened. Paris reached its utmost point of insignificance in the days of Charles the Great, whom French legends have pictured as a French King, reigning in Paris as his royal city. Whatever importance it had, it seems to have derived from its neighbourhood to the revered sanctuary of St. Denis. By a strange accident, the first King of the new house—the house with which Paris was to wage a war of races and languages—died either in the city itself, or in the precinct of the great monastery beyond its walls. Pippin, returning from a successful campaign in Aquitaine, fell sick at Saintes; from thence he was carried to Tours to implore the help of Saint Martin, and thence to Paris to implore the help of Saint Denis. He died at Paris, and was buried in the great minster which became the burial-place of the next and rival line of kings.[44] But Paris was neither the crowning-place nor the dwelling-place of his son, nor was it the object of any special attention during his long reign. Of the two sons of Pippin, between whom his kingdom was immediately divided, Paris fell to the lot of Karlmann. But he chose Soissons for his crowning-place—the place where his father had been crowned before him.[45] Charles, crowned at Noyon, made Aachen his capital, and, in the course of his whole reign, he visited Paris only on a single progress, when it is incidentally mentioned among a long string of other cities.[46]

But this time of utter neglect was, in the history of Paris, only the darkness before the coming of the dawn. In the course of the next reign Paris begins to play an important part, and from that time the importance of the city steadily grew till it became what we have seen it in our own day. The occasional visits of Lewis the Pious to the city are dwelled on by his poetical biographer with evident delight, and with even more than usual pomp of words.[47]. And the city was now about to appear in its most characteristic; light. In the words of Sir Francis Palgrave, who has sketched the early history of Paris with great power and insight,[48] 'the City of Revolutions begins her real history by the first French Revolution.'[49] In this particular case we do not even grudge the premature use of the word 'French,' for the movement of which he speaks was plainly a movement of the Romanized lands of the West against their Teutonic master. Most likely no such feeling was consciously present to the mind of any man; but nations and parties seek to shape themselves unconsciously, and cities and regions learn to play their appropriate parts, before they can give any intelligible account of what they are doing. The Emperor was leading an expedition against the revolted Bretons; suddenly all the disaffected spirits of the Empire, his own sons among the foremost, gathered themselves together at Paris.[50] They then seized Lewis himself at Compiègne, and their hated step-mother Judith on the rock of Laon. But one part of his dominions was still faithful to the imprisoned Cæsar; the German lands had no share in the rebellion, and eagerly sought for the restoration of their sovereign. In marking out the geographical divisions of feeling, the writer of the ninth century, like those of the nineteenth, is driven, as it were, to forestal the language of a somewhat later time. The Emperor had no confidence in the French, but he put his trust in the German.[51]

Such was the part—a characteristic part—played by Paris in the Revolution of 830. Four years later Paris appears playing an opposite, yet a no less characteristic part. The Emperor Lewis, already restored and again deposed, is held as a prisoner by his eldest son Lothar, and is led in bonds to Paris.[52] Again the men of the East, the faithful Germans, are in arms for their sovereign under Lewis, at that moment his only loyal son. But by this time the city has changed sides. Lothar, for fear of the German host, flees to the South, leaving his father at liberty; the late captive is led by his rejoicing people to the minster of Saint Denis, and there is girt once more with the arms of the warrior and with the Imperial robes of the Cæsar.[53] Once then in the course of its long history, did Paris behold the inauguration of a lawful Emperor. But it was the re-inauguration of an Emperor whom one Parisian revolution had overthrown, and whom another Parisian revolution had set up again; and in the moment alike of his fall and of his restoration the force of loyal Germany forms at one time a threatening, at another an approving, background.

We thus see Paris, well-nigh unheard of during the reign of Charles the Great, suddenly rise into importance under his son. Under Charles the Bald its importance becomes greater still, and it begins to assume the peculiar function which raised it to the head place in Gaul. The special wretchedness of the time was fast showing the great military importance of the site. Under the rule of the Austrasian Mayors and Kings there had been endless wars, but they had been wars waged far away from Paris. Above all, no hostile fleet had for ages sailed up the Seine. Lutetia on her island must, under the Frankish power, have enjoyed for some generations a repose almost as unbroken as she had enjoyed in the days of the Roman Peace. Now all was changed. The Empire was torn in pieces by endless civil wars, wars of brother against brother, and the fleets of the Northmen, barely heard of in the days of Charles the Great, were making their way up the months of all its rivers. Men now began to learn that the island city, encompassed by the broad Seine, with its bridges and its minsters, and the Roman palace on the left bank, was at once among the most precious possessions and among the surest bulwarks of the realm. It is not without significance that the one time when the Great Charles himself visited Paris, it was in the course of a progress in which he had been surveying the shores of the Northern Ocean.[54] He came to Paris as a mourner and as a pilgrim, yet we may believe that neither his grief nor his devotion hindered him from marking the importance of the post. His eye surely marked the site as one fated to be the main defence, if not of his whole Empire, at least of its western portion, against the pirate-barks by which the Ocean was beginning to be covered. And probably it was not mere accident that it was in the course of an expedition against Brittany that Paris became the centre of the conspiracy of 830. In a Breton war, a land war, Paris would not be of the same pre-eminent importance as it was in the invasion of the Northmen. Still the island stronghold would be of no small moment in case of a Breton inroad, and in the days of Lewis the Pious a Breton inroad was again a thing to be dreaded. Among the troubles of the next reign the pre-eminent importance of Paris begins to stand out more and more strongly. By the last partition under Lewis the Pious, his youngest son, Charles the Bald, became King of a kingdom formed by the accidental union of Neustria and Aquitaine. The kingdom so formed answered to nothing which had been thought of in earlier divisions, but it answered in a kind of rough way to modern France. Far smaller as a whole, it took in districts at both ends, in Flanders and in Catalonia, which have long ceased to be looked upon as French. But it nowhere came near to the coveted frontier of the Rhine and the Alps. Of this kingdom it seemed at first that Paris was at once to become the capital; no other city filled so prominent a place in the early history of the reign of Charles the Bald. In the very beginning of his reign we find Charles making use of the position of the city and its bridge: to bar the progress of his brother, the Emperor Lothar. We find him dwelling for a long time in the city, and giving the citizens the delight of a spectacle by appearing among them in royal pomp at the Easter festival.[55] Four years later, the city began to appear in its other character as the great mark for Scandinavian attack. The northern pirates were now swarming on every sea, and the coasts of Britain, Gaul, and Germany were all alike desolated by their harryings. But they instinctively felt that, while no shore lay more temptingly for their objects than the shores of Northern Gaul, there was no point either of the insular or of the continental realm where their approach was better guarded against. The island city, with its two bridges and its strongly fortified Roman suburb on the mainland, blocked their path as perhaps no other stronghold in Gaul or Britain could block it.[56] In the very year of the fight of Fontenay, as if they had scented the mutual slaughter from afar, the Northmen had sailed up the stream and had harried Rouen and the surrounding lands with the sternest horrors of fire and sword.[57] Four years later they pressed on yet further into the heart of the defenceless realm; Paris was attacked; in strange contrast with the valour of its citizens forty years later, no one had the heart to resist; the city was stormed and sacked; and King Charles, finding his forces unequal to defend or to avenge, was driven to forestal the wretched policy of Æthelred, and to buy a momentary respite from the invaders.[58] Other attacks, other harryings followed. One more terrible than all, in the year 857, was specially remembered on account of the frightful havoc wrought among the churches of the city. The church of Saint Genoveva, on the left bank of the river—better known to modern ears as the Pantheon—was burned, Saint Stephen's, afterwards known as Nôtre Dame, Saint Germans, and Saint Denis, bought their deliverance only by large ransoms.[59] In the minds of the preachers of the time the woes of Paris suggested the woes of Jerusalem and a wail of sorrow went up from the Jeremiah of the age for the havoc of the city and its holy places.[60]

When we remember the importance to which Paris was plainly beginning to rise under Lewis the Pious, we may perhaps be led to think that it was the constant attacks to which the city was exposed which hindered it from becoming the permanent dwelling-place of royalty under Charles the Bald. That the city held a place in his affections throughout his life is shown by his choosing Saint Denis as the place of his burial. But it never became the royal city of the Kings of his house. We need hardly look on it as a mark of personal cowardice in Charles that he preferred to fix the ordinary seat of his government in some other place than the most exposed fortress of his kingdom. Compiègne now often appears as a royal dwelling-place; but the home and centre of Carolingian royalty in the Western Kingdom gradually fixed itself on a spot the most opposite to Paris in position and feeling which the Western Kingdom could afford. Paris and Laon were in every sense rivals; their rivalry is stamped upon their very outward appearance. Each is a representative city. Paris, like Châlons and Bristol, is essentially an island city; the river was its defence against ordinary enemies, however easily that defence might be changed into a highway for its attack in the hands of the amphibious Northmen. But Laon is the very pride of that class of towns which out of Gaulish hill-forts grew into Roman and mediæval cities. None stands more proudly on its height; none has kept its ancient character so little changed to our own day. The town still keeps itself within the walls which fence in the hill-top, and whatever there is of suburb has grown up at the foot, apart from the ancient city. Paris again was the home of the new-born nationality of the Romance speech,[61] the home of the new French nation. Laon stood near the actual German border, in a land where German was still spoken; it was fitted in every way to be, as it proved, the last home of a German dynasty in the West. There can be little doubt that, by thus moving eastward, by placing themselves in this outlying Teutonic corner of their realm, the Carolingian Kings of the West threw away the opportunity of putting themselves at the head of the new national movement, and of reigning as national Kings, if not of the whole Romance-speaking population of Gaul, at least of its strictly French portion north of the Loire.

Of such a mission we may be sure Charles the Bald and his successors never dreamed. The chances are that those to whom that mission really fell dreamed of it just as little. We must never forget that the national movements of those days were for the most part instinctive and unconscious; but they were all the more powerful and lasting for being instinctive and unconscious. An act of Charles the Bald, one of the ordinary grants by a King to one of his vassals, created the French nation. The post from which the King himself shrank was entrusted to a valiant subject, and Robert the Strong, the mightiest champion of the land against the heathen invader, received the government of the whole border land threatened by the Breton and the Northman.[62] We may be sure that the thoughts of the King himself did not reach at the most beyond satisfaction at having provided the most important post in his realm with a worthy defender. To shield himself from the enemy by such a barrier as was furnished by Robert's country, it was worth while to sacrifice the direct possession even of the fair lands between the Loire and the Seine. His dominion was a mark;[63] his truest title a marquis. But the Mark of France, like the Mark of Brandenburg and the Mark of Austria, was destined to great things. Robert no doubt, like the other governors and military chiefs, who were fast growing from magistrates into Princes, rejoiced in the prospect of becoming the source of a dynasty, a dynasty which could not fail to take a high place among the princes of Gaul. But he hardly dreamed of founding a line of Kings, and a line of Kings the most lasting that the world ever saw. Still less did he dream of founding a nation. But he did both. The Counts who held the first place of danger and honour soon eclipsed in men's eyes the Kings who had retired to the safer obscurity of their eastern frontier. The city of the river became a national centre in a way in which the city of the rock could never be. The people of the struggling Romance speech of northern Gaul found a centre and a head in the rising city and its gallant princes. That Robert was himself of German descent, the son of a stranger from some of the Teutonic provinces of the Empire,[64] mattered not a whit. From the beginning of their historic life the Parisian Dukes and Kings have been the leaders and representatives of the new French nationality. No royal dynasty has ever been so thoroughly identified with the nation over which it ruled, because no royal dynasty could be so truly said to have created the nation. Paris, France, and the Dukes and Kings of the French are three ideas which can never be kept asunder. A true instinct soon gave the ruler of the new state a higher and a more significant title. The Count of Paris was merged in the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French was soon to be merged in the King. The name of Francia, a name whose shiftings and whose changes of meaning have perplexed both history and politics—a name which Eastern and Western writers seem to have made it a kind of point of honour to use in different meanings[65]—now gradually settles down, as far as the Western Kingdom is concerned, into the name of a territory, answering roughly to the Celtic Gaul of the elder geography.[66] It has still to be distinguished by epithets like Occidentalis and Latina, from the Eastern Francia of Teutonic speech, but, in the language of Gaul, Francia and Franci for the future mean the dominion and the subjects of the lord of Paris. We need not say that the lands beyond the Rhone, the Saône, and the Maes, which formed no part of the Western Kingdom, are not included under the name of Francia. But neither are the lands held, like the French Duchy, in fief of the common sovereign, Brittany, Flanders, Aquitaine, and the ducal Burgundy. To these must be added Normandy, the land wrested from the French Duchy to form the inheritance of the converted Northman. France is still but one among the principalities of Gaul; but, like Wessex in England, like Castile in Spain, like Prussia in Germany and Piedmont in Italy, it was the one destined, by one means or another, to swallow up the rest. From the grant of 861, from the foundation of the Parisian Duchy, we may date the birth of the French state and nation. From that day onwards France is whatever can, by fair means or foul, be brought into obedience to Paris and her ruler.

Count Robert the Strong, the Maccabæus of the West-Frankish realm, the patriarch of the old Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons, died as he had lived, fighting for Gaul and Christendom against the heathen Dane.[67] But his dominion and his mission passed to a son worthy of him—to Odo, or Eudes,[68] the second Count of his house, presently to be the first of the Kings of Paris. In his day came the great struggle, the mighty and fiery trial, which was to make the name of Paris and her lord famous throughout the world. On the great siege of Paris by the Northmen, the turning-point in the history of the city, of the Duchy, and in truth of all Western Europe, we may fairly dwell at somewhat greater detail than we have done on the smaller events which paved the way for it. We must bear in mind the wretched state of all the countries which made up the Carolingian Empire. The Northmen were sailing up every river, and were spreading their ravages to every accessible point. Every year in the various contemporary annals is marked by the harrying of some fresh district, by the sack of some city, by the desecration of some revered monastery.[69] Resistance, when there was any, was almost wholly local; the invaders were so far from encountering the whole force of the Empire that they never encountered the whole force of any one of its component kingdoms. The day of Saul-court, renowned in that effort of old Teutonic minstrelsy which may rank alongside of our own songs of Brunanburh and Maldon,[70] the day when the young king Lewis led the West-Frankish host to victory over the heathen,[71] stands out well-nigh alone in the records of that unhappy time. While neither realm was spared, while one set of invaders ravaged the banks of the Seine and the Loire, while another more daring band sacked Aachen, Köln, and Trier,[72] the rival Kings of the Franks were mainly intent on extending their borders at the expense of one another. Charles the Bald was far more eager to extend his nominal frontier to the Rhine,[73] or to come back from Italy adorned with the Imperial titles,[74] than he was to take any active step to drive out the common enemy of all the kindred realms. At last the whole Empire, save the Burgundian Kingdom of Boso, was once more joined together under Charles the Fat. Paris was again under the nominal sovereignty of an Emperor whose authority, equally nominal everywhere, extended also over Rome and Aachen. Precarious and tottering as such an Empire was, the even nominal union of so many crowns on a single head, however unfit that head was to bear their weight, does seem to have given for the moment something like a feeling of greater unity and thereby of greater strength. Paris, defended by its own Count and its own Bishop, was defended by them in the name of His Emperor, Lord of the World.[75] The sovereigns alike of East and West were appealed to for help, and at least a show of help was sent in the name of both parts of the Frankish realm.[76] The defence of Paris was essentially a local defence, waged by its own citizens under the command of their local chiefs. Still the great check which the invaders then received came nearer to a national act on the part of the whole Frankish Empire than anything which had happened since the death of Charles the Great.

Our materials for the great siege are fairly abundant. Several of the contemporary chronicles, in describing this gallant struggle, throw off somewhat of their usual meagreness, and give an account conceived with an unusual degree of spirit and carried out with an unusual amount of detail.[77] And we have a yet more minute account, which, even as it is, is of considerable value, and which, had it been a few degrees less wearisome and unintelligible, would have been of the highest interest. Abbo, a distinguished churchman of those times, a monk of the house of Saint German, and not only a contemporary, but a spectator and sharer in the defence,[78] conceived the happy idea of writing a minute narrative of the exciting scenes which he had witnessed. But he unhappily threw his tale into the shape of hexameters which have few rivals for affectation and obscurity. The political biographer of Lewis the Pious at all events writes Latin; Abbo writes in a Babylonish dialect of his own composing, stuffed full of Greek and other out-of-the-way words, and to parts of which he himself found it needful to attach a glossary. Still with all this needless darkness, he gives us many details, and he especially preserves many individual names which we should not find out from the annalists. A fervent votary of Saint German, a loyal citizen of Paris, a no less loyal subject of the valiant Count who, when he wrote, had grown into a King, Abbo had every advantage which personal knowledge and local interest could give to a narrator of the struggle. Only we cannot help wishing that he had stooped to tell his tale, if not in his native tongue, whether Romance or Teutonic, yet at least in the intelligible Latin of Nithard in a past generation and of Richer in a future one.[79]

The poet begins with a panegyric on his city, in which he may, while dealing with such a theme, be forgiven for somewhat unduly exalting its rank among the cities of the world.[80] Its position, the strength of the island-fortress, connected with the mainland by its castles on either side, is plainly set forth.[81] The defenders of the city are clearly set before us; Odo the Count, the future King, as we are often reminded,[82] and Gozlin the Bishop, stand forth in the front rank. Around the two great local chiefs are gathered a secondary band of their kinsfolk and supporters, clerical and lay. There is Odo's brother Robert, himself to wear a crown in the city which he defended, but in days to which the foresight of the poet did not extend. There is the valiant Count Ragnar; there is the warlike Abbot Ebles of Saint Germans, whose exploits are recorded with special delight by the loyal monk of his house.[83] A crowd of lesser names are also handed down to us, names of men who had their honourable share in the work, but with whose bare names it is hardly needful to burthen the memories of modern readers. A great object of attack on the part of the Northmen was the castle which guarded the bridge on the right bank of the river, represented in after times by the Grand Châtelet. The watchful care of the Bishop had been diligent in strengthening this and the other defences of the city; but the last works which were to guard this important point were not fully finished.[84] The Danish fleet now drew near, a fleet manned, so it was said, by more than thirty thousand warriors.[85] As in the tale of our own Brihtnoth,[86] the invaders began with a peaceful message. The leader of the pirates, Sigefrith, the sea-king,—a king, as the poet tells us, without a kingdom[87]—sought an interview with Count Odo, and demanded a peaceful passage through the city. Odo sternly answers that the city is entrusted to his care by his lord the Emperor, and that he will never forsake the duty which was laid upon him. The siege now began; the Northmen strove to storm the unfinished tower. After two days of incessant fighting, and an intervening night spent in repairing the defences, the valour of the defenders prevailed. The Count and the Bishop, and the Abbot who could pierce seven Danes with a single shot of his arrow,[88] finally drove back the heathen to their ships; and instead of the easy storm and sack which they doubtless looked for on this, as on earlier occasions, the Northmen were driven to undertake the siege of the city in form.[89]

One is a little surprised at the progress in the higher branches of the art of war which had clearly been made by the enemy who now assaulted Paris. The description of their means of attack, if not intelligible in every detail, at least shows that the freebooters, merciless heathens as they were, were at all events thorough masters of the engineering science of their age.[90] But, through the whole winter of 885, all their attempts were unavailing. The skill and valour of the defenders were equal to those of the besiegers, and their hearts were strung by every motive which could lead men to defend themselves to the last. But early in the next year, in February 886, accident threw a great advantage into the hands of the besiegers. A great flood in the Seine swept away, or greatly damaged, the lesser bridge, the painted bridge, that which joined the island to the fortress on the left bank of the river.[91] That fortress and the suburb which it defended, the suburb which contained the Roman palace and the ministers of Saint Genoveva and Saint German, were thus cut off from the general defences of the city. The watchful care of the Bishop strove to repair the bridge by night. But the attempt was forestalled by the invaders; the tower was isolated and surrounded by the enemy. The Bishop and the other defenders of the city were left to behold, to weep, and to pray from the walls, at the fate of their brethren whom they could no longer help.[92] The tower was fiercely attacked; the gate did not give way till fire was brought to help the blows of the Northmen; the defenders of the tower all perished either by the flames or by the sword, and their bodies were hurled into the river before the eyes of their comrades.[93] The conquerors now destroyed the tower, and from their new vantage ground they pressed the siege of the island city with increased vigour.

The chances of war seemed now to be turning against the besieged. The stout heart of Bishop Gozlin at last began to fail; he saw that Paris could no longer be defended by the arms of its citizens only. He sent a message to Henry, the Duke of the Eastern Franks, praying him to come to the defence of the Christian people. The Duke came; we are told that his presence did little or nothing for the besieged city;[94] yet in the obscure verses of the poet we seem to discern something like a night attack on the Danish camp on the part of the Saxon Duke and his followers.[95] But in any case the coming of the German allies did nothing for the permanent relief of the city. They went back to their own land; Paris was again left to its own resources, and at last the Bishop, worn out with sorrow and illness, began to seek the usual delusive remedy. He began to enter into negotiations with Sigefrith, which were cut short by the prelate's death. The news was known in the Danish camp before it was commonly known within the walls of Paris, and the mass of the citizens first learnt from the insulting shouts of the besiegers that their valiant Bishop was no more.[96]

The Bishop, as long as he lived, had been the centre and soul of the whole defence, yet it would seem that, at the actual moment of his death, his removal was a gain. We hear no more, at least on the part of the men of Paris, of any attempts at treating with the enemy. One bitter wail of despair from the besieged city reaches our ears, and the hero of the second act of the siege now stands forth. The spiritual chief was gone; the temporal chief steps into his place, and more than into his place. Count Odo appears as cheering the hearts of the people by his eloquence, and as leading them on to repeated combats with the besiegers.[97] At last hunger began to tell on the strength of the defenders; help from without was plainly needed, and this time it was to be sought, not from any inferior chief, but from the common sovereign, the Emperor and King of so many realms. Count Odo himself went forth on the perilous errand; he called on the princes of the Empire for help in the time of need, and warned the sluggish Augustus himself that, unless help came speedily, the city would be lost for ever.[98] Long before any troops were set in motion in any quarter for the deliverance of Paris, the valiant Count was again within its walls, bringing again a gleam of joy to the sad hearts of the citizens, both by the mere fact of his presence and by the gallant exploit by which he was enabled to appear among them. The Northmen knew of his approach, and made ready to bar his way to the city. Before the gate of the tower on the right bank, the tower which still guarded the northern bridge, the lines of the heathen stood ready to receive the returning champion. Odo's horse was killed under him, but, sword in hand, he hewed himself a path through the thick ranks of the enemy; he made good his way to the gate, and was once more within the walls of his own city, ready to share every danger of his faithful people.[99]

Such a city, we may well say, deserved to become the seat of Kings, and such a leader deserved to wear a royal crown within its walls. Eight months of constant fighting passed away after the return of Odo before the lord alike of Rome, of Aachen, and of Paris appeared before the city where just now his presence was most needed. Towards the last days of summer Duke Henry again appeared, but it was fully autumn before the Emperor himself found his way to the banks of the Seine.[100] Duke Henry came, with an army drawn from both the Frankish realms, Eastern and Western.[101] With more show of prudence than he had shown at his former coming, Henry began by reconnoitring both the city and the camp of the enemy, to judge at what point an attack might be made with least risk.[102] But the Northmen were too wary for him. They had surrounded their whole camp with a network of trenches, three feet deep and one foot wide, filled up with straw and brushwood, and made to present the appearance of a level surface.[103] A small party only were left in ambush. As the Duke drew near, they sprang up, hurled their javelins, and provoked him with shouts. Henry pressed on in wrath, but he was soon caught in the simple trap which had been laid for him; his horse fell, and he himself was hurled to the ground. The enemy rushed upon him, slew him, and stripped him in the sight of his army.[104] One of the defenders of the city, the brave Count Ragnar, of whom we have already heard, came in time only to bear off the body, at the expense of severe wounds received in his own person.[105] The corpse of the Duke was carried to Soissons and was buried in the Church of Saint Médard. The army of Henry, disheartened by the loss of their chief, presently returned to their own homes. Paris was again left to its own resources, cheered only by such small rays of hope as might spring from the drowning of one of the besieging leaders in the river.[106]

The news of the death of Henry was brought to the Emperor. Notwithstanding his grief—perhaps an euphemism for his fear—he pressed on towards Paris with his army; but even the chronicler most favourable to him is obliged to confess that the lord of so many nations, at the head of the host gathered from all his realms, did nothing worthy of the Imperial majesty.[107] All in truth that the Emperor Charles did was to patch up a treaty with the barbarians, by virtue of which, on condition of their raising the siege of Paris, they received a large sum as the ransom of the city, and were allowed to ravage Burgundy without let or hindrance.[108] We are told indeed that this step was taken because the land to be ravaged—are we to understand the Kingdom of Boso?—was in rebellion.[109] At all events, the Christian Emperor, the last who reigned over the whole Empire, handed over a Christian land as a prey to pagan teeth, and left Paris without striking a blow. Charles went straight back into Germany, and there spent the small remnant of his reign and life in a disgraceful domestic quarrel.[110] One act however he did which concerns our story. Hugh the Abbot, the successor of Robert the Strong in the greater part of his Duchy, had died during the siege. The valiant Count of Paris was now, by Imperial grant, put in possession of all the domains which had been held by his father.[111]

But the Count was not long to remain a mere Count; the city and its chief were alike to receive the reward of their services in the cause of Christendom. Presently came that strange and unexampled event by which the last Emperor of the legitimate male stock of the Great Charles was deposed by the common consent of all his dominions. The Empire again split up into separate Kingdoms, ruled over by Kings of their own choice. The choice of the Western realm fell, as it well deserved to fall, upon the illustrious Count of Paris. The reign of Odo indeed was not undisturbed, nor was his title undisputed. He had to struggle in the beginning of his reign with a rival in the Italian Guy, and in latter years he had to withstand the more formidable opposition of a rival King of the old Imperial line. And chosen as he was by the voice of what we may now almost venture to call the French people, hallowed as King in the old royal seat of Compiègne by the hands of the Primate of Sens, the Metropolitan of his own Paris,[112] Odo had still to acknowledge the greater power and higher dignity of the Eastern King. He had to confess himself the man of Arnulf, to receive his crown again at Arnulf's hands, while Arnulf was not as yet a Roman Emperor, but still only a simple King of the East Franks.[113] Still the Count had become a King; the city which his stout heart and arm had so well defended had become a royal city. The rank indeed both of the city and its King, was far from being firmly fixed. A hundred years of shiftings and changings of dynasties, of rivalry between Laon and Paris, between the Frank and the Frenchman, had still to follow. But the great step had been taken; there was at last a King of the French reigning in Paris. The city which by its own great deeds had become the cradle of a nation, the centre of a kingdom, was now placed in the foremost rank at their head. The longest and most unbroken of the royal dynasties of Europe had now begun to reign. And it had begun to reign, because the first man of that house who wore a crown was called to that crown as the worthiest man in the realm over which he ruled.

But we must go back to the enemy before Paris. By the treaty concluded with the Emperor, they were to raise the siege, but they were left at liberty to harry Burgundy and other lands. The citizens of Paris, however, steadfastly refused to allow them to pass up the Seine; so the Northmen ventured on a feat which in that age was looked on as unparalleled.[114] They saw, we are told, that the city could not be taken; so they carried their ships for two miles by land, and set sail at a point of the river above the city.[115] While the Empire was falling in pieces, while new kingdoms were arising and were being struggled for by rival kings, the Northmen were harrying at pleasure. Soissons was sacked;[116] after a long and vain attack on the mighty walls of Sens, the enemy found it convenient to retire on a payment of money.[117] Meaux also, under the valiant Count Theodberht, stood a siege; but after the death of their defender, the citizens capitulated. The capitulation was broken by the Northmen; the city was burned, and the inhabitants were massacred.[118] By this time Odo was King. Meanwhile the Northmen, after their retreat from Sens, had made another attempt on Paris, and had been again beaten off by the valiant citizens.[119] The King now came to what was now his royal city, and established a fortified camp in the neighbourhood to secure it from future attacks.[120] Yet when the Northmen once more besieged Paris in the autumn of 889, even Odo himself had to stoop to the common means of deliverance, The new King, the first Parisian King, bought off the threatened attack by the payment of a Danegeld, and the pirates went away by land and sea to ravage the Constantine peninsula, the land which, a generation or two later, was to become the special land of the converted Northmen.[121]

Paris was finally secured against Scandinavian attack by the establishment of the Duchy of Normandy. By the treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 913, Rolf Ganger, changed in French and Latin mouths into Rou and Rollo, became the man of the King of Laon for lands which were taken away from the dominion of the Duke of Paris. Charles the Simple, the restored Karling, was now King; Robert, the brother of Odo, was Duke of the French, and there can be no doubt that the tottering monarchy of Laon gained much by the dismemberment of the Parisian Duchy and by the establishment at the mouth of the Seine of a vassal bound by special ties to the King himself. The foundation of the Rouen Duchy at once secured Paris against all assaults of mere heathen pirates. France had now a neighbour to the immediate north of her—a neighbour who shut her off from the sea and from the mouth of her own great river—a neighbour with whom she might have her wars, as with other neighbours—but a neighbour who had embraced her creed, who was speedily adopting her language and manners, and who formed, part of the same general political system as herself. The shifting relations between France and Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries form no part of our subject, but it will be well to bear in mind that Paris was at once sheltered and imprisoned through the Norman possession of the lower course of the Seine.

It follows then that the next besiegers of Paris came from a different quarter; and these next besiegers came from the quarter from which its last besiegers have come. In the course of the tenth century, the century of so many shifting relations between Rouen, Laon, and Paris, while the rivalry between King and Duke sometimes broke forth and sometimes slumbered, Paris was twice attacked or threatened by German armies. Both the First and the Second Otto at least appeared in the near neighbourhood of the city. In 946, the first and greatest of the name, not yet Emperor in formal rank, but already exercising an Imperial pre-eminence over the kingdoms into which the Frankish Empire had split up, entered the French Duchy with two royal allies or vassals in his train. One was the Burgundian King Conrad, Lord of the realm between the Rhone and the Alps; the other was the nominal King of Paris and its Duke, Lewis, alike the heir of all the Karlings and the descendant of our own Ælfred, whose nominal reign over the Western Kingdom was practically well nigh confined to the single fortress of Compiègne. Among the shifting relations of the Princes of the Western Kingdom, Hugh the Duke of the French and Richard the Duke of the Normans were now allied against their Carolingian over-lord. He had lately been their prisoner, and had been restored to freedom and kingship only by the surrender of the cherished possession of his race, the hill and tower of Laon. Otto, the mighty Lord of the Eastern realm, felt himself called on to step in when Teutonic interests in the Western lands seemed to be at their last gasp. The three Kings united their forces against the two Dukes, and marched against the capitals both of France and Normandy. But never were the details of a campaign told in a more contradictory way. There can be little doubt that Rouen was besieged, and besieged unsuccessfully. Thus much at least the German historian allows;[122] in Norman lands the tale swells into a magnificent legend.[123] What happened at Paris is still less clear. Laon, for the moment a French possession, was besieged unsuccessfully, and Rheims successfully.[124] Then, after a vain attempt on Senlis, the combined armies of the Kings of Aachen, Arles, and Compiègne drew near to the banks of the Seine. Flodoard, the canon of Rheims, the discreetest writer of his age, leaves out all mention of Paris and its Duke; he tells us merely that the Kings crossed the river and harried the whole land except the cities.[125] The Saxon Widukind tells us how his King, at the head of thirty-two legions, every man of whom wore a straw hat[126] besieged Duke Hugh in Paris, and duly performed his devotions at the shrine of Saint Denis.[127] From these two entries we are safe in inferring that, if Paris was now in any strict sense besieged, it was at least not besieged successfully. But Richer, the monk of Saint Remigius, one of the liveliest tale-tellers of any age, is ready with one of those minute stories which, far more than the entries of more solemn annalists, help to bring us face to face with the men of distant times. The Kings were drawing near to the Seine. In order that the enemy might be cut off from all means of crossing, the Duke of the French, Hugh the Great, aware of their approach, had bidden all vessels, great and small, to be taken away from the right bank of the river for the space of twenty miles. But his design was hindered by a cunning stratagem of the invaders. Ten young men, who had made up their mind to brave every risk,[128] went in advance of the army of the Kings, having laid aside their military garb and provided themselves with the staves and wallets of pilgrims. Protected by this spiritual armour, they passed unhurt and unchallenged through the whole city of Paris, and crossed over both bridges to the left bank of the river. There, not far from the suburb of Saint German, dwelt a miller, who kept the mills which were turned by the waters of the Seine.[129] He willingly received the comely youths who professed to have crossed from the other side of the river to visit the holy places. They repaid his hospitality with money, and moreover purchased wine, in the consumption of which a jovial day was spent. The genial drink opened the heart and the lips of the host, and he freely answered the various questions of his guests. He was not only a miller; he was also the Duke's head fisherman, and he moreover turned an occasional penny by letting out vessels for hire. The Germans praised the kindness which he had already shown them, which made them presume to ask for further favours. They had still other holy places to pray at, but they were wearied with their journey. They promised him a reward of ten shillings—no small sum in the tenth century—if he would carry them across to the other side. He answered that, by the Duke's orders, all vessels were kept on the left bank to cut off all means of crossing from the Germans. They told him that it might be done in the night without discovery. Eager for his reward, he agreed. He received the money, and, accompanied by a boy, his step-son, he guided them to the spot where seventy-two ships lay moored to the river side. The boy was presently thrown into the river, the miller was seized by the throat, and compelled by threats of instant death to loose the ships. He obeyed, and was presently bound and put on board one of the vessels. Each of the Germans now entered a ship and steered it to the right bank. The whole body then returned in one of the vessels, and each again brought across another. By going through this process eight times, the whole seventy-two ships were brought safely to the right bank. By daybreak the army of the Kings had reached the river. They crossed in safety, for all the inhabitants of the country had fled, and the Duke himself had sought shelter at Orleans. The land was harried as far as the Loire, but of the details of the siege of Rouen and of the siege of Paris, if any siege there was, we hear not a word.[130]

The military results of the first German invasion of France and Normandy were certainly not specially glorious. Laon, Senlis, Paris, and Rouen, were, to say the least, not taken. All that was done was to take Rheims and to ravage a large extent of open country. But, in a political point of view, the expedition was neither unsuccessful nor unimportant. From that time the influence of the Eastern King in the affairs of the Western Kingdom becomes of paramount importance, and under his protection, the King of the West Franks, King of Compiègne and soon again to be King of Laon, holds a far higher place than before in the face of his mighty vassals at Paris and Rouen. The next German invasion, forty years later, found quite another state of things in the Western Kingdom. The relations between King Lothar and Duke Hugh Capet were wholly different from the relations which had existed between their fathers, King Lewis and Duke Hugh the Great. No less different were the relations between Lothar and Otto the Second from those which had existed between their fathers, Lewis and Otto the Great. The elder Otto had been a protector, first to his brother-in-law and then to his nephew; the younger Otto was only a rival in the eyes of his cousin.[131] On the other hand, it was the policy of Hugh Capet to keep up the dignity of the Crown which he meant one day to wear, and not to appear as an open enemy of the dynasty which he trusted quietly to supplant. For a while then the rivalry between Laon and Paris was hushed, and the friendship of Paris carried with it the friendship of Rouen and Angers. Thus, while Lewis, a prince than whom none ever showed a loftier or more gallant spirit, was hunted from one fortress or one prison to another, his son, a man in every way his inferior, was really able to command the forces of the whole land north of the Loire. Again the King of Gaul looked Rhine-wards; the border land of Lotharingia kindled the ambition of a prince who might deem himself King both of Laon and Paris. That border land, after many times fluctuating to and fro, had now become an acknowledged portion of the Eastern Kingdom. But a sudden raid might win it for the King of the West, and the Duke of Paris would be nothing loth to help to make such an addition to the Kingdom which he meant one day to possess. The raid was made; the hosts of the King and the Duke crossed the frontier, and burst suddenly on the Imperial dwelling-place of Aachen. The Emperor, with his pregnant wife, the Greek princess Theophanô, had to flee before the approach of his cousin, and Lothar had the glory of turning the brazen eagle which his great forefather had placed on the roof of his palace in such a direction as no longer to be a standing menace to the western realms.[132] As in a more recent warfare, the Gaul began with child's play, and the German made answer in terrible earnest. The dishonour done to their prince and his realm stirred the heart of all Germany, and thirty thousand horsemen—implying no doubt a far larger number of warriors of lower degree—gathered round their Emperor to defend and avenge the violated Teutonic soil. Lothar made no attempt to defend his immediate dominions; he fled to crave the help of his mighty vassal at Paris.[133] The German hosts marched, seemingly without meeting any resistance, from their own frontier to the banks of the Seine. Everywhere the land was harried; cities were taken or surrendered, but the pious Emperor, the Advocate of the Universal Church, everywhere showed all due honour to the saints and their holy places.[134] In primatial Rheims, in our own days to be the temporary home of another German King, the German Cæsar paid his devotions at the shrine of Saint Remigius, the saint who had received an earlier German conqueror still into the fold of Christ.[135] At Soissons Saint Médard received equal worship, and when the church of Saint Bathild at Chelles was burned without the Emperor's knowledge, a large sum was devoted to its restoration. But if the shrines of the saints were reverenced, the palaces of the rival King were especially marked out for destruction. Attigny was burned, and nearly equal ruin fell upon Compiègne itself. Meanwhile the King had fled to Etampes, in the immediate territory of the Duke, while Hugh himself was collecting his forces at Paris. At last the German host came within sight of the ducal city. Otto now deemed that he had done enough for vengeance. He had shown that the frontiers of Germany were not to be invaded with impunity; he had come to Paris, not to storm or blockade the city, but to celebrate his victorious march with the final triumph of a pious bravado. He sent a message to the Duke to say that on the Mount of Martyrs he would sing such a Hallelujah to the martyrs as the Duke and people of Paris had never heard. He performed his vow; a band of clergy were gathered together on the sacred hill, and the German host sang their Hallelujah in the astonished ears of the men of Paris. This done, the mission of Otto was over, and after three days spent within sight of Paris, the Emperor turned him to depart into his own land.[136]

Such, at least, is the tale as told by the admirers of the Imperial devotee. In the hands of the monk of Rheims the story assumes quite another shape, and in the hands of the panegyrist of the house of Anjou it inevitably grows into a legend.[137] Richer tells us how the Emperor stood for three days on the right bank of the river, while the Duke was gathering his forces on the left; how a German Goliath challenged any man of France to single combat, and presently fell by the dart of a French, or perhaps Breton, David;[138] how Otto, seeing the hosts which were gathering against him, while his own forces were daily lessening, deemed that it was his wisest course to retreat.[139] As for the details of the retreat, our stories are still more utterly contradictory. One loyal French writer makes Lothar, at the head of the whole force of France and Burgundy, chase the flying Emperor to the banks of the Maes, whose waters swallowed up many of the fugitives.[140] The monk of Rheims transfers the scene of the German mishap to the nearer banks of the Aisne,[141] while the Maes is with him the scene of a friendly conference between the two Kings, in which Lothar, distrusting his vassals at Paris, deems it wiser to purchase the good-will of the Emperor by the cession of all his claims upon Lotharingia.[142] The most striking details come from the same quarter from which we get the picture of the Hallelujah on Montmartre. The Emperor, deeming that he had had enough of vengeance, departed on the approach of winter;[143] he reached the Aisne and proposed to encamp on its banks. But by the advice of Count Godfrey of Hennegau, who warned him of the dangers of a stream specially liable to floods, he crossed with the greater part of his army, leaving only, on the dangerous side, a small party with the baggage.[144] It was on this party that Lothar, hastening on with a small force, fell suddenly, while a sudden rise of the stream hindered either attack or defence on the part of the main armies.[145] Otto then sends a boat across with a challenge, proposing that one or the other should allow his enemy to cross without hindrance, and that the possession of the disputed lands should be decided by the result of the battle which should follow.[146] 'Nay rather,' cried Count Geoffrey, probably the famous Grisegonelle of Anjou, 'let the two Kings fight out their differences in their own persons, and let them spare the blood of their armies.'[147] 'Small then, it seems,' retorted Count Godfrey in wrath, 'is the value you put upon your King. At least it shall never be said that German warriors stood tamely by while their Emperor was putting his life in jeopardy.'[148] At this moment, when we are looking for some scene of exciting personal interest, the curtain suddenly falls, and this, our most detailed narrator, turns away from the fortunes of Emperors and Kings to occupy himself with his immediate subject, the acts of the Bishops of Cambray.[149]

Putting all our accounts together it is hard to say whether, in a military point of view, the expedition of Otto the Second was a success or a failure. If his design was to take Paris, he certainly failed. If he simply wished to avenge his own wrongs and to show that Germany could not be insulted with impunity, he undoubtedly succeeded. In either case the political gain was wholly on the German side. King and Duke acted together during the campaign; but each, in its course, learned to distrust the other, and each found it expedient to seek the friendship of the Emperor as a check against his rival.[150] And more than all, the Imperial rights over Lotharingia were formally acknowledged by Lothar, and were not disputed again for some ages.[151]

This campaign of 976 has a special interest just now, as its earlier stages read, almost word for word, like a forestalling of the events of the present year of wonders. How far its later stages may find their counterpart in the great warfare now going on, it is not for us to guess. But it is a campaign which marks a stage in the history of Europe. It is the first war that we can speak of—a war waged between Germany and anything which has even the feeblest claim to be called an united France. When Otto the Great marched against Paris and Rouen, he was fighting in the cause of the King of the West Franks, the lawful over-lord of the Dukes against whom he was fighting. When Otto the Second marched against Paris, he was fighting against King and Dukes alike, and King and Dukes between them had at their call all the lands of the strictly French speech, the tongue of oil. Aquitaine of course, and the other lands of the tongue of oc, had no part or lot in the matter; then, as in latter times, there were no Frenchmen south of the Loire. But if the expedition of Otto was in this sense the first German invasion of France, it was also for a long time the last. It is not often that Imperial armies have since that day entered French territory at all. The armies of Otto the Fourth appeared in the thirteenth century at Bouvines, and the armies of Charles the Fifth appeared in the sixteenth century in Provence. But Bouvines, lying in the dominions of a powerful and rebellious vassal, was French only by the most distant external allegiance, and Provence, in the days of Charles the Fifth, was still a land newly won for France, and the Imperial claims over it were not yet wholly forgotten. Both invasions touched only remote parts of the kingdom, and in no way threatened the capital. Since the election of Hugh Capet made Paris for ever the head of France and of all the vassals of the French Kingdom, the city has been besieged and taken by pretenders, native and foreign, to the Capetian Crown, but it has never, till our own century, been assailed by the armies of the old Teutonic realm. The fall of the first Buonaparte was followed by a surrender of Paris to a host which called up the memories alike of Otto of Germany and of Henry of England. The fall of the second Buonaparte is followed before our own eyes by the siege of Paris, the crowning point of a war whose first stages suggest the campaign of the Second Otto, but which, for the mighty interests, at stake, for the long endurance of besieger and besieged, rather suggests the great siege at the hands of Sigefrith. But all alike are witnesses to the position which the great city of the Seine has held ever since the days of Odo. Paris is to France not merely its greatest city, the seat of its government, the centre of its society and literature. It is France itself; it is, as it has been so long, its living heart and its surest bulwark. It is the city which has created the kingdom, and on the life of the city the life of the kingdom seems to hang. What is to be its fate? Is some wholly different position in the face of France and of Europe to be the future doom of that memorable city? Men will look on its possible humiliation with very different eyes. Some may be disposed to take up the strain of the Hebrew prophet, and to say, 'How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased!' Others will lament the home of elegance and pleasure, and what calls itself civilization. We will, in taking leave of Paris, old and new, wind up with the warning, this time intelligible enough to be striking, of her own poet—

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Art. VI.—The Established Church in Wales.

(1.) An Essay on the Causes which have Produced Dissent from the Established Church in Wales. By Arthur James Johnes. Third Edition.

(2.) Letters on the Social and Political Condition of Wales. By Henry Richard. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.

(3.) History of Nonconformity in Wales. By Thomas Rees, D.D. London: John Snow.

(4.) Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd gan. John Hughes.

(5.) Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry, gan y diweddar Barch. William Rawlands. Llanidloes: John Pryse.

(6.) The Church of the Cymry. A Letter to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., from Henry S. Edwards, B.A. Oxon., Vicar of Carnarvon. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

(7.) The Church of England in Wales, in Seven Letters to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. By the Rev. William Rees, Liverpool.

The Act for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church was one of great importance for what it did, but of still greater importance for what it implied; for in that measure there was a distinct legislative recognition of certain general principles, which are susceptible of far wider application than to the particular case they were invoked to sustain. It disposed, once for all, of the fond fantasy that the State is bound in its collective capacity to have a conscience, and in obedience to the dictates of that conscience, to impose its own creed upon the community, as the established faith of the country, to be supported by the authority, and enforced by the sanction of law. It acknowledged the principle that where an established church never has been, or has ceased to be the church of the nation, and fails, therefore, in its professed function as the religious instructor of the people, it has no longer any raison d'être, and ought to be swept away as an anomaly and encumbrance. It recognised the fact, if not for the first time, at least with more distinctness and emphasis than was ever done before, that ecclesiastical property is national property, which the nation has a perfect right through its legitimate organ, the legislature, to apply to any purpose it may think fit, whether sacred or secular.

We need not wonder that when the Irish Establishment was abolished, men's minds should turn almost instinctively to the sister institution in Wales, as furnishing a case in many respects parallel, but in other respects still less admitting of justification. The discussion of this subject in Parliament last session, on the motion of Mr. Watkin Williams, did not take place, perhaps, under the most favourable auspices. But it was at least attended with this advantage, that it obliged those who oppose the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church to show their hand. As Mr. Gladstone, in addition to his many other merits as an orator, is the most accomplished debater in the House of Commons, we may safely assume that whatever could be said in defence of the Church in Wales, and in deprecation of its proposed severance from the State, was said by him with the utmost degree of plausibility and point. But certainly on a calm review of the arguments he used on that occasion, they do not appear to be very formidable.

It may be said, indeed, that the Prime Minister made no attempt to defend the Welsh Church. He abandoned it to the strongest condemnation pronounced upon it by its adversaries, for the 'gross neglect, corruption, nepotism, plunder,' to use his own words, by which it has been marked; and only tried to account for these evils by laying them all to the charge of 'Anglicizing prelates.' He admitted that, even granting what Churchmen claimed, namely, about one-fourth of the population as belonging to the Establishment,—a claim, let us say in passing, which in the face of notorious facts is simply preposterous—'the disproportion is very remarkable in the case of a Church purporting to be the Church of the nation.' He admitted, moreover, as a circumstance seriously militating against the Welsh Church, that 'so large a proportion of her members belong to the upper classes of the community, the classes who are most able to provide themselves with the ministrations of religion, and therefore, in whose special and peculiar interest it is most difficult to make any effectual appeal for public resources and support.' But while acknowledging all this, he resists the proposal for its disestablishment. On what grounds? First, on this ground—that there is no hostility in Wales to the Church Establishment, and that its existence does not, as in Ireland, produce alienation or bitterness of feeling between different classes of the community. But this argument, if it were well founded in fact, which unhappily it is as far as possible from being, does not address itself in the least to the reason or justice of the case. Even if the Welsh people were so devoid of spirit and self-respect as to feel it no grievance to have a costly Church Establishment, which exists almost exclusively for the benefit of the rich, saddled upon their necks, surely that is no proof that it is right to perpetuate the privileges of a body, whose history for generations has been marked by 'gross neglect, corruption, and nepotism,' and which, purporting to be the Church of a nation, does not pretend, even according to the claims of its most audacious advocates, to number among its adherents more than one-fourth of the nation. But Mr. Gladstone is wholly misinformed as to the fact. Because the Nonconformists of Wales are an eminently peaceable, loyal, and orderly people, and do not proclaim their grievances with clamour and menace, it is imagined that they do not feel the gross injustice and indignity of the position they occupy. They do feel it deeply, and they are made to feel it, by events continually occurring in their social and political life, which all spring from this one root of bitterness. We need only refer in illustration of what we mean to the circumstances which attended and followed the last general election. Every form of unfair pressure was brought to bear upon the people to induce them to vote against their convictions, and many of those who had the courage to resist, were mercilessly evicted from their holdings, or otherwise injured and persecuted. All this sprang from the existence of the Established Church, as is evidenced by the fact, that in every instance we believe without a single exception—the oppressors were Churchmen and the sufferers Nonconformists.

The other, and the only other, argument of Mr. Gladstone is this—that except for conventional purposes, there is really no Church in Wales, that the Welsh Church is only a part of the Church of England, and cannot therefore be dealt with separately. We confess we are not very much dismayed by this difficulty; for we can remember the time when the same reason was urged to show the impossibility of touching the Irish Church. Properly speaking, we were told there was no Church of Ireland, but only the united Church of England and Ireland—the two churches having, at the time of the Union, been joined together by a compact so solemn and binding, that Her Majesty the Queen could not give her consent to any measure for dissolving that compact, without incurring the danger of committing perjury and bringing her crown into jeopardy. And as for providing legislation for Ireland distinct from that of England, the suggestion was scouted as an absurdity. Ireland was as much a part of the United Kingdom as Yorkshire or Lancashire, and must be governed by the same laws. The sense of justice, however, and the urgent necessities of the case, triumphed over these foregone conclusions.

There is one fact that gives a sort of sinister unity to the religious history of Wales through all its vicissitudes. It is this: that the influence of its relations with England, whether they were hostile or friendly, whether under Saxon or Norman rule, whether in Catholic or Protestant times, has been, in this respect, uniformly disastrous. We can only glance very briefly at the proofs of this allegation. Without raising again the controversial dust which envelopes the discussion as to the time and manner of the first introduction of Christianity into this island, we may at least assume it as an admitted historical fact, that early in the second century the Gospel had been planted here, and that long before the Saxon invasion there was a flourishing Christian Church in Britain. In the records of the first three or four hundred years of its existence, we find that many large collegiate establishments were formed and dedicated to religion and literature. From these institutions went forth men thoroughly instructed in the learning of their times, some of them bearing the fame of their country's piety and erudition to the uttermost parts of Europe. In the œcumenical councils summoned under Constantine the Great and his sons, in the third and fourth centuries, at Arles, at Nice, and at Sardica, to decide the great Donatist and Arian controversies that disturbed the unity of the Catholic faith, we are told that the British Churches were represented by men who bore an honourable part in the defence of sound doctrine; for Athanasius himself testifies that Bishops from Britain joined in condemnation of the heresy of Arius, and in vindication of himself. But when, in the sixth century, the Pope sent the celebrated Augustin, as a missionary, to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of this island to Christianity, there came on the British Church a time of terrible persecution. Having resolutely refused to recognise the papal authority, Augustin and his successors, in accordance with the policy of that persecuting Church which they represented, incited their Saxon converts to make war upon the British recusants, exasperating the national animosities, already sufficiently bitter between the two races, by adding to it the fanatical frenzy of religious bigotry. For many ages, therefore, the Britons were liable to frequent incursions from their Saxon neighbours, who, instigated by the councils of Rome, invaded their country, destroying their churches, burning their monasteries, and putting to death the pious and learned monks, who, in the seclusion of those establishments, were pursuing the peaceable occupations of literature and religion.[153] This struggle between the ancient British Church on the one side, and that of Rome, backed by the Saxon sword, on the other, continued for centuries. And when the Saxon conquerors had in their turn to succumb to the Norman invaders, that struggle was renewed with greater fierceness than ever. Religion was again unscrupulously used as an instrument of State, the Norman princes forcing ecclesiastics of their own race into all the higher offices of the Church in Wales, not from any regard for the spiritual interests of the people, but that they might aid in extinguishing the national spirit of the Cymri, and in subjugating the country to the Norman yoke. This policy, of course, failed, as it richly deserved to fail. The bishops and other dignitaries thus intruded upon the country were only safe when surrounded by bodies of armed retainers, and whenever the Cymric arms won a victory in the field, the interlopers had to flee to England to save themselves from popular indignation. About the end of the twelfth century, the Welsh princes appealed to the Pope for a redress of these intolerable wrongs. A petition couched in eloquent language was presented to his Holiness from Llywelyn, Prince of Gwynedd; Gwenwynwyn and Madoc, Princess of Powys; Gruffydd, Maelgwn, Rhys, and Meredith, sons of Rhys, Prince of South Wales. It is curious, in reading this document, to observe that some of the ecclesiastical grievances of which the British princes complain, are precisely those which the friends of the Church in Wales are still reiterating in our own day:—

When the Reformation came, the influence of the connection with England was, if possible, still more disastrous on the religious interests of Wales. 'The robbery in times of peace,' says Mr. Johnes, 'proved worse than the spoliation in the times of war, and the rapacity of the Reformation was added to the rapacity of Popery.' He then describes, in language of eloquent indignation, how the ecclesiastical endowments of the Principality were pitilessly plundered by being bestowed upon laymen, the descendants of the Norman invaders, or by being alienated from the Church of Wales to endow English bishoprics and colleges! For the last century and a half, again, the policy of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in dealing with the Welsh Church has, it would seem, been steadily directed to the extinction of the Welsh language and nationality by the appointment of Englishmen to bishoprics, canonries, deaneries, and most of the richest livings in Wales, in utter contempt of all decency. And now when, by the legitimate operation of a State establishment of religion, nearly the whole nation has been alienated from the Church, so that it has become a mere encumbrance in the land, we are told that Wales is so inseparably united with England that it cannot expect to be rid of the incubus until England has made up its mind to deal with its own Church Establishment.

But what we have to do with most especially at present is the Protestant Church Establishment in Wales, and our indictment against it is this, that at no period of its history has it fulfilled, in anything approaching to a satisfactory manner, its proper function as the religious instructor of the Welsh people. We have a chain of testimonies in support of this allegation that are unimpeachable as to their quality, and of overwhelming force in their concurrence and cumulation of evidence. We are anxious to make this point clear, because the line of defence that has been lately taken by the friends of the Church of England in Wales is to this effect. It is true, they say, that towards the middle of the last century the Church had fallen into a deep sleep, and so afforded occasion, and to some degree excuse, for the rise of Nonconformity, which was previously almost unknown in Wales. And then they point in vague and sounding phrases to the golden age that preceded that period of spiritual torpor, when the Church, alive to her high mission, ruled by native bishops, who understood the language and commanded the confidence and veneration of the country, comprehended and cared for within her ample fold the whole population of the Principality. Dissent, we are assured, is in Wales an exotic of quite modern growth, which, it is further implied, will prove to have a very ephemeral life, like Jonah's gourd, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Now all this is pure fiction. Dissent is not a thing of modern growth in Wales. It has existed more or less for 230 years, and whatever of vital religion has existed there during the whole of that period, has been owing far more to its influence than to that of the Established Church. It is not correct to say that the Church 'fell asleep' in the last century, simply because it had never been awake. 'The wisest thing, in my opinion, that our Church friends can do,' said Mr. Henry Richard, in his address at the opening of Brecon College—

And to begin with what must surely be considered as the first and most solemn duty of a Protestant Church, that of supplying the people of whom it professes to take charge with the Word of God in their own language, how does the account stand with the Welsh Established Church in this respect? Dr. Llewellyn, the learned author of the 'Historical Account of the Welsh Versions of the Bible,' states

But how did the ecclesiastical authorities act in reference to the translation of the Scriptures into the Welsh language, even for use in the churches? In the year 1563, an Act of Parliament (5 Eliz. c. 28) was passed, ordering this work to be done. In the preamble it is recited,—

It was therefore enacted that the Bible, consisting of the New Testament and the Old, together with the book of Common Prayer and the Administration of the Sacraments, should be translated into the British or Welsh tongue. The duty of seeing this done was devolved upon the Bishops of St. Asaph, Bangor, St. David's, Llandaff, and Hereford, and they were subjected to a penalty of £40 each if the work were not accomplished by March, 1566. The New Testament was translated within the given period, principally by William Salesbury, a lay gentleman, with some help from the Bishop and Precentor of St. David's; but there was no version of the Old Testament for twenty years later, and that was done not by the initiative or at the instigation of the bishops, but by the spontaneous piety and patriotism of one individual, Dr. William Morgan, vicar of Llanshaidr-yn-Mochnat, Denbighshire, whose name ought to be held in everlasting veneration by all Welshmen. This was published in 1588. He acknowledges, indeed, that he received some encouragement and help from the Bishops of St. Asaph and Bangor. Ingenious apologies have been urged for the gross neglect of the bishops in fulfilling their commission. But Dr. Morgan, in the Latin dedication of his Bible to Queen Elizabeth, ascribes it to what, no doubt, was the true cause, mere 'idleness and sloth.'[154] There was no other edition of the Welsh Bible for thirty-two years. But in the year 1620, Dr. Parry, Bishop of St. Asaph, brought out a new issue. This also seems to have been the result of individual zeal, for in his preface Dr. Parry says, that the former edition having been exhausted, and many or most of the churches being either without any or with only worn-out and imperfect copies, and nobody, so far as he could learn, even thinking of a republication, he was moved to undertake the work.[155] This, likewise, was exclusively for use in the churches. The first edition of the Bible for popular use was published in an octavo form in 1630, but does not seem to have originated with the Church in any way. 'The honour,' says Dr. Llewellyn, 'of providing for the first time a supply of this kind for the inhabitants of Wales, is due to one or more citizens of London,' namely Mr. Alderman Heylin, 'sprung from Wales,' and Sir Thomas Middleton, also a native of the Principality, and an alderman of London.[156] For the next half century there was only one edition of the Scriptures in Welsh published by Churchmen, a large folio of 1,000 copies, for the pulpits of the churches. But during the same period the persecuted Nonconformists—Walter Cradock, Vavasor Powell, Stephen Hughes, Thomas Gouge, and David Jones—published nine editions, consisting of about 30,000 copies of the whole Bible, and above 40,000 of the New Testament separately. During the subsequent half-century (from 1718 to 1769) we acknowledge with cordial gratitude that several large editions were issued by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, two of them at the instigation of the Rev. Griffith Jones, and one at the instigation of Dr. Llewellyn, a dissenting minister. But let it be observed that the former period, from the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, synchronises as nearly as possible with the golden age which some members of the Welsh Church fondly believe to have existed in the history of that institution.

But let us now enquire how, in other respects, the Established Church in Wales discharged its duties as the teacher of the people. In the absence of the Bible there was, of course, all the more need for personal earnestness and activity on the part of its ministers in preaching the word and catechising, and the regular and solemn administration of all religious ordinances. But how was it in this respect during the beatific period, when, as some of the modern advocates of the Church exultingly declare, there was 'no dissent in Wales?' We will begin our inquiries with the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the year 1560, Dr. Meyrick, Bishop of Bangor, writes that he had only two preachers in his diocese. Strype, in his 'Life of Archbishop Parker,' describes the condition of the bishoprics of Llandaff and Bangor, one in South and the other in North Wales, about the year 1563, as follows. The former had been two or three years, in effect, void, and wanted a vigilant bishop to manage that diocese. But the great dilapidations had so impoverished that see, that few who were honest and able would be persuaded to meddle with it.

In 1588, John Penry published his 'Exhortation unto the People and Governors of Her Majesty's Country of Wales,' every line of which was aflame with the fire of a righteous and eloquent indignation at the negligent bishops and 'unpreaching ministers,' to whose tender mercies his 'poor country of Wales' was abandoned. We need not quote at large from the melancholy picture he gives in this and his other pamphlets of the state of the Principality in that day, as his writings have been rendered familiar to many of our readers by Dr. Waddington's 'Life of Penry,' and Dr. Rees's 'History of Nonconformity in Wales.' We will therefore cite only one or two pregnant sentences:—

The Rev. Henry T. Edwards, the author of the very able and vigorous pamphlet mentioned at the head of this article, has permitted himself, in an evil moment, and in stress of argument and information, in defence of the Welsh Church of those days, to describe this noble-minded and devoted Christian and patriot in very opprobrious terms, as 'a sour-minded Puritan, recognising no truth save in his own interpretation of the written Word,' &c., &c. But Strype, at least, cannot be called 'a sour-minded Puritan.' Let us then revert to his testimony in reference to precisely the same period. In his 'Annals of the Reformation'[157] he makes the following statement. We borrow Dr. Rees's summary:—

We will now follow the history of the Welsh Church into the reign of James I. At that time, there lived and laboured in Wales a very remarkable man, the Rev. Rees Pritchard, Vicar of Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire, the author of a work which has had a larger circulation in the Principality than any book except the Bible. It is entitled 'Canwyll y Cymry,' or, 'The Welshman's Candle,' a series of moral and religious poems, most simple in their language, and even slovenly in their metrical composition, but full of poetry and feeling, and thoroughly saturated with evangelical truth. He flourished between the years 1616 and 1644. John Penry, in his most vehement remonstrances, does not employ stronger language to portray the utter ignorance, irreligion, and immorality in which the people were sunk, than does this excellent clergyman. But what we have specially to do with now is the testimony he bears as to the condition of the Church, a testimony all the more unimpeachable, as he continued through life a member and a minister of that Church. In one of his poems, after describing all classes as wholly given up to every species of depravity, he adds that the clergy were asleep, leaving the people to wallow in their sins, and to live as they liked, unwarned and unrebuked.[158] In another poem, he puts the clergy at the head of various classes, whom he enumerates, who were 'contending with each other, which of them should most daringly affront the Most High.' There is evidence still more conclusive, if possible, in the reports presented to the King by Archbishop Laud, between the years 1633 and 1638, which are still extant among the Lambeth MSS. This bigoted prelate had, it seems, in those years, been specially instigating the Bishops of St. David's and Llandaff to persecute without mercy those in their dioceses who were guilty of 'inconformity;' that is, who refused to read 'The Book of Sports,' and other similar obligations which were laid on the consciences of the clergy. After commemorating the success with which the Bishop of St. David's had silenced one Roberts, a lecturer, for inconformity, and reduced three or four others to submission, he adds: 'He complains much, and surely with cause enough, that there are few ministers in those poor and remote places that are able to preach and instruct the people.' And the Bishop of St. Asaph tells Laud that 'they were not anywhere troubled with inconformity; but that he heartily wished that they might as well be acquainted with superstition and profaneness.'

In the year 1651, there was published a translation in the Welsh language of the once celebrated 'Marrow of Modern Divinity.' This translation was by the Rev. John Edwards, one of the clergy ejected by the Parliamentary Commission appointed under the Commonwealth. In the preface, he deplores the neglect into which the Welsh language had fallen, and declares that, 'among the Church clergy (y Dyscawdwyr Eglwysig), scarcely one in fifteen knew how to read and write Welsh.' The reader will observe that we are following our chain of evidence link by link. In 1677, a work was published in Welsh entitled 'Carwr y Cymry,' that is, 'The Welshman's Friend; an Exhortation to his dear countrymen for the sake of Christ and their own souls, to search the Scriptures according to Christ's command, John v. 39.' This is supposed to have been written by a clergyman of the name of Oliver Thomas. The introduction is in the form of an earnest and affectionate address to 'Welsh Churchmen.' In this he says:—

We have brought our chain of testimonies down to near the end of the seventeenth century. But from that time to our own they are still more abundant.

In 1721 was published, 'A View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St. David's, about the beginning of the Eighteenth Century,' by Dr. Erasmus Saunders. It contains a most deplorable picture of the condition of the Church, as regards both its material and spiritual interests. He describes some churches as totally decayed; they

He then refers, though with great forbearance and tenderness, to the low type of character which such a state of things produced among the clergy; and then exclaims, sorrowfully, 'Such is the faint shadow that remains among us of the public service of religion!'

To aggravate the evils of all kinds already sufficiently rife in the Welsh Church, the English Government, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, adopted the practice, which it has continued ever since, of appointing Englishmen utterly ignorant of the Welsh language to Welsh bishoprics.[160] And the bishops, following the example thus set by those acting for the head of the Church, inundated the Principality with English clergymen, their own relatives and connections, to whom all the highest dignities and the richest livings were, almost without exception, assigned. A more monstrous abuse than this it is difficult to conceive, and yet it has been persevered in for 150 years in the face of all complaint and remonstrance, and in the teeth of the express judgment of the Church itself, which declares in its 26th Article that 'it is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God, and to the custom of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the church, or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.' We need not wonder, therefore, that great prominence should be henceforth given by the friends of the Church to this, as one of the causes, if not, indeed, the sole cause, of its inefficiency and decay. How far they are justified in attaching such supreme importance to it we shall consider hereafter. But we shall for the present resume our series of testimonies to the matter of fact. Most of our readers will doubtless have heard of the Rev. Griffith Jones, of Llanddowror, the founder of the remarkable circulating schools, which, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, rendered such inestimable service to the people of the Principality. We cannot here enter upon the history of the life and labours of this admirable clergyman. If one man could have saved the Church in Wales, he would have saved it. But as Mr. Johnes has remarked with great sagacity—though he does not appear to see the inevitable inference to be drawn from the remark—'it is a truth but too well sanctioned by experience, that a few pious ministers are the weakness, and not the strength, of an establishment, when the majority of its ministers are sunk in indifference to their sacred duties.' Our object now, however, is merely to cite the Rev. Griffith Jones as a witness to the condition of the Church about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the year 1749 he published a letter in Welsh, on the 'Duty of Catechising Ignorant Children and People.' In that letter he observes that the

There is one other eminent Welsh clergyman whom we must add to this cloud of witnesses before we speak of the rise of Methodism in Wales. The Rev. Evan Evans, better known, perhaps, by his Bardic name, Ieuan Brydydd Hir, was a man of learning and genius, a friend and correspondent of Bishop Percy and other literati of that age. He was especially well versed in ancient British literature, and published a Latin essay, Dissertatio de Bardis, containing Latin translations from the poems of Aneurin, Taliesin, and Llywarch Hen. In 1776, he published two volumes of Welsh sermons. To the first volume he prefixed a dedication to Sir W. W. Wynn in English, and an address to the reader in Welsh, in both of which he describes in bold and burning language the miserable state of the Church in Wales at that time. Here is one out of many extracts we might have given. After complaining that most of the gentry had 'thrown away all regard for religion and morality,' and that 'the ignorance and immorality of the lower class of the people was pitiful, owing to the slothfulness and neglect of many of the clergy,' he thus proceeds:

It is well known that the man who may be called the father of Welsh Methodism was Mr. Howell Harris. He was, and continued to the day of his death, a dutiful son of the Church. He applied for ordination, but was refused. He pressed his request for six years, but to no purpose. 'Wherever he went,' we quote again the language of a Welsh clergyman, 'as a simple and unoffending preacher of the gospel, either in the South or the North, he was denounced by the clergy from their pulpits, he was arrested by the magistrates, and persecuted by the rabble.[161] Now let us hear his own account of the reasons which induced him to commence and continue preaching to his countrymen. He describes his being taken before the magistrates at Monmouth, for the work of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, and then continues—

The second great name in connection with the rise of Methodism in Wales, was the Rev. Daniel Rowlands, of Llangeitho, a man whose powers as a preacher are described by those who knew both, to have surpassed even those of Whitfield. The effect of his eloquence among his countrymen was extraordinary. It ran like a stream of electricity through the nation, kindling into life thousands who had been previously wrapped in spiritual torpor. Like Howell Harris, he was not merely content, but anxious to continue his ministrations in the Church. 'But he was cast out of the Church of England,' says one of his biographers, the Rev. J. C. Ryle, 'for no other fault than excess of zeal.' And what was the condition of the church, from which this over zealous man was expelled by Episcopal judgment? Mr. Ryle shall answer. 'This ejection took place at a time when scores of Welsh clergymen were shamefully neglecting their duties, and too often were drunkards, gamblers, and sportsmen, if not worse.'[163]

The inference from all this has already been drawn for us by a candid Churchman. Mr. Johnes, in his 'Essay on the Causes of Dissent in Wales,' says that he is irresistibly led to the conclusion 'that before the rise of Methodism in Wales the churches were as little attended by the great mass of people as they are now: and that indifference to all religion prevailed as widely then as dissent in the present day.' Of the early Methodists in Wales, as indeed of the early Nonconformists, it may be said most truly that they did not leave the Church of their own accord. Most of them clung to it with a most touching fidelity, in spite of incessant persecution and obloquy from those within its pale, and were at last thrust out of it, for no offence but the excess of their zeal for the moral and spiritual improvement of their countrymen. It is not necessary now to put in any defence for these men; for it has become the fashion of late among our Church friends in Wales, while denouncing modern Nonconformity as schismatic, turbulent, self-seeking, and other choice epithets with which we are so familiar in this connection, to speak with great tenderness and respect of the founders of Welsh dissent, and especially the early Methodists. Retaining, of course, that de haut en bas air of extreme candour and condescension which any Churchman, however small, thinks it right to assume when referring to any Dissenter, however illustrious for capacity and service, they do nevertheless admit that the men in question were admirable men, full of genuine zeal for evangelical truth and the salvation of souls. Nor do they scruple to deplore and censure the perverse policy which persecuted such men and drove them from the Church. Nay, in some cases, clergymen have even become their admiring and eulogistic biographers. But this is the old thing over again. 'Ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' But then, unhappily, by displaying the same spirit towards the successors of these men, and branding them with the same epithets of contumely and reproach as their fathers applied to their fathers, and that for doing precisely the same work, they are witnesses unto themselves that they are the genuine children of them which persecuted the prophets.

Having brought our review down to the great revival of religion about the middle of the last century, let us now inquire what the Church has done since that time to make up for centuries of gross neglect or perfunctory service. It might have been thought that this stirring of spiritual life in the country, through other agencies than its own, would have roused it, were it from no better motive than that of jealous emulation, to make some effort to retain or recover its influence over the population. And this, indeed, has been the case to some extent within the last quarter of a century. But for nearly a hundred years after the appearance of Harris and Rowlands, during which all bodies of Dissenters were labouring incessantly for the evangelization of the Principality, the Church was settled on her lees. Her rulers not only winked at for their own profit, but actively maintained and promoted the existence of abuses as audacious and monstrous as ever dishonoured a Christian Church. Her clergy, wholly abandoned to themselves, with little or no episcopal supervision or stimulus, were content with enjoying their temporalities while they neglected their duties, leading lives of mere worldly ease, and sometimes much worse lives than that. If any reader should imagine we are indulging in exaggerations, we can refer him for exuberance of proof to Mr. Johnes' most able and admirable work, which we have already mentioned. It was published in 1832, and describes the state of things then in actual existence. The sole object of most of the alien bishops who had been and were in occupation of the Welsh sees, seemed to have been to provide for themselves and those of their own households. Never was episcopal nepotism carried to so daring an excess, with this peculiar and enormous aggravation, that 'in Wales every relation of a bishop is in language a foreigner; and his uncouth attempts to officiate in his church in a tongue unintelligible to himself, can be felt by his congregation as nothing better than a profanation of the worship of God.'[164] As a specimen of how the chief pastors of the Welsh Church acted in this matter, we subjoin an extract from a speech delivered in the House of Commons, in 1836, by Mr. Benjamin Hall, afterwards Lord Llanover, a gentleman whose name and memory ought to be held in grateful and honourable remembrance in the Principality, for the strenuous efforts he made in and out of Parliament to remedy many flagrant abuses in the educational and ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and to procure something like justice for Wales:—

To what unseemly consequences the appointment of English clergymen to Welsh incumbencies must have led, our readers may conceive by imagining a number of Frenchmen installed in livings in England, and attempting to perform the service in the English language. Here are a few examples of the ludicrous scenes often witnessed in Welsh churches. They are taken from a speech delivered in 1852 by the Rev. Joseph Hughes, a very able clergyman, a native of the Principality, but residing then at Meltham:—

Before citing these specimens, we may premise that if any of our readers should be acquainted with the Welsh language, they will immediately perceive how probable it is that the blunders described should have been committed by an Englishman trying to read Welsh, or rather, how next to impossible it is that he should not have committed some of them.

But while admitting, as who could hesitate to admit, that the practice so long followed of appointing Englishmen to all the higher ecclesiastical offices in Wales, could not fail to affect most injuriously the interests of the Welsh Church, we must utterly demur, as we have already intimated, to the exaggerated influence ascribed by the modern defenders of the Church to this circumstance, as though it were the sole cause of its inefficiency. For let us look a little more closely into the matter. The period to which the advocates of this theory are fond of reverting, as constituting the ideal era of the Established Church in Wales, when it was governed principally by native prelates, is, speaking in general terms, the interval between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the reign of William and Mary, or to take the precise dates, adopted by those among them who have most carefully investigated the subject, from the years 1558 to 1715. They specify the names of twenty-four Welshmen elevated to Welsh sees during these 257 years. But what was done by these Cymric bishops for the spiritual good of the Principality? Mr. Johnes, whose work is the great repertory of information on all matters connected with this subject, mentions three out of the whole number who seem to have distinguished themselves by some service rendered to their country. First, Bishop Morgan, who translated the Bible into the Welsh language; but he did this not as bishop, but as the vicar of a small country parish in Denbighshire, and he undertook the work precisely because it had been neglected by the Welsh prelates to whom it had been entrusted. Second, Bishop Parry, who brought out a new edition of the Bible for use in the churches. Third, Bishop Owen, who succeeded to the diocese of St. Asaph in 1629, and of whom we are told that 'he began first by his order and decrees, to establish preaching in Welsh in St. Asaph parish church, and as it is supposed, in other parish churches, in his diocese. He repaired his cathedral at his own cost, and set up a new organ in it;'—expressions which evidently seem to imply, that these very simple and obvious duties had been neglected by his predecessors, though they also were native prelates. We have, also, seen a general statement that some of the others established and endowed schools in particular localities in Wales. Of most of the rest we know nothing, but of some of them we know something. We know of Bishop Hughes, of St. Asaph, that he held sixteen rich livings in commendam, and left his diocese in the disgraceful condition already described in the early part of this article. We know that under Bishop Meyrick, of Bangor, there were, by his own acknowledgment, only two preachers in his diocese; and that according to the testimony of Strype, the grossest scandals were openly practised by the clergy. We know that the four native bishops, who by the Act of Elizabeth, of 1563, were charged with translating the Scriptures into Welsh, so neglected their duty as that even the churches were left without Welsh Bibles for twenty-five years after that date. We know that for seventy years after the settlement of the Reformation, not a single edition of the Bible in the Welsh language was issued for the use of the people. We know that from 1640 to 1690, which forms a considerable portion of the vaunted era of Welsh bishops, Churchmen published only one edition of the Scriptures—a large folio, for use in the churches—while during the same interval the Nonconformists published nine editions. We know that the contributions of the 'native bishops' to the moral and religious literature of the Cymry are conspicuous by their absence. We have examined with some care Rowland's 'Cambrian Bibliography' ('Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry'), containing an account of all books published in the Welsh language from 1546 to 1800, and, between the years 1558 and 1715, the era of Welsh bishops, we have failed to discover a single work written in Welsh or translated into Welsh by any one of these prelates, except 'A Letter to the Welsh,' by Bishop Davies, introducing Salesbury's translation of the New Testament. Nor is there any proof that they helped or promoted in any important degree the publication of religious books in the Welsh language, while the Nonconformists of that age laboured indefatigably to enlighten the people through the press. Even Vicar Pritchard's work, 'The Welshman's Candle,' left by him in manuscript, and which, next to the Bible, had the greatest influence on the religious character of the country, was published by the care and at the expense of Mr. Stephen Hughes, a Nonconformist minister. But above all, we know what was the state of the Church and the country during, and at the end of, the reign of this long dynasty of Welsh bishops. It is described in the language already cited of Strype, and Penry, and Pritchard, and Edwards, and Thomas, and Erasmus Saunders, and Griffith Jones, and Howell Harris. And we beg our readers specially to observe, that all the witnesses we have summoned to depose to the character and condition of the Welsh Church during three centuries of its history, have been members of the Church itself. If there is one exception, it is that of John Penry. But he also was born in the Church, and baptized in the Church, and ordained in the Church, for we are told that he was 'a famous preacher of the University' and he had, moreover, the honour of being persecuted, imprisoned, and hung by the Church. With that one doubtful exception all the rest lived and died within its pale. We might, of course, have added a large number of witnesses from the ranks of Nonconformity, whose testimony, we believe, would have been quite as trustworthy. But we have preferred omitting whatever might be thought open to even the suspicion of sectarian prejudice. Let us remember, that several of the 'native bishops' lived several years into the beginning of the eighteenth century, and if they had exercised so blessed an influence on the Church and the country as it is now the fashion to affirm, that influence could not have suddenly vanished immediately after their death. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus is surely as applicable to a community as to an individual. And yet we know by the confession of all candid Churchmen, that when Griffith Jones and Howell Harris began their labours—the former in 1730, and the latter in 1735—the Welsh Church was in a most lamentable state of inefficiency and corruption.

The simple truth is, that the history of the Welsh Church is only a crucial illustration of the invariable and inevitable evils that attend State establishments of religion. It is true that in its case these evils appear in a somewhat aggravated form, from the attempt made by the English Government to treat Wales as a conquered country, and to employ the Church as an agent in the extinction of its language and nationality. But when the life of a Christian Church is made to depend not on the faith, love, and liberality of its own members, and the presence and blessing of its Divine Master, but upon the protection and patronage of the civil government, and when, as a necessary consequence, the administration of its affairs falls into the hands of worldly politicians, who use it as an instrument of State, what can be expected but what always has ensued, that its spiritual life should wither, until those who seek real religious nourishment from its breasts are driven in sheer desperation to seek it elsewhere?

Indeed, it is curious that the friends of the Welsh Church, while enumerating the secondary causes which have led to her ruin, do not find their way, which they may do by a single step, to the right conclusion as to the primary cause from which all the others spring. Our Church, they say, has suffered grievous injustice from the alienation of her revenues, from the appointment of unqualified persons to all her highest offices, from the most flagrantly corrupt use of patronage, from the neglect of native talent, from laxity of godly discipline. But who has alienated her revenues? The State. Who has made those unfitting appointments? The State. Who has exercised patronage so corruptly? The State and its nominees, the bishops. Who has overlooked native talent? Again, the State and its nominees. Who has neglected to enforce godly discipline? Still, the State and its nominees. Yet, when it is proposed to strike away the fetters which bind them to the power that has thus maltreated and oppressed them, they hug their chains with frantic vehemence, and even use them as weapons with which to assail those who would fain assist in their liberation.

But let us now inquire into the condition of the Church in our own day. And in the phrase 'our own day,' we suppose we may include a period of twenty-five years. We have previously observed that, for a long time after the revival of religion which stimulated the Dissenters in Wales to such extraordinary activity in providing the means of religious instruction for the people, the Church continued sunk in utter apathy. It is impossible to find a more conclusive illustration of this, than is afforded by the following statement of the comparative progress made in church and chapel accommodation during the first half of the present century. It is founded on the Census Returns of 1851, and appears in Mr. Richards's 'Letters on the Social and Political Condition of Wales,' where it is cited on the authority of a very accomplished statistician, the late Mr. Plint of Leeds. North Wales, in 1801, stood thus as to religious accommodation:—

	Sittings	Proportion to all Sittings
Church of England	99,216	75·2
All others	32,664	24·8
Total	131,880	100·0

In the fifty years following, the population increased from 252,765 to 412,114, or 63 per cent. To have kept up the ratio of sittings to population by each of these sections of religionists, the former should have supplied 62,505 sittings, and it did supply 16,164. The latter ought to have supplied 20,576, and it did supply 217,928. The Church of England fell short of its duty 73·5 per cent., and all other denominations exceeded it 950 per cent. The ratio of sittings to population, which, in 1801, was 52·1 per cent. (5·9 less than the proper standard, according to Mr. Horace Mann), was, in 1851, 88·9—that is, 30 per cent. above it.

South Wales, in 1801, stood thus:—

	Sittings.	Proportion to all Sittings.
Church of England	133,514	61·8
All others	82,443	38·2
Total	215,957	100·0

The population increased from 289,892 to 593,607, or 105·5 per cent. The quota of sittings required of the Church was 140,854; it did provide 15,204. The other denominations ought to have provided 86,975; they did provide 270,510. The Church of England fell short of its duty 89 per cent.; the other denominations exceeded it 211 per cent. The ratio of sittings to population in 1801 was 74·7 per cent., and in 1851, 84·5. Can the force of antithesis go further.[165]

But we must descend a little more into detail, and furnish some practical illustrations, still taken from the testimony of Churchmen themselves, as to the condition of their Church in Wales in these modern times. In 1849, Sir Benjamin Hall made a speech in the House of Commons, in which he described the state of things at that time, especially in the diocese of St. David's. He spoke of the total neglect of archidiaconal visitations, of the small number of services performed in the diocese, and of the ruinous and deserted state of the churches. Here are a few extracts from his statement, taken, we believe, from the Report of the Commissioners on Education:—

Such was the aspect of the Church in the diocese of St. David's only twenty years ago; and we have no doubt there were scores of other parishes in the same diocese in little better condition than those specified in the above extracts.

Let us now turn to look at another diocese. In the year 1850 a vigorous effort was made to promote church extension in the diocese of Llandaff. An appeal was issued in the form of a letter from the Archdeacon of Llandaff to the Bishop, stating the facts of the case, which were these. The population of the two Archdeaconries of Llandaff and Monmouth was 173,139. There was church-accommodation for only 17,440. Let our readers specially remark this fact. After having been in possession of the country for three hundred years, the Established Church in that part of Wales did not pretend to have made provision, in the year of grace 1850, for the religious instruction of more than one-tenth of the vast population committed to her care. But, did the people avail themselves of her ministrations even to that extent? The answer is at hand. Among others to whom the appeal for help in building new churches, founded on the above showing, was sent, was Sir Benjamin Hall. Before responding to that appeal, Sir Benjamin, who was intimately conversant with that part of the country, and who had his doubts whether more church-accommodation, scanty as it was, was really needed for the district, instructed competent persons to count the actual numbers who attended the churches and the dissenting chapels in forty of the parishes of the diocese on a given Sunday. He published the result in a pamphlet, in the form of a letter to the Bishop, from which it appeared that, while the sittings provided in the churches were 17,440, the total number of actual attendants at the most numerously-attended service on Sunday, October 13th, 'the weather being particularly fine,' was 7,229; while the number which attended the 227 chapels provided by the Nonconformists, in the same district, amounted, on the same day, to 80,270. 'From the above it appears,' says the writer of the pamphlet, 'that so far from the churches being too small to hold the remnant of Churchmen which the zeal and activity of Dissenters have not wrested from us, there is, at present, room for 9,591 persons in addition to those who now attend the divine service of the Established Church.'

If we turn to one of the North Wales dioceses, that of Bangor, it would seem that even now, notwithstanding the energetic efforts which the present bishop is known to have made to infuse some life into the church, its condition, according to the acknowledgment of its own friends, is sufficiently discouraging. At a meeting held in Bangor last year, the bishop in the chair, a lay churchman said that Anglesey has seventy-nine parishes, fifty-two of which have no parsonages. The seventy-nine parishes are held by forty rectors; two of them possess four livings each, eight of them possess three livings each, and seventeen two each. He said that the desirable thing for Anglesey was the residence of the clergyman among his parishioners. He declared that the church there was now 'empty.' Another of the speakers, Lord Penrhyn, acknowledged that Dissent had prevented Wales from becoming a heathen country. At a clerical conference held in the same city in August, 1868, also under the presidency of the bishop, the Rev. P. C. Ellis, Llanfairfechan, in the course, we are told, of 'a very earnest address,' made these remarks:—'He believed if the Church of Ireland were disestablished it would be a just judgment upon the clergy of that church for their shortcomings, and he was convinced that investigation would show that the clergy of the church in this country had fallen as far short of their duty as their brethren in Ireland. He trembled to think what the report of the state of the Church in Wales would disclose, as he believed its position was worse than that of the Church in Ireland. If the Church in Ireland were to go down, the Church in Wales must surely follow.'

With regard to the number of persons still attached to the Church in Wales, there is great discrepancy of opinion. Without pronouncing dogmatically on the subject, we propose to furnish our readers with certain data, which may assist them in drawing their own conclusions. So far as we know, the first, and we believe the most careful attempt that was ever made to procure a return of the ecclesiastical statistics of Wales, was in 1846, by Mr. Hugh Owen, Honorary Secretary of the Cambrian Educational Society, a gentleman to whom the Principality is indebted for many valuable services. What provoked that inquiry was this. About that time the National Society was making a strenuous effort to cover Wales with day-schools, wherein, according to the fundamental regulations of that Society, 'the children were to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures, and the liturgy and catechism of the Church of England, such instruction to be subject to the superintendence of the parochial clergyman;' 'the children to be assembled for the purpose of attending service in the parish church;' 'the masters and mistresses to be members of the Church of England,' &c. A special appeal was issued on behalf of Wales by Archdeacon Sinclair, with a view 'to raise a large fund' to establish schools on the above principles. In this appeal, the suggestion 'to adopt a broad basis in which all sects could unite,' was sternly rejected. No system 'from which the characteristic doctrines of the Church of England were expunged' could be tolerated for an instant. To show how utterly unsuited to the country schools of this description must prove to be, the inquiry of which we speak was instituted. Having obtained, through means of the relieving officers, the names and addresses of trustworthy persons in about three-fourths of the parishes in Wales, Mr. Owen addressed a circular to each of those persons, requesting a return of—1. The name of every place of worship in his district. 2. The name of the denomination to which it belonged. 3. The exact number of the congregation at each place of worship on the first Sunday after the receipt of the circular, in the morning, afternoon, and evening. 4. The exact number attending the Sunday-school at each place, morning and afternoon.[166] Returns were received from 392 parishes, thirty of which were in Anglesey, fifty-nine in Carnarvonshire, fifty-three in Denbighshire, seventeen in Flintshire, twenty-three in Merionethshire, twenty-eight in Montgomeryshire, twenty-seven in Breconshire, fifty-four in Cardiganshire, forty in Carmarthenshire, eighteen in Glamorganshire, forty-three in Pembrokeshire, and ten in Radnorshire. The population of these 392 parishes amounted to 431,000. As the total population of Wales, not including Monmouthshire, was then only 911,603, that of the returned parishes contained nearly one-half of the whole population of the country. The result is thus summarized in a pamphlet published soon after:—

It may be objected that as there were probably many churches in which only one service was held, the deduction, from the average of three services, may be unfair. Well, let it be noticed that the maximum number attending the churches is in the morning, when it amounts to 18,128; and that the maximum number attending the dissenting chapels is in the evening, when it amounts to 128,216; hence the ratio of the maximum attendance at dissenting chapels (evening service) to the maximum attendance at the churches (morning service) is seven to one. But leaving out of account for the moment the relative proportions of Church and Dissent, as indicated by these returns, what do they tell us of the absolute number of persons attached to the Church, as compared with the population? Instead of taking the average attendance at three services, we will, as before, take the number present at the most numerously attended, namely, the morning service; and if we add to that number one-fourth to represent absentees, we shall have a total of 22,660 souls. This, in a population of 431,000, would amount to rather more than one in nineteen of church-goers.

But let us now turn to the official census of 1851. We have not the slightest wish to impeach the general accuracy of the facts and figures given in Mr. Horace Mann's masterly report. But the condition of Wales is very peculiar, and the general rules laid down by that eminent statistician for classifying and formulating the immense mass of figures with which he had to deal, while fair enough, no doubt, to the normal state of society in England, may not have been equally applicable to a country in so exceptional a state as Wales.

That a serious error has crept in somewhere into the returns, as respects the Principality, is obvious from this one fact. The number of sittings provided by the Church of England is stated to be 301,807, and the number of the worshipping population of the same church on the 31st of March, 1851, is stated to be 138,719. Now Mr. Mann shows that the proportion per cent. of attendants to sittings in the Established Church, throughout all England and Wales, is only thirty-three; whereas by the above showing, the proportion of attendants to sittings in Wales alone is 40 per cent. We venture to say, that no man competently acquainted with Wales, knowing, as every such man must know, the miserably meagre attendance at hundreds of churches in that country, would for an instant believe that the churches are occupied in the proportion of 40 per cent. of attendants to sittings. Let us, however, take the figures given to us in the census. The population of Wales, including Monmouthshire, in 1851, was 1,188,914. The total number of places of worship was 4,006, which was distributed thus:

PLACES OF WORSHIP.

Of the places of worship—
	The Established Church furnished	1,180
	Nonconformists	2,826
		4,006

Of the sittings (including estimates for defective return)—
	Established Church furnished	301,897, or
	30 per cent.
	Nonconformists	692,239, or
	70 per cent.

It appears thus, that the Church had provided sittings for only 25 per cent. of the population, while the Nonconformists had provided sittings for nearly 59 per cent.

But how about attendance? According to Table B. of the Census of Religious Worship, the greatest number by very far of attendants at the services of the Established Church on the Census Sunday was in the morning. The number was 100,953. If we add one-fourth to this number for the absentees, we have 126,191, which represents 10·6 per cent., not quite one in nine of the population.

But these facts, sufficiently remarkable as they are in themselves, give really but an imperfect impression of the real magnitude of the anomaly which exists in Wales. An Established Church is presumably a national Church, and rests its claim to being established on the ground of its being national. Above all, it ought to be par excellence the poor man's Church, as some of the friends of the English Establishment are wont to allege, with what truth we pause not now to inquire, that theirs is. But in Wales the Church is not only not national, but it is anti-national; and the whole policy of its rulers for at least a hundred and fifty years has been inspired by a prejudice as stupid as it was mean against, the Welsh nationality and language. At present, of the small remnant of the population which still remains within its pale, by far the larger part are either English immigrants into Wales, or that portion of the Welsh people which have become Anglified in their feelings and tastes; and instead of being the poor man's Church, that of Wales is emphatically and almost exclusively the rich man's Church. There are scores, we might safely say hundreds of churches, in which, if the clergyman's family and the squire's family, and their few dependents and parasites were removed, there would be absolutely no congregation at all.

Mr. Gladstone lamented, as members of the Welsh Church also sometimes profess to lament, the want of accurate and trustworthy information as to the real facts of the case as regards the several religious opinions in Wales. But whose fault is that? There would be no difficulty whatever, in a small country like Wales, in obtaining perfectly accurate information as to the number of adherents to the church, if that body were to follow the example of the principal Nonconformist denominations in the Principality, who collect and publish periodically statistical returns of the members of their churches, and the attendants at public worship. But the clergy of the establishment, clinging tenaciously in the face of notorious facts to the fond fancy that theirs is the national church, however small a fragment of the nation really belongs to it, decline to give us the number either of their communicants or of those who habitually frequent their churches. We are driven therefore to look for such incidental indications of the real state of the case as may come within our reach. Some of these, however, are very significant. In the National Society's report for 1866-7 there is a return given of the number of persons attending Church Sunday Schools in Wales. They amounted to 49,358, or 4 per cent. of the population. The number found in Dissenting Sunday Schools, according to the printed year books of the various denominations on the same year, was 351,128, or 29 per cent. of the population, thus showing the Church Sunday scholars to be one-eighth of the entire number. These returns are all the more valuable, because in Wales it is not the children merely that attend the Sunday schools, but a very large proportion of the adult population also.

Very striking revelations have been made, likewise, in connection with Day Schools in Wales, tending to throw much light on the actual and comparative strength of the church. When the committee of Council on Education began to make grants for the erection of schools, there was a great rush of applicants from the friends of the Established Church in Wales. They had many advantages in their favour for undertaking the work of establishing Day Schools. They had nearly the whole land and a great proportion of the wealth of the country in their possession. As they drew the means for the support of their clergy, the fabrics of the church, and public worship—which the Dissenters had to provide out of their own pockets—from the national endowments, they had all their resources at liberty to devote to the work of education. The administrators of the national fund were their partial friends, and dispensed it with a lavish profusion, with little or no inquiry into the fitness of those who applied, to direct and control the education of such a population as that of Wales. The National Society, as already shown, made an appeal, which was liberally responded to, for a special fund in which the co-operation of England was solicited, to promote 'the education of our fellow-countrymen throughout Wales in the principles of our common church.' Our friends of the Establishment, moreover, were restrained by no scruple whatever from receiving public money to any extent for teaching their own peculiar tenets in day schools, while the Dissenters conscientiously refused the proffered grants of Government aid for religious instruction. This sudden access of educational zeal sprang avowedly in great part from proselyting motives. The Bishop of St. David's, in one of his early charges, adverting to the peculiar condition of the Principality, confessed that the existing generation was hopelessly alienated from the church, but that the next could and must be recovered by attending to the education of the young. The result of this effort was that State-aided Church schools sprang up in all the larger towns and villages, and in many remote hamlets, and that often in places where there were not half-a-dozen church children.[167] In these schools the principles of the National Society were rigidly enforced. All the children were taught the Church catechism, and obliged to attend church on Sundays. But State-aided schools were liable to inspection, and the inspectors had to present their reports to the Committee of Council, and these were laid before Parliament and the public. It was not possible, therefore, in reporting on the state of education in Wales, wholly to conceal the fact, that an enormous majority of the people held religious views different from those held by the class who in many places had undertaken to direct their education. This has often come out in the reports of even Church of England Inspectors. Thus the Rev. Longueville Jones, who was inspector of Church schools in Wales in 1854, says:—'The number of children in Welsh schools whose parents belong to the Church is so very small, that it requires great experience and delicacy of feeling to treat their young minds as they should be.'[168] As an illustration of the difficulty with which this gentleman had to contend, it is only necessary to refer to the statistics he gives of one school under his inspection, in which out of 107 children, only five were of parents belonging to the Church, whilst in the following year the same school contained 144 children, of whom two only were of church-going parents. To come down to a later period in the report of the Rev. S. Pryce, Inspector of Church of England Schools for Mid-Wales, for 1868, we find the following admission:—'The number of children attending the Welsh country schools I visit, is great beyond all proportion when compared with the number of persons attending church.'[169]

Among the inspectors of British schools in Wales was and is Mr. J. Bowstead. We believe that Mr. Bowstead is himself a churchman. But he is a liberal and candid churchman. When, therefore, in the discharge of his office, he began to visit the country, some eighteen or twenty years ago, he was forcibly struck with the singular anomaly he found to exist, of a large number of Church schools in some cases liberally subsidized from the public funds, and in others supported by deductions from workmen's wages, planted among a population of Dissenters, who felt the strongest repugnance to much of the religious teaching forced on their children in such schools. He had the courage in his reports to expose this injustice, for which he has been ever since the bête noire of the Welsh bishops and clergy, who often assail him with great acrimony and conspicuous unfairness. But on the other hand, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has won the enthusiastic gratitude of a whole nation, who owe to him, in a main degree, the exposure of a flagrant wrong from which they had been long suffering, with little hope of deliverance. Well, Mr. Bowstead, after extensive and careful inquiry, in order to show the aggravated character of the anomaly of which he complained, ventured to say that nine-tenths of the common people in Wales were Nonconformists. A writer in the April number of the Quarterly Review has assailed him very angrily, and has accused him of 'asserting without a shadow of proof that nine-tenths of the Welsh people are Nonconformists.' In a pamphlet issued for private circulation, Mr. Bowstead has with just severity first rebuked his assailant for perverting his words, and then shown how little foundation there is for the charge of his having asserted without 'a shadow of proof,' what alone he did assert, that nine-tenths of the common people of Wales, of such people as use elementary schools, are Nonconformists. Now for the proof of this allegation. When Sir John Pakington's committee was sitting in 1865-6, Mr. Bowstead was one of the witnesses summoned to give evidence. He had been asked to procure the best information he could, as to the comparative numbers of children of church people and children of Dissenters in the schools he visited. He had no difficulty in getting at this from the school register, because the name of the Sunday school which each child attends is entered in a column provided for the purpose, a very satisfactory index of the denomination to which its parents belong. And what was the result? He received returns from thirty schools, 'which were the only elementary schools in their respective localities. These thirty schools had an aggregate of 6,799 children under instruction, and of these 756 were returned as belonging to the Church. The children of parents attached to the Church formed, therefore, about 11 per cent. of the whole, and the children of Nonconformists constituted the remaining 89 per cent. But Mr. Bowstead supplies us with more recent evidence, which we give in his own words:—

Mr. Bowstead then subjoins a table showing the number of children belonging to each denomination, in attendance at the Dowlais schools: out of a total of 2,933, those belonging to the Established Church are 266. 'The Church children therefore would be almost 7·7 per cent., or one-thirteenth of the whole, and the Nonconformists would claim the remaining twelve-thirteenths. This gives a larger proportion to the Nonconformists than any former return.' Accompanying this return there is a letter from Mr. G. T. Clark, the manager of the Dowlais works, containing two or three sentences which are of great significance and value. In sending the tabular statement just referred to, Mr. Clark remarks:—'The proportion of the several sects may, I think, be taken as typical of the manufacturing population of South Wales and Monmouthshire.' We must quote two or three other sentences from Mr. Clark's letter:—

It would be difficult to find a more competent and trustworthy witness. Mr. Clark is himself an attached member of the Church of England. He is a gentleman of rare intelligence, who has for many years been at the head of one of the largest and best conducted of the great iron works of South Wales. His knowledge of the population of the whole district is extensive and accurate. His testimony therefore as to the comparative number of Churchmen and Dissenters, and the feelings of the Nonconformists towards the Establishment, must be held to be unimpeachable.

But what is the comparative progress in accommodation for worship made by the Church and the Nonconformists since the Census of 1851? We have the materials for an approximate estimate. The Bishop of Llandaff, in his last charge, delivered in August, 1869, states that since 1849, the number of new churches erected in his diocese is thirty-nine, not quite two churches in the year; and the number of churches rebuilt on the same site, but whether enlarged is not stated, is thirty-six, making a total of seventy-five. Against this we have to place the following return, furnished to us in detail, but of which we can here give only a summary, of what has been done in the same diocese by three Nonconformist bodies since 1850:—

Number of new chapels built by the Independents	68
Number of ditto rebuilt and enlarged	46
		114
Number of new chapels built by the Baptists	66
Number of ditto rebuilt and enlarged	39
		105
Number of new chapels built by Calvinistic Methodists	52
Number of ditto rebuilt and enlarged	42
		94
		313

Let it be observed that this showing includes only the three principal Nonconformist denominations, as we have failed to procure returns of the different bodies of Wesleyan Methodists and other minor sects, which would make undoubtedly a considerable addition to the total increase of dissenting accommodation. And yet how does the comparison stand even with such incomplete elements as we possess? We find that the Nonconformists have built 186 new places of worship against thirty-nine built by the Church, and have rebuilt and enlarged 127 more against thirty-six rebuilt by the Church.

With regard to the whole of Wales, our information as respects what the Church has done during the last twenty years, is not so perfect as we could wish. The number of new churches built in the four dioceses appears, as nearly as we can calculate from the data within our reach, to be about 110. But there is more difficulty in getting, at those rebuilt and enlarged, as in one of the returns (that of St. Asaph) we find churches 'restored' and 'improved'—words implying merely repairs of existing fabrics without any additional accommodation—mixed up with those which have been 'rebuilt and enlarged.' We have the precise number rebuilt, and we are willing to presume somewhat enlarged, in Llandaff, which is thirty-six, and in Bangor, which is thirty-one. We think it would be a liberal allowance from the statistical report before us to assign thirty-five 'enlarged' churches to St. Asaph, and judging by the number of new churches built in St. David's, we presume that thirty 'enlarged' churches would cover all that has been done in that diocese, making a total rebuilt and enlarged of 132. Let us now turn to the Nonconformists. The following are facts on the substantial accuracy of which our readers may rely. Since 1850, the Calvinistic Methodists have built 321 new chapels, and have rebuilt and enlarged 435 more, providing additional accommodation in all for 123,881 worshippers, at a cost of £366,000. The Independents, during the same period, have built 118 new chapels, and have rebuilt and enlarged 200 more, furnishing additional accommodation for 130,000, at a cost of £294,000. The Baptists have built 142 new chapels, and rebuilt and enlarged ninety-nine more, furnishing additional accommodation for 81,800, at a cost of £163,000. Thus, these three denominations alone have in twenty years built 581 new chapels, and rebuilt and enlarged 734 more, providing accommodation for 308,681 persons, at a cost of £823,000.

But it must be further observed, that it is not merely in the matter of religious instruction that the Nonconformists have become almost exclusively the leaders of the Welsh people. As respects literature and science, and all important social and political movements, it is the same. The literature of Wales, and not its religious literature merely, is almost wholly Nonconformist. There are about thirty periodicals, quarterly, monthly, and weekly, at present published in the Welsh language. Of these all but three are owned and edited by Dissenters. There are nine commentaries on the whole Bible, and nine besides on the New Testament alone, some original and some translated from English, and only two of these were done by Churchmen, and even they were Dissenters when they began their work. There are eight Biblical and Theological Dictionaries, and as many bodies of divinity or systems of theology, and no Churchman, we believe, has had a hand in the production of any one of them. There is a History of the World, a History of Great Britain, a History of Christianity, a History of the Church, a History of the Welsh Nation, a History of Religion in Wales, all by Dissenters, besides elaborate denominational Histories of the Calvinistic Methodists, the Independents, the Baptists, &c. Indeed, all the ecclesiastical histories in the language are Nonconformist, and all the general histories except the History of Wales by the Rev. Thomas Price, and a small work called the 'Mirror of the Principal Ages.' There is a valuable work illustrated by many excellent maps and diagrams, entitled 'The History of Heaven and Earth,' treating of geography and astronomy, by the Rev. J. T. Jones, of Aberdare, formerly a Nonconformist minister. There is another large geographical dictionary in course of publication by a dissenting minister. There are two copious Biographical Dictionaries edited and principally written by Dissenters. There is now, and has been for several years, in course of publication an Encyclopædia in the Welsh language (Encyclopædia Cambrensis), dealing as such works do with the entire circle of human knowledge. It was described by the late Archdeacon Williams, who had seen the earlier volumes, as 'a work of great promise, as sound in doctrine as it is unsectarian in principle.' It is studiously free from denominational taint, and was intended to be a great national undertaking, the contributors being indiscriminately selected from the ablest writers of all denominations, the combined learning and talent of Wales being thus engaged in its preparation. The enterprising publisher at the outset addressed a letter to all those among his countrymen of whatever church or creed who had distinguished themselves in any way by their literary acquirements and productions, inviting their co-operation. We have now before us a list of the contributors amounting to ninety names, and out of these ninety, there are certainly not more than nine churchmen.

The English public has of late years become partially acquainted with a remarkable institution existing in Wales, which has come down from very ancient times, called Yr Eisteddfod, or the Session, meaning in its primitive signification the Session of the Bards. Its object is to encourage the cultivation of literature, poetry and music. The English press has tried to throw great ridicule on this institution, as the English press is wont to do, upon all institutions that are not English. And yet surely, as the Bishop of St. David's has said, 'it is a most remarkable feature in the history of any people, and such as could be said of no other than the Welsh, that they have centred their national recreation in literature and musical competitions.' Prizes ranging from £1 to £100 are offered for the best compositions in poetry, prose, and music. The highest honour bestowed by the Eisteddfod is the Bardic chair, and the productions entitling the successful candidates to this distinction are supposed to possess rare merit. There are now living nine chaired bards, of whom one is a clergyman, seven are Nonconformist ministers, and one a Nonconformist layman. In musical compositions, the proportion would be about the same. And certainly the Welsh clergy of the present day have not, any more than their predecessors, distinguished themselves as authors. A catalogue of Welsh books published within the last twenty years, would show a very beggarly 'account' standing to the credit of the official instructors of the Welsh people.

Such are the past history and the present condition of the Established Church in Wales. Surely no legislature with any sense of justice can long refuse to deal with so anomalous an institution as that we have described; a Church which has wholly failed, and is still failing, to accomplish the only object for which it pretends to exist, from which—and that entirely owing to its own criminal neglect—the great body of the people are hopelessly alienated, and which has no vital relation with the religions, political, social, or literary life of the nation. And it is not merely a theoretical anomaly. It is an intolerable practical grievance, and is becoming more and more so every day. For its friends, numbering as they do nearly all the landowners and wealthy classes, galvanized, of late years, into a sort of spasmodic zeal, which is far more political than religious, are making frantic efforts to regain for their Church the ascendancy it has so righteously lost, by a very unscrupulous use of their wealth, their social position, and their control over the land. The advocates of the Church, especially in the English press, are trying to wreak their vengeance on a nation of Dissenters, by traducing the character of the people, and ridiculing their language, their literature, and their religious institutions; and this they are not deterred from doing by their utter ignorance of all three. Some of the Welsh clergy, also, exasperated by seeing their pretensions contemned, and their ministrations forsaken, are propagating the most monstrous calumnies against their successful rivals, the Dissenting ministers. One Conservative journal in London has especially distinguished itself by throwing its columns open to these anonymous slanderers. Here are some of the flowers of speech that have been plentifully scattered in its pages on the Welsh Nonconformists. 'The Welsh language is made the instrument of evil by preachers and other supporters of anarchy and plunder.' 'The people are actively taught to commit arson and murder; they are regularly drilled into Fenianism.' 'Dissenting ministers are the curse of Wales; there is scarcely a sermon or lecture they deliver that is not full of sedition.'

And yet the country whose population is thus systematically trained to sedition and murder, is more free from serious crime than any part of the United Kingdom; so free, indeed, that in many of the counties the annual visit of her Majesty's judges is almost a work of supererogation. Take as an example the county of Cardigan, which was the scene of the most extensive and cruel political persecutions after the last election, where about sixty tenants were evicted from their holdings, some of them under circumstances of a singularly exasperating character. And yet at the Assizes, that were held immediately after, there was not a single prisoner to be tried. Mr. Justice Hannen, in charging the grand jury, said 'that a perfectly clear calendar was a circumstance he had never before met with since he had been on the bench, and he understood from his brother judges that only in the Principality of Wales was such a thing known, and that there it was frequent. Whether it was attributable to race or to the influence of religious teaching he could not say, but he felt deeply interested in the matter, and whatever might be the cause, there was the indisputable fact, one of which the county of Cardigan might well be proud.'

These insane efforts to drive or to drag the people back into the Church by coercion and calumny, produce, of course, precisely the opposite effect. Indeed the Conservatives, in their treatment of Wales, are triumphantly vindicating their right to the title bestowed upon them by Mr. Stuart Mill, as 'the stupid party.' Unhappily, however, they do succeed in embittering the heart of the people, and in introducing alienation and anger into their relations with the classes who are thus tempted to tamper with their religious and political rights. And all this is owing to the existence of an Established Church.

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Art. VII. (1.)—The Greek New Testament, edited from Ancient Authorities, with the Latin Version of Jerome from the Codex Amiatinus. By S. P. Tregelles, LL.D. Matthew to Acts—Catholic Epistles—Romans to Philemon. S. Bagster and Sons.

(2.) Fragmenta Evangelica quæ ex antiqua recensione versionis Syriacæ Novi Testamenti a Gulielmo Curetono vulgata sunt Græce reddita textuique Syriaco editionis Schaafianæ et Græco Scholzianæ fideliter collata. Pars Prima. J. R. Crowfoot, S.T.B. Williams and Norgate.

It is difficult to estimate our unpaid obligations to the students and scholars who have sacrificed their life to furnish us with the common-places of our knowledge. The elaborate and prolonged effort, the perseverance, ingenuity, and scientific skill often concealed in the foundations of a great building or in the underways of a great city, are no inapt illustration of the lifelong labours of those students and votaries of literature who have placed in our hands authentic and accurate copies of the chefs-d'œuvre of ancient thinkers. The learned, patient, and devout men to whom we are indebted for our present careful approximations to the text of the New Testament, have undergone a species of toil which it is very difficult for those scholars even to appreciate, who have never made the attempt to decipher a single MS. or to gather around them the abundant and often conflicting evidence on which the judgment of the critic really turns. Whatever be the ultimate currency or acceptance of the text which Dr. Tregelles has offered to the world as the result of his life-long effort, and granting that some of the disadvantages under which he has suffered have left ineffaceable marks on the greater part of the work, and that his main principles may still be under judicature, yet we readily endorse the strong language of Bishop Ellicott: 'The edition of Tregelles will last to the very end of time as a noble monument of faithful, enduring, and accurate labour in the cause of truth; it will always be referred to as an uniquely trustworthy collection of assorted critical materials of the greatest value, and as such it will probably never be superseded.'[170] The Bishop does not regard Dr. Tregelles' text as the final one, but does not hesitate to speak of it as far better than Tischendorf's, and as furnishing material which no subsequent editor can afford to ignore. With the exception of the text of the Apocalypse and of the appendices rendered necessary by the progress of textual criticism since the earlier portions of the work were published, this long-expected work is now placed in our hands. The exception to which we have referred is, we profoundly regret to say, occasioned by the serious indisposition of the learned, laborious, and devout editor. The regret is to some extent alleviated from a literary point of view by the circumstance that one of the first contributions to Biblical science made by this conscientious and accurate scholar was published in 1844, and entitled 'The Book of Revelation in Greek, edited from Ancient Authorities, with a new English Version and various Readings, by Samuel P. Tregelles.' There is this difference, however, between the evidence alleged by Dr. Tregelles for the text of the Revelation and that which he has pursued throughout the elaborate work now before us, that in the former he was either content or only able at that time to give the evidence of the few Uncial MSS. and early versions, then known to contain the Apocalypse, with such confirmation as they received from a large number of the Cursive MSS. Although his object was to approximate as nearly as possible to the most ancient text, his apparatus criticus had not then reached the proportions it has subsequently assumed, and he did not even attempt to marshal the evidence of patristic quotations, or to give the arguments pro and contra any reading that he deliberately adopted. The Codex Sinaiticus had not then been rescued from the Convent of St. Catherine by the enterprising Dr. Tischendorf, and the system of careful notation which is adopted in the magnum opus now before us, had not been elaborated. Since 1844, moreover, the Rev. Bradley Alford has published a collation of the celebrated Cursive MS. 38, Dr. Delitzch has discovered the MS. used by Erasmus, and a careful collation is promised of the Codex Basiliensis, which Dr. Tregelles proposes to call Q, instead of adopting the old and confusing symbol B, which has led some to identify it with the Codex Vaticanus. The introduction to the interesting volume on the text of the Book of Revelation was expanded in 1854 into a goodly octavo entitled 'An Account of the printed text of the Greek New Testament, with remarks on its revision upon critical principles, together with a collation of the critical texts of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf with that in common use.' We know no work on biblical criticism more charged with well-digested information, and none which reveals a more extensive literary enterprise, than that which is here recorded. Dr. Tregelles tells us in the preface to his Greek Testament, that this work contains a detailed exposition of the principles he holds and the studies in which he has been engaged, and as his editors earnestly request that it be referred to in explanation of the principle adopted by Dr. Tregelles, it is almost incumbent upon us to remind our readers of its contents and spirit. In the appendix to section 13, occurs a brief and modest sketch of the extensive and continuous labours of this great student of the New Testament text. It appears that he commenced his research simply for his own satisfaction. The text of Dr. Scholz, based so largely on the consensus of later MSS. but revealing the small group of Alexandrian authorities and most ancient witnesses in opposition to the text adopted by him, first called Dr. Tregelles to a consideration of the fact that these most ancient but rejected testimonies were curiously confirmed by the older versions. He was thus led to conceive of the creation of a text entirely based on the authority of the most ancient copies. He did not even know that Lachmann in 1838 had already made his celebrated though imperfect attempt to produce the text of the first four centuries in entire or professed independence of the later authorities and of the received text. When the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin Version was collated and published by Fleck in 1840, Tregelles found it confirm, in opposition to the Clementine Vulgate, the oldest Greek readings. In preparing his work on the text of the Revelation, he found it necessary to collate the Uncial MSS. with his own hand. In 1845 he collated the Codex Augiensis (in Trinity Coll. Camb.). Though he visited Rome for the purpose of collating the celebrated Codex Vaticanus he was prevented from copying unless it were surreptitiously on his thumb-nails, a single reading. We formerly gave to our readers[171] a full account of the various imperfect collations made by Birch, Bartolocci, and Cardinal Mai, and also of the edition which has recently been published under the auspices of Dr. Tischendorf. In the greater part of Dr. Tregelles' critical labours he has been compelled to trust to the faulty and otherwise divergent collations which preceded Dr. Tischendorf's edition; but while he was deprived of the personal advantage of investigating Codex B for himself, he did collate at Rome, with his own hand, the Codex Passonei, and at Florence the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin; and at Modena, Venice, Munich, and Basle, other Uncial MSS. of considerable portions of the New Testament. Many of these were used by Tischendorf in his second Leipsic edition of the Greek Testament.

Dr. Tregelles became acquainted in 1849 with the remarkable Syriac fragment which Dr. Cureton found among the MSS. brought from the Nitrian monasteries and deposited in the British Museum. This mutilated fragment contains portions of the four Gospels—Matt. i.-viii. 22; x. 31-xxiii. 25; Mark xvi. 17-20; John i. 1-42; iii. 6-vii. 37; xiv. 11-29; Luke ii. 48-iii. 16; vii. 33-xv. 21; xvii. 24-xxiv. 44; but in the opinion of the best Syriac scholars, it is older than the Peshito, and would seem to have been collated with the Greek by the translator of the Greek Testament into Syriac (Peshito). Dr. Cureton supposed that it represents a first translation from the original Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, but Dr. Davidson has we think conclusively proved that it is a translation from the Greek. Dr. Cureton conjectured that sundry curious blunders or deviations from the canonical Matthew are due to the mistakes made by the translator of the Hebrew into Syriac. These conjectures are ingenious but perfectly gratuitous. Dr. Davidson has shown that in a variety of places the Curetonian Syriac (as it is called) differs from the early Greek text by the obvious blunder between two Greek words of similar appearance. We have been rather explicit on the matter of this valuable witness to a very early text, not only because Dr. Tregelles and others have made constant reference to it, but because the second work which we have placed at the head of this article is a translation into Greek of the first part of these precious fragments, and is, moreover, a collation of every reading with Scholz's text, and with Schaaf's edition of the Peshito. This critical effort of Mr. Crowfoot will be of real service to the student who is not familiar with Syriac, and who wishes to see for himself the singular deviations of this text from the Textus Receptus. Take e.g. the additions made to the text of Matthew in chap. xx. 28, where a passage resembling one in Luke vii. is introduced. The Cur. Syriac here is sustained by the Codex D. Very frequently, however, it corresponds in its omissions with the most ancient MSS. and with the old Latin, as in Matt. xx. 22, 23. It is profoundly interesting, moreover, in that it retains of Mark's Gospel only a portion of the very closing passage, which is not to be found in Codex B. or in ℵ. Partly in consequence of this testimony Dr. Tregelles leaves the passage as an authentic appendix to the text of the Gospel of St. Mark. We see that Mr. Crowfoot and Dr. Tregelles sometimes differ, as we might expect them to do, as to the Greek equivalent which they suppose most likely to have been the exemplar of the Syriac, but they do not seriously differ as to the testimony it bears to a particular reading. In Matthew xi. 23, the Textus Rec. reads καὶ σὺ Καπερναοὺμ ἡ ἕως τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὑψωθεῖσα, κ.τ.λ. Mr. Crowfoot gives in place of ἡ, οὐχ. Dr. Tregelles on the authority of B, C, D, the Vulgate a, b, c, and Syr. Cur., gives μὴ, and makes the clause interrogative.

But to proceed with Dr. Tregelles' labours. The various collations made by him need not be exhaustively enumerated, though special attention should be called to the extraordinary effort and patience which was required by him to form an accurate estimate of the readings of the Codex Colbertinus, called 33 in the Gospels, and 13 in the Acts and Catholic Epistles. The leaves of the vellum have been in places sodden with damp and stuck together. The consequence was that when separated, 'the ink adhered to the opposite page rather than to its own, so that in many leaves the MS. could only be read by observing how the ink had set-off, and thus reading the Greek words backwards.' At Paris, Leipsic, Berlin, Dresden and Wolfenbüttel, Dr. Tregelles continued his patient research, and came to such discoveries as that the Codex Sangallensis (Δ of the Gospels), and Codex Boernerianus (G of St. Paul's Epistles) were the severed portions of the same book. At Dublin, the difficult palimpsest fragment (Z) was deciphered after submitting the vellum to a chemical process, and Tregelles was able to restore the portions which had been left blank in the edition of this fragment published by Dr. Barrett.

Special reference may be made to the Codex, called Zacynthius and designated Ξ, the property of the British and Foreign Bible Society. This is almost an illegible parchment palimpsest, containing considerable portions of Luke's Gospel. The readings of this old lectionary have been carefully noted by Tregelles and are cited throughout his text of the Gospel of Luke. The Codex Leicestrensis, the property of the Town Council of Leicester, has been also carefully collated by our author, as well as by Mr. Scrivener. It is cited as 69 in the Gospels, 31 Acts, and by other numbers in remaining portions of the New Testament.

Dr. Tregelles has not paid much attention to the mass of cursive MSS. It is not fair to accuse him of utterly neglecting them, when he has gone through the laborious work of collating specimens of cursive MSS. in each of the divisions of his subject. He has, however, placed far more confidence in another class of authority and of evidence. The most ancient versions have been thoroughly noted by him in their several codices. The old Latin is carefully studied throughout; the Codex Amiatinus of Jerome's Latin is published in the volume before us, with all the deviations from it in the Clementine Vulgate. The Peshito and Harcleian Syriac versions, the Cureton fragments, the Jerusalem Lectionary, the Memphitic and Thebaic (sometimes called the Coptic and Sahidic) versions, the Ethiopic and the Gothic, are used throughout this edition of the Greek Testament. A considerable number of uncial MSS., which have been published in facsimile or in a printed text, Dr. Tregelles has copied with his own hand, and all the rest of the uncial MSS. he appears to have also collated with his own hand. Having gone through this extraordinary labour, he has proceeded to give the text of the New Testament on the authority of the oldest MSS. and versions, and with the aid of the earliest citations, so as to present the text of the fourth century. He does not hesitate to deviate from these ancient testimonies, when they agree in transcriptural error; and he confers this great advantage on the student, that he states in every case the authorities on both sides with reference to any disputed reading.

Now there has often been expressed on the part of the advocates of the cursive MSS. and the Constantinopolitan group of MSS. and of the later uncial MSS., the conviction that their consensus ought to outweigh the strong and clearly expressed testimony of the ancient MSS. on the plausible supposition that the existing later MS. may be the copies of an older text than that of any existing MS. whatever. Now if Dr. Tregelles or Dean Alford or Dr. Tischendorf had been mere slaves of the few uncial MSS. of great antiquity which are extant, and had no further or corroborative testimony to add in favour of the readings, or the additions and omissions they have affirmed, there would be much justice in the protest sometimes raised; but neither of them can justly be charged with this, and Dr. Tregelles must certainly be acquitted of such prejudice. He and Dean Alford do indisputably and notoriously differ in certain cases where subjective reasons and considerations of the exercise of personal discretion must assume great importance; and in some of these doubtful and difficult cases Tregelles has been more influenced by diplomatic considerations, and has more readily yielded to authority, than Dean Alford; but Dr. Tregelles has stated very acutely and powerfully his reasons for trusting the ancient MSS., even in these difficult readings. Let the following phenomena to which he is able, in most cases, to add the unexceptionable evidence of his own personal observation and collation, be considered. (a) The uncial MSS. are now known and have been at length collated with such care that we may be certain of their testimony. (b) The palimpsests which have been recently found and deciphered confirm the readings of the oldest codices. (c) The great discovery of the Sinaitic Codex throws in its testimony against the bulk of the cursive MSS. (d) The Curetonian Syriac of the Gospels agrees with the oldest MSS. (e) Certain cursive MSS. (such as Codex Colbertinus of the 12th century) agree with the ancient text rather than with the bulk of the cursives, thus providing a class of exception which proves the rule. (f) There is agreement of the ancient versions with this older text; and (g) not infrequently there is the express testimony of early patristic writers to the existence of such a text in their day. Now the principle that Dr. Tregelles takes great pains to establish is as follows,—While there are certain readings sustained by the great majority of recent MSS., divergent readings of the same passages can be proved to have been in existence long before the existence of these MSS., by the evidence of the earliest MSS. of the old Latin version, by the Syriac and other translations, and by the deliberate discussion of the very peculiarities in question by some earlier writer like Origen. Now, even if there were no uncial MSS. which confirmed such divergence, this would constitute a presumption in favour of such a divergence, if some adequate explanation could be found of the commonly received text. But, if in addition to these testimonies, a considerable number of the most ancient uncial MSS. confirm such readings, then Tregelles urges the adoption of them as an approximation to the true text. Thus, take his elaborate argument in favour of the reading of Matt. xix. 17, τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; εἷς ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθός. This alteration was first made by Griesbach and sustained by Lachmann, and adopted subsequently by Tischendorf and Alford, though condemned by Mr. Scrivener on the ground of the numerical poverty of the evidence, and because it evinced theological zeal for the honour of the Incarnate Son. It is interesting to find, since the judgment of these recensionists was deliberately given, that the final recension of the Vatican MS. and the testimony of the Sinaitic MS. have arisen to defend it. The evidence for the existence of this text in the fourth century, or indeed before the time of Origen, and before the existence of Cureton Syriac, just proves, according to Tregelles, that it is safe 'to take the few documents whose evidence is proved to be trustworthy, and to discard the eighty-nine ninetieths of the evidence shown thus to be less valuable.' One result of his comparative criticism is, 'that as certain MSS. are found by a process of inductive proof to contain an ancient text, their character as witnesses must be considered to be so established, that in other places their testimony deserves peculiar weight;' and still further—'that the ancient MSS. were not exceptional documents, because they contain readings which we learn elsewhere to have been both ancient and widespread.'

One great advantage in Dr. Tregelles' New Testament is, that he not merely states but cites the authority of the patristic writers to whom he appeals, and by a somewhat elaborate notation enables the reader at a glance to see how his uncial MSS. and principal versions are serving him, and where all the lacunæ begin and end.

We proceed to give some further account of the contents and peculiarities of this great work. Dr. Tregelles and Dr. Alford agree in the great majority of cases where they differ from the received text, although in some instances they have not with the same facts before them, come to the same conclusion. E.g., both call attention to the fact that in John vi. 51, the clause ἣν ἐγὼ δώσω is omitted by B, C, D, L, T, 33, the Latin versions, the Cur. Syriac, Thebaic, and Æthiopic versions, and by many Fathers, and Alford even mentions a longer list of such omissions than Tregelles, but Alford allows the homoioteleuton just above, to be a sufficient explanation of the original omission in the text, and retains the clause: Tregelles strikes it out, making the verse read thus, 'and the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.' Since their discussion, the Sinaitic MS. confirms Tregelles, by not only omitting the clause, but altering the order of the words. This alteration of order may confirm Dean Alford in his continued insertion of the clause, though we think Tregelles is in the right. Through whole chapters of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, these two recensionists may be said to agree verbatim et literatim, and to have come precisely to the same conclusions: still a few specimens of their divergence may explain more fully than a more elaborate analysis, the character of their work. In John viii. 41, Alford prefers the less comprehensible form γεγεννήμεθα, to the form ἐγεννήθημεν, on the ground of the possible alteration of the tense to the more usual form. We do not think that Tregelles has acted here on his own principles, for he shows that versions and citations defend the former rather than the latter reading. In John viii. 54, they differ again as to the preferable character of the readings ἡμῶν or ὑμῶν, 'our God' or 'your God,' and here Tregelles defends the reading ἡμῶν with a great array of evidence; see also ch. ix. 4, where ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι κ.τ.λ. is given as preferable to the ἐμὲ δεῖ κ.τ.λ., and largely on the ground that Origen must have been acquainted with this obscure text, and tried to interpret it. In each instance a theological zeal might have provoked a copyist to the ordinary readings. Throughout the ninth chapter of the Acts, where the received text has passed through so fiery an alembic, Alford and Tregelles agree, we believe, in every word, with one exception, and that is the word ἐπείραζεν is preferred by one to the ἐπειρᾶτο of the other in v. 26. Here strong uncial authority governs Tregelles, and the disposition to prefer the less usual or less common form has influenced Dr. Alford. In Romans v. 1, the celebrated reading ἔχωμεν in place of ἔχομεν is preferred by Tregelles. Alford still has doubts about it, from the indecision of MSS. in their modes of spelling certain vowel sounds. The quotations from Origen and Tertullian are decisive of the existence of such a text in their day, and the array of versions is strongly confirmatory of the seven uncials and two cursives that are quoted for it. We need scarcely say, that Tregelles gives his powerful authority in favour of ὃς, rather than θεὸς, in 1 Tim. iii. 16, and rejects the reference to the three heavenly witnesses in 1 John v. 7; but in spite of the authority of Tischendorf's collation of B and of ℵ, and other authorities in favour of the received text, he gives κυρίου instead of θεοῦ as the preferable reading of Acts xx. 28.

Our author is strongly moved by the citations of Origen, and consequently places in his margin as the alternative reading in Heb. ii. 9, χωρὶς θεοῦ by the side of χάριτι θεοῦ. It is clear, from no fewer than seven citations of Origen, he must have had a MS. before him with this startling statement, 'that Jesus on the behalf of all without (or in the absence, or hiding of) God might taste death.' The only MS. authority for such a reading is the uncial fragment called M of the tenth century, so that we are surprised to see the high place given to it in Tregelles' margin. Dr. Tregelles, in the wealth of material at his disposal, sometimes almost travels into the region of the exegete, as in the long note upon Rom. ix. 5, where he gives eight or nine quotations from Greek and Latin Fathers, to show the sense in which they took the phrase, ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας as not divided from the ὁ χριστὸς which precedes. It may be added, that he retains ἐν Ἐφέσῳ in the text of Eph. i. 1, thus preserving the traditional character of this Epistle as one addressed not to Laodiceans or any group of Asiatic churches, but to the church at Ephesus.

Dr. Tregelles and Dean Alford differ slightly in 1 Cor. iii. In the fifth verse, τί οὖν ἐστιν Απολλώς is preferred to the τίς of the Receptus, by Tregelles, while Alford sustains the latter. Tregelles has given the adjectives χρυσίον and ἀργύριον in v. 12, in place of the χρυσὸν, ἄργυρον; and ἔθηκα to the commoner τέθεικα and of v. 10. Here Alford seems to have the weight of evidence in favour of his view, though doubtless the aorist gives the finer sense, and makes the truer affirmation 'I laid,' rather than 'I have been laying the foundation.'

He leaves Ἄγαρ in brackets in his text of Gal. iv. 25. So also he deals with the εἰκῆ of Matt. v. 22. The βαπτίσαντες of Matt. xxviii. 19, given on the authority of the doubtful recensions of the Vatican MS. is most unsatisfactory. Tischendorf, who gave it in some of his earlier editions, has returned to βαπτίζοντες ; and probably Dr. Tregelles will show us in his appendix that he has done the same, as ℵ agrees with all the uncial MS. here in the more grammatical reading. We will not further trouble our readers with details. These will suffice for a specimen. Every page presents at a glance the presence of the entire group of MS. versions and fragments collated by the author, and the whole is printed with extreme beauty of type and arrangement.

In conclusion, we express our profound sense of the obligation under which the accomplished and persevering editor has laid every student of the New Testament. There is a fulness and richness of material placed here by him, at the disposal of those who are utterly precluded from this kind of investigation. The work is done so conscientiously and laboriously, that great confidence is inspired in the accuracy and reliableness of the information thus harvested for general use. The principles on which Dr. Tregelles has toiled, are so clearly put, and for the most part so patiently applied, that they command hearty respect, if not general assent. Such work as this is necessarily provisional, and cannot be regarded as final. The discovery of the Sinaitic codex and the recent collated edition of the Vatican MS. since the commencement of Tregelles' enterprise, is sufficient proof of this; and until the promised appendices appear we cannot tell to what extent this circumstance may have modified the text of our author. It is inexpressibly affecting that the labour of nearly forty years should be arrested when the patient, true-hearted scholar had just reached, as we understand, the last chapter of the Revelation, and that he should be suffering not only from prostration of strength, but be smitten in that very organ of vision which he had consecrated so lovingly to his Master's service. We can only deplore and sympathize with such disappointments as these. We are satisfied that we speak the universal desire of his collaborateurs, and of his rivals, in this lofty field of work, when we express the earnest hope that he may yet be spared to complete his labours, and to see the effect of them in the deeper reverence paid by his contemporaries to the Word of the living God.

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Art. IX.—The War of 1870.

It is impossible as yet even to guess the consequences of the memorable war of 1870. It may verify the German exclamation that the hour of the Latin race has come, and that France has ceased to be a great power, or it may lead to the moral resurrection of that essentially noble people, and even to the recovery of its military supremacy. It may develope a French Republic which from its failure to turn the tide of fortune shall be followed by a Jacobin successor, and issue in a despotism of the sword not less fearful than that of Napoleon I. or it may be the forerunner of a better period when France, purified by adversity, shall win the esteem and admiration of Europe, by her constancy in affliction, her lofty patriotism, her renewed energy, her surviving genius. Looking at it, too, from the other side, it may accelerate the unity of Germany, cemented by blood poured out in the field, by a brotherhood in arms, and by common triumphs; or it may tend only to German divisions, and to the collapse of the policy of 1866, by aggrandising Prussia out of all proportions, and making her influence intolerable to the minor States. Who, indeed, shall speculate on the results of this mighty and awful conflict, when, though it seems for the time to be drawing to a close, France refuses to acknowledge defeat, and defies the invader behind the walls of the capital, and when, though apparently struck to the ground, she still raises the flag of resistance, appeals to the memories of 1793, and endeavours to rally for a final effort those national forces which, in her case, have so often proved impossible to subdue? Yet, if we shall not attempt to forecast the remote issues of this tremendous struggle, or to predict what it shall ultimately bring forth, the time has come when we can briefly describe its marvellous events and fortunes, and can truly indicate its immediate lessons of deep significance to these kingdoms. The momentous war of 1870 is not only one of the grandest illustrations of the art which founds and destroys Empires; it not only is an astonishing drama, every scene which the military student should examine carefully and lay to heart; it not only fascinates the ordinary observer by its gigantic action and immense events; it points conclusively to a solemn moral, not to be forgotten by any country which seeks to maintain its position in the world, and cherishes a sense of its independence. It shows how weak, in the hour of trial, may be even a great military power which neglects the real sources of its strength, and relies mainly on its martial traditions, on its past honour, on the memory of a name; it proves fearfully how imperial despotism may rear an edifice of imposing grandeur, which for a generation shall deceive mankind, and yet fall suddenly at the first breath of misfortune; it testifies to the old truth that material prosperity with moral corruption are the fruitful sources of national decline; and it teaches us what we should never forget, how terrible and decisive, in modern warfare, are the results of rapid and great success, and how absolutely necessary it is for England, in the present menacing condition of Europe, to surround herself with an invulnerable shield, to look after her national defences, and to take care that by sea and on land she shall possess the means of repelling aggression.

It would be an unnecessary and unprofitable task to examine at length the causes of the war. Impartial history, we believe, will pronounce that though Napoleon gave the challenge, it had been to some degree provoked by the policy of Bismark, by the attitude recently taken by Prussia, by the series of events which since 1866 have changed the centre of power in Germany. It was impossible but that the Emperor should feel bitterly how he had been outwitted by the unscrupulous statesman who had purchased his complicity in the spoliation of Denmark by promises of annexation on the Rhine, and had afterwards coolly violated his pledges; nor yet that he should not be really alarmed at the immense development of the military power of Prussia during the preceding five years. It would have been disregarding the traditions which, rightly or wrongly, for two centuries have guided the foreign policy of France, to have witnessed the absorption of the German States into one dominant and threatening power, without an effort to break the union; and if an attempt to obtain this, was contrary to modern ideas and aspirations, it was only carrying out what had always been the views of Henry IV. and Richelieu. Besides, ever since the battle of Sadowa, France and Prussia had been watching each other, and tending inevitably to collision; both Powers had been increasing their armaments, and events have proved which was the more ready; and we know from the Imperial correspondence that Napoleon had been repeatedly warned that Prussia was meditating an invasion of France, and would avail herself of the first opportunity. It is not, therefore, too much to say that it was not merely French folly and arrogance which precipitated this tremendous conflict; the conduct of Prussia and her aggressive acts contributed to it in no slight degree; and if France, as it has turned out, was unwise in not accepting accomplished facts, and in chafing at the military strength of her rival, we can perfectly comprehend this sentiment, without charging her, as a nation, with any peculiar turn for aggrandisement, or even any extraordinary ambition. It must be admitted that the Emperor was utterly in the wrong in the pretext on which he declared war, and that his whole policy in this respect showed ignorance of the real state of opinion. After the Hohenzollern candidature of Spain had been withdrawn at the instance of England, it was an act of extreme unwisdom to have proceeded to further demands; and the result was that, to outward seeming, France, at the beginning of hostilities, was alone to blame for the frightful contest, and that Prussia appeared the injured defender of the national independence of Germany. In truth, however, in this as in other matters, Bismark probably outgeneralled Napoleon; he seems to have been eager for war, and to have been too glad to find an opportunity to attack France with the support of public opinion; and now at least when he puts forward claims to wrest from her some of her present provinces, he can scarcely be considered by impartial men as the mere opponent of French aggression.

Hostilities were proclaimed on the 15th of July, after efforts at negotiation on the part of England. There can be little doubt that the war was welcomed by the classes who form public opinion in Germany, quite as much as in France. The passionate and foolish cry, 'to Berlin,' was answered by shouts of defiance, 'to Paris;' and if French chauvins and journalists talked of the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine, and of the breaking up of the German Confederation, claims for 'the lost patrimony of Elsass and Lothringen' were put forward prominently by the press of Germany. In fact, amiable German professors who back the arrogant demands of Bismark, and pleasantly insist on 'the line of the Vosges,' as a necessary bulwark for 'peace-loving Germany,' against the 'intolerable ambition of Frenchmen,' must have a strange notion of the facts of the case; the war fever was at least as strong in the capital of Prussia, as in that of France; and it is about as correct to represent the two nations as differing in this, as it is to repeat the veracious legend—of which of course the League of Pilnitz and the barbarous invasion of 1792 are confirmations that cannot be gainsaid—that France has always been the assailant of her meek and long-suffering Teutonic rival. Within a few days after the declaration of war, the army of the Rhine was set in motion, and the heads of the columns of eight French corps were approaching the verge of the German frontier; the main bodies, however, being still distant. The first corps, under the renowned MacMahon, had advanced from Algeria and the south, and occupied Upper and Lower Alsace, its headquarters being at Strasburg. The second and fifth corps of Frossard and De Failly were sent forward, and at St. Avold and Bitsche held the approaches to the Rhenish Palatinate, from MacMahon's left to near the line of the Saar. To the left of these again, was the fourth corps, marched from the north under L'Admirault, and stationed at and around Thionville; while, in the rear, Bazaine with the third corps, was moving to the great fortress of Metz; the sixth, under the orders of Canrobert, was on its way from Chalons to Lorraine; and far behind, the Imperial Guard—the flower of the French army—was pushing forward from the French capital. In the meantime, the seventh corps of Douay formed the extreme right of the great French line; far to the north it guarded Belfort, the 'gate of France,' between the Vosges and the Jura; and it connected itself with MacMahon's rear-guard along the Rhine and Lower Alsace. The whole French army, in its first line, extended in a huge semicircle from Northern Lorraine to the Southern Vosges; but its second line, massed between Metz and Chalons, was at a considerable distance from the first; and though it was well connected by railways, and placed as it was, it threatened equally the Rhenish provinces and Southern Germany, it was not yet even nearly concentrated.

Such was the disposition of the army of the Rhine about the 21st or 22nd of July. It will be seen at once that it was well adapted for an offensive movement against Germany, if made rapidly and in full force, for Baden and the Palatinate were threatened, and the exact point of attack was concealed. Placed as they were, the forces of France could either pour into the Rhineland, drawing after them their reserves on all sides, or they could cross the Rhine, and, advancing from Strasburg, interpose between Northern and Southern Germany and endeavour to break up their uniting armies. On the other hand, the position of the French was badly chosen as a line of defence; for their foremost corps were widely disseminated, and in case of a sudden attack, were thrown too far beyond their supports; and if they were assailed by a resolute foe, converging against them in full strength, they would be exposed to serious disaster. For these reasons we may certainly infer that the strategic plan of the French Emperor was to march upon the Germans with much rapidity, and whether the recently published pamphlet does or does not disclose his purpose, it is evident that he intended to advance either by the Rhineland on Landau and Mayence, or by Strasburg into the territory of Baden. Besides, he must have known perfectly well that a brilliant initiative was his best chance; for not only was it in accordance with the traditions and genius of the French soldier; not only was it calculated to sow dissensions and alarm among his foes and perhaps prevent them from combining; it was the sole means to give full effect to the one great advantage which France would possess over Prussia at the beginning of a campaign, the imposing strength of a standing army, supposed to be ready at all points and formidable in its numerical proportions, compared with levies, immense indeed when brought together and set in motion, but believed to be inferior in military power, and requiring time to be fully arrayed. It may therefore be said with confidence, that a sudden and vigorous spring on Germany was the real scheme of Napoleon III.; and, notwithstanding all that has occurred, it is impossible to say what the result would have been had this design been carried out boldly, with the promptness and skill of a great commander who would have led his troops to immediate victory. Unhappily, however, for the interests of France, vacillation at the decisive moment took the place of resolution and genius; and her armed arrays, however imposing to outward seeming, were not in a state to undertake great and rapid operations. The Emperor lingered a fortnight at Paris before he went to his headquarters at Metz; even when he had arrived he passed nearly a week, uncertain, it would appear, how to strike; and thus the favourable opportunity was lost which might have changed the whole course of the war. In addition to this, it is now well known that the army was not ready to march; its commissariat was not complete; it was deficient in ammunition and supplies; and its real strength was considerably less than Napoleon III. had been led to expect. Between the irresolution of its chief, and its own ill-prepared condition, it had already forfeited its most hopeful chances before even a blow had been struck.

During these delays of the army of the Rhine Germany had been making astonishing efforts. If Bismark's reports are to be believed, the German nation was not prepared for immediate war on a gigantic scale. But considering that since the battle of Sadowa Prussia had been steadily increasing her armaments, and that it is tolerably clear from her government press that she was eager to measure her strength with France, we shall scarcely credit the Northern Confederation with any want of military readiness; still immense as their exertions were, it is not impossible that the Southern States were taken to some extent by surprise. However this may have been, the summons to arms against the ancient and dreaded foe met with but one answer from the Teutonic race; and whatever may be thought of the policy of its rulers, its patriotism and heroic attitude are entitled to the highest admiration. From the sandy wastes that border the Niemen to the valleys watered by the Moselle, and from the shores of the Northern Sea to the Danube and the Bohemian hills, the martial cry 'to the war' was heard; the integrity of the Fatherland was the one thought of the whole people; and whatever may have been the divisions caused by the events of 1866, and whatever the hopes of dispossessed sovereigns, of blind diplomatists, or of discontented nobles, it was soon evident that Napoleon III. would have to contend against an united Germany. This single circumstance shows how impolitic had been the course of the French Emperor, and how badly he had been advised; and, in fact, unless, as is not improbable, the conduct of Prussia shall tend to disunion, the war will have done more to make Germany a concordant people than any event since 1813. Within a few days the military system of the nation was in full operation; the army was 'mobilized' and increased to its war strength within the local limits assigned to its different divisions, and in an exceedingly short time a gigantic array composed of regular troops in the first line, with reserves of landwehr in the second, was in a state to commence operations under the guidance of leaders of proved ability. Those who witnessed that mighty torrent of war pouring through Germany towards the Rhenish frontier have described its tremendous power and impulse; and none who have observed how it was directed can doubt that it had been long held in hand to commence as well as to repel aggression. Towards the last days of July and the first of August, while the French were still disseminated in Lorraine, three vast German armies had taken possession of the territory of the Rhenish Palatinate, and, already in communication with each other, were being marshalled to pour into France an overwhelming tide of invasion. The first army, numbering about 80,000 men, was under the command of the aged Steinmetz, and was approaching the Saar from Treves, its outposts reaching to near Saar-Louis. The second army, nearly 200,000 strong, had crossed the Rhine at and above Mayence, and, led by King William and Prince Frederick Charles, held the centre of the Rhenish Palatinate, its outposts almost advanced to the Saar, and its rearward divisions stretching far backwards. To the left was the third army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, about 150,000 strong; it touched the right of the second army, and extended thence to the course of the Rhine, and its vanguard, along the stream of the Lauter, approached the northern frontier of Alsace, the main body being not distant, and concealed behind the adjoining fortresses. From Treves on the west to Landau on the east, and pressing forward to the very edge of France, the huge German masses were already in a state to fall on their enemy with tremendous force.

The manner in which these immense armies were formed, organised, and moved in concert within a short distance of the French frontier, was one of the most notable of strategic exploits. In the space of nineteen or twenty days 430,000 men in the highest state of efficiency for war, with guns, horses, and other material, had been arrayed and prepared for the field, and now stood on the verge of the Rhineland ready to overrun Alsace and Lorraine. We know of no finer military movement, except perhaps the splendid concentration of Napoleon's forces on the Belgian frontier on the 14th of June, 1815; and it attests clearly the calculating forethought and ability of the Prussian Government, the high training and skill of its generals, and the discipline and power of the German troops. The French army, scattered and divided on the semicircle from Thionville to Belfort, and with its first line widely separated from the second, was already in no condition to offer a successful resistance to its mighty foe; it was not only much weaker in strength, being outnumbered fully two to one at the decisive points where it was threatened, it was also so disunited in its parts, that it could hardly collect 60,000 men in any position to withstand an attack. In fact, a glance at the map will show that along the whole line of the Saar and the Lauter it was exposed to be defeated in detail by a force infinitely superior in power; and this peril was aggravated by the circumstance, placed beyond dispute by the clearest evidence, that it believed itself completely secure, and that its leaders were planning a forward movement while their enemy was close at hand to destroy them.

It is now well known that a German advance was not suspected in the French camp even during the first three days of August: the woods along the edge of the frontier were not searched by the French outposts, and the German columns were allowed to collect in force behind this deceptive screen while the Emperor and his Marshals were dreaming of a march without an obstacle into the Rhenish provinces. The consequences of this ruinous neglect and self-deception became soon evident. On the 4th of August the Crown Prince of Prussia detached a part of his vast army to attack the extreme right of the whole French line, this movement being only the first step of a general advance across the French frontier. The Prince, with about 40,000 men, fell upon a single division of about 10,000 which lay encamped near the town of Weissenburg, surprised it, it is said, when at breakfast, and drove it back in a state of confusion. The French, rallying on the Geisberg, made a gallant resistance for a short time; but the hill having been stormed by the enemy, they were ultimately driven in utter rout from beyond Weissenburg on the road to Strasburg. The first success, so important in war, had thus been decisively won; the trophies of the day were 500 prisoners, a gun, and a great deal of material; and the advanced guard of the German army stood in triumph upon the soil of France, the right wing of the French forces having been already threatened and struck, and the secret of their want of preparation having been disclosed to their able antagonists.

The affair at Weissenburg was only the prelude of operations of a more serious kind. The 5th of August was spent by the Crown Prince in bringing the mass of his troops forward, and in arraying them for a formidable attack on the French forces in his immediate front. There can be no doubt that in making these dispositions he exposed his flank to the corps of De Failly, which, stationed at Bitsche, beyond the Vosges, ought to have combined with that of McMahon, and fallen on the right of the Prussian commander, while, as yet, his columns were not closed up, and his whole line was somewhat out of order. This movement, however, was not executed; the want of intelligence and the vacillation which characterised the operations of the French, were again too painfully conspicuous; and though De Failly sent one division through the hill passes to the aid of his colleague, he remained at Bitsche with the bulk of his troops, and left MacMahon completely isolated. Meanwhile that brave, but unfortunate chief, made preparations to resist the attack of the Germans, now evidently impending. It is a misconception to suppose, as some have done, that he advanced recklessly against his foe; what he did was to take and occupy a defensive position on the flank of the Germans, where he could hope to give them battle, under circumstances of the least disadvantage, and De Failly, if he wished, could come to his aid; and we assert, with confidence, that this strategy was the best open to the Duke of Magenta. The marshal by the evening of the 5th had drawn up his forces along the crest of a range which extends from Reichsofen on the left by Woerth to Elsasshausen, and Marbronn on the right, and which, with the stream of the Sauer in front, and with broken ground along the rising slopes, formed a strong position against his enemy. MacMahon's object evidently was to compel the Germans to turn against him, and assail him as they changed their front; he would thus divert them from the road to Strasburg, and engage them as favourably for himself as possible; and at the same time, he as it were summoned the corps of De Failly to join his rear, while he kept open several lines of retreat. These were the arrangements of an able commander; and considering that MacMahon had not more than 50,000 men in his band, his dispositions certainly give proof of the tactical skill for which he is renowned. On the morning of the 6th, the Crown Prince advanced to the attack, with 130,000 men, and not less than 440 guns. As MacMahon had calculated, the change of front, which the Germans were compelled to make, threw their line for some time into confusion; and the French repelled for several hours a somewhat feeble and disunited effort against their left, at and near Reichsofen. Meantime the French centre at Woerth had been engaged; there too, for a considerable time, MacMahon's divisions resisted stoutly, and even for a moment assumed the offensive. But about two o'clock the huge German line had come up on all sides in strength; and the Crown Prince prepared to turn the French wings at both sides, combining with this an attack in front—a movement justified by his superiority in force, but certainly not without hazard. MacMahon, who, at this conjuncture, De Failly not having come up, ought, in our judgment, to have retreated, struck desperately at the German centre at Woerth, thinned by the extension of its flanks; but the French onset was bravely resisted, and indeed it could not have been successful. Ere long the formidable outflanking movement developed itself, and became decisive; and from Reichsofen to beyond Marbronn the dense German columns extended threateningly, and overlapped the whole French position. A sudden panic fell on MacMahon's army; its right and centre gave way; and it was soon a mass of disheartened fugitives, broken on all sides into disunited fragments. Six thousand prisoners and thirty guns were the spoils of the victorious Germans; and for some time the defeated force was annihilated, in a military point of view.

It cannot be said that the Germans' tactics were remarkable for ability or boldness during the first part of this desperate battle. They attacked weakly, and in divided masses; they gave MacMahon more than one chance; and with their immense superiority of numbers their victory ought to have been more decisive. On the other hand the French Marshal showed talent in his original dispositions; he resisted his enemy during several hours, and at one time placed him in much danger; and had he when he had been assured that De Failly's corps was not coming up, effected a rapid and confident retreat, he would have been entitled to commendation. MacMahon, however, held his ground too long; and when the Crown Prince, who, as soon as he had ascertained the inferiority of the French in strength, displayed consummate energy and skill, had advanced on Reichsofen and Marbronn, it was almost inevitable that the French line should give way and be totally defeated. As regards the conduct of the opposing armies, the Germans, cautious and slow at first, became at last self-reliant and bold; the French fought long with 'consummate bravery,'—we quote the German official report—but they broke up hastily under the stress of disaster—a fault almost a national characteristic. The strategic consequences of the battle were in the highest degree important. The whole right wing of the French army, overpowered by immensely superior forces, was driven in and almost destroyed; it had no chance but to retreat behind the Vosges, too fortunate if it could make its escape; Alsace was thrown open to the enemy, and an avenue into the heart of France laid bare. This result was in some measure due to the criminal negligence of De Failly, who, if he had chosen, might have joined MacMahon, and whose corps might have changed the fate of the day; but it was also caused by the bad arrangement of the whole French line upon the position, which at no point was in sufficient strength to offer a firm and certain resistance. This, indeed, was made evident, at the same time, at another part of the theatre of operations. While the Crown Prince was attacking MacMahon, a German division of the First Army crossed the Saar and advanced to Saarbrück, where a few days before the corps of Frossard had made a demonstration on the frontier, in order, it has been supposed, to gratify the curiosity of the Prince Imperial. The French were completely surprised; but, pressing hastily forward, they advanced to repulse the audacious foe, who with great boldness resisted steadily for some time. Meanwhile another German division had come to the aid of their comrades; and seizing promptly the cover of woods which overlapped the right of the French, they wasted it away with a destructive fire; and further supports having come up, the Germans stormed with heroic valour a line of heights called the Spicheren hills, which formed the front of the French position. The whole French line had begun to give way; and an additional mass of foes appearing on their extreme left, and having outflanked it, they retreated in precipitate haste, leaving a considerable number of guns and prisoners.

The two engagements of the 6th of August, named respectively those of Woerth and Forbach, were fraught with results of great moment. It was not only that the renowned French army which had been supposed to be the first in the world had suffered a double crushing defeat, in one instance of a dishonourable kind; not only that it had lost its prestige and given proof of want of steadiness, of indiscipline, and of disorganization; the invasion of Germany was now impossible; the South had been united to the North by the pledge of common military success; and there was nothing to avert the victorious progress of the German masses on the French frontier. The situation, in fact, had been suddenly changed; and Europe, which up to that moment had been expecting a French advance, was now to witness the calamitous recoil of the Imperial forces at all points, attended with ever increasing disasters. The right wing of the French army, well-nigh cut off and destroyed at Woerth, was driven in rout out of Alsace and compelled to abandon Strasburg to its fate; and it would be too fortunate if it could rally at Châlons, drawing to it the corps of De Failly and Douay. The right centre, broken through at Forbach, was forced backward upon Metz; and the centre and left, involved in its defeat, were obliged to fall back in the same direction. Meanwhile the Germans ably directed, and collected in overwhelming strength, poured into France in the successive waves of an invasion that nothing could resist. The Crown Prince's army, in communication with the Second by a cordon of cavalry sent through the Vosges, detached a part of its force to besiege Strasburg, and with its remaining divisions poured forward through Lower Alsace in pursuit of MacMahon. The Second Army advancing from the Rhineland, swept across the Saar in immense forces, and passed into the north of Lorraine, driving before it the feeble French corps now seeking a refuge under the guns of Metz. Meanwhile, the Third Army made a parallel movement; and, uniting with the right of the Second, marched rapidly in overwhelming front on Metz, already threatening with its right wing to overlap and surround the great fortress. By the 18th August, 300,000 Germans with large reserves in their immediate rear had made good their way into France, and from Strasburg to Thionville and thence into the heart of Lorraine, were taking military possession of the country and menacing with ruin the enemy in their path.

During this mighty advance of the Germans, the strategic operations of the French, in part owing to the bad disposition of their forces for combined movements, and in part to the weakness of their commanders, had been characterised by much indecision. MacMahon, indeed, had effected his retreat from the field of Woerth with the wreck of his troops, and escaped safely through the Vosges passes; and though his corps was almost ruined, he had shown some ability in getting away, for he ought to have been destroyed by the Germans. In fact, the pursuit of the Crown Prince had not been marked by energy or speed, whatever indiscriminate flatterers may urge; his own reports more than once refer to the comparative slackness of his cavalry or at least to their extreme caution. De Failly, too, though the disaster at Woerth must be laid to a great extent to his charge, had been prompt in breaking up from Bitsche, and he had succeeded in approaching MacMahon without being caught by the enemy; his escape, however, being in a great measure due to the resistance made by the fortress of Bitsche, which retarded the march of one of the Crown Prince's columns. The broken right of the French army, though its losses had been terrible, and its morale was destroyed, was, in a word, making good its way to Châlons; and, as the corps of Douay was moving towards it, and as the whole mass was about to concentrate, we cannot find fault with these arrangements. But in the remaining part of the theatre of war the French dispositions revealed nothing but feebleness, vacillation, and want of forethought. The instant Woerth and Forbach were fought, and the right and right centre of the French were forced back on either side of the Vosges, it cannot be doubted that the whole French army ought to have retreated in a parallel line; and it ought certainly to have retired on Châlons, having thrown a strong garrison into Metz, for it was at Châlons only that it could hope to reunite, and when there it would be in a position to save Paris and defend the interior on the well-known lines of the Marne and Seine. To effect this would not have been easy, for the disseminated state of the corps on the frontier from Thionville to Forbach and thence backward to Metz exposed them whatever moves they attempted; but this was what ought to have been done, and the attempt would have probably succeeded. Instead of this the unfortunate emperor drew in his left and centre on the Nied—and when he had collected these behind the river, he halted five or six days at Metz, uncertain evidently what to do next, and hesitating, while there was time to fall back on Châlons. The reason of this strange and fatal fault, through which the main body of the French army was exposed to be cut off and destroyed, remains as yet to be explained; it was probably owing to vacillation and to the dread of terrifying Paris by the news of a general retrograde movement. While the bulk of the Army of the Rhine was being detained in camp around Metz, completely separated from its supports in Champagne, the German armies advanced to the Moselle; and while a part of the First and Second Armies were massed close to the great fortress a considerable detachment was thrown forward, to menace and fall on the French line of retreat should an attempt be made to retire on Châlons.

The results of these strategic arrangements, so different in ability and forethought, were developed ere long with great distinctness. On the 14th of August one detachment of the French army with the Emperor at its head, left Metz and crossed to the left bank of the Moselle; and this ultimately reached Châlons, where it effected its junction with MacMahon. The remaining corps endeavoured to begin their retrograde movement the same day, but being on the eastern side of the fortress, and their great numbers impeding their march, they were attacked by two corps of the Germans, whose vigorous onset held them in check. The combat lasted the whole day; and each side claimed to have won the victory; but the real issue was in favour of the Germans, who detained their antagonists round Metz, while their own troops were being pushed forward to occupy the French line of retreat. Next day, the 15th, the whole French army began to defile to the left bank of the Moselle; but it marched only ten or twelve miles on the two roads to Verdun and Etain, the avenues by which it would reach Châlons; and it bivouacked at Mars La Tour and Doncourt, still, as it proved, not far from its enemy. The causes of this disastrous delay, fraught with consequences of a ruinous kind, remain yet to be explained; much was doubtless due to the extreme difficulty of moving columns of great length and size, encumbered with baggage and other impediments; and it is not improbable that a desire to avoid the appearance of a hasty retreat may have had influence on the French commanders. It is certain, however, that a greater distance should have been accomplished by the retiring force; it was of vital importance to get clear at once of the foes gathering on the flank and rear; and Marshal Bazaine, who by this time certainly had been invested with the supreme command, unquestionably committed a grave error in not having pressed forward the movement. The next day it was too late; and the Germans found themselves in a position to achieve success, which it is quite clear from their own despatches, they never expected. On the morning of the 16th, the retreating French were attacked on the Verdun road by the cavalry and infantry of a German corps, which continued for some hours to hold them in check; and aid having come to the assailants, a sanguinary battle raged at Mars La Tour, one side endeavouring to cut its way through, the other struggling to bar the passage. Throughout the day fresh supports thrown forward judiciously on the flanks of the French, gave terrible effect to the German attacks; and their enemy, bound to a single road, and in their extended columns fatally exposed, was compelled to fight at a great disadvantage. The French, however, fought desperately, aware of the importance of the issue; and it is possible that they would have resisted successfully, had it not been for a brilliant charge of a large mass of cavalry towards the evening, which forced them back a considerable distance. Meanwhile, a simultaneous attack had been made on the Etain road, and though the French struggled with great courage, this too ultimately proved successful. The whole French army about nightfall withdrew sullenly towards Metz, having failed to make its retreat good, and the Germans, closing on its communications, already stood on its way to Châlons.

Driven thus to bay under the guns of Metz, Bazaine resolved to concentrate his forces in order to fight a decisive battle. He had probably 130,000 men in hand, with from 400 to 500 guns, the flower and strength of the French army; and his plan was to choose a defensive position where he could resist the onslaught of the Germans, and, having repulsed it, could break through their lines, and get off with the mass of his troops. With this object he drew up his men along the summit of a range of uplands, extending from Gravelotte before Metz, to beyond the hamlet of Privat La Montagne, and which, broken by streams and difficult ground, and with woods, villages, and thickets in front, offered a strong barrier to an attacking enemy. The French left rested on Gravelotte, the centre on Vionville and Amanvilliers, and the right stretched away to Doncourt and Jaumont, the whole line thus holding the roads which debouche to Verdun, Etain, and Sedan, protected by natural and artificial obstacles. This was a position of the strongest kind, considered as a scheme of defence, for it exposed the assailants at most points, and especially at that of Gravelotte, to a terrible fire at great disadvantage; but, as the result showed, it was deficient in this, that it gave no opportunity for a counter attack, and it enabled the Germans to draw round from all sides on the enemy before them. The 17th was spent by each army in preparing for a decisive engagement. The German commanders by this time had 240,000 men, with from 700 to 800 guns, and they resolved to attack according to a plan, which, if perilous in some degree, was justified by their superior numbers, and promised great and remarkable success. While the right of the Germans was to restrain the French left, their centre and left were to march across the whole front of Bazaine's position, and having overwhelmed his right wing, the weakest point in his defensive lines, they were to converge inwards upon the French and force them back in retreat on Metz. On the morning of the 18th, three German corps began to engage the French at Gravelotte, while at the same time, five and a half corps moved towards Vionville and Privat La Montagne, in order to execute the great turning movement which was to lead to the expected victory. The French, immoveable in their positions, were compelled to await the circling attack which threatened to stifle and hem them in; unlike Napoleon I. at Austerlitz, Bazaine had not secured the means of striking his enemy as he swept round on him. Towards the afternoon, the Prussian guards had outflanked the right of the Marshal; soon afterwards, his centre was fiercely assailed, and by degrees the great German line advanced snakelike to encompass its foe. It was now time for the German right to strike fiercely at Gravelotte; and here a battle of the most desperate kind raged until nightfall for several hours, the French certainly having the advantage, and destroying the Germans with frightful carnage. But gradually the German plan was worked out; the German masses converging on all sides forced the French backward from point to point; and at last the whole line of defence gave way, and retreating, slowly fell back on Metz, having lost the real object of the battle.

It is not improbable that, in this conflict, the losses of the Germans exceeded those of the French. At Gravelotte the corps commanded by Steinmetz was repeatedly driven back with terrific slaughter, and at other points the ranks of the assailants were cruelly thinned by a destructive fire. But if in a tactical point of view the battle was hardly a German victory, and if the resistance of Bazaine with an inferior force was honourable to him, the strategic results were great and decisive. The Germans had now obtained possession of the entire line of the Marshal's retreat; they barred the way to Châlons completely, and he had been forced back with his army on Metz, where, his communications with France being cut off, he would be ultimately compelled to surrender. Unless he could again begin the contest and pierce through the encircling foes, no prospect awaited him but to resist until famine dashed the sword from his grasp, and made the army of the Rhine captive—so ruinous had been the disastrous generalship which had detained it in isolation at Metz, and had allowed its enemies to gather round it instead of effecting a speedy retreat!

Leaving Bazaine in this perilous strait, we must now turn to another part of the theatre, where folly, rashness, and above all the exigencies of the political situation, were to complete the work of irresolute weakness in contributing to the ruin of France. About the 16th or 17th of August MacMahon had made good his way to Châlons with the wreck of his corps defeated at Woerth, and he was rejoined in a day or two by De Failly, who had contrived to elude the pursuing Germans—a retreat which proves that the Crown Prince had moved slowly and with much caution, and had not made the most of his brilliant victory. About the 19th of August the corps of Douay, marched back from Belfort, arrived at Châlons; this body, at the news of the battle of Woerth, having properly retired to the great strategic point which nature and history have alike marked out as the position where the defence of France should be undertaken in front of Paris. Next day, the 20th, about 70,000 men, with more than 100 guns, came up hastily from the French capital, the Government under Count Palikao having certainly made energetic efforts to reorganize and recruit the army; and thus MacMahon, by the 21st, had probably about 150,000 men, with from 400 to 500 guns, under his orders at the great camp at Châlons. When we recollect what Napoleon I. accomplished on this very ground—the memorable lines of the Marne and Seine—with a force greatly inferior in numbers, against more than 300,000 Germans, it cannot be doubted that a great commander would have made such an use of this army that he would long have kept the invaders back, and possibly changed the whole situation. But ability and caution were especially requisite, for the troops now under MacMahon's orders were in fact raw or demoralized soldiers; and plain common sense ought to have suggested that they were not fit for operations that demanded speed, or that could bring them in contact with a superior enemy.

At this critical moment a plan was formed, the responsibility for which is unknown, but which led to the greatest of military disasters. Considering the state of MacMahon's forces, there can be no doubt that his proper course was to delay his enemies as they advanced on Châlons, to endeavour to defend the Marne and the Seine, and, retreating slowly, to fall back until he had reached a position at which he would be in the flank of the Germans as they approached Paris. A great general, operating in this way, would have retarded the foe for weeks, would certainly have inflicted much injury on him, and while he inured his own troops to war, would assuredly have kept his army intact in order to make a stand for the capital, the fortifications of which, with a force before them, would perhaps have changed the issue of the campaign. It is true that the strategy would have been an apparent abandonment of Bazaine; but this really was inevitable. Bazaine, as the event proved, was not in need of immediate relief; shut up, as he was, inactive at Metz, he still detained an immense mass of Germans around the great fortress; and in any case, as affairs now stood, the first consideration ought to have been the security of the last army of France, and a settled purpose to defend the capital. Had Wellington been in MacMahon's place, we are convinced that these would have been his tactics; and we feel certain that he would have succeeded, if not in defeating the Germans in the field, at least in greatly reducing their strength, in preserving Paris from real danger, and in saving his forces for an effort to be undertaken when his raw troops were rendered more equal to their antagonists. Instead of a rational operation like this, a resolve was made at the French head-quarters which can only be described as insanely rash. It was determined to relieve Bazaine with MacMahon's weak and undisciplined army; and the manner in which this was to be done was marked by thoughtless and strange presumption. The French troops were to leave Châlons, and moving northwards to Rheims and Rethel, were to strike from that place across the Argonnes, to pass the Meuse and attain Montmédy, and descending thence upon Thionville, were to fall on the rear of the Germans at Metz, to extricate Bazaine, and in conjunction with him, to annihilate the astounded enemy by an attack worthy of the first Napoleon. By this operation MacMahon's army was to slip round the flank of the Crown Prince, known to be advancing from Nancy on Châlons; it would probably attain the northern frontier before its destination could be ascertained; and if it ever reached the neighbourhood of Metz and came into communication with Bazaine, what would be the fate of the insolent invaders, and what the triumphant issue of a campaign begun under ill-omened auspices?

Whether the pamphlet recently published at Brussels be the work of Napoleon III. or not, it is now clear that Marshal MacMahon was not the real author of this strategy. A glance at the map will clearly show that it exposed the French army to ruinous disaster, and it has been proved that it was inspired by the Government of the Regency at Paris, ill-informed as to the real situation, and fearful lest a retrograde movement should cause the sudden fall of the Empire. And what was the projected operation, which it was assumed was proposed by an eminent French Marshal, who, we may suppose, knew the art of war, and certainly had very great experience? It was simply to make an immense flank march with a weak and thoroughly untrained army, within full reach of an enemy twice as strong, who would be able to arrest the movement, and to fall on his adversary in overwhelming force; and it was to do this along a line on which a defeat would probably entail destruction, or a surrender upon the Belgian frontier. Let it be granted that MacMahon might expect to cross the Meuse before he would be intercepted, still it was all but certain that the German armies, which assuredly would turn northward at once, would come up with him between the Meuse and Thionville; and if he were caught, what chance had he of contending against the enormous forces which, in that event, would be directed against him? A crushing defeat was to be expected, and if he were defeated would not his army, hemmed in along the narrow belt of land extending from the northern Argmues to Lorraine, be either utterly broken to fragments or forced helplessly to lay down its arms? And it was for a reckless scheme such as this—one in which success was hardly conceivable, and of which ruin would be the natural result—that the rational and legitimate course of retreating leisurely and defending Paris from point to point, was to be abandoned! The correspondence recently published shows that this plan did not originate with MacMahon; and that it was adopted must be ascribed to the necessity felt at the Tuileries of avoiding a retrograde movement in the interest of the tottering Empire. MacMahon, however, did consent to it; and for this he must be held responsible. Beyond all doubt he ought to have rejected a project fraught with calamity to his country, at the risk even of resigning his command; had he done so, the position of France might have been different from what it is now, and his own reputation would not have suffered from the consequences of a dire catastrophe. Making every allowance for his difficult situation, we cannot acquit him of want of resolution, though sheer ignorance and incapacity did not lead him to make the greatest of blunders ever made perhaps by a commander-in-chief.

Our space precludes us from describing at length the series of great events that ensued. On the 22nd of August MacMahon's army, already giving melancholy proofs of weakness, indiscipline, and insubordination, had reached Rheims from the camp of Châlons; and on the 23rd it was on its way to Rethel. The march of the columns was extremely sluggish, in consequence of the bad organisation of the troops, and eye-witnesses have recorded that the unfortunate marshal was even now evidently dispirited and anxious. Rethel was not passed until the 25th; and as the movement to the Meuse and the Argmues was to be accomplished as soon as possible, MacMahon divided his army into three parts; one to go northward, by railway to Mézières, and the other two to advance easterly by Vouziers and Nouart, and Le Chène and Stonne. The Emperor and his ill-fated child attended mournfully the doomed army, but if we are to credit newspaper reports, Napoleon III. still felt confident that he was marching to assured victory. Though the dispositions of the French marshal were evidently made with a view to speed, the movement of his columns was exceedingly slow, no doubt owing to their inefficient state, and also probably to commissariat defects; and even by the morning of the 29th they had only attained Nouart and Stonne, that is, they were still a day's march from the Meuse, which they ought to have found on the 28th. These delays aggravating the inherent perils of a strategic plan essentially vicious, were sure to lead to disastrous consequences; and while MacMahon had been going northwards the German commanders had been preparing the means of utterly overwhelming him. On the 19th and 20th of August, after Bazaine had been shut up in Metz, a fourth German army had been despatched, under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony, to co-operate with that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and it had been moved by Verdun, on St. Menehould, to be in readiness for any event. Meanwhile the third German army, after passing Nancy, had advanced on the great road to Paris to Ligny and Bar le Duc, its light cavalry, the well-known Uhlans, having scoured the whole country to beyond Châlons. By the 24th the Crown Prince of Prussia, who had been rejoined by the king from Metz, had his head-quarters at Bar le Duc, and when there the news arrived that MacMahon had broken up from the camp, and was aiming northward toward Mézières and Rethel. The plan of the French was immediately perceived by the eminent strategist who in this campaign had been the genius of the German armies, and he proceeded to defeat it, and ensure victory. Orders were at once issued to the Crown Prince of Saxony to move northerly towards the Meuse, and intercept the heads of MacMahon's columns; while the third German army, under the Prussian Prince, was to advance rapidly in the same direction, and fall on the French flank and rear. By the 25th the huge German array, numbering nearly 250,000 men, with from 700 to 800 guns, was marching forward in dense masses to overwhelm the much weaker force that incautiously presented its flanks to it, and that soon would be within its formidable reach.

By the 28th and 29th of August the game began to be gradually developed. The vanguard of the Tenth German Army, having passed Verdun and reached the Meuse, appears to have crossed the river at Stenay, and it struck one of MacMahon's columns about Buzancy and again at Nouart. Meanwhile the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia advancing by Clermont, Grand Pré, and Suippes, had closed on the flank and rear of the Marshal and had made it certain that he would be overtaken. Headed thus, as they approached the Meuse, and threatened with a destructive attack, which, if successful, would prove ruinous, the French were compelled to diverge northwards, and MacMahon endeavoured to make his escape though his case was already well-nigh desperate. Drawing one of his columns towards the other, and leaving a strong rear-guard at Beaumont, with orders to make a determined resistance, he sought to concentrate his remaining forces, and having passed the Meuse between Sedan and Mouzon, to move rapidly on Carignan, and thence to march direct on Montmédy, thus eluding the tightening grasp of the Prussians. In these operations we see the windings of a general who feels that a disaster is at hand; but, situated as MacMahon was, they were the best that could have been made. By the morning of the 30th the whole French army, except the corps at Beaumont, was collected from Lethêne to near Stenay; and it has been said that the unhappy Emperor was still confident as to the issue. His powerful antagonists were not likely to allow their prey to slip out of their clutches. The German columns on the 29th had closed more firmly on their retiring enemy; and while a portion of the Fourth Army had taken possession of both banks of the Meuse, the Third was in readiness to attack Beaumont, and to press MacMahon as he crossed the river. These dispositions assured success which could hardly fail to be ultimately decisive. As the French army approached the Meuse, the Crown Prince of Prussia made an attack on the detachment which had been left at Beaumont; and these corps, commanded by the incapable De Failly, were overwhelmed after a feeble resistance. Meanwhile MacMahon had contrived to get two of his corps across the river, which had marched towards Carignan; but as the remaining ones were passing they were caught and routed by the Crown Prince of Prussia with a great loss of guns and men at Mouzon. At the same time the Fourth German Army advancing from the right bank of the Meuse, had driven the French from the road to Carignan; and thus the whole French army baffled and defeated was forced in confusion still further northward. By the evening of the 30th its routed divisions had been re-formed in front of Sedan behind the defensive line of the Chiers, the huge German forces gathering all round and hemming in their intended victim.

We can only devote a few sentences to describe the decisive battle that ensued. The 31st of August was spent by MacMahon in drawing up his army in a line of defence extending from Givonne on the Belgian frontier, across ranges of eminences in front of Sedan, and thence backward to the rear of the town, as far as the plateaux of La Garenne and Floiny. The left of the Marshal rested on Giomne, his centre protected by the Chiers and by the villages of Bazeilles and Balan, spread before Sedan in strong positions, and his right and right centre stretched beyond Sedan, holding the Meuse nearly to Floiny northwards. The Fourth German army in the meantime had been marched on the opposite bank of the Chiers, while that of the Crown Prince had come up to the Meuse in full force; and the German commanders now pursued the plan of hemming in MacMahon completely, and having forced him upon Sedan, of destroying him by their overwhelming strength. With this object the French left was to be turned and passed by, the centre was to be fiercely assailed, the right was to be surprised and struck, and the whole German armies, having united in a perfect circle around Sedan, were to accomplish the ruin of their entrapped enemy. Considering the extraordinary disproportion between the hosts about to join in battle—230,000 men at least with from 600 to 700 guns against 110,000 of inferior quality with one-third less pieces—this ambitious and astonishing design may be justified in a military point of view; but, notwithstanding all that has been said, it is by no means to be admired in its conception; and a great commander, who in such a position, should break out from the centre with resolute troops, might cause an attack of this kind to end in a terrible defeat. On the morning of the 1st, the Fourth German Army, in consequence of the neglect of the French outposts, effected the passage of the Chiers without loss; and its right soon turned the French left at Givonne, the defenders of that important point having offered only the feeblest resistance. At the same time a considerable part of the forces of the Crown Prince having crossed the Meuse during the previous night, attacked Bazeilles and Balan in great strength; but here the French showed a bold front, and the battle hung in suspense for hours. Meanwhile, however, the remaining corps of the Third German Army had faced the Meuse at a point much lower down the river, and falling on the extreme right of the French at or near a hill that commands Floiny, had driven it in after a brave defence, and placed themselves in communication with the victorious troops of the German army which had approached them from Givonne. The inner circle was now completed; the French centre still fighting obstinately was obliged to evacuate Bazeilles and Balan; and the whole French army was compelled to recoil inwards upon Sedan, where it was crushed by a death-dealing artillery. No alternative but a surrender remained; the German tactics had completely succeeded; and on the 2nd of September, the last army of France in the field had passed under the yoke, and was a mass of prisoners of war. The Emperor was one of the trophies of the conqueror; MacMahon, more fortunate, had been severely wounded and did not witness the capitulation; but upwards of 90,000 men and from 400 to 500 guns in the hands of the triumphant Germans attested the magnitude of the catastrophe.

The results of the terrible battle of Sedan—a catastrophe unparalleled in the annals of war—were the destruction of the only French army that remained to the nation in the field, the complete isolation of Bazaine at Metz with a certainty of his ultimate surrender, the exposure of Paris to an immediate siege, and the prospect of the subjection of France to the will of an implacable conqueror. At no conjuncture in military history has a strategic error of the gravest kind been fraught with such calamitous effects; and the march to Sedan will long be noted as one of those frightful mistakes of generalship which have deeply influenced the fate of kingdoms. A day or two after this dire event a revolution broke out in Paris; the empire collapsed with the captive Emperor; the Empress Regent was compelled to fly; and, although a Government of National Defence was formed, composed of men of very great eminence, who—after fruitless attempts to negotiate—bravely resolved to carry on the struggle, sooner than consent to the dismemberment of France, hardly anyone believed that the defeated nation would be able to offer serious resistance. The situation of France, indeed, appeared desperate even to her well-wishers—even to those who resented the dictum of the cynical scorner of popular rights, that whether their inhabitants liked it or not, Alsace and Lorraine 'would belong to Prussia'—and for several weeks her exulting enemies remained absolute masters of the situation, and trampled down the defenceless country. The German armies which had fought at Sedan marched without a moment's delay to Paris, arrived before the forts on the 18th September, and, having routed a few raw troops, who endeavoured to harass them at Versailles, invested the capital on all sides, and inclosed it in impenetrable lines. The surging waves of the tremendous invasion meanwhile flowed furiously over the northern provinces, carrying with them devastation and ruin. Strasburg, after a siege which clearly indicated the temper of the people of Alsace, and their assumed sympathy with their 'German liberators,' fell on the 29th September; most of the fortresses of the Vosges, with the exception of Bitsche and Phalsburg, submitted; Toul, which had gallantly resisted for weeks a whole army, met the same fate, and by the close of October the German hosts had cleared their communications with Paris, were masters of the whole region between the Seine and the Rhenish Provinces, and had laid hold of Picardy and the valley of the Loire, which locust-like they devoured by requisitions. The consummation seemed at hand, when after making many attempts to break the iron ring of his foes, Bazaine on the 27th of October surrendered the fortress he had so long held; and the whole remains of the army of the Rhine, the garrison, and a mass of auxiliary troops, became prisoners of war as they defiled from Metz. France seemed under the Caudine forks; the iron had entered into her soul; and even the most far-sighted observers believed that the end of the war was close at hand.

For two whole months after the battle of Sedan, France thus appeared altogether ruined, trampled under the hoof of a ruthless invader. Her capital was invested; her provinces were overrun; fortress after fortress became an easy prey; the grasp of the Prussian upon the country seemed day after day to become stronger, and few signs of resistance appeared except a desultory partisan warfare. Some military critics at Versailles exclaimed that the 'hour of the Latin race had come;' the King of Prussia piously resigned his spirit to the triumph that seemed close at hand; Bismark with grim humour declared that Paris was 'frying in its own fat;' writers disposed complacently of Lorraine and Alsace, and congratulated France that her fate was no worse, and only a small minority of Englishmen entertained a hope for the fallen nation. Yet during all that terrible time vitality was returning to the stricken frame, and France was preparing for mighty efforts which, whether they prove successful or not, have been some of the noblest in history, and are entitled to the highest admiration. The first symptom of reviving animation was seen in the attitude of Paris, which, under the control of General Trochu, a commander who has already won a high place in the annals of fame, put off her Sybarite pride and luxury, and from behind her ramparts prepared herself for a defence which must be pronounced astonishing. Day after day the immense capital which the Germans declared would consume itself by internal revolution and anarchy, and which was not expected to hold out a fortnight, encompassed itself with fresh defensive lines, drilled its raw levies within its walls, and arrayed itself in such a panoply of war that before long it had become evident that its speedy reduction was impossible. The bombardment which it was predicted would soon 'bring these fools to their senses,' was postponed for the simple reason, that it had not the faintest chance of success; and as amazed Europe beheld the works of Paris growing in formidable power, and actually threatening the investing circle, it learned to set a proper value on the profession that 'there was no intention to destroy by fire a noncombatant population,' as if starvation was a more humane process. Meanwhile silently, and hardly observed by the correspondents of the English Press, enormous preparations for the renewal of the contest were made in every part of the country. Arms were produced in prodigious quantities, old soldiers were recalled to their colours, recruits were summoned in hundreds of thousands, the nuclei of several armies were formed, and the splendid memories of 1793-4 were invoked by the representatives of the people, and created wide-spread martial enthusiasm. While Bismark jeered at the 'gentlemen of the pavement,' and cynically redoubled his confident insults, while telegram after telegram announced that town after town was capitulating, France was becoming a vast camp, and sternly, proudly, and in a very different spirit from that in which it began the war, the nation girded up its loins for the strife. M. Gambetta, whose journey from Paris in a balloon excited considerable ridicule at Versailles—for a while—was the mainspring of this remarkable movement, of which, if we cannot predict the success, the patriotism and force cannot be disputed.

The first symptom in the turn of the tide which made itself distinctly perceived, was an engagement which took place on the 9th of November. A mass of raw levies and depôt battalions, to which had been given the name of the Army of the Loire, had been driven out of Orleans in October; and it was generally supposed that it had been all but destroyed. But a general had been placed at its head who had given it consistency and strength; it had been furnished with good artillery, and on the ninth of November it recrossed the Loire and defeated the Bavarian force in its front, which it succeeded in almost surrounding. After this the nuclei of armies, in the west, the north, and the south-east of France, have made their appearance, and are growing formidable; and the military strength of what had been deemed the effete and worn-out nation, has shown itself to be great and threatening. The attitude of the armies of the Loire and of the West has compelled the Germans to draw in almost their whole available forces to cover the immense circle of their lines around Paris; and though as yet they have suffered no reverse, and have even gained some important successes, their enemies still confront them in the field with rapidly improving power and discipline, and so long as they hold their present positions, they are exposed to considerable danger. In fact the German armies round Paris would be placed in imminent peril, if the covering armies on the circumference outside, were to meet anything like a defeat; and as the French levies are day after day acquiring an increase of numbers and force, this is by no means an impossible contingency. Meanwhile the beleaguered capital of France has offered to the besiegers a resistance which has astonished and confounded the world, and its illustrious governor, General Trochu, has literally created out of the young and demoralised troops within its walls, armies of unquestionable valour and worth. These armies commenced offensive operations on the 29th and 30th November, by making immense sorties from the capital; and though they have not succeeded in breaking through the net which hems them in, it is not impossible that they may yet do so. The situation, in fact, has so completely changed since the beginning of the month of November, that all competent persons now think that if Paris can hold out five or six weeks more, the result may be fatal to the Germans. It is almost useless to speculate on events which may be solved before these lines shall be printed, but we venture to hazard a glance into the future. It appears to us that in all probability Paris will ultimately succumb to famine, that it will not be relieved from without, and that General Trochu and his brave troops will have to yield to adverse fortune. This blow, if it happens, will be terrible, but if France continues to evince the resolution and energy of the last two months, its military consequences need not be decisive. In that event the defence of France will have to be undertaken on the Loire; and if her young armies are carefully husbanded; if her generals and statesmen admit the truth that the siege of Paris has gained time for developing her restored vigour; and if no fatal mistakes are made, we believe that she yet may repel the invader. What is most to be feared is, that if Paris falls, a collapse of authority may ensue, that Red Republicanism may lift its head, and that the men who have done such eminent service, may be overthrown by popular fear and terror. But if France is true to herself, if she goes on as she has done lately, and if her forces are rationally handled, she may possibly succeed in shaking off her assailants, and avoid the dismemberment with which she is threatened. Let the nation comprehend that if Paris falls, it will have done wonders in gaining time, and in allowing the spirit of France to revive, and then let it go on with the contest, obedient as a man to the existing Government, and looking steadily to the one great object, deliverance from impending subjugation.

Such has been, up to the middle of December, the memorable war of 1870. We have well-nigh exhausted our space, and can only make a few brief reflections. History has yet to describe the real causes of this terrible and devouring conflict, and the persons really responsible for it; but, allowing that Napoleon was in the wrong for throwing down the gauntlet to Prussia, what is now to be thought of the Power which is carrying on an internecine contest after she has received offers of ample compensation, and is endeavouring to dismember France, and to annex two of her most loyal provinces for the sole purpose, we fear, of making her former rival her vassal? Ever since the interview with Bismark at Ferrières, when, after Sedan, M. Jules Favre proposed to give Prussia more than satisfaction for all losses incurred by her, the war has been one of simple conquest on the part of King William and his minister. France, who at the outset of the conflict may have been, at least through her ruler, in the wrong, is now fighting against an invader for her national existence and her place in history; and beaten down as she is, it is not impossible that she may yet succeed; certainly she is rapidly winning the sympathy which was at first denied her. It is creditable to the mind of England, which was at first almost unanimously on the side of Germany, believing that it was unjustly attacked, that the majority of our countrymen are beginning to see through the ambition of Prussia, to distrust the cynical fraud of Bismark, and to wish well to the nation which is now really fighting for all that makes life dear. But it may be said, 'France has been beaten; the victor offers her peace on the terms of the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, which after all were at one time German; why does she not admit her overthrow, and thus restore quiet to awed Europe?' But to such suggestions, France, we believe, will not listen. We do not see how, until her resources are destroyed, she can consent to abandon Alsace and Lorraine, because these provinces are absolutely necessary to her safety as an important Power, as any military student must know; nor ought she, as a leader of civilization, to give up populations devoted to her to invaders whom they detest. As for the ethnological argument derived from the German origin of their territories, France may fairly adduce their present attitude as evidence of the real sentiments of the inhabitants.

We cannot dwell at the present moment on the lessons to be deduced from this war. Those who think that it conclusively proves the superiority of the German over the French soldier, will do well to read a little history and to study the battles of Jena and Austerlitz. No doubt on several occasions the French have fought badly under the moral depression of repeated and overwhelming defeats; but nothing has yet been seen in this campaign compared to the demoralization of Prussia in 1806. Nor may we assume that the French military character has deteriorated, though a corrupt layer of Imperialism has injured the upper ranks of society; the nation which after crushing reverses can still show such an indomitable front, will be yet found by its foes to be terrible. What the campaign proves is the immense superiority of German generalship over its antagonists, a superiority which, seconded by irresistible force, and by great advantages in artillery, has produced results of an astonishing kind, yet not more marvellous than those witnessed sixty years ago on the other side when Napoleon commanded the Grand Army. As to the military operations of the French commanders, they have been throughout as bad as possible. From the outset of the campaign to the first battles we see nothing but reckless rashness; we then behold vacillation and weakness followed by the astonishing blunders of Sedan; and the news which has just arrived of the defeats of the Army of the Loire at Orleans, prove, we fear, that another series of mistakes in the plainest strategy have been committed. These have been the causes of the disasters of France of which an able adversary has reaped the advantage; and to these we should add the enervating results of Imperialism on the upper classes, corruption and peculation in the higher ranks of the army, the false confidence engendered by martial traditions, and not least, the numerical inferiority of the French forces to those of the Germans. Yet we do not doubt that if France continues her present resolute attitude, if common sense prevails in her councils, if she remains united and patriotic, she may yet pluck safety out of her dangers; and in a long and internecine struggle the Power which has the command of the sea, superior wealth, and more compact unity, may in our judgment ultimately triumph. For ourselves this cruel and fearful war ought to teach us to look after our national defences, to array ourselves in complete panopoly, to take good assurance that this England of ours, the home of freedom and good government, shall at least be secure in the shock of arms now crashing over a large part of the Continent. It cannot be questioned that the sudden rise of Bismarkian Prussia is a threat and a peril to the world; the demands of Gortschakoff and the letters of Bernstorff already prove that it bodes no good to England; and we shall do better to look after our fleets, and to put our military organization in order, than to believe the idyls of sentimental professors who assure us that the plunderer of Silesia, the divider of Poland, and the despoiler of Denmark, is 'wise, pious, moral, and unambitious.' If it is not our duty to interfere actively in the interest of the balance of Europe, we, at least, in the conflict now rending France ought to read a warning address to ourselves; and while the boundaries of nations are being shifted, while justice and right are in danger of being trampled under foot, that brute force may work its will, we ought to take good heed that this our England shall retain her high position in the world, shall be able when necessary to lift her hand in the cause of civilization and human progress, shall never 'lie' at the proud foot of a conqueror, shall be as powerful as she is great and glorious.

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Contemporary Literature.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.

History of England, from the Earliest to the Present Time. In Five Volumes. By Sir Edward S. Creasy, M.A., Emeritus Professor of History in University College, London; late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Vol. II. Completing the History during the Early and Middle Ages. Walton. 1870.

Sir Edward Creasy's second volume embraces nine reigns, from Edward II. to Richard III., both inclusive. We consider the strong point of it, and that which has had most of the writer's heart, to be the constitutional and social history. The narrative of public and military transactions has not the same merit; and especially that towards the latter end, including the Wars of the Roses, which is too compressed—we had almost said too perfunctory—to be even interesting. In the earlier portions, where the author takes all the room that he wants, he lets us see that he does not lack the power of placing the events of war in an instructive light. Coming to Edward III.'s reign, he corrects the impression that is probably entertained by many, that the great contest with France arose from a wanton and ambitious claim upon the crown of that kingdom; and shows, by a very careful statement of facts and dates, that it was Philip of Valois' war, not Edward's.

Few of our historians have attempted thoroughly to penetrate Edward's plan in that famous expedition of 1346-7, in which he traversed the North of France, landing at La Hogue, and embarking at Calais, just as though it had been a piratical expedition needing no further explanation. Sir Edward makes a good suggestion as to the commencement and early stage of the invasion; namely, that one great object of it was to deliver a blow at the nourishing woollen manufactures of Normandy, and thereby relieve English trading towns from their powerful competitors in that quarter. But we think he fails to account satisfactorily for Edward's movements after the taking of Caen, when he assigns it as a sufficient reason for his advance on Paris (after being obliged to turn away from Rouen, be it remembered), that he wished to divert French troops from the South of France, where a small English army was being hard pressed. But could not the king of England have effected such a purpose by establishing himself in Normandy, where he rested on his fleet? To dismiss his ships, as he did at Caen, and to take a moderate force of some 40,000 men into the interior without a base of operations, in the hope of relieving a distant province, would not have been worthy of the genius of Edward III. We have little doubt that after achieving his success as far as Caen, if not before, Calais itself (not Paris, nor yet Guienne) was in his eye. In fact, the speech of Sir Geoffrey Harcourt to Edward, at Caen, reported by Froissart, distinctly recognises Calais as the ultimate goal of the expedition. His having found the North of France so defenceless (to say nothing of his having taken prisoner at Caen the Count of Guisnes, on the border of whose territory Calais lay), probably suggested the feasibility of capturing Calais on the land side. Hence the immediate attempt to cross the Seine at Rouen; and hence, when this failed, the march up the Seine—not to relieve Guienne, but to effect a passage of the river. The famous fortress fell to Edward as the result of a bold calculation, not as a piece of good luck after a desperate escapade. To judge how tempting it must have seemed to him, even so far off as Caen, we have only to reflect on the immediate use he made of it as soon as it was his own; to say nothing of his resolution in maintaining a longer winter siege. He immediately converted what had before been a piratical stronghold against him into an English colony; besides which he made it the Continental staple for the English wool trade, by which means he delivered himself from certain Flemish towns, which hitherto had converted his necessities into their own gains. Those who understand something of English State finance in this reign, and the peculiar importance of the woollen trade to Edward as a financier, will be able to comprehend his views when he resolved on obtaining hold of this important position upon the Straits of Dover.

In a fresh history of Edward III.'s reign, various episodes, of minor importance, indeed, but ineradicable from the English mind, will always be turned to, to see how far the new lights will permit the old favourites of the popular imagination to stand their ground. Let us turn, then, to the Ostrich Feathers. Mr. Longman, in his recent 'Life of Edward III.,' simply remarks that the current story is a very doubtful one; while Sir Edward Creasy's remark is, that there is no reason at all to doubt it. But passing observations like these, on the one side or on the other, entirely fail to do justice to a very interesting series of papers (not referred to by either of these authors), that may and ought to be read in the 'Archæologia,' mentioning the curious discovery of a contemporary statement of the popular story (Camden having been hitherto the earliest authority for it), which, nevertheless, cannot overcome the strong evidence marshalled by the learned antiquaries, that the feathers really came from Hainault, and through Queen Philippa, not from Bohemia at all, or its gallant old king. The story of the six haltered citizens of Calais Sir Edward accepts likewise, and finds himself able to support it by fresh evidence. In fact, there was never any sufficient reason to doubt it, and our historic scepticism is apt sometimes to be over-scrupulous. For the anecdote, singular as it is, is by no means unique: the incident mentioned in 1 Kings, xx. 31, if not strictly parallel, was quite sufficient to have originated the custom in the picturesque days of the Middle Ages, with the genius of which, too, it entirely harmonises. Monstrelet records a similar instance in the campaigns of the Duke of Bedford, in the following century; and another in Papal history, belonging to 1540, may be read in Ranke.

A narrative work ought not to be dismissed without an examination of its dates. And here we are obliged to admit that our narrator has not shown sufficient vigilance. The death of Roger Mortimer, Queen Isabella's favourite, is undated, although we are carefully told that Edward III.'s real reign only began from that event. One-half of the narrative of his overthrow is on a page headed 1328, and the other half under 1330. The death of the Black Prince is described and its importance to public affairs is acknowledged, but it is undated. The page on which it is narrated is headed 1376; but the next page, dealing with the events of the moment, is dated 1377. The battle of Cressy is dated August 25th, a day too soon. Henry V.'s setting sail for the Agincourt campaign is twice on one page dated Sunday, August 12th, instead of Sunday, August 11th. The Duke of Bedford engages the enemy at the mouth of the Seine on August 18th (it should be 13th), returning home August 16th. The famous coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims, when the Maid of Orleans assisted, is dated July 18th, instead of Sunday, July 17th. Lord Talbot fell in the battle of Castillon, and this is dated July 23rd, a date of that hero's death quite new to us, although we have seen four others recorded. But we do not at all feel confident that our author gives this figure as the result of any special inquiry. We are sure that our writers will never be induced to guard wakefully against the crime of circulating false dates until their eyes are thoroughly open to the dreadful state in which our popular chronology stands, making it unsafe for us to adopt any figures whatever without every means of verification in our power.

We have expressed ourselves freely as to where this volume might, in our opinion, have been stronger. We therefore gladly invite attention to what we have felt Sir Edward Creasy's chief success to be, and to what we consider our chief gains in possessing this record of his studies.

The constitutional and social history of the period comprised in this volume will soon attract the reader's warm interest; for he will perceive that it is not merely inserted for the sake of filling up a department, but written con amore, and out of full stores of knowledge. The author has made diligent and zealous use of the numerous and valuable works published under the Master of the Rolls, and has not lost sight of the researches of our local antiquarian societies, and other good authorities. Matters which in most current histories are simply referred to as known, and which therefore remain long unknown, such as obsolete mediæval taxes, the nature of impeachment, the council, and the like, are here carefully explained, which makes the history popular in the best sense, as well as a thorough student's book. What he calls the Thirty Years' War between capital and labour, from the Black Death to Wat Tyler, is a most lucid and interesting piece of social history, fully worked out, and by no means useless in view of present-day questions. As the result, Tyler's insurrection, as well as Cade's, will wear a new complexion, we suspect, in the minds of many general readers.

One feature of Sir Edward's pages will certainly gratify not a few; we mean the conspicuous absence of partisanship and all unfairness of statement. While forming his judgments on the past, he succeeds in throwing himself into the times he is describing, and consequently preserves a calm and reasonable tone, without being querulous and hasty. A striking instance of this judicial temper occurs in his account of persecuting Arundel and the frightful statute De heretico Comburendo, the tenor of his observations on which we hope no one will be so uncandid as to misunderstand or misrepresent. The danger of such a habit of mind is, of course, a liability to that amiable weakness which wants to whitewash everybody and palliate everything; but this danger we think Sir Edward succeeds in avoiding. He has a moral firmness of his own, and an independence of mind which would not permit him to be simply an allowance-maker. If we wanted a proof that he has his strong partialities, unfalteringly expressed in the right direction, we should point to his chapter on Wycliffe, which also is the weightier, from its being, as usual, discriminating. Here, facing the great religious movement of the Reformation, our historian expresses himself as a Christian believer, and one who venerates the Holy Bible, and as though he considered himself writing for those who ought to be both.

Lectures and Essays. By Professor Seeley. Macmillan & Co.

To those who are acquainted with 'Ecce Homo,' we need not say that this is an interesting volume. There is something so fresh and bold, so frank and vigorous in all that Professor Seeley writes, that we must enjoy reading him, whether we agree with him or not, and whatsoever topic he discusses.

He writes on the 'Revolution at Rome,' and on the 'Decline and Fall of the Empire,' with a masterly grasp on an obscure and complex subject. We entirely agree with him in his estimate of Julius Cæsar's motives and character; and while we acquit Brutus himself of any mean and sordid impulse, we cannot think that he served Rome or humanity in the 'taking off' of the Dictator. If we can trust Sallust at all, the nobles for whom Pompey fought were quite unfit to govern Rome. Our author's explanation of the final fall of the Empire has more than probability. The facts justify it to a large extent. Wherever population is at a standstill, we may be sure 'there is something rotten in the State,' and may confidently anticipate its dissolution. Is not the prostrate condition of France at the time we write another illustration of the truth? Have not similar causes there produced like effects?

Our author's analysis of Milton's opinions and his critique on Milton's poetry, deserve perusal. He appreciates the solitary grandeur of the gentle and cultivated Puritan,—Titanic, yet not coarse. It is not easy to reconcile the utter disappointment, the deep heart-sorrow, of Milton's old age with his uniform hopefulness. All the more honour to him! There is nothing more paralyzing than despair. We doubt whether it should ever find utterance in a Christian's writing. We at once recognise the parallelism of Carlyle's position with Milton's in some aspects of it. We were taken aback to hear of Ruskin in a similar aspect, but our author makes out a good case for him too.

Nothing can be juster in our view than the 'Essay on Art.' These 'elementary principles' must be recognised, one is apt to say, by all thoughtful men, and we are greatly indebted to the Professor for setting them forth so clearly. We cannot too soon adopt the principle that 'art is not always independent, but in some cases parasitic; and accordingly, in judging particular performances, in architecture and oratory, it is necessary to apply two standards in succession—the practical and the artistic ... the decisive test of merit "here" being art in subordination.'

Surely no one has more right than he to speak with authority on 'University Education.' And his strictures upon the course at Cambridge, and the effects of it upon both teachers and taught, are well worthy of attention. Somehow or other it is true that life-long study is not secured by present methods, and it is a topic deserving of careful discussion. 'Why is it so, and how can it be mended?' With a great deal advanced in this searching essay we heartily agree, and we are glad to see that some suggestions in it are already being acted upon. Many more we hope and expect will become the usage of the future. We were pleased, not surprised, to find him frankly acknowledging, that in one important particular the method at Oxford is to be preferred to that at Cambridge. It is not a little humbling to us as a nation to have him say parenthetically (not as 'thesis' to be maintained—observe—but as an axiom—an unquestioned truth) that 'most good books are in German.'

Again, in regard to the study of 'English in Schools.' Who so competent as he to speak? With all that he says about the duty of teaching more fully in our schools, both the language and literature of our country, we heartily agree, though we are not prepared to go with him quite so far as to say, 'No Latin at all till a boy is fourteen.' The 'accidence' of any language are more easily learnt by young minds—it is a mere effort of memory, and strengthens it—while in later life such matters cannot be learnt as accurately, in our conviction. We hold with him, however, respecting the English, and are inclined therefore, in this matter, to the rule, 'Then ought ye to do, and not to leave the other undone.'

The strictures on preaching, again, are excellent. How well it will be if all our young preachers ponder them well! The world needs, and more than that, it likes practical preaching, if it be intelligent, sympathetic, and sincere. Every word he says about 'political preaching' we would gladly endorse. Surely it is as much within a Christian teacher's sphere as the domestic relations, and we believe that greater fidelity in the pulpit on the subject of political morality, will be followed by a great advance at the poll. Men are willing to be told where they are wrong and ought to amend, if only it be a true man who tells them so. Wherever one who is 'bone of their bone' speaks 'to them on vital topics, men will come and hear. They will not then leave the Church to the women and the children.'

With the inaugural address at Cambridge the volume closes. His subject, 'History, a Teacher of Politics,' promises much, and we are inclined to envy those who are in the way of hearing the discourses to which this one is preamble and preface. May they profit by them as much as we think we should, and our children reap the fruits in the wiser legislation of the coming generation of statesmen! Somewhere lately, we have seen the doctrine put forth, with marvellous confidence, that 'the history of the past cannot give wisdom for the future, inasmuch as Society is ever progressing, and no past state therefore can ever be exactly reproduced.' It would be as sensible to say that a legal education is of no good, because laws are ever being altered (ought we to say mended?); or a medical training, because no two human constitutions are exactly alike. 'Men are of like passions' with their forefathers, and masses of men are moved by impulses similar to those which stirred the men of old. So we believe in 'History as the Teacher of Politics,' and are glad indeed that our young politicians at Cambridge have so learned, and faithful, and courageous a guide. May they have the graces to profit by their privileges, and give their countrymen the benefit hereafter, and so disappoint the somewhat disheartening forebodings of the exordium of this discourse!

The Mutineers of the 'Bounty' and their Descendants in Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands. By Lady Belcher. John Murray.

Lady Belcher, having obtained possession of a variety of private documents, and having from private sources gathered a variety of details, has, in this volume, told over again the romantic story of the Pitcairn Islanders. Lady Belcher herself is the step-daughter of Captain Heywood, a midshipman of the 'Bounty' at the time of the mutiny—she naturally, therefore, feels a personal interest in the subject. She is not very skilled in book-making; her narrative is desultory and overlaid with documents; but she has told the story with a fulness of detail to which the volume of Sir John Barrow, written for 'The Family Library' thirty years ago, makes no pretension. The diary of Morrison, a petty officer of the ship, gives for the first time the details of the voyage, and of the tyrannous conduct of the commander of the 'Bounty,' Lieutenant Bligh, prior to the mutiny. Clearly, Fletcher Christian was maddened by insults and overbearing tyranny. Bligh's conduct indeed seems to have been that of a madman rather than of a sane person. After the mutiny the narrative divides itself into three independent branches. First, a history of Bligh and his companions, who were sent adrift in the boat; next, of Christian and those who remained in the 'Bounty,' some involuntarily, having taken no part in the mutiny, simply because the boat in which Bligh was sent off could contain no more—among these was Peter Heywood, the midshipman. This section of the crew of the 'Bounty' landed at Tahiti, and there gave themselves up to the captain of the 'Pandora,' by whom they were treated with great and unnecessary harshness. They were put in irons, and sent to England for trial. The 'Pandora,' however, was wrecked upon a reef, and after a hazardous boat voyage, they reached Batavia, and were thence sent to England. Heywood and Morrison were adjudged guilty, on the formal ground of insufficient resistance to Christian, but were instantly and honourably pardoned; others were executed.

Christian and eight Englishmen, who remained in the 'Bounty,' went to Pitcairn Island, taking with them some Tahitian women, and founded a colony there. After some dissensions and violence, in which Christian, Edward Young, and others, lost their lives, the colony, under the rule and teaching of John Adams, became singularly peaceful and virtuous. They were not discovered for many years; and were permitted to remain unmolested; one or two adventurers joined them, and the colony remains to this day. It outgrew the small island, however, and a few years since the entire population was transferred, under the auspices of Sir William Dennison, to Norfolk Island; a few of them returned, and were last visited by Sir W. Dilke, who gives an account of them in his 'Greater Britain.'

No wonder that so romantic a narrative, and so picturesque a community, fascinated the muse of Byron, and elicited 'The Island' from his pen.

Lady Belcher has told a plain unvarnished tale, but it is one hardly to be paralleled in the romance of the seas.

European History, narrated in a Series of Historical Selections from the best Authorities. By E. M. Sewell and S. M. Yonge. Macmillan and Co.

This is the second volume of an attempt to render history attractive and popular with young readers, and there is much to be said in its favour. The era of which it treats is from 1088 to 1228. The characters foremost on the scene are Henry II., Frederick Barbarossa, Richard I., Philip Augustus, John, St. Bernard and Abelard, Becket, Longchamp, and Langton. According to the design, we have a set of pictures by hands of very unequal power. Gibbon and Capefigue are side by side with Milman and James, while from Mr. Stubbs's masterly analysis of Henry II.'s character we pass to a portrait of Longchamp by Lord Campbell, and one of Langton by Dean Hook. The result is rather like a mosaic, but of course it could not well be otherwise. The editorial introductions are admirably done; the first, which describes the position and character of our Angevin kings, is a sketch both brilliant and accurate. The chief objection to this method of teaching history is, that writers of historical monographs are too apt to become amorous of their theme, and to indulge in much fine writing in consequence; and this objection specially applies to Mr. Morrison's account of St. Bernard, which is painfully verbose and magniloquent. Undoubtedly the best chapter in the book, and the one that will most severely tax the young student's mental energy, is that which contains Mr. Stubbs's account of Henry II.

On the Trail of the War. By Alexander James Shand, Occasional Correspondent of The Times. Smith, Elder and Co.

This little volume purports to be nothing more than a full and true account of the ordinary incidents in an extraordinary state of things which occur on the trail of the war. To this position the author strictly confines himself, leaving the more stirring events of the front to be described by others. Some of the papers are reprints from The Times, but the greater portion of them are original, and may be supposed to be a veracious account of the progress of the armies as beheld from the rear. The author's departure from London is told with a picturesque dash, which predisposes the reader for the hacking, hewing, and slashing he has subsequently to go through; while the last chapter resumes the situation, as the French say, in a warm outburst of dread, and admiration of the strength of new-born Germany. Mr. Shand evidently sees amid all this ponderous power, the stumbling-block over which she must one day totter and fall. To the paramount passion of nationality from which this gigantic Germany has been created, will likewise be owing her quick decay and sudden dissolution. This feeling makes the wisest of Germans lose his head when speaking of united Germany, and proclaim himself proud to belong to God's chosen people. To this we can only answer from our own personal experience, that if the impatience created by the restless variety and overweening self-laudation of the French, are to be exchanged for the cold pedantry and haughty arrogance of the Prussians, Europe will have made but a sorry bargain. We cannot agree with Mr. Carlyle in his opinion that we may be greatly benefited by this sudden transfer of moral power from light satirical France to heavy overbearing Prussia. We can only pray to be preserved from both.

The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes; with some Account of the Huguenots in the Seventeenth Century. By Mrs. Bray, Author of 'The Good St. Louis and his Times,' 'The White Hoods,' &c. John Murray.

Of all the stirring romances hitherto published by Mrs. Bray, the true history before us is assuredly the most stirring and the most romantic. The single story of Jean Cavalier, the baker's boy of Anduze, contains the elements of a dozen romances. From his first appearance on the stage of history to do his allotted work, to his final sinking into honourable obscurity when his work was done, Jean Cavalier shines out as the true and gallant soldier of the cross, the faithful defender of the right, the constant avenger of the wrong. He was a youth of seventeen, the eldest of three sons of a shepherd of Anduze. 'Altogether,' says Mrs. Bray, 'he was such as we may fancy him to have been, who, armed with the shepherd's sling in the cause of the Lord, overcame the giant Philistine.' None could have thought that such a one could have been chosen to avenge the iniquitous Edict of Nantes, issued by the greatest monarch of Europe, at the instigation of the wisest woman of her day. The boy had been apprenticed to a baker at Anduze, and this circumstance was in itself a fund of amusement at the court of Versailles, where the 'Petit Maître' and the 'Garçon Boulanger' served as whetstones to the wit of the courtiers at the petit lever and grand coucher of the king. But the baker's boy had been endowed by heaven with the strangest and most mysterious of gifts—a military genius untaught, and frank as nature's self—which ere long caused the boldest of the Great Monarch's generals to tremble and turn pale at even the mention of his name. No other account of this extraordinary talent has been given than that during his shepherd life he would love to spend whole hours on the Garden watching the manœuvres of the soldiers, who at that time were stationed in the country in order to force the Protestants into adoption of the Catholic faith. No other lesson in military science had he ever taken, and yet he defeated the boldest troops and ablest generals of the proudest army in the world! The mysterious nature of his mission, reminds one strongly of Joan of Arc. At nineteen years of age he quitted France for ever, leaving behind him the memory of his glory and the grateful affection of the Protestants of the Cevennes, by whom his name is revered and cherished to this very day.

Mrs. Bray has performed her task of biographer of Jean Cavalier in the most satisfactory and conscientious manner, with all the stedfastness of the historian and the enthusiasm of the romance writer. 'The Revolt in the Cevennes' is a charming book, and should be placed in the hands of every Protestant boy and girl throughout the world.

The Correspondence of the Right Honourable William Wickham, from the year 1794. Edited, with Notes, by his Grandson, William Wickham, M.A. Two vols. 8vo. London. 1870.

These volumes are another contribution to the still increasing store of material for the history of the great French Revolution; the first act of that great drama of which another is now being played amid sympathies and antipathies, hopes and fears, perhaps as intense, certainly more widely felt, than those which accompanied the first lifting of the curtain. Now, however, the Revolution and the ancien régime have become accustomed to each other, and know that though it be but as cat and dog, they must awhile lead some sort of life together; and they have modified their reciprocal attitude accordingly. Then each startled by the first apparition of the other, glared at it with the hate, not of prolonged antagonism, but of instant death-grapple. Free England, guided by great and noble-minded men—Pitt, Lord Grenville, and Burke—not only joined in, but led the resistance of the Continental sovereigns, and we have no need to blush for the conduct of our grandsires. Whether, looking from our present coign of vantage, we may judge England's course then wise or imprudent, the evidence afforded by these volumes is enough to show—admitting the hostile prejudice which an established and aristocratic government must needs have against a mushroom democracy—that our statesmen descended to the fray with an honesty of purpose, and an elevated sense of national duty on which we may reflect with grateful and patriotic pride.

Mr. Wickham was twice sent by Lord Grenville as minister to Switzerland; to the comparatively slight duties of which office was added the onerous task of concerting, in correspondence with the Royalists in France, with the Prince of Condé, the Court of Vienna, Marshal Suwarrow, General Pichegru, and many others, the measures to be taken against their common foe—the Directory in Paris. At the time of Mr. Wickham's earlier mission, Bonaparte had not yet risen to power, and if Mr. Wickham could have inspired with his own zeal and prudence the selfish and blind potentates whom he was aiding with English counsel and treasure, the glittering series of Napoleonic phenomena might never have appeared. Mr. Wickham was regarded with the most perfect confidence by his own Government. How dangerous he proved to their foes may be judged from the fact that when at a later period he was named to represent his country at the courts, first of Berlin and then of Vienna, his appointment was objected to because it would be displeasing to the French Government.

By those who are either well acquainted with, or are studying the history of the French Revolution, these volumes will be highly prized, while general readers will find much of great interest in a correspondence which comprises letters from George III., Louis XVIII., the Prince de Condé, and the Duc d'Enghien, the Archduke Charles, Marshal Suwarrow, and many others, besides the despatches and other communications which passed between Mr. Wickham and his chief, Lord Grenville. The present Mr. Wickham has added succinct biographical notes concerning the several correspondents and persons named, some introductory remarks to the several groups of despatches, and a slight sketch of his grandfather's career, written with grace and modest pride. The first volume is embellished with a portrait of the diplomatist; and the second with a very interesting one of the most eccentric of great men—Suwarrow.

Nearly all the letters now published relate to Mr. Wickham's foreign missions. He afterwards served as Secretary for Ireland, and while he held that office Emmet's rebellion occurred. He was also a member of the ministry of 'All the Talents.' If he has left as interesting memorials of his later services as of his earlier ones, we hope that his grandson may at a future time let his present good work be followed by a publication of Mr. Wickham's later correspondence.

Cicero. Select Letters. With English Introductions, Notes, and Appendices. By Albert Watson, M. A. Macmillan and Co. Clarendon Press Series.

The letters of Cicero, on account of the materials they supply for the history of the Roman constitution during its last struggles, the light they throw upon the motives and movements of the partisan leaders, and the insight they afford into the character of Cicero himself, are justly regarded as the most important and instructive of his literary productions. Cicero's correspondence extends over the space of twenty-six years; and of the letters written during this eventful period to a wide circle of literary and political friends and connexions, there are extant upwards of 850, which are undoubtedly genuine. Up to the present time, this portion of Cicero's writings has received but little attention at the hands of English editors. In Germany, excellent editions have been published by Billerbeck, Boot, Frey, Hofman, and Süple; while in England we have only an inferior edition of the letters to Atticus by a Master of Arts, and a selection of 111 letters by E. St. John Parry, intended to illustrate the public life of Cicero, accompanied with notes which are purely historical. The volume before us is also a selection of 148 letters, taken almost exclusively out of the two chief divisions of Cicero's correspondence—the Epistolæ ad Familiares, those ad Diversos, and the Epistolæ ad Atticum—containing together 822 letters. The first letter in this volume is dated July 65 b.c., and the last July 43 b.c. The collection, therefore, covers one of the most momentous periods in Roman history. Mr. Watson, in making the present selection of letters, has been principally guided by considerations of their historical importance, or of their value as illustrating Cicero's character. The collection is divided into parts or groups, each of which is preceded by a lengthy and valuable introduction, furnishing the reader with a digest of the leading public events, and a review of the state of political parties during each period. In this portion of the work, the editor has borrowed largely from the well-known 'History of Rome,' by Professor Mommsen, and from Brückner's 'Life of Cicero.' The works of Zumpt, Drumann, Abeken, and Reen, have also been laid under heavy contributions. In the appendices to those sections, the reader will find discussed with clearness and ability many legal and historical questions, highly important for the right understanding of allusions in the letters—e.g., the legal question at issue between Cæsar and the Senate, the Calendar, the meaning of the terms 'colonia,' 'municipium,' and 'præfectura,' &c. These introductions and appendices add greatly to the value of the volume. The notes are far more numerous, but not so learned and valuable as those of the German editions. Indeed, many are so brief and unimportant that it is difficult to account for their insertion, and seem quite out of place in a work which is evidently not intended for tyros. The only persons qualified to read the letters of Cicero are the highest classes in schools, and students at the Universities, neither of which stand in need of a translation of passages and of words that involve no particular difficulty. The following are taken ad apertram libri:—ὕστερον πρότερον , 'I will answer your last question first;' Ὁμηρικῶς 'after the manner of Homer;' contiones, 'addresses to the populace;' manum, 'crew;' in eo ... erant omnia, 'on that everything depended;' inopiam, 'the neediness;' judicium, 'the trial.' Most of the notes are, in our opinion, too elementary for qualified readers of the correspondence of Cicero. The abundant references to Madvig's Grammar will be found exceedingly useful. On the whole, it is an excellent edition, and cannot be perused without greatly enlarging one's knowledge and deepening one's interest in these unique epistolary writings.

The Life of Richard Deane, Major-General, and General at Sea, in the service of the Commonwealth, and one of the Commissioners of the High Court of Justice appointed for the Trial of King Charles the First. By John Bathurst Deane, M.A., F.S.A., of Pembroke College, Cambridge; Corresponding Member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society; Rector of St. Martin Outwich. Longmans, 1870. 8vo.

Another successful attempt to rescue a great historical reputation from the slanders of the scurrilous pamphleteers of the Restoration, and one of which it is no mean praise to say, that it is not unworthy of a place beside Mr. Markham's recently published noble vindications of Fairfax. The 'Goodman Button (a hoyman of Ipswich), his boy' of the 'Mystery of the Good Old Cause,' which would seem to have been the source from whence Bates, Winstanley, Heath, and the author of the 'Lives of the King-killers,' as well as Clarendon, drew their inspiration, turns out to have been the son of a Gloucestershire gentleman, who was connected both by birth and by marriage with such families as the Wickhams, the Hampdens, and the Mildmays; and the 'Hoyman of Ipswich' to have been a captain in the King's service, who was attached to the Royal Dockyard, at Harwich, and was a kinsman of Sir Thomas Button's, a near relative of the St. Johns and the Cromwells. Mr. Deane having been fortunate enough to discover a copy of the elaborate and elegant Latin inscription which was composed for the tablet erected to the memory of his illustrious ancestor in Westminster Abbey, among the additional MSS. in the British Museum, has been directed by it to the entry of his baptism in the register of the parish of Lower Guyting, near Winchcombe. It is as follows: 'Anno Dni. 1610, ye viii daie of Julie, was baptized Richard Deane, ye sonne of Edward Deane.' His mother was a Warre, and his grandmother a Wickham, through whom he was connected with the Hampdens and the Cromwells; and his aunt Joan seems to have married Robert Mildmay, of Terling, the grandson of Sir Thomas Mildmay, one of the auditors of the Court of Augmentation in the reign of Henry VIII., and grand-nephew of Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. We have no knowledge of Deane's career up to the year 1642, beyond the fact of his having served under Captain Button, of Harwich, during some part of that period; nor have we any of his private life at all, except that he married Mary Grimsditch, and that at his death he left two daughters by her, Mary and Hannah, the former of whom died unmarried, and the latter married Goodwin Swift, attorney-general of Tipperary, and uncle to the well-known Dean of St. Patrick's, Jonathan Swift. From the year 1642 to that of his death, however, few names are more frequently mentioned in the annals of his day than that of Richard Deane. He early and heartily espoused the cause of the Parliament in the great civil war, under a conviction that in no other way could the religion and the liberties of the country be saved; and soon proved himself to be 'one of those extraordinary men, produced by revolutionary times, who by the innate force of an energetic character, surmount the difficulties of birth and station, and, rising to authority, seem as if they had been born and educated for it; no one wondering either at their elevation, or at the ease with which they discharge the duties of the highest offices.' His biographer has related his great services to the cause which he espoused with singular impartiality, which renders his work a valuable contribution to the general history of his times. After the trial and execution of the King, in which, as is well known, Deane took a very prominent part, he was appointed, 'in connection with Colonels Edward Popham and Robert Blake, as one of the three generals at sea,' with 'co-ordinate powers.' In 1651, he assumed the chief command in Scotland, where he was the principal means of bringing about the 'eight years' tranquillity' which Bishop Barnet 'so commends and attributes to the (happy) usurpation.' War now breaking out with the Dutch, Deane was hastily summoned to rejoin the fleet. It was in action with the Dutch that he met with his death, June 2, 1653. 'He fell at the moment of victory, sword in hand, in the bow of his ship, as he was waving his sword and encouraging his men to follow him in boarding 'the Dutch Admiral,' Van Tromp. Deane was buried with all honour in the chapel of Henry VII., at Westminster Abbey, on the 24th of February following. 'The corpse,' the authors of the 'Parliamentary History of England' inform us, 'was brought from Greenwich to Westminster Bridge by water, attended by thirty barges in mourning. The procession was saluted in their passage by all the ships in the river, and the Tower guns. In the evening, the body was interred in the Abbey with great pomp; the lord-general and his council, with all the officers of the navy and army then in town, attending the funeral.' After the Restoration, his body, together with those of twenty others of his contemporaries, was removed and re-interred in the adjoining churchyard. The sympathies of his biographer may be inferred from the following comments on this act of Charles II. and his advisers. 'If their bodies had been decently removed from the church to the churchyard, no blame can justly attach to the King for the removal, for he naturally desired to clear his own family vaults of those whom he might undoubtedly regard as intruders. But it is not quite so certain that the removal and re-interment were so decorously conducted as tradition says they were. The present Dean of Westminster, with the laudable desire of ascertaining not only the place, but also the manner of re-burial, caused, in November, 1869, the ground to be opened on the spot supposed to be the grave of the removed, but found no evidence of a decent and careful interment, such as fragments of coffins, and skeletons lying side by side in the order of deposit, but only a confused mass of bones, so mixed together as to suggest an irreverent emptying of coffins into a large common pit. The Dean, and other members of the Chapter who accompanied him, went away, and still remain in the charitable hope that they have failed in discovering the deposit which they sought, but have fallen in with some other not unusual spectacle in crowded churchyards, where the callous sexton of one generation shovels away the coffinless bones of the preceding, to make room for the bodies of his own contemporaries who may have occasion for his services. It is earnestly to be hoped that such was the case here, and that the only indignity to which Richard Deane and Robert Blake were exposed, was the removal of their remains from the burial place of kings to that of ordinary Christians, with no other memorial of their names than that of their deathless renown. Be the case as it may, these facts are certain, they fought on the same deck, died in the same cause, and were buried in the same pit. They had been loving and pleasant in their lives, and in their graves they were not divided.' We congratulate Mr. Deane on the ability, the fairness, and the diligence which he has brought to his praiseworthy undertaking. He has rendered the historical student admirable service.

John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century. By Julia Wedgewood. Macmillan and Co.

The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., Founder of the Methodists. By Rev. L. Tyerman. Vols. I. and II. Hodder and Stoughton.

Our literary and ecclesiastical authorities are much occupied at present with the life-work and surroundings of John Wesley, with his relation to the Church of England, and with the probable position that would have been assigned to an ecclesiastical reformer, or revivalist, occupying in the Church of Rome a position analogous to that of John Wesley in the English Church. We do not endorse the big words with which Mr. Tyerman opens up his subject. 'Is it not a truth (he asks) that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ? Methodism has now existed one hundred and thirty years. Is there any other system that has spread itself as widely in an equal period? We doubt it.' Whether the victories of Methodism over other ecclesiastical organizations, or over religious indifferentism, or over the stubborn resistance to God's truth of the barbarian or the idolater, can be paralleled with the past successes of the Apostolic Church or not, and whether numbers or area can now be used as measures of greatness, may be considered open questions, but no ecclesiastical writer pretending to honour truth or candour can hide his eye to the fact of Methodism, or to the vitality it displays at the present moment. We are thankful for this instalment of Mr. Tyerman's valuable work. There is a mine of wealth, a store-house of treasure, in the unimpeachable diary and authentic correspondence contained in this first volume, which will amply repay most careful attention.

Miss Julia Wedgewood, in our opinion, has done very excellent service. She has not attempted to write a memoir of John Wesley or his brother, or a history of Methodism, nor has she kept up a chronological continuity in her fascinating pages, but she has shown us the remarkable figure of Wesley upon a great variety of backgrounds. Methodism at Oxford, with its first obstacles in the painfully exacting conscience and scrupulosity of Wesley himself, becomes a vivid sketch of Oxford life at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Methodism in Virginia becomes an impressive representation of the relation of England to her colonies. The conflict of Methodism with Bristol and Cornwallese colliers; its hand to hand fight with the devils of hysteria and fear, and with those of bigotry and exclusiveness; with Moravian theology, and with Calvinism and its old problem of the universe, are all well told in a succession of bright and thoughtfully conceived pictures. There is very remarkable candour, much good sense, and wise use of material in her work; and the volume will bring the high enthusiasm and glorious earnestness of Wesley into contact with classes that would remain strangers to the more elaborate biographical details of Mr. Tyerman. The subject is so large—so important in all its bearings—that we cannot dismiss these works with a cursory notice; we shall hope, at an early date, to return to the literature and ecclesiastical position of the Wesleys.

Memorials of the late Rev. William M. Bunting; being Selections from his Sermons, Letters, and Poems. Edited by the Rev. G. Stringer Rowe. With a Biographical Introduction by Thomas Percival Bunting. Wesleyan Conference Office.

The characteristic of William Bunting which all who knew him would assuredly mention first was an unbounded power of loving; and as the effect of this as near an embodiment of the 'charity' of the Epistle to the Corinthians as is perhaps possible to men who love truth and the God of truth. 'Grace to all them that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity,' was not only a sentiment upon his lips, it was an instinctive, irrepressible feeling of his heart. Few men were more attached to his own Church; few men had more large-hearted and loving appreciation of the good men and good things of all other Churches. Charity was the 'bond of his perfectness.' Wherever Christ was to be served, the souls of men benefited, faithful preachers to be heard, fervent worship to be joined in, there, according to his opportunity, William Bunting was to be found. Our cathedrals were familiar with his tall, attenuated, intellectual figure. In any Nonconformist congregation in London, where worship and preaching were edifying, he was at any time as likely to be found as in a Wesleyan Chapel. Few of the principal Nonconformist pulpits were unfamiliar with his ministrations. His friends were the best ministers of every evangelical church. He was a lover of all good men, and all good men loved him. He was a kind of tertium quid, around which the best men and feelings of the different sects crystallized into beautiful forms of charity. No one thought of him as belonging to any one section of the Church; the feeling towards him was that he belonged to all. This volume of memorials will be valued by his friends. The brief biographical sketch by his brother is sufficient for the record of his uneventful life; it is racy and piquant in its style, yet fervent and tender in its love and devout sympathy.

As a preacher, Mr. Bunting was diffuse and therefore lengthy, and sometimes tedious, although his brother testifies to his great efficiency.

As a letter-writer he was wonderfully loquacious; some of his letters, as he says, 'as long as a life,' even as abbreviated here, filling eight or ten pages of print. Rarely could he have said with Paul, 'I have written a letter unto you in few words:' but they are wonderfully loving, enthusiastic and brilliant, full of delicate sympathy and beautiful piety and charity.

Chiefly, however, Mr. Bunting excelled as a writer of hymns. Two or three of his compositions have found their way into popular hymnals, and are not likely to be forgotten. The tender pathos of the 'Song in the Night Season,'

has not often been surpassed.

The Life of Arthur Tappan. With Preface by the Rev. Newman Hall, LL.D. Sampson Low and Co.

Mr. Tappan was a New York merchant, of a type which the laudator temporis acti would tell us was once not uncommon, but is now rarely to be met with either in America or England. This we are loth to believe. There are still, thank God, not a few upright, God-fearing, noble-hearted men, who will do and dare whatever righteousness and religion may demand. Mr. Tappan was eminently one who 'feared God and eschewed evil,' whose business was as much a religion to him as church-worship. His one simple maxim was to do right at any cost. He is said to have been the first man in America 'to make use of money in large sums for benevolent objects.' Certainly he was generous, to the verge of prudence; and when reverses came upon him he did not begin retrenchment with the things of God. His high-toned morality did not always square with the morals of Wall-street, and often involved him in perplexing and ludicrous entanglements; but nothing could shake his determination to do right. Several business friends wished to help him in his pecuniary difficulties, but urged upon him as a tacit condition the desirableness of lessening his anti-slavery denunciations. His short and decisive answer was, 'I will be hung first.' He was the prime mover and leader of many things, greatest and best, in the religious life of America. He was president of the Anti-Slavery Society, and one of the founders of the Bible Society, the Tract Society, Oberlin College, and the American Education Society—to all of which he gave large pecuniary and laborious personal assistance. He was a kind of American John Thornton in his religious philanthropy. He fought many a fierce and fearless battle, especially in the anti-slavery cause—when to be its advocate was to imperil life. He was mobbed, and had a price set upon his head. A more beautiful, single-hearted, noble life of integrity, industry, fearlessness, and generosity has rarely been lived. His closing days at Newhaven have an interesting setting of New England Puritanism, and were quiet, devout, and beautiful. In a higher sense than mere amassing of money he was a 'successful merchant.' Our merchants will do well to read this interesting memoir, and to learn anew from it the old lesson that 'the fear of the Lord is, indeed, the beginning of wisdom.'

Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia; with some Account of Corea. By the Rev. Alexander Williamson, B.A., Agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. With Illustrations and 2 Maps. Two vols. Smith, Elder and Co.

Mr. Williamson has contributed to the literature of travel and of science another of those thorough, sober, and instructive books which have been one of the incidental results of Christian Missions. To the ordinary advantages over casual visitors, which long residence and familiar intimacy gives to a missionary, and to the conscientiousness which his religious position and character impose upon him, Mr. Williamson, as a highly-educated medical man, adds a higher degree of scientific knowledge than many of his brethren possess, which qualifies him to speak of the configuration, products, and possibilities of the country in a way that will impart valuable knowledge. Mr. Williamson first visited China as a missionary in connection with the London Missionary Society. His health failed after two or three years' residence, and he returned to England. On the re-establishment of his health he returned to China, about seven years ago, as an agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. These volumes are, virtually, the journal-records of eight extensive journeys through various parts of North China, which he has made in the prosecution of his evangelistic labours. It need scarcely be remarked that a man so occupied, the very business of whose life is to travel from place to place, and to cultivate familiar intercourse with the people, has opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge, to which no mere casual traveller, or resident merchant, or professional man can pretend. Accordingly, Mr. Williamson's volumes are full of minute, thorough, and novel information of all kinds concerning the country and the people; they are utilitarian enough for a blue book, while they have the general interest of a book of travels in countries of which we are almost entirely ignorant. We do not, in fact, remember two volumes the information of which is so valuable, and the interest of which is so great, at this particular juncture especially, when our peaceful relations with China are again in peril. Our Government, as well as the general public, may gather from them more accurate and extensive information respecting the sources and character of Chinese feeling towards us, than from any other source whatever—not excepting even the valuable and intelligent information furnished by our diplomatic agents. Mr. Williamson has been among the people as distinguished from officials, and he speaks confidently concerning the peacefulness and friendliness of their disposition towards Protestant missionaries. He travelled unarmed, and encountered no violence or rudeness, nothing more than the occasional attempts at extortion with which travellers are not unfamiliar in London and New York. They are grossly ignorant, and in some places look upon Europeans as a different species of beings. 'In some places they calls us "devils," not in impertinence, but in genuine ignorance of our origin and character; so much so, that they often use this term with complimentary prefixes, as e.g., their practice of calling a friend of ours Kwhe tze ta jen, "His Excellency the Devil." Moreover, they often use this term in our courts of justice. In other places they look upon us as a race of fierce men not quite up to the mark in mental powers. Many a time have foreigners been provoked by Chinamen coming up to them, patting them on the shoulder, and caressing them just as we would a huge Newfoundland dog, or a semi-tamed lion. Nor is this all. They appear in many districts to look upon us as a species of fools. Often have I observed Chinamen address myself and others just as mendacious nursery-maids address children, as if we were incapable of seeing through their barefaced lies and shallow deceit.' The Imperial claim is as preposterous as ever—as shown by the refusal to receive Prince Alfred—and is a serious obstacle in national intercourse. Lord Elgin attempted effectually to destroy this by a march on Peking, which was baffled by the flight of the Emperor to Tartary. The Chinese people sadly lack truth, uprightness, and honour, the fear of God. The opium trade, which has been our great disgrace, and which has, it is feared, extended beyond all legislative or diplomatic control, is the deadly curse of the country. 'There are literally millions,' says Mr. Williamson, 'to whom opium is more valuable than life. The only hope is the creation of a public opinion against it among those who abstain from the poison, and among the young; so that the generation of opium smokers may, in due course, die out. The reformation has already commenced, and only needs to be fostered and systematized.'

The Roman Catholics are much disliked by the Chinese, chiefly because of the outrages committed by the French soldiers during the late war—the fatal blunder into which our neighbours always fall in their dealings with weaker nations, or in their attempts to colonize: wherever they go, they invariably succeed in getting themselves well hated. Another cause of dislike to the Roman Catholics is the assumptions of the priests, and their arbitrary claims to property. 'There is no hostility on the part of the people towards Protestant missionaries.' And Mr. Williamson thinks that 'were the matter of inland residence made a provision in treaty engagements, there would be little or no difficulty in carrying it out.' The hostility of the mandarins during the last year or two, the Tien-tsin massacres, and other indications of dislike in the governing classes, are attributed by Mr. Williamson to 'the ultra-liberal policy of our Government, and especially to that outburst of hostile criticism in the spring of 1869, on the part of our officials and leading politicians and writers at home, all of which was duly communicated to the Chinese authorities, leading them to believe either that we were sure of our strength, or had lost all interest in our countrymen in China.' Mr. Williamson lays great stress on a demand being made for 'inland residence under proper sanction;' and he argues this from the perfect success of the experiment, so far as it has been made. 'Protestant missionaries, British, German, and American, have been labouring unmolested for some years, in many of their inland cities.' The Chinese opponents of missionaries are not the people, but corrupt officials, who oppose everything foreign and everything calculated to enlighten or improve the moral tone of the people. Mr. Williamson's reply to such diplomats and writers as denounce the missionaries in China, or sneer at them, is not only conclusive, it is perfectly crushing. Five powerful foreign legations have for several years resided in Pekin, viz., the British, American, French, Russian, and Prussian. They had very able men and very great facilities. Not long ago, the head of the British Legation thought fit to taunt the missionaries, by urging them to begin by converting the higher classes, adding that 'China would be raised through them, not in spite of them.' Mr. Williamson pertinently asks, what with all their ability and opportunities they have done, and unhesitatingly answers, nothing! All the European books, lesson books, and books of science especially, which it is no part of the missionary's function to produce, have been compiled or translated by them. 'Dr. Hobson has given them works on Physiology; on the Principles and Practice of Surgery; on the Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica; on the Diseases of Children; on the Elements of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Mr. Wylie has given them the whole of Euclid; De Morgan's Algebra, in thirteen books; Loomis' Analytical Geometry and Differential and Integral Calculus, in eighteen books, and also the first part of Newton's Principia which is now in process of completion. Mr. Edkins has translated Whewell's Mechanics, and given them many other contributions on science and Western literature. Mr. Muirhead has produced a work on English history, and another on universal geography. Dr. Bridgman has published a finely illustrated work on the United States of America. Dr. W. P. Martin has translated Wheaton's International Law, and just published an elaborately illustrated work in three large volumes, on Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Other missionaries have given them works on Electro-telegraphy, Botany, and elementary treatises on almost every subject of Western science.' Would it not be as well for some of these diplomatic gentlemen to employ their abundant leisure in emulating, rather than in sneering at the earnest philanthropy of these hard-working missionaries. Until they can show something like such a list of contributions to Chinese enlightenment, shame should keep them silent, even if they are incapable of generous appreciation.

These matters, however, are only touched in the introductory part of Mr. Williamson's book, which is an intelligent traveller's account of China and the Chinese. It is full of matter for quotation; but for this we have no space. At one of the temples in Manchuria, Mr. Williamson saw an instrument, which was the famous praying machine. 'Prayers are pasted both on the inside and outside of the barrels, which being turned round, their prayers are presented, as they suppose, to their god.' Some curious church music was aided by 'two trumpets, each of which was about twelve feet long, with a mouth two feet in diameter; they were mounted on small wheel-carriages, like guns, and the players reclined upon the ground when playing.' This was in the famous Temple of Do-la-nor. At one place the landlord, having no clock, fastened a huge fat cock under Mr. Williamson's bed, lest he should oversleep himself. We will add only, that the book is written in a plain, business-like style, that it is full of valuable facts, that, in appendices, Mr. Edkins and others have contributed valuable papers, and that, in our judgment, it is one of the most sterling and instructive, as it is one of the most modest books of travels that has appeared for years.

Westward by Rail: the New Route to the East. By W. F. Rae. Longmans, Green and Co.

The temptations to fulsome eulogy or to exaggerated caricature are, to a writer of a book of American travels, so great and are so rarely resisted, that Mr. Rae, as a signal exception, deserves the very highest praise. His feeling to America and Americans is evidently of the kindest, and yet he has had such a wholesome fear of fulsome praise, that he has put himself under almost undue restraint—the greys predominate in his colouring. He has everywhere manifestly endeavoured to see things as they are and to describe them as he saw them; the result is a sober, judicious, intelligent book, that vouches for its own trustworthiness. Mr. Rae describes only the route across the American continent from New York to San Francisco by the Great Pacific Railway. He tells us that the basis of his book is two series of letters which appeared in the Daily News, revised and recast. He writes in an easy, accustomed style, as men write whose pen is the weapon with which they fight the battle of life. He has imagination enough and descriptive power enough to redeem his narrative from the dryness of a log, and he has sufficiently large and varied knowledge of the world to qualify him to form wise, practical, and genial estimates of things. Much in American life is novel and experimental, and demands in its judge no small power of constructive imagination. Much in American feeling is provincial, wayward, and almost morbidly sensitive, and needs great candour for the appreciation of its fresh, generous, and noble elements. The Americans are rapidly outgrowing some of the follies of their youth; there are still in the practical administration of politics and social economies many things—worse than follies—that belie the noble principles of their constitution, and that the warmest friends of America cannot but look upon with anxiety. The extent of administrative corruption, the unscrupulousness of party politics, not only as towards each other but as towards other nations—such passionate, undignified, and manifestly venal messages as the one just sent to Congress by President Grant for instance, with the political interpretations of which it is susceptible—render it a question of great solicitude whether these are the moral weaknesses of childhood, which experience and discipline will cure, so as to develope a nation high and courteous in political as in social and personal honour, or whether its political maturity will manifest the faithlessness and unscrupulousness which so sadly stain the escutcheons of some European nations, and which necessitate a constant and suspicious vigilance; we strongly hope in the higher developement, but the centenary of the nation's birth is near at hand, and we are longing to see a high-minded government and policy such as we do not see yet.

Mr. Rae describes with smartness, the railways and cars and travelling ways of America as they have often been described. He especially commends to our own greater railway companies the luxury of Pullman's sleeping cars, and we heartily endorse the recommendation. It is no small luxury to be able to go to bed while traveling at the rate of thirty miles an hour in America—of from forty to fifty here—those who cannot sleep may at any rate enjoy a sprawl with disencumbered limbs. We would also add a recommendation of the check system with luggage; what should prevent our companies giving passengers a check, to which a corresponding number is affixed to the piece of luggage, so that the latter might be delivered to the porter or a servant presenting the check? The comfort of being delivered from all anxiety about luggage is a great luxury of American travel. Mr. Rae describes Chicago 'the Garden City,' 'the Queen of the West,' 'the Queen of the Lakes,' as it is proudly called. Forty years ago it was a log fort, to-day 300,000 well-to-do people, many of them as wealthy merchants as any in the States, occupy in palatial residences one of their most imposing cities. Mr. Rae's account of the Mormons is not very eulogistic, and is we suspect much nearer the truth than most of the superficial accounts, the result of an hour's conversation, note-book in hand, that have reached us. Brigham Young's peculiar institution does not commend itself even on utilitarian grounds: the intolerance, jealousy and violence of the Mormon city, restrained only by the adjacent United States' camp, must make it an unenviable residence: while even the vaunted industry of the residents is seriously qualified in Mr. Rae's estimate of what has been done in relation to the condition of the place. We commend Mr. Rae's careful study of Mormondom to all who have been fascinated by the glamour of writers like Mr. Dixon. Mr. Rae has much to say concerning California, the enterprise of the people and their great future; but he gives special emphasis to their ultra-provincialism, and what surprises us more, implies a slighting estimate of their hospitality. Of their literature he speaks in glowing terms—indeed he seems to think the provincial press of the States superior to the New York press. Mr. Rae's book is restricted to the route which he travelled, and to matters connected with it; it is therefore limited in its range. He has also a slight tendency to preach, but, as a whole, his book may be very highly commended as an honest and successful attempt to represent Brother Jonathan as he really is.

A Voyage round the World. By the Marquis de Beauvoir. In Two vols. John Murray, Albemarle-street. 1870.

These charming volumes come before us with every claim to interest. The author is a Frenchman without national prejudice—a mere boy in years without either self-sufficiency or vain-glory—a nobleman of high degree without morgue or arrogance, to whom fortune has allotted an inestimable opportunity of improving the gifts of nature by sending him as companion to the young Duc de Penthièvre, on this easy, pleasant 'Voyage round the World.' All these conditions unite to predispose the reader to a series of novel emotions in traversing an already beaten track. The Duc de Penthièvre is introduced to us as a young man of high intelligence and sterling character, who, in spite of his youth, had already seen six years of service in the United States' navy, and gained promotion therein by merit alone—not as homage to his position as scion of a royal house. The princes of the House of Orleans have been apt scholars in the great school of adversity. It would be well for France if the lessons they have been learning could be turned to account in the government of their own country. We learn from M. de Beauvoir's preface that, during the space of three months, three princes of Orleans left Europe to see if in some distant land they might not utilize their talents and energy, as at present they were unable to devote them to the service of their own. The Duc d'Alençon entered the Spanish service, and took command of the artillery during the glorious expedition to the Philippine Islands; the Prince de Condé went to India and Australia, where death cut him off at the commencement of his career; and the Duc de Penthièvre, the Prince de Joinville's son, started on a voyage round the world. No greater proof of the great change which has come over the social world of France could be found than this announcement made so simply by our author.

The two volumes under review are devoted to Australia, Java, Siam, and Canton. The novel judgments of men and things, attributable to the extreme youth and exceptional position of the writer, gives an entirely original insight into the manners and customs of the higher classes of these different countries. Naturally enough, we turn at once to Australia. Throughout the whole of the volume which treats of Australia, the national pride of the English reader is gratified to its fullest extent, not by empty praise of material wealth and rich produce, but by solid admiration of the perseverance, tenacity of purpose, and high intelligence with which the mother country has resisted all temptation to impose a yoke upon her distant children; and has thereby caused their hearts to cling closer to her own, than those of her nearer and dearer progeny. We can readily sympathise with the pleased astonishment which seizes upon the Marquis de Beauvoir, when he contrasts the wise abstention from all interference in the local government of the colony, with the petty and vexatious pressure of French authority in Algeria.

One instance of the equity of the law as practised in the colony, contrasted with the following of its mere letter, peculiar to the tribunals of Europe, we cannot pass over.

'In going through the workshops we remarked two native blacks, mere children, and utterly hideous, but with a perfectly gentle expression. Their extremely white teeth exposed to view by a mouth split from ear to ear, formed a strong contrast with their black skins, as their jolly and perpetual laugh did with the dress which is worn by those condemned to hard labour for life. Their appearance was so cheerful, that we were naturally much interested in them. Besides, there was a great deal in their novelty as aborigines.' All interest in these merry culprits was, however, at an end, when the visitors were informed that one of them had murdered three sailors, and the other had waylaid and hacked to pieces two white women. They had not been condemned to death, because 'they were natives—and none of the aborigines had as yet been hung—their instincts and belief being so different, that with them murder is no crime; they are tamed more by gentleness than cruelty.'

The Marquis expatiates, with true youthful ardour, upon this generous forbearance, and declares that a government professing such principles after invading, in the name of civilization, a country occupied by a barbarian race, deserves the admiration of all Europe. The records of Sydney law confirm the distinction made between barbarous native and civilized colonist; for a little while after, seven white men, having murdered a family of natives, were hung without mercy, to give a good example to the rising generation of the young colony, who are taught to pity the blind, ferocious instincts of the native race, and to feel contempt and horror of the civilized white men guilty of the same cold-blooded atrocities.

Life in the bush has charms for our youthful author as great as those of the handsome drawing-rooms of Melbourne and Sydney. After much visiting amongst the highest circles of Sydney—banqueting at the Government House, and dancing in the spacious halls of the great officials of the colony—the buoyant spirits of the young Marquis lead him to throw himself, a corps perdu, into the delights of savage life. His enthusiastic description of the visit to Mr. Capel—the arrival of the party at the hut inhabited by the triple millionaire, on the banks of the Murray river—the glee with which he recounts the danger of fording the stream, while the horses were left to swim to the bank as best they could, and the subsequent scramble up the muddy side to Mr. Capel's dwelling, will make many an English boy's eyes sparkle with delight and envy as he reads.

We can only mention the journey through Java, Siam, and Canton. Much of the interest lies in the description of the court of the King of Siam, rendered familiar to the English public by the recent account of the 'English Governess.' At Hong Kong, the author's admiration of English rule again breaks forth. And we take our leave of the distinguished party, of which he appears to have been the very life and soul, with hearty thanks for the boldness with which the young Marquis has dared to assert his conviction that the English alone are fitted to found a colony, and that no other nation is possessed of the patience, the calmness, and true sense of justice which are needed to render the natives submissive to civilization and the yoke of the foreigner.

Fair France. By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman.' Hurst and Blackett.

At a time when France is torn and tortured by the most terrible war the world has ever known, it seems strange to open a volume of peaceful travel in the beautiful country which most of us know so well, and which has undergone such an unparalleled transformation. The authoress (pace Thackeray) of this charming volume is well known to the public as a novelist, and however critical judgments may vary as to her artistic power, of her purity of tone and freedom from the vicious tendencies of modern fictitious literature, there can be no question. For our own part, we find her even more agreeable as a tourist than as a novelist. She looks at the world with unprejudiced eyes; she finds that even French curés are human beings, and not the frightful demons that they appear to the excited imagination of the honourable member for Peterborough. We have, in these days, been accustomed to travellers of many kinds: there is the sensational tourist, who bursts into mysterious eloquence on the slightest provocation; and there is the cynical tourist, who with upturned nose regards all the world as a gigantic imposture—looking up into the dome of St. Peter's, or down into the crater of Etna, and contemptuously remarking that 'there is nothing in it.' But the truly pleasant traveller is the man or woman who starts with intent to enjoy the trip, who looks at the bright side of everything, and who, writing a book, writes cheerily and gaily. This is precisely what we find in 'Fair France.' The dedication deserves to be quoted: 'I inscribe "Fair France"—France of yesterday—to those heroic and suffering souls in the France of to-day, who yet suffer in hope, seeing light through the darkness, and believing in a new and nobler "France of to-morrow."' That new and nobler France is no dream of the ivory gate. This siege of Paris, to which the siege of Troy seems trivial, will purge the French people of many evil qualities, and leave them greater than before. This is the belief of all who know them well—who know how their higher life has been eclipsed by noxious influences. However this war may terminate, and whatever may be the fate of the country of Lothair, it is pretty certain that the fatal follies which have misguided the French people are now exploded for ever.

The Land of the Sun. By Lieutenant C. R. Low. Hodder and Stoughton. 1870.

This book makes no pretensions to be regarded as a regular diary of connected travel, but is a series of vivid sketches of such places in the East as the author frequently visited. In a succession of interesting chapters he carries us from place to place, describing each locality with many of its historical associations, and his own personal impressions and incidents of adventure. He tells us something of Aden, Massowah, and the Red Sea, the Andaman Islands, and many other places of interest, some of growing importance; leaving us finally at that city of romance, Bagdad. Those who have commercial relations with 'the Land of the Sun' will find valuable information in this volume, especially in the chapters on Aden and Persia. As Mr. Low says, 'The Suez Canal has opened a new era for Aden and Persia, and indeed for all the ports of the Red Sea, and it is impossible to exaggerate the mighty future in store for them.' It did not require that the title-page should inform us that the writer belonged to the navy, for almost every paragraph contains expressions which are possible from only a joyous, enthusiastic sailor-nature. He makes the reader feel as though he were listening to some clever Jack-tar, who can describe the places and people he has visited, and can spin a yarn with startling effect. The lieutenant revels in adventure, and any skirmish excites his vigorous sympathy. Like a true British sailor, he has an infinite contempt for all his enemies, and a supreme belief in English seamanship and courage. Our readers may get considerable instruction and many a hearty laugh out of this capital book.

Two Months in Palestine; or, a Guide to a Rapid Journey to the Chief Places of Interest in the Holy Land. By the Author of 'Two Months in Spain.' Nisbet and Co.

This little volume is what its title indicates. It gives useful information, and records the impressions du voyage of an intelligent traveller. While it does not wholly refrain from historical reminiscence and archæological speculation, it touches them lightly, and without dogmatism. It is a pleasant record of experiences in sacred scenes, whose interest no number of travellers' books can exhaust. Readers of 'The Leisure Hour' will be familiar with the papers here collected into a volume.

Daybreak in Spain: a Tour of Two Months. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D. Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1870.

Whatever other distinguishing traits Dr. Wylie may possess, he is at least a famous hater of the Papacy. In several former volumes he appears as the earnest champion of Protestantism, and in his vigorous declamatory rhetoric gives the enemy no quarter. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that the remarkable movement in Spain which preceded and followed the expulsion of Isabella II. should have awakened his most energetic sympathy. With a naïveté perfectly charming he informs the reader that he entered Spain on the anniversary of the Queen's summary dismissal. The coincidence of the two events may be an important historical incident, but as yet we fail to see it. However, he presents to us the results of two months' tour in a light sketchy manner, though in a very readable book. His descriptions of the scenes and people are sometimes vivid, but they leave the impression of haste and effort to be striking. The author also compiles a number of noteworthy facts concerning the progress of the Gospel in that long unhappy land, which enable us to share his prophetic hopes for its brighter future. The book would be immensely improved by the omission of many of those eulogistic paragraphs on the Bible, which mar the continuity of the narrative, and read like the perorations of innumerable speeches. The illustrations by Gustave Doré, which he says (page 12) accompany the first chapter, are wanting in our copy.

History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Vols. VIII.-XII. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1870.

This most admirable and faultless reprint of the classic history of a great period of our annals is now completed. Never have publishers considered more carefully the convenience and comfort of the general reader. The volumes are portable, and the type is suited to the most defective sight. The pleasure of consulting Mr. Froude's works is moreover enhanced by a copious and well-arranged index, which occupies no fewer than one hundred pages. The dates are given on every page, from first to last; and this great work, on which we have so often commented, is now placed within the reach of thousands who have for their perusal of it hitherto had to depend on library copies. Whatever difference of opinion may be entertained as to the justness of certain conclusions, and the good taste of some revelations, the extraordinary merit of this history of the most eventful epoch in the development of the English church, nationality, and constitution, can hardly be exaggerated.

Sketches from America. By John White, Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. Sampson Low and Co.

Mr. White's book has but very little of the character of a tourist's book of travels, although it is, he tells us, 'founded upon a tour that was undertaken without any design of collecting materials for a book.' Personal experiences are but little obtruded. We get the most of them in the second section, 'A Pic-nic to the Rocky Mountains.' The party consisted of newspaper editors and Mr. G. F. Train; who probably is an editor, and a dozen things besides. This personal part of Mr. White's book indicates a keen observer and a graphic pen. We would gladly, had we space, extract some of the amusing incidents of his journey. The first and third parts of the book—on Canada, and on the Irish in America—are disquisitions founded in part upon personal observation, but chiefly upon facts and opinions collected from diversified sources with care and discrimination. They constitute, therefore, a series of judgments by Mr. White, and are to be taken simply as such, quantum valeat. We are bound to say, however, that they are marked by great moderation, scholarly intelligence, and plausible credibility. But clearly, other observers equally well-informed and judicial, might come to very different conclusions. We can only indicate some of Mr. White's opinions. He points out acutely the distinctive characteristics of the Canadians; their many points of difference from the citizen of the States, both in manners, feeling, and political interest. Canadians are strong in a theoretic loyalty, and are proud of their English belongings, while they have very little of patriotic passion. The Irish in Canada are not, Mr. White thinks, so loyal as is often boasted, although they are less hostile than the Irish in America. They feel no affection for the English, and, as a class, desire annexation. The French Canadians are contented without being patriotic. They are not annexationists, and see nothing better for themselves than English rule. The best classes in Canada, like those in the States, studiously eschew politics, and affect indifference, even while the streets of Montreal are crowded at an exciting election. Mr. White conveys no very exalted idea of the dignity of Canadian legislation, by the account he quotes of the behaviour of the members of the Ottawa Parliament singing choruses and indulging in other forms of obstructive boisterousness all night. 'Men, not measures,' is the Canadian political motto, although to a less extent than in the United States. Mr. White gives a good account of the Church legislation of the last few years, and of its beneficial results, which we commend to our Church and State partisans. While admitting that the feeling of Canada is adverse to annexation with the States, Mr. White seems to think that commercial interests and necessities will make it inevitable—a forecast from which there is both room and reason for differing.

Mr. White's book is, throughout, written with an amount of information, a scholarly intelligence and care, and a studied moderation of feeling, which place it above most books of its class, and entitle it to a permanent place in the library. It will have value when the interest of ephemeral books of mere travel has passed away.

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POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND ART.

The Transformation of Insects. By P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S. Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.

The metamorphoses of insects comprise some of the most interesting phenomena of the most attractive class in the animal kingdom. They lose none of their attractions in the hands of the enterprising publishers to whose energy the public are already indebted for so many handsome and profusely illustrated works on various branches of natural history.

The present volume, like the rest, abounds in pictures of all kinds, from those which are diagrammatic, and should accompany a scientific treatise, to those which are highly pictorial and life-like; and they are all of high merit. Of course, the illustrations, for the most part, are not original. They do not come from the hand of the author, nor were they designed to illustrate his text. No work with such first-class engravings, drawn expressly to elucidate the meaning of a writer, could be produced at ten times the cost of the book before us. Collected from all sources, and more or less judiciously distributed through the volume, the plates constitute the chief value of the work. The letter-press, however, like the illustrations, is full of interesting matter. Almost all the well-known facts which science has revealed to us concerning the whole life-history of the Arthropoda, are stripped of their technical phraseology, invested in an amusing, and sometimes a grotesque garb, and displayed so as to attract those to whom real scientific study would be repulsive. To our youth, and to that numerous class of casual and unscientific observers of Nature who rather delight in interesting facts than in the causes which underlie them, 'The Transformation' will, no doubt, be found amusing and satisfactory. On the other hand, we are bound to state that there is nothing in the book before us, either in the shape of original contribution to our information, or of philosophic grouping of phenomena into wider generalizations, which will really assist the scientific student.

We have purposely mentioned the publishers rather than the author as the originators of this work, because the resources of the former are far more evident than those of the latter. Probably no one but the publishers could have produced so handsome and entertaining a volume at so small an expense, while almost any one might have been the author of it. We have also designedly made the plates occupy the first place in our commendation. It is evident that the book was made to order from a large stock in hand. We do not wish to disparage the work at all, or any more than is necessary to let the public know exactly what it is. Such a book would not be written except to order, and could not be so good unless there were a large stock of material on hand. Such books have a definite use, and this particular book is good of its kind. It is, as it professes to be, an 'adaptation of M. Emile Blanchard's work.' If the author had done for his own work what he has done for M. Blanchard, i.e., 'eliminated large portions which, although very interesting, do not refer directly to the phenomena of metamorphosis,' we should have been deprived of half the volume; and as the illustrations could hardly have been crowded more closely together, we should have lost them also, and this would have been a great pity. That the letter-press is but accessory, and sometimes hardly accessory, to the pictures is abundantly manifest. Thus, at p. 366, we have a beautiful engraving representing the transformations of Cicada fraxini—an insect belonging to, and even the type of, the homopterous division of the order 'Hemiptera'—incorporated, without reference to it, into the chapter on the 'Neuroptera;' while, in the chapter on the 'Hemiptera,' the metamorphosis of the same species is described without reference to the engraving.

The term 'insects' is used in the old Linnæan sense, and not according to its more modern and definite scientific signification, and so is made to include not only moths, bees, beetles, locusts, dragon-flies, bugs, and flies, and the orders of which they are the types, but also spiders, hundred-legs, and crustaceans. The Metamorphoses of the Arthropoda would be the more correct title, but this would not have been so popular, and therefore not so well suited to a popular work. This dominant idea of rendering the book popular is always kept in view. Thus, when we have a description of the habits of that popular favourite, the water spider (Argyroneta aquatica), it is hoped, no doubt with some degree of confidence, that we shall be so pleased with the wonderful facts, that we shall forgot to ask why a species which has no metamorphosis, and belongs to a genus, family, and order which never exhibit transformations, should have been introduced to our notice at all. Again, when we are facetiously told that Cimex lectularius drops from the ceiling on to sleepers, and grows more or less rapidly according to the temperature of the room and corpulency of its inhabitants, and we have 'to thank Providence that it has no wings,' it would be ill-natured to inquire whether the statements are strictly accurate, and with regard to the latter statement, to whom we are indebted for the rest of the anatomy?

Mr. Duncan thinks it only just that M. E. Blanchard should be relieved from the authorship of opinions as to the nature of metamorphosis contained in this work, but as the only part of the book which treats of metamorphosis philosophically consists of a long, well-chosen, and acknowledged quotation from Newport's 'Essay,' we think this delicate sense of justice somewhat misplaced.

We cannot too highly recommend the 'Transformation of Insects' as a glorious picture-book full of moderately trustworthy anecdotes; but we warn all students of physiology or natural history that there is no such royal road to learning as its pages present.

Rome and the Campagna: an Historical and Topographical Description of the Site, Buildings, and Neighbourhood of Ancient Rome. By Robert Burn, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. Deighton and Co. 1871.

There is something singularly opportune in the publication of this book at this time. Rome, dear to all men of taste, for its countless treasures in the department of the arts—to all scholars, for its multitudinous associations with relics of classical times—to many a Christian too, for its memories of our holy religion, has just passed into new hands, and is henceforth to be subject to other rulers. We will not affect to regret this. We have long despaired of any substantial improvement under the régime now happily brought to an end; but there can be no reason, in the nature of things, why modern Rome should be the worst drained and dirtiest of Christian cities, and why the Pontine marshes, once so fruitful, should now be a pestiferous waste. We believe that a thorough revolution may be worked, both in Rome itself and all around it, not only without any detriment to those precious relics of the old world with which this volume deals, but with great advantage to them; and we hope to read ere long of the appointment of a commission (we are not sure what is the proper Italian word for it) with some such man as the Cavaliere Rosa at its head, whose business it shall be to guard with jealous care whatever already discovered may interest the student of art or of history, and to watch for new matter of a kindred nature wherever public works or private enterprise may lay open the still unworked mines which underlie in all directions the accumulated rubbish of many centuries in this city of Rome. A board of antiquaries and artists, with two or three practical men amongst them, may earn for themselves the gratitude of the civilized world, by an enlightened and earnest prosecution of this work.

As to the book before us, we can hardly find words to express our sense of its varied excellence. It has evidently been a con amore labour with its author; and he has brought to his work the three qualifications essential to its thorough discharge—learning, sagacity, and zeal. His references to the classical writings of Rome, and to those who have been his pioneers in these researches, prove the first; while the accuracy with which he observes and compares both objects and opinions are sufficient evidence of the other qualities.

Starting with a geological discussion of the soil on which the city is built, we are introduced to the original materials for building in Rome and its immediate neighborhood. There is abundant evidence of volcanic action in the tufaceous rock which is characteristic of the region; and this is associated with the depositions of water—both salt and fresh—and in some cases has been manifestly modified by their action. Indeed, there is proof that the valleys between the famous hills were marshes, frequently flooded by the Tiber, down into the early period of Roman history. There are two sorts of tufa, one more granular, and so lighter than the other, as well as a fair portion of a limestone rock, named travertine, harder than either of the tufas; besides these there is capital clay for bricks, and matter which makes the best mortar in the world. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that not only during the Republic, but in later times, when, under the emperors, the wealth and luxury of the Romans was boundless, the main substance even of the most magnificent of their buildings was brick; and marble 'facings,' columns, and pavements came in to give finish and beauty to their solid brickwork. Indeed, to this fact we owe it that so much is still left to us. The barbarous rapacity of the Middle Ages, which ruthlessly appropriated these enrichments, would no doubt have taken all, had all been marble.

Our author regards the myths which connect the early Romans with the Greeks, and with the Trojans under Æneas, as belonging rather to the domain of poetry than history, and confining himself to the facts as illustrated by these ruins, begins with the Palatine, as the hill originally occupied by the first fathers of the Romans; and he gives us, in chronological order, as far as possible, notices of all ruins now uncovered there. He then passes on to the Capitoline, as having been occupied next in point of time, dealing with it in the same manner; after this we return southward to the Aventine; thence, turning east, we cross the valley of the Circus Maximus to the Cælian Hill, and then proceed northward to the Esquiline, the Viminal, Quirinal, and Pincian, in succession. On all these we are introduced to the remains of ancient buildings; their chronology, their identity, their extent, their present condition, and their associations with such historic matter as has come down to us, are all set before us with great accuracy of detail. Then we cross the Tiber, and visit Janiculum and the Vatican Hill; recrossing into the valleys among the hills, we visit the Circus Maximus, the Campus Martius (now occupied by the modern city), and the Via Lata. The 'Forum' (Romanum) is discussed in the earlier part of the work, and with it the Fora of the emperors, which were meant to supersede it and its associations, and did so. The line of the walls of Servius, built mainly of the tufa already mentioned, in large rectangular blocks, is traced all round the city with ingenious care; and then the more extensive walls of Aurelian, with notices of the fortifications of the present day. Before we have done we take a delightful, though hasty, run through the Campagna. We visit Hadrian, at his villa Tiburtina (Tivoli); Cicero, at Tusculum (Frascati); and dear old Horace, at his Sabine farm. At Laurentum we inspect, in detail, the country seat of our communicative host, the unlucky Pliny, who perished miserably when Pompeii was destroyed.

We would gratefully acknowledge our sense of obligation to our intelligent guide; and shall reckon it henceforward as among our pleasantest reminiscences that we have thus visited with him the spot where Virginia bled, where Cicero spoke, where Cæsar fell; that we have, in his company, trodden the Forum, the Capitol, and the Appian way; and wandered, silent and awe-stricken at their grandeur, in the golden house of Nero, the Forum of Trajan, the Coliseum of Vespasian, and the baths of Diocletian.

We must not close our notice without a word about the maps and ground plans, and the illustrations. All are worthy of the work. Here and there, in the ground plans, we miss the arrow-head, indicating the points of the compass, and this, we hold, should always be put in; and if the illustrations, engraved from photographs, as we are told, are a trifle too sharp and hard, we gain in accuracy what we lose in beauty, and would not have it otherwise. We heartily thank Mr. Burn for his valuable work, and his publishers for the style in which they have put it forth; and shall be only too happy to find it in our portmanteau when we next visit Rome.

The Wonders of Engraving. By Georges Duplessis. Illustrated with Ten Reproductions in Autotype, and Thirty-four Wood Engravings, by P. Selher. Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.

This translation of 'Les Merveilles de la Gravure' will doubtless, in the words of the editor, be 'acceptable to all lovers of this important and deeply interesting branch of art. It traces from its different origins in wood engraving and nielli, this effort of one high art to become the handmaid and herald of another, until the genius of the engraver has developed a comprehensive department of original design and elaborate artistic work of his own. Our author has told the story of this development as it unfolds itself in the different schools of Italian art in Spain, in Flanders, in Holland, in Germany, England, and France. This necessitates brief sketches of distinguished engravers in wood or copper, belonging to all these countries, with some account of their works. As many of these engravers are far better known to fame by their paintings, we have fresh interesting details concerning the life-work of Leonardo da Vinci, Marc Antonio Raimondi, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Lucas v. Leyden, Paul Potter, Hogarth, Gillray, Nicolas Poussin, and Claude Lorraine, with very many others. The author rather glories in a clever reference which he made of some anonymous engraving of the early Italian school to the hand of Leonardo himself, and in some interesting and independent confirmation of his guess, which he afterwards derived from other quarters. To those who have not made the art of engraving a practical and prolonged study, many of these chapters may have the appearance of a catalogue of strange names, and of partially comprehended work, rather than of a dissertation to make one wise. The transition is rapid from one great name to another, and the volume will be used as a book of reference rather that as a continuous treatise. The autotype copies of several old engravings, as well as numerous woodcuts, greatly enliven and enrich the pages. It is very interesting to see in this department of human endeavour, how great results have followed accidental discovery. The Italian goldsmiths, who, before running their enamel (nigellum) into the ornamented and engraved gold, tried the effect of their work by staining paper or linen, and by the impressions (nielli) which the engraved surface when first washed with colouring matter would produce, no more anticipated the extraordinary development which their chance trials would receive, than could the early printers have prophesied the marvels of the modern printing-press. M. Duplessis has briefly and clearly enumerated and described all, or nearly all, of the processes of engraving. We are surprised that he has not given some place to the wonderful process of lithography. The volume is a marvel of finish and beauty.

Art in the Mountains. By Henry Blackburn. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.

Mr. Blackburn is well-known as a traveller with a special faculty; he has an artist's eye, and his record of wanderings in Algeria, Spain, Normandy, are pages of picture. Hence was he the very man to make a pilgrimage into the Bavarian highlands, and bring back an intelligible account of that strange Passion-Play performed by the peasants of Ober-Ammergau; and excellently well he has done it. There is something strange, something almost weird in the enactment of a mediæval miracle-play in this nineteenth century—by peasants, too, who are some of them before Paris by this time, obeying Bismarck's iron will. Extremes meet in the oddest manner. As to this old-fangled representation, which has come off once a decade for the last two centuries, there seems to be nothing irreverent about it. They are a child-like folk, these Bavarian peasants; they have no Prussian geist; they possess a strong imitative faculty, such as belonged to the first villagers who, in ancient Greece, originated what we now call comedy. Mr. Blackburn's illustrations amply show what sort of people they are. Look at the maiden at page 59, with the mild bovine eye that Homer loves to attribute to Hebe, and the well-shapen yet utterly unlightened face, and the comfortable, unfascinating curves of shoulder and arm, a woman—a dull, good, unimaginative 'young person'—with no tendency towards witchery or ladyhood. Having examined that portrait, you have no difficulty in understanding how it is that a Passion-Play lives alongside the railway and the telegraph. The slow-moving, cow-eyed maiden is typical; that she would heartily and reverently enjoy the show of our Lord's Passion is clear enough. But how long she, and such as she, will crawl on in their snail-like groove, now that our 'own correspondent' has appeared in Ammergau, now that the representatives of Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate have gone together to besiege Paris, is a question not easy to settle. Mr. Blackburn states that there will probably be ten performances of the Passion Play in 1871, and that then it will not be repeated till 1880. We commend anybody who really desires to see it to go to Ammergau next year. We move fast nowadays—that Bavarian village will be quite another sort of place in 1880.

Church Design for Congregations: its Developments and Possibilities. By James Cubitt, Architect. With nineteen plates. Smith and Elder.

The practical divorce of Art and Utility has told nowhere more disastrously than in the building of churches. Gothic buildings with 'long-drawn aisles and fretted roof,' designed and adapted for the processional and ritual worship of the Romish Church, have for three centuries been the dreary reverberating theatres of Protestant reading and preaching. Perhaps few of us could recall a more comfortless ideal than a rural parish church in winter, half the congregation excluded from seeing, and the other half from hearing the monotonous reader of prayers and sermons. Nonconformists, while rightly deeming that the Episcopal Church had no monopoly of Gothic architecture, have not been always wise in their appropriation of it. They have built the old Gothic church with its nave, two aisles, transepts, and chancel, its clustered stone pillars and clerestory, utterly unmindful of the fact that of all styles of ecclesiastical building it was the most unsuited for their worship and preaching. Their dignified discomfort led to the substitution of iron columns, as incongruous, and, in artistic effect, as ugly as anything that could be imagined—'a mediæval church,' as Mr. Cubitt says, 'in the last stage of starvation.' If we must have nave and aisles, as he justly remarks, we seem shut up either to bad arrangement or bad architecture. Fame and fortune await the architect who can create a new order of buildings for Congregational worship which shall avoid both. Mr. Cubitt seems ambitious to attempt this, and he breaks a lance with old conventionalism with great courage and skill. The type that is required, he says, 'does not present itself in the ordinary nave and aisles plan, whether its nave-piers are thick or thin; but it may be hopefully sought in either of these two ways—'by designing our churches without columns at all, or by designing them with substantial columns placed where they will cause no obstruction. The former system is already adopted in small buildings, and there are some signs of its future employment on a larger scale. It allows great variety of form. Its plans may be oblong, cruciform, circular, or polygonal; or still better, a fresh combination of three different elements. On the latter system the columns may be few in number and far apart, or they may be placed so near the side walls as to obscure, not the seats, but only the passages leading to them. We may thus have either the wide nave with narrow side aisles, or the ordinary nave with very wide bays, or both together. We may plan a grand open space before the pulpit and communion table—surely a natural arrangement for a Protestant Church—and we shall find ample scope for architecture in its external and internal treatment.' The subsequent chapters are virtually a development and illustration of these ideas. The writer advocates the admission of the dome into Gothic architecture; he has much to say on behalf of the Eastern mosque; and no one who has stood in the vast and simple area of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, built, it must be remembered, as a Christian church, could fail to have been greatly impressed with its magnificent congregational capabilities. Galleries in theatre form, iron column churches, lanterns, and most other things that perplex church builders, are discussed. The merit of Mr. Cubitt's work is that it is strictly utilitarian. It recognises the actual necessities, not only of Congregational worship, but of Congregational church builders; it boldly grapples with all inartistic incongruities; it avoids 'schools' and 'orders,' and honestly seeks to supply what is wanted under genuine artistic conditions. Abundance of plates and drawings illustrate Mr. Cubitt's theories. We heartily commend this book to all whom it may concern, as the most independent, intelligent, and scholarly attempt in the direction indicated that has been made.

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POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.

The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens. Words written for Music, by Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate; the Music by Arthur Sullivan. Strahan.

So many rumours have been for so long in circulation about this volume, and the names of its joint authors are so eminent, that it is not surprising it should have excited much curiosity and many hopes. We venture to predict that neither the curiosity nor the hopes will be disappointed. Mr. Tennyson's songs need not fear being 'tested' in the same crucible with the 'Lotos Eaters,' or 'In Memoriam,' or we may add with 'Maud,' or the 'Princess.' Nor will Mr. Sullivan's music be found less characteristic of his genius, or other than fully worthy of the words to which it has been composed.

The 'Window' is, we believe, the first attempt in English—certainly the first attempt of any eminent English poet—to cast a series of events or emotions into the form of a set of connected songs. Wordsworth's well-known series of sonnets are an approach to the same thing; but the song—a composition of two or three stanzas, suitable to music—is not so favourite a form with English poets as with those of Germany. There the cycle of songs—the Liederkreis or Liedercyclus—is better known. Readers of Heine and Chamisso will remember more than one instance. We are glad to welcome it to English literature, not only as a new form of verse, but also because of the promise which it gives of many a marriage between fine poetry and fine music—a marriage hitherto far too rare among us.

The 'Window,' then, is a 'circle of songs,' twelve in number, describing the hopes and fears of a lover parted from his mistress, and uncertain what her reply will be to the great question he has asked her.

In the first—'On the hill'—he stands on the slope of the valley which separates his home from hers, and as he looks across the distance sees the flash from the window-pane of his love:—

He knows the window of which the flash has thus come to him, and is familiar with all the charm both of what surrounds it, and what it enshrines:—

The flowers are there, but their mistress is gone:—

The winter comes, but our lover holds out in spite of the season:

and it passes, and spring-time comes, with

At last he can bear the suspense no longer—

The letter is sent, and no answer comes; and then he despairs, as he well may, and in the 'wet west wind' of the spring he wishes himself dead:

The answer is still delayed:—

But at length it comes:—

and its tenour is obvious, from the rapture of the reader—

the rhyme to 'Why' being of course 'Ay.'

After this the progress of things need no telling.

The last song of the series is too fine and too even a union of fancy, feeling, and art not to be quoted entire—

Surely these songs, even in the fragmentary state in which we have been forced to give them, will be recognized as the work of a great master, by everyone who has the feeling and the fancy requisite for any appreciation of poetry, and are surely as worthy of Mr. Tennyson's genius as Shakspeare's songs are of his, or the lyrics in 'Wilhelm Meister' of Goethe's. They are full of the old exquisite art that has endeared the songs of the 'Princess' to so many thousand hearts. We find here, as in those and other old favourites, those lovely and indescribable touches which seem to paint in sound or air the very things they name—the

the

There is the alliteration that is so magical because so seldom used—

There are the familiarity with nature and the accurate observation at once so characteristic of English poetry and of Mr. Tennyson's muse—

There too the hundred links of connexion which bind the twelve songs into one golden chain—the constant references to the 'light,' or the 'blaze,' or the 'flash,' or the 'window pane,' which form the keynote of the whole; and lastly the human sentiment at once so deep and broad which fuses the whole into poetry in its noblest sense—all these proclaim the deep and abiding worth of this unpretending series of lyrics.

The Shakspearian ring in one or two of them (especially in No. 8), is as obvious, though in a different vein, as in any of the well-known lyrics in the 'Idylls of the King.'

It will be obvious that we do not agree with those who regard Mr. Tennyson's last effort as 'a trifle from beginning to end.' Slight in texture it may be, but slightness is not triviality.

Mr. Sullivan's task in setting these charming songs to music has not been without its difficulties. The very qualities which render verse characteristic of its author often militate strongly against its adaptability to music. The subtleties which form the main charm of the poet may be mere blemishes and hindrances to the musician. Irregularity of metre and variety of form are among his most serious difficulties. What the composer requires is a strong pervading sentiment or idea to inspire character to his music, with regular even verse for the vehicle. The finest songs of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann are written to little poems of the simplest structure, almost always in stanzas of four lines of eight or ten feet, the syllables linked together in easy concatenation. Such are the 'Auf Flügeln des Gesanges,' the 'Widmung,' the 'Junge Nonne,' and the 'Sey mir gegrüsst.' Was it instinct or calculation that led Goethe, Heine, Eichendorff, and other great poets of Germany, to throw so many of their enchanting thoughts and passionate emotions into these simple forms? Whichever it was, the end has fully justified the means; and the poems of these great geniuses have a double beauty and a double gift of immortality in the strains of their composer-brethren. Now the very charm of the songs of the 'Window' on which we have been insisting, and so rightly insisting, are all in opposition to those of the poems just spoken of. What is he to make of such stanzas as

or such unequal lines as

or,

or,

If we want to see what can be made of them, by what adroit shifts their difficulties can be avoided and overcome, we have only to turn to Mr. Sullivan's music; and the examination will well repay the trouble, and will open the eyes of anyone who was not before aware of the laws which must govern verse that is to be married to music. No. 6 has been altered since it was set, and we thus have the advantage of two versions.

For the music itself we must really refer our readers to the book. Dissertations on music, unless in connection with actual performance, or with technical study, are very much like attempts to paint a sunrise in words. At any rate, without musical quotations, any description of these songs would be unintelligible.

The finest of the set are indisputably the first and the last. Next, perhaps, for depth of sorrow, comes No. 7, 'The mist and the rain.' No. 3, 'Gone,' with its persistent accompaniment, is beautiful. Of the tender songs, Nos. 9 and 10 are especially charming, while No. 4 is a bold air, which we venture to predict will be in the mouth of many an amateur baritone before a month is out. We have only one word of regret to add—if regret be not too strong a term. We wish that Mr. Sullivan had availed himself of the chance which the words gave him to do what Beethoven has so finely done in his 'Liederkreis,' namely, to re-introduce the melody of the first song in the last one, and thus make his work really a 'circle.' But this is so obvious that we do not doubt he had some sufficient reason for not doing it.

Mr. Sullivan has written many fine songs; and indeed great as is his genius for the orchestra, it often seems as if it were equally great for vocal music. And it is not too much to say that in this direction at least, his last effort has been his greatest, and that these songs surpass all that he has written before. Of their popularity among the best class of amateurs—that class which we delight to believe is rapidly increasing—there can be no doubt. They will want not only good singing, but what is rarer still, good accompanying, and we trust some opportunity may be shortly found for their being given in public by Mr. Reeves and Mr. Stockhausen, or Mr. Santley, accompanied by the composer himself. After that we are bold enough to hope that he may score some of them for the orchestra. Connected though they be, they are not indivisible, and there are several which would not suffer by being taken from their place in the 'cycle' and transferred singly to the concert-room.

The Paradise of Birds. By William John Courthope. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.

Verily the young English poet who dares tread in the footsteps of the Attic Aristophanes has a fine audacity. This does Mr. Courthope, and not altogether without justification. He is a lover of birds; he is disgusted at the way in which they are murdered at pigeon matches, and for the adornment of ladies' hats. He goes to Aristophanes for inspiration, and gives us a very charming poem as the result. Mr. Courthope is unquestionably a poet. The fault we find in limine is, that he is not sufficiently original and varied in rhyme and rhythm, for a professed follower of Aristophanes. All the birds of the air sing in the pages of the mighty Greek, sing in character, with the very music that belongs to them. We cannot say this of Mr. Courthope, yet is he often fortunate and felicitous. Here is the Nightingale, pitying us unfeathered bipeds:

Wings! ay, that is what we should all of us like. Fancy being able to soar and tumble in mid-ether, like those pigeons that flash round our roofs. Fancy having power to follow the summer like 'the temple-haunting martlet,' which leaves its house under our eaves for a residence somewhere in Central Asia! What Mr. Courthope wants, in our judgment, is greater imaginative intensity: he plays laughingly with his theme, and even so did Aristophanes, his master; but he does not attain as yet the lofty poetry, the strong humour, which are born of earnestness in Aristophanes.

The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis; and other Poems. By Tankerville Chamberlayne, B.A. Hurst and Blackett.

There is curious variety of style, of finish, and of theme in this little volume. A classical epos is followed by a monody on Lord Derby, and translations from Horace and Heine. Elegies on Napoleon, Peabody, and Mozart, are interspersed with love ditties and theological speculations. A discussion of the probable condition of Napoleon's soul in the other world is terminated by the following most inappropriate couplet:—

There is some spirit and fire in the 'Song of the Rhine,' weakened, however, by sad doggrel. The impression produced by the whole is, that an accomplished and well-meaning graduate has favoured the public with the contents of his college portfolio without due selection.

Loveland, and other Poems chiefly concerning Love. By Wade Robinson. London and Dublin: Moffat and Co.

There is a charm of novelty and freshness about these poems. The thoughts expressed are often both original and beautiful; and in this lies the chief attraction of the book. The language in which the thoughts are clothed is not remarkable for elegance, and the style is occasionally rather obscure, but the reader will find it worth his while to take the little trouble that may now and then be needed fully to grasp the author's meaning. There is no particular arrangement in the poems, but they all turn in some way on the subject indicated in the title-page; one (by no means the best of them) describing an Utopian world perverted and ruled by love alone. There is an elevated tone of feeling about the work in general, befitting the high theme to which it is devoted. We will content ourselves with one specimen of the poetry, though it would be easy to select many. The following lines are taken from a short poem called 'Spring-time in the Woods':—

Poems. By William Tidd Matson. Groombridge and Sons.

The Inner Life: a Poem. By William Tidd Matson. Elliot Stock.

Mr. Matson does not now first come before the world as a poet, but in his best poem, on 'The Inner Life,' he has done something better than any of his previous productions. The book consists of meditations, not perhaps very strictly connected, yet passing naturally from one into another—all treating on themes of the deepest interest, as the title implies; the poetical strains adding greatly to the charm of the Christian philosophy that is conveyed in them. It is true poetry, though not poetry of the highest order. The reader of this little work will be glad to turn to a volume of poems by the same author which appeared some years ago. Mr. Matson speaks in the preface to this book of the joy he has found in poetry. We do not feel in his case as we are sometimes tempted to do, that the poet himself is the only person benefited—the pleasure found in making the verse being the only pleasure it can ever afford. Far from this: we are much indebted to Mr. Matson for giving his poetry to the world. The versification is unusually easy and flowing—no straining after effect; no determination to be original at all costs: all seems to come naturally and without effort. There is an evenness of merit in the poems which would make it difficult to specify one above another; but one characteristic marks them all, and distinguishes them from those of many other writers, i.e., the Christian sentiment by which they are all pervaded. Instead of the wail of unrelieved disappointment and regret for the past, and dark and vague forebodings for the future, the voice of resignation and heavenly hope is never wanting, mingled with the plaintive strains in which we always expect to hear a poet sing. We cordially recommend both the books to all lovers of this class of poetry among our readers.

The In-Gathering. By John A. Heraud. Simpkin, Marshall and Co.

Mr. Heraud, whose first poem was published in 1820, ten years before Tennyson, shows no perceptible decrease of poetic faculty now, after the lapse of half a century. It is doubtless true with some men that

The little volume before us contains 'Cimon and Pero,' a series of two hundred somewhat mystical sonnets under the title of 'Alcyone,' and several minor poems. 'Cimon and Pero,' which we prefer to any of the other poems, is based on the fine old story, told by Valerius Maximus, of the Greek woman, who, to save her imprisoned father from starvation, fed him at her own breast. Mr. Heraud has avowedly chosen to tell the tale in the austere style of Wordsworth's noble 'Laodamia,' and not without success. It may be but a fable this, but no fable is devoid of significance, and we may say with Valerius, 'Putaret aliquis hoc contra rerum naturam factum, nisi deligere parentes prima naturæ lex esset.' Several of the minor poems have a delicate beauty: among these may specially be noted the short lyric entitled 'Eres,' which is quite in Herrick's vein; the well-known story of 'The Brides of Venice' is also pleasantly told. The author's admirers will be glad to find that he has still the vigour and versatility of his youth, with greater skill of artistic execution.

The Poetical Works of William Cowper. Edited, with Notes and Biographical Introduction, by William Benham, Vicar of Addington. Globe Edition. Macmillan and Co.

It was a matter of course that Cowper's works should form a volume of the Globe series. His popularity has scarcely waned since he first became the poet of the religious world, beloved for his piety by those who had but small appreciation of his poetry, and admired for his poetry by those who had but little sympathy with his themes or his spirit. As a realistic painter of middle-class life he anticipated, and in delicacy and sensibility infinitely surpasses Crabbe; while as a humorist of the purest water he took the kind of hold upon the general public that Sydney Smith afterwards did—only Cowper's humour was more delicate and subtle—and as a poet of nature he was the literary progenitor of Wordsworth. Mr. Benham's biographical introduction is very carefully and very modestly done. He is, we think, right in his judgment on the point questioned by the Spectator, 'that Lady Austen would gladly have married Cowper;' and perfectly conclusive, we think, is the evidence concerning the contemplated marriage with Mary Unwin. Newton and Bull were Cowper's most intimate friends, and the denial of Southey, who was by no means so accurate as the Spectator assumes, cannot be put against their positive and explicit evidence. The works are arranged in chronological order, and the notes are intelligent, accurate, and true. Altogether, we possess in the Globe volume the best edition of Cowper hitherto given to the world.

The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, reprinted from the Originals, with the latest Corrections of the Authors; together with the poems of Charles Wesley not before published. Collected and arranged by E. Osborn, D.D. Vols. VII. to X.

This admirably edited collection of the poetical works of the Wesleys proceeds steadily towards its completion. It reveals a surprising fecundity of verse, and an amazing degree of sustained fervour, strength, and excellence. There are treasures of song in Charles Wesley's compositions, unused and unknown as yet by the Church, that would give him high rank as a hymn writer, independently of the compositions which are in every church and on every lip. We do not think he ever reaches the reverent sublimity of the best hymns of Watts. Watts, for instance, would scarcely have used the somewhat incongruous adjective 'tremendous deity;' nor would Watts have fallen into the German jingles of some of his metres; but in devout inspiration, sacred passion, and felicitous verse, Wesley holds his own against any hymn writer of the Church of Christ. We shall have more to say concerning him when the collection of his poetical works is complete. The eighth volume contains his admirable version of the Psalms, and a great variety of personal and national hymns, which furnish a kind of devotional commentary on the history of both. The ninth volume consists of the first portion of the short hymns on 'Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures.' The two-volume edition of 1762 has long been a table book with us. We specially commend some of Wesley's exquisite poetical versions or uses—this, for instance:—

A Syren. By J. Adolphus Trollope. Three vols. Smith, Elder and Co.

Mr. J. A. Trollope has returned to the scenes of his first love—to Italian skies, artists, maidens, marchesi, and friars. We are plunged at once into the hot sunshine and tropical excitements of a Ravennese Carnival. The author gives us exuberant descriptions of female beauty, of fastidious adornment, dexterous deshabille motivée, and of fierce sexual passion met by cold calculating resolve to play a high stake without love, or faithfulness, or even wisdom. Mr. Trollope is matchless in his portraiture of Italian artistes, and of the simple contadina of refined and delicate taste, and pure seraphic devotion to the one over-mastering affection. He has, in this story, contrasted the natures of two beautiful portionless girls, who by strange fortune are thrown, during the same carnival, into the way of the two Marchesi Castelmare. The one is an opera singer, the other a painter. The former resolves on making a conquest of the elder nobleman, and the latter does win the affections of the younger. The uncle is described as the pattern of the highest virtue, of stone-cold passions, of infinite proprieties; and La Lalli, the syren, succeeds during the carnival in bewitching, maddening, and befooling him into promise of marriage, and inspiring the most deadly jealousy of any interference with his claim. A noble nature is ruined by the fierce fires of a foolish attachment, and most tragic are the issues. We will not diminish the fascination of the story by revealing its secret. La diva Lalli is actually murdered on the very day when the old marchese has publicly admitted his intention to marry her, and everybody but the murderer seems to have run the risk of having to bear the brunt of the charge. More than a volume is occupied with an endeavour to answer the question, 'Who has done the deed?' There is more delicacy, and subtlety, and meaning in the inquiry, than in the inquiry, 'Who killed Tulkinghorn?' and the reader is reminded of the heart-searching of Mr. Browning's 'Ring and Book,' rather than of Mr. Dickens's popular story. The story cannot be called pleasing or profitable. It is a wonderful drawing, full of brilliant effects, and crowded with narrative and suggestion. The style is clear, and the Italian expletives and appellatives give it an operatic grace and sweetness that are very attractive. If 'tesoro mio' had been translated 'duck of diamonds,' and the rest of the prettiness turned into plain English, perhaps the blue sky and the circolo and the carnival would have had to vanish likewise.

Against Time. By Alexander Innes Shand. Two vols. Smith, Elder and Co. 1870.

The machinery that Mr. Shand has contrived is clumsy, and looks like a violent effort to be original. The hero of the story is put into circumstances of maddening temptation to make money by unfair means. He is exasperated by discovering that a relative has made him sole heir to her vast estates, on the proviso that in the course of three years he developes out of the few thousands that are left to him, a fortune equal to that which he may then receive. On his failing to fulfil this condition, the designation of the property is concealed from all except a pair of contemptible villains, who endeavour to play a series of underhand tricks to secure it ultimately for their own uses. The hero came from the Kursaals of Germany to hear of this race that he had to run 'against time,' and he is determined, by huge speculation, to win the prize. The monetary scheme, the Credit Foncier and Mobilier of Turkey, is described by one who has seen the eggs of many of these vipers hatched in the sun of England's prosperity. There is a grandeur about the conception, and a rapidity in the inflation of this great balloon, that is enough to take away the breath of ordinary financiers. The young aristocrat is the Ulysses in council, the Achilles in strife, the Bayard sans peur, sans reproche; and though he makes, in the course of three years, some quarter of a million sterling, and might claim the possession of family estates, he has positively contrived to withdraw the greater part of it from the 'concern,' and to have done it without dishonour. He has been dabbling up to the elbows in boiling pitch, and is neither scorched, nor blistered, nor defiled. Most surprising is his nobility. When the bubble bursts, he has the magnanimity and magnificence voluntarily to sacrifice his splendid fortune, and more splendid prospects, at the shrine of the honour which seems for a moment in the dust. Finally, of course it all turns out for the best, and the young lady who has won the heart of the great financier is prepared to second his sublime sacrifice, and as the two are starting for Australia in beautiful poverty, it turns out that on the bridegroom's failing to fulfil the conditions of the will, the penniless bride has herself become the heiress of the immense estates, and so the pair are happy ever after. There is much brilliant writing in the story, some caustic satire, and a great deal of clever and pleasant characterization.

Diary of a Novelist. By the Author of 'Rachel's Secret,' 'Nature's Nobleman,' &c. Hurst and Blackett. 1871.

The title of this volume is attractive. What speculations and hopes are excited by the mere announcement, 'Diary of a Novelist!' The secrets into which curious readers have attempted to pry are about to be unfolded, the originals of the characters described are to be revealed, a real personal living interest is to surround the author's fictions ever after. What would we give to have such a diary from the pen of George Eliot or Charles Dickens! But amid such a rush of eager anticipations, we turn to the book itself, and find that no explanations are given—the authoress does not lift the veil. It is the journal of a year's most striking thoughts and noteworthy experiences. The first feeling is one of disappointment that the volume is so different from our expectations; but disappointment soon changes into hearty admiration and sincere gratitude. It is emphatically a good book. Sympathy with all that is beautiful and noble pervades the whole, and it is written with the ease of a practised hand. The rippling chat runs on through a succession of bright sunny scenes, ever and anon deepening into shady pools of profounder thought, and then again merrily hastening on its way. We are permitted to read the aims of this novelist's life, so true, pure, earnest, that we involuntarily exclaim, 'O si sic omnia!' There is also a cheerful religiousness in this diary, which will equally surprise those who think that a fiction-writer's only use is for amusement, and those who indiscriminately condemn all novels as unmitigated evils. The following sentence gives us the key-note of the book:—'I like to feel that this fair earth, which God has made, which even now, where man has not marred it, keeps the touch of his hand upon it still—breathes back its life to Him in love. And so the whole world becomes to me at once a Temple and a Home—a place for worship and for happy life: and I live in it, not alone, but sharing with all created things in the great Father's care, and joining with them in their many-voiced psalm of love and praise.' The charming sketches of natural scenery show the touch of an artist and a poet; the outline descriptions of character reveal the writer as a keen observer of human life; while her reflections on some of the tangled problems of the world tell us that she, too, has wrestled with the mighty mystery, and found peace only in trust.

We notice an exuberance of enthusiasm which might be toned down with advantage to the general style. The attempt to transcribe the Yorkshire dialect is not successful; but, as we have ourselves failed in that accomplishment, we appreciate the difficulty, and only notice the fact—'a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.'

The Iliad of the East. By Frederick Richardson. Macmillan.

The title of this book is of course ad captandum; the East has no Iliad, in any intelligible sense. What is here offered us is a series of legends, taken from Valmiki's Sanskrit poem, the 'Ramagana,' and taken from the French version of M. Fauche. It is a readable little volume, and may be recommended to those who desire to obtain some slight knowledge of the early Sanskrit poetry. When we compare a work like the Ramagana with the Iliad and Odyssey, we cannot avoid the conclusion that in the Greek mind there existed a vivid view of poetry, which is quite absent from the Hindoo mind. Rama's adventures are absurdly grotesque. We meet garrulous vultures, chivalrous monkeys, and so forth. The supreme imagination, which obtains a sublime effect by depicting humanity in its intensest forms, as in Achilles, Diomed, Odysseus, as in Helen, Andromache, Penelope, has no place in the Oriental poems. They are childish, exaggerated, mere nursery tales. The theorists, foremost among whom is Mr. Max Müller, who conceived that both the Greek and Sanskrit poetry come from one source, ought assuredly to explain to us why there exists so wide a difference between the Homeric poems and all the Oriental cycle. Homer's epic, like the goddess Athene, seems to have sprung perfect in person and panoply from the brain of its creator. The Eastern pseudo-epics are mere strings of ridiculous stories, with no definite connection, no beginning, middle, or end. This manifest literary difference would appear to indicate some definite racial difference. Valmiki is not an entirely unreadable author, but between Homer and him there is about as much difference as between Shakespeare and Quallon. Now, what the Sanskrit scholars ought surely to do for us is to state some theory whereby to account for the fact that their favourite language contains no literature worth perusal. There is neither the poetry of the Greek nor the theosophy of the Hebrew in Sanskrit. Hence we venture to infer that there is some innate racial distinction as yet undiscovered by the modern ethnologist.

John. By Mrs. Oliphant. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.

Mrs. Oliphant's delicate touch in social description is too well known for it to be necessary to dwell upon it here. She is one of the few lady-novelists who improve as they go on; the truth being that she has never sought to obtain startling effects by absurd means, but has always studied nature and human nature. In 'John,' re-published from Blackwood's Magazine, which is a novelette rather than a novel, she is very felicitous. There is no more story than Canning's knife-grinder had to tell: it is a mere love-tale, 'Silly sooth,' as Shakespeare hath it. John is a country parson's son, and Kate is a banker's daughter, and she is thrown from her horse near the parsonage, and has to be taken there, and as she convalesces makes sad havoc with poor John. A simple story, but charming in its simplicity. The situation is well conceived. Dr. Clifford is a worldly person; his son John is utterly unworldly; Crediton, the banker, is a plutocrat of the first force; Kate is a spoilt child, who means to have her own way in marriage. The end of it all is easily conceivable; but the comedietta is played out with consummate skill, especially by its heroine. We are less interested in her lover than in her; and although doubtless Mrs. Oliphant is an able nomenclator, we venture to think that the book would have more properly represented its title if that title had been 'Kate.'

From Thistles—Grapes? By Mrs. Eiloart, Author of 'The Curate's Discipline,' 'Meg,' &c., &c. In three vols. Richard Bentley, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, New Burlington-street.

Given a bundle of thistles, how many bunches of grapes can it produce? Answer, none. This theory Mrs. Eiloart seeks to develope to its fullest extent; and, as a natural consequence, we find the miserable 'grapes,' the son, dangling by the neck on the scaffold whither the testimony of the 'thistles,' the unnatural parent, has sent him. There is nothing so new or original in the plot of the novel as the title, which with its note of interrogation at once arouses the interest of the reader, an interest which unfortunately goes little further than the title-page. The scene is laid in a cathedral town of England. Dr. Langton, a sanctimonious divine, who has sown a terrible crop of wild oats, as well as 'thistles' in his early youth, excites the enmity of one of his parishioners, a ragged vagabond, who has been convicted of robbery, and sentenced to one month's imprisonment in the county jail. The fellow, having escaped from durance, is concealed by the hero till morning, and succoured by the heroine in a wood, where he lies helpless and prostrate from a sprained ankle. But unfortunately Dr. Langton, passing by that way, discovers the poor wretch of whom the officers are in pursuit, struggling amidst the brambles, and instantly gives the alarm. The vagabond is consequently conveyed back to prison, muttering threats and imprecations against his betrayer. From these preliminary incidents arise a series of events, which, as they pass before us, we salute with all the reverence to which they are entitled from their venerable age and ancient service. But notwithstanding the long acquaintance we have enjoyed, in the land of romance, with the greater part of the adventures contained in these three volumes, some of them appear before us with their old garments so delicately patched and mended with Mrs. Eiloart's new materials that we willingly forget the proverbial weariness of the thrice-told tale. The death of the heroine is well managed. The kindness to the wretched offender, her efforts to drag him out of the mire into the atmosphere of intelligence and feeling, meets with the usual result. He becomes deeply enamoured of the sweet gentle girl according to the brutal instincts of his nature, and pushes her through the wood even to the brink of the precipice down which she is bent on throwing herself, maddened as she is with the discovery of the hero's attachment to another. The vagabond, whose brain is as usual muddled with beer, suddenly becomes sobered at the sight of her peril, and rushes forward to save her. Seizing her by the folds of her dress, the frail material gives way, and a portion of it remaining in his hand and afterwards found in his possession, becomes the circumstantial evidence, which causes his arrest. Now the thistles come forward to bear witness to having beheld the frantic flight of the girl through the wood, and the subsequent appearance of the boor on the very spot where she had met with her death. The testimony is crushing, the offender is condemned to die, and mounts the scaffold proclaiming his innocence. The revelation of the relationship in which he stands to his denouncer is made too late, and Dr. Langton arrives with the proof of the young lady's meditated suicide just in time to see his own illegitimate son swing in mid-air as the drop falls, and the shoutings of the crowd announce that all is over. The perseverance and tenacity of purpose which bear an author through the labour of executing three goodly volumes unaided in the task by incident, description, or dialogue, are beyond all praise. 'Il est si facile de ne point écrire,' exclaims Boileau. But the lady-writers of modern times evidently reverse the saying—with them it far more difficult to refrain.

'Six Months Hence.' Being Passages from the Life of Maria née Secretan. Three volumes. Smith, Elder and Co.

In the anonymous author of this story we have, we suspect, a new writer of fiction, and of considerable power. The novel is mainly a psychological one—although full of tragic incidents, and complicated in its plot. Indeed, the story is constructed with a mechanical ingenuity, which in the minuteness and mosaic of its incidents, is not unworthy of the author of the 'Lady in White.' The story is told autobiographically by the heroine, in a plain matter-of-fact way; full, however, of psychological self-analysis that would do credit to the author of 'Dr. Austin's Guests,' especially in the delineation of Fortescue's madness. The heroine enters upon a situation as governess in the family of Mr. Armitage, of Harcourt Villa, Hastings; who, being left a widower, with a son and daughter, Charles and Helen, has married, a second time, a woman of coarse nature and unscrupulous character, who has one son, Fred, a little boy of six. A Mr. Fortescue, an accomplished and wealthy young man, is a constant visitor at the villa, and is the presumptive lover of Helen, although he has never declared his love. Helen, and Maria, the governess, who are of the same age, become fast friends; gradually, however, Mr. Fortescue transfers his attentions to Maria, whose first guilt consists in yielding to ambitious desires, and permitting in herself and Mr. Fortescue treachery to her friend. The incipient attachment is strengthened by a long nursing of little Fred, who meets with an accident; the rescue of Maria from the tide by Mr. Fortescue precipitates matters, and they are secretly engaged to be married; two or three days before the intended disclosure of the engagement, and a few days before the intended marriage, Mr. Armitage dies, having, through the machinations of his wife, made an iniquitous will, whereby little Fred is made his heir in the event of his attaining the age of twenty-one; should he die before that age, the estates revert to the natural heir, no other provision being made. Maria and Mr. Fortescue are married. On the very week of their arrival at Dalemain Castle, Mr. Fortescue's seat in Cumberland, little Fred is murdered,—Mr. Fortescue being absent from home on some business in another part of Cumberland. Helen is suspected and tried; then suspicion falls upon Charles, against whom circumstantial evidence is strong, and public indignation stronger still. The mob at Lewes attempt to lynch him on the day of his trial, and he receives injuries of which he dies. In the meanwhile, Maria discovers that she has married a maniac, who inherits the fatal taint from his grandmother. In the event of such a contingency, by the grandfather's will, the property is to go to the next heir. Now comes the struggle between Maria's cupidity and her conscience; she tries to hide the fact of her husband's insanity, and discovers that, under a strong hallucination, he has been the murderer of little Fred. Again a struggle between selfishness and conscience—Helen is accused of the murder, and Maria conceals the evidence that will exculpate her, and, to put it out of her power to save her, goes with her husband into Switzerland; there she hears that the accusation is transferred to Charles, whom she has secretly but passionately loved. What conscience would not do for Helen, love does for Charles; she hastens to England with proofs of his innocence, but arrives only in time to see him die of the injuries received from the mob. All this is told with great power—the anatomy of selfishness in herself, of madness in her husband, and of love in Helen and Charles is very masterly, and almost painfully minute. The story is one of intense interest, and gives promise of another powerful writer of fiction, who, notwithstanding the feminine autobiography, and the minute analysis of female passions, is, we suspect, of the sterner sex.

The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. By One of the Firm. Edited by Anthony Trollope. Smith, Elder, and Co.

Mr. Trollope has, in this little brochure, essayed the epic of modern advertising. The following sentences epitomise the moral thereof:—Robinson, loquitur—'Did you ever believe an advertisement? Jones, in self-defence, protested that he never had. And why should others be more simple than you? No man, no woman, believes them. They are not lies; for it is not intended they should obtain credit. I should despise the man who attempted to build his advertisement on a system of facts, as I should the builder who lays his foundation on the sand. The groundwork of advertisement is romance. It is poetry in its very essence. Is Hamlet true?'

'I really do not know,' said Mr. Brown.

'There is no man, to my thinking, so false,' continued Robinson, 'as he who in trade professes to be true. He deceives, or endeavours to do so. I do not. Advertisements are profitable; not because they are believed, but because they attract attention.'

Per contra. 'The ticketing of goods at prices below their value is not to our taste, but the purchasing of such goods is less so. The lady who will take advantage of a tradesman, that she may fill her house with linen, or cover her back with finery, at his cost, and in a manner which her own means would not fairly permit, is, in our estimation, a robber. Why is it that commercial honesty has so seldom charms for women? A woman who would give away the last shawl from her back will insist on smuggling her gloves through the Custom-house. Is not the passion for cheap purchases altogether a female mania? And yet every cheap purchase—every purchase made at a rate so cheap as to deny the vendor his fair profit, is, in truth, a dishonesty—a dishonesty to which the purchaser is indirectly a party. Would that woman could be taught to hate bargains! How much less useless trash would there be in our houses, and how much fewer tremendous sacrifices in our shops?'

Those who read in the Cornhill Magazine this sketch of the advertising firm, its wonderful puffs, and the sensations they caused in Bishopsgate; with the unromantic, hard, business-like match-making which is interwoven with it, will remember with what a keen and somewhat cynical satire, too much upon a dead realistic level perhaps, the story is told. Those who have not read it there, are recommended to make themselves acquainted with it. It is but 'An Editor's Tale,' but its moral is wholesome and timely.

Mariette; or, Further Glimpses of Life in France. A Sequel to Marie. Bell and Daldy.

This story of humble life in the French provinces is intended as a sequel to that of 'Marie,' and is a mere narrative of events occurring in the daily existence of the humblest of serving women, who reports the sayings and doings of her masters, through the incidents, political and municipal, occurring in the good town of Nantes, where they reside. The book is amusing enough, a sort of French country town chronicle, such a record as Mrs. Gaskell would now and then give us of English life under the same conditions; there is nothing in it to stir the passions—nothing to irritate or vex; but on the other hand, nothing to soothe or calm the nerves. It resembles a long unbroken chant, as if from the lips of an aged crone, which neither commands the attention of the listener nor prevents him from bestowing it on anything else, and yet is regretted when it is over, simply because the scenes, the characters, the conversations are all familiar to our memory, and hallowed by long association. The little volume possesses one charm of its own. It is written without the smallest pretension, easy and simple in style, and delicately subdued in sentiment, in keeping with the character and station of the supposed narrator.

Lorna Doone. A Romance of Exmoor. By R. D. Blackmore. Sampson Low.

We spoke of this novel when it first appeared in almost the highest terms of commendation that we could command. A re-perusal of it only confirms our impression, that in scholarly conscientiousness, artistic skill, and romantic interest, it more nearly approaches the best of the Waverley novels than any fiction that has appeared since then. We can give it no higher praise. We only wonder that it has so tardily won the honours of a cheap edition.

The Victory of the Vanquished. A Tale of the First Century. By the Author of the Schönberg-Cotta Family. T. Nelson and Co.

In her new story, Mrs. Charles has ventured to tread the oft-trodden paths of the age of the Incarnation, and with a delicacy, grace, and devout tenderness that perhaps none of her predecessors have attained. The story opens in Rome in the year a.d. 17. Its personages are a captive German family, brought to Rome by Germanicus—slaves in his household, first becoming acquainted with the pagan life at Rome, then with the heaving Jewish life, which He who was Immanuel was stirring to its depths. Jew and Roman, Greek and Christian represent the various classes of contemporary life. Mrs. Charles is too refined and reverent an artist to bring us into the actual presence of him who taught in Capernaum; but we vividly feel and realize his life; and Siguna and her children, Seivord and Hilda, and Laon, the old Greek, and Clœlia Diodora, the Roman maiden, find its salvation. A more beautiful, pellucid, and tender story has rarely been written.

Chips from a German Workshop. By F. Max Muller, M.A., Foreign Member of the French Institute, &c. Vol. III., Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities. Longmans, Green, and Co.

The first and second volumes of Mr. Max Müller's occasional essays on the subject of comparative mythology, and on the so-called science of religious development, received the modest and quaint title of 'Chips from a German Workshop.' Our author has given the stress of his energy and the prime of his life to great undertakings. His edition of the 'Rig-Veda,' and now his elaborate translation and interpretation of its hymns, have not prevented his delivering important courses of lectures on the Science of Language. The great assistance he rendered to Baron Bunsen in his Oriental and philological speculations has been abundantly recognised by all students of the greater works of Bunsen. But scientific scholarship on this high scale has brought our author into contact with other and allied themes of literary research; and we find in the present volume a reprint of sixteen additional essays, of varied interest and merit, which greatly enhance our idea of the wide extent of Mr. Max Müller's scholarship, and are, moreover, of a class which may be safely commended to the general reader. Comparative grammar is clearly the key which this accomplished student of ancient and modern languages is tempted to use on all occasions, and for the solution of all puzzles, historical, theological, political, and even scientific. His keen and penetrating eye sees analogies, histories, reaches of civilization, bonds and bars of fellowship, in non-extant words, where one less trained to the business would utterly fail to discover them; and his linguistic omniscience makes us, in our ignorance, not seldom feel that he is too clever by half, and that his conclusions come almost too 'pat' upon his speculative theses. Be this as it may, we thank him very heartily for the exceeding refreshment and peculiar charm of this volume. The three articles on 'Cornish Antiquities,' on the question 'Are there Jews in Cornwall?' and on 'the Insulation of St. Michael's Mount,' which were written in 1867, form a trilogy of extreme interest. We have seldom read anything more perfect or complete in its way than his demolition of Mr. Pengelly's plausible theory, that the Cornish language was spoken before the insulation of St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, could have taken place; even though, geologically speaking, that event must be thrown back from 16,000 to 20,000 years. His learned refutation of the idea that Jews worked in the mines of Cornwall, in part effected by the discovery of the true etymology of the name of the town Marazion, on which so much had been built, and his instructive exposition of the nature and value of the Cornish antiquities and language, will well repay perusal.

The gem of the volume is the eloquent and affectionate tribute to the memory of Bunsen, in the form of a review of his memoirs. To these Max Müller has now added a valuable postscript, in a selection of some hundred letters addressed to himself by the great scholar and diplomatist. They are charged with kindly and generous feeling, and with noble enthusiasm; and they give fresh insight into Bunsen's astounding activity, far-reaching glance, and prodigious range of literary endeavour. They would many of them be more intelligible if they were read in their proper place in his biography; but the perusal of them recalls the zest with which three years ago the memoirs of this great man were devoured rather than read. We are not surprised that M. Müller should say, 'It has been my good fortune in life to have known many men whom the world calls great philosophers, statesmen, scholars, artists, and poets; but take it all in all, take the full humanity of the man, I have never seen, and I shall never see his like again.'

One of the essays to which we would direct special attention is that on the language and poetry of Schleswig-Holstein. The biographical articles on Schiller, and Wilhelm Müller, and some of the shorter 'chips' on 'Ye Schyppe of Fools,' 'Old German Love-songs,' and on 'A German Traveller in England, A.D. 1598,' are racy, and highly entertaining.

The World of Moral and Religious Anecdote; Illustrations and Incidents gathered from the Words, Thoughts, and Deeds in the Lives of Men, Women, and Books. By Edwin Paxton Hood. Hodder and Stoughton.

Mr. Hood is a man who reads everything, and who, making allowance for such slight inaccuracies as are characteristic of voracious readers, forgets nothing that he has read. It would be difficult to name a man better qualified to compile a volume of anecdotes. We wish, however, he would not call Samuel Bailey, the thoughtful author of the 'Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions,' Baillie. Eccentricities of this kind are frequent in Mr. Hood's writings, and not easy to be accounted for.

The volume published by Mr. Hood, under the more general title 'The World of Anecdote,' has met with a reception so favourable, that he has published this companion volume, 'The World of Religious Anecdote,' filled with anecdotes of religious men or things, gathered from a very wide circle of religious biography and history, and from all imaginable miscellaneous sources—from a quarterly review to a newspaper. Mr. Hood does not exaggerate the importance and significance of anecdote, either in history or biography; if exactly told, such incidents as constitute anecdote, indicate the movement or the man, more truthfully than formal disquisition. We do not pretend to have read through Mr. Hood's volume—this would be a task, less arduous only than to read through a dictionary—but we have read enough of it cordially to commend it as a repertory of many things that are both new and good, and of some that are neither.

The Essays of an Optimist. By John William Kaye. Smith, Elder, and Co.

Mr. Kaye tells us that he had no particular design when writing these papers; no purpose, that is, of illustrating any special philosophy. They were not to him a serious work—they were 'holiday tasks, written by snatches, and sent off piece by piece as they were written; the loose thoughts of a loose thinker, desultory, discursive,' written away from books, 'in country inns, or sea-side lodgings, or other strange places far away from home.' Criticism is exonerated from dealing in any serious way with a book so produced. Literature is not thus achieved. Cameo-cutting should be as artistic and patient as genre painting. Mr. Kaye is pleasantly garrulous, and intelligently superficial. He writes as one would write good letters; and what he writes is very pleasant to read. He throws the regulating good sense of a sober well-informed man upon such matters as Holidays, Work, Success, Growing Old, Toleration, &c. He has done and can do good work; therefore we accept with a certain degree of interest these 'chips.'

A Book of Golden Thoughts. By Henry Attwell, Knight of the Order of the Oak Crown, &c. Macmillan and Co.

This is one of the most charming volumes of the Golden Treasury series. The author, with rare discernment and fine taste, has selected the richest, sweetest thoughts of our greatest and wisest teachers on a marvellous variety of themes, but all tending in the direction of high spiritual culture. The apothegms or longer passages extracted from French or German writers are translated with delicate tact and placed in an appendix. The words of Pascal—J'ecrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein: c'est le veritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même—are placed at the head of the volume. It would take a long time to try and unravel the design of Mr. Attwell, but whoever wishes to have the choicest words of Bacon, Pascal, Montesquieu, Goethe, Ruskin, Helps, and many others, may find them here brought together into small compass, and presented in a very attractive form.

Publications of the Early English Text Society. 1870. Extra Series. Trübner and Co.

X.—The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, made by Andrewe Boorde, of Physycke Doctor.

A Compendyus Regyment, or a Dyetary of Helth. By the same Author.

Barnes in Defence of the Berde.

XI.—The Bruce. By Master John Barlowe, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, A.D. 1375.

These issues are not quite according to the Society's programme in their report of January last, which, stated that three or four other works besides the first part of the 'Bruce' were in the press for their extra series of 1870, and made no mention of the volume which Mr. Furnivall has edited. Indeed, the opportunity for his undertaking this work did not, he tells us, occur until February, when he purchased an early copy of the Dyetary at Mr. Corser's sale.

Dr. Andrew Boorde or Borde, was a Carthusian monk of Henry the Eighth's time, who 'was dyspensyd of the religion,' whatever that may mean—a point obscure to Mr. Furnivall—travelled over a great part of Europe, and returned to practise as a physician, having for his patient the Duke of Norfolk, when that great noble was in the Royal favour. Of several works which the Doctor wrote, Mr. Furnivall has printed two; in a preface and epilogue which he is pleased to style 'Forewords and Hindwords,' are collected many particulars of the author's life, and long extracts from others of his writings. 'The Introduction of Knowledge' is a book of travel, partly in rhyme, giving characteristics and specimens of the languages of the several countries the author had visited. The Dyetary is a book of hygiène, containing many prescriptions which modern physicians would approve. Both tracts abound in quaint, curious, and shrewd remarks. One of the Doctor's last works was a treatise on beards, which he seems to have condemned, and to have advocated shaving. For this Mr. Furnivall, who 'left off the absurdity some three years before his neighbours,' thinks him 'a noodle,' as it seems did 'Barnes, whoever he may be,' whose defence of the Berde is here printed. There is, however, some reason to suppose that the learned editor thinks Barnes was a noodle also. The subject is clearly a pet with him.

The 'Bruce' is well-known, and has been frequently reprinted, editions having appeared as lately as 1856 and 1869. The last was issued after Mr. Skeat had begun his labours; but its character was not such as to lead the Society to desire less the completion of their own edition. About half the poem is now printed. Mr. Skeat's preface and glossarial index await the publication of the second part. John Barlowe was the contemporary of Wycliffe, Chaucer, and Gower, and his poem is a worthy member of the group of noble works which were the first fruits of English literature. It may be called English, now that Scotland and England have a common inheritance, though it is a Scot's story of his countrymen's resistance to the dictation and encroachment of the English king, and the Archdeacon would doubtless have scorned and repudiated the epithet. The subject-matter of the poem is a great one. It tells how, on the death of King Alexander, a doubt arose, whether, according to the true law of inheritance, the Bruce or the Baliol ought to succeed to the throne; how the dispute was referred to the arbitration of the English Edward,—

how, instead of judging loyally, he seized the opportunity for insisting on his own claim to a feudal superiority over the Scottish crown, deciding for the Balliol because he 'Assentyt till him in all his will,' while the Bruce replied,—

how English invasion and Scottish insurrection followed, and how the long-baffled Bruce fought out his triumph. The story is told with archaic simplicity, but with much grace of diction.

The Riches of Chaucer, &c. By Charles Cowden Clarke. Second Edition, carefully Revised. Lockwood and Co.

Tales from Chaucer in Prose, designed chiefly for the use of Young Persons. By Charles Cowden Clarke. Second Edition, carefully Revised. Lockwood and Co.

Mr. Clarke is a veteran in the field of Shakespearian literature; although this is not necessarily a qualification for the exposition of Chaucer, who lived two centuries and a quarter earlier, and at the very dawn of our literature: the scholarly character of his Shakespearian work, however, is a presumption in favour of a worthy presentation of Chaucer. The work itself justifies this presumption. The first of these volumes is an expurgated, modernized, and accentuated edition of Chaucer. Scholars, or perhaps we should say, pedants, will likely enough turn up their noses at this, and pour upon Mr. Clarke the ridicule that has been the meed of Bowdler; but Chaucer and Shakespeare stand in different relations to modern popular readers. To such the archaic language of Chaucer makes him simply unintelligible, while his coarseness absolutely excludes him puerisque virginibus. No idolatry of English literature can warrant a parent in putting Chaucer as he is into the hands of his children. Nor can much moral benefit accrue to anyone from his perusal. If, therefore, Chaucer is to be a popular book at all, to be read by any but scholars, both processes are essential. Mr. Clarke has every desirable qualification for the work, which demands both a scholar and an artist. The accentuation of the rhythm too will be a great help to unpractised readers. This edition of Chaucer may be put into the hands of young people and modest women, with the assurance also that it will be easily understood and thoroughly enjoyed. We trust that through it our first and one of our greatest poets will be introduced into schools and homes, and win a popularity hitherto denied him.

The second volume is an attempt to reproduce the Tales of Chaucer in modern prose after the manner of Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare.' This is a far more arduous undertaking. Mr. Clarke tells us that he has endeavoured to render the poetry in as easy prose as he could, without at the same time destroying the poetical description and strong natural expressions of the author. Some of the long discussions are omitted, as of course is all that is offensive in coarse expression or allusion. The task has been difficult. 'I was,' Mr. Clarke says, 'to be at one and the same time modernly antique, prosaically poetic, and comprehensively concise.' That he has succeeded in so large a degree is very high merit. We trust his little volume will be widely read.

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THEOLOGY AND PHILOLOGY.

The Origin, and Development of Religious Belief. By S. Baring-Gould, M.A. Part II.—Christianity. Rivingtons.

We have already called the attention of our readers to the first part of this remarkable work, in which the writer, taking the standpoint of positive science and the facts of human nature, endeavoured to account for the developments of religious belief in all ages and places, and uttered his conviction that they all correspond to some necessity and quality of human nature. He then hazarded the opinion that the true and absolute religion would take account of, and embody, and satisfy, the cravings expressed in the strange worship and religious ideas of all peoples. He has now pursued his inquiry into the positive dicta of Christian theology, and seeks to show that they rest on facts anterior both to the text of Scripture and the very existence of the Divine Society. Revelation, if it exists at all, must take up into itself all the varieties not only of Mosaism or heathenism, but of polytheism, of idolatry, fetishism, and mysticism, because these and many others are facts of human nature, and have had a great part to play in the development and progress of human thought. Christianity, to our author, is true—and by Christianity he appears to mean the whole dogmatic and hierarchical and social edifice of Catholicism, because it contains in itself the utterance of all truths. All other religions and all sects and schism of the one Church, so far as they hold positive truth, hold only what the Church holds; their negations are to his mind 'nothing,' and are destitute, therefore, of all vital power. The Quaker, the Lutheran, the Anglican, the Greek, the Presbyterian, the modern Christian philosopher, not to say the Pagan, the Arian, the Pelagian, the Donatist, grasped severally and forcibly some one truth; perhaps one-half of the antinomy presenting itself in some great synthesis. Let this be granted, and, according to Mr. B. Gould, Catholicism held the same great truth. It may be found embedded in her system, taught with greater explicitness there than by the sectary; but each of these has denied some truth or placitum of Catholicism, and its negation has been nothing, has added nothing to the value of belief as positive truth. Yet with all this, the author falls foul of Rome at a hundred points. The union between the Church and the temporal power is denounced with unmeasured terms; the Papacy is a violation and a 'negation' of the œcumenicity of the Church, and the encyclical of Pius IX. comes in for a series of terrific blows. The Inquisition and the persecuting spirit which arose in Rome under the union of sacred and secular powers, is treated with as sincere a condemnation as is every form of Protestantism. Still further, when the author comes to deal with the evidence for the Incarnation, on which his whole theory turns, he disposes of every vestige of proof which may be supposed to linger in the New Testament in favour of this stupendous mystery of grace, and this 'conciliation of all antinomies.' The chapter on 'The Evidence of the Incarnation' is a feeble rechauffé of the most ultra type of modern scepticism. Miracles and prophecy, the inspiration, authenticity, and genuineness of the Gospels, the evidential value of specific occurrences in the life of Christ, all go to the wall. Much is made of discrepancies and contradictions, of the silence of contemporary historians, and all the rest of it, with which we are so familiar; and our author's conclusion is, that there is no evidence worthy of the name for the chief fact on which the whole of the religious development of Christianity turns. Relinquishing every proof of the divinity of Christ derivable from the New Testament as less than useless, the grounds on which he calls for a belief in the incarnation of God in Christ (who, by the way, need not ever have existed as an historical character at all) are, that 'such a union of divinity and humanity is necessary to me, that my nature may find its complete religious satisfaction;' 'such a dogma alone supplies an adequate basis for morals, establishes the rights of man on a secure foundation, enables man to distinguish between authority and force, conciliates my double nature, rational and sentimental, and my double duties, egoistic and altruistic, and supplies an adequate incentive to progress.'

These several points furnish the matter of several chapters; and while it must be observed here that Mr. Baring-Gould's 'negations,' as well as those of other sectaries, are 'nothing,' and his condemnations and denials of many positions for which the Catholic Christian would be prepared to die, put him, in spite of himself, among the most extreme left of the Hegelian school, yet his arguments on the worth of the dogma of Incarnation, from his own point of view, deserve serious consideration. After his numerous indications of a negative criticism and spirit as hardy and audacious as could be well imagined, he sets to work with a will, to blaspheme Protestantism as the negation of moral truths. His monstrous perversions of Luther's and Calvin's position merit severe castigation. Thus, 'Calvin denied free-will, and therefore denied duty.' Can he have read the 'Institutes?' The statement 'that Reformers denied the holiness of God,' with Jewel's 'Apology,' or any of the Protestant symbols in his hand, is too flagrant a violation of common fairness. The charge in this chapter against Protestants, that they deny or negative the Personal Christ, and in a later chapter, that they have only a dead Christ and not a present Christ to worship or love, comes with a bad grace from one who has thrown away the evidence of the existence or divinity of Christ as an historical fact. He appears to glory in the sacramental system of the Romanist, and assures us that the Protestant sacraments are reduced to two, and these are not baptism and the Lord's Supper, but the 'Ministry' and the 'Bible;' the latter of which, in its sacramental character, he pleasingly describes for his purpose, as just so much 'washed-up rags and black treacle stains,' an euphuism for the printed page, which is the matériel for the communication of such truth and reality as we poor destitute beings possess. We are content. The mighty Word itself, with all its power to kindle life and instruct intelligence, to stir the affections, and discern even the thoughts and intents of the heart, is graciously communicated to us by the printed page, and by the living voice of men charged with the Holy Ghost; and for an actual communication of the living Christ to our true nature, it is on an infinitely higher level than that which can only reach our emotional nature through the medium of our alimentary canal and gastric juices. When our author holds up to heartless Protestants certain acts of special worship which Cardinal Wiseman described so feelingly and poetically, we can hardly refrain from telling him that such Cremorne splendours of religious awe, such blendings of fetishism and wax-candles with the stupendous conception of the ever-present Christ, will have little effect upon those whose intellectual, moral, and sensuous nature have been brought into their due relation with each other, who know the Christ, who love Him and could die for him.

There is much that is worthy of profound consideration in Mr. Baring-Gould's positive assertions with reference to the Incarnation and the Atonement, the dogma of immortality and the Christian sacrifice; but he has a strange habit of putting a few transcendental propositions one after the other, mounting up from a 'positive' basis to something like 'Catholic doctrine,' and then calling his string of dogmas, demonstration. He appears perfectly rabid in his hatred of Protestantism and Protestants, in his dislike of the doctrine of the Atonement, as expounded in every phase of evangelical Christianity; and he never wearies of accusing Protestants of worshipping a dead Christ, because they cannot, after his Hegelian fashion, accept the Tridentine dogma of transubstantiation and eucharistic sacrifice. With all his rapturous admiration of the Church and denunciation of Protestants, it is sufficiently amusing to find him perpetually—when he wants to give high utterance to his most enthusiastic dream—driven to quote the poetry of Sectaries; and once he is so far left to himself as actually to make that heretic, Isaac Watts, do him some service, and say for him one of his sweetest thoughts. After all said and done, we find him still outside the Roman Church, and the next thing we may hear is, that his interesting, eloquent, and original book is placed in the 'Index.' There is surely scarcely a position of high importance adopted by him which would not be repudiated by a Catholic theologian.

The Athanasian Creed, and its usage in the English Church: an Investigation, as to the General Object of the Creed, and the Growth of prevailing Misconceptions concerning it. A Letter to Very Rev. W. F. Hook, D.D., from C. A. Swainson, D.D. Rivingtons.

This letter is extremely interesting, coming, as it does, on the morrow after the publication of the Report of the Ritual Commissioners, and following the courageous articles of Dean Stanley and Professor Maurice in the Contemporary Review, and the long discussion of the subject in the Guardian. Dr. Swainson is well entitled, by his prolonged studies in this department of ecclesiastical literature, to be heard in defence of the symbol of Athanasius. The upshot of his argument is, that it is a 'hymn,' and not a 'creed.' Here he does but re-echo the language of Dr. J. H. Newman, Mr. Maurice, and others. He conceives, however, that he has proved that it was in the first instance used to prepare candidates for baptism, and that the damnatory clauses do not belong to it in essence, and have not the same authenticity or value as the exposition given in it of the Catholic faith; that their meaning is not intended to cover every individual clause of the exposition, but to refer to the Catholic faith as a whole; that they merely assert the grand distinction which faith makes between those that are being saved and those that are perishing for ever in the darkness of unbelief; that the inaccuracies of the English translation are due to the influence of the Greek translation of Bryling, and to the obscurity introduced by Luther's version of it into German; that it ought to be 'sung,' in a true translation, as an addition to the psalmody, and not in place of the Apostles' Creed; that as 'the articles were never intended originally to be made a test to be subscribed or enlarged from that point of view,' the reference to the Athanasian Creed in the Articles does not bind us to believe that every clause in it is agreeable to the word of God, any more than a multitude of other propositions in the Articles, about which it would be absurd to make a similar assertion. These various refinements will not avail to reconcile the Anglican clergy to continue much longer the use of a formulary which, though certain portions of it may, by antiquarian scholars, be severed in thought from the rest, does yet assume to the majority of those that are called to 'sing' or 'say' it, the appearance of a homogeneous whole. Dr. Newman's description of it as a war-song of the Church, is unquestionably true; if so, it does condemn, in the language of triumphant dogmatism, the opinions of Arian, Sabellian, and Apollinarian, as well as those who repudiate the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit; and it declares that, without doubt, those who hold such opinions shall perish for ever. Scarcely one in a thousand of the Anglican clergy can believe in the obvious literal interpretation of the symbol as a whole.

The History and Literature of the Israelites, according to the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. By C. de Rothschild and A. de Rothschild. Two vols. Longmans, Green and Co.

The first element of interest to us in this work is, that it is a history of the Jewish people and their literature, by members of their own nation and faith. It must ever be of great interest and of great importance to Christian students of the Old Testament to see the views of it taken by Jews, who certainly do not bring to it the Christian preconceptions which so often overlay and perplex its interpretation. If, as we think, the interpretation of the modern Jew errs through his refusal to see the relations of its predictions and types to Jesus of Nazareth, it is certain that the interpretation of Christians often errs through the excess of Christian allusion which they imagine themselves to find there. One way of correcting the latter is to see how intelligent, pious, and conscientious Jewish interpreters look at it. Many things are placed by them in natural lights, which are not the less artificial in Christian hands, because Christian thought and meaning are imported into them. The Messrs. Rothschild, who claim the conjoint authorship of the book, are accomplished and devout men, and are remarkably free from polemical one-sidedness. A chaste and gentle elegance of style, illumined with quiet lights of a poetic but restrained imagination, make the volumes very pleasant to read. The work, moreover, is popular in form. Its critical power is not great, and the criticism that there is, is latent rather than formal, and is exhibited in its results rather than in its processes. It is sufficient, if not to determine great controverted questions, yet to give intelligence to the quiet assumption of conclusions. Nothing is debated, everything is assumed and affirmed as unquestionable truth, although there are indications that the writers are aware of the positions of modern criticism.

The first volume is a simple recast of the Old Testament story; the ordinary conclusions of popular orthodoxy are accepted. It makes no pretensions to the rectification and reconstruction of Ewald or Stanley; Ewald, indeed, is not once referred to. This volume, therefore, which completes the history, calls for no remark, except that it is written freshly and pleasantly. The second volume, which deals with Hebrew literature, presents many more points for criticism. The writers have arrived at conclusions, some of which are warranted by the most authoritative judgments of modern scholarship; others of which are so far from this, that it was almost incumbent upon the authors to justify their assumption of them. They are such as these,—that there were two Isaiahs, the first living down to the time of Josiah, the second a hundred and fifty years later in the time of Cyrus—the one the prophet of prosperity, the other of adversity; that the Messianic prophecies of the latter, those contained in the fifty-third chapter for instance, had reference to contemporary martyrs; that the traditions of Jonah, the fretful prophet, were handed down through many generations, until they were embodied in their Biblical form by some able writer of the Babylonian period; the writers, however, repudiate the idea of its being a legend, and contend for its historical character—that the book of Daniel was written about the year b.c. 160; that the canonical book of Psalms was ever used or intended to be used 'as a kind of liturgy of the Jewish Church,' and 'that the poems were made to serve this purpose, however different their original object might have been;' that the book of Job was an imaginative drama, or dialogue, written about the Babylonian period, constructed to prove the true doctrine of human calamity; that the book of Ecclesiastes was written 'in the Persian, if not in the Macedonian period,' and that the author 'put his ideas very appropriately into the mouth of King Solomon;' that the 'Song of Solomon' was 'written not long after the death of Solomon, by a poet living in the Northern Kingdom,' was supposed to be the production of Solomon himself, and 'naturally believed to have a religious tendency,' and that through this misconception it obtained its place in the Canon.

As the writers give no reasons for their assumptions, it is impossible to indicate the reasons of our agreement with them or difference from them; we content ourselves with remarking, that the absence of reasons in matters so greatly controverted, deprives the volume of scholarly character and critical value. We can only say that, taking it for what it is, it is an intelligently and agreeably written book. Although making no pretensions to the ability or historical power of Stanley's 'Jewish Church,' it does not fall into any of his great assumptions. The general remarks on the office and character of the Prophets, and on the schools of the Prophets, are very meagre and feeble compared with the chapters of Dr. Payne Smith, or of Dean Stanley. The work, indeed, must be commended as simply a popular and uncritical reproduction from a Jewish point of view of the Old Testament story.

Present Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology. Edited by the Right Reverend Alexander Ewing, D.C.L., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. Strahan and Co.

These pamphlets have been published separately, and subsequently collected into a volume. The first bears the title 'The Atonement,' by the Rev. Wm. Law, a reprint of that great writer's 'Dialogue on the Atonement,' with an elaborate introduction; the second, by the editor, is on 'the Eucharist;' the third to the sixth are anonymous, under the titles 'The Rule of Faith,' 'The Present Unbelief,' 'Words for Things,' and 'Meditations and Prayers;' the seventh is a translation of Luther's theses on 'Justification by Faith,' by the Rev. J. Wace. It is impossible to deal with these papers separately in the compass of a brief notice. One strong spirit pervades almost the whole of them. The burden of several is to charge upon Evangelical doctrine the entire blame of the 'present unbelief,' to represent that which we hold to be the essence of the Gospel of Christ as little better than blasphemous misunderstanding of God, as immoral, as defamatory to the true nature of God and the work of Christ. It is urged that Socinians and infidels would have had their deadliest weapon wrenched from their hands, if schoolmen and theologians had not perverted the Gospel by representing the Atonement of Christ as a means adopted to reconcile the Father to his rebellious children, propitiate His wrath, or satisfy His justice. We quite agree so far as this with Mr. Law, and with the spirit of several of the pamphleteers. If the Church of Christ had been converted to the view of Christ's work held by the Socini and their followers, such disbelievers would have gained a great victory. The doctrine of 'substitution' is the bête noire of these writers. Whatever else they attempt to explain away or refute or repudiate, this hated doctrine comes in for condemnation. The editor, in his paper on the Eucharist, devotes great space to show that the 'basis of morality is overthrown by the idea of a substituted or equivalent righteousness, ... all true conception of the righteousness and holiness of God is lost, and we are only saved from profanity ... by our non-observance of its real nature.' To 'accept the sacrifice of the Son' in lieu of man's righteousness, or in place of man's punishment, 'is a terrible misconception,' changing 'all that we naturally know and believe about God, as good and right, into darkness.' The paper on the 'Present Unbelief,' which turns on man's indisposition to recognise the self-evidencing revelation of God, and propounds much wise and true remark on the undue reverence paid by men and Churches to the logical processes once needed for special combat with evil, but now no longer useful, tells us that 'the definitions of God too often among ourselves, of God under the name of Christ Jesus, or the anointed Saviour, have been too similar to the heathen—to Saturn devouring his children, painted, no doubt, in milder colours, and clothed in decent cloud, but very near the old heathen conception, the old pictures of the Greeks.' 'God was not only in danger, but lost by such a belief.' The author of the paper on 'the Rule of Faith,' after much vague declamation and mystical enthronement of the inner life, says what is very excellent on the fact 'that the proof of revelation being true from the character of its operation, is the highest kind of proof, and is not liable to the accidents which affect other or external evidence.' He lays great emphasis on that inner verification of revealed truth which also makes it to be revelation to each man. 'The God of another is not my God; He is not my God by authority; I must be the authority myself.' After developing the older 'rule of faith,' as understood by the writer, and saying some useful though not very satisfactory or clear things about the canon of Scripture, he endeavours to show that the old 'rule of faith and practice in Christ has been essentially altered.' The climax of the offence of modern theology is represented here and elsewhere in these papers as a transformation of the statements, 'God so loved the world that He gave His Son for it,' into 'God so loved his Son as to give the world for Him.' What the writer means we are at a loss to understand, but he actually tells us, with a very grave and solemn look, that 'in the theology of substitution the way is turned into the end,' 'darkness is brought in at the centre,' God's 'love for man, as such, and individuals, as such, was lost sight of, and the soul left to a conventional relationship with Him which left it entirely outside, and from whence it could draw no nourishment.' All we can say here is, that the author does not understand the alphabet of the doctrine of substitution, or has wilfully misrepresented it. The introduction to the reprint of William Law's dialogue is full of these misconceptions, and seems utterly blind to the mighty powers of the new life which, in the reformed theology, are the direct form in which the justification of the soul by faith in Christ's sacrifice becomes a matter of experience or consciousness. The paper on 'Words for Things' is largely occupied with the same theme. That man should not suffer to the full the consequences of his sins in this world and the next seems, we suppose, to these writers a fearful violation of order; that the work of Christ should be adapted to save a man from his sins by guaranteeing and assuring him of the Father's forgiveness is incomprehensible to them. To us this state of mind is only explicable on the supposition that these writers cannot have felt the awfulness, hideousness and peril of sin against the irresistible order in the midst of which we are placed. Christianity seems to us a very worthless thing if this key-note of its melody, this key-stone of its masonry be abstracted. From Confucius to Marcus Antoninus, from Seneca to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, from English Deists to French Positivists, we are told by sages and philosophers of all kinds to be good and self-sacrificing, to love God and our neighbour, and do justice and love mercy, and that all will be well. Leave out of Christianity the 'grace' that, to a broken heart and to a mind conscious of guilt, comes not only with the Divine life that makes a man a new creature, but with the assured conviction that the order of God's universe, the will of the Father, the justice of His rule, are manifested in His infinite love to the world through the death of His Son; leave out the sublime truth that pervades the whole revelation, and then the Bible and the Christ have little more to tell us than we can find in enlightened heathenism and pagan philosophy. There is much in these papers of which we cordially approve, and for which we feel grateful; but this dead-set at what seems to us the heart of Christianity wounds and distresses us. Mr. Wace's translation of Luther's theses is pitched in another key, and deserves separate treatment.

The Theology of the New Testament. A Handbook for Bible Students. By the Rev. J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D. Translated from the Dutch by Maurice J. Evans, B.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

Biblical Theology of the New Testament. By Christian Friederek Schmid, D.D., late Professor of Theology, Tübingen. Translated from the Fourth German Edition. Edited by C. Weizäcker, D.D. By G. H. Venables. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.

The Theology of Christ from His own Words. By Joseph P. Thompson. New York: Charles Scribner.

We anticipate great advantage from the translation of these two excellent manuals. We are learning in this country to value 'historical theology' and the genesis and development of Christian ideas. Many efforts have been made to present to the student the first stages and earliest forms of this wondrous element of religious thought. Neander in his 'History of the Planting of the Christian Church,' Reuss in his 'Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne,' and Dr. Bernard in his Bampton Lecture, have made us familiar with the fact that the teaching of the New Testament, though resulting in glorious harmony, is yet not homogeneous, and reveals throughout a progress from less to more—from germinant seeds to rich efflorescence, from mysterious reticence to open secrets, from fundamental principles to elaborate and systematic detail. The peculiar type of doctrine conspicuous in the Synoptic Gospels differs from the spirit and burden of the fourth gospel. The Petrine doctrine is not identical either with Pauline or Johannine theology. We are, perhaps, too apt to explain the language of James by that of Paul, or both by that of John, without sufficiently taking into account the specific teaching of each Evangelist and each Apostle. Dr. Oosterzee's 'Biblical Theology' presents, in small compass, the results of much careful study, and seeks, at each stage of the inquiry, to place the student in relation with the authors of the New Testament respectively, and with them alone for the time being. The references to literature are ample, and various points of stimulating inquiry are suggested. The author does not go very deeply into the separate positions, nor does he attempt any elaborate exegesis of the Scriptures cited in proof of the induction he makes. The Evangelical bias of the inquiry is not concealed, and his summaries of doctrine and the higher unity which he claims for the somewhat divergent forms, reveal very clearly the dogmatic tendencies of his own investigations. We can most cordially commend this work—especially to those who have not access to larger and more voluminous treatises—as an admirable compendium of Biblical theology, and a valuable preliminary to all honest study of scientific and dogmatic theology.

The second work mentioned above pursues the same general theme, and contrasts the Biblical theology of the New Testament with exegesis on the one hand and systematic divinity on the other. This manual is a translation by Mr. G. H. Venables of the fourth German edition of the late Dr. Schmid's work as edited by Dr. Weizäcker, and is a far more elaborate treatise than that of Dr. Oosterzee. It is divided into two parts, the one a development of the teaching of Jesus, and the other an exposition of the teaching of the Apostles. The first part is preceded by an historical review of the life of Jesus, and the second by a fruitful and suggestive sketch of the lives of the Apostles. The strength of learning and high analytical powers of the author are reserved for the doctrinal review, and very beautifully does he bring forth the teaching of our Lord under the three divisions—(a) the glorification of the Father in the Son, involving the full sublime teaching of Christ with reference to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (b) the redemption of man, including the object of redemption, man and the world, and the subject of redemption in all His relations; and (c) the whole teaching of Christ about the kingdom of God, which is identified with the Church; there the author reveals his sacramentarian proclivities, and his high idea of the function of the Church and development of the kingdom both in this world, and that which is to come. In developing the teaching of the Apostles, his chief point is that that of James and Peter presents Christianity as in living unity with the Old Testament, and that of Paul and John in its fundamental distinction from the Old Testament. Great care and skill are shown in showing how the teaching of Paul and John roots itself in the previous teaching of Jesus, and the result of the entire discussion affords high subsidiary proof of the unity of the New Testament, the authenticity of the later as well as the earlier of Paul's Epistles, and the fundamental identity of doctrine in the Apocalypse and fourth Gospel.

Dr. J. P. Thompson of New York, in the third work mentioned above, has confined himself to the high, grand, noble theme of illustrating the 'theology of Christ.' He takes, as we think, higher and broader ground in his illustration of the 'kingdom of God' than either Dr. Oosterzee or Dr. Schmid, and admirably states the truth when he represents the Church as a form of the kingdom of God, embracing the whole 'commonwealth of believing souls who, through all diversities of race, language, and ecclesiastical institution, fraternise in the love of Christ.' Dr. Thompson developes the teaching of Christ under a great variety of themes which are not concatenated in any such classification as Dr. Schmid's, though they traverse much of the same ground. Such topics as 'prayer,' 'providence,' and 'eschatology,' occupy much of the space. The exposition is wise, candid, and eloquent.

A Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology. Edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, M.A., F.S.A. L—Z. Rivingtons.

We see no reason for modifying the judgment of Mr. Blunt's Dictionary which we ventured to pronounce upon the first section of it. His extensive knowledge is beyond all doubt, and his indefatigable industry beyond all praise. We give him all credit for both painstaking and conscientiousness; but he sorely lacks the scholarly faculty of using his knowledge in a dispassionate way. Rash assertion, hasty generalization, partial and illogical inference, disfigure every page of his Dictionary. Mr. Blunt is fairly carried away by his sacramentarian theories; they possess him like a fever, and affect both his vision and his judgment. Above most of his brethren even, and that is saying very much, he infuses a polemic into every scrap of antiquarian fact that he can collect, and into every particle of reasoning that his ingenuity can devise. We are aware that a statement like this is a very grave accusation, and that it can be substantiated only by a patient induction such as a brief notice will not permit; but we pledge our critical judgment to the assertion that there is not a page in which statements do not occur, which no judicial mind can accept. Thus, on the very first page, sub voce, 'Laity,' Mr. Blunt chooses to interpret the Hebrew word עַם, which Gesenius and all lexicographers render 'people'—in the sense of nations—by the ecclesiastical word 'laity,' i.e., the people as distinguished from the priests. This enables him to give to a number of instances in which the word occurs just the twist of interpretation that his theory demands. Surely a conscientious scholar would refrain from giving a general term such a special significance for the sake of sustaining an ecclesiastical theory. It matters not that the term is sometimes used in this sense, and is applied to the people as distinguished from the priests—Mr. Blunt treats it as the generic sense. Under the word 'Latitudinarianism,' among much prejudiced statement, we meet this astounding assumption, 'this article (the 18th of the Church of England) is somewhat loosely worded; but by comparison of the language used with the use of similar language in the New Testament, it will be plainly seen to amount to a statement that salvation is only to be obtained within the boundaries of the Church.' Under the word 'Lay-Co-operation' we have this unscholarly, and must we not say spiteful, assumption: 'Puritanism confounded the idea of the κλῆρος and the λαὸς, and if the phrase "co-operation of the laity" had been known to it, the theory of such co-operation, as well as the practice, would have been resolved into a substitution of the laity for the clergy, by setting the former to do those works chiefly or solely which especially belong to the office of the latter.' Is it the function of a theological dictionary to utter hypothetical prophecies founded upon rash and gratuitous statements, and conceived in a spirit of theological malice like this? Under the head 'Lay Priesthood' we read: 'This sacerdotal function of the Christian laity is a consequence of the anointing which they receive from God the Holy Ghost in baptism and confirmation.... The Holy Eucharist is offered at the altar by the priest ordained for that purpose, and the lay priest co-operates with him by saying "Amen" at the giving of thanks.' Will Mr. Blunt permit us to say that no lay scholar could possibly have been guilty of such desperate assertions?

Passing over the word 'Limbo,' and some regrets that it cannot be used on account of prejudice, although perfectly unobjectionable in itself, we find under the word 'Liturgy' the usual assumptions of men of Mr. Blunt's school, e.g., 'the circumstances under which, the Holy Eucharist was instituted, make it absolutely certain that the Apostles celebrated it from the first with a considerable amount of ritual preciseness, and the same circumstances make it probable that they also used from the beginning some liturgical form. It seems to be unnecessary to prove that the Apostles used some set form of liturgy in celebrating the memorial of their Lord.' And yet if Mr. Blunt would condescend to furnish such proof, it would convert to his views of things one-half of Protestant Christendom.

Under the word 'Lollards,' Mr. Blunt is disingenuous enough to cite against Wickliffe the articles prepared for his indictment in the trial before Archbishop Courtenay; among them, '7. That God ought to obey the devil;' and then to say, 'Such was the teaching initiated by Wickliffe, and assiduously promulgated by his followers.' It is surely a new thing to adduce an indictment of enemies as a witness to character. Does Mr. Blunt really believe that this was Wickliffe's teaching? If he does, what are we to think of his scholarship? If he does not, what are we to think of his candour?

This brings us only to 'Ló,' under the first letter in this division of Mr. Blunt's work. We need not say that these are fair samples of the whole. We protest against such gross assumptions and perversions in the name of simple scholarship. We greatly regret that so much labour and knowledge are thus perverted to the aims of the fanatical polemic. His book is not without its value, but it sorely tries the patience of a simple inquirer after fact and truth. Mr. Blunt has done his best to make worthless a work that might have been a valuable contribution to popular ecclesiastical knowledge.

The Leading Christian Evidences, &c. By Gilbert Wardlaw, M.A. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark.

The Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. By Albert Barnes. Blackie and Son.

We have bracketed these two volumes together, not simply because they are alike in theme, but because by a peculiar coincidence they are complementary of each other. Written as we need scarcely say, altogether independently, they yet arrive by opposite methods at similar conclusions. From Scotland and from America come the same earnest, forcible national testimony to the truth of Christianity. There are both likeness and unlikeness. Each author treats his subject in a clear, attractive, popular manner, candidly confessing difficulties where such exist, yet carrying the reader forward by the almost irresistible power of his reasoning to the most decided conviction. The literary style is eminently different, as is to be expected when two diverse thinkers express themselves on a common topic. This, however, arises not only from the individuality of the writers, but also from the very circumstances in which their works were produced. Mr. Gilbert Wardlaw has been 'secluded, during the later years of life, from other opportunities of service to the cause of truth,' and his book therefore bears the impress of a thoughtful mind evolving for itself arguments in support of a faith in which has been found the truest consolation during years of retirement. We imagine that his very seclusion from active life has compelled him to re-examine in the light of modern scepticism the foundations of his belief. His work is characterized by a calmness and quiet force which we cannot too highly admire, and which must be productive of the happiest results upon the minds of sincere doubters. Mr. Barnes's volume, on the other hand, had a different origin. It consists of a series of Lectures in a Theological Seminary, which are somewhat elaborate, diffuse, and theoretical, and were evidently intended to produce an immediate impression on an audience by their style as well as their matter. Yet each work is admirable. Both should be studied together, since they look at the argument from diverse stand-points. Their methods of treatment, not only in manner but substance, are in harmony with the circumstances in which these volumes originated. The one may be described as the subjective, the other the objective method. Mr. Wardlaw, believing that the moral aspect of the Christian revelation and the attitude of the inquirer are the most important preliminary questions in determining the truth of Christianity, commences with the internal and experimental evidences; while Mr. Barnes deals with external proofs, looking at the Bible as a book to be accounted for on historical grounds. It has been a real mental gratification to study these diverse methods, and to watch how, though travelling by distinct lines of thought, both authors arrive at the conviction that Christianity is from God. The volumes are in many ways helpful to each other, for if Mr. Wardlaw's seems to suffer from condensation, leaving too much to his readers' minds, the same points are often elaborated by Mr. Barnes with abundance of detail. It would have been an improvement if, in 'The Leading Christian Evidences,' italics or some other form had been adopted by which the successive stages of the argument would have been indicated, so that we could at a glance gather up the main points discussed. We do not venture on any criticism of positions which we consider weak or unsound, as our space is limited, and therefore content ourselves with congratulating these authors on their well-reasoned additions to our apologetic literature.

The Brahmo Somaj. Lectures and Tracts. By Keshub Chunder Sen. First and Second Series. Edited by Sophia Dobson Collett. Strahan and Co.

We have on previous occasions given considerable space to the remarkable movement in Hindu thought which is known to us under the above title. Some of these lectures, notably that on 'Jesus Christ—Europe and Asia,' have long been before us, and offer a remarkable sign of the effect produced on Indian society, by the truth of Christ's life, and its sublime ideal of conformity with the will of God enshrined in the Gospels. The lack, the negation, the blank in the theology of Mr. Sen need not be wondered at. This is a very different phenomenon from a similar mental position when adopted by a professedly Christian teacher. These lectures and tracts will receive special attention in consequence of the recent visit to England of this remarkable man, whose obvious earnestness and passionate yearnings after the regeneration of India have produced so deep an impression. We do not in the least sympathize with the hasty disposition shown by some to accept Mr. Sen as a prophet of an undogmatic theism, nor with his somewhat arrogant address to English Christians from certainly very small acquaintance with them and their work. All that he knows of the higher life of faith and true holiness, and all the stimulus that his own moral nature and Hindu society have received of late years, are so conspicuously due to the indirect effects of missionary labour and Christian teaching, that his disposition to ignore the source of the new light that has flooded his soul is unsatisfactory in the extreme. At the same time, we do rejoice at the moral dignity and spiritual ideal and religious exercise which he is proclaiming to his countrymen. His protest against Pantheism, his grasp of the idea of 'the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,' of man's sin, and need of regeneration, of man's dependence, and need of faith and resignation, of self-sacrifice and prayer, are very instructive. But let us clearly recognise the position assumed by him, that Hinduism and Mahometanism are themselves, in some purified form, to 'harmonize and form the future Church of India.' The words of Jesus or His Apostles are often quoted by him with respect, as something 'excellently and wisely said,' but there is no acknowledgment of fealty to the Lord, no Gospel but what he calls 'the Gospel of Divine mercy,' based upon his own intuitions and experiences.

'The true faith,' which is expounded in a series of apothegms arranged under a variety of headings, is intended to appeal to those who are accustomed to the style of some of the best of the sacred books. There is much that is most excellent and Christian in its tone of feeling, beautiful and attractive in form, lofty in conception and ideal, as were the meditations of Antoninus. He and his friends reveal the potent influence, the pungent leaven, the grain of mustard seed, that has been cast into the Oriental mind. They are feeling after God and finding Him. God has given them by His Spirit some faith. May it daily grow to more and more!

Christus Consolator. The Pulpit in Relation to Social Life. By Alexander MacLeod, D. D. Hodder and Stoughton.

Ad Clerum. Advices to a Young Preacher. By Joseph Parker, D.D. Hodder and Stoughton.

A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. By John A. Broadus, D.D., Philadelphia. Smith, Elder, and Co.

The literature of homiletics is becoming almost redundant. It is singular that every man whose business it is to teach this difficult science is dissatisfied with the text-books and manuals that his well-meaning predecessors have prepared for him, and tries his hand at a new one. We cannot see any very sufficient reason for the work of Dr. Broadus. It is neither better nor more comprehensive nor more helpful than the well-known treatises of Vinet, Kidder, and Shedd. It is not so philosophical as M. Vinet's, nor so erudite as Dr. Kidder's, nor so rich and suggestive as Dr. Shedd's. It goes over the old ground in very much the old way, and tells some of the old stories, and gives much the same old advice. Those who can work by rule, and who thoroughly trust the rule-maker, will find the subject carefully and exhaustively but not energetically treated by Dr. Broadus. The contrast between Dr. Broadus and Dr. Parker is great. The 'Advices to a Young Preacher' are racy, caustic, and stimulating. They are not confined to the great theme, but wisely condescend to give useful hints on little things. The personal allusions to living men, the astounding eulogiums passed by Dr. Parker on some of his brethren, the withering satire pronounced on others, the conversational criticism on certain printed sermons, and the familiar epistolary offer to all and sundry to send the respected author a sermon to criticise, almost take the breath out of one's mouth, and certainly remove the volume from the range of ordinary literature. The specimen prayers introduced by the author, though very excellent in their way, appear out of place. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the book is full of strong and wise advice. Here is caricature and broad farce, and extreme exaggeration and violent personal attack under assumed or blank names, all of which are strangely out of tune with the manly and reverent tone of the author when he touches the deepest themes. A preacher of such high reputation and undoubted success must be listened to by young preachers with great interest. Dr. MacLeod's volume has greatly delighted us. Seldom have the high functions of Christian truth, and the possibilities of the pulpit, been more powerfully or more candidly put. We wish that some of the unsuccessful men whom Dr. Parker grinds to powder, would ponder with the aid of this volume the sublime work which may even now be within their reach. Dr. MacLeod has described with singular power and freshness 'the preacher as an Elevator, as a Healer, as a Reconciler, as an Educator, as a Liberator, and Regenerator.' Under these several headings he has touched the sorest places in our social life, has carried a torch into some of the darkest chambers of human sorrow and need, and has shown the mission of Christianity and the function of its minister with conspicuous success. Dr. MacLeod is wise and stringent, moreover, in his condemnation of those who only preach fragments of the truth of God. His rebuke has a loving, helpful peal in it, which makes the heart soft, and calls aloud for higher effort and more consecrated zeal. There is neither common-place exaggeration nor rasping personality; it is full of wisdom, strong sense, and earnestness.

Culture and Religion in some of their Relations. By J. C. Shairp, Principal of the United Colleges of St. Salvator and St. Leonard, St. Andrew's. Edinburgh; Edmonston and Douglas.

The volume before us consists of five lectures delivered by the principal of the United Colleges of St. Leonard and St. Salvator, on a theme of high interest, at a time when the elevating process indicated by the rather vague term 'culture' bids high to supersede the divine claim and authoritative sway of religion. Professor Shairp, though dealing with the relations of culture and religion in a vein and manner suited to popular address, reveals on every page his own deep sympathy with the paramount claims of religious truth and the spiritual life of man, and a large-hearted appreciation of those aspects of 'culture,' which its exclusive advocates imagine never to have shed their light on deeply religious minds. With great dexterity, if, in the present case, such a term is applicable, our author shows that starting from a fair definition of 'culture,' 'it must embrace religion and end in it;' and on the other side, that Christianity is the great harmonizing principle of human affairs, bringing one region of human cultivation after another under its sanctifying influence 'to reconcile all true human learning not less than human hearts to God.' In lecturing on the 'scientific theory of culture,' our author exhibits the ideally educated man on Professor Huxley's theory, and quotes and criticises the celebrated comparison drawn by him between the liberal education he demands, and the acquaintance which an imaginary chess-player should possess with the laws of the mighty game with nature, on the success of which his fortune and his life depend. Mr. Shairp has shown with great beauty and force of expression, that if there were no other than the fixed laws of this game determined by scientific investigation, 'men would be more than ever driven inward, and their natural selfishness be tenfold concentrated and intensified;' that for the 'tender conscience' which Mr. Huxley postulates as an element in wisely playing this great game of life the 'theory' makes no provision; and indeed that such conscience, though the highest part of a man's nature, would be no help, but a hindrance, to any successful issue of the struggle. The scientific theory of culture leaves out facts of our nature which are as certain, though not so apparent, as any fact which science registers. With fine appreciation of all the excellencies of Mr. Arnold's theory of culture, which he designates as literary or æsthetic, Mr. Shairp contends that Mr. Arnold has erred in his estimate of what the spiritual energy really is in which our highest good is to be sought, 'has made that primary which is secondary and subordinate, and made that secondary which by right ought to be supreme.' He argues with much force, that the first great commandment 'cannot be made subservient to any ulterior purpose;' that religion is either a good in itself or it is not a good at all. We have not space to describe the remaining lectures on 'Hindrances to Spiritual Growth' and 'Combinations of Religion and Culture.' The volume is charged with weighty suggestions.

The Witness of St. John to Christ; being the Boyle Lecture for 1870; with an Appendix on the Authorship and Integrity of St. John's Gospel, and the Unity of Johannine Writings. By the Rev. Stanley Leathes, M.A. Rivingtons.

This is the third series of Boyle Lectures delivered by the Rev. Stanley Leathes. In the first and second series, the author dealt with the witness of the Old Testament, and that of St. Paul to Christ. In the volume before us, he pursues a similar method; and taking nothing for granted, not even the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, nor the inspiration of this, or of other portions of the New Testament, 'he does not assume that its conception is true, but he does affirm that if its message is fraught with substantial truth, certain results will follow, and—do follow.' In the appendix, there is an effort made to grapple with the question of the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, and to meet the difficulties raised by Dr. Davidson, the Rev. J. J. Tayler, and others. There is nothing special or peculiar in this argument, with the exception of the detailed effort which Mr. Leathes has made to show the abundant similarity of theme, doctrine, historical fact, and even form of expression between the three Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. We have never seen this point so well elaborated elsewhere, and the obvious conclusion is that much too great a stress has been laid upon the supposed discrepancy of subject-matter and ethical tone discernible between these documents. We think that both Dr. Hengstenberg and the Rev. John Godwin have handled the Paschal difficulty more successfully than Mr. Leathes, but few writers have shown with more sufficiency and clearness the unity of the Johannine writings. In fact, everything turns in this discussion on satisfactorily showing the possibility, from a literary standpoint, of the identity of authorship of the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel. The Tübingen school, Dr. Davidson, J. J. Tayler, and the most thorough-going opponents of the genuineness of the Gospel, admit, nay contend for the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse. They uphold the external evidence for it against Lücke and others; they establish the relations between the John of the Synoptists and the Apocalyptist. If, then, by accumulation of independent evidence, the identity of the author of the fourth Gospel with the Apocalyptist is established, or a belief in it is shown to be perfectly rational, a great victory is won for the faith of Christ. We commend Mr. Leathes' argument to the profound consideration of students. The eight lectures deal with the credibility of the witnesses, the characteristics of John's teaching, the essentials of this teaching, John's appeal to the inward witness, the unity of John's writings, their authority, John's message to the age, and John's place in Holy Scripture. There is much fine and strong, though rather cold and artificial reasoning in these lectures. The reader feels a little too much as though he were under the authoritative commands of a drill-sergeant, or rather of a too officious guide, who tells him exactly where he must stand, or where he must not stand, in order to see some glorious panoramic landscape. The hand of the critic and the logician is always on the shoulder, and forcing head and heart into the appropriate and rational conclusion. Yet, with this drawback, every lecture leaves a healthy impression; and the testimony of the beloved disciple to our Divine Lord seems at length to be so strong and self-evidencing, that it matters comparatively little when, where, or by whom the testimony is given.

Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts. By Francis Jacox. Hodder and Stoughton.

This volume is the result of very extensive and discursive reading. Sixty or seventy passages of Scripture have been annotated by the author from the copious stores of his secular erudition. Choice fragments of poetry, philosophy, and history, the analogies of life and thought, with the high themes suggested by the sacred text, are heaped in almost prodigal affluence of illustration upon the foundation of each text. Thus, on 'the Tempter's it is written,' our author quotes in illustrative vein not only Bunyan, and the criticism on the Dublin Synod of Irish Catholics, but Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice,' Gray, Coleridge, Burns, Diderot, Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Dickens. In his beautiful comment on 'Consider the lilies,' we have Tennyson, and Justice Shallow, Leigh Hunt and Mr. Proctor, Bishop Copleston, Isaac Taylor, Shenstone, and Dr. Croly's Salathiel, Mr. Hannay, and Mrs. Browning, all laid under contribution, and a very charming mosaic is the result. We might imagine the book to be the work of a life-time, or the hobby of a highly-cultured and devout man. Many a sermon and many a platform-speech may hereafter benefit by Mr. Jacox's labour of love; but none will take the pure delight in it which it must have given to the author in his quiet hours. The annotations of the words 'Strangers and Pilgrims,' 1 Peter ii. 11, are peculiarly rich and beautiful.

Rain upon the Mown Grass, and other Sermons, 1842—1870. By Samuel Martin, Minister of Westminster Chapel. Hodder and Stoughton.

The ministry of the Rev. Samuel Martin has now for nearly thirty years exerted a spiritual force upon an ever widening circle. Westminster Chapel has constituted a focus of holy influence, where his varied, thoughtful, continuous instructions have not only gathered around him one of the largest congregations in England, but have conferred upon it a character for wise effort, liberal sympathies, and Christian devotedness. It would be impossible to measure the circumference of that influence. Few nonconforming churches in the kingdom have failed at least to seek Mr. Martin's presence and assistance when any great thing was to be done; when any difficult enterprise needed a special consecration, when a young pastor at his ordination, or a church entering on a new career of usefulness, craved sanctifying counsel and tender sympathy. It would be difficult to convey to a stranger, or to an unsympathizing critic, any conception of the strange fascination, the deep thrill of holy excitement, the solemn hush of spirit which the spoken words of Samuel Martin have produced on susceptible minds. It is quite beyond our power to analyze or account for the overwhelming impression we have known him produce by his mode of quoting some well-known words of Holy Scripture, or by iterating and reiterating in a manner almost unique, the key-word or clause of some discourse on which he has put forth all his strength. His sermons are often characterized by an exceeding quaintness which from any other lips than his might provoke a smile; by a subtle ingenuity of illustration which reminds one of Brooks, or Sibbes, or even of Thomas Adams; by an elaboration of argument which seems to throw a disproportionate weight on some minor truth of God's word; by a fulness of illustration bordering on the efflorescent; and by a tone of meditation, fitted, as it might seem, to the cloister or some learned leisure rather than to this busy, world-harassed, distracted age: yet it is almost impossible to listen to one of those exceptional discourses without an intense desire for a higher, more beautiful, more self-sacrificing life. The exquisite sensitiveness of the preacher to all the sorrows of men, his obvious personal distress over the breaking heart of suffering humanity, his quivering sympathy with the weak and diseased, the poor, the out cast, the prisoner, 'the publican and the sinner,' the old man and the little child, make almost every sermon a lesson in the 'enthusiasm of humanity.' Much of every good sermon, is beyond the power of reproduction by the press; and this noble volume of Mr. Martin's discourses has to some extent the effect upon the reader which a volume of Beethoven's symphonies might have upon a musical student who had lost the power of hearing. Notwithstanding this necessary peculiarity disparaging the printed and revised report of all the noblest productions of the pulpit, we render Mr. Martin our unfeigned thanks for the volume. It contains thirty-two discourses. Many of them have been preached on special occasions, and demand a little imagination from the reader before he can understand their full significance. Take, for instance, the sermon preached at the opening of the new church at Halifax on the text, 'Then the king said unto Nathan the Prophet, See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.' The three sacred places, 'the home,' 'the grave,' 'the sanctuary of God,' have never been more admirably described, and the sketch given of 'the history of places of true worship' has never been drawn with more graphic force or spiritual beauty; but all the circumstances of the day and the place of that discourse gave it tenfold meaning. It would be well for those who disparage the Puritan theology and its professors, to understand that the high strain with which the volume opens on the genial influence and character of the Gospel, was preached with electrifying power to one of the great gatherings of Nonconformist ministers and churches in the North of England.

The sermons on 'The Saving Name,' 'The Precious Blood of Christ,' 'The Fulness of God,' show how Mr. Martin handles some of the great theological problems, and there is hardly one which is not charged with deep emotion, with carefully expressed thought, and spiritual force. This last element is the distinctive virtue of a volume which can scarcely be touched without perceiving some electric flash of light, some new pulsation of holy, Christ-like feeling.

The Shepherd of Hermas. Translated into English, with an Introduction and Notes. By Charles H. Hoole, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Rivingtons.

It is not long since we called the attention of our readers to the admirable translation, from the Greek test, of the 'Shepherd of Hermas,' which was published, together with other writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. The Greek text of this ancient Christian allegory or romance was found, together with the epistle of Barnabas, attached to the Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament; and this may account in part for the revival of interest among the students of ecclesiastical history in this once popular but long-neglected fragment of antiquity. Mr. Hoole has executed his task with great care and painstaking, and has given in his 'introduction and notes' some very valuable information bearing on its interpretation, and on its reception by the Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Church. We are brought by it 'into the earliest period of Christian antiquity.' It was doubtless quoted by Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius, with a decreasing respect; and we can only admire the fine tact and good sense which ultimately led the later writers and the Church Councils unequivocally to exclude it from the Canon of the New Testament. The question of the authorship is enveloped in great obscurity, and the apparently explicit statements are easily refutable. It is not even certain, but indeed very doubtful, whether the author was an ecclesiastical officer of any kind. The supposed Ebionitic tendencies of his doctrine have been maintained strongly by Hilgenfeld, but refuted by Dörner and Donaldson. We are surprised that in virtue of the non-appearance in Latin translations of the main passage on which this charge rests, Mr. Hoole has thought fit to omit it. Dr. Donaldson shows at length that there is 'nothing in the teaching of Hermas with regard to God, Christ, the Church, or the work of salvation, which is contrary to the truths or spirit of Christianity.' It is interesting also to observe from various passages, that Hermas identified the office of bishop and presbyter, and makes no reference to the Eucharist.

Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Vols. XVII. and XVIII. Edited by Rev. A. Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

These two volumes are extremely valuable; one is the third and last volume of Tertullian, and the other contains 'The Clementine Homilies' and 'The Apostolical Constitutions.' The Homilies are a translation by the Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., by Peter Peterson, M.A., and Dr. James Donaldson, and the 'Constitutions' have been carefully revised from Whiston's translation. If Bunsen's theory be correct, that they take us into the end of the second century or beginning of the third, and can be almost conclusively shown to be the work of one to whom the interpolations of the Ignatian literature were familiarly known, we obtain a valuable additional test of the quality of second century literature, and another assurance that the Gospel of John must have preceded them by more than a generation. It is not merely the abundant quotation from the fourth Gospel, but the profound difference of tone between these documents, that is so remarkable. If this is the second century theology and ecclesiasticism, how comes it that an author living in that century could rise such an untold height above them and omit what unfortunately had become the chief features of his time? Krabbe, in his elaborate work on the Apostolical Constitutions, concludes that the eighth book could not have been written before the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century. Bunsen thinks that the law of interpolation may account for the several references to later customs and offices which are to be found there. At all events, throughout the earlier books, we hear nothing or next to nothing of the sacerdotal order, and no other officer is mentioned intermediate to bishop or deacon. In the eighth book we have full-blown sacerdotalism and episcopacy, and the several apostles are made responsible for all the innovations. We owe a great debt of obligation to the careful editors of these translations now approaching their term. The admirable indices of all kinds greatly enhance the value of the work thus accomplished.

The Miracles of Our Lord. By George Mac Donald. Straham and Co.

Mr. Mac Donald is well known in the circles of the Church, for the ministry of which he was educated, as a preacher of remarkable freshness and power. Whatever judgment may be passed upon some points of his theology, there are few living men whose words are fuller of high religious inspiration, and indicate a more reverent and intense love for the Lord Jesus. This is his distinctive claim as a religious teacher. He disregards the conventionalities of sermon-structure, and of sermon-speech, and brings to bear upon his themes the fresh thought of a man of genius, and the penetrating spiritual insight of a man of fervent piety. Whether any of these papers have been preached as sermons we do not know; thousands of readers have become acquainted with them in the pages of the Sunday Magazine, to which they were contributed. Mr. Mac Donald has no difficulty in accepting the miraculous; nay, he justly says that if the Supreme Being 'be a God worthy of being God, yea (his metaphysics even may show the seeker), if He is a God capable of being God, He will speak the clearest, grandest word of guidance which He can utter intelligible to His creatures.' 'The miracles are mightier far than any goings on of nature, as beheld by common eyes, dissociating them from a living will; but the miracles are surely less than those mighty goings on of nature with God, beheld at their heart. In the name of Him who delighted to say, "My Father is greater than I," I will say that His miracles in bread and in wine were far less grand and less beautiful than the works of the Father they represented, in making the corn to grow in the valleys, and the grapes to drink the sunlight on the hill-sides of the world, with all their infinitudes of tender gradation and delicate mystery of birth.' Whether we agree with every minute interpretation or not, this little volume, precious as fine gold, is full of penetrating spiritual insight, of fine spiritual sympathy, and of suggestions and inspirations greatly helpful to the noblest spiritual life.

Saint Paul: his Life, Labours, and Epistles. A Narrative and an Argument. By Felix Bungener. Translated from the French. Religious Tract Society.

M. Bungener's is one of the numerous books elicited by M. Rénan's assaults upon Christianity. Such have always produced the effect of multiplying defensive exposition and arguments. They are therefore not to be regretted; their resultant good is much greater than their incidental evil. Untenable positions are tested and abandoned, and valued defences are strengthened. M. Bungener's argument is the narrative. He goes steadily through the incidents of the Apostle's history, parrying attacks, and setting forth evidences and arguments as he goes. His French brevity and his religious earnestness give a great charm to the volume.

History and Revelation: the Correspondence of the Predictions of the Apocalypse with the marked Events of the Christian Era. By James H. Braund. Two vols. Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.

In the exposition of the Apocalypse, literally everything depends upon a right principle of interpretation. Whether the symbolism of the book has its solution in historic facts or in spiritual principles, determines everything that a writer has to say respecting it. Into these two schools all interpreters of the Apocalypse may be divided. Of the former, Mr. Elliott is the modern Coryphæus, and he has found in Mr. Braund a laborious disciple. 'The Horæ Apocalypticæ,' he says, 'will be found, perhaps, the nearest to perfection of its kind extant;' and these two volumes are devoted to a patient working out of historical coincidences and congruities. Mr. Braund confidently trusts that the proof from such congruity will be so self-evident that it will be impossible to doubt. But clearly it must depend very largely upon the historical knowledge and imaginative ingenuity of the interpreter, whether a fulfilment can be demonstrated or not. For instance, there is much more of ingenuity than of demonstration in the fancy of Mr. Elliott adopted by Mr. Braund, that the white horse of the first seal is the Roman Empire, that the rider is Nerva, and that the bow in his hand is the symbol of his Cretan origin—the Cretans being great votaries of Apollo. It may be so; but the mere statement of it does not, in virtue of its congruity, carry with it demonstrative proof. It is a mere piece of ipse dixitism, which might find a hundred parallels of equally ingenious suppositions. On what authority, again, does Mr. Braund affirm that the 'seven horns of the Lamb symbolize his atoning work, because the blood of the sin offering was sprinkled on the horns of the altar, and the seven eyes, his mediatorial character between God and men'? Horns are usually the symbol of power, and eyes of wisdom. The statement of Mr. Braund, so far from being self-evidencing, provokes our incredulity.

For ourselves, we hold to the opposite principle of interpretation, as substantially adopted by Hengstenberg, Godwin, and others, viz., that the rise, progress, and overthrow of antichristian principles—Jewish, pagan, infidel, worldly and ecclesiastical—are symbolized in the Apocalypse, and that with the development of these, national events have to do in only a very subordinate way. Then much of the symbolism takes its place as mere parabolic drapery. Whether any specific historical event find its type in an Apocalyptic symbol or not, we cannot err seriously if we lay hold upon a great principle; certain it is that every antichristian power in the history of the world has had its strength in the domain of superstition, rather than in mere historic incident; and to be assured of the destruction of this is to be assured of the main thing. We cannot help thinking that such laborious demonstrations as Mr. Braund's are, comparatively speaking, exercises of painful and wasted ingenuity.

Moses, the Man of God. A Course of Lectures. By the late James Hamilton, D.D., F.L.S. James Nisbet.

These lectures have been selected for separate publication from Dr. Hamilton's MSS. They have all the fascinating characteristics of his pen—graceful description, imaginative reconstruction, unconventional, and often very ingenious, sometimes learned, disquisition, with the light, graceful touch of poetic style and delicate fancy which ally all his productions with general rather than with sermon literature. As sermons they seem to us to want point and cogency: they read rather like chapters of a book; but it is a sufficient commendation to say they are James Hamilton's.

Memories of Patmos; or, some of the Great Words and Visions of the Apocalypse. By J. R. Macduff, D.D. James Nisbet and Co.

Dr. Macduff disavows all pretensions to be a hierophant of the mysteries of the Apocalypse. We are left to gather incidentally that he himself inclines to what may be called the spiritualistic, as distinguished from the historic school of interpreters. His object in this volume, however, is to present those 'manifold isolated passages of transcendent grandeur, beauty, and comfort ... which can be see by the naked eye, without the aid of the prophetic lens or telescope.' His selections are made chiefly from the opening and closing chapters. Dr. Macduff's manner of discoursing is too well known to need characterizing; it is enough to say that in these glorious manifestations of the exalted Christ, he has, with due regard to exegesis, indulged, wisely and profitably, in the unction of description and application which have made his books so popular. No man may discourse of the new heavens and the new earth without palpable shortcoming, but he has given to devout readers a wise and edifying book.

Hours of Christian Devotion. Translated from the German of A. Tholuck, D.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Halle. By Robert Menzies, D.D. Blackwood and Sons.

This excellent manual of devotional thought, the work of one of the greatest Biblical scholars that Germany has produced, has passed through many editions, and has been translated into several different languages with more or less of abridgment. Dr. Menzies has accomplished the difficult task not only of translating the prose meditations, but the numerous poetical effusions that enrich and pervade the volume. Seventy-six brief meditations on personal, experimental, and practical religion, are of course very varied in their character. Thus one of them is a running comment of extreme beauty on Psalm xxiii., followed by a poetical rendering of the spirit of the Psalm, which, even in Dr. Menzies' translation, is of a high order, as thus—

And a few verses later on—

We are tempted somewhat profanely to ask, however, whether the perfume of the violet quite carries out the idea of flowery beauty as a banquet for the eye through the night? To many of these meditations four or five great texts are prefixed, and the reader feels that the gentle pressure of a powerful hand has crushed these sacred fruits, and handed him the fragrant wine of the kingdom in a golden goblet. The writer seems to blend his own spiritual history with his exposition in such a way as to aid the reader to make such experience his own. Reading between the lines it is easy to perceive the philosophic dissertant, the accomplished Biblical scholar, the learned theologian, but all is subdued to the language of simple, earnest piety and profound devotion. Some of the deepest mysteries of the kingdom of God are made more comprehensible when thus brought into the light and glory of the Most Holy Place. We note particularly the meditations on 'Drawing nigh to God,' and on 'By grace made free from sin.' Thus, 'If peace have departed from thy heart, build upon the vacant spot a penitential altar, and peace will again return, for the Lord Himself will place upon it the atoning sacrifice. Can any suppose that a servant who has transgressed his Lord's will, and then with anxiety in his heart sets about amending his ways, is as well qualified to do good works as the child who has wept repentant tears upon his Father's bosom, and has had his faults forgiven? Oh, no; the future cannot be made better until the evil be made good.' The abundance and variety of the material furnished in this volume for quiet pondering render further characterization difficult. We are thankful for the introduction of this wise, thoughtful, helpful book in this dark, sad season.

The Holy Bible, according to the Authorized Version, arranged in Paragraphs and Sections; with Emendations of the Text, also with Maps, Chronological Tables, &c. The New Testament. Religious Tract Society.

It is very difficult to amend the authorized version without proceeding to a thorough revision which again would necessitate a revision of the textus receptus of the Greek. There is no intelligible principle to guide an editor in pursuing a middle course. Dr. Jacob has improved the renderings in the more important instances in which the labours of later critics have shown that the translators to whom we owe our justly venerated English version were in fault. We are too thankful to have errors removed in any degree to demur. The truth is, that a false superstition for the authorized version, like all false things, is permitted to suppress true reverence for the Divine Word as God gave it. It will soon cease to be a question of the excellencies or defects of the authorized version, and will become the imperative duty of all who reverence that which is the truest and most perfect record of revelation, to protest against its usurpation of a reverence due only to the original text. Another bondage from which the editors of this admirable edition are helping to deliver us is that of chapters. The arrangement of the text in paragraphs according to the sense, and its division into sections corresponding thereto, is a much greater service in interpretation than many might suppose. This beautiful, clearly printed, and carefully edited volume deserves very high praise.

Night unto Night. A Selection of Bible Scenes. By the Rev. Daniel March, D.D. Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

Certain well-known night-scenes of Scripture are here sketched with a vividness and graphic force which make us spectators of the varied incidents, while the lessons that are drawn from them of warning, of hope, or of duty, are brought home to the heart and conscience with tenderness and power.

Bible Lessons. By the Rev. Edwin A. Abbott, M.A., Head Master of the City of London School. Part II., New Testament. Macmillan and Co.

Mr. Abbott has very opportunely published the substance of the Bible lessons which he gives to his fifth and sixth forms, thereby demonstrating how practicable it is to give to pupils the very highest form of religious teaching, without any ecclesiastical or even dogmatic sectarianism. He must be a fanatical theorist indeed who can take exception to the contents of this volume; and yet pupils receiving them would be possessed of all that the most exigeant need care for in religious teaching. It is not every teacher who can inculcate religious truth with such penetrating wisdom and catholic breadth of sympathy as characterize Mr. Abbott; but it is almost certain that, practically, he must be an ingenious fanatic indeed, who, with the Bible alone in his hand, can do much in sectarian teaching; at any rate if he do, he will do it wilfully, and the remedy will neither be far to seek, nor slow of application. Mr. Abbott has done good practical service—over and above the intrinsic value of his book, which is great—by this timely publication.

The Pulpit Analyst. Vol. V. Hodder and Stoughton.

The 'Analyst' has completed the fifth year of its existence, and has, we think, continued to grow from the beginning. The present volume is a rich and valuable one. A course of sermons by Alford 'On the Parable of the Ten Virgins,' a very valuable series of discourses by Mr. Baldwin Brown 'On Misread Passages of Scripture,' a miscellaneous series of fresh and vigorous sketches by Mr. Watson Smith, and a short series by the Editor on the life of Jacob, constitute a homiletical department of unusual excellence. Dr. Parker's odd concatenation of wise, clever, and incongruous advices to a young preacher, of which we have spoken elsewhere, run through the volume under the title 'Ad Clerum.' Mr. Godwin contributes two or three able discourses on 'Proving Knowledge,' and a new translation, with notes, on the Epistle to the Galatians. The 'Analyst' again changes hands. It comes with the new year under the editorial control of Mr. Paxton Hood. It enlarges its dimensions, and changes its name to 'The Preacher's Lantern.'

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JUVENILE BOOKS.

At Christmas time all pleasant things abound:—from turkeys to pantomimes, from oysters to gift books, from staid family gatherings to snapdragon and hunt the slipper; all domestic and social charities are in highest exercise, as if the carol of the angel, and the blessed advent of the Holy child inspired all forms of brightest joy and most loving thought. Not least among the blessings which Christmas pours from her cornucopia are her gift-books. If we welcome with satisfaction the higher works of art which Christmas brings, and which, ministering to the sense of the beautiful, elevate and refine the entire man, moral and intellectual, as well as æsthetical, we welcome still more heartily the affluent Christmas supply of books which more especially address themselves to the young. Artistic excellence, romantic adventure, fairy imagination, natural phenomena, the wonders of travel and of science, creations of fiction and fancies of poetry, are all brought under requisition—and their very highest products consecrated to the nurture of youthful imagination and fancy, mind and heart. This is one of our distinctive glories, and, we will venture to say, a mark of distinctive wisdom, that our literature for the young is so rich in quality and so affluent in quantity. Few nations possess a juvenile literature—France has no children's books; neither has Spain, nor Italy. Even our American cousins have a very meagre native supply. Only Germany can make any pretence to a comparison with us. Month by month books for the young are produced, and at Christmas-tide they are poured forth in bewildering profusion; publishers of gravest repute lay themselves out for them; the staidest literary journals review them. We have come to understand that no service to a people can be greater or more momentous than to supply a pure, bright, merry-hearted literature for the young, which shall wisely minister to their imaginations, and in pleasant ways sow the seeds of good things in their hearts. Happy are the children of these days compared with those of the days of 'Goody Two Shoes' and 'Sandford and Merton.' What a small British-Museum-library a child of twelve would possess who should have, from its birth, acquired and retained the hundreds of juvenile publications of each year; and what is more, how intelligent, if it had imbibed all their instructions, how good if it had embodied all their lessons. Tales of fairies and genii abound, as is fitting and wise; but it is no less a national blessing that our juvenile literature is so wholesome. We can speak only of a very few of the books which, in every variety of form and character, seek to brighten the nursery and the fire-side.

In the very foremost rank, whether in respect of artistic attractiveness or of literary excellency, we must place the dainty publications of Messrs. Nelson. In the Eastern Seas; or, The Regions of the Bird of Paradise. A Tale for Boys. By W. H. G. Kingston. In the Wilds of Africa. A Tale for Boys. By W. H. G. Kingston. Two books of imaginative travel, in the style that Mr. Kingston has made his own, full of descriptive information carefully compiled, and of adventurous incidents well imagined. Mr. Kingston wraps the pill of useful information in the jam of romantic adventure so deftly that young patients will scarcely be conscious of the physic—only of the gratification of their intellectual palate. In the first of these works Mr. Kingston carries his young friends to fresh scenes and pastures new, and opens out to them the tropical wonders of the Malay Archipelago. Walter Heathfield, the hero of these adventures, is a fatherless boy, who, with his sister, are taken to the East by Captain Davenport. The voyage is, of course, full of adventure and peril, and all the phenomena of Eastern seas and skies are observed. Singapore and Nagasaki open to the young travellers the worlds of China and Japan. Walter, with a companion, is washed overboard in a typhoon, and, of course, is cast upon a desolate island; after hair-breadth escapes he returns to England, as the heir and successor of his relative, Lord Heatherley; the personal story being cleverly interwoven with the useful knowledge. In the second book named, Andrew Crawford is sent to sea, in consequence of the mercantile reverses of his father, with a due charge of good advice from the latter. The captain dies, and the ignorant mate permits the ship to be stranded on the coast of Africa. A slaver picks up Andrew, and part of the crew getting on shore, they resolve to journey inland to the Crystal Mountains, through the gorilla district, the wonders of which are described. On the river, among the mountains, through the wilderness, they wander, until all the marvels of Central Africa are described. These two books will be prime favourites with boys. They are worthy of Mayne Reid.—The Sea and its Wonders. By Mary and Elizabeth Kirby. This is a companion volume to 'The World at Home,' published last year, of which it is in every way a worthy successor. Both books are beautifully got up as to paper, type, and binding, and are most profusely illustrated with steel engravings. The wonders of the sea itself, and of its productions, are described in a clear and simple style, and in short chapters, with paragraphs and words equally short, so that the book has a most inviting look to even an inexperienced reader. It would be difficult to find a more interesting as well as instructive book for children from seven to fourteen, while to many beyond that age, its facts will be new and interesting.—The Fall of Jerusalem and Roman Conquest of Judea. A condensed account of the 'Fall of the Sacred City,' and a summary of the events that led to it; followed by a vivid narrative of the final subjugation of Judea. The last chapter gives us the characters which Dean Milman introduces in the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' and quotations from it. It is an interesting and valuable little book, well furnished with engravings.—Lighthouses and Lightships. By W. H. Davenport Adams. A very complete and readable account of the ancient Pharos and of our modern lighthouses, with their principles of construction; together with a correct list of those that guard the dangerous coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. A chapter is given to French lighthouses, and to the manner of life of those who spend their days in tending these safeguards for our sailors. As a book of reference it will be very useful, but it will repay a careful reading before being consigned to the reference shelf. The illustrations, over sixty in number, give life and interest to the little volume, which is intended for no especial class of readers, but for both young and old who care for the welfare of humanity.—Cyril Ashley. A Tale. By A.L.O.E. Another of A.L.O.E.'s instructive stories for young people, which the authoress, in a touching preface, 'thinks will be the last time she may be permitted to bring her pitcher from the well-spring in which she has so often dipped it.' Cyril Ashley is a young man of singular prudence and goodness, who has thrust upon him by stern duty the reformation of a weak, selfish step-father, and a number of unruly half-brothers and sisters. The history of Jonah is the stimulus and deeply pondered lesson which gives him the resolution to carry that trying task to a satisfactory issue.—Birds and Flowers. By Mary Howitt. A volume of verses on birds and flowers, enlarging the latter term, that is, so as to include orchard and forest trees; written on that high level of excellence which makes Mrs. Howitt's poetry so pleasant and readable, although there are not many pieces of it that abide in the memory, or will take their place in our permanent poetical literature. The illustrations by M. Giacomelli, the French artist who illustrated 'the Bird' of M. Michelet, are very beautiful. They are all vignettes, or initial letters, or chapter headings, but they are done with great artistic skill and delicacy. Altogether this is one of the most beautiful of smaller Christmas books. Graceful song and artistic picture together will charm young readers, and supply a very choice gift-book for them.—The Spanish Brothers. A Tale of the Sixteenth Century. By the Author of 'The Dark Year of Dundee,' &c. The author of the series, of which this is one volume, has much of the careful skill and fascination of the author of the Schönberg-Cotta series. Many suspected her first work to be from the pen of the latter. The 'Spanish Brothers' contains a vivid picture of the horrors of the Inquisition, and of the heroism with which many of the early Protestants in Spain endured its inflictions—life-long incarcerations, and auto-dá-fé's, at which men, and even women of gentle birth were burned to death before crowds of exulting spectators. Such things are strange to read of in these our 'soft times,' but there is abundant evidence to prove that both the cruelty and the heroism in their extremest forms were real facts. The fictitious part of the book is a story (interesting, but rather too long) of two brothers devoted to each other, and to the idea of a father whom they had never seen, until one of them comes accidentally to share his prison. The two then remain together till the death of the father and the martyrdom of the son.—The Story of our Doll. By Mrs. George Cupples. The adventures of little Maggie's foundling doll will appeal very successfully to the make-believe imagination of little children, and greatly delight them.—Wonders of the Plant World; or, Curiosities of Vegetable Life.—Useful Plants. Plants adapted for the Food of Man, Described and Illustrated.—Walter in the Woods; or, Trees and Common Objects of the Forest Described and Illustrated. Three little books designed to give young people popular botanical knowledge. The first is the more scientific in form. The last two have recourse to that kind of conversational incident and illustration which children will listen to for hours. All three may be commended.—Pictures and Stories of Natural History. A series of short sketches of different animals, with very effective coloured plates of each animal described. Admirable for juveniles.

Foremost and best among Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton's juvenile books comes Old Merry's Annual, the prince of its class, as Aunt Judy's volume is the princess. Brilliant in crimson and gold, and chubby in form like a winter apple, Old Merry comes forth to brighten Christmas firesides, as cheery, wise, wholesome, and quaint as ever. Among the annuals we like it the best. Stories, gossipy chats de omnibus, puzzles, useful information about most things that interest boys, and didactic papers, make up a miscellany which it is impossible to describe, and difficult to overpraise. M. D. Liefde's story is the vale of an able man, a great favourite with young people. It is chiefly a posthumous publication.—Madeleine's Trial, and other Stories. From the French of Madame de Pressensé. A group of simple stories illustrative of the law of love. The translator has made them so English in tone as well as in style that the flavour of the original is well-nigh exhaled.—Walter's Escape; or, The Capture of Breda. By J. B. De Liefde. A spirited account of one of the most remarkable exploits in the heroic struggles of the Dutch to secure their liberty. It is written with the author's wonted vigour.—Model Women. By William Anderson. This volume gives us slight sketches of the Mother of the Wesleys, Elizabeth Fry, Amelia Sieveking, Felicia Hemans, Hannah More, Elizabeth Browning, Caroline Herschel, Selina Countess of Huntingdon, and a few others whom the author conceives to have been respectively 'model women,' either in domestic life, philanthropic effort, literary achievement, scientific research, or Christian consecration. There is not much power or point in the characterization of these distinguished women, but the brief memorials of some of them are interesting, and may help to raise the idea of women's work.

Messrs. Griffith and Farran sustain the reputation of the house that became famous by the publication of 'Goody Two Shoes.' They have an admirable staff of writers for young people, and the works they produce are of a highly interesting and instructive character. One of the best this year is Household Stories from the Land of Hofer; or, Popular Myths of Tirol. By the Author of 'Patrañas; or, Spanish Stories.' Between twenty and thirty stories of myth and magic of the old-fashioned sort, embodying the wild legends that hang about the valleys of the Tyrol (the writer pedantically spells it Tirol), and have haunted them for a thousand years. The Norgs, or little men, are the chief heroes, a kind of southern Trolls, or dwarfs of the Black Forest. It is a class of myths less known than those of Scandinavia, but having many of their weird characteristics. The most popular are 'Nickel of the Mine,' the little man of the mountain who dug riches for the covetous, selfish Aennerl; and the 'Rose Garden of King Sweyn,' made by the Norg king for his mortal bride, whom, however, after a fierce combat, he had to surrender to Theodoric the Visigoth. Many of the stories are legendary embodiments of the struggle between Christianity and Paganism. Since Dr. Dasent's 'Norse Tales,' a more important and interesting collection of legends has not appeared.—Tales of the Saracens. By Barbara Hutton. These tales are history, not fiction, treating first of Mohammed as prophet and as conqueror, and then of the line of Caliphs by whom he was followed. The book is written in a clear and lively style, and to intelligent readers will prove both entertaining and instructive.—Sunny Days; or, A Month at the Great Stowe. The Great Stowe is a farmhouse in the country, at which a family of little town-folk spent a month. We are told all that they saw and did, and a right merry party they were; none the less so for the wise discipline and sententious wisdom and clever stories of Aunt Gommie. 'Aunt Gommie is like a spider; she goes on spin, spin, spin, and she is never at a loss for a web.'

Sampson Low & Co. have re-published a charming American Story, Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. By Louisa M. Alcott. Whether Miss Alcott is the most popular of American writers for young people we do not know; but beyond all question, 'Little Women' is just now the most popular American juvenile fiction. You see it upon every American book-stall, and find it in almost every American home. It is having a greater run than any recent fiction; and it is really a very charming story. The 'Little Women' are the four children of Mr. March, an American pastor, away South at the war. Their characters are delineated, and their history, from early girlhood to motherhood, traced with a consummate cleverness. Miss Alcott has not, perhaps, so delicate a touch as the author of the 'Gayworthy's,' nor so graphic a power as Mrs. Beecher Stowe; but she has delicacy, descriptive power, and force of no ordinary kind. One of the most promising characteristics of American fiction is its individuality. There is a marked family likeness among the fictions by female writers, which during the last few years have obtained such popularity among ourselves. They are redolent of American character and life, especially of New England life, and have also an intellectual cast of their own—a kind of household idealism, quaintness, and piety, not easy to describe, but unmistakably to be recognised. We predict for 'Little Women' a popularity greater than that of the 'Wide, Wide World,' 'The Gayworthy's,' or 'Faith Gartney's Childhood.' We are not sure that our American cousins do not, in this department of literature, far excel any writer that we can boast There are two or three other books of Miss Alcott's ('The Old-Fashioned Girl,' for instance) with which we should like English children to be acquainted, although they are not quite equal to 'Little Women.'

Messrs. Bell and Daldy send The Brownies, and other Tales. By Juliana Horatio Ewing. Beautiful stories, charmingly told, with capital illustrations by our old friend George Cruikshank.—Aunt Judy's Christmas Volume for Young People contains a wealth of instruction and amusement, which we have neither time nor space to describe. Our young readers should get it, and judge for themselves, and we assure them they will not be disappointed.—Waifs and Strays of Natural History. By Mrs. Alfred Gatty. An elementary book of instruction, concerning corals and coral islands, the Beaver, sponges, zoophytes, microscopic objects, &c., conveyed in Mrs. Gatty's charming way. Nothing lends itself more easily to romance than natural phenomena, and Mrs. Gatty's readers need not to be told how magical Aunt Judy's pen is.—Parables from Nature. Fifth Series. By Mrs. Alfred Gatty. Eight more of Mrs. Gatty's popular parables, about 'Consequences,' 'Ghosts,' 'Unopened Parcels,' 'See-Saw,' &c. The one on 'Unopened Parcels' is the longest and the best.—Deborah's Drawer. By Eleanor Grace O'Reilly. The author of 'Daisy's Companions' cannot fail of an eager welcome from the readers of that charming little volume. Here is a companion to it. Deborah is the dead sister of Lavinia Meek, who had a great gift of telling and writing stories for children. These had been put away in a drawer, which Lavinia Meek opens for the amusement of little Averil, who reads four or five clever and touching little stories which she found there. These are set in a neat framework of personal history. The little book is a gem.

Messrs. Seeley and Co. send us Aunt Judith's Recollections; a Tale of the Eighteenth Century. By the author of 'Missionary Recollections.' Aunt Judith flourished in the days of Wesley and Whitfield, and in a pleasant chatty way, though somewhat garrulous withal, the old lady tells her young niece Annie the story of those times—of the darkness which had settled on this England of ours, and of the great awakening that followed the labours of those holy, earnest men.—Hetty's Resolve; a Story of School Life. By the Author of 'Under the Lime Trees.' There is but little power or point in these rather prosy details of school routine; but if they should lead some young readers to shun the slippery ways of Florence Benson, and to imitate the honest work of the kind-hearted Maggie, they will not have been written in vain.—Curious Facts about Animals. For Little People. Evening Amusement. Two little books for little folk, simply written and attractively illustrated; the former describing the habits of the mole, the badger, the otter, the deer, the dog, the sheep, the horse, &c., and telling anecdotes respecting them; the latter a series of juvenile stories of the simplest kind, which derive their main interest from the children cutting out figures in black paper to illustrate them.—Tony and Puss. From the French of P. J. Stahl. With Twenty-four Illustrations from designs by Lorenz Frölich. Another dainty book for very little children, with multitudinous groupings of Tony and Puss in varied relationship. Some of the illustrations are very clever, though Herr Frölich's typical 'Papa' looks rather of the feeble order; but he may not be less welcome to the Tinies, for whose special advantage Messrs. Seeley and Co. cater so lavishly.—Sunday Echoes in Weekday Homes. By Mrs. Carey Brock. This book is a history of the home life of some young people, who having been trained to look upon the Bible as connected with every thought and incident of their lives, find in the journeyings of the children of Israel types and emblems of their own doings and trials, at home and at school. It is none the less interesting to the class for whom it is written, if less true to Nature, that the children themselves suggest the warnings given and the lessons taught by God's dealings with the Israelites. From the 'passing over Jordan' of the youngest of the family the rest derive much comfort in seeing one of their number enter the 'promised land.'

Messrs. Cassell cater liberally and successfully for young readers. The Log of the Fortuna: a Cruise on Chinese Waters. Containing Tales of Adventure in Foreign Climes, by Sea and by Shore. By Captain Augustus F. Lindley. A Collection of 'Seven Sailors' Yarns'—not all of them, however, relating to China. The scene of one of them is laid in Paris; of another, among Australian Bushrangers; of another, in the Sea of Azof. The 'Yarns' are told on board the Fortuna, which has got upon a mud-bank in Chinese waters, and waits for spring tides. Captain Lindley wields a vigorous, incisive, and humorous pen. His stories are therefore clever and amusing: some of his descriptions and bits of rollicking humour would not discredit Charles Lever. The book is profusely illustrated, and, like all the publications of this firm, marvellously cheap.—Home Chat with our Youngsters. By C. L. Mateaux. Never was instruction more acceptably given or more sweetly sugared than in this attractive volume. The twenty-two chapters on 'People, and things which the Young Folks see or hear about,' are illustrated on almost every page. The chapters are conversational in form, the young folks asking only sufficient questions to mask the monotony of unbroken information. The story of 'Columbus' is thus told, and is made lucid by illustrations. Simpler synonyms for some of the words might have been found, but the book will be a great favourite in the nursery. It is, for children a stage farther advanced, almost as good as 'The Children's Album.' We can give it no higher praise.

From the Religious Tract Society we have received—Spanish Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the Author of 'Swiss Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil.' We have done—what doubtless some of our readers have done—tested the 'Swiss Pictures' by taking it to Switzerland as a quasi guide-book. We found it carefully accurate, and full of intelligent observations. This bespeaks our confidence for this companion volume about Spain. 'Africa begins at the Pyrenees,' says the French proverb: so does our author: and even veteran travellers will feel that once over the Pyrenees they are in a terra incognita. And yet few lands are physically more unique, romantically more full of wild legends, historically more full of romance, ethnologically more interesting, and socially and religiously more full of undeveloped possibilities. Madrid, the Escurial, Granada, Seville, &c., are visited and described. Cathedrals, bull-fights, gipsies, Murillo, religious customs, literature, trade, the Moors, all receive due notice; and have thrown upon them gleams of history, snatches of poetry, and visions of the future. The author has freely laid under contribution writers of renown, large extracts from whom are interwoven with his narrative of personal experience. Gustave Doré is among the eminent artists who have supplied the illustrations. It is an instructive and effective popular book.—The Picture Gallery of the Nations is a series of short descriptive chapters of about seventy of the nations of the earth; each occupying only a page or two, and illustrated with very effective wood-cuts, some of them whole-page size, others smaller. It is a popular book of the best kind for young people who delight in the help which the eye affords to the instruction of the pen.—Original Fables. By Mrs. Prosser. Readers of 'The Leisure Hour' and 'The Sunday at Home' are familiar with Mrs. Prosser's name as the writer of two or three capital serial stories which appeared in these publications. With these fables they will, through the same medium, have made acquaintance. To write fables successfully has been given to only three or four of the human race—the author of those which pass under the name of Æsop, La Fontaine, and Kriloff are the only three names of great fable-writers that occur to us. Mrs. Gatty very successfully attempts parabolic stories, but not the terseness and brevity of the fable proper, which is to fiction what the sonnet is to poetry—what the proverb is to the sermon. Mrs. Prosser has done fairly where so few have done well. From the nature of the case we cannot quote (to analyze would carry us beyond our space); we content ourselves therefore with a general commendation. The morals which she weaves into fables may catch the fancy of children, whom an apothegm would only make callous.—The Leisure Hour and the Sunday at Home are sustained at a degree of almost unrivalled adaptation and efficiency. Tale, biography, sermon, and song, often of a very high order, diversify and enrich their pages. We are glad to see in the 'Leisure Hour' the wise breadth and impartiality which supplies biographers of characters so diversified as those of Miss Burdett Coutts, Charles Dickens, Père Hyacinthe, Professor Huxley, Mr. Disraeli, and General Trochu. Mr. Lord, Naturalist to the Egyptian Exploring Expedition, supplies a valuable series of papers on the 'Peninsula of Sinai.'—Cousin Mabel's Experiences. By E. Jane Whately. Cousin Mabel having been absent from England for some years, in visiting various home circles is much struck by the diversified errors and follies into which religious people have fallen, whose earnestness and seriousness cannot be doubted. The ritualism of young ladies run wild upon church decorations, the spiritual gossip in which certain elderly people indulge, the doing for the poor and strangers to the neglect of home duties, the party spirit pervading missionary work, with other forms of worldliness and selfishness, which are so largely mixed up with many forms of religious life—all these grave errors are exemplified in a series of unconnected stories of family life. Miss Whately does not exaggerate in her characters the follies she wishes to point out; and her way of combating them is one of much wisdom, and is combined with many practical hints, calculated to effect in actual life the reforms which in these tales is always achieved. We trust the practical result may be the same.—The First Heroes of the Cross. By Benjamin Clarke. Sunday School Union. Mr. Clarke's 'Life of Jesus, for Young People,' has been received with so much favour that he has attempted to tell the story of the Acts of the Apostles in the same way. He has done this admirably, with great simplicity, and in a very interesting way. Mr. Clarke has spared no pains to qualify himself for forming and expressing true conceptions of the incidents that he narrates.

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Art. I.—Burton's History of Scotland. Vols. V., VI., and VII. London. 1870.

The affairs of Scotland will always occupy an honourable and conspicuous place in the grand drama of national development which makes up the history of the British Empire. It has been the destiny of the Scottish people to influence the general fortunes of England in a larger degree, and more permanently, than could have been expected from their mere numbers, or their position in the north of our island. In the years which succeeded the Norman Conquest, Scotland was, in some measure, a place of refuge for the English name from foreign oppression; and though deeply penetrated by the Norman elements which consolidated and strengthened her feudal monarchy, she held up something like a beacon of hope before the eyes of the down-trodden Saxon, during the calamitous period of alien domination. Two centuries later, when her nationality had become more firmly established, when her Highland clans, her Anglo-Norman colonies, her Norse settlements, and her Lowland commonalty had been brought nominally under a supreme government, though not yet formed into one people, she exhibited to the world a magnificent spectacle of prolonged, stubborn, and successful resistance to the encroachments of a very superior power; and, in the internecine struggle which ensued, we see distinctly the high qualities which have made her the worthy compeer of England. It was probably one of the results of this contest that France, aided by her Northern ally, was enabled to throw off the Plantagenet yoke, and to acquire the position she still holds in Europe; and, but for Verneuil and other battles, it is possible that, in the fifteenth century, England might have become a military despotism, extending from the Western Isles to the Pyrenees, and have had a completely different history. It is unnecessary to say what Scotland accomplished at the great crisis of the Reformation; if, in the person of Mary Stuart, her dynasty threatened England with subjection and with the despotism of the Catholic League, her people proved the defence of Protestantism, rejected the sovereign they justly detested, gave strength to the counsels of Elizabeth, and contributed largely to the success of the policy which culminated in the ruin of the Armada. For it was at the momentous period of the civil wars of the seventeenth century that the house of Stuart and part of the Scottish nobility endeavoured to blight the prospects of England, to stifle freedom by military power, and to restore what was Romanism all but in name; but the mass of the nation opposed the movement, and set the noble example of resistance to it; and though they ultimately separated from England, they did much to cause the series of events which ended in the Revolution of 1688. Scotland, in a word, has had a beneficent influence of a marked and even extraordinary kind in shaping the course of our English story; and we need not notice how her independent spirit has affected for good the national character, what eminent men she has given the State, what valuable additions she has made to the treasures of British literature and thought, what use some of her institutions have been, as patterns for our own imitation.

The author of the interesting volumes before us has long held a distinguished name in connection with the literature of his country. He has given us an exceedingly good account of the transitional period in the history of Scotland, which embraces the Revolution of 1688, the Union, and the final extinction of the reactionary and half-Romanist party in the nation, when Jacobitism perished in 1745. He has also described with clear insight, and, on the whole, with an impartial pen, that honourable episode in Scottish annals, of lasting importance to these kingdoms, the 'ancient league' of Scotland with France; and no writer, perhaps, has done more to elucidate whatever is most noteworthy in the antiquarian remains and monuments of the races which from the earliest times have inhabited the northern division of our island. The history, however, which he has just completed, and which deals with the affairs of Scotland from the Roman invasion, under Agricola, to the overthrow of the House of Stuart, is, beyond comparison, his greatest work; and as a repository of the learning with which modern research and criticism have explored the national life of his countrymen, it stands alone, and without a parallel. Mr. Burton, in his first four volumes, which were published in 1867, carried down his narrative from the legendary period of the Roman occupation, of the Scots and Picts, of Fergus and the old Celtic monarchy, to the rise of the feudal kingdom of Scotland and its long contest with the power of England; and he went on to describe the memorable era when the ascendancy of France, and national pride resenting Flodden and Pinkie Cleugh, struggled with the forces of the Scottish Reformation; and Mary Stuart, but for her crimes and her fall, would probably have united the two crowns, and become the sovereign of a Romanized Britain. If in treating this important part of his subject Mr. Burton was sometimes carried away by a somewhat too exuberant patriotism, if he, perhaps, assigned too high a place to the position of Scotland in British annals, and if he was never eloquent or picturesque, he displayed rare and extensive knowledge, a judgment usually calm and correct, and the faculty of forming sound conclusions; and his account of the Scottish war of independence, and of Scottish politics in the sixteenth century, is worthy of very high commendation. His last three volumes, which have recently appeared, and which we purpose now to review, comprise the last years of the reign of Mary Stuart, the triumph of the Reformation in Scotland, the struggle between the Kirk and the Crown, which marked the beginning of the seventeenth century, the reaction against James I. and his son, and the memorable events which were the result; they proceed to describe the great civil war, the important attitude of Scotland in it, the conquest of the kingdom by Cromwell, and the dreary epoch which followed the Restoration; and, as may be supposed, they exhibit the merits and the shortcomings of the earlier volumes. Mr. Burton is inclined to exaggerate the part which Scotland played in 1640-1649: he is rather too lenient to the Stuart kings, and he is not skilful in the art of composition. But, on the other hand, his learning is profound; his views of most of the great questions which arose during this memorable epoch, are sound and judicious, and deserve attention; and, on the whole, he has placed the events of the drama of which he has followed the chequered scenes, in their true light and real significance.

Mr. Burton's narrative begins at the period of the imprisonment of Mary Stuart at Lochleven. A few months previously the Scottish queen had been the hope of the Catholic Powers, which were ever planning the ruin of Elizabeth, and the overthrow of the Reformation in England; and, widely as they were divided from each other, they looked upon her as the appointed instrument with which to assail the common enemy. Her beauty too, her extraordinary gifts, the magic of her presence, and her rare abilities, had won the hearts of the Scottish nobility; and though she had never deceived Knox and the earnest champions of Scottish Protestantism, the pride of the nation was aroused in her favour, from the circumstance that it seemed probable that the two crowns would unite on her brow, and that she would become the sovereign of England and Scotland. Distrusted as she was in England by all the real friends of the Reformation, she was supported by the Catholic party, still most formidable in rank and numbers; and she had on her side the conservative feeling, of extraordinary strength in that age, which saw in her the heir to the throne, Elizabeth being without children, and the means of bringing England once more into the old order and ways of Europe. Had Mary Stuart not disgraced herself in the opinion even of that generation, not over-scrupulous about the acts of princes, there can be little doubt that she would have been acknowledged as Elizabeth's successor; and very probably she would have brought the reign of the heretic Tudor to a close, would have become the ruler of England and Scotland, arrested the Reformation for a time, and changed the whole tenor of our history. Providentially, however, this was not to be; and Mary Stuart, by her own hand, was to destroy the prospect of power and ambition, fraught with destruction to the destinies of mankind, which fortune seemed to have opened to her. The murder of Darnley, followed by the shameless and infamous marriage with Bothwell, revealed the depths of recklessness and crime in the existence of this singular woman, and placed her at once under the moral ban of Scotland, England, and Catholic Europe. At Carberry Hill her followers' arms dropped, as it were, from their nerveless hands; the nation rose in fury against her; her adherents were for the time silenced; and she found herself on a sudden a prisoner, her son proclaimed, the Reformation victorious, and Murray exercising the powers of a regent; the whole scene changing as if by magic. Catherine de Medicis, also, gave her up, alarmed at the storm which had burst out in Scotland; and though undoubtedly the Florentine queen was not guided by moral considerations, and, at this moment was beginning to adopt a conciliatory policy towards the French Huguenots, her complete abandonment of Mary Stuart was caused chiefly by a true conviction that she had ruined herself in general opinion. Philip II. also declined to give the slightest countenance to the beautiful fury, in whom he had hoped to find a St. Teresa; and in Catholic and Conservative England the revulsion of feeling was so strong, that thenceforward the cause of Mary Stuart ceased to be national in any real sense.

Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Froude have given us very different accounts of the captivity of Mary Stuart at Lochleven. Mr. Burton has taken great pains to ascertain the facts, and to judge of them, and we quote a few words from his description:—

The only personage, as is well known, who seems to have shown any real sympathy with the Queen of Scotland, in this forlorn condition, was the sovereign who, it might be supposed, was of all persons the least likely to do anything in behalf of her cause. On hearing of the imprisonment of Mary, Elizabeth not only refused to give open support to her 'rebellious lords,' but actually threatened to invade Scotland, should they not restore their mistress to the throne, on terms, however, dictated by England. To suppose that this conduct is to be ascribed to chivalrous generosity would be a mistake; nor do we think with Mr. Burton, that it was due wholly to Tudor dislike of disobedience to the Lord's anointed, though this certainly was one ruling motive. Elizabeth, undoubtedly, throughout her entire reign, especially in the case of the united provinces, was averse to countenancing revolted subjects, even when to do so was her evident interest; but in this instance she was, in fact, guided by other considerations in her conduct. She seems to have wished in this, following the traditional policy of English rulers, to have taken upon herself the settlement of Scotland; and she did not choose that that kingdom should be revolutionized without her sanction. She also had a particular aversion to Knox and the Reforming leaders; and very probably her sagacious advisers may have foreseen that the rule of Murray and his associates was far from secure. These motives probably influenced her policy in not siding with the Regent and his followers; and in one respect the event vindicated, in a great measure, her cautious prudence. Though the infant James was formally crowned, though the Reformed Church was established in Scotland, and Murray proved himself an able ruler, a strong reaction set in in favour of the imprisoned queen; and though unquestionably the great mass of the nation remained completely hostile, she was able to rally a party sufficient to cause a violent counter-revolution. The numerous adherents of the old Church, the whole body of the Catholic clergy, and a large minority of the Scottish nobility enlisted themselves on the side of Mary Stuart; they were joined by some of the politicians and patriots whose one idea was the giving a Scottish sovereign to England; and pity for misfortune, the recollection of rare beauty and great gifts, and that strange loyalty which so often has shown itself superior to the sense of right, of justice, and of the successful cause, contributed to swell the ranks of her followers. Mr. Burton describes the escape from Lochleven, and the stirring incidents of the struggle which ensued, with much research and even animation; but we can only refer our readers to them. The unimportant battle of Langside showed that, however imposing it was in name, the party of the queen was not supported in any degree by the Scottish nation; a defeat, though little more than a skirmish, was sufficient to overthrow her career, and to compel her forthwith to leave her kingdom. After her flight, in which she found few friends, Mary Stuart was obliged to take refuge in England, abandoning for ever a country in which she had played one of the most astonishing parts that have ever fallen to the lot of woman, and which, excepting a revolutionary faction, had repudiated her for crimes which had effaced the sentiment of former affection.

We agree generally with Mr. Burton in his estimate of Elizabeth's policy when her rival had placed herself in her power. That policy was not generous or high-minded; it was even temporising, doubtful, and tentative; but it was essentially crafty and prudent. To have listened to the petition of the Scottish queen, and to have sent her over to France or Spain, would have been to arm the enemies of England with a weapon of the most perilous kind, and, at the same time, to make all Protestant Scotland permanently hostile. On the other hand, Elizabeth refused to hand her guest over to the Scottish lords, in part certainly from compassionate feelings, in part from her known antipathy to rebellion against a lawful sovereign, and in part from a well-founded doubt whether the government of Murray was really stable, and whether, if the surrender were made, a violent reaction would not follow. A middle course was artfully struck out, which had the advantage of seeming just, of ruining the fair fame of Mary Stuart, and depriving her of all moral influence, and which, moreover, gave her the right of intervening in Scottish affairs, and making England the arbiter of them. Under the form of a charge against her revolted subjects, Mary Stuart was really put on her trial before the most distinguished personages in England; and the result of the inquiry was that she was disgraced in public opinion, that her detention was in part justified, and that, though made somewhat dependent on England, Murray and the Regency were confirmed in power. This is what Elizabeth and Cecil had aimed at, and whatever may be thought of the dignity of their conduct, it fell in with the interests of England; and it was, on the whole, inspired by wisdom. Mr. Burton describes at much length the conferences at York and Hampton Court, but we have no space to dwell on his narrative. The only real question was as to the guilt of Mary, and of this, like ourselves, he has no doubt. The evidence contained in the casket letters is confirmed by numerous subordinate proofs; the authenticity of the letters themselves was hardly questioned in that generation, and not a single member of the Commission—though several were devoted to Mary—not even, apparently, her own advocates, attempted to challenge this decisive fact. As the Scottish queen has found defenders of the boldest kind, even in our day, we quote a part of Mr. Burton's comments:—

Events showed that Elizabeth and Cecil were right in calculating that the power of Murray did not rest on a secure foundation. The Regent was one of the best governors who ever appeared in Scottish history; he was honourable, upright, firm, yet humane; and during his too brief rule he maintained order in a manner unknown in that generation. The religious movement, too, of which he was the unselfish and sincere champion, was followed by the great mass of the nation; and though most of the Reforming lords were simply greedy for the spoils of Popery, Knox and his adherents went with them, and, as a people, Scotland was sincerely Protestant. These combined elements of power, however, did not render the Government safe, and it was exposed to a series of formidable attacks which kept the country for some years in anarchy. The united parties which Langside had quelled again formed a perilous coalition; and the old Church, many of the great feudal lords, and the statesmen who wished above all things to place a Stuart on the Tudor throne, once more rallied in behalf of Queen Mary. The leading spirit of this ill-assorted league was that singular character, Maitland of Lethington, one of the ablest men of that stirring age, yet, with his keen intellect and clear brain, an enthusiast possessed by a vain idea. Long one of the chief opponents of the queen, he had yielded to the alluring prospect—held out to him skilfully by his wife, one of the captive's principal attendants—of making Mary Stuart the sovereign of Great Britain, and he now schemed and plotted in her cause in conjunction with his worst former enemies. At the same time, Elizabeth maintained a dubious attitude towards the Regency: wishing to stand well with the Catholic Powers, with whom for the moment she was at peace, and always disliking undutiful subjects, she more than once declared she would release the queen; and though we do not believe she was sincere in this, the effect was to weaken the Scottish Government, and to add strength to its many adversaries. Besides, Elizabeth contrived to stir the sense of Scottish patriotism to the quick by an imperious demand for the extradition of one of the leaders of the Northern rebellion; and the cry went forth that the pusillanimous Regency was the dishonoured instrument of Tudor oppression, and that Scotland under her lawful sovereign should again vindicate her independence with the assistance of her old ally, France. The result was a furious civil war, of which, after the murder of the Regent, the issue was for a time doubtful; and, as Mr. Burton correctly observes, Scotland was more thoroughly and widely divided than she had been at any former period. An event, however, which in that age revolutionized the politics of Europe, was, in Scotland also, to change the situation. The atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew stirred to its depths a people essentially Protestant, confounded the adherents of Mary Stuart, made the French alliance a source of dread, and threw the nation on the side of the Regency, now in the hands of the vigorous Morton. At the same time, it showed Elizabeth that the interest of England compelled her to support 'the lords,' Knox, and the Reformation; that in Mary she had an implacable enemy; and that her only chance was to strike in boldly with Morton and the national Protestant party. The union of these forces was decisive; Morton and his adherents, backed generally by the spirit of an indignant people, overcame quickly Mary Stuart's faction; an English army invaded Scotland, and the siege and fall of the Castle of Edinburgh put an end to the French alliance, destroyed for ever the chances of the Scottish queen, and, with the death of Lethington and Grange, extinguished the prospects of her cause.

Mr. Burton thus describes this conjunction, one of the turning-points in the history of Scotland:—

After these events the history of Scotland passes through a period of intrigues and factions, in the midst of which James I. grew up. He abandoned his ill-fated mother, and the Catholic Powers endeavoured to make his youth the instrument of their designs. The ascendancy of D'Aubigny and Arran marks the short-lived triumph of this policy. These attempts, however, were in the long run fruitless; the great body of the people adhered to Protestantism and the English alliance; the Kirk and the Reforming nobles worked together against the common enemy; and James, as he grew to man's estate, had sagacity enough to see the strongest side, and to direct accordingly his public conduct. Mr. Burton omits to dwell upon the base selfishness of the young king, in throwing over the unhappy princess, to whom he owed the love of a son. But morally he was always a coward; and the prospect of the inheritance of England, and the dread of alienating Elizabeth, was more than enough to determine his purpose. The extremely unsettled state of Scotland, after the death of the Regent Morton, and the rudeness and barbarism of its government, appear in the frequency and sudden violence of the changes which took place in its rulers; and it seems to have been assumed, that whatever faction had possession of the person of the king, was rightly invested with supreme authority. In these circumstances, as may be supposed, the progress of Scotland was only slow; the face of the country seemed scarred with the marks of desolation and war; the nation was rent by intestine troubles; and travellers from England drew marked contrasts between the aspect of the Southern land at peace under the Tudor sceptre, and that of its lawless Northern neighbour. Nevertheless, the course of events tended inevitably to the approaching union of the two crowns under a common sovereign—invasion from England had wholly ceased—and though the aged Elizabeth would not acknowledge the title of James to her glorious throne, every politician in both countries was aware that the time was not distant, when the policy inaugurated by Edward I., and pursued by every great English monarch, of joining together the whole of the island, would be consummated without civil war or bloodshed. Meanwhile the tragic and striking figure which had played such an awful and mournful part in the historical drama of the two kingdoms had passed away for ever from the stage, and the terrible career of Mary Stuart had been cut short by the Fotheringay headsman. Mr. Burton properly does not dilate on the incidents of her melancholy life during the later years of her long imprisonment, for they hardly belong to his subject, but his estimate of them is generally correct. Mary Stuart, after the final overthrow of her party in Scotland, transferred her energies to intriguing with the Continental powers; and it can admit of no question that she continued to maintain her claims to the crown of England, that she plotted directly against the life of Elizabeth, and that she kept England in a state of apprehension, intolerable to the Parliament and nation. She was a conspirator of the worst kind, and deserved the death she bravely encountered; and the crooked policy, the vacillation, and the duplicity of her rival towards her prisoner, should not render us blind to the real issue.

While, in circumstances such as these, Scotland was working out her political destiny, her ecclesiastical and religious reformation was being developed and matured. In no country, perhaps, in Europe had the Church of Rome been so grossly corrupt as in the northern part of our island; it had been the appanage of a vicious court, and the instrument of coarse spiritual tyranny; and in none, accordingly, was the reaction against it more rapid, popular, and thoroughly decisive. Although Beaton and the men of his faction had endeavoured to associate the defence of Popery with the spirit of stern opposition to the Southron, their policy had, in the long run, failed; and before Mary Stuart ascended the throne, Scotland, as a nation, had become Protestant. The grand and striking figure of Knox was the chief exponent of this movement; but it is idle to imagine that even Knox could have changed the spiritual life of Scotland, if the people had not been generally with him. As usually has happened, the baser elements of selfishness mingled with this revolution; and the support given by most of the Scottish nobles to the overthrow of Romanism was chiefly prompted by a greedy appetite for the spoils of the fallen Church. Nevertheless, the Reformation took firm root; the old ecclesiastical system of the country and its ancient faith were violently changed; and the accession of Murray to the Regency marks the period of this great transformation. Mr. Burton's account of the new Church which rose on the ruins of its predecessor, and of its peculiar ritual and doctrine, is one of the most interesting parts of his book, and abounds in learning and sound criticism. The Scottish Kirk was founded upon the model of the Huguenot Church of France; with a large admixture of lay elements, it had the same definite and strong organization, and the same tendency to create what was a powerful priesthood all but in name; and its teaching exemplified the austerity and strictness of the theology of Calvin. From the first, accordingly, it was calculated to encourage pretensions among the ministry, and to become an imperium in imperio, not without risk of collision with the State; and its whole system, in its excess, led to fanaticism and contempt of civil authority. We transcribe a few passages from Mr. Burton's description of the Second Book of Discipline of the Scottish Kirk, a specimen of its general principles:—

While Knox and his generation survived, the tendencies of the new establishment were prevented from fully showing themselves. The great Reformer was at bottom moderate; he had a real reverence for the powers that be, however he abhorred Mary Stuart. The lay lords had sufficient influence to control the ministry throughout the country; and the presence of a common danger compelled the Scottish Protestants to uphold the Government. But, when the Kirk had become settled, and the Reformation was completely secure, dissensions rapidly grew up between the spiritual and civil powers, and the Presbyterian clergy began to assume that attitude in the affairs of Scotland, which led, afterwards, to such momentous consequences. The leader of the new school of divines was the celebrated Melville, thus described by Mr. Burton:—

An organization of this kind, supported by such spiritual leaders, ere long displayed its natural tendencies. The Kirk, with its powerful local ministry, connected with each other by numerous links, attempted to revive in Scotland the pretensions of the old dominant Church, and it succeeded in creating a vast spiritual power, often in conflict with the authority of the State. The principal fact in Scottish history, during the last years of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth, was the opposition given, by the Presbyterian clergy, to the acts and even the rights of the Crown; and though the conduct of James I. was, as usual, arrogant and unwise, he was subjected to extreme provocation. The enthusiasm which followed the defeat of the Armada, the supposed inclination of the king to High Church, and even Romanist doctrines, and the open favour he showed to several of the old Catholic Scottish houses, gave strength to the champions of the Kirk; and for some time, as he ruefully exclaimed, he was not a ruler in his own dominions. The formal abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland—the institution had existed in name even after the iconoclasm of Knox—marks the highest point of Presbyterian ascendancy; and, more than once, the king and his council were compelled to yield to the demands put forward by those whom he called the 'Popes of Edinburgh.' Undoubtedly, however, if James had been a really able and popular ruler, he could have vindicated his supreme authority, and the national estates, which even at this juncture often showed jealousy of the heads of the Kirk, would have upheld the prerogatives of the Crown. As it was, Scotland was divided by a contest between the Church and the State, and the Presbyterian Hildebrands assumed an attitude which contributed afterwards to many troubles. We quote a passage that gives an idea of the bickerings between the king and the clergy:—

While seeds of trouble were thus growing up in the contests between the Kirk and the Crown, the great Tudor queen had passed away, and James became monarch of the three kingdoms. Both England and Scotland recognised in him the principle of hereditary right, for there was little in his character or antecedents to recommend him as a national sovereign. In his own country he had become unpopular, and in England he was chiefly known as one who had basely betrayed his mother, who had intrigued with Elizabeth to obtain her throne, and who had no sympathy with the great alliance with France and the United Provinces in the war with Spain. James, however, encountered no opposition in assuming the sceptre of these realms; and his progress to London from the North—described graphically by Mr. Burton—was a scene of continuous joy and festivity. The king, at least, had ample reason to feel delight at the happy change which had come over his life and prospects. He left a poor and distracted country—where his reign had long been a long scene of trouble, and where he was being continually reviled by those who, in his phrase, 'agreed as well with monarchy as the devil with Christ'—for rich, peaceful, and well-ordered England; and he might well expect a season of repose amidst the blandishments of a Tudor hierarchy, and the submissive acts of Tudor courtiers. For some time he was not disappointed, and what between the unctuous flattery of prelates, who said that 'he spake like the Spirit,' and of nobles who vied with each other in adulation, James must have thought himself translated to a sphere not unworthy even of his own estimate of himself. Before long, however, he was destined to find out that in England, as well as Scotland, he was to earn the contempt and dislike of his subjects. Essentially timid and short-sighted, he abandoned the foreign policy of Elizabeth; he disgusted Englishmen by his open preference for worthless and needy Scottish favourites; and in a few years he found himself in antagonism with the House of Commons, now becoming a real image of the nation, and with the tremendous force of Puritanism already growing into ascendancy in England. Mr. Burton gives us, from a contemporary chronicler, this sketch of the ignoble monarch:—

As is well known, the dislike entertained for James in England was in part owing to the favour he showed to Scotch favourites. The nation, too, abounding in keen adventurers—poor, hardy, and pushing—came in for a share of this feeling; and the wits and satirists of the day indulged in sarcasms on the greedy race who crossed the border in hungry swarms to feed on the wealth of of the well-fed Southron. We quote from one of these pasquinades:—

During the years that followed the union of the crowns, Scotland made considerable material progress, though still troubled by occasional disorder. The strife which for ages had made the border a theatre of desolation and rapine came, to a great extent, to an end, and signs of good husbandry and growing comfort began to appear in this wild district. The great house of Huntly, 'the cock of the North,' and the terror of the Reformation party, was balanced by the rival house of Argyle, and the barbarous Highlands were reduced in some degree to subjection to the Crown. The wealth of Scotland increased apace under the influence of trade comparatively free; and the political consequences were important in weakening the connection of the country with France. At the same time, the authority of the law, which, since the death of Murray, had been feeble, began to be again vindicated. The following, from a contemporary eye-witness, will show the progress of this revolution:—

Yet, though Scotland was growing in wealth, and the authority of the Crown was increasing, the nation, during the last years of this reign, abounded in discontent and disorder. The Scots seem to have felt bitterly the transference of their ancient Royal House to an alien and lately hostile country; and though they had no affection for James, they resented the visible loss of the monarchy. A High Commissioner and Council at Edinburgh could not supply the place of the sovereign; the evils of absenteeism began to be felt in the capital and the rural districts; and complaints were made that what had been a kingdom was now treated as a subject province. Dissatisfaction of this kind, however, was small, compared to the angry sentiments engendered by the long-standing quarrel between James and the Presbyterian clergy. Puffed up by the oriental flattery of the courtiers and prelates at Whitehall, that sagacious ruler formed the design of revolutionizing the Kirk in Scotland, and of restoring the mode of Church government which the Reformation had violently overthrown; and he proceeded to his work with a timid arrogance which provoked contempt and indignation alike. Many circumstances concurred to second a purpose, which in the next generation was to culminate in disaster and ruin to the House of Stuart. The pretensions of the Presbyterian ministry had disgusted many moderate persons; their despotic claims to spiritual domination had aroused the jealousy of the national estates; a large party among the nobility were ready to comply with the wishes of James; and though the nation was fanatically Protestant, a minority of it had no sympathy with what they thought was sacerdotal tyranny. The result was that, without seeming difficulty, Episcopacy was again set up in Scotland; the king was enabled to boast complacently that he had built up the chief pillar of the throne, and he even succeeded in introducing innovations into the simple ritual which had been established after the Reformation. James, however, prudently abstained from allying aristocratic selfishness with popular feeling, and did not venture to lay hands on the forfeited possessions of the Church, long in the ownership of lay families; and, on the whole, notwithstanding the tone of pompous dictation assumed by him, he avoided wounding powerful class interests when he insisted upon the return to 'Prelacy.' His bishops, indeed, were very different personages from the mitred tyrants who, a century before, had lorded it over thousands of vassals, and had exasperated Scotland by their pride and wickedness. They were, for the most part, needy and insignificant men, who thought a great deal more of 'making ends meet,' and of winning the royal ear by adulation, than of asserting the claims of the Church, and they had little in common with the class of the Beatons. Mr. Burton gives us a most interesting account of their difficulties and privations, and of the ignoble means some of them took to keep up their state. We quote an anecdote to that effect:—

This change, however, though it did not provoke a violent revolution in Scotland, created a large amount of discontent. The Presbyterian clergy declared that the Kirk had been contaminated and profaned; they kept up a sullen agitation; and many of their congregations only awaited an opportunity to revolt openly. Whenever James paid a visit to his Scottish dominions, which he occasionally did, his devout respect for the Anglican ritual, his reverence for 'my Lords, the Bishops,' and his assiduous care about forms and vestments, aroused indignation and contempt, and before his death it had become evident that a great religious movement was at hand. The King, however, continued to avert a passionate explosion during his life; he avoided acts of high-handed oppression; and it is remarkable that he expressed an unfavourable opinion of the wrong-headed personage who in the next reign was to precipitate the catastrophe and bring his son to ruin. We quote James's account of the character of Laud:—

The death of James, in 1625, was the inauguration of a new era in Scotland. The king, though full of arrogant pretensions, was timid, feeble, and not without a certain kind of political insight; and if he had irritated and alarmed the nation, he did not venture to outrage its feelings or to assail some of its most powerful interests. His successor, naturally a firmer man, and taught to believe the odious doctrines of passive obedience and divine right, had no scruples in overbearing opposition, however stern and national, to the line of policy he had marked out for himself; and the conscientiousness he undoubtedly possessed with respect to certain cardinal principles, made him obstinate in carrying them out in government. Besides, he seems to have really thought it was no part of the duty of a king to keep faith with ministers or subjects, that something in his office placed him outside the pale of ordinary moral obligations; and in addition, like all the Stuarts, he was especially addicted to favourites, and to lend an ear to their unwise counsels. Such a man, a bad ruler as it were on principle, was calculated to precipitate the great revolution which in England and Scotland alike had been gradually in course of development. As Mr. Burton truly observes, the teasing, fitful, and hesitating attempts of James to cross the will of his people, were as nothing to the steady and resolute efforts with which Charles endeavoured to accomplish the ends which from the first he had clearly in view. The battle in Scotland, as might have been expected, commenced upon the affairs of the Church; and the king, with singular unwisdom, contrived to unite against him most of the nobility, the Kirk, and the bulk of the people, and to stir to its depths the national sentiment. There can be little doubt that Charles intended to force the Anglican system on Scotland, and to introduce into that kingdom the well-endowed State Church, the rich courtier prelates, 'the midge-madge of doctrine,' and the gorgeous ritual which he considered divine in England. His first step was audaciously to claim the resumption of the revenues of the old Church of Scotland, which had been forfeited at the Reformation:—

By this wicked and insensate measure, Charles made enemies of all the powerful men, the leaders of the nobility of Scotland, who were in possession of ecclesiastical property, and he gave the whole nation a significant example of the iniquities of mere arbitrary power. But he was not satisfied with exasperating a class; he proceeded to touch to the very quick the religious and patriotic feelings of the nation. At the stroke of a pen he completely changed the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland, by proclaiming his right to make canons for the Kirk; and he not only introduced many of these ordinances, but he peremptorily enjoined the use of forms and symbols in worship for many years detested in Scotland. This was done, too, with a coarse contempt of Scottish sentiment which was especially galling; the innovations being thrust upon the country by English prelates, regarded as aliens. We quote a specimen of scenes which, doubtless, were not unfrequent at this juncture:—

In this kind of foreign innovation, Laud, now made a royal favourite, was badly and conspicuously eminent. This meddling priest, who thought that he could bind the faith of two nations within his formulas, was made an overseer of the Scottish prelates, and presented to them with insolent rudeness the ecclesiastical policy they were to adopt. There is reason to believe they disliked him heartily, while he was execrated by the Presbyterian clergy. We quote a few words from one of his dictatorial letters:—

By this policy, Charles had contrived to unite the great mass of the nation against him. The descendants of the lay lords of the Reformation, the moderate men who reverenced law, the still powerful Presbyterian clergy and their congregations throughout the country were alarmed, irritated, and provoked; and signs of discontent were manifest even in the Council of National Estates. The last drop that made the cup overflow was the publication of the famous Liturgy of Laud, which, itself odious to all true Protestants, was forced on the people in a manner certain to exasperate a high-spirited country. Mr. Burton criticises at length and learnedly this celebrated attempt on the faith of Scotland: it must suffice to say that the new Liturgy was in conflict with all the forms of Scottish worship, devised, as we have seen, from the Huguenots, which had existed since the Reformation. The scenes that ensued are well known, and it is not necessary to dwell on them. The 'rabblings' of the angry mobs at Edinburgh, Jenny Geddes and her 'devout sisters,' the terror that fell on the appointed bishops, were merely symptoms of the deep indignation which had taken possession of the people of Scotland; and, in a short time, a general opposition was organized against the king and his government. How ignorant Charles and his ministers in England were of the tempest they had waked, will be seen from the following passage:—

Meanwhile the opposition to the king in Scotland had assumed a formidable shape, and throughout the country crowds of 'supplicants,' demanding a repeal of the obnoxious measures which had been passed during the preceding years, had formed themselves into regular assemblies, connected with a central convocation, which expressed angrily the will of the people. It has been supposed that the Council of Edinburgh connived, to say the least, with this movement; it certainly recognised the representative quality of the delegates by treating officially with them; and the institution of the celebrated 'Tables' marks the commencement of the great revolution. Charles, however, and his councillors were unrelenting; and Laud especially distinguished himself in invoking fire and sword upon the audacious 'rebels.' The 'Tables,' that is, the leading men of the nation, acknowledged as a lawful power, in direct opposition to the Sovereign, resolved to make their authority felt; and the famous compact of the 'Covenant' found the entire sympathy of all classes with them. The Covenant, in fact, was the solemn protest of Scotland against the wrong done by the king. The following, from a contemporary account, shows the deep enthusiasm with which it was welcomed:—

Charles now began to act after the fashion which was to lead him at last to ruin and death. He had not yet alienated the hearts of his people, and timely concession and simple justice would certainly have allayed the tempest. But he resolved to dissimulate with them, to hold out hopes that he would comply with their requests, and, at the same time, to prepare the means of chastising them as audacious 'rebels.' He sent Hamilton, as a commissioner, to Scotland, with full power to redress grievances, with a promise that a General Assembly and a free Parliament should be convened; but he secretly determined to put down opposition by sheer military force. If Charles was not what is called a 'bad man,' if he was not a mere reckless and wicked tyrant, it must be allowed that the detestable doctrines of kingcraft had poisoned his understanding; he acted on system, as though he were free from all obligations of good faith with his subjects. Mr. Burton gives us the following letter, written to Hamilton at this juncture; it is one of the worst extant specimens of royal duplicity:—

According to the promise given by the king, a General Assembly was now held, described fully by Mr. Burton. This great convention met at Glasgow; and Episcopacy was condemned and set aside, as in the days of the first Reformation. Charles replied by seizing Edinburgh Castle, and taking possession of the chief Scottish fortresses; and Hamilton openly issued proclamations denouncing the Covenanters as audacious rebels. Civil war broke out in 1639; and in a few weeks, an irregular contest was raging in the east and south-east, and threatening to overrun the kingdom. At this juncture, Scotland abounded with soldiers trained in the Thirty Years' War, not mere mercenaries of the Dalgetty type, but men really fitted to command; and a resolution was formed to march to the south, and to make an armed demonstration against England. In an incredibly short time, 22,000 men were arrayed under the orders of Leslie, and making for the English border—a force relatively to the population of Scotland, of extraordinary numerical amount, and a conclusive proof of the enthusiasm of the country. The composition of this army, led by some of the noblest men in Scotland, shows all classes, high and low, joined in the movement against the king:—

The Scottish army having reached the Border, the king consented to the brief truce known by the name of the Pacification of Berwick. Once more Charles made specious promises with a resolution to break faith: the wishes of the nation were to be respected; Episcopacy was not to be restored; Presbyterianism was to be the form of Church government; and the National Estates were to sanction the reforms confirmed by a paternal and high-minded sovereign. The Parliament, however, was hardly assembled before it was indefinitely prorogued; and there is ample evidence that Charles intended, as soon as an opportunity came, to invade Scotland, and take summary vengeance. At this juncture, the Scottish leaders unquestionably remembered the 'Ancient League,' and looked to France and Richelieu for aid; and if we cannot approve their purpose, we at least should remember the great provocation. The king thought that the time had arrived to inflict punishment on the 'rebels of the North;' he felt assured that the old English jealousy of a political connection between Scotland and France would throw all England upon his side; and he issued orders for a general armament, for the invasion and even the conquest of Scotland. But, at this crisis, political sympathy got the better of past national dislikes; and England, as a people, was averse to aid the king in crushing discontent beyond the Tweed. For a series of years the government of Charles had provoked indignation in England, only less than that which existed in Scotland; the tyranny of Strafford and the arrogance of Laud had combined the Constitutional and Puritan parties, and a great revolution was fast approaching. The future chiefs of the Long Parliament co-operated with the Scottish malcontents; and Charles found it impossible to collect a sufficient army to carry out his purpose. Mr. Burton describes the situation thus:—

The Scottish army, as is well known, encountered no opposition on the Tweed, and, having taken Newcastle, was advancing southwards, when its progress was stayed by the Treaty of Ripon. The sword had been struck out of the hands of the king; his English subjects had refused to second his efforts against their ancient enemies; and, in England and Scotland alike, the national cause was about to triumph. From this time, the chiefs of the opposition to the court cooperated in the two countries; and the acts of the Long Parliament and the Scottish Estates were, in a great degree, of the same kind, and had objects almost similar. Mr. Burton, however, correctly shows that Scotland certainly has the honour of having inaugurated this glorious resistance; but for the resolution displayed by the nation, it is not impossible that Stratford's scheme of 'Thorough' might have been successful for many years, and the constitutional liberties of England might have been suspended for at least a generation. Mr. Burton describes at some length the visit of the Scottish Commissioners to London, and the first proceedings of the Long Parliament; but we have no space to dwell on a subject which, however interesting and picturesque, belongs more properly to the History of England. In 1640-41, the Scottish Estates were convened in accordance with the conditions of the Treaty of Ripon, and it became evident, at once, that the authority of the king would be swept away by a violent revolution. This Assembly, formerly little more than an instrument of the will of the king, was now intent on putting an end to the policy and the power of Charles; it was overflowing with religious zeal and with national, if not democratic passion; and it resolved once for all that the House of Stuart should no longer trifle with the rights of Scotsmen. As Scotland had suffered more grievously than England from the tyranny of the court, the legislation of the Estates was more violent than that of the Long Parliament, and marked more strongly with precipitate haste; on the whole, it does not contrast favourably with that of the English Assembly; but, undoubtedly, not a few of its measures served as precedents for the Long Parliament, in the later stages of the conflict with Charles. For instance, after destroying Episcopacy, and sweeping away all the innovations in Church and State of the twenty years before, the Estates proceeded practically to abolish the prerogatives of the Crown in Scotland; and the course they took seems to have suggested the Nineteen Propositions of the Long Parliament:—

It was not to be expected, after this, that a revolution could be avoided. Charles, unquestionably, resolved to draw the sword as soon as an opportunity offered; the Estates, backed by the mass of the nation, were as determined to maintain their advantage. When such were the feelings on either side, there is little use in examining with care how or by whom the Civil War was commenced. But, as in the case of the Five Members, so in that of the mysterious Incident, the king seems to have acted with that treacherous malice which so often provoked the indignation of his subjects; and after this event, war was inevitable. The great Irish rebellion of 1641 came to add fuel to the gathering flame; and Scotland, like England, was impressed with the belief that Charles had connived at an infamous scheme of overthrowing the colonists of Ireland, and of marshalling a Papist Irish army to put down the Estates and the Parliament. Mr. Burton examines at some length the evidence against the king in this matter, and certainly is not inclined to acquit him; however that may be, it is somewhat curious that he does not allude to a most significant fact, that the alleged commission to the rebellious Irish was given under the great seal of Scotland, and was said to be in the interest of the Scotch, and that the Irish carefully avoided to lay a hand, at first, on the Scottish colonists, while they massacred wholesale their English fellows. Civil war now broke out in England and Scotland; and for some time, as is well known, success inclined to the side of the king. Mr. Burton describes the brilliant campaigns of Montrose in the North minutely and well; but he shows correctly that they were mere raids, of which the importance has been exaggerated; and Montrose was defeated without difficulty, when encountered by a really able soldier. The real struggle was in the South; and Mr. Burton, perhaps, underrates the extraordinary efforts of Cromwell in restoring the Parliamentary cause, and overestimates the weight which Leslie and the Scottish army threw into the balance. Undoubtedly, however, Leslie and the Scots were auxiliaries of extreme importance. We quote this brief description of Marston Moor, where Leslie and Cromwell commanded together:—

Meanwhile the Solemn League and Covenant had attested the Union of England and Scotland, and the celebrated Assembly of Divines at Westminster had been employed in devising means for establishing one faith in both kingdoms. The inherent difference between the Protestantism of the two countries was fully developed. The Scottish Presbyterians, true to the narrowness and bigotry of their peculiar tenets, claimed that the Kirk was of Divine institution, and endeavoured to compel a universal adoption of its ritual and forms of worship. These vain pretensions were strenuously opposed by the Parliament, broad and Erastian in view, and by the great mass of the Puritan party, trained by the results of the persecution of years to acknowledge the rights of freedom of conscience. Disputes, leading to memorable consequences, were the result of these divergent views which Mr. Burton has fully set forth:—

The civil war had gone on during these long and important discussions. The genius of Cromwell and the power of his army had everywhere overcome the Royalists; and the great Republican had become the arbiter of the situation, and supreme in England. In these circumstances the auxiliary force of the Scots became of little importance, and jealousies had already begun to grow up between the soldiers of the two nations. As is well known, the unfortunate king repaired to the Scottish camp, and the Scottish leaders delivered him up to Commissioners of the Parliament for a sum of money. We quote Mr. Burton's account of this transaction, which, if not so base as has been described by writers of the Junius type, does little credit to Scottish honour:—

It is unnecessary to dwell on the melancholy scene of the execution of Charles I. In his case, as in that of Mary Stuart, sufferings and a violent death endured with dignity, have atoned, in the eyes of many persons, for misgovernment and political crimes. This event was the signal for an open rupture between the leaders of the various parties which, in England and Scotland alike, had accomplished the great revolution of the time. The English Independents, already supreme under Cromwell and his invincible army, had resolved to establish the Commonwealth, and to set up Puritanism as the national faith; the Scots insisted on placing Charles II. on the throne as a covenanting King, and on Presbyterianism as the church of these realms. A brief but decisive struggle ensued, which, as might have been expected, ended in the overthrow of the weaker country, and the complete ascendancy of the great soldier who had never yet met his equal in the field. Mr. Burton describes at some length the 'crowning mercies' of Dunbar and Worcester, but we have no space to refer to the narrative. In the settlement of the religious affairs of Scotland, the breadth of view and even the toleration of Cromwell contrast favourably with the high-flown pretensions and narrow-mindedness of the Presbyterian clergy, who approved themselves the Pharisees of pedantic formalism. His grand exclamation—'In the bowels of Christ, I beseech you think that you may be mistaken,' shows that he recognised one of the principles which in matters of faith enjoins charity. We quote Mr. Burton's account of the closing of the General Assembly:—

It is, however, but just to add that Cromwell did not countenance this violence; and though the General Assembly was closed, no restriction existed during his régime on the exercise of the Presbyterian form of worship.

The northern and southern parts of our island were now under the rule of Cromwell, the Long Parliament having been swept away, and the great soldier wholly supreme. Even the worst enemies of the Protector must allow that in Scotland, as elsewhere, his government was in advance of his time, and, if despotic, was wise and judicious. After long conflicts, the nation was at rest; and if its patriotic spirit was quelled, it enjoyed a large share of real freedom, and grew rapidly in material wealth. Though the Kirk was no longer established, all forms of Protestantism were tolerated and favoured; and the Catholic nobles also had no cause to complain of the harshness of the civil magistrate. In governing the country Cromwell gave proof of that profound policy and anticipation of the future, which marks him out as one of the greatest of statesmen. All restraints on commerce were removed. Scotland was completely united to England; the feudal jurisdiction of the great nobles and Highland chiefs was summarily abolished; and forts, armed with sufficient garrisons, kept the half-barbarous clans in subjection. In a word, all the capital reforms which it took a century after the Restoration to introduce into Scotland again, were, in a few years, carried out by Cromwell; and it is but the truth that his Scottish policy was a model for three generations of statesmen. Under his far-sighted and firm government the country began to thrive apace. We quote from a contemporary chronicler this curious account of Leith and Glasgow:—

Our space precludes us from dwelling at length on the history of Scotland after the death of Cromwell, described fully by Mr. Burton. As is well known, a loyal reaction set in, in favour of Charles II., and this was followed by a period of tyranny in Church and State of extreme severity. Not only were proscriptions frequent, and the scaffold crowded with many victims, but the legislation of 1641 was cancelled, Episcopacy was insolently restored, the authority of the Crown considerably increased, and Presbyterianism barely allowed to maintain a weak and inglorious existence. The era, indeed, of the ascendancy of Sharp, and of the tender mercies of Claverhouse and his dragoons, was one of darkness and sorrow in Scotland—it far exceeded in its melancholy features that of the Cavalier reaction in England; and the question arises why a nation, which had proved itself so fiercely tenacious of its independence in the preceding generation, submitted for years to this cruel oppression. Mr. Burton has hardly brought out sufficiently the causes of this remarkable quiescence, which are of deep interest to the student of history. They are, we think, to be found in the facts that, after the exertions of the great civil war, Scotland was, in a great degree, exhausted; that after the Restoration, the power of the Crown was upheld for the first time by a standing army, not large, but formidable; and, above all, that the Government avoided one capital error of Charles I.—it conciliated instead of injuring the nobles, and did not attempt to assail their interests by threatening to resume the old Church revenues. Worn out, borne down, and without leaders, the nation was for a time submissive; its discontent exhibited itself in a few occasional risings only; and Lauderdale, Charles II., and his brother were allowed a season to fill up the measure of iniquity and wrong. At last the fierce awakening came. But it should be observed that at this conjuncture the movement for freedom began in England; and if Scotland inaugurated the events which led to the meeting of the Long Parliament, she played a very subordinate part in the Revolution of 1688. The passages of that memorable time are not narrated in this work, so it is not necessary to allude to them. An estimate of Mr. Burton's history will be gathered from what we have already written. It is deficient as a picturesque narrative; it sometimes, as may be supposed, displays a too fervent national patriotism; but it is singularly well-informed and complete, and its conclusions on men and events are usually careful, correct, and judicious.

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Art. II.—Early English Texts. Publications of the Early English Text Society. London: Trübner and Co. 1864-70.

Thus sings Nicholas Rowe in his translation of the poet Lucan; but can we agree with the sentiment expressed? It is partly true and partly false, for although the poet possesses this wonderful power, he himself creates an enemy that wars against his own and his hero's immortality, and this enemy is the medium he uses to express his thoughts. Few men will take the trouble to learn a language for the special purpose of enjoying an author's works, and therefore for the many it is requisite that some one should be ready and willing to reintroduce the old writer into new society. The poet Waller feared that the time would come when his countrymen would be unable to understand his writings, and he thus expressed his fear—

This is, of course, an extreme view, and time has proved it to be a false one; but the writers of the centuries previous to Waller are already in the position that he expected soon to be in himself. Chaucer is a household name, but we fear that few read his works, and still fewer the works of those who went before him. This is a state of things that should not be allowed to exist; but that it does exist, no one would be rash enough to deny. We do not blame those who neglect foreign literatures, but we do blame those who turn away from the authors of their own land because there is some little difficulty in understanding their writings.

It cannot be right that the literature of England for eight or ten centuries should be quietly ignored by Englishmen, because it is not easy to read its language; and, moreover, this difficulty is much exaggerated, for although a Saxon book may, without previous study, appear as if written in a foreign tongue, yet the few difficulties of its language will in a graduated study speedily disappear. The pedigree is complete that takes us back from the language of the nineteenth to that of the fifth century. Both in language and literature it is emphatically true that the child is father of the man, and no one can thoroughly appreciate the greatness of Shakspeare, Milton, and our moderns, who has not contrasted them with the authors who preceded them; no one can rightly judge the force of words and phrases, who has not followed them up to their sources, and seen the meads of thought they have flowed through.

Not long ago the early history, language, and literature of England were thought to be unworthy of study. Men of culture studied the languages and literatures of France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, but utterly neglected the early literature and language of their own country, which were considered rude and unworthy of attention. We do not expect to find any among the uneducated caring for the old forms of speech, but it is a disappointment to find men of education, who ought to be justly proud of the grandest literature in the world, treating our old writers with neglect. This feeling of contempt for our early literature is by no means yet destroyed, and therefore no lover of the work done by his ancestors should rest until it is entirely and for ever eradicated.

In the old English literature there is a choice for all tastes: history, biography, theology, science, romance, lyrics, and merry tales, have all come down to us from the earliest times, and in them may be seen the gradual development of the nation's mind. It should be a cause of pride for the Englishman to remember that the links in the chain that connects the language of Tennyson with the language of Alfred are all perfect.

Shall we, then, allow the treasures of the past to crumble and decay? We are now living in the enjoyment of an intellectual feast that centuries of our forefathers have prepared for us; and shall we in return leave to our children less than we have ourselves received? Are we not bound rather to take no rest until all our MS. treasures are placed beyond the reach of decay? The printing press must not be allowed to pause in its work until every line is set in type. Nothing is more likely to encourage our desire to attempt this great work than for us to see what has been done of old. All honour is due to the unnamed writer of the Vernon MS.,[172] to Shirley and Thornton, the contemporaries of Chaucer and Lyndesay, who recognised the value of the treasures that came in their way, and copied MS. libraries that have survived in safety to our times. The man who has consulted the grand Vernon MS. in the Bodleian Library has obtained a glimpse of the olden time, with its noble desire to benefit posterity, that he is never likely to forget.

The student, however, may naturally ask, 'Where can I study these works? I can't read at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, or London; and even if I could I don't understand the writing. I want the books in print, and not only in print, but in an accessible form.' It is this question that we will attempt to answer; this want that we will try to show can be satisfied.

Various worthy men have at different times laboured to diffuse a knowledge of our old literature, and societies have been formed for the same purpose. Hickes, Junius, Gale, Lye, the two Elstobs, and many others, are editors whose works have been so widely circulated that we need hardly dwell on them; but the issues of printing clubs are less known, and we therefore propose to summarize them. In 1812, the Roxburghe Club was instituted in London, to commemorate the grand sale of the Duke of Roxburghe's library, and although many trifling matters were printed by its members, yet through its aid several important texts have been brought to light. In 1818, John Gower's 'French Ballads' and other poems were printed; in 1819, Caxton's translation of six books of 'Ovid's Metamorphoses,' 'Le Morte Arthure,' and 'Sir Lancelot du Lake;' in 1828, 'Havelok the Dane;' in 1832, 'William and the Werwolf;' in 1838, 'The Owl and the Nightingale,' and Old English versions of the 'Gesta Romanorum,' and in later years the 'Alliterative Romance of Alexander,' the 'Ayenbite of Inwyt,' and the 'History of the Holy Graal.'

In 1823, the Bannatyne Club was started at Edinburgh, and in 1827, it printed the 'Palice of Honor,' by Gawin Douglas, and in 1839, a collection of all the poems relating to Sir Gawayne, and Douglas's translation of the 'Æneid of Virgil,' which it has left without preface, glossary, or notes.

In 1828, the Maitland Club was founded in Glasgow, and it printed three old romances, viz.: 'Clariodus,' 'Sir Beves of Hamptoun,' and 'Lancelot du Lak.'

The Abbotsford Club commenced its career in 1835, at Edinburgh, and printed several romances from the Auchinleck MS., as 'Rouland,' and 'Vernagu,' and 'Otuel,' 'Arthour and Merlin,' 'Sir Guy of Warwick,' and 'Rembrun,' and 'Sire Degarre.'

The Spalding Club, which was founded in 1839, at Aberdeen, printed Barbour's 'Brus' in 1856.

Although the publications of these clubs are very praiseworthy, and have done much good, the number of copies is so small, and their commercial value so great, that they are placed almost as far beyond the reach of the ordinary literary man as the manuscripts themselves. We believe that all true lovers of their country's literature will echo the words of a living editor quoted in the first prospectus of the Early English Text Society. 'I should rejoice to see my books in the hands of a hundred, where they are now on the shelves of one.'

Soon after the select printing clubs were started, a more popular movement set in, with the foundation in 1834 at Durham of the excellent Surtees Society. Although its publications are mostly of an historical or local character, it has issued several literary relics, such as 'The Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter,' 'Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church,' and 'The Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels.'

Four years afterwards, the Camden Society was started in London, and from 1838 to the present time it has continued to publish a most valuable collection of works. Its chief object has been to advance historical studies, but it has issued the 'Thornton Romances,' comprising the early English romances of Perceval, Isumbras, Eglamour, and Degravant; three early English metrical romances—viz., 'The Anturs (or Adventures) of Arther at the Tarnewathelan, Sir Amadace, the Avowynge of King Arther, Sir Gawan, Sir Kaye, and Sir Bawdewyn of Bretan;' 'The Ancren Riwle,' a treatise on the rules and duties of monastic life; an 'Apology for Lollard Doctrines' attributed to Wicliffe; and Mr. Way's invaluable edition of the old English and Latin Dictionary, entitled 'Promptorium Parvulorum.'

All students of English literature owe a debt of gratitude to the Percy Society, which was founded in 1840. Unfortunately it did not meet with the success that it deserved, and died a natural death after some unfortunate dissension among its editors. Nevertheless, it published in a convenient form, among other works, 'Selections from the Minor Poems of John Lydgate;' 'The Owl and the Nightingale' from a better MS. than that which the Roxburghe Club had printed; 'Reynard the Fox;' 'Poems of John Audelay;' 'Romance of Syr Tryamoure;' 'Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,' from the oldest and perhaps the best manuscript known; 'Songs and Carols of the fifteenth century;' and William de Shoreham's 'Religious Poems.'

In 1843, the Cheetham Society was formed at Manchester, in order to print the historical and literary remains connected with the palatine counties of Lancaster and Chester; and the Ælfric Society in London, for the publication of Anglo-Saxon works, both civil and ecclesiastical.

The Caxton Society was started in 1845, and the Warton Club in 1854.

The late Canon Shirley at one time projected a Wycliffe Society, which was to print our great reformer's works, but instead he induced the Oxford delegates to undertake the task, and after great labour he published, in 1865, his catalogue of Wycliffe's works. His lamented death has not stopped the undertaking, and one volume of the Latin works has been published at Oxford, and three of the English ones are nearly ready for issue.

In January, 1857, the Master of the Rolls submitted to the Treasury a proposal for the publication of materials for the history of this country from the invasion of the Romans to the reign of Henry VIII., which has resulted in the issue of the valuable series of chronicles and memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the middle ages. Many of these works are in Latin and French, but among those to be mentioned as written in English are Capgrave's 'Chronicle,' Pecock's 'Repressor,' Cockayne's 'Saxon Leechdoms,' the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,' and Wright's 'Political Poems and Songs.'

We have now scoured the field and shown shortly what had been done before the formation of the Early English Text Society. This was but little, for there was a mass of unprinted literature entirely unknown and unregistered, and it was felt by a few lovers of early English that the time had come when the great work of producing this literature in cheap editions must be grappled with.

The Philological Society commenced in 1858 with the occasional publication of some Old English MSS., and issued 'Early English Poems and Lives of Saints,' 1250-1406; 'The Play of the Sacrament;' 'Liber Cure Cocorum,' a cookery book in verse; Hampole's 'Pricke of Conscience;' and the 'Castel off Love.' In 1864, these texts were discontinued, and a few of the members of the Philological Society 'formed a committee for the purpose of collecting subscriptions, and printing therewith early English manuscripts.' From this small beginning the Early English Text Society has grown to its present flourishing condition, with a yearly income of over £900.

The publications of the Society are naturally of a very varied character, but they may be divided under four heads. There are first the Arthurian and other romances; and these form a large, and probably the most popular class, for they were the light literature of our ancestors, and in them we see as in a mirror the love for war and women, and for action of all kinds. Few of these are of native growth, but are translations from the French.

The second division consists of works illustrating our dialects and the history of our language, including a series of early English dictionaries. Some of these last are of great value and interest, and we are glad to see that the Committee propose to edit some which will form worthy companions to the 'Promptorium Parvulorum' of the Camden Society. A rare old rhyming dictionary has already been issued, and it is proposed to bring out shortly the 'Catholicon Anglicum' from Lord Monson's MS. This is a dictionary of a slightly later date than the 'Promptorium,' which contains many new and unregistered words. To this second division all the texts may be said to belong more or less, because most of the editors give careful glossaries and introductions on the dialect of their authors. Dr. Morris's introductions, especially, are the only real grammars of our early language, and are of the greatest value to the student of the history of the formation of our tongue.

The third division consists of Biblical translations and religious treatises; and the fourth of texts, such as 'Piers Plowman,' which do not come under either of the three first headings.

We will now pass in review some of the works issued by the Society, and we shall do so according to their dates, beginning with the 12th century.

The most valuable monuments of our language are chiefly of a theological character, and in 'Old English Homilies'[173] Dr. Morris has given us a deeply interesting collection, from which a curious insight into the religious views of the time may be obtained. Much of the religious teaching of these old preachers was of an evangelical character, and is but little mixed up with the legends of later writers. One writes: 'We must forsake the broad way which leads to hell, and choose the narrow and green way along the high cliffs which leads to heaven, where there are no earthly luxuries, but where the sight of God alone constitutes the eternal life, bliss, and rest of his saints.' In the homily on the Lord's-day the author tells the curious legend of St. Paul's and St. Michael's descent into hell, and how they obtained for the damned one day's rest in the week unto doomsday. He admonishes all to honour the Sunday, and fortifies his position thus:—'We ought to honour Sunday very much, and to observe it in all purity, for it hath in it three worthy virtues which ye may hear. The first virtue is that it on earth gives rest to all earth-thralls, men and women, from their thrall works. The second virtue is in heaven, because the angels rest themselves more than on any other day. The third virtue is that the wretched souls in hell have rest from their great torments.'

In the 'Story of Genesis and Exodus,'[174] the author has versified the most important facts contained in those books, and has included portions of Numbers and Deuteronomy, so as to give a complete history of the wanderings of the Israelites, and the life of their leader Moses. The poet (of whom nothing is known) invokes the aid of the Deity in these terms:—

He then goes on to relate, in a spirited manner, the chief incidents of the Bible narrative. Lamech's bigamy is thus referred to:—

To bigamy is afterwards added murder:—

The author thinks that Christian men ought to be as glad as birds are of dawn, to hear the story of man's bliss and sorrow.

'Seinte Marherete,'[179] is the first of a triad of saints' lives, to be edited for the Society, the other two (St. Juliane and St. Katherine) are still to come. The editor is Mr. Cockayne, whose observations are always worth a hearing, although they are of a very pugnacious character. In 'Hali Meidenhad,'[180] he expresses great offence at the opinions of his author, whose attacks on wedlock he takes very much to heart. We find in the side-notes such expressions as these—'highflying notions,' 'this ranter.' The anonymous author of the treatise is supposed by Mr. Cockayne to have been a bishop, and the same as he who wrote the three saints' lives, and the 'Ancren Riwle.' Whoever he was, he writes with considerable vigour, and describes the troubles of wives with great goodwill. The maiden is to ask the queens, rich countesses, and saucy ladies as to their mode of life. 'Truly, truly, if they rightly bethink themselves and acknowlege the truth, I shall have them witnesses that they are licking honey off thorns. They buy all the sweetness with two proportions of bitter.' A husband is held up before the maiden's eyes in these unfavourable colours:—'While he is at home, thy wide walls seem too narrow for thee; his looking on thee makes thee aghast; his loathesome voice and his rude grumbling fill thee with horror. He chideth and jaweth thee, and he insults thee shamefully; he maketh mock at thee; he beateth thee and mawleth thee as his bought thrall and patrimonial slave. Thy bones ake, and thy flesh smarteth, thy heart within thee swelleth of sore rage, and thy face externally burneth with vexation.' It shows how much outspoken language has gone out of fashion, that the author thinks it necessary to put into Latin certain of the passages which a bishop addressed to some young nuns. Mr. Furnivall has unearthed from the Vernon MS. a later essay on the same subject, entitled 'Clene Maydenhood,' in which the author adjures young women to bind Christ in their hearts, because man's love is never constant.

'Havelok the Dane,[181] is one of the best—if not the very best—of early romances, and we are indebted to the Society for bringing it within the reach of the ordinary reader. It was first edited, in 1828, by Sir Frederic Madden, for the Roxburghe Club, but since that time it has been almost unattainable on account of its scarceness and consequent high price. The story, like most of the romances, is a version taken from an original, written in French. Two kings, of England and Denmark, die, and each leaves his child to the care of a steward, who uses it badly. Grim, the founder of Grimsby, saves the life of Havelok, the son of the King of Denmark, and comes with him to England, where the boy grows up stalwart, and becomes the strongest man alive, putting the stone twelve feet beyond his companions. Havelok marries Goldborough, 'the fairest woman alive,' who was the daughter of the dead King of England. The two go to Denmark and drive the usurper from the throne, after which they return to England, and conquer the English usurper. They reign for sixty years, and fifteen children are born to them, who all become kings and queens. Havelok's first acts, on his return to England, were to found a priory of black monks in Grimsby, for the good of his old friend Grim's soul, and to marry Grim's daughters to two of his courtiers. 'King Horn,'[182] another romance of the thirteenth century, is of English origin. Horn, the son of the King of a place called Suddene, who had been killed by the Saracens, reaches the country of a neighbouring king with his companions, and is loved by that king's daughter. The king finds out the attachment, and banishes Horn, who travels to another kingdom, and conquers a formidable giant. After this, he returns to Westernesse and claims his lady love. Various troubles succeed; but, in the end, Horn returns to take possession of the ancestral throne of Sudden.

We now pass to the fourteenth-century texts; and here we find the most important work that the Society has attempted, which is a three-text edition (under the able editorship of Mr. Skeat) of the most valuable work in early English literature before Chaucer, viz., 'The Vision of Piers Plowman.'[183] This great 'Puritan' poem was very popular for many years, and a large number of MSS. of it have come down to us. These differ very much, and it appears that the author, William Langland, was induced by the popularity of this work to produce at various times what may be called, for want of a better term, three editions. These are represented by—1, the Vernon MS.; 2, the copy printed by Robert Crowley, in 1550; and 3, that printed by Dr. Whitaker, in 1813; and all the MSS. at present known can be ranged under one or other of these types. Before commencing the great work of producing a worthy edition of this great classic, the Society was anxious to have as much information concerning the MSS. as it could obtain, and in 1866 issued Parallel Extracts of twenty-nine MSS., asking, at the same time, that librarians or possessors of libraries would communicate to the Society's editor the discovery of other MSS. not noticed in these extracts, as the committee believed that many valuable ones might have remained unknown. In the following year Text A, from the Vernon MS., appeared. This only extends to eleven passus, or less than half of the whole poem, as subsequently written. The author is very severe upon the vices of his day, and in scourging them he gives us a valuable insight into the domestic life of the time.

The poem is divided into two parts, the 'Vision of Piers the Plowman,' and the 'Vision of Do-well, Do-bet, and Do-best.' In the first, the author describes how he fell asleep on the Malvern Hills, and saw, in a dream, much to displease him. The world is represented by a field full of folk, among whom are ploughmen, spendthrifts, hermits, minstrels, beggars, pilgrims, friars, a pardoner with bulls, law-serjeants, bishops, and all kinds of craftsmen. Holy Church comes to the author as a lovely lady, and points out to him Falsehood, Bribery, Simony, and Flattery. The King makes up his mind to punish Falsehood, if he can catch him; but that delinquent flees, and takes refuge with the friars, who pity him and take him under their protection. The king then appeals to Reason, but he will not take pity on wrong until lords and ladies love truth, rioters are holy clerks, knights are courteous, and priests practise what they preach. The author awakes, but soon dreams again. Conscience preaches, and is seconded by Repentance in his endeavours to convert the deadly sins. The preaching has great effect, and all set out on a pilgrimage to find Truth; but no one knows the way, and a Palmer who has returned from the Holy Sepulchre, and met many saints, knows nothing of Truth. They now meet Piers the Ploughman, who directs them to the way, and promises to guide them when he has ploughed his half-acre; meantime he sets them to work. At first, the people will not work till hunger comes in, and then they agree to do whatever Piers wills. All the names of persons introduced into the poem tell their own story, thus Piers's wife is called Work when time is, his daughter, Do as you are bid, and his son, Obey your king. In the second part, Do-well is to fear God, Do-bet to suffer, Do-best to be lowly of heart. All the allegory of the poem is very palpable, and at times tedious; but the incidental allusions to the state of the people are of the greatest interest. The author appears to have felt strongly the responsibility of his position as a preacher, and the contempt he evinces for the small value of the Pope's pardon, shows us that in the middle ages a purer Christianity was occasionally preached than we are often apt to imagine. Langland lays great stress on the law of love, and shows the infinite superiority of a life of righteousness over a mere trust in indulgences. Mr. Skeat says of him: 'He shows himself to us a man of simple, noble, and pure faith, the friend of the poor, the adviser of the rich, with strong views on the duties of a king toward his subjects, together with a feeling of deep reverence for the kingly character, fearless, unprejudiced, and ever willing to be taught.'

'Pierce the Ploughman's Crede'[184] is not written by the same author as the 'Vision,' but is an imitation of it by some one who was glad to avail himself of the popularity of that work. It is thus analyzed by Alexander Pope:—

Mr. Skeat has followed manuscripts in his edition which had been previously neglected. Dr. Whitaker and Mr. Wright printed from the first edition of 1553, but the British Museum MS. is older than this, and there can be little doubt that both the MSS. and the printed copy are all copied from a MS. now lost or not forthcoming.

The next work we shall mention is a translation of a French treatise on sins and virtues into the homely English of Kent. It is called the 'Ayenbite of Inwyt,'[185] two old and expressive words which are now completely lost to us, and superseded by remorse and conscience. The book was written for the benefit of laymen, in order that fathers and mothers might keep their consciences undefiled. There is a very full account of sins, and the morality preached is very strict, for backgammon and chess are placed among foul and forbidden games. This text had been previously edited by Mr. Stevenson for the Roxburghe Club, but in a very careless manner, as is seen by the author's original preface and table of contents being left out. Dr. Richard Morris has remedied these deficiencies, and has prefixed a most valuable grammatical introduction, in which the characteristics of the Southern dialect during the early English period (1250-1340) are pointed out.

The late Mr. Toulmin Smith's collection of the statutes of 'English Gilds,'[186] in the 14th and 15th centuries, is one of the most valuable works issued by the Society, as its interest is so wide as to include both the past and the present. The study of the societies of the olden times gives us a deep insight into the domestic and municipal life that has been so much neglected by historians, and throws a strong light upon the present condition of the working classes as developed in the trades' unions.

A life and coherency has been put into the dead bones of dry statutes by the valuable essay on the subject by Dr. Lujo Brentano, which is the first and only 'History of Gilds' in English, and comprises the Continental Gilds as well as our own. Mr. Toulmin Smith unfortunately died before the work was completed, but his daughter, with filial piety, has worked at the completion of her father's design, and the result is a book that forms a worthy monument to an able and good man.

The 'Early English Alliterative Poems'[187] consist of the 'Pearl,' 'Cleanness,' and 'Patience.' The first poem is an allegory of great beauty, in which resignation to the will of God is enforced. The writer has lost a daughter of two years old, and he dreams of gleaming rocks, crystal cliffs, and silver trees, and sees his child in bliss on the opposite side of a stream. The second poem is a collection of Biblical stories tending to enforce purity of life, and the third is a paraphrase of the Book of Jonah. All three show the author to have possessed much poetic power.

'William and the Werwolf'[188] was edited by Sir Frederic Madden, in 1832, for the Roxburghe Club, but his edition had become very scarce before the Early English Text Society undertook its publication as the first text for their Extra Series. Mr. Skeat, who has edited this edition, has wisely changed the name of the English romance to William of Palerne, because it is a translation of the French 'Guillaume de Palerne,' and has been able to fill up the missing parts of the English version from the French MS., portions of which were supplied to him by M. Michelant, of the Imperial Library at Paris. The story is as follows:—William, the son of the King of Apulia, is about to be murdered by his uncle, when he is carried off by a wolf, who is found subsequently to be a werwolf or manwolf, enchanted by his stepmother. William is adopted by a cowherd, and afterwards taken into his household by the Emperor of Rome, whose daughter falls in love with the boy. To save herself from being married to another prince, Melior leaves the palace with William, both of them being disguised as bears. They are taken care of by the werwolf, and afterwards re-disguise themselves as a hart and hind. William performs marvels, taking the werwolf's step-mother a prisoner, and only releasing her on condition that the werwolf shall be disenchanted. All ends happily, with several marriages as a climax.

We have not yet referred to the great cycle of Arthurian romances, which have lately been brought so prominently before the reading public by the charming poems of the Poet Laureate. Most of these romances were introduced to an English public in the 15th century, but some are of an earlier date. 'Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight'[189] is one of these last, and appears to have been written by the author of the 'Alliterative Poems' previously mentioned. Sir Gawayne, the matchless and faultless son of Loth, was one of the leading spirits in his uncle's court, and the present text contains one of the most interesting incidents in his career. While Arthur is holding a Christmas festival at Camelot, a knight of gigantic stature, clothed entirely in green and riding on a green foal, enters the hall. He carries an axe, sharp as a razor, and asks that some one should strike him with it, on condition that he may return the stroke at the end of a year. All are silent. Arthur accepts the challenge, but Gawayne beseeches his uncle to allow him to undertake the encounter, and the king consents. The Green Knight adjusts himself, and after Gawayne has struck off his head, walks off with it under his arm. The company feel more comfortable after his departure, but the year soon comes to an end, when Gawayne must travel to seek the Knight of the Green Chapel. After many adventures, Gawayne comes to the loveliest castle ever beheld, where he is welcomed warmly. The lord (who is the Green Knight in a more ordinary costume than that he had before adopted) treats him nobly, and tells him that he will direct him to the Green Chapel. The two make a covenant between them that the lord shall go to the chase and Gawayne stay at home, and at the end of the day give each other what they have got in the meantime. On the first day the hostess tempts Gawayne, but he is proof against her charms, and she leaves him with a kiss, which he gives the host at night; on the second day she does the same and gives him two kisses, which he gives to his host; the third time Gawayne is again tempted and receives three kisses, and a girdle of green lace that will preserve whoever wears it from wound or death. At night Gawayne gives the kisses but keeps the girdle. On the morrow, after much trouble, he finds the Green Chapel, from which the Green Knight comes out, and makes a feint to strike him. The Knight pretends to strike again, and the third time he brings blood, when he explains his conduct to Gawayne thus:—'Two blows I aimed at thee, for twice thou kissedst my fair wife, but I struck thee not, because thou restoredest them to me according to agreement. At the third time thou failedst, and therefore I have given thee that tap.' The Green Knight, who is Bernlak de Hautdesert, now tells Gawayne that his aunt, Morgain la Fay, lives at his castle, and presses his friend to return with him, but Gawayne will not, as he wishes to return to Arthur's court. Here he is received with joy, and all the knights wear a green belt in his honour. The author tells all this, which we have been obliged to relate in the baldest manner, with great spirit and vivacity; and in the midst of his story he gives lively accounts of boar and fox hunts, which display a wonderful mastery over language. Another of the prominent knights of Arthur's court was Lancelot of the Laik.[190] His adventures are related in a short romance paraphrased into the Scottish dialect from a part of the long French 'Lancelot.' The author is in love and dares not tell it, but dreams that he should write a poem for his lady love to read. He does not know what to write about until he thinks of the romance of 'Lancelot,' when he runs over rapidly an enumeration of that knight's early deeds by way of saying that he will not tell of them. He then commences in earnest with the wars between Arthur and Galiot. A knight brings a message from King Galiot, bidding Arthur to yield to him or he will invade his land and not return until he has conquered and taken Queen Guinevere prisoner. Arthur returns the defiance, but on asking Gawayne who Galiot is, he learns that ten kings obey him. At this time Lancelot is imprisoned by the lady of Melyhalt, and laments his fate, but as he hears of a battle between Arthur and Galiot, he obtains leave from the lady to join Arthur on condition that he returns to his prison at night. The lady provides him with a red courser, and red shield and spear, and he goes to the fight, where he performs wonders, and sees the queen, with whom he falls in love. He returns to prison, where the lady visits him, and is smitten with love. She goes to court, and returns after being sumptuously entertained. She now promises to let Lancelot go on one of three conditions—either he must tell whom he loves, or declare his name, or say if he expects again to equal his former exploits. He refuses to tell his lady's name, or his own, but declares his trust to do more than he has done before.

The lady of Melyhalt asks Lancelot to remain with her till the next battle, when she will provide him with black armour. Arthur's forces are led in the fight by Gawayne, who is severely wounded. Lancelot joins in the battle on the third day, and laments over Gawayne, but he does not waste time in regrets; for on all the ladies, with the exception of the queen, sending him a message, he overthrows several knights, and does great damage to the enemy. At last, on Gawayne's instigation, the queen sends him a message, the receipt of which affects him so much that he seems to grow a foot in height, and nothing can withstand him, as he goes into the thick of the fight. His foes leave the place in mortal fear at the sight of him; for whilst his thoughts are of his lady's love he achieves unheard-of-wonders. At last he is borne to the earth, and Galiot, who has seen his powers, says he shall not die on his account, and gives him his horse. Here the Scottish romance closes, and the rest of the story is only to be learnt from the French original. Gawayne swoons when he sees Lancelot with Galiot; but the latter is induced by Lancelot, although he is conquering, to submit to Arthur. When all are friends, Galiot and Arthur go to see the wounded Gawayne, and then they speak of Lancelot. Gawayne says that he would wish to be a woman, if Lancelot would love him all his life. The queen seems to approve of the sentiment, for she admits that she can say no more. Now the serious part of the story commences, for the queen, through the instrumentality of Galiot, visits Lancelot, and promises to love him. She takes counsel with the lady of Melyhalt, and after a general understanding they all part, with hopes of soon meeting again.

Mr. Furnivall has printed a short and rapid sketch of the life and wars of Arthur,[191] king of men, which occurs in an incomplete Latin 'Chronicle of the Kings of Britain,' belonging to the Marquis of Bath. The author seems to have got excited, and found dull Latin prose unequal to his feelings, so he breaks out into English verse. There are many spirited and lively sketches in the Lincoln 'Morte Arthure,'[192] which was first printed by Mr. Halliwell, in 1847. It opens with a general statement of Arthur's conquests, and then proceeds with the account of the summons from the Emperor Lucius. When Arthur hears it, his face is so terrible that the Romans who bring the letter quail before him. The king has a magnificent feast prepared, at which boars' heads are served upon silver, and peacocks and plovers upon golden plates. There are also sucking pigs, herons in sauce, huge swans, cranes, and curlews, tarts and conserves, hams and brawn in slices, wild geese and ducks, young hawks, stews, curries, and all kinds of made dishes. So much for the food; and the drinks are on as grand a scale of magnificence. Wine of various kinds is made to run in silver conduits, and the rare sorts are served by the chief butler in goblets of gold, decked with precious stones, in order to preserve the drinkers from the deadly effects of poison. All this grandeur astonishes the Roman senator, who allows that Rome itself could show nothing equal to this luxurious feast. Arthur sends a grand message to the Roman emperor, in which he threatens to throw down the walls of Milan, ravage Tuscany, and besiege Rome. All these big words seem to have frightened the Roman senator, for he prays to be protected on his homeward journey; and Arthur tells him that if his coffers were crammed full of silver, he would be quite safe with a passport from him. Nevertheless, the Romans were glad to get away, and

In the great battle that follows, Lucius's army is preceded by sixty giants, born of fiends and witches, riding on tower-bearing camels. In spite of all this, Arthur is victorious, and sends the body of the emperor, whom Lancelot had killed, to Rome, as his arrears of tribute. Other battles[193] succeed this, till Arthur learns of the villany of his bastard son, Mordred, when he at once sets out for Britain, and he might well say with Edgar—

Gawayne, always rash, fights Mordred like a madman, and is slain in the deadly struggle. Thus dies the merriest, the kindliest, and the bravest of knights—he who was the hardiest of hand, the happiest in arms, and the most polished in hall. Now all grows dark, and the end begins to close upon all. Arthur finds the dead body of his nephew, and his great grief is beautifully exhibited in the following description:—

Arthur now, with his 1,800 men, fights desperately against 60,000, and is successful in conquering them, and killing Mordred; but what signifies victory, when he has got his death wound, his wife has deserted him, and his friends are dead around him. The great conqueror and pattern of all knightly virtues dies a broken-hearted man, and the grand old story comes to an end. The writer really felt what he was writing about, and the consequence is, that his history stirs our very blood. And not in vigour alone is the writer's power shown; the lines in which he describes a bright morning in spring, and others in which he tells of love, can hardly be beaten by any other early work.

'Merlin'[199] is one of the longest of the romances, and although the whole of the text has been issued in three parts, the work still awaits for its completion Mr. Wheatley's introduction, index, and glossary. It has, however, two interesting essays prefixed—one by Mr. D. W. Nash, who learnedly draws the distinction between Merlin the enchanter and Merlin the bard; and another by Mr. J. S. Stuart Glennie, on the Arthurian localities which he finds in Scotland. The story commences with the miraculous birth of Merlin, and a description of King Vortiger's tower. The various events occur very rapidly at first. Pendragon and Uter defeat Vortiger, and Pendragon becomes king, but soon after he is killed in a battle, and Uter succeeds him, taking his brother's name at the same time as a surname. Uter Pendragon falls in love with Ygerne, the wife of the Duke of Tintagel, and by the help of Merlin he deceives her into receiving him as her husband while the duke is away. This ill-used man is killed in a fight, and the king at once marries Ygerne, who soon after bears him Arthur. Merlin is now very busy, and by his help the child is carried away. When Uter Pendragon dies, Merlin points Arthur out as the heir. He is made king, but the barons revolt against him, and now a long series of battles commence, which are graphically described by the old author. Gawein and the other nephews of Arthur come to him to be knighted, and through their instrumentality the rebel kings are gradually reconciled to their chief, to whom they do homage.

Merlin is enchanted by Nimiane, in a hawthorn bush, in the forest of Brochelond, and Arthur is heavy at heart on account of the long absence of his adviser. Gawein and his fellows go to seek for Merlin, and with the account of their adventures the book is brought to an end.

The 'Romance of the Chevelere Assigne'[200] is a translation of the French poem, 'Chevalier au Signe,' and was formerly edited for the Roxburghe Club by Mr. Utterson. The present editor, Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, gives in his preface a description of a curious ivory casket of 14th century workmanship, belonging to Mr. William Gibbs, which illustrates the story.

King Oryens and his queen Beatrice have no child to succeed them, and when one day they see a woman with twins, the queen is unkind enough to revile her. As a punishment, she herself soon afterwards bears six sons and one daughter, each with a silver chain about its neck. The king's mother, Matabryne, gets a man to drown the children, which she replaces by seven whelps, and then bids the king to burn his wife. Marcus, the man employed to take away the children, leaves them in a wood, wrapped up in a blanket, a hind then suckles them, and a hermit takes them home. The forester sees them, and tells Matabryne, who has the eyes of Marcus put out, and employs Malkedras to kill the children, and take away their chains. The man only finds six, as one is with the hermit; but he smites the chains from off these, and the children are turned into swans. The queen gives the chains to a goldsmith to make into a cup, but one chain increases so that half of it does for a cup, and the workman keeps the other five. The poor queen is to be burnt for her crime of bringing forth seven whelps, and a day is fixed for the purpose; but in the meantime, an angel comes to the hermit, and tells him the whole truth, commanding him at the same time to take the child he has with him to court, and have him christened Enyas. The angel counsels the child, who is twelve years old, to say that he will fight for the queen. There is then a great combat, in which right is victorious.

Enyas cuts off the head of Malkedras, and the old queen is burnt instead of the young one, who is unbound. The goldsmith comes forward with the five chains, which being given to the swans, bring them back to their proper form. The unfortunate sixth one, however, is obliged to remain a swan because its chain is irrevocably gone.

The 'Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry'[201] is a very entertaining work, as it gives us a good insight into the condition of woman in the fourteenth century, which cannot be considered as at all satisfactory. The worthy knight set about instructing his three daughters on their various duties, and all his directions are enforced by some tale from the Bible or monkish legends. He employed two clerks and two priests to look up examples and anecdotes for him, and a curious medley is the result of their labours. He seems to have been a credulous man, and a good friend to the priests, for he never fails to uphold their views. He tells us that the Virgin saved the life of an evil woman when she fell into a well, because she fasted on Fridays and Saturdays, and kept herself from sin on those days; but a good woman was lost because she did not confess one sin. He is very severe upon the dressiness of the women, and says that young ladies now often take so long to adorn themselves that they are too late for service. Some ladies who washed their hair in wine and other things, to change its colour, could not get into the church of our Lady until they had cut off their hair. Besides waste of valuable time, much money was thrown away by these ladies, and the knight laments that one woman's dress would have clothed many poor. The worthy man wrote a book for the benefit of his sons, on the same plan as this one for his daughters; but, unfortunately, it has been lost.

'The Wright's Chaste Wife'[202] is really, as it is here styled, 'a merry tale.' A wright or carpenter marries a fair maiden, whose mother can only give, as her portion, a garland of roses, that will keep its colour while she is true to her husband, but will change if she is faithless. The man makes a room in his house, with a trap-door, out of which escape is impossible, and then goes to build a hall for a certain lord. This lord asks the wright about his garland, and thinks he will go to try its efficacy. He gives the wife forty marks, and she tells him to go to the secret chamber, where he drops through the trap-door. He threatens, but his passion is of no avail; and when he is hungry, the woman will give him nothing to eat until he has earned his dinner by work. The steward follows the lord, and gives the woman twenty marks, when he also is sent upstairs, and tumbles through the trap-door. This man won't work until he is very hungry. Next comes the proctor, who also gives the woman twenty marks, and likewise tumbles through the hole prepared for his reception. He very much objects to work, and stands out for a longer time than the others; but at last he is obliged to give in too, and spin for his meal. At last the wright comes home, and wonders at the noise. When he finds out the cause, he asks his wife to let the lord out, but she will not until his lady is sent for. At last all three are set free, and the garland remains as fresh as ever.

This story is a reproduction and improvement of one of the 'Gesta Romanorum,' in which the carpenter gets with his wife a shirt that will never want washing as long as she is faithful to him. In the original story the three lovers are fed on bread and water, and not made to work, as in Adam de Cobsam's poem.

Mr. Furnivall seems to have a special gift for hunting interesting tales and bringing them to earth. His 'Political, Religious, and Love Poems'[203] are a miscellany of good things of various dates; but the 'Babees Book'[204] is a perfect treasure-house of curiosities, which tend to illustrate the manners of the fifteenth century. It contains a 'lytyl reporte' of how young people should behave; 'how the good wijf tauzte hir douztir;' 'how the wise man tauzt his son;' the 'Book of Nurture, or schoole of good maners for men, servants, and children,' by Hugh Rhodes; the 'Boke of Nurture, by John Russell;' the 'Boke of Kerninge;' the 'Booke of Demeanor, and the allowance and disallowance of certaine misdemeanors in companie, by Richard West;' the 'Boke of Curtasye;' the 'Schoole of Vertue, by F. Seager,' and various other pieces on the customs of the times. The authors of these pieces give very good rules for behaviour, and some of them would be appropriate in a book of etiquette of the present day; but others discover a state of society now happily passed away. The subjects treated of rise from the rules laid down for boys, which if they follow,

up to the difficulties that beset chamberlains, ushers, and marshals, in ordering the precedence of the great men entertained by their lords.

Mr. Furnivall has prefixed to his book a valuable introduction on the subject of Education in Early England.

'The Booke of Quinte Essence'[205] is a short text with a long title, on a revelation delivered to Hermes, the prophet and king of Egypt. It is here said that God's greatest secret for man's need is how to restore old feeble men to the strength of youth. A walnut-shell full of the wonderful liquid is sufficient to turn an old man young again, to cure one given up by the doctors, and to make a coward bold and strong. Besides all these advantages, it has the further one of driving away the devil. As the price of the book that contains these wonderful secrets is only one shilling, we should not be surprised to learn that the Society had sold a very large number of copies.

We now pass to some of the purely religious texts of the fifteenth century, commencing with the hermit of Hampole.

Richard Rolle, author of the 'Prick of Conscience,' was formerly held in great estimation as a prolific writer, and his 'English Prose Treatises'[206] are a real addition to our literature. The hermit was not a priest, but a recognised, although an irregular sort of preacher. One John de Dalton gave him a hermit's clothing and a cell, and provided for his maintenance. His gaze was ever upwards, and he was so absorbed in his work that his friends could take off his tattered coat and put it on again when mended without his knowledge. He was an ascetic himself, but saw that some men must lead an active life or the world would come to an end; and although much of his teaching is gloomy, it is generally Scriptural. Hampole died of the Black Death, in the year 1349, and his shrine became a favourite resort of pilgrims, who believed that he performed miracles of healing after his death. Mr. Perry has discovered a very great curiosity in a Latin office, prepared for the time when the hermit should be sainted. Whether this time did arrive, or whether the office was actually used, does not appear.

The 'Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse'[207] contain Dan Jon Gaytryge's sermon, 'the whilke teches how scrifte es to be made, and whareof and in scrifte how many things solde be consideride' (this has also been wrongly attributed to Wiclif); the 'Mirror of St. Edmund,' which contains some good precepts, although gloomy and ascetic; the 'Abbey of the Holy Ghost,' and a few hymns and poems. The 'Abbey of the Holy Ghost' is founded in the conscience, and the maidens that cleanse the place are righteousness and purity. The abbey is built on the river of tears, meekness and poverty prepare the ground, the walls are raised by obedience and mercy, the love of God and right faith are the cement. Patience and faith shall raise the pillars, shrift make the chapter-house, preaching the hall, prayer the chapel, contemplation the dormitory, sadness the infirmary, devotion the cellar, and meditation the store-house. The Holy Ghost is the warden and visitor, charity the lady abbess, wisdom the prioress, meekness the sub-prioress, discretion the treasure, orison the chauntress, jubilation the helper of the chauntress, devotion the cellaress, penance the cook, temperance the waiter, soberness the reader, pity the answerer, mercy the almoner, dread the porteress, honesty the mistress of the novices, courtesy and simplicity the receivers of the guests, and reason the purveyor. But with all these excellent virtues about, four evil damsels are introduced into the abbey, and they are envy, pride, grumbling, and evil-thinking, who do much mischief; but in answer to prayer the visitor expels the evil damsels.

John Myrc, a canon of Lilleshall, in Shropshire, knowing how ignorant many priests were, compiled his 'Instructions for Parish Priests,'[208] for the purpose of 'coaching' them in their duties. He instructs them as to the questions they should ask the penitent in confession, and gives forms of absolution. He says that bad Latin does not spoil the Sacrament, if the first syllable of each word be right. The author, however, does not confine himself to priests, but adjures the laity to be reverent in their behaviour at church; and not to jest or loll against pillars and walls. This treatise affords, as may be supposed from its subject, very valuable illustrations for the life of its time.

We have left to the last, one of the texts that we like best, and that is, the 'Hymns to the Virgin and Christ.'[209] These poems are full of a pure devotional feeling, and many of them exhibit their authors as true poets. 'The Mirror of the Periods of Man's Life; or, Bids of the Virtues and Vices for the Soul of Man,' is a striking and vigorous poem; but there is a tender philosophy breathing throughout 'Revertere' (in English tunge, turne aghen!) which is very charming:—

Besides the texts we have noticed, there are many of a later date than the fifteenth century; but we cannot do more than mention the names of Lauder's 'Poems,' Hume's 'Orthographie of the Britan Tongue,' Thynne's 'Animadversions of Chaucer,' Lyndesay's 'Works,' 'The Romance of Partenay or Lusignen,' Levins's 'Manipulus Vocabulorum,' Awdeley's 'Fraternitye of Vacabondes,' &c., &c.

The list of books to be printed in the future is a very tempting one, and we notice many works of great interest, which we trust the Society will have money enough at its disposal to allow it to issue. This can be done only by a large accession of members, and we are sorry to see that the income has not increased as it ought to have done during the last year. The following are the totals of the balance-sheets of the various years from the formation of the Society in 1864, when the income was only £152 2s.; 1865, £384 0s. 11d.; 1866, £681 0s. 1d.; 1867, £941 6s. 10d.; 1868, £1,229 1s. 3d.; 1869, £1,227 19s. 4d.

The committee seem to feel the greatness of the work before them, and calling for further assistance, write in their fourth report:—'Thus reinforced, the Society can proceed with fresh vigour to the accomplishment of its task, with the determination not to rest till Englishmen shall be able to say of their early literature, what the Germans can now say with pride of theirs, "Every word of it is printed, every word of it is glossed."' And in their second report, they had previously said, 'The Society will be ready to take on itself the burden laid by the late J. M. Kemble on the Ælfric Society, to leave no word of Anglo-Saxon unprinted.' In redemption of the latter pledge it has now in the press, King Alfred's translation of Gregory's 'Pastoral Care,' the 'Homilies of 971 a.d.,' belonging to the Marquis of Lothian, and a fresh set of Ælfric's 'Homilies,' most of which are in verse.

We ought never to lose sight of the urgent need there is for printing our MS. treasures. A unique manuscript may be destroyed at any moment, as has lately occurred in the total destruction of the Strasburg library, to the irreparable loss of the whole literary world.

All tastes are catered for in the set of Early English Texts. Do you wish for ballads and short poems? You have them here. Do you care only to read romances? You have the tales of battles and gallantry that delighted our grandfathers while they sat as open-mouthed listeners to the reading of the great volume that lasted them for many a long winter evening. Do you wish to study manners and customs, to find out how our ancestors lived, worked, and played, what were their religious beliefs and superstitions? Here are ample materials for your investigation. Or is the old language the object of your examination? Then the great object of the Society is to popularize the old works that illustrate the history of our native speech.

There is everywhere evidence of a growing living interest in modern languages, and of an attempt to study them with the thoroughness that has heretofore been confined to the classical languages. At present, although we are comparatively in the dark as to our grammatical forms, we are gradually constructing a history; but we cannot build without bricks, and the Early English Text Society proposes to supply them.

No pleasure is thoroughly enjoyed until it is imparted to another, so that as we have had the satisfaction of conversing with, and studying the mind and manners of our ancestors, we are anxious that others should enjoy the same pleasure; and we cannot but feel that those who will only read printed books are under great obligations to those gentlemen who undertake the arduous task of reading and explaining the manuscripts for their amusement and instruction. We have made a rapid sketch of the literature of several centuries as illustrated by the publications of the Society, and necessarily, from the extent of the subject, in a very slight and cursory manner, but we shall be quite satisfied if its imperfections lead our readers to consult the originals themselves.

We may add, for the benefit of those whom it may interest, that the subscription to the Early English Text Society is one guinea a year (with an additional guinea for those who subscribe to the Extra Series), and the honorary secretary is Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, 53 Berners-street, W.

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Art. III.—Parties in the Episcopal Church.

(1.)Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. By the Hon. G. C. Brodrick and Rev. W. H. Freemantle. London: John Murray.

(2.) The Church Times.

(3.) Church Association Reports.

The glory of the Episcopal Church, according to many of her loudest eulogists, is her comprehensiveness. She is not, they say, like the sects, bound within the narrow lines of a rigid orthodoxy. She does not expect that from all her pulpits the same doctrines should be preached in stereotyped phraseology, not even that her ritual shall always conform to the same pattern. She recognises diversities of tastes, and adapts herself to them. Instead of checking, she encourages the widest freedom of inquiry, and secures for her clergy a liberty which the members of voluntary communities will not tolerate in their ministers. Hence she includes in her ranks men of innumerable varieties of opinion, from believers in the extreme theory of verbal inspiration on the one hand to Doctor Colenso and his sympathizers on the other; from upholders of sacramentarian and sacerdotal systems, which run to the very verge of Romanism, to men whose Church principles are hardly to be distinguished from those of the Plymouth Brethren. Whether such diversity is consistent with the fundamental principles of the constitution of the National Church; whether it was ever contemplated by the men who, at the time of the Restoration, gave her her present character; whether the advocates of this comprehensiveness support it by arguments drawn from their own ideal of what a National Church should be, rather than from the documents which determine what the Anglican Church really is; whether the principle they lay down is worked out to the extent which, if admitted at all, justice would demand; whether, on the whole, it works for evil or for good, are questions which we do not propose to discuss at length here. The fact at all events is patent, and was never more so than at present, that the Church of England includes not only individuals of different views, but great antagonistic parties having their separate organizations, pursuing their own ends, and two of them at least, so far from admitting that the Church should be of this comprehensive character, asserting that they themselves are the only loyal Churchmen, and that all others have more or less of the taint of heresy upon them. The lines of demarcation have become even wider, and the feelings cherished by the more eager partizans on either side more intense than when, eighteen years ago, one of the distinguished divines of the day gave to the world his celebrated sketch of the rival hosts. During the interval there have been many fierce struggles, in the settlement of which the courts of law have been called to intervene. Decisions of great importance in their bearing upon the liberty enjoyed by the clergy have been given. Toleration has been secured for doctrines and practices which it was generally thought were inadmissible, and the legislature has gone so far in its desire to relieve scrupulous consciences as to modify the terms of clerical subscription. The result of the liberty thus given, has been, as perhaps might have been expected, a wider divergence of opinion than has existed at any previous period; but this, unfortunately, has not been accompanied by a growth of that mutual tolerance which even the result of the various suits, instituted for the suppression of what was regarded on one side or the other as heresy, ought to have produced. The parties who have failed in their attempts to purge the Church of error have sat down under their defeat, angry and discontented, the loud talk of a determination to secede rather than be parties to the toleration of false doctrines has died away, but the lesson as to the limitation of their power has done nothing towards producing a spirit of greater charity.

The Broad Church party—if indeed it is right to speak of a number of men who have no party organization and no party aims, among whom are to be found all shades of opinion, and whose one bond of connection is their common love of freedom—have consistently maintained that the Church of England belongs neither to one section nor the other, but is intended to comprehend all. The aim of the courts has been as far as possible to maintain this view, on behalf of which they have often strained the language of the law to a dangerous extent, and in fact have allowed mere custom to set aside the authority of law in a way which certainly would not have been tolerated in any proceedings relative to property or civil right. The expositions of ecclesiastical law, as given even by the highest court, have often been remarkable as illustrations of the dexterity with which the judges have rescued the Church from positions of great difficulty, rather than as examples of sound interpretation of the statutes. Considerations of public policy have affected the decisions, and the strict letter of the law has been disregarded in a fashion which would find little favour in Westminster Hall. The question has been, not as to the positive requirements of the statute if construed on the ordinary principles of language, but as to the amount of latitude to be permitted; and so far has this been carried, that the defendant in a recent suit was bold enough to quote a passage from a letter of Dr. Arnold, which was not published till after his death, as illustrative of the liberty which had been granted to him, and which, therefore, though to a much greater extent, he demanded for himself. Statesmen and lawyers in truth, understanding that the absolute victory of either of the contending parties meant the downfall of the National Church, have anxiously sought to protect all in the enjoyment of their position, and to make them understand that the continuance of the great institution, to which in common they profess so hearty an attachment, depends upon their mutual recognition of each other's rights. But the lesson has been given to reluctant pupils, of whom it would not be too much to say that they cling to that which they ought to forget, and turn a deaf ear to all they need to learn. If among the best men on all sides there has been the steady growth of a better feeling, and if there is an increasing body of the ablest and most thoughtful of the clergy who refuse to identify themselves with any party, the majority of the strong adherents both of the High Church and the Evangelicals display all the old spirit, and if they had the power certainly do not lack the will to make the Church the exclusive preserve of their own section.

A better illustration of this could not well be found than that which is given in the introductory Essay on 'Anglican Principles' in the recent volume of 'Essays on the Church and the Age,' the manifesto of moderate High Churchmen. In this party the Dean of Chichester deservedly holds a very high place. His great abilities, his large and varied experience, his distinguished services in various departments of labour, his high character, rightly give him position and influence. He is not a man of illiberal temper, and if he ever had the heat of the partizan, the mellowing influence of time has toned down its ardour. He is so far from being a man of extreme views or from cherishing any sympathy with the Ritualist party, that he says, 'They assert dogmas which are scarcely to be distinguished from some of the errors of the Church of Rome.' 'To this party,' he adds, 'those who adhere to the principles of the English Reformers, and who were, till of late years, known on that account as High Churchmen, are as much opposed as they have ever been to the Puritans, and on the same grounds.' His opposition to these Romanizing tendencies, however, does not lead him to regard more favourably those who are at the other pole of the theological compass. On the contrary, if he condemns Ritualists, he lays much of the blame for their position, as well as for that of the Rationalizers, on the Evangelicals, whom he charges with infidelity to their ecclesiastical obligations, and with all the consequences which have resulted from those lax notions of subscription of which they gave the first example. 'The only difference,' he says, 'between the Tractarian and the Puritan, in regard to the formularies of our Church, is this, that the former honestly, if not discreetly, has avowed the principle upon which the other party has, from the time of the Reformation, never ceased to act. The Puritans did not use the term non-natural; but what else is meant when they clothe in the garment of Calvinism what the Church has laid before them as plain and simple Catholic truth?' Having himself no sympathy with those who do not care to inquire what the Church really means in the dogmas which she has laid down, and who are satisfied if they can so torture her formularies as to make them lend an apparent sanction to preconceived opinions, he contends that 'if the thumb-screw be allowable to one party, it cannot be withheld from the other;' ... that if liberty be granted to one, it must be extended quite as freely to the other; and that if this be conceded, the only conclusion is that 'we possess no authoritative statement of doctrine whatever.'... 'The question is—we repeat it—the principle having been conceded to the Puritans, where is it to stop!' This is certainly turning the tables to some purpose. The Evangelicals have been in the habit of denouncing, with a good deal of righteous indignation, the Popish traitors who eat the bread of a Protestant Church, while all the time they are labouring only to betray her into the hands of her enemy; or the still greater offenders who continue to occupy Christian pulpits, while their writings show that they have accepted even the fundamental doctrines of Christianity in a non-natural sense. It is somewhat startling for them to be told, not only that they are equally guilty, but that their own laxity has been the fruitful parent of the excesses of which they complain so bitterly in others; that as the definite meaning of formularies must be maintained or universal liberty be conceded, and every man left to believe as seemeth right in his own eyes, the toleration to a Gorham necessitated toleration to a Bennett and a Mackonochie and a Colenso; and that on them, therefore, rests the responsibility for the disorder, the anarchy, and the heresy by which the Church is afflicted. The argument is not new, for it is substantially that which was employed by the Rev. W. G. Ward in his defence before the Oxford Convocation, and the Evangelicals would doubtless have a good deal to say in opposition to its conclusions. We quote it here only as indicative of the strong feelings that prevail between different parties. Mr. Ward used it in self-defence, and in an extremity when the tu quoque plea was about the only one which was available. From Dr. Hook it comes as a judicial utterance; and when such a man adopts this style of criticism, we can easily understand with what bitterness the struggle will be carried on by those who have neither his ability nor his self-restraint.

While High Churchmen are thus determined on their side, and while the more advanced section of the party never attempt to conceal the contempt they entertain for Evangelicals, we have only to turn to the utterances on the opposite side to see how fully the sentiment is reciprocated. It would be hard to conceive of a sadder caricature of Christianity than would be presented by a series of extracts from the Church Times and Church Review on the one side, and the Record and the Rock on the other. That there are members of both parties who are shocked by the violence, the narrow-mindedness, the unreasoning partizanship of their organs, we do not doubt; but it is impossible to deny that these journals do represent large classes, whose antagonism to each other they at once stimulate and express. The scenes which two or three years ago disgraced the meeting of the Christian Knowledge Society, and the prosecutions which occupy so much of the time, and must sometimes try the temper and patience of the judges, are other indications of the same virulence of spirit. We hear about the comprehensiveness of the Church, but while this internal strife continues, that comprehensiveness is its scandal, not its glory. It is the legal association in a Christian Church of men who have no faith in each other, whose principles are mutually subversive, who lose no opportunity of expressing their disgust with their companions and their belief that they are where they are, only by unfaithfulness to conscience and disobedience to law. It is the maintenance of an outward and visible form of union where there is not the inward and spiritual grace; not the fellowship of those who have subordinated minor differences that they may cultivate a true spiritual unity, but of those whose antagonism is deep-rooted and intense, and who remain in the same Church from mutual jealousy and distrust rather than from any better feeling. It is a comprehensiveness which is the child of legal moderation, not of Christian charity, which, so far from being the legitimate development of noble and generous sentiment, is the result only of external constraint, whose hollowness is evident in the railing accusations to which both parties condescend, and which survives only because neither is willing to withdraw from an enforced and hateful union, and so leave all the prestige and emoluments of the National Church in the hands of its opponents for the promotion of what it regards as deadly error.

The ideal of a church which allows the greatest latitude of opinion consistent with an adherence to the primary truths of the Gospel, which trusts for the maintenance of Christian truth to its own living force rather than to any artificial defences, which aims to cultivate unity of spirit rather than agreement in creed, which, proceeding on the belief that where there is the same spirit there will yet be diversities of gifts, and under the same law differences of administration, does not attempt to curb the free development of individual belief or allow the divergence to which it may lead to interfere with the enjoyment of true spiritual fellowship, is a very exalted one. If the Church of England were really striving to attain that, or if it exhibited any signs of an approach to it, we should be prepared to condone many faults, and, even though it failed to realize its own conception, to honour it for aiming at such an ideal. But this is just the view which High Church and Low Church would alike repudiate. Little love as they bear to each other, they have still less for the only section which is honestly seeking to give the Church this character. Whether or not the members of the Broad Church party are right in their interpretation of the facts of history or the principles of ecclesiastical law, it is due to them, at least, to say that they are consistent in their maintenance of clerical liberty. Others demand freedom for themselves, and are very loud in their protests against ecclesiastical despotism if there is any danger that they may themselves become its victims. Broad Churchmen vindicate the liberties of all, and have more than once, in times of fierce excitement, exposed themselves to a storm of unpopularity by their gallant defence of men who had made themselves obnoxious by their avowal of what was branded as heresy. All others have in their turn been assailants; they, never. From all the crusades against heresy they have stood aloof, and have been content to bear the reproach of heterodoxy themselves rather than do anything which might narrow the boundaries of the Church, or curtail the freedom of the clergy. We could not find a better illustration of this than in Dean Stanley's recent volume of Essays. We find him in the Gorham controversy breaking a lance in defence of the Evangelicals when an attempt was made to deprive them of their status in the Church; and when they, forgetful of their own difficulties, turned round, and in their turn became assailants of the authors of 'Essays and Reviews,' we find him equally resolute in courageously withstanding them. His own views in opposition to Ritualism are expressed with sufficient distinctness, and, when dealing with its favourite South African prelate and his attack on Dr. Colenso, he is bold and unsparing; but if any wish him to unite in an effort to expel Ritualists from the Church, his answer is, 'As we would wish to include the Nonconforming members of the Church who are without its pale, so we would wish to retain those Nonconforming members who are within its pale.' The very thoroughness with which the Dean carries out his principle itself irritates many. They cannot understand how a man should be so zealous a champion of the rights of those whose theological and ecclesiastical opinions he has not a spark of sympathy. But nothing tempts him to swerve from his position. The Church is nothing to him if she be not comprehensive, and he will resist to the death anything which threatens to deprive him of this boasting on her behalf.

All that Broad Churchmen can thus do, however, is to justify themselves. They cannot alter the fact that there is an Act of Uniformity defining exactly what the character and constitution of the Church shall be; and when we come to examine the history and requirements of that Act, it is difficult to see how it can be maintained that the Church was intended to be comprehensive. It is so in fact; but it is so certainly in opposition to the designs of the ecclesiastics of the Restoration who gave it its present constitution, and in opposition to the letter of the law.

But if the existence of separate parties with views in such complete antagonism as to be mutually destructive is an anomaly, these parties may plead in their own behalf that they are as necessary to the Establishment as the Establishment is to them; that they could exist and work for the advancement of their own views even though they should be expelled from the Establishment, but that in such case it must assuredly fall; and that so conscious of this have been the administrators of the law, that until the extreme views of Mr. Purchas and Mr. Voysey have dictated a somewhat different course, their constant effort has been to avoid any decision which might compel any one of them to secede—a tenderness certainly not prompted by any regard to them, but solely by a consideration of the probable results to the Establishment. How far this should reconcile conscientious men to retain their position, is a point which must be left for themselves to settle. Nonconformists have sometimes been too ready to settle it for them, and condemn both Evangelicals and Ritualists for infidelity to truth because they do not take the course which, under like circumstances, they themselves would feel bound to adopt. Imputations of this kind are as impolitic as they are unfair. They leave out of sight the different aspect in which the same facts present themselves to different minds, and the diversity of conclusion which may be reached with perfect honesty on all sides. It is certain, however strange it may seem to those looking at the subject from a different stand-point, that of the two extreme parties there are numbers who sincerely believe that the Church was intended to be of their particular type—'Evangelical or Catholic,' as the case may be. It requires a good deal of faith, perhaps, to believe that any man can honestly think that Gunning or Sheldon intended to make the Church Evangelical, but it is nevertheless certain that numbers have a sincere conviction that Evangelicals are the true Churchmen. That 'Catholics' on their side are satisfied of their own ecclesiastical orthodoxy is less surprising; while any, whether High Churchmen or Low Churchmen, who are candid enough to confess their rubrical transgressions, would maintain that no one conforms to the pattern in all things, and that if they err, it is only in common with all beside.

One of the most remarkable features in the history of the Church during the last twenty years has been the development of High Church principles; and in this we do not so much refer to the extreme extent to which they have been pushed by the Ritualists, or to the increase of professed adherents of the party, as to the higher tone of Church sentiment which is so perceptible, and which has affected numbers who would disown all connection with any section of the party. The Tractarian movement has undoubtedly been one of the chief causes of this. Mr. Bennett and others of the early leaders who still remain faithful in their allegiance to the Church of their birth, may well congratulate themselves on the different atmosphere by which they now find themselves surrounded. They have not indeed succeeded in moulding public opinion, they have not undermined the strong Protestant feeling of the nation nor have they persuaded the people that the National Church is anything but a Protestant Church. But practices are tolerated to-day which formerly were regarded with horror and alarm; battle-grounds which once were hotly contested have been left in possession of the High-Anglicans, and they, grown bold by the successes they have won, have put forth new claims and are seeking to introduce innovations—or, as they would call them, restorations—which the most sanguine among them would not have dared to contemplate a few years ago. To preach in a surplice, for example, is no longer regarded as an evidence of Romanising tendency, although, perhaps, it is still a sign that the preacher is not of the Evangelical party. In the struggle, however, which is now waged to prevent the adoption of sacrificial vestments, it is almost forgotten how recently the appearance of the preacher in a surplice was sufficient to provoke popular commotion and to furnish an occasion of legal prosecutions. In the style of Church architecture and music, in the more elaborate form of service adopted in places innocent of High Church tendencies, and in the increased attention paid to some of the festivals, we find the same advance. Nor is it only in such points as these that the change is seen. Even more significant is the quiet revival of Convocation, and the amount of influence it has been able to gain. Power in the strict sense of the term it has not; and there is often a ludicrous contrast between the loudness of its talk and the feebleness of its performances. But if it has no legislative authority, it continually passes its judgment on questions affecting the interests of the Church, and its pretensions have sometimes been treated with a consideration, not to say deference, which is indicative of an alteration in the spirit of the times. No English Prime Minister, indeed, whatever might be his personal proclivities, would dare to concede what its leaders consider themselves entitled to ask; yet a careful observer cannot fail to see that it has been quietly asserting itself in a way most grateful to the advocates of ecclesiastical ascendancy. The Bill for the Revision of the Lectionary, introduced in the last session of Parliament, afforded a very striking proof of this advance. Convocation was first consulted as to the changes proposed to be made, and greatly to the satisfaction of High Churchmen, the preamble of the measure contained a distinct reference to the opinion which that august body had expressed on the subject. It is true that the Bill did not pass the House of Commons, and would probably not have been able to secure the assent of an assembly chosen by household suffrage without the sacrifice of this point of the preamble, but the fact that it was introduced by the ministers of the Crown and, in opposition to the protests of Lord Shaftesbury and some other peers, was accepted by the House of Lords, is itself painfully significant. It may even prove that the move has been premature and impolitic, and the result may be the awakening of a spirit of jealousy that will prevent any further encroachments. Still, such progress as has been made in this development of Church authority would not have been possible if there had not been, in certain quarters, a state of feeling friendly to it—a reaction against the Erastianism which would treat the clergy as mere officers of the State, whose duty was simply to carry out the will of Parliament—a growing tendency to accept the rule of the Church in the business of the Church.

There are many who attribute this High Church development to the influence of what they call the 'Catholic revival' throughout Europe. A wave of deeper spiritual feeling, more humble reverence for authority, more perfect faith in Catholic truth, and more earnest desire to work out the true Catholic ideal of holiness has, they say, been passing over the Continent, and it has reached us. Before we admit the fact of this revival, we are entitled to ask where its evidences are to be found. Is it in Belgium, esteemed the most Catholic country in Europe except Ireland, where the closer our acquaintance with the people the more clearly does it appear that underlying much show of outward devotion, there is, especially in the male part of the urban population, a spirit of silent but decided revolt against the superstitions of Rome? Or is it in Austria, whose ecclesiastical policy has been growingly liberal in its character, and has been continually putting it more and more out of accord with the Vatican? Or in Spain, where once priests and Jesuits ruled supreme, but where the fall of their wretched instrument, who so long disgraced the throne of that unhappy land, has inaugurated an era of freedom? Or is it in Italy herself, preserving indeed her outward allegiance to the Papal See, but it is to be feared with little faith of any kind surviving among her people? As we look at these nations where the dominion of Rome is supposed to be most secure, it seems absurd to talk of 'Catholic revival.' Still we cannot say that it is only a dream of enthusiasts. In a certain sense there has been the revival of which Archbishop Manning is so fond of boasting. Ages and countries in which we find great material prosperity, love of luxury, a low standard of morals, are those in which we find also a strong development of superstition, and a readiness to bow to the will of the priest. Europe in the nineteenth century is no exception to the rule. France in particular would perhaps be pointed out as the scene of the great Catholic revival of the day; and if the desertion by the great body of the Gallican bishops and clergy of the cause for which their predecessors so gallantly contended, the readiness of priests and people to accept the most extreme views of Papal infallibility and Mariolatry, the restoration of the rites of the Church in the old cathedrals in their full pomp and circumstance, and the shameless subserviency of French politicians to Papal ambition, be the signs of a 'Catholic revival,' such revival there undoubtedly has been. Side by side with the falsehood, the frivolity, the idle display, the incredible extravagance, and the immorality which were the scandal of Paris, and in which the court of the Second Empire was so deeply implicated, there was also an outburst of superstitious devotion, yclept, we suppose, a 'revival.' The Empress was the great leader of fashion, and as she was a devotee of Rome and the Jesuits, it became fashionable in the circles of which she was the centre, to affect an earnest zeal for the Church and her observances. As in Paris, so to some extent in other capitals; and thus, though there is little on which a Church intent only on spiritual ends could congratulate herself, there have been an increased splendour in ceremonial, a more facile acceptance of Church dogmas, a greater show of deference to the priest, and especially to the Holy Father, which have been gratefully welcomed. Looking back at the position of the Papacy in 1848, and tracing its rise from the extreme depression into which it had fallen at that time, to that sense of power which encouraged the Pope eighteen months ago to convene a Council in the hope that it would realise the grand idea of years, and proclaim his infallibility, we cannot be surprised that we hear boasts of a revival. But the more closely it is examined, the less of a religious character will it be found to possess.

In England it has been different. Whatever we may think of the doctrines of the Tractarians, it would be worse than uncharitable to doubt their sincerity, their conscientiousness, their intense devotion to the principles they hold, their spiritual life and fervour, as it would be foolish to deny that they have been the authors of what may fairly be described as a 'Romish revival.' So far as there has been any real religious movement in the Roman Catholic churches of the Continent, we believe that it has come from this country. It was no small thing for the Papal See to gain the distinguished band of converts, of which Newman and Manning are the most conspicuous. Bringing with them subtle and highly-cultured intellects, high reputations, and fervid zeal, they threw themselves into the service of the Church in which they professed to have found rest with all the passionate devotion of new converts, and their influence could not but be felt throughout the whole Romish community. The prospect of the return of England to the true Church that so large a secession from the Anglican ranks seemed to hold out, was itself sufficiently stimulating, while the example of their ardour and diligence stirred up their new associates to nobler efforts in the common cause.

But while they thus breathed new life into the movements of the Roman Catholic Church, their influence did not end there. The leaven of their teaching and spirit remained in the Church they had forsaken. Contrary to what was once expected, their secession neither deterred many of their sympathisers from venturing still further in the dangerous paths which had conducted their leaders to Rome, nor induced them to follow their example, and reconcile themselves with the Holy See. So far from the Church being purged of Tractarian principles, these are more defiant and rampant than ever. Mr. Bennett, Dr. Littledale, and Mr. Mackonochie have only developed the idea of Mr. Newman and his coadjutors; but they have done this to an extent which their predecessors never attempted, and which in those days they would not have thought possible. It is possible now, because these teachings have done much more than merely indoctrinate a certain number of minds with their opinions, they have created a High Church tone in a much wider circle than that which they are able directly to affect. Men who would scorn to accept them as their leaders, who declaim about the absurdity of some of their practices, and the Romish tendency of the whole movement, are yet to an extent, perhaps almost unconsciously, influenced by them. How is this?

Something is due to their very audacity. They speak with no faltering tone, they act with decision and fearlessness, and the confidence which they show in themselves and their opinions begets a similar feeling in others; while even with those who refuse to yield themselves absolutely to their lead, there is a disposition to think that, though they may push their notions too far, they would not have dared to go to such an extreme unless they had been in the main right. There are large numbers of Englishmen, who, looking on at the spectacles provided for them in Ritualistic churches, are induced, after the first feeling of surprise, and possibly of indignation, is over, to say, 'There must be something in these men; they have gone too far, but that is only what others are doing in the opposite direction. They have borrowed too much from Rome, while others approach too near Geneva. We like neither the one nor the other. What we want is the service of our own Church well done.' Thus they have carried a large body who condemn Ritualism to a position in advance even of the old High Church view, and they have done it mainly because they had the courage of conviction, and did not shrink from the consequences to which their boldness might expose them. What the Protestant public would think and say of them, how many prejudices they would awaken, what condemnation they would have to face, they must have foreseen. But they have braved all, and they have a reward, even beyond the progress they have made in winning converts to their party, in the subtle but powerful influence they have exerted on Church sentiment.

They have had, too, the life and energy characteristic of the youth of religious parties. In the abundance of their labours, in their freedom from conventionalism in their work, in their willingness to adopt any plan which has been found successful by others, they are an example to ministers of all churches. There are, of course, among them those who have little sympathy with the noble aims of their brethren, and who have no higher object than a gratification of their own strong priestly instincts, perhaps even of their childish love of display, who delight in the show of the gorgeous service, and have little care for the truths it is intended to symbolize, and who bring contempt upon the whole movement by words and deeds which stamp on it a character of weakness and puerility. It is the fate of every party to attract some followers of this type, and it would be as unfair to judge it by them, as it would be uncandid not to recognise the higher qualities of those who have given it weight and importance. The truth is, these men have a faith, and they are not afraid of avowing and of acting upon it; and in an age which is only too prone to seek after compromises, this itself gives them power. Their very dogmatism, offensive as it is to inquiring minds, is a reaction from the too prevalent laxity of religious belief, and commends them to a large class who are weary of endless disputations, and crave for something positive. To the clamour for liberty—which is not unfrequently only another name for lawlessness, the sign of an unwillingness to submit to any rule either of faith or practice, the assertion of a man's right to believe what he likes, and do what he will—they oppose the law of a Catholic Church, ending all discussion, and silencing opposition by the mere assertion that the Church has spoken, and that through her we receive the will of God. In the presence of a widespread disbelief in the supernatural, and a desire to eliminate the miraculous from the teachings of Scripture, they assert the existence of a perpetual miracle in the presence of the Lord upon His own altars, and find the best evidence of His Incarnation in the extensions of that incarnation through the sacraments for the nourishment of the spiritual life of His followers. Such a creed is out of harmony with all Protestant opinion, and does not bear the test of either reason or Scripture; and when, as it must be, the demand for its acceptance is based on the authority of the Church, it is open to attack from the Roman Catholic side equally fatal with that which it has to encounter from Protestantism. But illogical and unscriptural as it appears to us, it is held by Anglicans with a tenacity, and worked out with an enthusiastic ardour, of which we find too few examples among the believers in creeds of a more Scriptural order. They are ready to proclaim its articles on the housetops; so far from attempting to hide the extravagance of any of their pretensions, they seem rather to delight in bringing them out in their most pronounced obnoxious forms; and by their outspoken boldness they constrain even the admiration of those who like them least.

If this party have gained power by the strong assertion of their distinctive principles, they have largely increased it by the way in which they have identified themselves with various popular movements, and the earnestness, combined with a certain kind of practical wisdom, with which they have prosecuted their work. With all the deference they claim for tradition in relation to doctrine, they show not the slightest respect to traditional notions, so far as Christian work is concerned. Of that regard to dignity which restrained the High Church clergy of a former time from everything that bore the most distant resemblance to Methodism, they have not a vestige, and, indeed, they view it as one of the errors of that dreary Hanoverian Protestantism which they hate intensely, and certainly not without good reason. They set out with an ardent longing to recover the masses of the people to their allegiance to the Church, and any means that will contribute to that end they adopt. 'All other sections of the English Church save one,' Dr. Littledale tells us, 'have stood their trial and have failed.' The time is come when an effort should be made on a different principle, and that principle is a careful regard to the tastes and necessities of the people whom they have to win; for past failure is to be attributed largely to 'a refusal to face the fact, that it is with beings with human wants and frailties, and not pure disembodied rationalities that the Church has to deal, that the shopkeepers and artisans have gone to Dissent, and the labourers have gone to the devil.' Acting on this conviction, they have sought to understand the nature of the influences by which the people have been drawn on both sides in order that they might fight both dissent and the devil with their own weapons. They have been willing to learn everywhere, believing that if the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light, the latter cannot do better than become pupils in their school. Hence they have not been particular as to who their instructors were, if only they had something to teach them, and have been content to learn from a gin-palace as well as from a conventicle, from the Odd-Fellow or Forester as well as from the Primitive Methodist, borrowing from the one the histrionic style of their Ritual, and from the other the spiritual enthusiasm which expresses itself in revival services with stirring addresses and glowing hymns. There is certainly something singular in the idea that, inasmuch as the landlord of the gin-palace caters for his customers by means of painting, light, and music, the Church of Christ should do the same, and that ministers of the Gospel, adopting the arts of the managers of benefit societies, and pandering to that childish love of display which the latter gratify by glittering insignia of office, processions with a great deal of pomp and show, and rites around which a mysterious awe is thrown, should seek to attract the people by churches with gaily decorated altars, processions with banners and music, and a regular succession of church festivals celebrated with accessories that appeal to both the eye and ear. It indicates, however, the spirit of the party. Their Ritual has a deeper meaning than this, but by many it has undoubtedly been developed with the prominence they have given it under the belief that it would produce great popular effects.

Had they, however, confined themselves to the cultivation of this histrionic element, they would never have gained the power they possess. They have been equally active in the employment of means of a higher order. With the contempt for preaching which was, and still is, so prevalent amongst a large number of the Anglican clergy, they have little sympathy; for while they attach supreme importance to the work of the sacrificing priest or the confessor, they take ample care also to cultivate the art of popular address. This was specially apparent in the celebrated 'twelve days' mission,' which brought into notice more than one public orator of a type very different from anything with which the Episcopal Church has been familiar. That mission itself, disfigured as it was by many extravagancies and eccentricities, lowered in its character as a Christian work by the loud flourish of trumpets by which it was heralded, and the jubilant exultation as to its success in which its promoters indulged, and especially discredited by their manifest design to make it an opportunity of familiarising the minds of the people with Romish notions and practices, was, nevertheless, a remarkable proof of the skill as well as enthusiasm of the party. We should be sorry to think that among those by whom it was carried on there were not many influenced by a higher desire than to secure a mere party triumph; but regarded in that light only, we cannot too much admire the knowledge of human nature, and particularly of English human nature, shown by those who conceived the idea. Its very novelty was sure to arrest attention and draw crowds, and the fact that crowds are drawn by whatever means to religious services is with many sufficient to cover a multitude of offences against good taste, and even against Christian truth. There are those who apply to everything what they call practical tests, and one of their surest tests of the power of a preacher, is his capability of attracting large audiences. Of course, the proclamation of a grand crusade against sin and Satan, to be undertaken by a number of clergymen whose peculiarities had already attracted to them a large share of public attention, awakened curiosity, and, if there had been no other feeling, that would have been sufficient to crowd the churches. Among those who attended these services were many good people who went to see in what fashion and with what weapons this new warfare would be carried on. They saw the unusual sight of numbers, and many of them belonging to classes seldom found in a place of worship, coming night after night, and apparently impressed by the services. They heard eloquent preachers preaching to them the great truths of the Gospel, in forcible and striking language rebuking the sins of the day, in vivid and glowing pictures setting before them the love of Christ and His redeeming work, and in thrilling appeals beseeching them to believe and obey. Though even this could not reconcile them to a style of worship so strongly Romish in its character, or lead them to accept the error which was so subtly insinuated, it disarmed not a few prejudices, and led numbers, who never had a friendly thought towards Ritualism or Ritualists before, to think that, despite all their faults, these men were doing a great work, and were not lightly to be evil spoken of. The spectacle of so many clergymen banding themselves together for earnest evangelistic work, casting aside the traditions of their Church and their office, throwing themselves heart and soul into services in which the freedom and fervour, characteristic of Methodist revivals were substituted for the dulness and decorum with which the high Anglicans of former days were satisfied, and determined that, so far as lay in their power, they would make their Church what it has so often claimed to be, and what as a National Church it ought to be, the Church of the people, could not fail to produce a deep and favourable impression. Men who maintain an attitude of indifference to all parties did homage to the earnestness which marked the movement; and even among those who regarded it with strongest disapproval, and believed that its effect, so far as it was successful, would be to Romanize rather than Christianize the people, there were many who felt that the only way of overcoming such workers would be to display a spirit as devoted, as self-denying, and as practical as their own. Ritualists would be mistaken if they accepted the ungrudging praise which was given in many quarters to their daring courage, their free and energetic modes of action, their conscientious attempts to solve in their own fashion one of the most important problems of the day as indicating any abatement of decided opposition to their teachings, or of the righteous indignation with which those who are most ready to honour them for all that is good in them or their work, view their disloyalty to the Church of which they are ministers, and the wretched quibbles by which they seek to cloak or excuse their unfaithfulness. But, on the other hand, the Evangelicals will be equally mistaken if they forget that practical service of this character tells powerfully on behalf of the party by whom it is undertaken, and that those who feel that duty compels them to take a position of antagonism to it must, if they are to carry popular sympathy with them, justify their faith also by works.

Another feature in the conduct of the Ritualist clergy deserving of commendation, is the tact they have shown in utilising the power which was lying dormant in their congregations. The experience of all Churches testifies that nothing does more to attract a man to a religious community than the assigning to him a place and a work, and so making him feel that he contributes something to its power and prosperity. The 'Catholic' party (as they would have us call them) understand this, and have acted upon it. They endeavour to find a place for every one who will heartily give himself to the common work. They take care, of course, to preserve the sanctity and authority of the priesthood, and have clearly-marked boundary lines beyond which no layman will be allowed to go; but they perceive that one grand secret of the weakness of the Episcopal Church has been the unwillingness or the inability of the clergy to use the services which numbers in their congregations were willing to render, and they have sought to remedy the defect. Let it be granted that much of the work they give to their followers is not of a very exalted or edifying character. Still, even the masters of ceremonies, the cross-bearers, the choristers, the acolytes, the sacristans, feel themselves honored by the kindly notice of the clergy. They are pleased to think themselves of some use and importance, are led to identify themselves with the movement, and are often among its most zealous propagandists. The Christian work of women has been made a special study, and a number of devoted labourers called forth, who are among the most trusty adherents of the party, and whose ministry of love has been an immense gain to the influence of the Church in the neglected districts where it is carried on, and is a tower of strength to it. If we were intending here to estimate the exact value of the service done in these and other ways by the Ritualist clergy, we should be compelled to make many deductions. But the point on which we wish to insist, is simply the effect of their work in ministering to the growth of High Church sentiment in the country—a growth which has been aided by the unwise opposition of the Evangelicals, who have been too prone to oppose every movement of Ritualist origin without regard to its character. They have thus not only enabled their opponents to monopolise the entire credit of movements which might just as consistently have been undertaken by one party of the Church as another, but have caused Evangelicalism to be viewed by men of a more catholic spirit, who belong to no party organization, but are willing to accept wise suggestions from whatever quarter they come, as obstructive and impractical. The éclat which never fails to attend activity and enterprise has thus unfortunately remained with the Anglicans.

But while High Churchmen owe much of their present position to themselves, or, to speak more accurately, to the small but active section who form their extreme left, it cannot be denied that they have to some extent been favoured by circumstances. There are different characteristics of the age, distinct from and even opposed to each other, which have been friendly to them. They have profited by its material prosperity, and the consequent increase of its wealth and luxury; and they have profited, though in a different way, by its spirit of philosophic inquiry, its intelligent freedom, its political earnestness. A religion which delights in show, which attaches high importance to externals, which will be lenient in its judgments of those who obey the priest and regularly attend the sacraments, is certain to find many votaries in an age when there are such numbers who have no higher business in life than the pursuit of mere pleasure. The love of a new sensation alone is enough to attract crowds of this class to a church like St. Alban's. But it is not the novelty alone which captivates them; it is the type of religion which meets their tastes. It is true that they may hear from the pulpit eloquent denunciations of the frivolity of the life they are leading, but these oratorical thunders do not disturb them, save for the time. It is a remarkable fact, indeed, which has often been noticed, that sermons directed against their own special sins are rather popular than otherwise with hearers gathered from the world of fashion. They listen with interest, and if a preacher does his work well, are, perhaps, moved to some degree of sentimental emotion; they meekly submit to the castigation which they have to endure, and accept it as a species of penance which is to be borne with all humility, and having discharged what they consider a religious duty, feel themselves entitled to return with all the more zeal and avidity to the scenes from which they have for a time been withdrawn. They have had indeed the virtues of an ascetic life set before them, but they do not apply the exhortations to themselves. These, they quietly assume, belong to the 'religious,' the clergy, or those who have a vocation to a more exalted type of piety. For themselves, they are satisfied with a much humbler rôle; and if they are regular at church, observe the Holy Communion at proper times, and practise some degree of abstinence on Fridays and in Lent, they consider that they have amply satisfied all the claims of conscience and religion. If they are zealous at all, their zeal is shown in a very different direction. They leave to others all services demanding self-denial or patience. They are never found in the crowded alleys where the poor congregate, visiting the sick or succouring the needy. For the painful austerities which some practise they have no love. It is by the histrionic element that they are attracted. To them the decorations of the church and the vestments of the priests are subjects of supreme interest. They go into ecstasies over the cut of a chasuble or the colour of a stole, can tell the exact difference between a dalmatica and an alb, can give the most orthodox opinion as to the colour proper to each church festival, and are wonderfully captivated with a religion in which millinery plays an important part. 'You should (said one of this class) visit —— church. It is so delightfully high; the vestments are superb, and the clergyman has got such dear little boys, with red stockings, for acolytes.'

There is a better side of the system which appeals to another and higher class, also to be found in aristocratic circles. Repelled by the wretched frivolity of fashionable society, wearied of its incessant round of pleasure, conscious that life ought to have some higher end, and seeking after something to satisfy the craving of their souls for the real good,—they are taken by the ascetic view of Christian life as given by High-Churchism. The idea of an authority in the Church which shall relieve them from the trouble of deciding between the conflicting opinions which are abroad, and shall give them some resting-place in which they may find secure footing and so be saved from the indifference and unbelief into which such numbers are drifting, is itself welcome. They are pleased with the idea that they have the faith held by the Catholic Church for centuries, while the prospect of a life marked by self-sacrifice and active labour is that above all others the most calculated to kindle their aspirations. Romanism has always had these two sides by which it has attracted adherents of the most opposite character; and it is not surprising that Ritualism, which has sought to follow so closely in its steps, should exhibit the same characteristics with the same results,—drawing from out the circles of fashion both the superficial and frivolous, who are captivated by its outward and objective character, and the more earnest, who are won by that ideal of a life with nobler aims, and under the government of unselfish principles which it exhibits before them.

The controversies of the day, too, have helped the development of High Church feeling. When a Church is or is supposed to be in danger, when enemies are assailing her from without, and some of her own adherents are seriously compromising her character and influence, and when there is a need, therefore, for the display of special zeal on the part of those who would maintain her position, the party which is conspicuous for the highest idea of her rights, and for the most uncompromising spirit in their assertion and defence, is sure to be specially popular. High Churchmen have known how to use to the utmost advantage the existing state of things. By a singular coincidence, the Judicial Committee have been engaged in hearing the case of Mr. Voysey on the one hand, and Mr. Mackonochie and Mr. Purchas on the other; and although the Vicar of St. Alban's and the Brighton Incumbent have both been condemned, we doubt whether the High Church will not profit more by the spectacle presented by Mr. Voysey than it will lose by the suspension of Mr. Mackonochie or the prohibition of the extravagancies of Mr. Purchas. By the one, indeed, the High Church, as distinguished from the Ritualist section, will gain, rather than lose, if the result be the repression of outrages upon Protestant feeling and defiances of law, which check the sympathy that otherwise would flow much more decidedly in a High Church direction. By the other, however, the gain is immediate and very considerable. Here, we are told, is the outcome of Protestantism. 'Rights of private judgment, free inquiry, individual responsibility—see to what they all lead us! There is safety only in abiding by Catholic truth, and submitting implicitly to the authority of the Church which asserts it. The assumed right of conscience which is the basis of Protestantism is the root of all evil, and the consequence of admitting it will be an absolute eclipse of faith. Reject the voice of the Church, and men will soon cease to believe in the Bible, or even in God at all.' There are not a few who receive all this; even sincere lovers of Evangelical principles will declare that they would rather men should believe too much than believe too little, forgetting that the one evil is tolerably sure to be the cause of the other; that it is just where the dominion of superstition has been most absolute that, in the inevitable sway of the pendulum, scepticism becomes most rampant and powerful; and that no more fatal error could be committed by the friends of truth than to appeal to ecclesiastical authority on its behalf. The fact, however, is undeniable, and it is only another illustration of the general law of which we have just spoken, that in the reaction from rationalizing views and the fear of their consequences, numbers are ready to throw themselves into the sheltering arms of High-Churchism. They love truth more than liberty, and are content to surrender the latter rather than brave the risk of any danger to the former.

The progress of opinion in favour of the separation of Church and State, so manifest in different quarters, has produced a similar effect. Anticipating the possibility of disestablishment and of its coming soon, thoughtful members of the Episcopal Church are anxiously considering in what way she will be best able to meet the difficulties and demands of the novel position in which she will find herself when she is placed on a level with other Christian churches. They see that when the prestige of State connection is gone, something will be necessary to make up for the loss which she will sustain, and they hope to find it in that exaltation of her claims in which High Churchmen delight. In the view of High Churchmen, the Evangelical who has nothing on which to rely but his faithfulness and power in carrying on the work of his ministry, and who admits that the Congregational minister by his side is on a level, so far as authority is concerned, with himself, reduces the Church to the position of the sects; and in the competition which is provoked, she will not necessarily be the gainer. What is wanted, according to them, is that the clergy should assert their prerogative. The maintenance of an ornate and gorgeous ceremonial is important, for it has been shown that it has great attractions for the mass of the people, and has been able to win back numbers who, so long as simplicity was the order of the day, saw no difference between the service of a church and that of a dissenting chapel, and, in fact, preferred the latter because of its greater freedom and warmth. But of still greater moment is it that the Church should mark out distinctly the line which separates her from the sects; should insist on the authority which belongs to her clergy as being in the true line of the Apostolical succession, and should make it felt that her members possess advantages in which those outside her pale do not participate. We do not believe that experience will justify the policy, or that the pretensions which are intolerable in an Established Church would meet with anything but ridicule when put forth by a Church which has not even the special patronage of the State to encourage such un-Christian arrogance. In the meantime, this is a prevalent view, and it is of material service to the party who are contending for High Anglican principles.

From those various causes a High Church spirit is showing itself far beyond both sections of the clergy who have identified themselves with Anglican movements, and, in fact, is more or less affecting all parties. We heard of a conversation the other day between some laymen of extensive information and strong Evangelical sympathies, in which the question was asked in relation to a place which had once been a stronghold of Evangelicalism, 'Are they not becoming rather high at ——?' 'Where' (was the reply) 'is it that they are not becoming high?' We have taken some trouble to get information, and it all goes to corroborate this view. There are few of our larger towns, even those which have been most distinguished for their zeal for Evangelical principles, where we do not find the intrusion of a High Church, and indeed, a Ritualist element, which in some cases may become strong and popular. We regret to add that several of the Episcopal appointments made by the present Government must still further strengthen the hands and encourage the hopes of the sacerdotal party. Already we note some ominous signs in a southern diocese, where, after the lengthened rule of an Evangelical bishop, one of a very different character—a prelate of great power of eloquence and extraordinary tact, not to say subtlety—has been appointed in his room. Some of the Evangelical clergy have, we are told, suddenly awakened to a perception of the great worth of their new diocesan, and are adopting practices which hitherto they have condemned, and a tone which will certainly be much more acceptable to him than that which they have been accustomed to maintain. We venture to predict, that if he preside over the see for a few years, he will be able to report a different state of things from that which he found when he commenced his administration. It is not probable that he will so completely expel the Evangelical element as, if we are to accept his own statement, he had excluded Ritualism from his late diocese, but we fear that his influence may so transform some of his clergy that their old friends will hardly be able to recognise them. Whether Nonconformists have any reason to congratulate themselves on this result of the Liberal triumph to which they so largely contributed, is a question on which we need not enter. They do not owe so much to the Evangelical prelates on the bench, that they have any special reason to regret that their number has not been augmented. Still, the increase of the power of the High Church party was not the direct and immediate object for which they gave their support to Mr. Gladstone; and we are bound to say that the amount of encouragement given to that party, both in the appointment of its members to important positions, and in the favour shown to certain points of its policy, has not been regarded with satisfaction.

One result of the new spirit that has been awakened in the Anglican party, has been the almost entire extinction of that particular section of the Episcopal clergy known as the 'high and dry' school. So long, indeed, as the present system of patronage continues, it is never likely altogether to cease from among us. While there are a considerable number of livings in the gift of the Universities and colleges, who appoint to them members of their own body, who have lived so long among the musty records of the past that they have little fitness for the work of the living present, who have, in fact, by the very force of circumstances, became so many Dryasdusts; and while there are a still larger number regarded as the appanages of great families, who give them to younger sons or needy cousins, without any thought either of their mental or spiritual qualifications, many of the clergy are sure to be 'dry, yea, very dry;' and because they are dry they will also be high. They have nothing on which to rest their claims except the authority of the Church and the dignity of their office, and they are sure to exalt the one and magnify the other. Still, the section is a diminishing one, and the Church may well rejoice both that it is diminished in numbers, and that what remains of it is improved in quality. We have before our eyes now, one whom we knew in our childhood, a quiet, dignified old gentleman, who might have earned respect in any other position but that of a clergyman. He resided in the parish for many years, but what influence for good he ever exerted upon it, except by means of his charities, which were always free enough, it would have puzzled his admirers to tell. Of course, he had a righteous horror of Dissent and Radicalism; but even in opposition to them he never showed any enthusiasm. Such men belong to another generation, and where they are found now occupying positions of importance, in the midst of the busy life of this nineteenth century, they only hold them to the injury of the Church of which they are the representatives.

The papers announced, a few weeks ago, the death of one of this class, with some facts of whose story we happen to be acquainted. He was one of the few pluralists who still remain, residing on one of his livings in a midland county, and holding another in a large manufacturing town in the North of England. This town, with its teeming population and growing importance, he had never visited for more than twenty years. The work was left to be done by two curates, living on very inadequate incomes, while their rector satisfied himself with drawing the lion's share of the ample revenues of the parish. He found more congenial employment in the small village where his other cure was situate, and where he discharged, doubtless with becoming grace, the duties of a country gentleman. A glimpse of his life was given through a side-light in a speech of one of his curates, who, in acknowledging his rector's health, at a great agricultural dinner in the town of which he was so negligent an overseer, assured the company that the rector would gladly have been present, as he took a deep interest in all agricultural pursuits, and was himself one of the most successful breeders of pigs in the county of ——. It is hardly necessary to say that Dissent has a powerful hold upon the parish, or that numbers have grown up in indifference, if not in absolute hostility to religion altogether. And yet even he was not of the worst type. We remember, some years ago, driving several miles in a midland district, with a friend who was thoroughly acquainted with the region and its history. The country was rather thickly studded with churches and parsonages, and, as we passed them, our friend gave us some account of the men who had lived and worked in them. Many of the livings were in the gift of colleges and other public bodies, while others were the property of the country gentry, and, as might be expected, the clergy had almost invariably been of the 'high and dry' school; and as we heard story after story of indolence, incompetence, heresy, or, in some cases, ministerial delinquency, we could not but feel that the Church of England might well rejoice that there are but few remaining of so unworthy a generation.

The Anglican clergyman of to-day (and the class is very numerous in rural districts) is of a very different pattern. Even where he has not actually embraced Ritualistic opinions, he has generally breathed something of their spirit, and is determined to carry it into his work. He loves Dissent as little as his 'high and dry' predecessor, but he is determined to deal with it in a different way. He is courteous in his manner toward the Dissenting minister, but he means, all the time, to 'stamp out' Dissent. But it is to be done by outworking it everywhere—in schools, in pastoral visitation, and in public services; any weakness in preaching being compensated by increased splendour of service. It is impossible not to admire the intensity of devotion with which some of these young clergymen give themselves to their work. A Congregational minister of our acquaintance was telling us of one of them who had recently come to his neighbourhood, and who was working a wondrous change among a remarkably slothful and apathetic people by the earnestness of his spirit and the abundance of his labours. He had himself been called to visit one of his own members, and, though he immediately responded to the summons, he found the clergyman already there, proffering services of every kind, and unwilling to accept a denial of his request to sit up and watch all night by the bedside of the sick man. The Nonconformist convictions of a poor man must be very clear and decided if he can be insensible to such a mode of approach as this, and it was only natural that, when he recovered, the recipient of such kind attentions should be found occasionally in the parish church. But it is by means of the schools, especially, that this gentleman and his class operate, and operate to considerable effect. We are told, and with some truth, that children cannot enter into nice theological distinctions; but it is not in theological subtleties that they are instructed. The lessons given are plain and intelligible enough, as to the rights of the Church and the evils of Dissent, the reverence due to a clergyman and the Church, and the sin which they commit who neglect to show it. Besides there are innumerable ways in which, indirectly, both parents and children are affected; and a clergyman knows well enough, that when he has once got a child to the national school, he has taken the first step towards securing the parent for the Church. Hence the resolute determination of the clergy to get hold of the education of the people, an attempt in which they have been helped by those who, twenty-five years ago, persuaded Nonconformists to take up an untenable position that prevented their just scruples from receiving proper attention, and shut them out from a work in which they had previously been the leaders. Hence, too, the remarkable outburst of zeal and liberality in the extension of denominational schools since the passing of the late Act. Denominational schools are, for the most part, Anglican and Roman Catholic, and a large proportion of the grant to them will, as a matter of fact, go to build up the power of the Establishment and suppress Dissent in the rural districts. It is true the new national schools will be under a conscience clause, but they must be credulous indeed who believe that it will be of much avail in parishes where there is an active and influential clergyman, wielding, in conjunction with the squire, a supreme authority. A more potent instrument could scarcely have been put into the hands of the priesthood; and among the young recruits of the Anglican party, there are numbers who know how to wield it with the greatest effect. They do not trust to the influence of the teaching alone, but they find various ways of interesting the children: they form them into singing classes; they prepare them for their choirs; they accustom them to the observance of Saints' Days; they please them by giving them a place in processions, or employing them as acolytes. In short, they find them in the National schools, and they lose no opportunity of so training them that they shall naturally grow up to be loyal sons of the Church. We have neither the intention nor the desire to reproach them for the manner in which they thus carry on their work, or for the care which they specially devote to children. With their views of the Church, they are only showing a proper loyalty to conscience in the course which they adopt. What we object to is, that the nation should be called upon to support them in this hierarchical crusade by increasing the grants they now enjoy. We have asserted from the first that schools already in existence had a fair right to be left undisturbed in the enjoyment of advantages which the State had virtually engaged to secure them, and which they had won by their own efforts. What we complain of is, that facilities should be given for the multiplication of these denominational schools at the very time that the Government are establishing a great National system.

The National school, however, is not the only theatre on which the activity of the advanced Anglican priest is manifest. His coming into a parish is the signal for a series of changes, all directed to one end. First, the interior of the church is to be remodelled to adapt it to the style of service he means to introduce. Pews which, it must be confessed, are often unsightly enough, are displaced to make way for benches. If it be practicable, a part is railed off for a sanctuary; and the altar, with its tall candlesticks, and, where they can be obtained, with its embroidered and coloured cloths, assumes an entirely new aspect. Fast days and feast days, hitherto unknown, begin to be celebrated; intoning takes the place of the quiet and orderly reading of the service, and by degrees the people find their church and their worship bear a striking, and, to many, not pleasant resemblance to that of Romanism. In all this there is no consultation, either of diocesan or of parishioners. The clergyman assumes the position of a dictator, and resolves to carry out his own ideas, whatever be the result. Sometimes there is fierce discord and, not unfrequently, there are many secessions; but even where this is not so, the changes are, as we hear, in many cases anything but satisfactory to the squirearchy, who have hitherto been found among the most steady supporters of the Church. They valued it as furnishing a respectable and quiet type of religion, which did not make any excessive demands from them. Their old High Church clergyman neither disquieted himself nor disturbed them. He was a welcome guest at their boards, and the slight requisitions which he made, in the way of subscriptions to his charities, were not particularly burdensome, and were generally met with cheerfulness. The new-fangled notions, which make it a far more difficult thing to be zealous Churchmen, requiring not only money for schools and other objects, but some amount of personal effort and sacrifice, and often involving a man in unpleasant controversies with his neighbours, are far from being welcome, and already quiet murmurings may be heard in various quarters. We have given the party by whom this work is carried on, all the credit to which they can possibly lay claim. We are therefore the more at liberty to condemn that which is reprehensible; and one of their most prominent features is their utter contempt for the law to which they owe subjection. Not content with adopting the most pitiful evasions in order to introduce practices contrary to the whole spirit of the Church to which they belong, they have invented a convenient theory of their own as to the distinction between the law of the Church and the law of the State, refusing to obey the one when it comes into collision with the other. In the economy of the Episcopal Church, such a distinction cannot be maintained for an hour. In the eye of the law, the nation is the Church, with Parliament as its legislator, and the courts as its administrators. If any of the clergy feel that their consciences are aggrieved by this subjection to civil authority, they have the remedy in their own hands. Nonconformity has after a long and difficult struggle, succeeded in obtaining for itself a recognised legal status, and the liberty which it has thus secured is opened to them, if they are content to accept the conditions. They can have the freedom, if they are satisfied to pay the price at which it can be obtained. What they cannot do, is to enjoy the advantages which the law gives to the national Church, without, at the same time, submitting to its control. Their declamation about the rights of the Church, and the iniquity of any secular Parliament putting restraints on its free action, or any civil tribunal undertaking to adjudicate on matters of doctrine and discipline, sounds well enough, but coming from those who still claim to enjoy the prestige and emoluments of a national Church, it is simply idle bunkum which can impose on no one. Were they manfully to resolve rather to be free than to retain a position which they can only hold on condition of their disobeying what is to them a higher law, they would command sympathy from all who know how to honour loyalty to conscience. As it is, their attempts to represent themselves as victims of persecution because they are required to obey the law, expose them only to contempt and ridicule.

It is only fair to add that there is a considerable section of the party by whom the force of this reasoning is felt, and who are prepared to carry their objections to State interference to their ultimate issue.

How far it is consistent for any man to lend his personal support to an alliance which he pronounces 'wicked, immoral, and godless,' by continuing to accept the advantages which it secures to him, is a question which his own conscience must be left to determine; but it is at least satisfactory to find that Mr. Orby Shipley and his friends have begun to feel the inconsistency of their present position. Whether in the event of the Judicial Committee condemning their distinctive principles, as it has already condemned their symbolic practices, and deciding against Mr. Bennett as it has done against Mr. Purchas, they would secede from the Establishment, is not very clear. What is clear is, that they regard the present relation of the State to the Church as hindering the work of the 'Catholic' restoration, and therefore seek disestablishment as the first essential to the realization of their ideal. But this cannot be brought about at once, and in the meantime circumstances may force on a separation. Perhaps, however, it is more as a menace to the bishops than as an indication of any serious purpose that Mr. Shipley tells their lordships that the 'conspicuous want of success which has attended Episcopal hindrance to the Catholic revival has certainly postponed, but has not at all removed the prospect of impending schism.' We are left to infer, therefore, that if the attempts to repress Ritualism should be crowned with more success than has hitherto attended them, we must be prepared for schism, which, Mr. Shipley says, would be an untold evil to the Church; adding, and in this we agree with him, 'that the present state of abnormal antagonism, in any Christian sense, is less harmful, it is hard to believe.' If, however, this calamity should come, he gives the Episcopal Bench to understand that on them the responsibility will rest.

These thunders will not disturb the serene complacency of the Episcopal Bench, nor are such petulant utterances to be regarded as indicating any serious idea of separation, but their insolent and lawness tone is eminently characteristic of the party. They have formed their ideal of the Church, and in defiance of all authority, whether civil or spiritual, they are determined to work it out. They know and confess that they are at variance with the bishops, whom they have promised 'reverently to obey,' 'following with a glad mind and will their godly admonitions, and submitting themselves to their godly judgments;' but they have a convenient theory as to the necessary limitations of the obedience they are bound to render, by which they satisfy themselves that they are right in their resistance to the authority which they have in the most solemn manner bound themselves to accept. The bishops 'are, it may be, good results, but still they are results of a bad, vicious, immoral system; of a system which is utterly un-Catholic;' they have pronounced against the Catholic revival from beginning to end, and having thus set themselves against all that 'priests of the Catholic school' are doing, they have condemned themselves, and forfeited all title to unlimited obedience, by condemning these developments. In other words, the want of harmony which they confess exists between the mind of the Episcopate and the mind of the Presbyterate is a sufficient reason why priests should refuse their allegiance. The conclusion is not that which suggests itself to ordinary minds, but these men are so thoroughly convinced that they have Catholic truth, and are doing a great Catholic work, that they seem to suppose themselves superior to the laws by which ordinary mortals are governed. They may seem to be arrogant and overbearing, they may indulge in railing and vituperation, they may condescend to a style of controversy, happily altogether cast aside by Christian gentlemen, but everything is done in the interests of the Catholic revival, and these are to be advanced at all costs. Mr. Shipley candidly avows that their aim is to 're-Catholicize the Church of England,' and he appears to think that because that object cannot be secured without disobeying the bishops, there is sufficient reason why they should be disobeyed. After enumerating the changes that require to be made in the election of bishops and the remodelling of Convocation, he says:—

The simplicity of this is no doubt beautiful, but its weakness is manifest. 'Limitless obedience' no one expects them to render; but the justification of their refusal to obey at all, on the ground that disobedience is necessary to their design of revolutionizing the character of their Church, has certainly the merit of novelty. They seem to imagine that the first essential to success is audacity, and expect that they will prevail, in virtue of their blustering self-confidence and contemptuous treatment of all opponents. But the ultimate result of such a policy cannot be doubtful. A party which sets up a plea of liberty to excuse the violation of distinct obligations, whose Catholicity has in it not a single element of true charity, which seeks to subject others to authority while it disclaims all authority that comes into collision with its own ideas and designs, which brands every man, however eminent and good, who will not bow down to its idols as a heretic or an infidel, is not a party that is likely to exert any permanent influence. The age is tolerant, disposed to permit great latitude of opinion, perhaps too ready to sympathise with those who are resisting constituted authority, but it is not to be cajoled by the specious sophistries of men who, professedly contending for liberty, are seeking only to establish a new priestly despotism.

But if we have no fears of Anglican Catholics being able to shape the future of the Church of England according to their wishes, neither can we look hopefully on the condition and prospects of the Evangelical party. Thirty years ago it was the most popular and influential, if not the most numerous section of the Church. Its most sanguine friend would hardly pretend that it holds the same position to-day. We have already marked incidentally the disadvantage under which it lay in contending against a party full of the passionate zeal and energy of youth, and with ability equal to its earnestness, its members claiming to be par excellence, the assertors of Church principles and the champions of Church interests, skilful in adapting themselves to the wants of different classes of minds, fertile in expedients, and indefatigable in labours. Under any circumstances, it would have been no easy task to have maintained an equal struggle against such adversaries, hampered as the Evangelicals necessarily are by their position in the Church. Still they had many compensating advantages, and had they known how to avail themselves of the forces at their command, they might not only have held their ground, but have been to-day masters of the situation. In the great conflict which has been going on between authority and freedom, the reactionary forces are not the strongest, and had the Evangelicals been prepared fully to identify themselves with the cause of liberty, they need not have feared the result of the struggle. They had on their side the prestige of the noble work which they had done in rousing the Church from torpor and idleness, and in regaining for her much ground that she had lost, in quickening the spiritual life of the nation, in promoting social and philanthropic movements at a time when they were not viewed with so much favour as at present. As the representatives of Protestantism in the National Church, they were able to rally to their support a strong national sentiment, not always very intelligent or reasonable, but deep and passionate in its hatred of everything that has on it the taint of Romanism, and only too easily roused in opposition to any party which could fairly be suspected of Popish sympathies. Their position, too, seemed to mark them out as the connecting link between the Established Church and the Nonconformists. Their theological views, if not identical, were in close sympathy with those of Evangelical Dissenters: they were frequently brought into association in Christian work, and had often to fight side by side against the common foe; and though there never was a chance that the Nonconformists could be won back to the Church, kindly and intimate relations might have been established with them, which would have told greatly to the credit of the party by whom they had been promoted. Yet with all these circumstances in its favour, the Evangelical party has been declining. Its enemies point to it with triumph, and exaggerate the weakness over which they rejoice. Its friends reluctantly confess it, and find the explanation in the wickedness and degeneracy of the age.

The tone of a recent gathering of the leaders of the party at Islington shows that they are conscious of the fact, and alive to the necessity of making some strenuous effort, perhaps of effecting a considerable change in their policy, in order to recover the ground that has been lost. To outsiders, however, the real causes of their weakness may be more apparent than to themselves, and we shall therefore attempt to explain a state of things which we unfeignedly regret. The Episcopal Church, whether Established or not, must be one of the most powerful religious forces in the country, and we must desire to see its influence wielded by men whose theology is that of the Reformers, who recognise the rights of the individual conscience, whose creed is derived from the Bible and not from Church tradition, who preach salvation by faith in the living Christ, and have no confidence in priests and sacraments. It would therefore be cause of sorrow to us, as it will assuredly in the issue prove disastrous to the Church and injurious to the nation, if the Evangelical party should be overborne in the present struggle, its power crippled, or its character so modified as to impair its usefulness. We are fully alive to its defects. As Nonconformists, we have little for which to be thankful to it; but not the less should we deplore the loss of what has been the most spiritual element in the Church, and therefore we can only regard with sorrow the state of things of which we have to speak.

The decline of the Evangelical party is attributed by many, both friends and foes, to a growing distaste for evangelical doctrine. The age, we are often confidently told by those in whom the wish is father to the thought, has outgrown the old theology; it is too intelligent to rest in the dogmas which were once received without question; the leading spirits of the time are known to be unbelievers, and that fact itself is sufficient to make unbelief a fashion among a class who desire to be esteemed intellectual. Very sorrowfully we admit there is some ground for these statements, but they are only half-truths. The philosophic and scientific movements of the day, have undoubtedly affected theological opinion; the spirit of inquiry has become more searching in its investigation; the rebellion against the bondage of creed has, in some instances, led to an indifference to all forms of belief; and in general, doctrines that were thought to be established, are discussed with freedom, and rejected when they do not stand the more severe tests by which they are proved. Orthodoxy counts for less in the estimate of Christian character, and there is less disposition to condemn any man because of his inability to accept all its shibboleths. But all this does not indicate that the power of the Gospel is diminishing; and, indeed, there are many things that point in the opposite direction. Preaching quâ preaching may be less influential; but the preaching which is a power at all, never was a greater power than it is at present. Men chafe against the notion that it is their duty to hear a certain number of sermons, even though they be made up of platitudes rendered additionally wearisome by the style in which they are delivered; but where a preacher has a message from God, and knows how to deliver it he is quite sure of having a large audience. Nor is it at all likely to be diminished by the fact that his sermon is decidedly evangelical and even strongly dogmatic. We have popular Ritualist as well as popular Evangelical preachers; but the discourses of the former are in their leading features as decidedly evangelical as those of the latter. Indeed, at the conference at Islington, it was frankly admitted that whatever might be the actual condition of the party, the doctrines for which it contends were never so widely preached by the clergy as at present. Certainly, the Nonconformist Churches know no decline, nor is their prosperity to be traced to any abandonment or concealment of evangelical doctrines. Congregationalists, accustomed as they are to breathe the atmosphere of freedom, and unfettered by the restraints of any formal creed, have, perhaps, felt more of the influences of the age than any other body of Christians; but no one who is acquainted with them would assert that they have at all faltered in their loyalty to the Gospel. Perhaps one of the best proofs of this is to be found in the essays in 'Ecclesia.' Their writers speak with great frankness; they admit many defects in their system, and suggest various changes; they are anxious, as far as possible, to adapt themselves to the wants of the age; but withal, there is a consistent adherence to the essential principles of the old theology. Changes in the forms in which doctrines are expressed, differences in the modes of expounding and defending them there are, but change as to the root-ideas there is none. And Congregationalism upholding the great truths of the Trinity, the Godhead of our Lord, and the Atonement, and basing all on the authority of Scripture, not only maintains its ground despite the opposition it has to meet from the renewed activity of the Established Church, but is on the increase.

If, then, the Evangelicals are decreasing in numbers and influence, the cause must be sought in some errors in their policy, and not in the increased unpopularity of the principles they profess. We are confirmed in this view by the refusal of some of the best men of the day to identify themselves with the party, even though they hold the principles. It would be invidious to name living men; but there is one recently passed from among us, to the great loss not of his own particular Church only, but of all Christian Churches, who affords, perhaps, the most striking illustration of the remark. Others there are, of whom the late Canon Melville may be taken as a type, whose High-Church ideas are sufficient to prevent them from uniting with a party with whom in doctrinal sentiment they have much in common. But the Dean of Canterbury, we need not say, had no such hindrance. Mr. Ryle himself is not more free from any tinge of ecclesiasticism, as he certainly is not more heartily and thoroughly Evangelical, than was Dean Alford. Yet the latter stood aloof from the Evangelical party; and they, we fear, did not desire his union with them. His case was a typical one, and enables us to understand the enfeebled state in which the Evangelicals find themselves. They did not like the Dean's breadth of view; they regarded the opinions on the subject of inspiration, to which his Biblical studies had led him, as unsound and dangerous; they did not understand, what was one of his marked characteristics, a large-hearted sympathy with goodness even in the professors of a false creed. So, though he was educated in the school, and (as the Rev. E. T. Vaughan truly says) though he 'preached the Gospel which they preached with a force and simplicity which they might well have wished to emulate,' they looked coldly on him, and he could find no home in their midst.

Here, then, is one great secret of their loss of influence. Their ideas of Evangelical doctrine are narrow and rigid, and they are maintained with an intolerance which is at once repulsive and inconsistent. We complain that the 'Catholic' champions of authority should demand for themselves that individual liberty for which Protestantism contends, but it is still more intolerable that these Protestants of Protestants should set up a claim to infallibility, and brand all those who do not agree with them as traitors to the Gospel. By maintaining the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture, insisting on a particular theory of the Atonement as alone Evangelical, committing themselves to a particular scheme of prophetic interpretation, and adhering to those old ideas of the religious life which make worldliness to consist in certain outward acts which are therefore forbidden to the spiritual man, rather than in the world-spirit which can make everything common and unclean, and which is the evil to be resisted, they have placed themselves in direct collision with the culture of the age—even that part of it which retains a hearty allegiance to the Gospel. But when with these extreme views is combined a spirit of intolerant conservatism, when new modes of thought, and even new forms of expression are regarded as dangerous novelties, when all wisdom is supposed to be summed up in the determination to walk in the old paths and to meddle not with those who are given to change, and when those who dare, even in relation to subjects that do not affect the essentials of the faith, to take independent ground are treated as enemies of the truth, it is not difficult to account for the weakness of the party. A creed that is not only unpopular, and in some points illogical, but which can be regarded as the creed only of a section, and that not the most intelligent section of Evangelical Christians, and which is yet set forth as the only true representation of the Gospel, must alienate many; but a spirit of exclusiveness, a Pharisaic pride of orthodoxy, a dislike of free inquiry, are sure to alienate still more.

It may be said, indeed, that the dogmas of the Anglican school are still more narrow and extreme, and its intolerance still more arrogant and exclusive; but this does not mend the case. The intolerance of the Anglicans is extreme enough, but then it is consistent. Their system is based upon the assumption of a special sanctity and authority belonging to their Church party. The name of 'Catholic' which they arrogate to themselves is itself an insult to all other Christians. For them, therefore, to abjure the spirit of exclusiveness would be to renounce their own principles. But the Evangelicals are in a very different position. They are the children not of the bond-woman, but of the free. They rest their doctrines not on an appeal to authority, but to reason. The Scripture is their one rule of faith, and they recognise the right of every man to interpret its teachings for himself. When, therefore, they attempt to put a bar on all progress, when they claim for the traditions of their school a position hardly less authoritative than that which their opponents demand for 'Catholic' tradition, when they discover a spirit of watchful jealousy in relation to all the intellectual movements of the day, and seem afraid of the light which science and philosophy have to shed upon the difficult problems of human life, they are untrue to themselves and their principles. Their watchword is, 'The Bible and the Bible only as the religion of Protestants,' but with them there is a reserved condition that the Bible must be interpreted as Puritans and Reformers interpreted it. They are afraid of the liberty to which they owe their existence, and are continually throwing themselves back on that Church authority which, if it is to be accepted at all, will pronounce in favour of their opponents.

It is this ignorance of their true strength which has betrayed the Evangelicals into errors of policy which have been fraught with serious injury. As Protestants, they ought to have been the most liberal party in the Church; the most desirous to secure the greatest liberty compatible with loyalty to truth; the most ready to welcome every advance in scholarship that might help to a more thorough understanding of the Word of God; the most candid in examining and pronouncing upon the conclusions which modern Biblical criticism has reached; the most anxious to establish cordial relations with Nonconformists outside the pale of the Church. Unhappily, the very opposite of this has been the case. They have left to others the duty of practically developing those Protestant principles of which they claim to be the representatives, and have again and again employed their influence in favour of the party of reaction. The spectacle which they have presented in the ecclesiastical controversies of the last few years has, indeed, been humiliating in the extreme. They have been the most timid in every panic,—the first to raise the cry of danger,—the most eager in the assault, whether upon Rationalists within or Dissenters outside the Church—the facile instruments of the High Church party, whose leaders have gladly accepted their aid, knowing well that any prestige or advantage that might be secured must remain with those who were the consistent champions of authority. At present they are the most zealous champions of the Establishment, and their organ the most Erastian in its tone of any of the journals of the day. Yet there is no party which owes so little to the Establishment, or would have so glorious a future before it if the union between the Church and the State were dissolved. Except during the brief interval when Lord Palmerston scattered mitres so lavishly in its ranks, it has had but a scant share of the higher honours of that Church which owes so much to the devoted labours of its members. Even of the more important parochial charges, but a small proportion is held by the Evangelicals, many of whose ablest men are the incumbents of churches dependent entirely upon voluntary contributions for their support. If the Evangelical leaders would make a careful estimate of the exact position of the two parties in the Church, and of the amount of the national revenues which go to the maintenance of that which they are continually telling us is deadly error as compared with that which is devoted to the support of their own principles, we think they would be inclined to doubt the wisdom of the position they take in relation to the Establishment. That they who ought to have the most confident faith in the spiritual forces of the Church, and whose own experience affords ample proof that that faith would not be misplaced, should cling the most tenaciously to the union with the State, with all its painful and compromising conditions, is surely a strange phenomenon. Yet this is not the worst of the case. Unfortunately, their zeal for the Establishment is not allied with charity, and their characteristic intolerance marks their treatment of those Nonconformists who feel themselves constrained to seek the dissolution of an alliance which they believe to be contrary to the mind of Christ and injurious to the interests of truth. Apparently unable to understand that this difference of opinion is perfectly consistent with the preservation of Christian unity and mutual respect, they have resented the assertion of Nonconformist principles as a personal injury, and have urged it as a sufficient reason for withdrawing from Christian intercourse with those who have been guilty of so flagrant an offence. They expected that Dissenters would purchase their friendship by unfaithfulness to their own principles, and have been disappointed and indignant when they have discovered their mistake. If Nonconformists will play the rôle of poor relations, content to receive a patronizing notice on the platforms of Bible and Missionary Societies, and for the sake of this to suppress their own convictions, they are willing to be on terms of kindly intercourse with them; but that they should presume on this, and venture to assert their religions equality, is more than they will tolerate. The inevitable result has been a division between two parties who have much in common, and whose union would have been a tower of strength to Evangelical Protestantism.

We should not care to have written thus fully on these points, but for the conviction that we are on the eve of important ecclesiastical changes, and that the character of the future will depend largely upon the position taken by the Evangelical party. The Broad Church dream of comprehension must remain a dream. It is beautiful, and it speaks much for the liberality of men trained amid the influences and associations of an Established Church, that they should have indulged in such a hope. But it cannot be realized. Nonconformists do not wish for a place in the National Church, and could not accept one without the renunciation of all for which they have been contending. And assuredly, the recent meetings at Sion College show that a large and powerful party in the Establishment have no desire for union with them. But if comprehension is impossible, disestablishment must come, and come speedily, and with it will come a new phase of the great struggle. 'I disbelieve,' said Mr. Orby Shipley, himself an able advocate of the separation between Church and State, 'in anything but a change in the contest of the Church militant, a change from a contest against the State without to a contest within, against Puritanism, against Latitudinarianism, against Infidelity, and against what may be termed "Lay-elementarianism in the Church."' The sacerdotal party believes that its position in this struggle will be improved by disestablishment; but if the Evangelicals are loyal to their Protestant principles, we predict that it will find itself mistaken. Disestablishment will remove the one obstacle to hearty co-operation between the two great sections of English Protestantism, and united, they will be fully able to withstand the fierce onslaught with which they are threatened. But if the Evangelicals are to play their part in this controversy, the sooner they choose their position, and resolve to hold it firmly, the better. Two great principles are daily coming more and more directly into conflict, and they must elect to abide by the one or by the other. They must abandon all tamperings with the delusive fancy of an apostolical succession, or of special virtue attaching to Episcopal ordination. They must cease the foolish coquetting in which a few of them seem disposed to indulge with High Church ideas and practices, they must show a broader spirit and cultivate closer relations with those of kindred opinions who do not belong to their party or even to their Church; in short, they must not shrink from the full development of their own principles, and they will soon regain the strength which has been lost by the timid and compromising policy of the past.

Meanwhile it is evident that the Establishment is on the eve of a great crisis. The condemnation of Mr. Purchas has goaded the High Church party, some almost to madness; and should it be followed by a decision against Mr. Bennett, it is not easy to predict the result. Indeed, be the deliverance of the Court what it may, 'there are breakers ahead.' If it be against the Vicar of Frome, it will be fatal to the hopes both of Anglican and Broad Churchmen. It will compel the former to secede, for we believe the body of them to be honest men who will not renounce principles which they hold to be the very essence of Catholic doctrine. It will teach the latter that their dream of comprehension is at an end. On the other hand, a decision in his favour will not conciliate the Ritualists, since it will still leave them subject to the restrictions imposed by the Mackonochie and Purchas judgments, while the Evangelicals in their turn will be placed in extreme perplexity. At present the Church Association is in the ascendant. We wish we could say that its deportment in the hour of victory was such as to assure us in relation to the future of the Evangelical party. We cannot wonder that it is jubilant, but wisdom would have suggested some moderation in the expression of its joy, especially considering that the decision yet to be given may prove that its exultation has been as premature as it certainly is undignified and impolitic. We read the report of the meeting at St. James's Hall to celebrate the victory with extreme pain and sorrow. The evident failure to realise the gravity of the crisis, the unseemly tone adopted towards defeated adversaries, the apparent unconsciousness of the scandal such a strife is bringing upon the Church and upon religion in general, and perhaps more than all, the disposition to rest so much on the power of the law, are all indicative of extreme weakness. Men who can talk in the style of the Dean of Carlisle clearly do not comprehend the spirit of the times or the true position of the party which they represent. They seem to think they can stamp out High Churchism at all events, in its more advanced forms. They do not appear to understand that, could they succeed, they would secure the downfall of that Establishment which they love 'not wisely and too well.' If they would think less of law, and remember that the true weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, they would take a position more in harmony with their principles, and be more sure of ultimate success.

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Art. IV.—Ingoldsby.

(1.) The Life and Letters of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham. By his Son. London: Bentley.

(2.) The Ingoldsby Legends. By Thomas Ingoldsby, Esq. London: Bentley.

(3.) The Bentley Ballads. Edited by John Sheehan. London: Bentley.

'Ingoldsby,' like Odysseus, has become a name. The word, used as a nom de plume by a facile versifier, has come to indicate the kind of verse which he produced, and in which he has had hundreds of inferior imitators. Mr. Carlyle, who objects utterly to the whole herd of

as being the emptiest shams the world has ever seen, would probably regard the 'Ingoldsby Legends' as fathom-deep below contempt; but with the highest respect for the philosopher of Chelsea, we hold such things worth notice, and do not intend to allow his virtue to prevent our reference to 'cakes and ale.' Indeed, there are times when the laughing philosopher does considerable service in the removal of abuses and prejudices; and if our Democritus writes in rhyme, it does not appear that he is any the worse. The world, probably, would be none the less happy for more true mirth than we at present get. There are laughters hideous and contemptible—aye, and even pathetic. Ruin and cynicism, and scorn and spite, have their hyæna laugh; but it differs wholly from the pleasant laughter of the man to whom the world brings always joyous impulses. We English are, assuredly, a humorous race, more humorous, in all likelihood, than any other; this is shown, not only in Chaucer, Shakspeare, Butler, Sterne, Dickens, but in the incidents of our country and city life, in the quaint colloquy and light chaff of the market-place and the way-side. 'Merry England,' is an ancient phrase; and there is much merriment in our modern England that is not always observed by philosophers and politicians. We happen to have walked through most English counties, and to have enjoyed the marvellous differences of humour which exist through the breadth of the land. We have tracked Shakspeare through Central Warwick; have trodden the paths of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Wilson, in the realm of lakes; have talked with moormen on Dartmoor, and with shrimpers at Poulton-le-Sands. Everywhere we have encountered a joyous humour, inextinguishable by poverty and toil—a humour clearly designed to lighten men's hearts in their passage through a world of many troubles. Recognising this, we think that any form of humour is worth cultivation, and that a writer like Barham, who, to many grave thinkers, might seem a lover of ineffable nonsense, was not without his use in the world.

Three things may be affirmed in his favour. He caused good honest laughter, by telling stories in a ridiculous style, without writing a word to which the most absolute purist could object. He ridiculed foolish and superstitious legends, blowing them away as the winds of the vernal equinox blow the dead wood from the trees. And he proved that the position of a minister of religion, doing his duty in a manner thoroughly conscientious, was not inconsistent with a pleasant mirthfulness of temper. Of him we may say, as Rosaline of Biron—

And, with all his merriment, Barham did not for a moment neglect his clerical duty; indeed, there are indications that he was a remarkably good specimen of the parson of the parish. If we found any fault with this biography, which is, for the most part, well executed, it is that Barham's life as a clergyman is too slightly indicated. His friend, Mr. Hughes, father of the member for Frome, wrote of him thus in the New Monthly:—

This testimony from one who knew him well, makes us regret that more of Barham's parochial life has not been revealed to us. Often there is a curious difference between the practical and the literary half of a man's career. A priori, one would not expect the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert' to be the work of a Canon of St. Paul's. More information as to Barham's clerical career would have been intensely interesting to the psychological student; but his filial biographer has refrained from entering on the subject to any extent. We are not certain as to his motive. Perhaps he thought it hopeless to persuade the world that a good parson could be a lover of fun. Well, another lover of fun was one Sydney Smith, well known to all of us, also a Canon of St. Paul's. Smith was a resolute Whig, Barham a high Tory, yet were they excellent good friends. Here is proof. Barham sent Smith some game: here is the other Canon's epigrammatic ironic reply:—

The pheasant for rectors, the fowl for Dissenters—a characteristic bit of chaff from Peter Plymley to Tom Ingoldsby. In these days, after wonderful rapidity of movement, when the questions which troubled the last generation have been merged in others far deeper and wider, it is pleasant to think of Whig and Tory in the same cathedral precinct—Tory sending Whig some game, and Whig replying with a gibe at all dwellers without the orthodox limits. Few years have passed, yet the atmosphere is marvellously clearer; there is not precisely the same relation between Conformist and Nonconformist. The pheasant and the barn-door fowl are rather more equally distributed, perhaps.

Mr. Barham's son and biographer thus states his determination not to record his father's clerical life. 'With the details of his experience as a clergyman, rarely suitable for publication as such particulars are, I do not propose to deal. Of course, an outline will be given of his professional progress; but the reader must, once for all, be requested to bear in mind that it is intended, in the following pages, simply to throw together some slight records of his leisure hours and recreative pursuits.' This design has been very well executed; but we certainly think that more might be done. However, we must perforce accept the editor's view of the matter, and learn what we can of his father by sidelong glimpses of him. Taken solely as a man of letters, Barham is well worth study. Taken as husband and father, he is delightful. His correspondence with his children is equal to Tom Hood's letters to infant friends, though in quite a different style. His nonsense, prose or verse, was always pleasant nonsense. Thus he writes to his daughter Fanny:

Pater peramans, evidently. Here again is a pleasant piece of chaff addressed to the same young lady, on 'having nothing to say' in a letter:—

So easy and regular was the course of Barham's life, that there is really nothing to say about it. As landowner, Canon of St. Paul's, parson of a City church, he moved pleasantly in society, and had only to encounter life's inevitable troubles. We remember him in our hot youth, at the long-extinct Chapter Coffee-house in St. Paul's churchyard, whose landlord bore the appropriate name of Faithful, improvising marvellous verses over a glass of antique port. Perhaps his life was almost too facile; perhaps men of serious temperament would regard such productions as the 'Ingoldsby Legends' as things intolerable: but Barham had his mission, depend on it, and if you go to a 'Penny Reading' in the country any winter evening, the chances are that you will get selections from 'Pickwick' or from 'Ingoldsby,' whatever else may greet your ear. Everybody knows Sam Weller and Tiger Tim—both typical man-servants:—

Everybody also recollects that rascally 'Jackdaw of Rheims'—related, doubtless, to the graculus superbus of Phaedrus—who stole the Cardinal's ring just as his Latin predecessor stole the peacock's feathers. There is no reductio ad absurdum extant equal to this whimsical legend. Excommunication, which was slightly damaged in value by the curse of Ernulphus, came to a ridiculous end when the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims tonitrated his worst maledictions at a thievish jackdaw. 'Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo, manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, quiescendo,' &c., &c.

When after awhile the mystery was out— when the poor little comminated jackdaw presented himself in a sad state, so that of the cathedral officers, sacristans, and vergers, and the like, it is recorded,

the absurdity reached its climax. For our own part, though these humours are not of the highest or deepest order, we laugh at them. Life has its follies; Shakspeare had his clowns. In the old forgotten coaching days, there was wonderful humour at the wayside inns. Sam Weller was possible then: a railway porter has no time to be humorous. Of the Ingoldsby humour, as practised by Barham himself, there is this to be said: it was always harmless, and it was directed against absurdity and nonsense. Ingoldsby has had disciples, who have not disgraced their master, yet who have never quite equalled him in certain peculiar points. There is Hood's admirable story of 'Miss Killmannsegg,' wherein, if we remember aright, he depicts certain folks as—

There is Praed's 'Red Fisherman:'—

Then, again, there is Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin,' a rare old story rarely versified:—

There is vast difference between the three writers; the courtly epigram of Praed, and the scholarly variety of Browning, differ widely from the style of the master whom they imitate. But it is a high testimony to the literary value of what we may call the Ingoldsby method, that men so original and so desperate have tried their hands at it. A glance at the 'Bentley Ballads' shows that the same thing has been done by a great number of very different men; Sheehan and Creasy, Maginn and Mahony, Sam Lover the versatile, whom we remember delighting us with improvisations at Barnes-terrace just above the Thames, Tom Ingoldsby's son who follows his father with filial felicity, have done excellently well in this style of spirit and humour.

Indeed, to succeed in it to a certain degree, demands only abundance of animal spirits and a capacity for rhythm and rhyme. But it is clear that Barham had more than this. What, indeed, makes him perfect and absolute master of his craft, is his power of invariably catching the whimsical aspects, the humorous sides, of an event. Hood was too fond of a pun, Praed was too fine a gentleman, Browning is too subtle and curious, to attain the precise humour of Ingoldsby. Wherever we open the 'Legends' we find the frolicsome fancy of their author fresh and facile. Take the description of Winifred and David Pryce, in 'Look at the Clock!' It is a picture easily realized in the Principality:—

Now in this there is absolutely nothing that will bear analysis; it is the laughing spirit of the man that carries you on, amusing you in spite of yourself, in spite of your decided feeling that really there is nothing to laugh at. But, somehow, what with the ready jingle of the rhyme, and the perfect good humour of the ridicule, amused you are.

Barham's loudest fun was generated when he had to deal with obsolete and obsolescent superstitions. He loved to laugh at the vulgar idea of the Devil—the fiend with horns, tail, and hoofs, whom Cuvier ruthlessly dismissed as 'a graminivorous animal.' Thus, in the 'Lay of Saint Cuthbert,' we find him describing a group of demons at dinner:—

and so on ad libitum. Again, in the 'Lay of Saint Abelard,' he gives us 'Old Nick' defeated by a saintly personage. It was—

Demons and saints were the favourite themes of Tom Ingoldsby's laughter; he jeered alike the Romish miracle-monger and the anthropomorphic fiend. A volume might be written on the way in which the popular and vulgar idea of the devil has gradually arisen. It is clear from 'Paradise Lost,' that Milton favored the mediæval notion that the Pagan divinities were really fiends; and it can scarcely be doubted that the hirsute Pan gave the first sitting for that portrait of the devil which Coleridge completed, when he wrote

At such matters we can smile contemptuously; but in earlier centuries, when the Pagan superstition had still some vitality left in it, it was a serious matter to the Christian convert. Pan might meet him at the corner of a lonely woodland, and strike him with a panic dread. Worse than all he might be allured by the terrible enticements of Venus. To this day, Friday has a tradition of ill-luck, because it is dies veneris—vendredi. That the goddess of evil pleasure still came among men as a female fiend was a firm belief of the Middle Ages. Hence have we the legend of the Venusberg, chosen as a theme by more than one living poet, the version we prefer being unquestionably Lord Houghton's; hence also that of the betrothal ring inadvertently placed by a bridegroom on the finger of a statue of Venus, which finger, on his return, he finds bent, and the ring irremovable. This latter story is told with prosaic prolixity in the final volume of Mr. Morris's 'Earthly Paradise.' It must be remembered that the change from Paganism to Christianity was often effected in curious ways; that the worship of Apollo, the sun-god, was, by a play upon words, diverted to Elias the prophet; that temples of Venus were, as a rule, dedicated to the Virgin. Probably that worship of the Virgin Mary to which Romanists cling so fondly originated in a weak desire to satisfy proselytes by giving them one goddess in exchange for another. Any way, the belief in Venus endured so long that, in 1614, in the good city of Frankfort, a learned lawyer named Kornman, published a work called 'Mons Veneris,' which dealt with the legends about her as if they were based on fact. Of such legends let us name one only; an English story, told by William of Newbury. In the reign of Henry I., a peasant passed at midnight, near a hill, not far from the town of Burlington. To his amazement, he heard sounds of revelry therefrom, and saw a door open in the hillside, and, entering, beheld a vast chamber, where men and women held high festival. A cup was handed him, full of some liquid, which doubtless would have the effect of Circe's magic wine: with singular presence of mind, our peasant threw away the wine, and ran off with the cup. All the rabble rout of Venus pursued him, but the swift-footed ploughman brought his prize safely to Burlington. Somebody (probably the mayor, who should have been knighted for it) sent the cup to the King, and the King made it a present to the Queen of King David of Scotland; but King William of Scotland returned it to Henry II. of England. Whether it is still among the royal plate is a point to be determined by 'Notes and Queries.'

The growth of letters and of science changes all this; just as Venus vanished a few centuries ago, Old Bogy also—the foe of our infancy—has vanished from modern nurseries, nor do very many children of elder growth believe in an archdemon of the graminivorous type. Hence the fun of 'Ingoldsby' that ridiculed superstition of this sort is likely to lose its interest in time. We fear, however, that his laughing caricature of Romish absurdities—as in 'The Jackdaw of Rheims'—will scarcely lose its point at present. The Pope may be reduced to 'the Vatican, and a garden,' but the Papal superstition still clings closely to multitudes of men, especially of the Celtic race. That race, as M. John Lemoinne has just said of his French kindred, is feminine, and seems unable to accept a manly religion.

The 'Ingoldsby Legends' are peculiarly adapted to the palate of youth. They make fun out of trifles and vulgarities. One can hardly understand a man of high culture caring much about them after forty. Then the humour of Shakspeare's clowns, of Cervantes, and Sterne, and Elia, becomes more enjoyable than the 'Ingoldsby Legends' or the 'Pickwick Papers.' Then you prefer Autolycus to Sam Weller. The strong point of Ingoldsby is his gay high-spirited boyishness; but this quality is only attractive under certain conditions. It may, perhaps, be roughly stated that a man will care to read Ingoldsby so long as he cares to play cricket. It is, in fact, the eager buoyancy and rather perspiring fun of the cricket-field which one finds in the rollicking strophes of the 'Legends.' When their writer knocks over a saint or a demon as if he were a wicket, you almost expect to hear the shout of, 'How's that, umpire?' Indeed, the book is a loud book, scarcely to be tolerated, one might think, in a quiet library. Yet was its author a quiet haunter of libraries, and we find in one of his letters how he received in one a royal visitor:—

Her lively Majesty might have been felicitated on finding Tom Ingoldsby as a guide to the library of the great cathedral. But to return to the 'Legends.' Besides their extreme boyishness, their redundancy of pulsation, there is a deficiency in them which must prevent their becoming classic. They are devoid of poetry. Master of the grotesque as he was, Barham had no mastery of the picturesque. Keen to see and seize the humorous aspects of affairs, he had none of that deeper humour which creates character. A real poet who had written some fifty or more eccentric legends, could not have helped inventing or describing certain individual characters in the course of his work. He must have done it unconsciously, must have done it if even he had tried to avoid it. There are two tests on the very surface of the true poet. If he describes a scene, you see it; if he describes a man, you know him. Barham's grotesque descriptions are often remarkable; indeed, his legends somewhat remind us of the hideous gurgoyles of old churches, wherein tradition sayeth the old ecclesiastic architects depicted their enemies, making of them waterspouts, that during rain they might seem to vomit. The men who carved those gurgoyles could not have sculptured an Apollo; and of Barham it may be said that, though he wrote laughable stories with supreme felicity, he never produced a line of poetry. He appears, indeed, to have regarded only the surface of life. There is nothing in his published works to show that he had an original idea, or that he cared about ideas. Of course, having given us the 'Ingoldsby Legends'—a piece of work absolutely unique, and quite unlikely to meet with a readable rival—he will be forgiven if he had a contempt for ideas; but one feels some desire to know whether such fertility of fun was not the upper stratum of something stronger and finer. Tom Hood's fun, for example, grows out of his profound melancholy, as under Etna's laughing vines the volcanic fire is sleeping. Shakspeare's fun grows out of his masterful knowledge of the world, of men, of women. In a play of his you seem in some city of chivalry and romance, where the great knight passes to deeds of high emprise, and the lovely lady smiles on him from her balcony, and the troubadour sings of 'the Lord of Oc and No;' and all the while you hear the chaffer of the market-place, the chatter of street gossips, the insignificant laughter of loitering louts. Fun that has no root in something deeper seems morbid and hysterical; and we cannot help believing that there was more in Barham than his writings reveal, than his most intimate friends knew, than perhaps he knew or even guessed himself.

Dr. Maginn, a man like yet unlike Tom Ingoldsby, wrote these four lines—part of a poem which we have no means of obtaining:—

Maginn had, if we may judge from appearances, higher poetic instincts than Barham; his 'Homeric Ballads' are a very remarkable contribution to the literature of Homeric translation; but he unwisely expended himself upon periodical writing, and has left nothing behind him worthy of his powers. It is, we think, a subject for congratulation, that the cheap magazines of the day are so anxious to please the populace, that a first-rate writer has absolutely no chance with them, and is obliged to do work worthier of him. The shilling magazine has to suit the taste of the railway reader, who wants to be amused during the hour in which Great Western or Great Northern accepts him as a parcel to be delivered at a friend's house by dinner-time. How this is done we need not say, as anybody who likes to expend a shilling can judge for himself; but it is so done as to render it absurd for men of the calibre of Barham and Maginn to write for the majority of these magazines. This we take to be an advantage. Such men are obliged to work harder—and better.

Another instance of a man with something nobler in him and better than he ever gave the world, or even his friends, is Theodore Hook. Until his private diary came into the hands of those who knew him best, they had no knowledge of the depths of passionate remorse for a wasted life which lay beneath the too brilliant surface of his character. 'In every page,' wrote Lockhart,

Theodore Hook laboured under the double disadvantage of an irremovable load of debt, and of an illicit connection which effectually prevented his marrying a woman who might have directed his marvellous powers into their true channel. The consequence was that he lived a false factitious life; worked terribly hard to produce income necessary for him to meet wealthy peers on apparently equal terms; was always pestered by money-lenders; yet all the while his daring spirit maintained an external gaiety unquenchable. At the very time when his spirit seemed highest, when his wit was memorably brilliant, when at club or country house he was amazing every one by his victorious vivacity, there occur in his diary entries that show a broken spirit, a wounded heart, an infinite regret for the past and despair of the future. Such was the inner condition of a man whose conversation had such unique sparkle, that men dined at the Athenæum for the chance of being allowed to draw their chairs to his little table in a favourite corner (Temperance Corner) after dinner—so that the diners at that club fell off more than 300 a year after his disappearance from his wonted seat.

It is unfortunate that the early career of men of letters is often turned awry by the well-meant interference of their relations. A boy of genius, who happens to appear in the midst of a steady, stolid, respectable family, is usually regarded as a 'black sheep.' They try to make him work in some regular groove, and, of course, he fails. If they are very determined, he quarrels with them, and then, too often, he runs headlong into debt, or love, or both, and burdens himself in such a way that he has to toil for freedom through the best years of his life, and possibly never emancipates himself. Of course, it is always hard to say whether the young gentleman is right who fancies himself a genius. Dr. Holmes, in his latest novel, has a capital sketch of a young poetaster who 'eventuates' behind the counter of a store. Such youths require Darwinian compression; but there are just a few of higher mould, with the irrepressible vocation for pen and ink which nothing can cure, who would do better if some way could be devised to give them a chance in literature. Perhaps when the school boards have leisure to consider the subject, they will try to discover a way of developing those latent powers, mathematical as well as poetical, which often exist in regions wholly unexpected. Inspectors of schools might be directed, after they have registered the triumphs of the clever boys, to investigate the habits of the stupid ones. A great poet or mathematician is almost certain to seem stupid in his boyhood.

It may appear that we have tried the 'Ingoldsby Legends' by too high a test; and, indeed, it is a very unpretentious production. Its originator was wholly modest, and did not dream of placing himself in the foremost seats of the literary amphitheatre. He knew the true value of his invention. It is designed for those who would rather laugh than think. It may amuse children at any rate, and there are certain fortunate folk who, to the end of their lives, can be children now and then—can listen to merry rhyming, can believe for the moment that in Fairyland there are mock turtles and March hares, that the dogs there have no ears because the dog's ears have been used up on the little boys' Latin grammars, and the sheep no eyes because the little girls have used up all their sheep's eyes in looking at their sweethearts; can imagine that in Ghostland one may dine comfortably with one's doppelganger. There are times—'weird winter nights,' as Shelley calls them, warmed with merriment, and joyous summer days in which the nightingale seems ebrious with ozone—when there is a necessity for nonsense of one sort or another. It is this necessity which Ingoldsby and his followers supply. Possibly some good is effected by the fact that the occupants of lofty positions have deigned to play with these toys; that the occupants of deaneries and canonries (ecclesiastic port-wineries, if we may venture to coin a phrase) have found in such matters Attic salt for their filberts.

Apropos of Ghostland, just named, Barham was a great lover of spectral stories, and the reader who cares about such will find in his memoir some of the best we have ever seen. As to anecdotes, the book is brimming over with them. Of course, one meets with one or two that have been met before; but an old story, like an old friend or an old coat, is sometimes more enjoyable than a new one. Barham was at Paul's School with some men as well known as himself, among them being Sir Frederick Pollock, Nestor of lawyers, and Richard Bentley, Nestor of publishers. Another of his comrades was Charles Diggle, afterwards Governor of Sandhurst College. Of him and Barham we find a good story:—

It was very improper, certainly; and we cannot help hoping that the Head Master of Dean Colet's famous school heard of the impertinence, and administered to the 'nether-urchin' of the future military pedagogue the sharp flogging which he undoubtedly deserved. But one cannot help laughing at these schoolboy absurdities; and the naughtiest boys, if looked after by a schoolmaster like Tom Hood's,

often turn out the ablest men. There is incipient power in these wayward vivacities of youth.

Musical amateurs of the present day of the strenuous class that elicited Charles Lamb's verses beginning—

will doubtless deem Lord North an utter barbarian. George III. scolded him for never going to the concerts of ancient music. 'Your brother, the Bishop,' said the King, 'never misses them, my Lord.' 'Sir,' answered the Premier, 'if I were as deaf as my brother, the Bishop, I would never miss them either!'

Of Lord Thurlow we believe it was that Theodore Hook declared that nobody could be as wise as Thurlow looked. Whether he had much wisdom is a moot point; but strength of will he possessed in an enviable degree, as the following anecdote shows:—

This we take to have been highly creditable to Thurlow: it was a courageous assertion that the aristocracy of genius is at least equal to the aristocracy of birth. Here is an amusing story of clerical ignorance from Barham's diary:—

In those days Eton was not famous for its erudition, and a fellow of that famous corporation was likely to be a better judge of the 'other fish' than of the chalybeate. Dr. R—— would probably have known exactly the right way to dress a red mullet from the Avon or a Coniston char.

Here is a good story of Dr. Thomas Hume, an intimate friend of Barham's:—

We hope that unlucky clerk could understand the rebuke that he received; but to us it appears that sarcasm is generally thrown away on such people. They are pachyderms.

The book contains some capital stories of poor Theodore Hook, that marvellously wasted intellect. His great power lay in impromptu, of prose or verse, spoken or written. No man has ever equalled him at a paragraph or a squib, except as to the latter, Garrick and Coleridge. Nobody was ever so exquisite a conversational wit. And certainly no one has ever possessed his power of improvisation in English. He threw off stanza and strophe as fast as a knifegrinder's wheel throws sparks. He scintillated always. Coleridge, after an evening in his company, declared he was as great a genius as Dante. His felicity was invariable. When he was improvising at the piano, after luncheon, at his Fulham villa, enter the ancilla, to say Mr. Winter, the tax collector, has called. Ejaculates Hook:—

But how could Hook stand the tremendous dissipation to which he foolishly condescended? Here is a specimen of his way of living:—

To revert from anecdotes of this class to the special theme of our article. Poetry is one thing, and verse-writing is another, and there may be very good verse-writers who would not condescend to be poetasters. In the present day there are a multitude of foolish persons who have discovered that breeze rhymes with trees, and that there are as many syllables as they have fingers in a line of blank verse. So they flood the shilling magazines with their silliness, and some of them raise money enough to pay for the publication of a volume of their trash. Within a few days from this time of writing we have had occasion to look through about a score volumes of this class, and only one contained anything that could be called poetry—and that one came from San Francisco. Now, why cannot people with a faculty for verse write it sensibly, without trying to be poets? Why can they not give us something manly, something humorous? Lockhart and Maginn wrote fine verse, but would have smiled at the notion of being called poets. Barham never wrote a line of poetry, in the severe sense—but what immense amusement has the world received from the rhymed stories of Ingoldsby!

---

Art. V.—The Downfall of Bonapartism.

(1.) Documents Authentiques Annotés. Les Papiers Secrets du Second Empire. 4e édition. "Fiat lux." Bruxelles: Office de Publicité. 1870.

(2.) La Guerre de 1870: l'Esprit Parisien produit du la régime Impérial. Par Emile Leclercq. 5e édition. Bruxelles. 1870.

(3.) Napoléon I^er, et son Historien, M. Thiers. Par Jules Barni. Paris, Germer-Baillière. 1869.

(4.) Histoire de Napoléon I^er. Par P. Lanfrey. Paris: Charpentier. 1867-70. Vols. I. to IV.

(5.) Napoléon le Petit. Par V. Hugo. Bruxelles. 1852.

(6.) Romans Nationaux. Par Erckmann-Châtrian. Paris: Hetzel. 1868-70.

Histoire d'un Paysan, ou la Révolution Française racontée par un paysan.

(7.) Louis's own Account of the Fight at Dame Europa's School. Literally translated from the French. London: J. Camden Hotten. 1871.

Imperialism has fallen; and with it France has for the present disappeared from among the great Powers. With Metz in foreign hands, she is much in the same position as that of Paris when the Prussians had turned upon her the guns of Mont Valérien. Her eastern frontier is wholly exposed; she must feel as Lombardy did while Austria held the Quadrilateral.

As far as material influence is concerned, France is become a second-rate state. She must confine her aim to doing what she has so often done before—influencing the world of ideas. She did this in the Middle Ages in a way which we seldom sufficiently appreciate; she did it in a less degree during the post-Reformation period, for then her own religious wars and the preponderance of Germany had thrown her somewhat into the shade; she did it most of all when the Encyclopédistes began to claim for her a definite position as the world's teacher. This position she had not formally claimed before. Under the old régime she had been slowly getting welded together; feudalism, carried out more 'logically' in France than elsewhere, had kept her provinces almost as distinct as so many little German kingdoms. Louis XI.'s policy, indeed, did for the French noblesse much what the Wars of the Roses did for ours; and Louis XIV., by giving the higher classes a taste for Court life, drew them together and trained them to a community of habits and aims; but the mass of provincials were scarcely affected by this centralization of a single class. Louis XIV., however, did one thing more: he secured to Paris that fatal predominance which has ever since made her the arbitress of the national destinies. While saying 'l'état c'est moi,' he so arranged that very soon the Parisians could say, Paris c'est la France. The great writers, too, lent their influence to glorify the capital: the town-loving spirit was strong in them all. Paris got more and more supreme, while at the same time the efforts of Government were divided between crushing out provincial independence and meeting the ruinous expenditure of a Court always luxurious and very often warlike. Hence a tendency in the old régime to a more and more strictly personal government. Feudal liberties were crushed; feudal tyranny was aggravated. The provincial parliaments, and that of Paris into the bargain, gradually lost even the semblance of power; and the old system degenerated into despotism.

The Revolution, while superficially breaking up this system, left untouched those parts of it which some say are grounded on the peculiarities of French character. It intensified centralization, and it practised most oppressively that interference with the rights of the individual which is of the essence of personal government. The very men who so loudly proclaimed the principles of '89 were found most ready to act on rules which led them straight to the lawless tyranny of the Terror. Their 'ideas' were grand, but personal freedom was far too trifling a thing to be allowed to stand in their way for a moment. In one point the Revolution diverged from the old régime: it became intensely and deliberately propagandist—bent, i.e., on carrying forward, with the strength of the whole nation, the mission which the thinkers of Voltaire's day had assigned to themselves. We often find that the man who believes in nothing in particular is the most violent in opposing the beliefs of others. So it was with the leaders of the Revolution: they were mad to spread their doctrines over Europe; and their doctrines being those of Paris, Paris became (in Frenchmen's eyes) the recognized head, not of France only, but of the civilized world.

Imperialism was at first a reaction from despotic anarchy; the dread of another Terror made the French welcome with delight a man who seemed strong enough to be 'the saviour of society.' So it was again in 1849, when the Socialist struggle in which 13,000 Parisians perished so alarmed the successful 'bourgeois,' that to prevent its repetition they condoned the coup d'état. Ideas, it was said in 1795, were ruining France; the men of ideas had been beaten in the field; Imperialism therefore meant military glory as the basis of French prosperity. Frenchmen were content to believe that (as M. Louis Blanc said the other day at Bordeaux) 'glory and liberty are incompatible,' and deliberately to choose the former.

Of course the Imperialism of 1852 differs somewhat from that of 1804, but it is the same in its intense selfishness, and its thorough insincerity. Under the second Empire, there have been commercial treaties and alliances, and the working class has found good wages, so long as it has been content with political nothingness; but the two will be seen to be the same in principle. Each has the radical evil of depending on success in war, or peace, or both, for its stability; and this necessary instability makes them more hopeless as systems than the old régime, with all its corruptness, or even than the wild theories of the Republic.[211]

But it is needless to enlarge on the manifest causes which made a hereditary monarchy stable so long as it is not wholly intolerable. The same causes make the best of 'tyrannies' (in the Greek sense of the word) unstable. Men as 'logical' as Frenchmen are sure to feel that if such a government is not fulfilling the purpose of its creation, it had better cease to exist; and feeling with Frenchmen generally means action.

The first Napoleon had immense success on his side; he 'saved France,' in his own fashion, and so long as he was successful, very few Frenchmen cared to inquire into the soundness of the method employed. The third Napoleon had in his favour the remembrance of his uncle's success, and the fact that the règne du bavardage had failed as completely in 1849 as it had done in the days of the Directory. Both were helped, too, by the systematic lying of their newspapers, which, amid the enforced silence of all who would not speak as they did, could say what they pleased without fear of contradiction. Both, too, were able administrators: Louis points out, in 'his own Account of the Fight at Dame Europa's School'—a bitter satire on the selfish insincerity of Imperialism—how hard he worked for years, and how by repressing them with one hand and giving them employment with the other, he controlled the terrible Paris canaille. This is, in fact, his solitary claim for forgiveness. But both fell when the moment of pressure came, and the fall of the nephew is irreparable: for him there can be no 'hundred days;' even the boundless capabilities of treachery which he found in Bazaine failed to do anything but seal his fate by convincing France that, whereas the uncle shed French blood like water in support of his selfish ambition, the nephew actually paltered with the enemy, and betrayed the strongest fortress in the country, in the vain hope of securing foreign support.

It is plain to the most superficial observer that of all the things which have collapsed in France since last July, none has collapsed so hopelessly as Imperialism. When the ex-Emperor rushed into war as the only way of staving off a revolution, France showed herself (as she so often has done at critical periods of her history) culpably passive. There were complaisant prefects who assured his Majesty that his people went with him heart and soul; there were crowds, hired or not, such as can always be collected in any great city, who shouted Vive la guerre and à Berlin; but the peasantry still believed that the Empire meant peace; and when they afterwards found war come upon them, they fancied (so strong was their faith in Napoleon) that it was the Prussians who were the aggressors. Just in the same way on the eve of the Spanish war, in 1808, the servile Senate said: 'Sire, the will of the French people goes along with you. This Spanish war is just and necessary. Fathers envy their sons the glory of rushing to join your ranks, and of winning another Marengo and another Austerlitz.' And this farce was kept up at a time when the conscription had grown so odious that the Government had to imitate Louis XIV.'s dragonnades, and to quarter garnisaires upon the families of those lads who had escaped to the woods, or had fled across the frontier.

France was passive in July, 1870, as she was more than once during the first Napoleon's career; the difference is, that the nephew's army, on which he was supposed to have lavished so much thought and money, and which, since the coup d'état, he had pampered into prætorian insolence, failed him utterly both for defence and offence; whereas the uncle always had something which he could trust to fight well, if not to win battles.

Since Sedan, France, no longer passive, has worked wonders; and every step in her work has made a relapse to the old state of things more impossible. 'The man of Sedan,' it was felt all along, could never return, except behind Prussian bayonets. Had he, on that last fatal day, cut his way at whatever loss through the encompassing host, and, throwing himself on Paris, raised a levée en masse to the old cry of 'the country in danger,' matters might have turned out very differently, both for him and for France; but he could not have so acted without denying his own principles. His whole career had been an attempt to juggle with universal suffrage while practising the narrowest despotism, and now to appeal in real earnest to popular principles, and to give the pledges necessary to make that appeal a serious one, was an impossibility for the man who had eagerly snatched at the chances of war which the crafty Bismarck threw in his way, rather than honestly carry out the liberal measures which he had at last been forced to adopt. There is a point beyond which charlatanism cannot go. Thrice had the uncle felt that this kind of appeal is useless when it is contrary to a man's whole antecedents: once at Arcis-sur-Aube, when in the midst of the battle, Sebastiani said, 'Are these all your Majesty's forces?' 'Every man I have.' 'Then does not your Majesty think of raising the nation?' 'Nonsense: you're dreaming of the way they did things in Spain, or here in France, in '91. How can you talk of raising a nation whose nobles and priests have been destroyed by the Revolution, and whose Revolution has been destroyed by me?' There was nothing, he felt, left to appeal to. Again, on his return from Elba, wisdom said, 'Wait on French soil, and crush the invaders at Paris and Lyons;' but this would have necessitated an appeal to the nation and a pledge that all war except defensive war should cease, and, as Colonel Charras says, in words which seem almost prophetical of the events of last July, 'to re-establish his despotism he could not do without the prestige of victory: he thought to find it on the frontier, so thither he hastened.' A third time, when, after Waterloo, Napoleon was among the remnant of his troops at Laon, it was still free to him to show himself not only the 'child of the Revolution,' but its legitimate offspring and its protector. He still shrank instinctively from doing so: bolder, indeed, than his nephew, he did go to Paris; but with the invincible dislike of all his race to true freedom of government, he went there merely to see if there was a chance of carrying on the war without making any real political concessions.

So it was that, after Sedan, the nephew passed out of history: no amount of plotting can restore the man who showed himself fool as well as knave, who fell—not, like his uncle, under the blows of banded Europe—but because he had allowed himself to be wholly deceived, both as to the quality and composition of his own army and as to the dispositions of neighbouring powers. France never can forgive such a result of twenty years of personal government. But that the ex-Emperor should disappear out of history is natural enough; the marvel is that he ever became one of the makers of history. His success was due to the vitality of the Napoleonic idea, nourished as it was after the restoration by writers of all kinds—notably by the veteran statesman who now, more than any one else, has made a return to Imperialism impossible. For this total revolution in literature it is hard to give a sufficient reason. Before the restoration, literature, when not venal, was strongly anti-Bonapartist.'[212] After the Bourbons were restored, writers began to extol Napoleon as industriously as before they had decried him. This change was owing partly to French feeling against the mode of his removal: it was a great humiliation; as Madame de Staël said (deploring the return from Elba), 'It's all over with liberty if he succeeds, and with the national independence if he is beaten.' The nation felt that the peace of 1815 had compromised its independence; and, in writing down the king who had been brought in by foreign armies, literary men were acting as the mouthpiece of France. But this is not all; wounded vanity did much. Under the Empire mind had been powerless, unless, as in the case of Lacépède and other savans, it had submitted to be the humble tool of force: when Sièyes said, 'I'll be the head and that little Corsican shall be the arm,' he had quite unwittingly spoken the truth; for, in Napoleon's system, the head was nothing and the arm everything. Great, then, was the disappointment when under Louis XVIII., and still more under his successor, the head seemed almost as powerless as before. The heart (if such a word may be used of the hollow system of Popery) came into play; and, unless a man was dévôt, or seemed to be so, ability of any kind served him little. Add to this the wilful blindness of the Bourbons, who (it was soon seen) 'had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.' Their petty despotism disgusted the nation; while the 'Memoirs of St. Helena' and a crowd of similar writings made out, with a sophistry so barefaced that we should fancy it could never have deceived even Frenchmen, that the Emperor had always acted as a dutiful son of the revolution, according to the programme which himself had laid down, that 'liberty, equality, and prosperity shall be ensured.' Will the nephew ever venture to assert, as the uncle did in 1816, that his government was a constitutional and temperate monarchy, and that the French people under it were the freest people in Europe? However this may be, there is no doubt that the claim thus made by Napoleon I. told immensely on the thought of the nation, and through it on the masses. Claiming to have saved the revolution by moderating its violence, the exile of St. Helena persistently called himself its soldier and its martyr. His wars (he said) had been undertaken to spread its civilizing influence; and the consciousness of this had made kings and princes so determined on his overthrow. We, of course, can see through the hollowness of all this: but the French writers of that day, finding France humiliated, and knowing that she had been glorious, actually came to believe, or at any rate fostered the belief, that in the days of her glory she had been free, since undoubtedly in the days of her humiliation she was fettered. No wonder the rest were deceived, since a man of consummate ability, M. Thiers, whose honesty is proved by his having refused office during some seventeen years of 'personal government,' could write such a marvellous romance as that which he gave to the world under the title of 'The Consulate and the Empire.'

Thus, by a combination of causes we may partly account for the change in the mind of France; and this change told upon the more or less educated masses. When Thiers wrote as he did; when Victor Hugo—whom a strange Nemesis afterwards urged to write 'Napoleon the Little'—sang the great man's praises in 'Lui,' and, throwing moral sanctions to the winds, declared that

when Beauchèsne, in 'L'Ecolier,' pathetically described the day-dreams of the boyish enthusiast; and, yet more, when Béranger sang his 'Vieux drapeau,' and his 'Serrez vos rangs, Gaulois et Francs,' and, above all, his 'Souvenirs du Peuple,' no wonder men forgot the real Napoleon, and accepted the ideal which was so persistently put before them.

Béranger was a true prophet when he sang

It is not easy to trace how this feeling had so penetrated downwards, and had so thoroughly laid hold of the lowest stratum, the wholly uneducated peasantry, that the first time the vote by universal suffrage was taken, many peasants thought they were voting for the old Emperor. That it did so is one more proof how soon a nation with great 'recuperative powers' loses the memory of disasters. The cruel conscriptions which drove mere boys to die in Spain under the fire of Wellington's seasoned troops—the retreat from Russia, after which 'the man of Smorgoni' was for a time as unpopular as 'the man of Sedan,' were forgotten. The heroic defence of Champagne, and the glories which preceded it, were alone remembered. This will account for the growth of the Imperial idea in the more fighting parts of France, especially in Alsace and Lorraine, which have always contributed much more than their share to the army.

How it was in La Vendée we cannot pretend to say. Napoleon there had been as ruthless in his way as the 'blues;' he had ordered that every family which could not prove that all its members were at home and quiet should lose its property, this being divided between the 'good subjects' and the occupying troops. Nor can we understand how the Southern peasants should have welcomed the nephew when they had hated the uncle. It was against them chiefly that the odious garnisaires had to be employed; and we all know how they showed their feeling in 1814 by several times nearly tearing the Emperor to pieces when he was on the way to Elba, frightening him so that he disguised himself as an English officer.

North-eastern France was Bonapartist because it was anti-Prussian, and the Emperor had thoroughly humiliated Prussia. For this special hatred of Prussia there is ample reason. The Prussian character is not loveable; even at the best it is singularly domineering and cantankerous; and during the invasions of French territory (not to speak of the bloodthirsty pursuit after Waterloo) the Prussians had shown themselves (as unhappily they too often have during this war)[213] worse than Cossacks. This special hatred of Prussians comes out continually in the Erckmann-Châtrian series. The contrast between the bitterness with which the fights at Ligny and Wavre and the final conflict at Waterloo are described is remarkable; it may almost be said to be prophetic of the merciless way in which too much of the fighting has been carried on within the past few months. 'No quarter' is the word on both French and Prussian side; and scornful hatred lurks in every phrase of the graphic account of those savage conflicts which at last left the French nominally victorious. The English, on the other hand, are 'jolly fellows, well shaved, and with the get-up of bons bourgeois.' We do not think that, even before the Crimean war, French mothers ever taught their children to hate us; whereas, mon fils tu haïras les Prussiens was a daily lesson among the peasants of the North-east.[214]

To account for the Napoleonism of the peasants in other parts, we must add to the feeling that Napoleon had glorified France, on the part of those who (we said) were only too ready to forget how he had also humiliated and ruined her, the persistent dread of the spectre rouge on the part of the vast class of little landowners, and thirdly, the influence of the priests. Both these had been made use of by the uncle. Whenever he wanted an excuse for despotism, he always got up a Jacobin plot. This was the pretence for that famous 18th Brumaire, by which 'model and prototype of all coups d'état,' as M. Barni calls it, he destroyed the constitution which he had sworn to defend.

When, as First Consul, he arrested a number of those who remained true to the Republic—among them Jourdain, the hero of Fleurus—and threatened to banish them to Cayenne, the pretext was 'the infernal machine' (very probably 'got up,' like so many more recent conspiracies), which was denounced as a Jacobin invention. Jacobinism was his apology for forming (at the beginning of the Empire) eight State prisons, and for exercising the most rigorous censorship both of the press and of the stage.

How the priests helped him may be judged from the amusingly profane addresses made to him on his accession to empire by the different bishops. The Bishop of Aix wrote: 'Like another Moses, Napoleon has been summoned by God from the deserts of Egypt,' 'God seems to have said (wrote the Bishop of Orleans), "My heart hath chosen a new ruler to rule my people; My almighty arm shall help him in his glorious work, and I will strengthen his throne. He shall reign over the seas, and the rivers shall become his servants."' In the eyes of other bishops and capitular bodies the new emperor is 'another Matthias sent by the Lord,' 'a new Cyrus,' 'Scripture hath given us, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, a prophetic outline of his reign.' This, the fitting reward of the Concordat, was the incense offered up by a servile clergy on the eve of his coronation; and it matches well with the Catechism, published by authority, and in use in all French churches in 1811.[215] After repeated injunctions as to the special duty of reverence for the Emperor and his house, the question is asked, 'Are there not yet other motives to bind us strongly to our Emperor?'—'Yes; for it is he whom God raised up in troublous times to re-establish the public worship of the holy religion of our fathers and to be its protector. He has restored and preserved public order by his profound and energetic wisdom; he defends the State by his powerful arm; he is become the anointed of the Lord by the consecration which he has received from the Sovereign Pontiff, chief of the Universal Church.'[216]

How the Pope, of whose meanly cruel treatment by Napoleon, the Count d'Haussonville gave such a graphic account in the Revue des Deux Mondes of two years ago, really felt on the subject, we need not inquire; with Napoleon the case was simple enough: 'he wanted a clergy (says Madame de Staël) as he wanted chamberlains and courtiers, and all the old things over again.' As for his being the restorer of religion, no praise was ever less merited; he told Cabanis: 'This concordat of ours is la vaccine de la religion; in fifty years it will have killed it out like a moral small-pox.' On the other hand, before the Concordat was signed there was full liberty of worship, and nearly eight millions of people were in full practice of Catholicism. His Concordat was needless, except for his own purposes; at the outset, indeed, the Assembly had borne heavily on the clergy: to force them to take oaths and then to persecute those who refused was to show an ignorance of the first principles of toleration; and one of the few things which we have to find fault with in MM. Erckmann-Châtrian's excellent novels is the way in which the 'refractory priests' are spoken of, and in which the harsh treatment they underwent is justified, because they disturbed the peace of families, and intrigued for 'royalist restoration.' But by the Constitution of the year III. Church and State had been separated, and freedom of worship restored to every one. There was no need, therefore, for any effort on Napoleon's part to secure what the Constitution had already secured; he was, as usual, working simply for himself: 'I did not despair,' (he writes from St. Helena) 'of sooner or later getting full control of the Pope; and then what a lever for moving the world, what a help towards keeping men's minds in hand!'

With the Pope and the Italian clergy, indeed, Napoleon never had the least success; but in France the large salaries which he gave to the bishops produced the effect he anticipated; and at last, even in La Vendée, a good deal of the old feeling died out. The noblesse of course still spoke of him as a mere locum tenens: for them he was always 'the General Bonaparte, Lieutenant-in-Chief of the Forces of his Majesty's King Louis XVII.' But the peasantry were gradually taught to accept him as the friend of religion, and not simply as a temporary police magistrate who was necessary to keep down their hated enemies the 'Reds.' Of this his nephew reaped the reward, and he moreover was able to come forward as the defender of the Papacy under circumstances in which his conduct gratified not only the peasants, but every sincere Romanist in France, while it caused one more breach in the already divided Republican camp. If the occupation of Rome was actually initiated by honest Republicans, they never (not even when they made Louis Napoleon Prince-President) were guilty of a more fatal mistake. They shared the reward of all trimmers; supporting 'order' at the expense of principle, they lost the confidence of the best men of their party; while the Prince-President, assuming to be the champion of that 'order' which after all they had only defended with half-heartedness, gained all the credit of the act, and won thereby the support of the Ultramontanists. Of this support his subsequent vacillation could not deprive him, because the Ultramontanes were sure that, whatever he might do in other countries, in France he would not relax those fetters which the Papacy finds so essential in securing the acceptance of its newly 'formulated dogmas and repressive encyclicals. When we say this, we by no means assert that the ex-Emperor had the full confidence of the clergy; that confidence it is not the policy of Rome to accord to any one. Now again, as in 1848, she has shown that on occasion she can be as revolutionary as Garibaldi himself, if there is an end to be gained by being so. Napoleon is lost; despite the ridiculous outcry of London imperialist papers like La Situation, his cause is hopeless; therefore Rome hastens to give him up, and to affirm that he is rightly punished for having supported Victor Emmanuel. But, so long as he was a power in Europe, he received support enough to keep him popular among the priest-ridden classes, because he was less dangerous than those who would be sure to succeed him. A Republican government would without doubt have given up the Roman occupation; while the Orleanists, who would come to the surface if the Republic failed, are, as the real friends of religious liberty, the most unacceptable of all to the Ultramontane party. Guizot, the Orleanist statesman par excellence, ventured to doubt whether it is not an abuse of toleration to allow full scope to such irreconcilable foes to liberty as the Jesuits; therefore it was better to uphold Napoleon, and to trust to the influence of the Empress rather than to provoke a change which was sure to be for the worse.

But we have said enough to account somewhat for the growth of the Napoleonic idea, after the first Emperor had done his best by the failures, and still more by the littleness of his later years, to crush it.

France, moreover, had been humiliated in 1815, and Louis Philippe kept her at peace without giving an outlet for enterprise in foreign colonization. If Algeria had been less of a mere military settlement; or if, instead of Algeria, France had laid hold of a colony better suited for Europeans to thrive in, the Orleans line might have still been on the throne. But the nation was slow to realize the amount of waste which had accompanied the wars of the Empire. France did not like to keep quiet and repair the ugly gaps left in her prosperity; she wanted to make a grand figure before the world. Louis Philippe thought that by combined repression and corruption he could check this restlessness; and so he, a constitutional king, was led into a career of unconstitutional conduct—the proximate, though not the remote, cause of the revolution in 1848.

The facilis descensus from a republic to a despotism was seldom more inevitable than amid the chaos of parties which succeeded the Provisional Government. France wanted prestige: who more likely to give it to her than the nephew of the man who won Jena and Austerlitz? France wanted protection against the 'Reds,' 'the enemies of order and property:' surely, the very man to secure this to her was l'homme providentiel, who could sway the army as one man, and who, though he professed to believe in universal suffrage, and to have a high regard for the working man, was known to be hand in glove with the great financiers and capitalists? As Victor Hugo puts it in his little history of the coup d'état, 'tous les hommes du passé, depuis tel banquier juif qui se sentait un peu Catholique jusqu'à tel évêque qui se sentait un peu juif,' all combined to work up the Napoleonic idea, and to induce the masses to accept what was the best government for stock-jobbers and Court tailors and highly paid functionaries of all sorts. It was the Nemesis of 1793 which produced the coup d'état of December 1851: but for the recollection of the Reign of Terror, of that wild carnival of cruelty and rapine, such an outrage would have been impossible. Men of substance argued that what had been might be again; and therefore they threw in their lot with the saviour of society, even while they abhorred the means which he employed for its salvation. National susceptibility, then, and a half unconscious desire to wipe off old scores, combined with Popish influence and the dread of the 'Reds,' helped to give tangibility to this long-cherished Napoleonic idea, by bringing about the second Empire.

A few words, now, on the causes and the history of its decay. These, as usual in political and social matters, are complex and seemingly conflicting. First, those who looked for prestige were not satisfied with the declaration, l'Empire c'est la paix, even explained away though it was by the many wars undertaken in the last twenty years. France fighting side by side with England in the Crimea and in China, was not the same as France carrying her eagles into almost every European capital. This feeling forced on the war which resulted in the sudden peace of Villafranca—the suddenness of which peace proved (to the French Emperor's detractors) that Magenta and Solferino were not such very decided victories, after all. It always seemed in Napoleon III.'s undertakings, that he was stopped at a certain point, just as if he had not really been the master of France, but was only free to use her resources within the range of his tether. This may be due to the financial complications in which he and his creatures were always mixed up, or to that indecision of character which, while it gave him for a time a reputation for profound wisdom, did him immense harm by making men suspect him of deep plotting when he was simply at a loss how to reconcile conflicting ideas, and by exciting profound distrust on occasions where pity would have been the more appropriate feeling. Herein he paid the penalty (almost always exacted in all ranks of life) of seeing both ways. The notion which couples moral obliquity with crookedness of vision is confined to the vulgar; but comparatively few can avoid distrusting the mental power of looking at once in several directions. The ex-Emperor had his English experience; his political education was far in advance of that of most of his subjects; he saw the weak points of each party, and saw too how each drew strength from the amount of truth which it had grasped. Could he have lived as president of a republic in which all these elements should have had free scope, France might have thriven morally during the last nineteen years, as much as she has thriven materially. But the French character, no less than his own designs, forbade this. Frenchmen cannot bear to 'give and take;' their logique shows itself by forcing them into the streets to battle for their cause as soon as there is the feeblest chance of success; and, above all, his aim was, not to give France the best government, but to keep himself by all means at her head. Hence, lying and repression became his instruments. One party was played off against another. The prolétaires kept in good humour by the Hausmannizing, not of Paris only, but of half the French cities, were told that the Emperor was really their friend; and so long as they got panem et circenses they seem pretty generally to have believed it. The parti prêtre was petted at home; and the control which the clergy was allowed to have over education more than compensated for the cutting off of the Romagna. The moneyed class, and all the crowd of little rentiers, who are almost forced to accept the existing order of things, saw by the vast growth of public credit and by the steady price of public securities, that the Empire was the millennium of men of means. The army, petted and spoiled, was full of dislike for civilians, and of chauvinist contempt for foreigners. The literary class alone feebly kept up the struggle; and its protest against the dictum 'la France c'est moi,' was chiefly confined to such far-fetched allusions as we find in 'Labiénus' and in the 'leaders' of the Revue des Deux Mondes. The French are brave; but those who did not accept the Empire were cowed by the coup d'état; and in such circumstances they are of all people the most patient under what they have come to believe inevitable.

But though nothing was done much was felt, and the mistakes and disappointments of later years soon brought the feeling to the surface. From the very first, nothing but the coup d'état had thoroughly succeeded. The Crimean war ended too soon; it failed in its main object, that of crippling Russia, and it was from the outset distasteful to a large party because it drew France so close to England. The Austrian war wanted the dash and vigour of Marengo; and the Mexican campaign (so opposed by Thiers in 1864) showed that the ruler of France was afraid to move when the United States bade him stand still. Meanwhile Poland had been twice given up—and Poland is very dear to a large section of the French; the Confederate States had been abandoned, and Denmark had been left unhelped to the tender mercy of Prussia and Austria. Military prestige had gone, despite the numbers and the ruinous cost of the army. All the while the occupation of Rome was a standing outrage on the feelings of the most thinking part of the nation; and, combined with it, by that strange inconsistency which marks all Napoleonic procedure, the creation of the kingdom of Italy alienated the Ultramontanes, and set them plotting, after their fashion, against the man whom it was still their interest outwardly to support.

Herein uncle and nephew are thoroughly at one. Both Lanfrey and the author of the 'Romans nationaux' remind us how constantly the first Napoleon displayed a cynical disregard for men's feelings, without apparently seeing that thereby he was giving irreparable offence. He looked on men as reasoning machines, and quite left out of account all the sentimental springs of action. Those whom he needlessly insulted would, he thought, recognise both his power to crush and also to benefit them, and therefore they would be his obedient servants. Such was the state of the Continent that he was scarcely disabused of this notion till he undertook to govern Spain. Italy submitted to exactions more galling though less ruinous than those which the Germans have been making upon France. Germany, thoroughly dissatisfied with its own serene highnesses and arch-dukes, and looking upon Napoleon as the true successor of Hoche and Moreau, and the others who had spread republican ideas through the Fatherland, was content to bear a great deal before she showed any signs of anger. Spain certainly set Continental Europe an example in this. Napoleon might prove beyond dispute that under his tutelage she would soon rise rapidly in position and wealth; but Spain had been cruelly outraged by the treatment to which her people as well as her royal family had been subjected; and Spain cared not a jot for either position or wealth compared with a successful revolt against French occupation. We know how wholly, in dealing with individuals, the uncle left the power of personal feelings out of account; the nephew, rarely forgetting this in regard to the individual, forgot it when dealing with classes. To the clergy for instance, he said, 'Italy must be reconstituted, and to that end the Pope must give up the Romagna and the Marches. You shall have our troops still in Rome, and I will arrange that you may control French education pretty much as you please.' The clergy, accepting what he gave, never even pretended to be grateful for the boon; they never forgave the 'spoliation of the Church;' and thus the ex-emperor's conduct, as usual, displeased both parties, and deprived him of any support except what it was manifestly men's interest to give him.

Then came the dread of Prussia, and the sudden attempt (almost as bad as deploying under fire) to reorganise that army for which so much money had been drawn that had really been expended on other objects. The severer conscription made the peasants restless; and the plébiscite was called for much in that spirit of distrust which set David numbering the people. When it was found that a considerable percentage of the army had voted the wrong way, it was felt that the pyramid, hitherto propped up on its small end by bayonets, was tottering; and the war, of which we have lately seen the sad issue, was hurried on as the sole change of retrieving the fortunes of the dynasty.

It is not our business to gauge the complicity of the French people in the affair of Benedetti and Gramont.[217] France, as we said, showed herself culpably passive; Paris, say the French 'irreconcilables,' was culpably complaisant. We may be thankful that here in England we have not for centuries seen twenty years of such a debasing system as that which made Paris what it was till it was purified in the furnace of affliction. We fancy that the reaction against the despotism of the capital will be very strong. There is far more independent life left than most people imagine in the French provincial cities, far more than in our large towns; and they were increasingly indignant at the pre-eminence which the imperial system gave to Paris in everything. This exaltation of Paris is natural in a dynasty which has no roots in France itself. Paris had proved herself in 1790 capable of taking the lead and giving the law to all France; Paris, therefore, must be kept strong in order that all France might be of one mind. How different from the days of Henry IV., or of any of the old race! To the Corsican intruder the peasant of Beauce was just the same as the peasant of the Bourbonnais—merely a fighting machine. Hence the real depression of the provinces, despite of some exceptional improvements in Brittany and in the landes of the Gironde. The first Napoleon's levies so reduced the relative strength of the country districts that Paris, in his time, gained a position which she has ever since held. Whatever form of government she chose the provinces echoed her choice. Disliking her, they still never thought of shaking off her yoke. That Paris, befooled by Béranger, by chauvinism, and by the popular fiction of imperialism, should have chosen such a President as she did, is a strange comment on all the bombastic nonsense which Victor Hugo talks about Paris-cerveau—Paris, the brain of the world. Paris now, conscious of her degradation, is avenging herself by heaping all sorts of abuse on the man of her choice—'the phlegmatic perjurer,' 'the silent Tartuffe,' as M. Leclercq calls him. But the choice was hers, and the degradation which resulted from the years of personal rule followed with peculiar rapidity owing to a want in the French character. The most 'logical' of nations is indeed terribly consistent; it always seems to want that happy power of stopping short before things have gone so far as to make a catastrophe inevitable.

The last years of the late emperor's reign were morally unhealthy beyond the average of the most immoral times since the Reformation. It is not that people were worse in their conduct: they were more cynical. They had got to laugh at everything, to despise all sanctions—even those shadowy ones which the first revolution substituted for the sanctions of religion. The years in which Cora Pearl and the rest of the demi-monde were the arbiters of fashion, in which Thérèse was the pet of drawing-rooms, and the younger Dumas the popular littérateur, saw the extinction of much that was noble in France, for they witnessed what we may call the apotheosis of epicureanism. Paris seemed to have lost all moral sense since the time that its government had ceased to have any. The efforts of Parisian talent resulted in nothing but ill-digested and unwholesome works. The upper classes did as the Court did—that crew of wholesale stock-jobbers, like the Duke of Morny, among whom, one who was a strange mixture of reckless extravagance and gross bigotry presided as mistress of the revels. The masses were sunk in ignorance, and lived a life—those Paris ouvriers who have so often taken in hand to regenerate the world—which it would terrify the average English workman to contemplate. The middle class, the Famille Benoîton of the play, vegetated, made money, and reasoned on false premises. It was Babylon over again, as poor Prévost-Paradol styles it. Tongue-tied on all high subjects, the Parisians flung themselves mad with delight upon that class of ideas which soon brings thought down to its lowest level, 'Make money, never mind how, and live simply to gratify your meanest instincts,' that was everybody's maxim—leur esprit s'était abâtardi.

At the same time Paris still asserted that superiority over all the rest of the world which her writers had first claimed when they began to write up the first empire. Her writers kept on blowing one another's trumpets, and crying out that theirs was the great nation, and that to the people among whom primary education is more deficient than even in Spain was entrusted the mission of indoctrinating Europe with ideas. Grossly ignorant of their own shortcomings the French were, last July, quite incapable of forming a fair estimate of any other nation. Because Napoleon III. had always managed to mystify his people as to what he was going to do, therefore they fancied he had mystified Europe. Because he had met Bismark at Biarritz, and had been always fond of personal conference with princes, therefore they dreamed of Tilsit over again, and refused to see that on every point their master was either outwitted or else over-mastered by other statesmen. All the follies which come of boasting, of contempt for one's adversary, of unmeasured self-esteem, of confidence in one's power of doing anything in any line whatever, seemed to have burst out at once into monstrous growth in the Paris of last July. M. Leclercq collects chronologically the choice passages from the Figaro, the Gaulois, &c., which show the feeling of those who claimed to be the leaders of thought; and surely nothing better than such a collection can justify the almost universal dislike to France which was felt at the beginning of the war. Belgian as he is, he knows how bad the supremacy of Paris has been for Brussels, her little imitator, and he hopes that this supremacy is gone never to be restored. In this hope he gives us page after page of blatant absurdity, of grotesque and childish rant, of transparent falsehood, from the inaugural 'leader' in Figaro down to the wild dithyramb which Victor Hugo published when he entered Paris after the 4th September.

It is worth while to quote a few sentences from Figaro of the 17th July:—

And the 'leader' (what an abuse of the word) winds up with a prayer 'to the God who has said that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword, and who ordains that liberty's furrows should be blood-watered, since no otherwise can the germ of freedom be developed.' Many have been offended during the war with the tone of Emperor William's telegrams; but even the Standard must confess that they are infinitely preferable to the blasphemous hiccoughings of the Figaro.

The strangest part of it, perhaps, is the monstrous lying; Austria (we are told) is thirsting for revenge:—'The Austrian aristocracy is wild about the insolence of these Brandenburg margraves, these parvenu, princes' (the appropriateness of the epithet from a Bonaparte of a Hohenzöllern deserves remark).... 'Frankfort has shut all its shops, and its trade won't recover the shock for many years.... Prussia has withdrawn all the able-bodied men out of Hanover for fear of an outbreak.' The truth being that, except a portion of the highest class, and a very few of the lowest, the whole Hanoverian population went in heart and soul for German unity.

This incredible ignorance of other nations is matched by an equal ignorance of the French army and its belongings:—'War can bring us no annoying surprises, for we have the most marvellous body of éclaireurs in Europe,' is an assertion repeated over and over again towards the end of last July, at a time when the Uhlans were already beginning to show what they were capable of, and when French officers were finding out that they had nothing provided in the way of maps, except out-of-date plans of East Prussian fortresses. The absurd vanity which could write in this way when the Prussians were showing that they knew every inch of French soil, is only equalled by the craven way in which Figaro's readers gave in whenever Prussian audacity, backed by Prussian knowledge of their country, enabled Uhlans or regulars to make a dash. The Cornhill tale, 'How the Prussians took Mousseux-les-Caves' (under the guidance of a sub-lieutenant who had been clerk to a wine merchant there), is a story which has been acted out to the letter, not once but fifty times, to the confusion of those who were boasting all the while about their 'admirable corps d'éclaireurs.' The boasting was about as well-grounded as that which, a fortnight later, declared that of Prince Frederick Charles's army nothing was left but the remnants, and that the whole corps of Bismark's white cuirassiers had been cut off to a man.

The companion piece to all this senseless exaggeration, encouraged, we must remember, and endorsed by the highest authority—first by the Emperor himself and then by Count Palikao—is Victor Hugo's dithyramb aforesaid. It appeared in the Electeur Libre of 3rd October, and surpasses anything which Walt Whitman, in his wildest moments, ever dreamt of:—

It is as hard for sober Englishmen to imagine a people delighting in edicts penned in that style, as it is for us to read without disgust any two consecutive pages of L'homme qui rit. Hugo's latest novel is well matched by his latest political utterances.

One encouraging sign is, that Paris journalism grows ashamed of itself: the lies, indeed, continue to the last: insincerity seems (since the first Napoleon's time) to have become inseparable from French bulletins; but the Siècle of the middle of November proves what a change had come on:—

M. Leclercq's comment on this is—

This, from a Belgian, is at least as humiliating to Paris as any of the Prussian victories.

From politics, as from warlike criticism, M. Leclercq abstains almost wholly: of course, he cannot help wondering at Bazaine's behaviour at Metz; as we heard it lately expressed by a great English financier, unable, like most financiers, to help liking the Emperor after all:—'I won't say Bazaine was a traitor; that is not quite fair upon him. But I will say that he thought more of his government than he did of France. He might have prevented the investment of Paris, there is not a doubt of it.' The decay of the Napoleonic idea is put in a startling light, when we reflect that Bazaine was, before the end of last September, almost the only Imperialist in France. Paris, which had been so delighted at the prospect of glory as to forget all about the coup d'état, went round as one man. In fact, Sedan was hurried on because Paris could not be trusted: there was no sincerity in the ex-Emperor's professions and concessions. The Parisians knew that, and though they had been ready enough to shout against the Prussians, they were only waiting for their opportunity to get rid of their own ruler. It is the old story of a house divided against itself. The poor men were mowed down at Sedan by shells from such a distance that they could not see whence they were fired, simply because it was 'useless' for Napoleon to go to Paris. The idea of really honestly trusting to the country, and giving pledges for future conduct, never presented itself as possible in 1870 any more than in 1814 and 1815.

On one point M. Leclercq finds just fault with the Republican government: they decreed a second expulsion of Germans from Paris, and they vowed not only never to yield an inch of French soil, but never to raze a stone of one of her fortresses:—'As to the soil (says our author), let the inhabitants decide; but the offer to dismantle Metz and Strasburg, and, above all, the little fortresses which have so long wished to be made open towns, would at once have set them right with all the noblest minds in Europe: to act as they did was to play into the hands of the King of Prussia.' But M. Leclercq is somewhat of a peace-at-any-price man.

He is a prophet, too, and delights in the thought that France, before long, will be a federation like the United States. Its provinces will then (he says) resume their old importance—'the life now heaped up in Paris will be spread abroad where it is needed.' Paris, no doubt, has done nobly, and there is, after all, a good side to her character. He is as little desirous as we are to deny this; but, then, the fault was mainly hers. Had she last autumn stood firmly by the Republican party, instead of falling so readily and blindly into the trap which Louis Napoleon laid for her, war would have been impossible. She enabled the Emperor to begin; and then, by her fickle restlessness, she hampered his movements and forced him to fight, as it were, with one hand tied up. Instead of Hugo's Paris-cerveau, M. Leclercq calls her Paris-spectacle, Paris-plaisir, Paris-panache, and he sees no future for France except in her humiliation: il faut trépaner (he says) le cerveau de la France.

The Papiers Secrets need not occupy us long; they were hardly worth the trouble of unearthing. The Government of National Defence might surely have found better work for men like De Kératry, Lavertujon, and Cochut, than to be rummaging among the rubbish found at the Tuileries, at St. Cloud, and at Meudon. If they had so destroyed the environs of Paris as to prevent the Prussians from finding shelter; if they had (as common sense would have dictated) fortified Versailles, connecting it with the enceinte by a strong military line, and used their abundant labour to make the works impregnable, it would have been far better than to have wasted precious time in docketing papers which are certainly disappointing. They reveal nothing, for we already know that the Empire was based upon corruption and espionnage; and all they do is to enable the curious reader to follow the ramifications of this imperial system into unsuspected corners.

Thus, at the outset, we have a letter from the Empress en route for Suez, which shows her grammar and orthography as much at fault as those of the fine ladies of Queen Anne's time, and which is sadly like what Henrietta of France might have written to Charles I.:—

Altogether Eugenie does not come off badly in the published correspondence.

Of the chapter on Napoleon's mistresses we need say nothing except that it will disappoint the prurient reader. Marguerite Bellanger, who first fathered a son on him, and then (after being managed by the président du cour, poor M. Devienne) confessed she had cheated him, and Miss Howard, are the only two who come to the front; the latter, by the way, appears to have received in the course of two years five and a half millions of francs—good interest for having paid 'the Prince's' debts when he was in England. It is unsafe to state anything about the ex-Emperor's private property. The 'facts' have been contradicted and re-asserted; but there they are, in this little pamphlet, with full details, sixty-three millions of francs, including the accounts with Baring of London, with Kindlet of Vienna, with Funder and Plitz of St. Petersburg, with Berg von Dussen of Amsterdam, and Jecker in Mexico, and Brown Brothers of New York. What he had in the French funds the author, of course, professes himself unable to tell; but en revanche he gives (in the chapter headed ce que coûtaient les impérialists) the whole of the enormous civil list, a great deal of which was (as is proved by marginal notes on the documents) paid by the Emperor over and above the allowance, without the intervention of the Ministry.

We all know how persistently Pierre Bonaparte begged for money, and how recklessly money was wasted on affairs like the Prince Imperial's baptism, but the amount expended per month on men like Baron Jérome David, M. Granier de Cassagnac, and others of the 'vendus' is prodigious; and we are told that of the actual total we can form no notion, the usual plan of payment having been one which may be recommended to our own 'man in the moon'—a trusty go-between used to breathe on the glass of the office door, and then write with his finger the sum which he was authorised to draw, whereupon it was paid without question.

Of the Cabinet Noir, where letters were opened, according to a system adopted in France at any rate since Louis XIV.'s day, we have all heard a good deal. The actual letter-stealers were certain concierges with whom the postmen were instructed to leave all letters addressed to certain persons. These letters were then carried off to M. Saintonier, 18, Rue Les Cases, who opened them, had them copied, if necessary, and, if possible, returned them in time for the next delivery. Among the copies found is a remarkable letter from Ducrot, at Strasburg, to Trochu, dated 1st December, 1866, setting forth the dangerous state of feeling in Germany, and pointing out that Prussia can get ready 600,000 men and 1,200 guns far sooner than France can muster half the number. Ducrot animadverts severely on the 'stupid vanity' which makes his countrymen think they can choose their own time, and get their Great Exhibition well over before they begin. He says, too, that the frontier swarms with Prussian agents, and that the feeling between the Moselle and the Vosges is far less French than people fancy:

Surely the Emperor was warned; and that, in spite of all warnings, he should have acted as he did, justifies as well as explains the scorn which all parties alike have manifested for him.

These papers, in fact, remind us that imperialism was based on surveillance publique, on a spy system so vast as to embrace lists of all the 'dangerous men,' of whatever views, throughout the Empire. The prop of this system was the terrible power of arbitrary arrest given to all prefects by the 10th article of the Criminal Code. How the nation which boasts of being exceptionally logique reconciles such an article with the principles of 1789 we cannot imagine; but it is clear that a Government, resting on such a basis, could only stand by its prestige. At whatever cost, it was necessary last July 'to do something,' and at Sedan the ex-Emperor judged rightly that he had better fall into Prussian hands than trust to feelings which even his uncle had not ventured to rely on.

Persigny, according to the letters contained in the Papiers Secrets, was Louis Napoleon's Strafford. As late as December, 1867, he memorialises the Emperor at great length on the state of the nation, and exclaims against the folly of concessions:

Persigny, at any rate, was faithful, and, we believe, felt proper scorn for the miserable policy which tried to secure the bourgeoisie by alarming them every now and then with sham plots. Except the Orsini and Pianori plots, and the Villette affair of last summer, all the plots were, we are told, hatched by Pietri and Lagrange. Thus Greco, who was condemned to life transportation in 1853, was let out one night from Mazas by M. Lagrange himself, lived for years in America on a pension of £250 and then came back to Paris under a feigned name, and worked as a detective. The man, we read, is now in prison, and has made a full confession of his antecedents.

That Ollivier, at the end of 1869, was anxious to infuse new blood into the Imperial councils, and also to win over 'the few men of talent between thirty and forty years of age who had not already been driven into the revolutionary ranks,' is a proof that the Constitutional-Imperialist was more clear-sighted than his enemies will admit. That the Empress, after Wörth, should have telegraphed to her husband not on any account to return to Paris, as she could not be answerable for the consequences, shows a weakness of character which the admirers of Eugenie certainly did not anticipate.

These quotations from Paris newspapers and secret documents help to show why the Empire fell. It was unsound. However we may differ as to the amount of culpability shared by the French nation, or even by the Parisians, there is no doubt of the rottenness of the whole system. That it has been swept away is a gain for the world—a gain for France which will outweigh all her hopes, if only (in the words of the Siècle) the esprit boulevardier, the street-idler spirit, disappears along with the régime which fostered it; and if that hardness towards the poor, and indifference to their sufferings, which are too characteristic of the French wealthier classes, can be modified.

And now for a very few facts to show what a poor idol was the uncle of such a nephew. The three writers, Lanfrey, Barni, and Erckmann-Châtrian, have done more than any others to disabuse the French mind about Napoleonism. The cheap edition of Barni, from which the analysis and seriatim confutation of M. Thiers' books are omitted, has been immensely read; that such a book could be published in France in 1870 was a sign of the times quite as alarming to imperialists as the known disaffection of a part of the army. Besides these Charras, Scherer, Quinet, and Eugene Pelletan had for years been working against the worship of which Thiers was so long the prophet, and had succeeded in proving to all thoughtful Frenchmen that Fichte and Channing were much nearer the truth than was the romancer who wrote the 'Consulate and Empire.'

Our remarks must necessarily be brief; but we would call special attention to what M. Lanfrey tells about the early life of Napoleon: so much seems accounted for by such circumstances acting on such a temperament. Corsica was passing through a crisis when he was a boy; his father, head of one of the most influential families, went over to the French side when he saw resistance was hopeless. The son, who began life an ardent patriot, cursed his father for not having shared Paoli's exile. The family, however, profited by his change of side. He himself, displaying that same skill in managing men, above all Frenchmen, for which his son was afterwards so remarkable, became the confidential adviser of the governor and his cabinet. His children were provided for on the different royal foundations then so common in France. Napoleon went to Brienne, and thence to Paris; the great poverty of his family, and the humiliating position in which he found himself among the cadets of noble houses, accustomed to spend money as recklessly at their military colleges as our boys nowadays do at Sandhurst, made him cynical. The references to his want of means are frequent in his early journals; but this consciousness of poverty did not deprive him of his keen power of observation. His journals are an admixture of practical shrewdness and of originality expressed in wild bombast. He soon took the measure of those with whom he was brought in contact, fathomed their weaknesses, and adroitly made use of them. Life in Paris in the days when young Bonaparte first went there must have been trying to a young man's faith. Bonaparte had been 'finished' under the régime which was said to have existed par les femmes et pour les femmes; but before he was fully a man the old system was swept away, and Paris was a scene on which the most fantastic absurdities were enacted in the name of liberty. The selfish greed of the Republicans seems to have done more than anything else to make the young man a disbeliever in the grand phrases which he so freely used. His determination to act for himself comes out strikingly in his first Italian campaign, when by his happy boldness against Wurmser he had made the convention of Loeben inevitable. Throughout the preliminaries he behaved as an independent prince. He told the Directory what he was doing, and received their instructions, and from time to time acted upon them; but the only way in which he showed himself a faithful servant of the government was by putting money and art-treasures in their way. The greed which these Parisian deputies displayed was something incredible: and their young general encouraged them in it. He told them that Italy was rich and able to pay; and the contributions which he levied—though trifling compared with the amounts of recent Prussian requisitions—were sufficiently grievous to drive the people of the Milanese to revolt. Leghorn, for instance, had to pay two million francs for the privilege of being protected against the English. How Venice was treated is well known. 'The child of the revolution' betrayed that city to Austria as cynically as he afterwards crushed the Ligurian republic. 'Give them (said he, writing of the Corfiotes), plenty of talk about old Greece and liberty: it will please them, and it means nothing.' He is always the same, pitiless in his scorn of that bavardage, to put a stop to which he tells Menou that he was leaving Egypt. No success ever pleased him more than the way in which he fooled Sièyes, the man of ideas—making use of his reputation as a constitution-builder, and then showing 'the head' that as soon as its work was done it must give way to the arm.

Lanfrey's account of the 18th Brumaire, when only two of the five directors, Gohier and Moulins, stood firm, and when the affair of the Orangerie consummated by force what had been begun by corruption, is exceedingly instructive. It shows how, out of such a chaos, the rise of the ablest man was inevitable. Had Napoleon been a Washington he would, of course, have risen for far other than selfish ends; he would at once have taken in hand the constitution of which he so well knew the defects, and would have perfected it. Even had he been a Cromwell, earnest and impressed with a really noble idea, he would have looked at home instead of abroad, and have proved that 'the empire is peace.' Being what he was, the successful military commander, with no rule of action, except to make everything further his own advancement, he began by destroying representative life, and making even the judges his creatures, at the same time that he entered on that career of war in which he never paused save for short breathing times. A true instinct told him that either the French must have bonâ fide freedom, or must be drawn away from politics by being kept always at war. He may have mistrusted his ability to play the part of Washington; or what he had seen of Frenchmen may well have made him doubt whether they would appreciate his self-denial. Anyhow he never tried them; war became a necessity of his position; and to make war he did not shrink from so thoroughly exhausting France that we may doubt if she has suffered so much by this last ruinous war, and yet more ruinous peace, as she did by the long struggle which ended at Waterloo. The recklessness of last July was but a recognition by the nephew of the uncle's maxim, that 'by war, and war only, can our position be kept safe.'

Another point in common between uncle and nephew, is reckless expenditure; we do not sufficiently remember that, besides the conscription, the first Napoleon had the whole wealth of the nation under his personal control. He used it as the resources of the Second Empire have been used. The vast salaries of senators, the bribes, direct and indirect, the encouragement of a luxury which made large means essential—all this soon destroyed 'the austere simplicity of the republic.' 'Il faut se montrer' was the phrase in everybody's mouth, 'for if we do not come forward as friends of things as they are, we shall have none of the prizes which are being so lavishly distributed.' It was imperial Rome over again.

Such a system could not last; and the way in which France succumbed after Waterloo, while it does not exalt our opinion of French gratitude (for, after all, the first Napoleon had for years given France all that the mass of Frenchmen ask for), shows how inherently weak the strongest 'tyranny' (in the Greek sense) must always be. Any one who wants a simple and natural account of how Napoleonism grew up out of the folly and corruption and strife of the republicans, and of the helpless disgust with which the mass of the nation submitted when they saw what Napoleonism really meant, should study the Erckmann-Châtrian series. We do not wonder that the writers should have been elected as deputies for the Meurthe and the Haut Rhin, so thoroughly do their books photograph life and thought in these most republican departments. The peasant proprietor, who has bought with his hard-earned savings a little patch of confiscated land, is as fiercely bent on keeping it as ever tigress was on defending her cubs. He is told that kings and nobles, creatures of Pitt and Coburg, are sworn to wrest it from him; and his previous experience of kings and nobles assures him that he has nothing to hope if he fall into their clutches. That was the secret of Napoleon's strength; he went forth as the soldier of the Republic, predestined to show Europe that it was hopeless to dream of restoring the émigrés. How the true Republicans, who formed the nucleus of his armies, got gradually depraved until they became the 'dogs of war' of the Old Guard is wonderfully well set forth; and is, we fear, only too truly paralleled in this recent war, in which the moral deterioration of the German citizen-soldier has, like everything else, gone on at railroad pace.

The Erckmann-Châtrian novels have been compared with the Waverley series. We do not think the comparison a happy one. They do not aim at Sir Walter Scott's intricacy of plot; the stories are exceedingly simple, and the events (péripéties is the untranslateable word which best describes them) are unfolded historically, rather than after the manner of a romance; the human agent merely serves to string together a number of sketches from actual affairs. On the other hand, the Erckmann-Châtrian books show that rare power of accurate nature-painting which belongs almost wholly to very modern times, and which shines forth so conspicuously in our own George Eliot as well as in Dickens, and which among French writers is best seen, perhaps, in Georges Sand. Very different this from the landscape style of Scott, which has beauties of its own, but which differs from them much as a picture of Wilson, or Constable, or 'old Crome' differs from one by Tenniel. In the 'Romans Nationaux,' too, there is a vast deal more direct political teaching than 'the author of Waverley' ever attempted. He no doubt had very strong views of his own; and he managed, strangely enough, to make a sentimental Jacobitism fashionable at the very time when 'his most Sacred Majesty George IV.' was visiting North Britain. He is answerable for several inversions of historical truth: he makes Balfour of Burley and his class contemptible, and throws a halo of glory round Claverhouse, like that with which Byron invests his Werterian villains. But he never directly teaches politics. The 'Romans,' on the contrary, do this in almost every page. They assume, moreover, an amount of political knowledge on the part of their readers which would be very unwisely assumed by any English novel-writer. The fact is, the average Frenchman does know his own history since '89 far better than most Englishmen know the tortuous politics of the Georgian era—knows it better because he take a vastly more personal interest in it. For us, Mr. Disraeli well pointed out, history from the Revolution to the Reform Bill is chiefly the record of the quarrels of a few 'great houses;' to the Frenchman the earlier half of the eighteenth century is the time when his country was in the labour pangs of the strange, wild birth which was to follow; and the close of it is the fitful period in which the Revolution, surfeited with blood, sank helplessly under the yoke of military despotism. No need to urge Frenchmen to do what her Majesty's inspectors have so often recommended in our elementary schools, to begin history at the modern end and work backwards. Our boys and our men prefer woad-stained Britons and the strife of Dane and Saxon to the Rockinghams and Walpoles, and even the Pitts; but in France it is wholly different. Hence an amount of political knowledge in the country, for which we rarely give our neighbours credit. Your diligence-driver between Caen and Falaise will point out the Château Turgot, and will tell you all about the minister whose name it bears in a way which would have astonished any of the old mail-coachmen along the Western road, who knew, indeed, Burke's name in connection with High Wycombe, but who knew nothing but the name. This is one of the errors of 'our own correspondent:' because Frenchmen have not that blatant freedom of speech to which he is used at English hustings, he writes home that they know little and care less about politics—and this of people who seldom hesitate, on occasion, to die for their opinions. Their peculiar way of managing things arises from their habit of looking to authority, of moving under pressure of a force majeure; they have not, and can form but a faint idea of, that English liberty which is in our air, which M. de Montalembert used to call a bain de vie; but they have generally speaking, historically at any rate, more political knowledge than we have.

This accounts for much in the 'Romans' which, to the English reader, is wearying; they appeal to what he does not possess, a knowledge of the state of parties from '89 downwards. Every one, however, must appreciate the way in which the rise of Napoleon is shown to have been due to the corruption, the gross corruption, as well as imbecility of the Directory. No wonder Bonaparte despised mankind, when such poor specimens—vain, self-seeking, blindly conceited—were presented to him as the pick of republican France. Thus politics, as well as national character and habits (the habits, be it remembered, of that Alsace which is now to become the Ireland of Germany), are abundantly illustrated in these novels. We do not mean to analyse any of them, or to give samples which would be about as satisfactory as a single stone picked out of a Greek temple. The most touching of them is 'Madame Thérèse,' which, showing as it does how heartily the Germans on the frontier sympathized with the ideas of which Hoche was the expounder, bears on the question, 'How will the annexed districts get on under Junker rule?' Quiet Dr. Jacob, the hero of the story, is already so smitten with revolutionary ideas, that when he hears them commented on by the wounded vivandière whose life he has saved, he forgets that she is only the daughter of a village schoolmaster who had volunteered and had fallen, with his three sons, at Valmy, and, marrying her, joins Hoche as army surgeon. Men of this stamp are found on both sides of the Rhine; and to force Junkerism upon them would provoke a speedy break-up of the German empire. German optimists say that this danger is imaginary: acknowledging the disagreeable features in the Prussian character, they say that 'Germany will open Prussia out.' If not, trouble must ensue.

The 'Blocus' is, perhaps, the most picturesque of the whole series. The old Jew who, despite his timidity and his hatred of war, gradually becomes an effective national guard, is admirably drawn; the details of the siege, the misery, the excitement, are told so differently from the half flippant, half bombastic manner of even the best of 'our own correspondents.' The old soldier who, churl as he is supposed to be, meets the Jew's kindness with still greater kindness, and who, long refusing to believe in the Emperor's abdication, shoots himself when the truth is forced upon him, is a finished picture of which any artist might be proud. And the town thus immortalised is Phalsbourg, which henceforth is to be German. But we hope our readers will go to the books themselves: their appearance marks an era in novel-writing; it has done much more, for they are all novels with a purpose, and have been very powerful in pulling down the Napoleonic idol, in hastening the decay of the imperial idea.

The idol is overthrown; what will be reared in its place is doubtful. Political wisdom is not to be learned in six months, no matter how sternly its lessons may be enforced. The France which accepted Louis Napoleon, which gloried in the absurd boast, 'When France is satisfied the world is at rest,' which suffered itself to be kept in leading-strings for twenty years, giving full control over its wealth, its resources, its foreign and domestic policy, to an unscrupulous adventurer and his stock-jobbing associates, is not likely to rise at once to the dignity of a free people. 'Unstable as water' has hitherto been the curse of France's efforts at free government. The mission she has chosen has been to teach ideas to others, not to work them practically out for herself. When we read in old files of the approving Times of the revels at Compiègne, the luxury, the extravagance, we are reminded of the answer made to the first Napoleon, when he asked, 'Have I not got back the old system in toto?' 'Yes, but you forget that two million Frenchmen died to root out that old system; and you can't bring them to life again.'

Why is France, as a whole, sick of 'ideas?' Why, although they could dance round the statue of Strasburg when they ought to have been making peace and husbanding their strength for by-and-by, were the besieged Parisians incapable of any serious effort? Why was Trochu paralysed by the fear of Blanqui? Why should Bourbaki's wretched army have behaved so differently from that of Hoche, which was equally shoeless, and almost as much in want of everything, and which its enthusiastic leader kept at fighting point by allowing no tents during the bitterest winter that had been known for years? Man for man, Germans have always been superior to the French; to succeed, these last must move in masses welded together by one overmastering idea. They had no idea, no union, last year. Will this terrible lesson give them that unity of sentiment which Germany, since 1808, has been gradually feeling after, and has only just attained? Let us hope that sad experience may, at any rate, teach them the insufficiency of the very grandest of all merely human ideals. The noble thoughts of the 'Marseillaise'—

led to the brutal Carmagnole and the sickening excesses of the Terror, because, though noble, they were not sanctified. The sickness that comes from aiming at too much brought on a reaction which has lasted ever since; and the fact that Romanism is the hereditary religion of the French masses increases the difficulty of hearty national union. No earnest political reformer can ever look on the priests as more than temporary allies; no ultramontane can ever be an honest Republican.

What may come if Rome changes in the direction indicated by the Abbé (so he styled himself) and now lately by Père Hyacinthe, we cannot say; anyhow, such changes must be slow. At present the French priesthood must be reckoned among the bitter opponents of all free constitutional development.

The next few months will better enable us to determine whether Paris will still hold its own against France, or whether M. Leclercq's hope will be realized.[218] We may be quite sure that thousands of Frenchmen feel what he so well expresses—that it is Paris which made Louis Napoleon possible, even as it was Paris which enabled his uncle to be what he was. They both, indeed, used 'France' against Paris; but it was Paris which gave them a status at the outset. Those who think thus will feel that in the changed character of the capital is the best safeguard for the good government as well as for the moral regeneration of France; and if this change of character seems hopeless, the dangerous experiment must be tried of moving the Legislature out of such an unhealthy atmosphere.

We have thus striven to trace the growth and decay of Imperialism—which in its re-establishment was the practical expression of the Napoleonic idea—and to contrast it indirectly with the old régime, and with the sad delusion which, beginning so nobly in 1789, too soon ended in perhaps the bloodiest tyranny that modern Europe has ever seen. We decline to draw any horoscope of the future; such prophesying is always useless. Let us hope that God, who 'fulfils Himself in many ways,' will comfort the faith which this cruel satire on modern progress has so rudely shaken, by showing plainly that good has come out of all the evil. We cannot hope that nations will yet recognise the truth that war is organised crime; but we may hope that for a long time imperialism, based, as we have shown it to be, on lawlessness and on the glorification of the individual, will be impossible.

That the beaten nation always deserves to suffer is a maxim which nothing but a distorted view of Scripture will propound. Berlin is not many degrees above Paris in morality; and France, despite the character given of her in her filthy novels, is certainly not without home life and deep pure home affections.

All that we can say is that we, believing in God's providence, are very sure that, however strangely things may seem to turn out, the course of this world is ordered by Him.

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Art. VI.—Religious Tests and National Universities. By F. A. Paley, M.A. Williams and Norgate, 1871.

(2.) Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on University Tests.

Owing to the energy with which Her Majesty's Government have pushed through its earlier stages, the identical Universities Tests Bill which was so adroitly shelved last year by the resolution of the Marquis of Salisbury, we may confidently anticipate that, before these pages reach the public, every hindrance which kept men from the enjoyment of prizes which they had fairly won, and from posts of honour and usefulness which they were well qualified to fill, simply and solely because they were Nonconformists, will be swept away for ever. It would be gratifying if as reasonable a hope could be entertained that the far more stringent and objectionable religious test which is a practical bar to the enjoyment of half the fellowships of Oxford and Cambridge, not only to Nonconformists, but to all such as cannot say they believe in their hearts that they are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost, and called, according to the Will of Our Lord Jesus Christ to His ministry, as defined by the Church of England, would be as speedily removed from the threshold of offices which in no way require, and, practically, are seldom associated with the exercise of this professedly divinely imposed ministry. The progress of events may discredit our hopes or our fears, but this need not prevent a review of the struggle for the abolition of those tests at the universities which are obnoxious to Nonconformists alone, as though it were a thing of the past; nor a prospective glance at the clerical test which is obnoxious to all conscientious laymen who object to give in their adhesion to a complex creed, and hesitate to assume functions which are imposed by the Majesty of Heaven, but defined by the Majesty of Britain. This is the point upon which we must next concentrate our forces.

In the course of a few years it will, no doubt, be a source of wonder that religious disabilities should have been retained at the universities so long after they have been removed from almost all civil and municipal offices throughout the realm. This wonder will certainly not be lessened by an enquiry into the nature of the offices they are supposed to guard, or the value of the emoluments which attach to those offices. That any man otherwise qualified to explain the laws which govern the physical forces of light and heat, or the principles of comparative anatomy, should be cut off from a professorship in these sciences, because he will not conform to a liturgy containing the Athanasian Creed, can never appear less absurd by the lapse of time. A fellowship at one of our colleges, is, as Mr. Paley correctly defines it, wholly and absolutely a sinecure. No duties whatever are required as a condition of its tenure. Fellowships are held by gentlemen who are absent from, as well as by those who are resident at their colleges, and if the residents in any way promote the discipline or education of the students in those colleges, they have extra payment for such services altogether apart from their incomes as fellows. The word 'sinecure,' however, as applied to a fellowship, loses much, if not all the odium usually attached to that term from the fact that fellows are elected absolutely according to their merit as scholars, as that merit is proved by success in the university and college examinations. It seems strange that one-half of the nation should have been so long content to be excluded from participation in the prizes of pure scholarship, when the possession of these, unlike the enjoyment of livings and benefices, involved no duties either lay or cleric. That creed or conformity should be required of those whose sole duty was to enjoy an income of £300 per annum is ridiculous, unless we adopt the theory that the disabilities were meant to be punitive in their character. The same remarks apply to the yet more lucrative headships of colleges. Nor can it be supposed that exclusion from these rewards of learning by a religious test was submitted to because the rewards were insignificant in amount, either singly or in the aggregate. Mr. Paley estimates the gross annual revenue of the two universities and their colleges at half a million of money, £50,000 of which goes to the heads of forty colleges and halls, while 730 fellows enjoy average incomes of not less than £300 a year. Thirty years' residence at Cambridge has given Mr. Paley the right to speak with some authority in these matters, but we think he has understated the amount of these emoluments. We should not be surprised if, at no distant day, a commission of enquiry should reveal, that the gross revenue of these institutions, calculated on the real value of their rapidly increasing property, is double the sum named. The apathy of other sects in not urging more determinedly their claims to have the prizes of the university course open to them, when the course itself is open to all comers, is not to be accounted for on the ground that they can afford to despise those prizes. The explanation lies in the fact that the injustice done them has never till lately assumed a practical and tangible form. The indifference of the English to theoretical grievances is proverbial, and a conjunction of circumstances has tended to mask the character of the injustice.

The circumstances referred to will in a few short years become hard to understand unless we seize the present moment to record them. On the one hand Nonconformists had not yet recovered from the repeated blows dealt upon them by the legislature—blows of which the Act of Uniformity may be taken as a striking example. Content to be tolerated and glad to be hidden, finding neither social comfort nor encouragement in the pursuit of the liberal professions, they sought in commerce a fair field and no favour, and entered on this avocation with an energy which has not a little tended to establish our national importance. At the present time we claim free entrance to the offices and emoluments of our universities, because they are national institutions, but to a dissenter a few years ago the very term national conveyed the idea of exclusion, as it still does in such phrases as 'National Church' and 'National School.' Nonconformists had almost learned to regard themselves as aliens, for so the legislature had taught them to consider themselves. The idea of demanding equal privileges with all other subjects of the Crown, had scarcely entered their thoughts. Hence the universities were regarded by them, as were also the army, navy, and the bar, as inhospitable places where they would be slighted and ignored.

On the other hand the universities them selves had, at the commencement of the present century, fallen from their high estate, and become corrupt, servile, and dead to all the higher aims which should distinguish institutions for learning and education. At that period a very narrow stream of conventional scholarship ran through a very wide meadow of mediocrity, which it never overflowed or irrigated. The modicum of knowledge required of the οἱ πολλοι was contemptible, and every arrangement seemed to be based on the principle of letting through as easily as possible those who could afford to pay, and rendering the course of study of the studious as useless as the nature of study would permit. At the time when Gunning was the repository of university gossip, it is evident that both university and colleges were dishonest in their distribution of both honours and emoluments; they were willing to set the university stamp of education upon men whose only claim to be considered educated consisted in their being able to bear the lavish expenditure of college life. From this depth of degradation the universities have been slowly extricating themselves, while during the same period Nonconformity has been relieving itself from civil disabilities, and increasing in wealth and influence. The two circles, which were once far apart, have by synchronous enlargement at length cut one another. Despite every discouragement, Dissenters began to send their sons to the ancient universities, especially to that of Cambridge. Of those sent up a large proportion were men of great ability. Messrs. Stirling, Aldis, Wilkins, and Hartog—and during the present year Dr. Hopkinson—and many others, obtained the highest places in the competitive examination. These men were no doubt consciously fighting the battle of liberty of conscience in general, and of their co-religionists in particular. The stimulus afforded to their competitors by the prizes incident to a high place in the tripos lists was, in their case, substituted by a desire to break down a system of injustice which oppressed their several sects, and the nobler impulse produced the noblest results. From the time of the triumph of such men the question assumed a new character. The injustice had ceased to be theoretical, and appealed for redress to every right-minded man in language which could neither be misunderstood nor disregarded. The tacit eloquence of unrewarded merit addressed itself most powerfully to the most influential quarters. However averse to self-reform the governing bodies at the universities might be, since they were composed of men who had climbed to their present dignity by the arduous path of study, these could not be altogether without sympathy for men of like ability. Hence the party for the abolition of tests within the universities has wonderfully augmented of late years, and, as is natural, numbers as its own the men of the greatest talent. These tests which had been regarded as the heavy armour of defence began so to gall that they are now looked upon as more cumbersome than useful. Whatever might be the necessity for the maintenance of tests, the incidental evil that men of such industry and acquirement should fail of their appropriate rewards could not but be deplored by all generous minds. Henceforth candid enquirers began to ask what were the uses of tests which were to counterbalance these palpably bad results? and men not celebrated for candour saw the necessity of finding some arguments in their favour.

Attention having been imperatively called to the question of tests, their abolition became certain. Besides the direct injustice done, it was soon perceived that tests inflicted indirect injury upon the whole body of Nonconformists, upon the universities themselves, and on the nation at large. Religion, discredited by her uncharitable janizaries, longed to repudiate them, and both religion and morality discarded safeguards which could exclude the man who was so loyal to the God of truth that he would not violate His truth in the slightest particular, but could include any infidel, provided he were not only infidel to his God, but also to his own conscience.

Nonconformists became alive to the necessity of claiming a perfect political and social equality with all other of her Majesty's subjects: they perceived that their practical exclusion from the old universities gave some colour to the imputation of ignorance and narrow-mindedness which their enemies had sedulously endeavoured to fix upon them.

University reformers, bent on opening the universities to all classes for the furtherance of every branch of study, saw the necessity of removing every invidious distinction, and welcoming on equal terms that half of the nation which had hitherto regarded these institutions as places where their sons would not have fair play. The rapid growth and wide influence of the London University, where no such disabilities existed, no doubt quickened the perception of these reformers, each of whom beheld his Alma Mater beginning to weep like Niobe for the loss of her children.

To oppose this rising current of opinion that set against the tests, their defenders had only such arguments as could be ranged under two categories; the one retrospective, and the other prospective. It was contended that by abolishing the tests the wills of the founders and donors would be violated, and the violence done to them would have a tendency to weaken the rights of property, and dry up the streams of benevolence. It was further argued that these tests were the only safeguards which could defend the minds of our youth from the inroads of infidelity, and from the hydra-headed monster of unbelief which was quickening into such active life. These were the two sheet anchors cast out astern and astem to keep the tests from drifting to destruction. The cogent logic of facts soon showed that, however good the anchors might be, their cables could not hold. The application of these arguments was singularly unfortunate. For the benefit of such uncompromising advocates of the tests as the Rev. E. H. Perowne, who, if sincere, must now be pacing the deck of his forlorn craft in fear of instant and imminent shipwreck, we may show the insecurity of the stays to which he trusted.

It is notorious that the offices and emoluments guarded by the tests were made, not for churchmen by churchmen, but for Catholics by Catholics. In the case of the writer of the pamphlet at the head of this article, we have a singular instance of cruel disregard of the wills of the founders. Mr. Paley is one of the best instructors in classics, and perhaps the most voluminous classical author in the University of Cambridge. He is in every way qualified for any post of classical instruction, but because he is an adherent of that church to which the founders of nine-tenths of the colleges belonged, he could receive no benefit from emoluments which were specially intended, where there was any limit to their application at all, for his co-religionists. On the narrowest conservative grounds Mr. Paley might urge his right to enjoy promotion in the university he adorns. If he were told by an advocate for tests, that the offices and emoluments were secured to the adherents of the religion of the state, and that they were since reserved for the professors of a different faith, because the state had adopted that new faith, he would doubtless reply;—that his church had never stooped so low as to admit that articles of faith could be matters of state legislation, and that the Catholic founders of the colleges would have stood aghast at the astounding anomaly of a state-made church. Surely none but an outlaw to the realms of logic and ethics could after that maintain that he ought to be excluded. Mr. Paley has chosen to advocate the abolition of tests on broader grounds. He is a Roman Catholic of the most liberal type, but as a Catholic citizen, whether liberal or ultramontane, his defence of his right to participate in the honours of the university is impregnable. We can readily imagine the just indignation with which the claim to these universities, as Church of England institutions still carrying out the wills and wishes of the original Catholic founders, made by those who are perpetually taunting Catholics with a want of veracity, would be flung aside as a sophism unworthy of men who ought to identify religion with the strictest honesty and truth.

But, even if this sophism were more worthy of the adoption of honourable men, it has become quite obsolete and inapplicable at the present time. The abolitionists might concede, for the sake of argument, that it is right that donors, living in a remote age, should be assisted by the present administration of law to attach conditions to the tenure of property which have a tendency to modify, restrain, and stereotype the political and religious opinions of a nation centuries after they had ceased to mingle with the affairs of men. They might even admit that no considerations of the wishes and convenience of the present holders of the property, nor the promotion of that education which is the main object for which the colleges and universities were founded, nor the requirements of the nation, ought to be permitted to modify the administration of the property by the present governing bodies. They might further forget that the universities were constituted by royal charter, and upheld by continual renewals of their charters. If colleges were looked upon as corporations irresponsibly holding property more absolutely than corporate bodies have ever been permitted to do in any enlightened state, yet these admissions would in no way affect or enfeeble the action of those who are now urging on the abolition of all religious tests. They, at least, are not responsible for introducing any novel principle of action dangerous to the stability of property. For, to say nothing of all past legislation,—including that act of uniformity which by limiting the election to headships, fellowships, chaplaincies, and the office of tutor to a certain class of persons, recognises an imperial authority to remove these limits—we have the recent Oxford and Cambridge University Acts. The latter Act specially and distinctly empowers the governing body of any college to repeal from its deeds of constitution, &c., disqualifications to office, and to abolish oaths and declarations. The Oxford Act has a section of the same tenor, but owing to its having been passed two years earlier, it is less distinct and explicit. This interference of the legislature has already been accepted by many of the colleges. Proceeding under the provisions of that Act, many of the governing bodies have removed the necessity for celibacy from the holding of fellowships, and made other important modifications with regard to the tenure of office, and the receipt of emoluments. It has therefore been recognised on all hands by Churchmen and Dissenters, by the authors of the act of uniformity, and the supporters of the University Acts, by Parliament as well as by the colleges, that the special provisions of the donors may be set aside in order to promote the main object of their benefactions. It is strange that men conversant with these facts should be content to occupy ground which, while it is completely commanded by their opponents, is to them a labyrinth of absurdities.

In some cases the Tests Bill will absolutely restore to the colleges their ancient rights and liberty which the legislature had previously ruthlessly curtailed. In the statutes of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, it is expressly and advisedly provided that no religious disabilities shall bar their offices. At the last annual meeting of the fellows of Trinity College, the following resolution was passed by twenty-five votes against ten: "That the master and seniors take such steps as may be necessary in order to repeal the religious restrictions in the election and conditions of tenure of fellows at present contained in the statutes." This vote is rendered nugatory, so far as nonconformists are concerned, because of an unrepealed clause in the Act of Uniformity. Thus, at Trinity, we have a governing body intent on rendering its means of education efficient, and administering rewards strictly in accordance with merit, but debarred from doing so, not by the wills of the founders, but by a subsequent innovation which restricts the rights of the present holders of the college property. Such a state of things appeals to every true conservative as well as to every wise liberal instinct for speedy and complete legislation.

The stern cable of the maintainers of tests having parted, is the fibre of the other more reliable? The confidence in the efficiency of tests, which was once almost universal, is being every day shaken by fresh revelations of their futility. At the Universities the tests have been themselves tested and found to be base metal, stamped indeed with the die of authority, but current only in those marts where credulity holds commerce with cruelty. Bishop Colenso was long a resident and, so far as his powers of imparting mathematical instruction are concerned, an ornament to the University of Cambridge, yet Bishop Colenso denies the inspiration of writings which the Church of England holds to be canonical. If it be maintained that his heterodoxy was subsequent to his residence, it may be replied, that he has ceased to reside at Cambridge because he has accepted preferment to an office which involves submission to a multiplicity of tests, each more stringent than that which attaches to a fellowship. Professors Baden Powell and Jowitt, two of the ablest writers in the volume which was once popularly called 'The Challenge of the Seven Champions of un-Christendom,' occupied distinguished places in the University of Oxford. Probably if we were to search for the home of the most dangerous kind of skepticism we should find it not far removed from the Combination rooms of Oxford and Cambridge, where 'the dons' discuss high matters at their ease 'across the walnuts and the wine.' This is certainly the case if we may take the evidence of Mr. Paley, who thus writes:—

It is easy to conceive of a case in which these arguments for the retention of tests might be urged with great force. It is scarcely possible to imagine a case in which they could be rendered more feeble and futile by the comment of circumstance.

The progress of events and the logic of facts could scarcely render the University tests more absurd, did not these make them day by day more pernicious to the charity and concord of Christians of all denominations, more galling and injurious to the Universities, now striving nobly and efficiently to meet the requirements of the age, and more detrimental to the interests and highest aspirations of the British nation.

In tracing the causes why these University Tests have existed so long, it has been impossible to avoid incidentally producing the reasons why they should endure no longer.

The test imposed at Cambridge, by requiring the graduate when he proceeds to his B.A. degree to declare himself a bonâ fide member of the Church of England, not only excludes the nonconformist from a voice in the senate, which body is the popular and ultimate regulator of the studies of the university, but it also denies to him a vote for the members representing the university in Parliament. This is the only constituency in which a religious belief is made to curtail the exercise of the franchise.

Headships and fellowships in colleges, as distinguished from the offices of tutor, lecturer, and dean, are sinecures involving no onerous duties, and not necessarily connected with the imparting of instruction of any kind, whether religious or secular. They are posts of honour and not of trust. Their occupants, no doubt, influence and control the course of study at their colleges, but they need not be and are not by their offices personally concerned in education. These posts, therefore, not only involve no clerical duty, they do not demand the exercise of those debateable functions which lie between the lay and clerical offices, such as the education of youth is supposed to imply. To use an illustration now rendered familiar to most by the practical working of the Education Act; the master and fellows of a college occupy the position of a school board, while the tutors and lecturers alone instruct. Lecturers in the several departments of study are, it is true, generally chosen from the body of fellows, but by no means necessarily so. Hence, there is no analogy between the test imposed on the clergy, and that which is taken by the heads and fellows of the colleges. The former is a pledge to perform definite functions for which the functionaries receive a definite stipend, the latter is a test applied to those who require service to be performed. The test as applied to these offices has become an unparalleled anomaly. It is the last remnant of the revengeful policy exercised by the Anglican upon the Puritan party, after these were driven from their short-lived supremacy.

Thus viewed, the tests at the universities are like the Needle rocks, which once were continuous with the neighbouring cliff, but are now become strange and fantastic through the isolation imposed upon them by the waves of the ever advancing ocean. As political change is as rapid and certain as geologic change is slow and sure, their bold position is an evidence not of their immunity from, but of their amenableness to the influence of the forces which play upon their bases.

The offices of tutor, dean, lecturer, &c., inasmuch as they are directly connected with the moral supervision and education of the undergraduates in all branches of study, including theology, stand in a somewhat different position with regard to tests. To those unacquainted with the universities, the distinction between these two classes of office is not obvious. The general impression obtains that these national institutions are training schools for the clergy of the Establishment, in which training all resident officials are concerned; but the members of the governing bodies themselves are quite aware of the difference pointed out. Unless this distinction could be made there would be no locus standi for the select committee of the House of Lords appointed for the purpose of inquiring into the best mode of giving effect to the following resolution of the house—

All the gentlemen who gave evidence before that committee, with the exception of the Rev. E. H. Perowne, who has the reputation of being the most uncompromising and indiscriminating advocate of tests, recognise this distinction; and all suggest that while fellowships, or some of them, be thrown open to all, a modified test be applied to the functional posts.

The pernicious principle that Government has a right to interfere between parents and their children in the regulation of the religious instruction of youth, has, no doubt, been often acted upon. Thus that Act of Uniformity, which is now the main prop of university tests, requires subscription not only from persons in holy orders and university officials, but also from schoolmasters in private as well as in public schools, and even from tutors in private families.

The recent legislation for the primary education of the country has, however, thrown a flood of light on the relations of education to religion, and of the State to both. It is scarcely conceivable that the Parliament which passed the Elementary Education Act of 1870, should retain a sectarian test as a safeguard to offices because they are posts of education. The Education Act was avowedly tentative and incomplete. It was a compromise, in which the representatives of old ideas obtained more recognition than they had anticipated. The bill will certainly be modified before many years are gone, and if so the modification is sure to be in the direction of eliminating the sectarian element from education. Yet there was great unanimity of opinion among the parties to the discussion in certain principles embodied in the Act. These principles were: 1. That the State might neither provide nor require definite religious instruction. 2. That where, owing to existing methods of denominational education, it was necessary for the State to make the various sects its allies to effect the common object of secular education, it should deal to all denominations even-handed justice. 3. That wherever the State interfered or was concerned with education, no child who was the recipient of the benefactions applied to instruction should be placed at any disadvantage on account of the religious belief of the parents of that child.

If the House of Lords should endeavour so to mutilate the University Tests bill as to substitute a test, however modified or limited in its action, in place of that imposed by the Act of Uniformity, it would ask the legislature to violate every one of the aforesaid principles, and thus to stultify itself. Such an attempt is certain to be successfully resisted. We had better not legislate at all than re-endorse a time dis-honoured practice.

The Elementary Education Act, while it thus indicated the nature of the reform required, also furnished the most urgent reason for the immediate adoption of that reform at the universities. If primary education ought to be the care of the State, secondary education is not less its duty. By secondary education we mean a higher education than that rudimentary training which is thought essential to all children; that is, a higher class education, not education for a higher class. That the child of a poor man who has shown himself capable of wider and higher culture by the readiness with which he has responded to the lower, should not be able to proceed to a higher class school, because of the poverty of his parents, would be even more deplorable than that dull ones should lack education altogether. The universities form the natural apex of the pyramid of national education. The nation can never rightly economise and utilise its intellect until every one of its children, capable of such culture, can pass freely up through all the grades of education to the very summit. If this is to be the case the capital must be rendered congruous with the column it should surmount. By reason of tests the national universities are rendered so incongruous with the rest of the structure that is in course of erection, that no cement could make them cohere. If by common consent we must eliminate sectarian religion from elementary education in the interests of the child whose father is so stolidly indifferent to the higher needs of that child that he must be compelled to send him to school; how absurd it is to provide that when he has grown into manhood and shown a capacity for the reception of the highest culture, he should be handed over for instruction to a body rendered exclusively sectarian by the retention of antiquated religious tests. The inauguration of a national scheme of education is an epoch in the history of the nation. It is a crisis in the history of the universities. On the present settlement of this question in some measure depends whether the ancient universities shall stand in the position of the Doric capitals which crown the columns and support the architrave of the classic temple, or lie like those same capitals after the earthquake has dashed them to the ground—the broken and isolated fragments of a former grandeur.

From a review of the past struggle, in which we have endeavoured to show how the march of events, the advance of ideas, and the change of position of parties, rendered the old line of defence formed by these tests, not only indefensible, but deserted by its defenders, we turn to examine the ground of the next battle-field.

The necessity of taking holy orders as a condition for holding or retaining offices and emoluments at the universities and their colleges is a test of the most stringent and pernicious character. Every argument against tests in the abstract, may be urged with double force against this clerical test. Every consideration of the welfare of nonconformists, of the universities, and of the nation, which has determined the abolition of the simple tests, is of greater force when applied to the complex test implied in the taking of holy orders.

Fully one-half of the fellowships of Oxford and Cambridge, and nearly two-thirds of the headships, can be enjoyed only by clergy of the Establishment. This clerical test is therefore a practical bar to Nonconformists of half the preferments of these wealthy national institutions; and the fact that all conscientious laymen are included under this academic ban certainly does not commend this test to exceptional retention. Colleges, where there is a certain minimum of clerical fellowships, are at the present moment compelled to elect inferior men when all their lay fellowships are filled. In colleges like Trinity and St. John's, Cambridge, where all must take orders at a certain date from their degrees, the more able and energetic men usually become absorbed in other pursuits and vacate their fellowships to serve in turn to younger men as means of defying the impecuniosity which notoriously dogs the early stages of a professional career; while the idlers as naturally become sinecure pluralists, because the dignity of the priest need not interfere with the fellow's ease. By this system the colleges are equally dishonoured by those whom they retain and those whom they reject. By this system the nation also suffers, by allowing the large revenues of national institutions to be squandered on cureless priests, which, by some such arrangement as is explained by Mr. Paley, might secure to literature and science the labours of our greatest scholars and ablest investigators. To this catalogue of ill effects may be added the damage done by the clerical test to the Church of England. Many years of university life is admitted to be the very worst preparation for parish work. As a rule, fellows manifest great repugnance to take upon themselves, in middle life, the duties involved in the acceptance of a college living; and the man who allows himself to drift first into holy orders and then into a college benefice, from sheer inanity, is not likely to bring much zeal to his work.

We are quite aware that a very different view of this result of clerical fellowships is taken by their advocates; and this brings us to the examination of those reasons which may be brought forward to show that the clerical test stands on a footing different from that of other tests. The advocates of clerical fellowships would state, first, that the clerical test was not imposed ab extra by the Imperial Legislature, but rested wholly and solely on the wills of the founders and donors of the emoluments and offices it guarded. They would argue, secondly, that by removing the tests from lay fellowships a sufficient number were thrown open to satisfy and reward all the Nonconformist scholars who were likely to seek education at the universities, and that by retaining the clerical fellowships a preponderance would be secured at the seats of learning in favour of Protestant Christianity, which preponderance is a desideratum with nine-tenths of the English people. They would show, thirdly, that these clerical fellowships induced men, having the reputation and acquirements of scholars, to enter, and thereby adorn and strengthen a Church which more than ever needs learned divines to meet scientific sceptics on their own ground.

All this may be true, but it is very little to the purpose. Whether the colleges, or any of them, were originally monastic institutions is a curious antiquarian question, but the requirement of holy orders and celibacy, from every member of the fraternity, in many instances, at least, originated in times when the recognition of a distinction between the regular and secular clergy was a part of the public opinion of the day. A community which accepted the theory that good works could be performed by a sacerdotal order which would benefit men's souls after death, quite irrespective of any effect which could be produced upon them during life, might look with complacency on fraternities freed from social ties, and consecrated to spiritual uses when these uses were not apparent. Nowadays, however, a collegiate priest is of all men least likely to give himself to works of supererogation. The duties of a fellow of a college and a priest without cure can be defined only as Bishop Blomfield once defined the functions of an archdeacon, namely, as archidiaconal. These duties may both once have been burdensome, but now the academic Issachar crouches down between them, and declares rest to be good and the land pleasant. The plain teaching of the clerical test is, not that we ought to follow the letter of the wills of the founders when it contravenes their spirit, but that well-meaning men can do little good, and may do much harm, by endeavouring to impose the ideas of one age on the customs and manners of a remotely future one.

It is a wild expectation that the maintenance of a Christian and Protestant ascendancy at the universities will establish oases in the midst of the barren desert of doubt, or clearings in the forest of Papist superstition, such as the several religious alarmists, according to their bent and temperament, would induce us to believe our country will soon become. Let those who delight in clothing bugbears with imaginary terrors speculate on the possibility of a Mussulman or a Parsee becoming an examiner for the theological degree, or a positivist becoming a professor of exegesis. A reasonable man will consider the conditions upon which such a thing could occur. Our nation must have forsaken a faith which has existed among us for a thousand years. Our legislature and our universities, both equally transcripts of the popular mind, must have forgotten their God. In such a case is it conceivable that a religion alike abandoned by a people which it has raised to power and prosperity, and by the Deity which promulgated it, should be preserved to our colleges by the operation of a test which is even now profaned by men who avow their readiness to swear et ceteras?

The great classical scholar Person, himself a sufferer under, and a protester against the clerical test, used to say that a fellow's life was like the lime-tree avenue at Trinity—a long walk with a church at the end of it. This was said in reference to Coton spire seen in the distance.

The present Bishop of Carlisle said in a sermon addressed to the University of Cambridge, 'We want men to enter the ministry of our Church who, if they went to the bar, would succeed at the bar.' There was a curious admission implied in these words, but to do Dean Goodwin justice, he was then speaking, not in defence of clerical fellowships, but to rouse the voluntary enthusiasm of the students he addressed.

That scholars are induced by the practical working of the system of clerical fellowships to take their places among the clergy of the Establishment cannot be denied, but the argument deducible from this, savours both of bigotry and worldliness. A clerical fellowship is in this view a skilfully-baited trap to catch a Church decoration. We have many instances to show that by placing upon learned men the badge of orthodoxy you do not make them defenders of the faith. Too often the false position of a man, thus entrapped, makes him cynically sceptical. Of such an one it may often be said, 'A little grain of conscience makes him sour,' and causes him—

This endeavour to affix a plume to the helmet of faith worn by the church militant is in strange relation to the thanksgiving which proceeded from the Head of the Church, 'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' This is evidently solely a Churchman's consideration, and does not deserve our further notice; but it is intimately related to the wider question of the influence of this test on morality and religion.

We cannot better preface our concluding remarks on this important bearing of the subject than by quoting the evidence given by the Rev. D. P. Chase and Professor J.B. Lightfoot before the Committee of the House of Lords:—

Dr. Chase does not endorse this lax morality, for he says as follows:—

Lord E. Fitzmaurice, in the debate on clerical fellowships, is reported to have said:—

Lord Fitzmaurice has so lately left the University of Cambridge that his recollection of it must be very vivid. The sentences quoted have just that quality of candid but rather indiscriminate truth, flavoured with somewhat flippant and irreverent satire; which would have brought down the house at the Union Debating Society. Indeed we can hardly refrain from thinking these words were originally prepared for the benefit of the audience there assembled.

The ingenuity of the great enemy of souls would be taxed in vain to hit upon a device by which the ministry of Christ and the truth of God could be more thoroughly brought into contempt in the judgment of susceptible youth, which is ever keen to detect selfish shams, and ever loyal to self-sacrificing nobility. The system of clerical fellowships is such a scheme—

If this hoar iniquity of clerical tests be for a few years longer maintained by a mistaken section of Churchmen, it will be our duty as Nonconformists, during that time, by making a vigorous protest through every channel by which public opinion is influenced, to show that if these tests be safeguards they are safeguards not of Catholic Christianity, but of sectarian ascendancy; to keep the fair garments of religion unspotted by a worldly and turbid policy; to cause that the contempt which cannot but be felt should light not upon the royal priesthood of Christ, but on the priesthood of the Establishment; and to demonstrate that, if truth be violated, she is violated by no criminal consent of ours.

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Art. VII.—The War of 1870-1.

In the last number of this Review we endeavoured to describe what may be called the first act of the tremendous contest which has convulsed Europe during the last eight months. We glanced at the original causes of the war long impending between Germany and France, reviewed the opening passages of the struggle, the gathering of the antagonist hosts, the false strategy of Napoleon III., the great ability of his opponents, the first victories that were the result,—Wörth, Forbach, and the battles at Metz; and examined the remarkable movements which led to the catastrophe of Sedan, an event unparalleled in military history. Pursuing the narrative, we noticed briefly the consequences of that awful disaster—the advance of the German armies to Paris, and their investment of the famous capital; and said a few words on the grand spectacle afforded by France at this conjuncture, when, after her unprecedented reverses, she unrolled the banner of national resistance, and tried to stem the flood of Teutonic invasion. We felt, however, that it would be premature to dwell at length on the scenes of the latter conflict, because their issue was as yet uncertain, and we postponed to the present number a more elaborate survey of them. We now propose to give a short account of the second and closing act of the drama, comprising the marvellous siege of Paris, the efforts of France to relieve the city, and their defeat by the German hosts, and, finally, the fall of the beleaguered capital after an heroic resistance. This phase of the war is altogether different from that which preceded it, and in many respects is more interesting. It is not a mere succession of dazzling triumphs caused by genius and force on one side and incapacity and weakness on the other; it is a frightful international strife, in which, owing to peculiar circumstances, the result was for a long time doubtful; in which the belligerent which at first seemed prostrate made a rally of an extraordinary kind, and placed its opponent in comparative danger; and in which victory was decided at last through the continued efforts of rare ability wielding perfectly organized military force, and prevailing over patriotic energy, strong in the elements of warlike power, but untrained, undisciplined, and badly directed. This part of the campaign shows us how the defences of Paris caused the invading armies, which had never expected that they would hold out, to be exposed to formidable attacks; how the breathing-time obtained in this way enabled France to rise again, and to put immense masses of men into the field; and how, in consequence of their military situation, the Germans, although at all points victorious, necessarily occupied a precarious position; and it shows not less clearly how superiority of generalship, of skill, and of efficiency in war, turned the scale at last against mere numbers, though possessing some remarkable advantages. As for the lessons to be deduced from the straggle, it lays bare painfully the real causes of the overwhelming calamities of France; it reveals very plainly the true nature of the gigantic Power now dominant in Europe; and it makes thinking persons sadly admit that, notwithstanding civilization and progress, the passions of man remain little changed, that the lust of conquest burns as fiercely at the close as at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that experience seems unable to teach that the triumphs of mere ambition and force are often a curse even to the victor.

After the disaster of Sedan, the German armies proceeded at once to march on Paris. At this moment the last regular army of France in the field was a mass of prisoners; the Army of the Rhine, the hope of the nation, was shut up with Bazaine at Metz, hemmed in by the corps of Prince Frederic Charles; and France seemed so utterly vanquished that even the cautious German leaders could see no possible danger in moving into the heart of the invaded country, though they had not taken one important fortress, or even occupied one line of railway. Besides, it was assumed in the German camp that the advance to Paris would be little more than a military pageant or demonstration; the city had fallen in 1814 and 1815 after a resistance of a mere nominal kind; though it had been since fortified, the fortifications were known to be within the range of modern heavy guns; and, in any case, it was taken for granted that a population like the Parisians would never venture to make a stand, or submit to anything like privations. Accordingly, the magnificent German hosts were directed in two enormous masses from Sedan against the devoted city, the Fourth Army under the Crown Prince of Saxony advancing by Vouziers and Rheims towards the Marne, the Third, under the Crown Prince of Prussia, descending from Rheims upon the Seine, the object of both being to converge and hem in Paris in an investing circle. Eye-witnesses have recorded with admiration how superb was the aspect of these mighty arrays as, flushed with astonishing success, and in the most perfect military discipline, they rolled on through the plains of Champagne in all the pomp and circumstance of war, finding literally nothing to check their progress. By the 15th or 16th of September the two armies had made good their way to the rivers which, in their uniting bends, form the first lines of the defence of Paris; the Crown Prince of Saxony having reached Meaux, and his colleague having pushed forward to Mélun. Soon after these points had been passed, the first signs of opposition appeared. After the fall of the Imperial régime, General Trochu, who had been President of the Government of National Defence, had been making great preparations to enable Paris to stand a siege; and as it was of vital importance to retard the assailants as long as possible, he had sent one detachment to hold in check the Germans in the valley of the Marne, and another to attack the Crown Prince of Prussia as he crossed the Seine to the south of the city. Their efforts, however, completely failed, the French troops with Vinoy and Ducrot, demoralized by repeated defeats, being wholly unable to withstand the Germans; and on the 19th of September the invading armies had closed on all sides around the beleaguered city, the Crown Prince of Prussia having mastered a range of heights overlooking the defences to the north, and having captured some temporary works erected by Trochu along their position. The army of the Crown Prince of Saxony spread along the northern and eastern parts of Paris, from Charenton to about Argenteuil; that of his brother Prince completed the circle from the Marne across the Seine to St. Germains, the head-quarters being at Versailles.

In this way, within two or three days after their first appearance on the Marne and Seine, the German invaders had encompassed Paris, and by the 22d of September the investment was complete. It is said that the fortifications merely saved the city from the terrors of an assault; but, however this may have been, these works were already in a condition which compelled the Germans to pause, and to make their approaches with circumspection. In fact, the natural strength of Paris as a defensible position is exceedingly great; and the artificial defences, though constructed before the invention of the artillery of this day, had rendered the capital a powerful fortress. Paris is protected along its eastern front by the converging streams of the Marne and Seine, thrown before it like a series of fosses, and by the succession of heights extending from the plain of St. Denis to Vincennes; to the west it is covered by the winding returns of the Seine, from Sèvres to beyond St. Germains; and to the north and south, though at these points weaker, it is not without a barrier marked out by nature. The result is that Paris is, as it were, designed for a vast entrenched camp, very difficult to surround or attack; for its situation on the rivers which wind about it not only compels an enemy to divide his forces if he would invest it, but exposes him to considerable danger, especially if a defending army held the eastern heights before referred to. This naturally strong and vast position had been fortified with great care in 1841, by engineers of the school of the first Napoleon. A ditch had been thrown around the city, and a rampart with regular bastions made; but these were merely the internal lines. The real and external defences were a series of powerful detached forts, so arranged as to support each other, and to constitute a zone on all sides of great dimensions, difficult to approach. For this purpose every advantage had been taken of the character of the place; the forts were so built as to command the obstacles formed by the Marne and Seine, and thus to enable troops to bar the passage of an enemy across these streams. They also crowned the eastern heights, and thence covered St. Denis to the north; and while one fort only—that of Valérien—threw a shield over the western front, four or five, along a range of projecting eminences, protected the southern and southwestern. It must be added, however, that those who designed the fortifications of Paris always supposed that an army would be within the zone comprised by the range of the forts, and would thus be able to oppose an enemy; and, owing to the invention of heavy rifled guns, the southern forts, from Charenton to Versailles, were comparatively weak, and liable to attack.

Such was the aspect of the defences of Paris when, at the end of the third week of September, they were surrounded by their Teutonic foes. The forts and ramparts were extremely formidable, but they were, as yet, ill-armed with heavy guns, and, above all, the great element required for a successful defence—a well-regulated and disciplined army, to prevent an enemy from closing round—was, for the present, altogether wanting. General Trochu, in concert with subordinate officers, had for several weeks laboured hard in bringing into the city artillery and munitions of war. Paris had become a vast arsenal for constructing fieldpieces, manufacturing gunpowder, and fabricating all kinds of military appliances; and an immense number of men fit for service, amounting, it is said, to half a million, including 250,000 National Guards, had been congregated within the walls to form the materials of an organized force. But though the efforts of the Governor and his assistants, and the patriotism of the population, had been admirable; though stores of provisions had been laid in; though foundries and workshops had toiled day and night in casting ordnance and preparing cartridges; and though the multitude of recruits had been subjected to continual drill, Paris was not ready when the Germans appeared; and, in consequence, after the feeble resistance of Vinoy and Ducrot on the 17th, the investment was completed without difficulty, and the first great object of the besiegers was attained. Yet, though Trochu was thus driven to a passive defence—what had hardly been seriously contemplated by those who had fortified Paris—he did not despair or lose heart; and we may believe that he had good hopes that France would be saved through the resistance of Paris. He knew that the city possessed resources of food for several months; he was aware that it was possible to create a vast supply of cannon and arms; he thought that he would have time to make out of the crude masses of men in his hands an efficient army inside the walls; and on these data he formed a scheme for the defence of the country, which, though it failed, and though, as we think, it was open to censure, was, nevertheless, not without grandeur. He would render Paris impregnable to attack, and detain the Germans around the ramparts for a time passing their calculations; he would form into soldiers the levies he commanded, while provincial armies would be raised in France. And if these forces could be made to combine, and attack the besiegers from without and within, how critical might their position become, divided, as they would be, around the capital, and distant from the frontier, perhaps in the depths of winter! In that case, it was not impossible that the siege would be raised, perhaps after a great defeat, and that the Germans would be compelled to retire; and the retreat might become one of extraordinary loss and disaster.

To make, therefore, Paris as strong as possible, although defended passively at first; to allow the besiegers to invest it without molestation for some time, inasmuch as this was unhappily necessary; to consider the capital the main pivot and cardinal point of the national war; and to combine operations by means of which an army, to be formed under his own auspices, was to fall on the Germans, while an army outside was to cooperate in the attack—such were the leading features of Trochu's project; and though, as we have said, it invites criticism, and it did not lead to the deliverance of France, it was nearer success than may perhaps be imagined. The Governor of Paris addressed himself energetically and steadily to carrying it out; and during the first few weeks after the investment, his whole care was directed to the increasing and strengthening of the defences, and the fashioning into military shape the enormous levies which had been collected. Heavy guns were turned out in quantities, and mounted upon the forts and ramparts; new works were constructed to add their fire to that of the original fortifications; redoubts were thrown up at several points, and armed with batteries of a formidable kind; the southern forts especially were protected; and at Avron and Villejuif, on the eastern and south-eastern fronts of the city, the investing circle began to be threatened by what, technically, are called counter-approaches, bristling with large and destructive artillery. The result was that although the armed masses within Paris were almost quiescent, and the besiegers were only slightly molested by an occasional and distant cannonade, their lines were gradually removed and forced back, and the obstacles to continuing the siege became more and more evident. At the same time, the organization of the masses inside the city went on regularly, and before long a real army of 150,000 men, supplied with artillery, officers and a staff, and in a fair state of military power, was formed out of the chaotic multitude crowded together when the siege had commenced—an achievement marvellous under the circumstances. Meanwhile, having escaped in a balloon, M. Gambetta had devoted the singular powers of his enthusiastic and passionate nature to raising and equipping provincial armies; and, aided by the patriotism of France, his success had been, on the whole, surprising. Old soldiers were recalled to the standard, recruits joined the ranks in hundreds of thousands, and immense efforts were made to procure field guns and small arms in sufficient quantities. In a few weeks four armies seemed to start, as it were, from the earth, in France—those of the North, the East, the West, and the Loire—all intended either to resist the farther advance of the German foe, or to co-operate in the relief of the capital. The first three armies were, as yet, in a very bad and ill-disciplined state; but the fourth army—that of the Loire—composed largely of veteran troops, and numbering nearly 100,000 men, with from 300 to 350 guns, was by no means to be despised by an enemy.

While France had thus been collecting her strength for a great effort of national resistance, the Germans on their side had not been idle. Though disappointed, as days rolled on, that Paris still held resolutely out, and though conscious that its defences were assuming a very formidable shape, they seem not yet to have supposed that a long siege was already certain. Nevertheless, they proceeded to clear their communications with the frontier, and to collect supplies from all parts of the country within tolerably easy reach of Paris; and for this purpose the sieges of some of the north-eastern fortresses of France were begun, and flying columns were despatched as far as Dreux, Chartres, Beauvais, and Orleans, to sweep the adjoining districts of their crops and cattle. These raiders, however, although they formed a kind of observing force for the investing lines, were not properly a covering army strong enough to defeat a real effort made in strength to relieve the capital; they were little more than petty detachments; and there can be no doubt that the German leaders were not yet sufficiently aware of the power of France to renew the contest. They seem, indeed, to have specially under-rated the real force of the Army of the Loire, which was now collected just north of Orleans, and had between it and the capital only a Bavarian corps about 25,000 strong; the reason being that in the first week of October a part of this army had been defeated easily, and had shown remarkable want of discipline. Yet even at this period—that is about six weeks after the beginning of the siege—the situation of the Germans in France, in consequence of her great exertions, was one of increasing difficulties. Nearly the whole forces of the invaders were spread around the capital and Metz,—that is, were detained by two vast entrenched camps, and were liable to attack from within, and that in the depths of an enemy's country; and while an army far from contemptible was being slowly created in Paris, immense levies were gathering in the provinces, and were being trained into regular armies in a condition of more or less efficiency. The German chiefs, however, elated by success, disregarded all these menacing preparations, and even now reckoned that a few days would see them victorious inside Paris, and would bring the war to a triumphant close. So confident, indeed, were they that no attack from any quarter was probable, that, instead of sending for reinforcements to strengthen the army around Paris, they had detached, after the fall of Strasburg, a force which might have been so employed, to reduce the fortresses of Alsace, and to Dijon, Besançon, and Lyons.

Such were the positions of the belligerents in the last days of the month of October. The fall of Metz increased immensely the power and advantages of the Germans, and threw a weight into the scale against France which ultimately it became impossible to counterbalance. It was not only that 200,000 invaders were now let loose to overrun the country and to strengthen the investment of Paris, nor yet that the whole army of the Rhine, with the garrison of a first-rate fortress—170,000 men, four marshals of France, and 6,000 officers—were swept off into captivity in Germany; the surrender of Metz, it is now well known, prevented operations which, at this juncture, were being planned for the relief of Paris, and which, but for that circumstance, would probably have been successful. As we have seen, the Germans had allowed the Army of the Loire to collect near Orleans, with only a small Bavarian corps interposed between it and the French capital; and they still so utterly despised this army that, although after Metz had capitulated, their leaders had ordered one corps of those around the fortress to advance to Paris, the bulk of the troops of Prince Frederic Charles were separated into two great masses, one directed against the North of France, and the other towards Troyes, Nevers, and Bourges,—that is, against the centre of the country, and not immediately on the Loire and Orleans. These dispositions, which showed plainly that the real strength of the Army of the Loire was inadequately understood in the invaders' camp, permitted the commander of that body—a veteran named D'Aurelles de Paladines, who had done much to improve its discipline—to attempt a design he had been meditating, and even to strike a blow at his enemy which possibly might have had extraordinary results. D'Aurelles, aware that the only obstacle to his reaching the lines around Paris was one corps of 25,000 men, resolved to attack and overwhelm that detachment; and there can be little doubt that, in the event of success, he contemplated a march on the besieged city, even though he must have known that Prince Frederic Charles had been set free, and was moving from Lorraine. The plan of D'Aurelles was well designed, though not executed with equal ability. On the 7th of November he crossed the Loire below Orleans with the mass of his army, a single column having crossed higher up, his intention being to surround and destroy the few divisions which stood in his path, and then to advance, if fortune favoured. Von der Tann, the commander of the Bavarians, either unaware of his enemy's strength, or confident in the prestige of success, moved boldly to attack the main French column; but, finding himself opposed by irresistible forces, he fell back rapidly and with great skill on the main roads from Orleans to Paris. Although this retreat was very well executed, and, indeed, was in part effected at night, Von der Tann suffered a good deal in a series of sharp and repeated engagements at Marchenoir, Coulmiers, and Baum; and had the French column which had crossed the Loire above Orleans been sufficiently quick, he could hardly have escaped a serious defeat. As it was, when upon the 11th he stood concentrated at Arthenay and Toury, covering the main route to Paris from D'Aurelles, he had certainly lost more than 3,000 men, and what is more important, the ascendancy of success; he had been, in fact, decidedly overmatched; and a French army, 70,000 strong, which could have been increased to 90,000, stood in his front, eager for battle and revenge.

It is not impossible that at this moment D'Aurelles could have forced his way to Paris had he known how to seize his opportunity. Considerable alarm prevailed at Versailles: it had become evident that a powerful force was only five or six marches from the lines, with nothing between but one reduced corps; there really was no covering army to repel a bold attempt at relief, and it was expected that the army of the Loire would advance obliquely by Chartres and Dreux, and attack the Germans to the west of the city. Such an attack, which would, of course, be combined with an attack from the armed masses within, would be too formidable to be resisted, for it would place the Germans between two fires, spread as they were on an immense circumference; and accordingly the remarkable man who directed the operations of the invaders made preparations to raise the siege, and to incur the consequent moral loss, in case the columns of D'Aurelles' army should be descried on their way from the south. As, however, the French general might pause, a corps of about 20,000 men was sent off to the aid of Von der Tann under the command of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg; one-half of this corps, however, being ordered to diverge towards Dreux to observe the French Army of the West, supposed to be moving from that quarter. Thus, even as late as the 13th of November, not more than about 30,000 Germans were interposed between D'Aurelles and Paris; and it is difficult to suppose, had he moved on the 11th, that he would not have broken down with ease the only barrier in his way, and not improbably have defeated Von der Tann and the Grand Duke in detail. The French commander, however, hesitated; he had not destroyed Von der Tann; he was evidently not thoroughly confident in himself; and, at this crisis of the affairs of France, he drew back instead of advancing, and finally retired to a camp at Orleans which he had marked out for ulterior operations, his success being thus rendered wholly fruitless. This was a calamitous mistake for the French; yet we can account for it without charging D'Aurelles with entire incapacity. Knowing that Von der Tann was still in his front, he calculated with justice that the Bavarians would be able to obstruct his progress until reinforcements should come up; and the news, which in all probability reached him, that the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg was being detached, caused him perhaps to overrate the Grand Duke's strength, and to halt until he should ascertain it. In addition, and what was, we believe, decisive, D'Aurelles knew that Prince Frederic Charles was moving from Metz towards the south; and though the Prince was still really distant, the French general not unreasonably feared undertaking a march on Paris, which might expose the Army of the Loire to be ultimately assailed in flank and rear. This consideration, though not well-founded, was exactly such as would influence a commander not of the first class, and thus a favourable opportunity was missed, of which the consequences might have been immense.

These operations, when attentively reviewed, show at once what a terrible disaster to the French cause was the capitulation of Metz, at the time when it actually took place. Had the fortress held out till the 9th of November, Prince Frederic Charles must have remained around it; his movement against the centre of France would not have been even commenced; and, in that event, there would have been no force which could have even threatened the Army of the Loire in the rear, had it advanced on Paris. If so, the obstacle which probably prevented D'Aurelles from pushing forward after the actions of the 9th and 10th could have had no existence even in his fancy, and, consequently, it is difficult to believe that D'Aurelles would not have marched, at once, and succeeded in raising the siege of Paris. As it was, he had, we believe, the means of attaining this result, had he been endowed with qualities of the highest order; but, giving him credit for the talents he possesses, had he known that the Prince was at Metz, he would almost certainly have pressed forward. And had the siege of Paris been raised, as was not altogether uncontemplated by Von Moltke, if ever the Army of the Loire came up, the effect in France would have been prodigious; and though we differ from those who insist that it would have led to a great German disaster, we think that it would have prevented a renewal of the investment of Paris. The question, therefore, presents itself—Did Bazaine hold out to the last, and is he responsible for the surrender of Metz at the moment when it occurred? On this subject, as may be supposed, there is a great deal of conflicting evidence, but some conclusions seem tolerably certain. We do not think it possible to deny that Metz really yielded to famine; the army was in a deplorable state, horseflesh had long been the only animal food, the bread rations had been greatly reduced, and fever and typhus had made portentous ravages among the troops, and even the population. But, on the other hand, there is some proof that, at the beginning of the investment, provisions had not been carefully preserved, and that the generals and other officers thought a great deal too much of their own comforts, and did not attend to the wants of the army; and therefore, although we think that Bazaine was incapable of anything like treason, and really made a stout resistance, it is possible that a more self-denying and foresighted commander might have slightly protracted the defence. The luxury and pride of the imperial régime, it is to be feared, infected the head-quarters and staff during the siege of Metz; and it may—though we speak with diffidence—have been the result that the fortress fell exactly at the least fortunate moment, so far as regards the interests of France.

The apparition of the Army of the Loire beyond Orleans, and its unexpected strength, caused a complete change in the plans of the Germans. It had become evident that a powerful force was in the field for the relief of Paris, and no one knew better than the great commander who guided the movements of the invaders, how necessary it was to interpose an effectual barrier against this foe if the siege of the city was to continue. Paris, too, was showing no signs of submission; the winter was coming on apace; and the position of the besiegers might become critical if they were detained around the capital for months, at an immense distance from their base on the frontier, and liable to attacks from without and within. The battles of the 9th and 10th, in a word, had awakened the able German chiefs to the possible dangers of their situation, and with characteristic energy and consummate prudence they applied themselves to avert or remove them. The corps intended to march northward were kept back and brought nearer to Paris, and the army commanded by Prince Frederic Charles was diverted from the centre and east, and ordered to move as quickly as possible to the Lower Loire and the neighbourhood of Orleans, with the view of checking D'Aurelles' force, and attacking it, should it attempt to advance. At the same time, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg was kept in communication with Von der Tann along the roads leading from Orleans to Paris, while some of his divisions were turned towards the Sarthe to face the French Army of the West; these arrangements, however, being only temporary until the arrival of Prince Frederic Charles should add largely to the strength of the Germans. In this way a whole series of covering armies were in a short time thrown in an extensive circle around the investing lines, so as to baffle and repel the French; and these would soon become formidable, though, as yet, they were not in sufficient force to render an attempt to relieve Paris beyond the reach of a daring commander. Meanwhile the French had done much on their side, though it cannot be said that their efforts were equally important or as well conducted. D'Aurelles retired to his camp near Orleans, entrenching himself with great care, and meditating ulterior movements, and in a few days he made his entrenchments exceedingly difficult to turn or attack, though their proximity to the Loire, just behind, made them dangerous as a defensive position. At this point, which he had made his base, he awaited his reinforcements for some days, apparently thinking that the addition of these would more than counter-balance Prince Frederic Charles, now hastening forward to arrest his progress—a conclusion utterly false, in our judgment. These reinforcements, however, it must be said, were, in mere numbers, exceedingly great, and at the close of November D'Aurelles' army had more than doubled its nominal strength, being now upwards of 200,000 men, with from 400 to 500 guns; but the organization of these new divisions was, for the most part, imperfect and crude; the recruits were partly young raw lads; the staff and other arrangements were bad; and not only was the second portion of the Army of the Loire inferior to the first, but it did not throw into the scale of France a force even nearly as great as that which, under Prince Frederic Charles, was now reaching the theatre of war.

Such, at the close of November, was the situation of the belligerent armies. By this time Trochu had completed his arrangements for carrying out his plan; had made Paris prodigiously strong; had greatly weakened the besiegers' lines; had organized two armies inside the city; and he now prepared for a gigantic sortie, while D'Aurelles should co-operate from without. That general seems to have been in communication with Trochu by means of balloons and pigeons; and, for the second time, he began operations which had for their object the relief of Paris. His army was very well placed in comparison with that of the Germans, for it was concentrated on a much narrower front, from Chateaudun to Montargis, its centre holding the camp at Orleans, and its wings occupying the main roads to Paris; whereas Prince Frederic Charles was only just in line at Pithiviers and Nemours. Von der Tann, at Toury, was extremely weak, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, thrown westward, was hardly united to his Bavarian colleague. There was thus an interval in the German line immediately in front of the French centre, which offered a favourable mark for attack; and had D'Aurelles been a great general, we think he would have advanced on that point, and very probably have been successful, especially if it is borne in mind that he had a great superiority in numbers—200,000 to about 100,000. But D'Aurelles again displayed timidity, indecision, and want of true insight. He commenced his march on the 28th of November, and attacked one corps of Prince Frederic Charles, stationed near the village of Beaune la Rolande, and though the engagement was indecisive, he made no effort with the rest of his army, and fell back on his camp at Orleans, having thus struck at his enemy's line, not where it was weak, but where it was strong, having delivered his stroke with a small part of his forces, and having only made the Germans aware of his position and movements. Prince Frederic Charles, who now commanded the whole German army to the south of Paris, made immediate preparations for a counter-blow which should overwhelm his timid antagonist. He perceived that Von der Tann and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg were perilously divided, and he gave orders for a general concentration of the whole forces of these commanders, while he advanced his own to co-operate with them. These movements went on during two days, the German columns drawing together within easy reach of the French general, who, however, lingered irresolutely in his camp, unwilling or unable to attack. On the 1st of December Prince Frederic Charles moved against his foe, with his divisions in hand; and as the French were now disseminated, in comparison with the German front, it is not improbable that, at the decisive points, they scarcely had a numerical superiority. The result was, of course, thenceforward certain. D'Aurelles' centre was pierced through and through; his wings were separated and thrown off in broken and widely-divided parts; the camp at Orleans, too near the Loire, proved a disadvantage rather than otherwise; the Army of the Loire was utterly defeated with a loss of nearly 15,000 men, and the attempt to march to the relief of Paris ended in complete and ruinous disaster.

In these engagements we see the difference between vigorous and bad generalship. It is not pretended that the army of the Loire was as well organized as that of the Germans; but numerically it was nearly twice as strong; and had it been commanded by an able chief it might not improbably have been led to victory. But in selecting his point of attack, in advancing with a fragment of his forces, in retreating when it was not necessary, and above all, in allowing his enemy to unite, literally without being molested, D'Aurelles showed want of capacity to command; whereas Prince Frederic Charles gave convincing proof of vigour and skill in these operations. That able commander was seriously alarmed when, on the 28th, he ascertained the strength and positions of the French, and perceived the space in the long line between Von der Tann and the Grand Duke; and had he been in D'Aurelles' place, Europe might have seen the Army of the Loire advancing between the German wings, and forcing its way in triumph to Paris. When, however, the Prince became aware of the real nature of the situation, he displayed talent of a very high order; and the celerity with which he collected his army and bore down on his vacillating foe was quite worthy of the first Napoleon. Meanwhile, a grand but unsuccessful effort had been making by the armies in Paris to break through or turn the lines of the Germans. On the 29th of November two large masses of troops, commanded by Generals Vinoy and Ducrot, covered by a terrible cannonade from the southern and south-eastern forts, attempted to carry the positions of Choisy le Roi and Chevilly, on the road to Orleans, and to storm Ormesson beyond the Marne, these operations being evidently intended to be in concert with those of D'Aurelles' army. On account of the rise in the waters of the Marne, the attack of Ducrot was not pressed that day; but on the 30th it was renewed with imposing forces, and four villages beyond the Marne were seized and occupied by the French, their numbers carrying everything before them. The German lines were now nearly reached, and had the attack been repeated next day, it is not impossible that it might have succeeded, for it is now known that 100,000 men could have been opposed to about 30,000. But Trochu paused at this crisis, resolved not to attempt to do more unless the Army of the Loire was at hand; and, as this force still made no sign, he allowed Ducrot to remain inactive during the 1st and part of the 2nd of December. Meanwhile the Germans had been combining their troops for a decisive effort, and on the morning of the 2nd they assailed their enemy in the positions he had won. Two of the villages were retaken; but, as the assailants advanced further, they were smitten by such a fire from the forts, the guns of which had been unexpectedly strengthened, that they were swept away and destroyed by thousands. The French pushed forward victoriously again. On the night of the 2nd they were once more in overwhelming strength near the investing line; and it may be doubted whether a bold effort would not have forced it at this juncture. But Trochu would not pursue his advantage, and as the army of the Loire did not appear, he soon withdrew Ducrot's army from before the Marne in the wood of Vincennes.

Persons not versed in military science will at once conclude from this brief narrative that Trochu was an incompetent chief. They will say that he ought to have cut his way out at all hazards without a second thought, and that he missed a fine opportunity during any of the first three days of December. They will point also to the means he possessed for concentrating on interior lines, and pouring an overwhelming mass of men on certain selected points; and they will insist that nothing but skill was wanting to France on this occasion. We do not wholly condemn the assertions; but considerations of the gravest kind must be borne in mind on the other side. It is a maxim of the art of war that an invested fortress must be relieved by the efforts of an army without combined with those of the garrison within; for, in the first place, it is extremely difficult for the garrison unaided to break through the entrenchments formed by the besiegers; and, in the second, if the garrison breaks through, it is liable to destruction unless it is received into the arms, as it were, of a friendly force. The case of a great city like Paris is no exception to this principle, or at least only in a slight degree; for it would have been an arduous task for Ducrot to have stormed the German lines in any event; and, if he had, what was he to have done with from 80,000 to 100,000 men, when he had got out in the open country, with scanty supplies, and without a base? There were special reasons also why, in this instance, Trochu should wait for the Army of the Loire, for if it arrived, the Army of Paris would be enabled to make its way out without running any serious risk; and, in that case, combined with the relieving force, it might expect to do the Germans immense injury, as they drew off from the investing circle. In acting, therefore, as he did, Trochu was not the temporizing fool he has been called by certain detractors; and it must be added that he adhered strictly to the recognised rules of military science. Nevertheless, had he been a chief of genius, we think he would have taken the bolder course, and have endeavoured, on the 1st and 2nd of December, to have broken through the German entrenchments. For, in the first place, he could not reckon, with anything even approaching certainty, that the Army of the Loire could reach Paris; and, that being so, he should perhaps have relied upon himself and his army alone. And, in the second place, it so happened that if his army could once sever the lines, it would not be exposed to a want of supplies, even if no assistance came from outside, for had he seized the great German depôts a few miles off on the Strasburg Railway, it would have found everything which it could have needed. Admitting, therefore, all that can be said, Trochu perhaps showed himself too wedded to mere rules and general notions in not having made a great effort with Ducrot at this critical moment; and had he struck with his whole force, that effort might have been successful.

The failure of Ducrot's great sortie, and the defeats of the Army of the Loire near Orleans, were cruel and lasting disasters to France. In another part of the theatre of operations, the balance of fortune hung more evenly, though the ultimate issue was not very different. The discomfited forces of D'Aurelles, as we have seen, were broken into three parts, the centre and wings divided from each other; and even after the battles of the first days of December, the centre and right, driven across the Loire, retreated hastily to Bourges and Nevers, while the left remained on the north bank of the river, clinging to Marchenoir and the adjoining country. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and Von der Tann, with about 35,000 or 40,000 men, were detached to destroy this isolated wing, while Prince Frederic Charles pursued the main body, and a series of operations ensued which throw a ray of lustre on the French arms. The commander of the broken French left was a general who, though before unknown, has since given proof of no common talents, and in fact seems to us to be entitled to no mean rank among able captains. Chanzy, in a series of obstinate encounters, confronted and baffled his victorious foes with a force hardly superior in numbers; and after disputing the difficult country between Beaugency and Vendôme, effected at last his retreat to Le Mans, where he joined the friendly Army of the West, and succeeded in obtaining large reinforcements. This retreat was executed with great skill, and was made exactly on the right points; and that Chanzy was able to gain his goal in the face of the Grand Duke and of Von der Tann, and subsequently of a corps of Prince Frederic Charles, moved up from the Loire to overpower him, does honour to his ability and judgment. A lull now took place in the operations along the zone of country to the south of Paris; but from the North an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the beleaguered capital was made. For some weeks the French Army of the North had been in a state of comparative order, and though it had been defeated in November, it had been entrusted to an experienced commander, who had done much to improve its discipline. In the third week of December, General Faidherbe advanced to attack at Pont Noyelles a part of the German Army of the North, his object being, should he win the battle, to press forward and march to Paris. This engagement, however, proved indecisive, and Faidherbe in a few days retired into the chain of fortresses on the Belgian frontier, his antagonist, Von Goeben, holding him in check along the line of the Somme and its affluents. Meanwhile Trochu, doubtless informed from without of the intentions of Faidherbe, had made another effort on the 21st to attack the German lines to the north; but though he achieved a certain amount of success, he again declined to strike more decisively, when it had become apparent that he was not to expect the assistance of a relieving army. The French captured several outlying positions on the great northern and eastern roads, and held them for two or three days; but there being no sign of Faidherbe's approach, they once more retired, having effected nothing.

While these combats had been taking place, the belligerents had been making great exertions to increase their forces and renew the war. The German commanders had discovered that France had developed resources of which they had no previous conception, and that Paris was stronger and better provisioned than they could possibly have imagined; and though as yet they had been victorious, they felt their position to be insecure, bound as they were to the besieged capital, and, in the depth of a severe winter, exposed to the attacks of all the French armies converging on them from every side. In fact, in a strategic point of view their situation was extremely critical; for if a single one of the covering armies were broken through by a relieving force, which thus could reach the line of investment, they might have been compelled to raise the siege, and might, perhaps, suffer a series of disasters. This danger was, therefore, to be averted; and as the covering armies had lost enormously from cold, hardship, and field-service, and the besiegers' ranks had also been thinned, it was necessary to make very large additions to the strength of the invading forces. Vast reinforcements were accordingly despatched across the Rhine to all points of the war; Prince Frederic Charles, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, and Von der Tann received thousands of recruits; the armies of Von Goeben and Werder were replenished to a considerable extent, and the corps selected to protect the different lines of the communications were increased by important reserves. In this way about 200,000 men were joined to the armies already in France; and at the same time no pains were spared to accelerate the arrival of siege trains before Paris, in order to open fire on the defences. This task, however, was extremely difficult, on account of the distance from the frontier, and the state of the roads; and though, during more than two months, heavy guns had been gradually sent up, it was not until near the end of December that batteries, more nearly adequate to the purpose, had been constructed and armed. Meantime, the French had been equally energetic, but the results obtained had been very inferior. Recruits, indeed, had been despatched in masses to increase the bulk of the provincial armies; munitions of war were obtained in quantities, and nothing, it must be said, was left undone which patriotism and devotion could accomplish. But though the divided parts of the Army of the Loire, and though the Armies of the North and the East became very formidable in mere numbers, the accession of raw and unformed levies, without proper military organization, did not much augment their real power; and as many of the best soldiers in the force commanded by D'Aurelles had perished in the recent engagements, it is not improbable that the strength of France was hardly greater towards the end of December than it had been three weeks previously, whereas that of Germany had increased to a degree that made the German generals masters of the situation in all its aspects.

Such, about Christmas, was the relative strength and condition of the belligerent armies. At this moment, Prince Frederic Charles, Von der Tann, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, held a central position between Orleans and Chartres, having Chanzy in advance of Le Mans, and the remainder of the Army of the Loire rallied by Bourbaki at Bourges and Nevers; Faidherbe was held in check by Von Goeben; to the east Werder, who had been told off after the fall of Strasburg to overrun the south, was confronted by the French Army of the East, with an irregular force under Garibaldi; and, as we have seen, the vast circle of the covering armies was more formidable than it had been at any preceding time. In this state of things an extraordinary scheme was formed for the French provincial armies, and ultimately for the relief of Paris, which we can only describe as the extreme of rashness. Werder had for some time invested Belfort, while part of his forces lay in Franche Comté; and as he had not more than 50,000 men, and Bourbaki was at no great distance with perhaps not less than 120,000, an opportunity seemed given to strike a blow, which it was hoped might crush this foe, and even change the aspect of the contest. If Bourbaki were to assail Werder from Bourges and Nevers, he would probably destroy him; and if so, he could relieve Belfort, and furthermore, by a bold advance on Nancy and Luneville, fall upon the great line of German communications from Strasburg to Paris along the main railway. But a stroke of this kind would in all probability compel the siege of Paris to be raised, for the Germans could not so easily subsist if their supplies were cut off or even interrupted; and if they were obliged to retire, the paramount object of French strategy would be attained by this single operation. The movement of Bourbaki, too, was not only promising in itself, for it was difficult to imagine that he would not crush Werder, which, being done, all the rest would follow; but, properly conceived, it need not endanger the French armies in other parts of the theatre. Let it be granted that the withdrawal of Bourbaki would relieve Prince Frederic Charles of an enemy, would the Prince, Von der Tann, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg turn round and fall in full force on Chanzy? And, even if they did, would not Chanzy, with his large army in position at Le Mans, be strong enough to baffle their efforts? And even supposing Chanzy defeated, how little was to be thought of a defeat provided Bourbaki relieved Paris by seizing and cutting the German communications? Besides, was it not very conceivable that Prince Frederic Charles would pursue Bourbaki, in which case that commander would escape him, and that he would not think of attacking Chanzy?

Such was their plan, and, we repeat, it was, under the circumstances, simply insensate. No one will deny that to overwhelm Werder, to effect the raising of the siege of Belfort, and to sever the communications of the Germans, were desirable objects for the French; and had Bourbaki reached in force the main railway from Strasburg to Paris, this might have caused the relief of the capital. But, in the actual state of the French armies—raw, ill-provided, and ill-disciplined—a movement like this was extremely difficult, and far from likely to be at all successful, even as regards the mere reaching Belfort; and it was open to the decisive objection that it enabled Prince Frederic Charles to oppose all his forces to Chanzy and overwhelm him, in conjunction with his German colleagues. The scheme, therefore, exposed the French on one side to certain disaster, and, on the other, was really far from hopeful; and it not only made it almost impossible to expect the relief of Paris, but it might lead to terrible results should Bourbaki fail or prove a bad General, In an unfortunate hour for France, however, this reckless project was adopted; and in the first days of January, Bourbaki broke up from Bourges and Nevers to reach Franche Comté, and made his way to his first point, Belfort. The operations that ensued were just such as might have been foreseen. The instant that Prince Frederic Charles had ascertained that Bourbaki's army was on its way to the distant east, he turned rapidly upon Chanzy, and directed his own reinforced corps, with those of Von der Tann and the Grand Duke, to converge without delay on Le Mans and overwhelm his French antagonist. The movement began in the first days of January; and as the united German armies were probably 140,000 strong, whereas Chanzy was hardly superior in mere numbers, and had little but undisciplined levies in his ranks, the issue was not for a moment doubtful. Chanzy, who had made a feint forward, and had threatened the Prince before Vendôme, found himself pressed by an irresistible enemy, and fell back at once on Le Mans, not having been, we believe, informed of the project which had detached Bourbaki. His retreat was conducted with marked ability, his German foes closing in on all sides, and endeavouring to cut him off from his point; and nothing save his judicious foresight enabled him to save even a part of his army. Chanzy had fortified a strong position before Le Mans, on the river Huisne—so strong that it has been compared to Torres Vedras by an eye-witness—and he succeeded in making a stand on this, and even baffling his enemy for a time. The contest, however, was too unequal; his lines were turned on the night of the 11th; Le Mans was captured the next day; and Chanzy's army, beaten and demoralized, lost, it is said, 20,000 prisoners.

While these events had been in progress, Bourbaki had been making his way across the rugged and hilly country which divides Burgundy from Franche Comté. The cold of the winter was intense; and his divisions, composed of young recruits, ill-clothed, ill-fed, and ill-disciplined, suffered cruelly, and were half demoralized before they saw even the face of an enemy. At Dijon he obtained reinforcements drawn from the French Army of the East, and with a force, nominally 140,000 strong, with from 300 to 400 guns, he proceeded through the intricate defiles, between the rivers Ognon and Doubs, which lead to the hills around Belfort. The march of his weak and untrained columns, confined to a single narrow route, was necessarily extremely slow; and it is decisive against Bourbaki's generalship that, at a time when speed was of the greatest importance, he did not advance by four or five roads, and thus make expedition possible. The French army, worn out and harassed, and especially wanting in staff officers, moved at the rate of four or five miles a day only, and the result was that it completely failed to cut off Werder, as had been expected, and that that general was enabled to retreat leisurely and cover Belfort. A rear-guard engagement took place at Villersexel, on the 6th of January, and it was not until the 14th that Bourbaki reached the Lisaine—a tributary of the Doubs in front of the fortress—where he found Werder's army drawn up in entrenched positions, and awaiting its foe. A series of combats ensued, in which the raw and bad French troops, although numerically three to one, were unable to gain any success; and, on the 18th, Bourbaki retreated, having lost from 8,000 to 10,000 men, and having met nothing but heavy disaster. His army, baffled and half starving, began to disband and go to pieces; and, as he retreated by the narrow defiles by which he had before advanced, he did not reach Besançon till the 22nd. Meanwhile Von Moltke had been directing a terrible and decisive stroke against him. As soon as the great German commander had become aware of Bourbaki's movements, he massed a force of some 50,000 men between Auxerre and Chatillon-sur-Seine, and launched it across the hills of Burgundy upon the flank and rear of the Frenchman, while Werder, pressing forward from the Lisaine, advanced against him through Franche Comté. By the 24th of January, four German divisions had passed Dijon and reached Dôle on the Doubs, to the south of Besançon, while a large part of Werder's forces were threatening Bourbaki from the north; and thus the unfortunate French army was already almost completely hemmed in by its vigorous and indefatigable pursuers. The disgrace of a second Sedan flashed across the mind of the French commander, and in a paroxysm of despair he shot himself, unable to brave the impending peril. His army, a mere dissolving mass, rolled out helplessly from Besançon, and endeavoured to make its way southward, but finding all the roads occupied, it turned aside and crossed the Swiss frontier. There the starving mob of disbanding fugitives was obliged helplessly to lay down its arms.

Such was the end of the expedition, ill-planned and still worse executed. The detachment of Bourbaki to the east caused the overthrow of Chanzy at Le Mans, by setting Prince Frederic Charles free; and the bad state of Bourbaki's army, and even more, his deplorable conduct, led to the catastrophe we have described. What, indeed, could have been more unwise than to have moved in a single column only, when celerity was the first consideration; and what could have been more shameful than the management of the retreat to Besançon, and the rash act which left an army at that place without a commander? These things are simply without excuse; yet it must be added that the condition of Bourbaki's troops made it very improbable that he could, under any circumstance, have accomplished the task which he undertook, at least that he could ever have reached the great line of the German communications; and accordingly, even when it seemed most promising, the whole enterprise cannot be justified. The result might have been very different if the forces of Bourbaki and Chanzy had been concentrated for a vigorous attack on Prince Frederic Charles and his colleagues on the line between Orleans, Vendome, and Chartres. Had this been done the French would have largely outnumbered their foes, and even had they failed and been defeated, they would have been able to make good their retreat without incurring a terrible disaster. The more we study the operations of the French armies in the month of January, the more we see how ill-devised they were; while, on the other hand, the strategy of the Germans—of Werder, in the stand he made on the Lisaine, and of Von Moltke in surrounding Bourbaki—is deserving of the highest admiration; and, though no one would think of comparing the young French troops with their veteran foes, it is not the less true that the final issue was decided in the main by generalship. Everywhere else in the theatre of war, while these disasters were taking place, the fortunes of France were in calamitous eclipse. The German Army of the North was taking the fortresses on her north-eastern frontier without difficulty by a brief bombardment, the old bastions of Vauban's time being useless against modern heavy guns, and the triple barrier of Louis XIV. was thus broken down from within, and the Northern Departments laid open. Faidherbe had fought two battles in a vain attempt to resist the invaders; but, though he gained some success at Bapaume, over a small part of Von Goeben's army, he had been unable to follow it up, and soon afterwards he was defeated with great and ruinous loss at St. Quentin—an ominous name in French annals. After this disaster the French Army of the North was no longer able to keep the field. Faidherbe took refuge in Lille and Cambrai, and the tide of German invasion flowed irresistibly to the borders of Artois and Hainault.

Meanwhile the progress of the great siege had been tending to its inevitable conclusion. On the 27th of December, the German batteries commenced the reduction of the outwork constructed by Trochu on Mont Avron, and in two days it was silenced and destroyed, the defences being feeble and incomplete. This roused the spirits of the besiegers; and as, by this time, their siege trains had come up in considerable numbers, fire was opened on the southern and eastern forts, and for some weeks was kept up with vigour. The distance, however, of the attacking batteries from the defences of Paris was very great, nor was their artillery powerful; and it cannot be said that they succeeded in making a serious or lasting impression. In fact, the forts, and even the ramparts, were armed with rather stronger ordnance, and they maintained a combat at least equal to that of the heavy guns that were directed against them. The bombardment of the city was next attempted, and shells were poured into its streets and squares; but as the extreme range of the German guns extended only to one bank of the Seine, no great damage, fortunately, was done, and, as often has happened in other cases, the effect on the spirits of the population was rather to stimulate than to alarm. 'You might as well have pelted Paris with bottles,' was the remark of an intelligent eye-witness, and there can be no doubt that the active siege of the capital was a complete failure. Meantime, however, famine was doing the work which fire and sword could not have accomplished. The city had been amply provisioned, but, at the end of four months and a half, it was reduced to the extreme of misery. For many weeks horseflesh had been the only animal food of the population; the bread doled out in scanty rations was a vile compound of bran and rye; the mortality among the old and young was appalling; the supply of fuel had fallen short, and that in the depths of a fearful winter. On the 19th of January, Trochu made a last effort against the besiegers' lines, but, as might have been anticipated, it failed, his troops having lost all courage and worth. By this time all hope of relief from the provincial armies had been frustrated, and at last, on the 130th day of the siege, the proud capital was subdued by famine. The line of the defences was almost uninjured; and, unquestionably, Paris would have held out for months, nay, perhaps might have proved impregnable, had the citizens possessed the means of subsistence.

The fall of Paris brought to a close the internecine strife between France and Germany. The extraordinary disasters of January, indeed (especially the ruin of Bourbaki's army), had made resistance no longer possible; and, in all probability, had the war gone on, the vanquished country would have been overrun. Those who, like ourselves, were of opinion that the expected surrender of the capital need not necessarily terminate the struggle, could not have anticipated the fatal strategy which annihilated the provincial armies of France in futile movements and desperate efforts. We believe the National Assembly was right in accepting the conditions of the Germans, harsh and relentless as these were; and we applaud the patriotism of M. Thiers in bowing before the doom of fate, and offer him our respect and sympathy. Our space has been already outrun, and we cannot make any general remarks on the mighty conflict which has just closed.

As regards its consequences, we can only hazard two or three anticipations of the future. Those who believed in the moderation and civilization of the gigantic power of which Bismark has been the creator must have been disappointed at the German terms; but as we are not among the credulous, we cannot say that we have been surprised. The annexation, however, of Alsace and Lorraine against the will of two millions of the brave inhabitants of those provinces, the dismemberment of France, and her spoliation, and, above all, the evident understanding between the autocrats of Russia and Germany, are simply the triumphs of brute force—perpetual menaces to the peace of Europe. As regards France, her destiny is uncertain; and it remains to be seen whether, as of old, she will rise superior to misfortune, or whether, like Spain, she will henceforth decline and sink into an inferior power. If, as we think, the first alternative is that which history will yet witness, France certainly will renew the combat, and endeavour to regain from her pitiless foe, not only her strategic position, but the conquered territories. To effect this purpose she will avail herself of any alliances, however abnormal—and for this she is not to be condemned. From this point of view, also, the prospect for England is not reassuring. France, however, if she would renew her strength, must first learn self-government, and to combat anarchy and revolution; and, deeply as we sympathise with her, she would, we believe, achieve more if she were to attain these great ends than if she were to avenge Sedan by a second Jena, and march once more in triumph to Berlin.

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Art. VIII.—Professor Fraser's Edition of Bishop Berkeley's Works.

(1.) The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne. Collected and Edited, with Prefaces and Annotations, by Alexander Campbell Fraser, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.

(2.) Life and Letters of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne, and an Account of his Philosophy; with many writings of Bishop Berkeley hitherto unpublished. By Alexander Campbell Fraser, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.

The English people have not treated their great philosophers well. They have profited by them, made use of their results, and embodied in political, social, and religious life the principles which men like Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have laboriously thought out and sent forth to enrich the common stock of human knowledge; but they have not sufficiently honoured their intellectual guides. They have not striven to obtain a clear and consistent conception of the whole of each great man's life, nor have they cared to estimate the full sweep of his influence upon the thought of his fellows. They have been content to sum up the result of life labours in the meagre formula, Hobbes, who was the father of Locke, who was the father of Berkeley, who was the father of Hume. They have measured the ingathering influence of the lake by the amount of water carried into it by the stream coming from the lake above, its outgoing action by the amount of water which the river bears away to the lake beneath. The thousand rills which trickle down from the hills and neighbouring highlands are forgotten, the constant unseen action of air and heat and light bearing away the myriad waterdrops to store them in the clouds of the firmament, ready to hear when the corn and the vine call to the earth, and the earth calleth to the heavens, and to answer in life-bringing showers, is left unremembered. Until Cambridge gave us Bacon's Works, edited by Messrs. Ellis and Spedding, England had not one good annotated edition of her great philosophers. Oxford has now given us Berkeley. We have only hope to trust to for Locke and Hume, the greatest and most powerful of all. And English philosophy pays the penalty of the neglect in the one-sidedness, superficiality, and inadequateness which have to some extent characterized it. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we welcome this beautiful, complete, and carefully-edited edition of the works of Bishop Berkeley, and thank the authorities of the Clarendon Press for what we hope is only the first fruits of a series of our great philosophers.

There is wisdom in the selection. Bishop Berkeley, of all English thinkers, is most easily misunderstood when detached portions of his writings are studied by themselves apart from their relation to the whole, and when his philosophy is criticised by those who have no knowledge of his life. How many of those who know and have discussed Berkeley's theory of vision, his nominalism, and his sensationalism, are aware that the theory of vision was only the first step in the exposition of a comprehensive theory of causality,—that his nominalism was only the denial of the conceptualist doctrine of universals, was suppressed in his latest writings, as if he had felt it to have been too sweeping, and was supplanted by a doctrine of realism almost akin to Plato's,—and that his sensationalism, inherited from Locke and bequeathed to Hume, was only one moment in a Platonic idealism, which he had learnt in his youth from More and Norris, in his old age from Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, and which he left to be developed by Kant. The truth is, that in Berkeley we have the meeting-place of two distinct streams of thought, both of which had already received distinct but inadequate expression in England. He inherits the intellectual wealth of the Cambridge Platonists, as well as the clearer, though less profound results of Hobbes and Locke. He has been misunderstood and misrepresented because his double position, inadequately expressed, and not uniformly maintained, has been unknown to so many of his readers, Berkeley, the disciple of Locke, the Nominalist, the amiable, unconscious sceptic, is familiar to most students of philosophy. Berkeley, the Platonist, the Realist, the idealist combatant of scepticism, who found in Miss Forster the mystic and the disciple of Fénélon and Madame Guyon the lady 'whose humour and turn of mind pleased him beyond anything that he knew in her whole sex,' is not so well known.

The great value which this edition of Berkeley's philosophical writings will have is that it presents us with the whole of his philosophy, and by some pregnant annotations enables us to trace the unity of the principle which binds them into a more or less consistent whole. Professor Fraser, in preparing this edition, has kept the following objects chiefly in view:—

These objects have been so well realized that we are enabled for the first time to survey Berkeley's character and opinions as a whole, to see how his life and philosophy act and react on each other, to view his great principles dimly shaping themselves in his earliest speculation recorded in his student common-place book, and to see how his latest and deepest thoughts are but the more adequate expression of his early musings. Professor Fraser's summary of Berkeley's philosophy, given in the fourth volume, will do much to destroy and render impossible the one-sided criticism to which the opinions of the philosopher have been so long subjected. He has shown that Berkeley's philosophy is not the dried-up intellectual cistern of a solitary thinker of the last century—is not a barren 'subjective idealism' which a breath of 'common sense' can 'for ever render impossible,' but is a living fountain from which our greatest modern English thinkers have not disdained to draw; and he might have shown that it is instinct with the germs of those philosophical principles which under the name of the Ideal-Realismus, are leavening modern German thought. We venture to predict that hereafter every historian and critic of philosophy will have to reconsider the commonplace verdict which, first pronounced by Dr. Thomas Reid in this country, by Kant in Germany, and by Cousin in France, has been repeated wearisomely by their successors. At the same time, we would not homologate every statement which Professor Fraser has made about the philosophy of his author. We are inclined to think that he has not sufficiently recognised the historical position of Bishop Berkeley. He has too much regarded him as occupying a unique place in the history of speculation, and neglected some of those facts of English philosophy which serve to explain Berkeley's position and principles. No thinker, and especially no great thinker, can occupy a position historically inexplicable. He is the exponent of the thoughts and feelings of his time, the interpreter of their present meaning, and the unconscious prophet of their future development. And Berkeley was no exception to this rule. It is just because he lived in an age in which two different streams met, and because he alone of the thinkers then living combined them, that he is to be reckoned among the few great English thinkers; and it is because the two tendencies then at work and conflicting with each other contained the undeveloped germs of the living principles now combining that Berkeley's philosophy is not to be thrown aside as a useless relic of the past, but to be studied as the inadequate expression of much that is deepest and truest in the present English and German philosophy.[219] 'England's Antiphon' against the sensational psychology, sceptical metaphysics, and utilitarian ethics, which form the bulk of her contributions to the general stock of philosophy, has usually found expression in her poetry and religion rather than in her philosophy; but there have always been thinkers who have refused to accept the common creed, and to suffer themselves to glide down the stream of popular opinion. Their protest has seldom been loud-voiced. They have generally lived solitary, unheeded lives; but their presence, like a scent unseen, has had its impalpable, invisible influence. English mysticism is a fact, though unrecorded in the pages of the history of her philosophers; and English mysticism was never stronger than in the generation preceding Berkeley. The Cambridge Platonists had but lately passed away. Four or five translations of Jacob Böhmen had showed the popular studies, Norris of Bemerton was so well known that his philosophy could be ridiculed in an elaborate parody, and Tom Brown, 'of facetious memory,' could tickle a not too fastidious public with a caricature of his Platonic love. The influence of Malebranche was felt upon English philosophy. Fénélon and Madame Guyon had their English disciples, and the gross immorality of the times of the earlier Georges had its opposite in the refined mysticism which appears in many of the religious and philosophical writers of the period. By education, training, studies and temperament, Berkeley was fitted to combine this mystical philosophy with the ruder and more practical sensationalism of Locke. He did so; and because he did so, he begins the second period of modern philosophy. However we regard Berkeley—whether as a man, as a Christian philanthropist, or as a metaphysician—we find the same unconscious combination of practical sagacity and of refined enthusiasm, a keen eye for fact, and a deep mind for theory, along with a continual incapacity to combine adequately or express fully, either by action or speech, the double tendency which is the secret of his power. We feel as if Berkeley were always struggling with a great thought which he did not wholly see, and could not adequately express. The young student of Trinity College is labouring to record in his commonplace book a principle which will prove to be the universal solvent, and set right everything that is wrong. The young philosopher has elaborated the principles of human knowledge which are to banish scepticism, re-establish theology, philosophy, and the physical sciences on new and lasting foundations. The missionary has a scheme for transplanting the virtues, arts, and sciences to a new continent, since an extravagant nobility and a reckless and dishonest passion for speculation have impoverished and demoralized the chief countries in Europe. The philanthropic bishop finds that a national bank will redeem his country from all her troubles, and that tar-water is a panacea for every ill the flesh is heir to. Everywhere we find the practical man and the idealist. Everywhere we find the same keen eye for facts not quite comprehensive enough; the same wealth of ideas which, nevertheless, wants the intellectual momentum needed to carry out a great philosophical conception; the same prophetic vision of principles and facts which are afterwards to become plain, accompanied by the inability to clear the way for their present manifestation.

Professor Fraser has given us a beautiful picture of young Berkeley and his surroundings in Trinity College, Dublin. Born at Dysart Castle, in the beautiful valley of the Nore, and educated at the famous Kilkenny School, the Eton of Ireland, Berkeley came up to Trinity College in the spring of 1700, and at once found himself near a whirl of intellectual life, into which he threw himself with ardour. The influence of the discoveries of Newton, Boyle, and Hooke, and the speculations of Descartes, Locke, and Malebranche, was beginning to show itself in the University, and was gradually displacing the old scholasticism; and the bright, clever lad looked with eagerness towards all the new lights which were beginning to shine upon him. An amusing story is told of his fondness for experiment, and his dreamy disregard of consequences. He had gone to see an execution, and returned pensive and melancholy, but strangely inquisitive about the sensations experienced by the unfortunate criminal in the crisis of his fate. He took counsel with an intimate college friend, Conterini, the uncle of Oliver Goldsmith, and

We need not wonder that this incident caused Berkeley to be looked upon as an eccentric by his fellow-students, nor that he had to bear the usual annoyances which befall those who get the name. With all his eccentricity, however, he seems to have been the centre of a company of friends, who thought him a prodigy of learning and amiability; and his college career was very successful.

It is his commonplace book, however, and the other records of his college life, now first published, that show us how the young student employed himself, and what were his favourite studies and opinions. In these early days one sees that he learned mostly by negation. Locke is not right in this particular, Malebranche is wrong in that, More is not to be trusted in a third,—are the most usual entries in the young student's journal. It is curious to look at those imperfect jottings and see as through a window into the eager young soul, sharpening and training itself by living contact with the thoughts of the great thinkers who then ruled the intellectual world, and preparing itself to take rank among them at some future day. Mathematics, metaphysics, optics, physics, and natural theology were all studied. Locke was his great teacher, then Malebranche, then the English Platonists; Barrow, Boyle, Newton, and Molyneux taught him physics and mathematics. He is always independent, perhaps too fond of independence, perhaps scarcely aware that as much is learned from what we find ourselves compelled to deny, as from what we are obliged to affirm. There seems to have been a great deal of intellectual life in the University, when Thomas Prior and Samuel Madden—the two founders of the Royal Irish Society—were fellow-students of Berkeley, when King was translated to the see of Dublin, and Bishop Browne was Provost of Trinity. Berkeley and his young friends formed themselves into a society for the purpose of discussing the problems which life and the new philosophy were presenting to them. We are not told who the members of this society were, but we can guess, from jottings in the commonplace book, that the subjects of discussion were mainly suggested by portions of Locke's essays, and we can fancy the young metaphysicians disputing with great eagerness, ardour, and confusion, all manner of soluble and insoluble questions. It is more than probable that out of the chaos of the thoughts and opinions which must have formed the intellectual outcome of such a society, there gradually arose clearly and more clearly before Berkeley the intellectual insight into the wants and difficulties of modern metaphysics, pure and applied, which at last realized itself in the 'Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,' and in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge.' At all events we know that these two works, on which Berkeley's fame as a metaphysician has rested, were written and published not many years after the date of the founding of the College Society; and that many of the questions discussed are to be found among the list of subjects which Professor Fraser thinks were there debated. Both works everywhere show traces of the reading and thinking which the commonplace book reveals, and the results of the two are the expression of the double tendency to the inductive philosophy and to mysticism, which, we have said, is the distinguishing feature in Berkeley's life and philosophy. 'The Theory of Vision' is Malebranche's seeing all things in God, but on a rational and experimental basis. We see God in all things, and we see all things by means of his continual contrivance. The outcome of the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' is, in the main, the attempt to explain clearly, fully, and in accordance with Baconian principles, the mystical thought of Norris, that God is the immediate author of our sensations, and that we therefore participate in Him when we see, feel, or desire, and the doctrine of providence on which Dr. More delighted to expatiate.

In 1713, we find Berkeley at the court of Queen Anne, in company with Swift. He had come over from Dublin chiefly for the purpose of gaining attention for his metaphysical system. He had endeavoured, while in Dublin, to interest English philosophers in his new principle, but the attempt was not very successful. He now tried by personal intercourse and more popular exposition, in his Essays in the 'Guardian' and in his Dialogues, to gain adherents to those opinions from which he expected so much; and in this he was pretty successful. Swift, writing to Lord Carteret from Dublin some years after, says that 'he (Berkeley) was a Fellow of the University here: and going to England very young about thirteen years ago, he became founder of a sect called the Immaterialists, by the force of a very curious book upon that subject. Dr. Smalridge and many other eminent persons were his proselytes.' We have very pleasant glimpses of the young Irish metaphysician among the wits of Queen Anne's court. Then, as afterwards, his amiability and enthusiasm disarmed enmity and gained friends among all factions. He was intimate with Steele and Addison, as well as the companion of Swift and Pope. Swift procured for him the appointment of secretary to Lord Peterborough, and in that capacity, and afterwards as tutor to Mr. St. George Ashe, he spent some years abroad. On his return,

He was shocked at the tone of social morality and his imaginative enthusiasm perhaps helped to make him fancy the plague more wide-spreading and more incurable than it really was. His thoughts found vent in his 'Essay toward Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain,' and he then probably first began to meditate on the romantic scheme of missionary enterprise which filled so much of his life.

His second stay in London brought him the beginning of many of the friendships which lasted through life. He had met in Italy, Benson, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, and now became intimate with Secker, successively Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Oxford, and Archbishop of Canterbury, Rundle, Bishop of Derry, Clarke, and Butler,—all of whom helped him in his attempt to realise the great plan now beginning to take shape in his mind. He had returned to Ireland as Chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant, and had been nominated, in rapid succession, Divinity Lecturer, Senior Greek Lecturer in Trinity College, then Dean of Dromore, then Hebrew Lecturer and Senior Proctor in Trinity College, then Rector of Ardtrea and Arboe, and lastly Dean of Derry; but no sooner had he fairly obtained the church preferment which his position and talents had merited, than he was eager to resign it—'his heart is ready to break if his deanery be not taken from him.' He wished to resign present preferment and future prospects, and to dedicate his life, means, and energies to instruct the youth of America, as the President of an ideally perfect University in the Isles of Bermuda. The old world had grown very evil, and Berkeley wished to make a new one. He had mysticism enough to imagine a new Atlantis, and the practical turn for experimenting which made him eager to attempt to realize it. His thoughts were not content with the patient waiting of the mystical mediæval piety which inspires the beautiful 'Hora Novissima' of Bernard, they must take shape in action. His enthusiasm rises to poetic height, and finds utterance in a few glowing verses prophetic of the dominion which is to come and increase on the other side of the ocean by the diffusion of education, the sciences, and the preaching of the Word:

After much anxious waiting and painful pleading at court and with Parliament, Berkeley at last obtained a charter for his college, and was promised an endowment of £20,000:—

He sailed from Gravesend with his newly-married wife and a little company of retainers and friends, and arrived in the Narragansett waters, on the western side of Rhode Island, at the beautiful harbour of Newport. Berkeley had meant to call at Rhode Island on his way to the Bermudas to get information, procure anything needful for the fulfilment of his great scheme, purchase land as an investment for his college, and perhaps gain the good-will and interest of friendly New Englanders. He was not destined to get nearer the Bermudas. The visit, which was originally meant to be a short one, lengthened out from month to month, until at last Berkeley began to like the place so well that he confidentially says to Prior in one of his letters:—'The truth is, if the king's bounty were paid in, and the charter could be removed hither, I should like it better than Bermuda.' And Newport would have made a very good centre for his scheme of educational and evangelical operations. It was the capital of the State of Rhode Island, and was a rich centre of foreign and domestic trade. The State had been colonized by Roger Williams in 1636, and had a constitution which asserted the right of religious freedom while that was still unknown in every other State in America. Its society was accordingly very unlike that met with almost anywhere else. Quakers, Moravians, Jews, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Independents, and Baptists of every sect, all lived together, holding their own beliefs, and tolerating those of their neighbours. The town population was chiefly mercantile, while that of the interior of the island, and that along the Narragansett shore, was pastoral. The inhabitants were famed for their hospitality, and the society was intelligent and well-informed. Great care was taken of the education of the children, and the libraries and pictures which still remain testify to the good taste and culture of the gentlemen of the island:—

While in Newport, Berkeley mingled in the society of the town, and frequently preached in the pulpit of Mr. Honeyman, a missionary of the Church of England. He visited the Narragansett country, and is said to have made some distant excursions to see the condition of the native Indian tribes. A few months after his arrival he bought a farm and built a commodious house, which he called Whitehall. The house is still standing, and is known in the neighbourhood as Bishop Berkeley's house. Few situations could be more adapted to the tastes of a student as fond of nature as of books. It was here that 'Alciphron,' the most elaborate, and, in the lifetime of the author, the most popular, of all Berkeley's writings, was written. Tradition points to a natural alcove in the rocks, commanding a view of the beach and the ocean, as the spot where the beautiful dialogues were composed.

While living this retired life at Whitehall and troubled with anxieties at the delays which prevented him from seeing the actual realization of his great scheme, Berkeley found time to mingle in the intellectual society which Newport afforded, and took the lead in forming a philosophical association for the discussion of speculative questions. One of the objects of this association was to collect books, and it originated the Redwood Library, which still exists in Newport, a memento of the short but interesting stay of Bishop Berkeley.

One American friend, however, is more closely related to Berkeley than any other, and must not be passed over without special mention. This was Dr. Samuel Johnson, the Episcopalian minister of Stratford. He had known the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' before Berkeley's arrival in America, and had become a convert to the metaphysical opinions there set forth. He was one of the first to welcome Berkeley when he landed in Rhode Island, and the friendship and correspondence which then began only ceased with the death of the Bishop. His name, too, possesses special interest to all students of Berkeley's philosophy, and he must be held in honour as one of the earliest and one of the greatest metaphysicians which America has produced. Although his works have been forgotten—obscured, perhaps, by the theological and metaphysical fame of his great pupil, Jonathan Edwards—they still deserve attention. We should like to see a new edition of his 'Elementa Philosophica;' and believe that, if re-published and known, it would be a valuable contribution to American philosophy. This work possesses a special interest for the student of Berkeley. It was written by a professed disciple, was the result of the study of Berkeley's writings, of conversations and correspondence with him on the philosophical subjects it discusses. It was dedicated to the Bishop, and may almost be looked upon as a new and more complete edition of the 'Principles of Human Knowledge.' It treats of the pure intellect and its notions, and of the intuitive intellectual light; and so, to some extent, supplies the place of the second part of that work which was never written, and connects the philosophy of Berkeley's earlier days with the Platonic mysticism of his old age. Johnson's 'Elementa Philosophica' can never be separated from Berkeley's 'Principles of Human Knowledge;' and had the two been always studied together, the continual misapprehension of the Bishop's philosophical system, which has characterized most histories of philosophy, could scarcely have arisen. The philosophical letters to Johnson are also full of interest, and show other sides of Berkeley's system than that most prominent in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge;' and Johnson himself seems to have had no small influence in developing what, in some respects, may be called the idealist,[220] and in others the mystical moment in Berkeley's speculation.

While thus employed in philosophical correspondence and composition, and in social and intellectual intercourse with his friends in and near Newport, Berkeley was harassed with doubts and anxieties about the success of his great scheme. He had embarked in the faith that Sir R. Walpole would fulfil his promise, and that the £20,000 endowment which had been voted by Parliament would be soon handed over to him for his college. But the long months spent in waiting lengthened out to years, and the prospect grew duller and duller, until at length even Berkeley began to despair. Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, who had been appointed by the charter the Visitor of the new University, did all he could to forward the scheme; and when he found that the ministerial delays were only meant to cover the non-fulfilment of their bargain, he at last got a conclusive answer from Walpole: 'If you put this question to me as a minister,' said he, 'I must and can assure you that the money shall most undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits with public convenience; but if you ask me, as a friend, whether Dean Berkeley should continue in America expecting the payment of £20,000, I advise him by all means to return home to Europe, and give up his present expectations.'

The ten best years of Berkeley's life were given to this scheme of missionary enterprise, and now it ended in what seemed to be utter failure. We have only to read his enthusiastic letters to his friend Prior to see how hopefully he had looked forward to the future, and to realize how crushing the blow must have been which now fell upon him. He bore himself bravely enough, however, outwardly, and his own account of the miscarriage given in 'Alciphron' does not reveal very much depression:—

But Berkeley felt that his life-work was done. He felt himself to be a broken man, so far as action was concerned. The practical-working experimental side of his nature falls into the shade; and the calm mystical enthusiasm which spends itself in study and in reverie, and can turn from the vexations and disturbances and wrongs of the real world to find repose and quietude in the contemplation of the world of ideal perfection visioned in the dreams of genius, grows stronger and stronger. He returned to England in the end of 1731, and soon found himself among old acquaintances. Church preferment awaited him. He was nominated to the rich deanery of Down, and when the nomination was from accidental circumstances cancelled, was soon afterwards nominated and consecrated Bishop of Cloyne. But he did not mingle much in society, nor take a very active part in the business of life. He more and more preferred to live in quiet seclusion. A wealthier bishopric was within his reach, but he contented himself with Cloyne. The offer of the Primacy of Ireland failed to draw him from his retirement. A growing feebleness, a love for quietness, and increasing and constant ill-health, all show how heavily the great disappointment of his life pressed upon him. He was not fifty when he was made Bishop of Cloyne, but all that he did afterwards bears the stamp of old age.

The American enterprise, however, was not such a failure as it seemed to Berkeley. His one great practical enterprise bears a curious analogy to his philosophical system. His life-work and his life-thought are strangely parallel. In both there is the combination of shrewd, practical judgment, with almost visionary enthusiasm. Both were thought by his contemporaries to be more suitable for a dream-life than for waking reality. Both fail in completeness of development and adequacy of expression; and yet both contain in them germs of life to be long afterwards developed. Berkeley's American scheme did not entirely break down at his return to England. The farm of Whitehall, which he had bought near Newport, he bequeathed to Yale College for the purpose of encouraging Greek and Latin scholarship, and the list of Berkeleian scholars—a list containing more than two hundred names, among them some of the most eminent in America—shows how far the designs of the founder were thus unexpectedly fulfilled:—

Berkeley's gifts to Yale College did not cease with the bequest of his farm. He so interested some of his Bermuda subscribers in the American College that, with their aid, he was able to send over from England a large donation of books to its library. Harvard College, as well as Yale, received gifts of books, and, to the end of his life, Berkeley's constant references in his letters to Johnson, and his continual kindnesses and recommendations of young American students who from time to time came over to England, showed the deep interest which he took in the cause of religion and education in the Western hemisphere.

The Cloyne life was a very retired one, and Berkeley was almost as much, if not more out of the world there than he had been at Newport. His intercourse with old friends was mostly by letter. Secker, the Bishop of Bristol, and Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, are still the most valued correspondents among the friends of his later life. Gibson, Bishop of London, writes in dignified style about public events, and about the analyst controversy. Prior, his old school and college companion, is still his most useful friend, eager and ready as ever to take up and defend any one of his theories or fancies. Dean Gervais writes and receives beautiful letters about Cloyne and foreign politics. These were stirring times abroad. Frederick the Great was in Silesia, and even a student recluse cannot help thinking that 'We live in an age of revolutions so sudden and surprising in all parts of Europe, that I question whether the like has been ever known before.' Protestant clergymen were very much afraid of France governed by old Cardinal Fleury, but the excitement did not last long, and only reawakened when the next post-bag arrived. The letters from Cloyne give us beautiful glimpses into Berkeley's home-life. There are musical parties, and country visits, village charities, and small attempts at the introduction of manufactures, and his student life in his diocese was not entirely that of a recluse. Even at this period of his life, Berkeley's sympathies were active enough to lead him to undertake a somewhat long and tedious study of the causes of Irish distress and poverty, and more particularly of the famine and epidemic of 1741-2. The results of his investigations were published in the 'Querist' and in 'Siris.'

The 'Querist' was originally published in three parts. It consists of a series of queries concerning the state of Ireland and the remedies suggested. It is a remarkable book, and very little known; still more remarkable when we consider that it was written in 1735 by a bishop of the Irish Church Establishment. The central thought is expressed in the pregnant query, 'Whether a scheme for the welfare of the Irish nation should not take in the whole inhabitants; and whether it be not a vain attempt to project the flourishing of our Protestant gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives?'—and the introduction of manufactures, a national bank, the admission of Roman Catholics into Trinity College, Dublin, without compelling them to attend chapel or divinity lectures, and the election of Roman Catholics as justices of the peace, are some of the means of realizing such a scheme. Berkeley's belief in the healing powers of tar-water is better known, and his efforts to get it recognised as a panacea scarcely require mention. They occupied no small part of his last years in Cloyne.

During these last years we hear occasionally of an 'Oxford Scheme,' and there are traces in Berkeley's correspondence of efforts made to give up his bishopric for the sake of some minor preferment not requiring residence. The education of his sons and his own imaginative desire for a 'life academico-philosophical' seem to have been the motives. In August, 1752, he left Cloyne, and was not destined to see it again. The journey was more than his weakened body could bear. 'He was so much reduced by suffering that he had to be carried from his landing on the English shore, in a horse litter to Oxford.' He did not linger long in the beautiful University city in the enjoyment of a life to which he had so often looked forward, and during the months of his residence was almost withdrawn from society by disease and suffering. He was not altogether idle, however.

The end was drawing near, and came almost unexpectedly. Professor Fraser tells us that

And so one of the greatest and of the purest thinkers that England has ever seen passed away to his rest.

The philosophy of Berkeley is not so much a theory of matter as a philosophy of causality; and the great service which Professor Fraser has done to the history of philosophy is that he has so far made it clear that the one important contribution which Berkeley has brought to the stock of knowledge, the one doctrine of his which has been most fruitful, and most pregnant with results to after-philosophy, is his explanation of the word cause, and the place which he assigns to causality. Berkeley's polemic against abstract ideas, his theories of vision, and his discussions about the nature of ideas, are all subsidiary to this one great doctrine of the meaning and place of causality. It does occur to us that Professor Fraser, while keeping this clearly before him in his admirable elucidations, by prefaces and notes, has somewhat obscured it by dwelling at such length on the points of similarity between Berkeley and Reid and Hamilton. These Scottish philosophers struggled after a theory of matter from the beginning to the end; the reality of the external world, as if anybody ever questioned it, was their alpha and omega. They could think and write of scarcely anything else. But Berkeley's philosophy was a great deal deeper and wider. It was free from what we may perhaps call the provincialism of the Scottish school, which clung with tenacity to what was after all a very small strip in the wide dominion of philosophy, and could never free itself from the narrowness which such exclusiveness was sure to beget. His philosophical writings, containing new and striking thoughts, some of them only now bearing fruit, upon the great metaphysical problems of universals, substance, causality, and the organism of the universe, cannot without danger of misconception be compared at length with a system which thinks itself competent to classify all metaphysical systems according as they contain some one or other theory of perception. We repeat, then, Berkeley's philosophy is by no means merely a theory of matter or a doctrine of sense-perception—it is a philosophy of causality—of substance and causality if you will, but of substance as subordinate to causality.

We are quite aware that these views regarding Berkeley's philosophy have not met with general acceptance. The great proportion of Berkeley's critics, roughly speaking, may be set in two classes: those who believe that his theory is utter scepticism, which the first breath of common sense dissipates, and those who believe the Bishop's opinions to be harmless, because quite unimportant. Dr. Johnson kicks a stone, and Berkeley's theory is disproved. Dr. Reid runs his head against a lamp-post, and with the same important philosophical result.

And Hood depicts the terror of the alderman at a system which would

The grave criticisms and arguments of many of Berkeley's opponents rest on the same basis. On the other hand, Hegel looks down loftily upon the whole affair, and pronounces the philosophy and its criticism a mere play upon words. Berkeley says without is within. Be it so. He has done nothing to settle the problem of philosophy, which remains as before. It may help to bring out more clearly what we believe to be a juster estimate of the nature and value of the speculations of Bishop Berkeley, if we shortly summarize these two different modes of criticizing his system as they appear in their latest form.

Thus it is said, on the one hand, when we look at any object we feel compelled to assert that we see it to be of a certain colour; but this assertion, we afterwards find, must be compatible with two facts—that the same object has different colours as seen by the same person from different points of view, and also as seen by different persons at the same time. Yet we stand by our conviction, that we do see the same thing, because it is our conviction that we do see it. If we were not to stand by it under these circumstances, we could never stand by such natural convictions at any time. The whole evidence for the system is that visible objects look of different sizes and colours at different distances, and in different lights; while the arguments against the theory are the primary convictions of men.[221]

On the other hand, a recent German critic says that the reason why Berkeley's theory has been so little approved of, not only by the great public of those who are capable of reflection, but also by those who are philosophers by profession, is that it is not at all in advance of common opinion; for Berkeley was not the first to declare that the apple which is seen and felt, is only seen and felt, or is phenomenal. This assertion is as old as philosophy. Most philosophers, however, in opposition to Berkeley, have thought, and still think, that the fundamental cause of the phenomena which brings it about is not merely phenomenal, but something quite different. This hypothesis is not without its difficulties. We cannot explain how a motion in the nerves becomes a sensation which we are conscious of. But Berkeley's theory does not better the position. He cannot show how it happens that the divine objective 'ideas' become one human subjective perception or intuition; he does not tell us how God enables us to share or represent His thoughts, since He neither speaks to us nor writes to us. Berkeley cannot, from his point of view, show with any certainty where the truth lies in the different opinions of men upon the orderly coherence of the phenomenal world, the relation of phenomenal things to each other, upon the ground and purpose of human existence, &c. In short, he is as little able to found a scientific knowledge and a theory of knowledge upon his hypothesis as the common opinion of man can on its presupposition. His whole system is only a change of position without result. It explains nothing, helps us in nothing—it is no philosophy.[222]

We have chosen these two representations, not because they are the best, but simply because they are the latest.

All such criticisms proceed upon the supposition that the whole of the philosophy of Berkeley is summed up in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' and do not even take the trouble to investigate the history of the opinions advanced in that unfinished and imperfect treatise. They do not know the philosophical importance of the Theory of Vision, the correspondence between Johnson and Berkeley, nor the Platonism or Neo-Platonism of 'Siris.' The publication of a complete edition of Berkeley's writings ought itself to render such criticism impossible, and the elucidations supplied by Professor Fraser should make them less excusable. A philosophical critic can scarcely now proceed on the presupposition that the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' and the Dialogues are the full and finished results of Berkeley's speculations, and take it upon him to neglect all else in his critique.[223] He must now recognise that it is not so easy to sum up Berkeley's principles; that we are in the same position for judging him as we would be with regard to Leibnitz if the 'Monadologie' and the 'Nouveaux Essais' had never been written; that we have a series of treatises, each more unfinished than the other, from which the latent developing thoughts have to be gathered as much by reference to history and life as by actual reference to their pages. He must recognise that there is a discernible unity in his life and speculations—a unity which may be traced throughout all Berkeley's writings, and which reconciles the Theory of Vision with 'Siris,' the Preface to the 'Principles,' &c., with the cancelling of the pages on Nominalism in the last edition of the 'Alciphron.'

Berkeley's whole philosophy is a combination of two currents of speculation—that of Locke on the one hand, and that of the English mystics on the other. In his earlier writings the influence of Locke is predominant, but gradually loses power until at last it almost succumbs to the influence of the Platonists; but, from first to last, we have the attempt to combine what is real and deep and true in the old spiritual philosophy with the clearness, consistency, and relation to physical science which Nominalism and the Baconian method can bring.

Berkeley seeks, in metaphysics, direct spiritual intuition; in physics, to abolish what would prevent this intuition. The mystics from whom Berkeley had learned so much had built their system of philosophy upon such an intuition, and made it their one thing needful. But their spiritual intuition was an intuition which was said to be enjoyed in meditations and trances, not in life and work. The world of things seen and handled did not bring them into direct communion with spirit; it was rather a veil to cloud the vision, a clog to hinder the endeavour of the human spirit ever trying to get beyond it. The senses and sense-knowledge were despised, and only behind the veil which it hung athwart the soul was there that universe of things unseen and eternal which More and Norris delighted to expatiate upon; or, if the senses did in any dim and uncertain way reveal the invisible spiritual realities longed for, it was because the soul, rising above them, put a divine meaning into them, and revelled in the 'lusciousness of this inward sense.' Such a hazy, unreal way of conceiving the spirit-life which he believed to be the true reality, was distasteful to Berkeley. He wished to keep to the spiritual intuition, which was the one good thing in these mystical doctrines, but he wished to bring it out of dreamland, and make it serviceable for every-day work and endeavour. Both More and Norris dreamt of an Atlantis, and celebrated its praises in prose and verse; Berkeley set sail for America to create the Utopia he had visioned. More and Norris could only realise the spiritual intuition on which they based their philosophy in an ecstatic contemplation, when the soul is borne on the wings of meditation far beyond this world of sensible things; Berkeley employs his spiritual intuition to account for puzzles in vision, errors in mathematics, and the virtues of tar-water. He wishes to mould and fashion, to give clearness and distinctness of outline to the spiritual beliefs and intuitions of the mystics by applying to them the method of Locke and Bacon. He wishes to conserve and give value to the fundamental truths which lie unshaped in the scholastic Realism, by applying to them the clearness and methods of Nominalism. This is, we believe, the key to Berkeley's life and philosophy.

Let us try to show its application.

The English mystics were the reaction against a phase of the new philosophy which had been so developed by Hobbes as to create a strong counter opinion. This phase was the doctrine of an inert matter which is so prominent in the writings of Descartes and Geulinx—matter, whose distinguishing characteristic was extension, which was entirely void of all power to act or to influence, and which was set up in opposition to spirit, whose distinguishing characteristic or property was consciousness. This theory of matter was so void of all real meaning that the existence and properties of material substance became gradually of less importance in a system of philosophy, and at length, as in Malebranche and Norris, ceased to have any influence on their speculations. It was outside their system, and of little or no account in its explanation. Yet the very semblance of its presence prevented a thorough-going attempt to explain the real meaning of reality, power, and causality, and recourse is had to meditation and ecstasy instead of to philosophical explanation and analysis. Locke's philosophy, on the other hand, with its calm, experimental analysis of the facts of knowledge, and its concentration of effort upon the senses and the knowledge they supplied, had brought the mind of man back to facts, and pointed to another path than that of vision or ecstasy, by which one might ascend to the understanding of what is meant by the world of things known and knowable. But if Locke is always judicious, he is never deep. He solved the theory of substance more by ignoring than by explaining it; and his Atomism, if one may call it so—his assertion that all knowledge is of particulars, and particulars only—not only turned him aside from any complete statement of causality, but forced him into theories of abstract ideas or conceptions that seem inconsistent with his own principles. When Locke had to account for the fact that this, that, and the other, sensation of colour were felt to be the same, he explains away this seeming contradiction to his favourite doctrine that all knowledge is of particulars, by saying that there is an abstract idea of whiteness framed from the particular ideas or sensations. But the necessities of language, thought, and science require that this abstract idea of whiteness must be as often, if not oftener, before the mind than any one of the particular ideas out of which it has been constructed, and thus the abstract idea is much more important than the particular sensation. When Locke is called on to give an account of our knowledge and its origin, his Atomism is always brought forward; when he wishes to speak of truth, certainty, &c., he cannot help paying more attention to abstract ideas. He thus figures two worlds just as the mystics had done, the sensible and intelligible, and while elevating the worth of the former, is inclined to make certainty, demonstration, &c., belong to the latter.

Locke's theory of abstract ideas was an hypothesis to account for and explain a really objective knowledge—that is, a knowledge which is true for others as well as for the individual. Objectivity, in this simple sense of the word, was a great difficulty in Locke's system. He had reduced all our ideas to ideas of sense and of reflection. He had insisted on the purely subjective origin of whatever is known. And at the same time he had insisted that what was known in this way were particular things and particulars only. He seems both in his account of the origin of knowledge, and in his description of the things known, to exclude the possibility of a knowledge common to several individuals at once. Each man seems rather to be shut within the sphere of his own ideas of sense and reflection about certain particular objects. But a subjective theory of knowledge and things known cannot be maintained. It would render all social intercourse impossible. There could be neither language, propositions, nor even common nouns. And the theory of abstract ideas is the way out of the difficulty. Now Berkeley, with his strong spiritual intuition, regarded Locke's system of abstract ideas very much as Aristotle, with his strong faith in progressive motion towards a final end (τελος), looked at Plato's ideal theory. It was only reproduction, a shadowy reflection, a cold crystallization of the world of sense ideas, and really did nothing to explain the life, motion, and order of the sense-world, nor furnished us with a basis for our real common or objective knowledge. We do not think that Berkeley altogether appreciated Locke, nor fully recognised the use which he, as well as Hobbes, had made of the doctrine of association of ideas, to explain community of knowledge and objective certainty. For in Hobbes and Locke we see the beginnings of that modern psychological theory which, under the names of association of ideas and relativity of knowledge, explain the existence, permanence, and objectivity of things and classes of things by a manifold flow of phenomena. Ideas or sensations, by rubbing themselves against consciousness, in various ways coalesce into things, and things into those possibilities of reproduction, intercourse, and communion which are represented by common nouns. But Berkeley had been taught by the mystics to associate motion, cause, and sensation with spirit or mind, and he could not see that Locke's doctrine of association, so void of conscious life or personal activity, might at least prove so nearly allied to his own doctrine of causality that it might be called its external wrapping. And even if Berkeley had seen this, we may excuse him from acknowledging what he owed to Locke in this matter, and forcing into prominence, in opposition to Locke's teaching, his intuition of direct spiritual agency, when we find how the association theory has not freed us from the abstractions which Berkeley dreaded, but still gives us such shadowy conceptions as the 'unconditioned' of Hamilton, or the 'unknown cause' of Mill. Berkeley admired Locke, and studied him carefully. His great aim was to keep Locke's results, to retain Locke's philosophy, but to give it new life. His philosophy was to be Lockianism stript of its notionalism, and inspired in all its parts by that direct spiritual intuition which was never absent from his mind. It was to be Locke's philosophy, with these differences: the starting-point of the system was to be the human self—the conscious ego—the type of all subsistence: and an association theory producing a second world of abstract ideas was to be supplanted by the continuous active causality of personal spirits; or, more shortly, it was to be Locke's philosophy, with living personal causality put instead of abstract ideas.[224]

If we take this as the fundamental thought in Berkeley's speculation we find three stages of development in his philosophy. In his 'Common-place Book,' and in the 'Principles,' he fancies, in his youthful fervour, that he has only to strip Locke's philosophy of its notionalism and the true system of metaphysics will appear. Hence his speculation in this first period is mainly negative. It is a war against abstractions, and his positive theories are more hinted at than explained. The second period is revealed in his philosophical letters to Dr. Samuel Johnson. He begins to find that there is more to be done in philosophy than to extirpate abstract ideas, and inquires into the archetypes of things. The third period is given us in 'Siris.' His philosophy has got deeper and perhaps less dogmatic. He was won to the grand thought of an organic universe of things, in which their whole is made for all the parts, and every part for the whole, and for the other parts; so that the virtues of tar-water are intimately connected by a multiform concatenation with the constant presence and continual agency of the God in whom we live and move and have our being. The first period in Berkeley's speculation is, as we have said, mainly negative. It is a polemic against abstract ideas in their various forms. The attack is earnest, eager, but also impatient and inadequate. We have only hints at construction. It seems as if he thought he had only to deny false modes of explanation in order to state the right one, and his discussion throughout bears the stamp of eagerness and impetuosity. It represents the man who could say of those who doubted the success of his American enterprise, 'that small-minded persons had a talent for objections.' This period is represented in the 'New Theory of Vision,' 'The Principles of Human Knowledge,' and 'The Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.' Its negative character may be due to accident. These three works are confessedly an imperfect sketch of Berkeley's principles. The 'Theory of Vision' is a mere tentative introduction; the 'Principles,' as we have them, are only the first part of a work which, if we are to trust 'The Common-place Book,' was meant to include three parts, and was published as Part I. The 'Dialogues' are only the 'reproduction of the first part of the 'Principles of Human Knowledge.' They are all of them imperfect expositions of Berkeley's speculative opinion. Taking them as they are, however, let us endeavour to discover the fundamental thoughts in each.

It has been for some time acknowledged that the essay towards A New Theory of Vision is not to be summed up in the dictum that distance is invisible. The invisibility of distance is the psychological basis of the theory.[225] The work is rather the first blow in the attack upon Locke's 'Doctrine of Abstract Ideas':—

The question which Berkeley really asks is—How do we universalize our ideas of sight? The proper objects of sight are light and colours. How, then, do we see distance, figure, size, situation, magnitude and solidity? How can the sensation of green colour peculiar to my mind stand for, not the mere sense-blur of vague green colour, but an oval leaf fluttering in the wind some twenty feet above me, attached to the twig of a beech tree! and, moreover, how can this sensation which belongs to me so far belong to others that the same knowledge conveyed to me is also given to them? How can the vague subjective sensation be universalized so that it stands for several things not felt, and more especially for sensations of touch? What is the link between these various qualities? What is the bridge by which the mind passes over from the one to the other? This link is not, says Berkeley, an abstract idea of extension, in which the visible and tangible sensations unite, for there is no such idea. The sensations of sight and of touch are on their side quite heterogeneous:—

Light and colour are the immediate objects of sight, and they constitute a species entirely distinct from the ideas of touch. No one would think of adding a visible foot to a tangible foot; and the experience of persons born blind and recovering their sight points to a certain confusedness in apprehending the connection between the two sets of ideas which would not occur if they belonged to one and the same abstract idea of extension. If we would explain the fact that ideas may so be universalized that they stand for ideas of touch, we must rather bring them under the living power of mind which, grasping the two together, makes the one the sign of the other. When we have the sensation of the colour greenness, we see a green leaf of a small oval shape, not because the colour is necessarily connected with the size and shape, nor because all three inhere as qualities in an abstract idea of extension, but because:—

There is no abstract idea which corresponds now to the sensations of sight, now to the sensations of touch; the connecting link is supplied by the unifying action of the human mind, which seizes upon the one idea and makes it the sign of the others, and this one idea is fitted to be the sign of the others not by any similarity or peculiar fitness on its side, but because of its position in the flow of phenomena given to it and preserved for it by the living spiritual causality which creates and arranges everything. The ideas of sense are universalized, scientific and objective knowledge is possible, we can go from ideas of sight to those of touch, and back again from those of touch to those of sight, because of a double spiritual influence—the active living influence of mind outside, permeating, creating, and associating all things, and the partly passive, partly active ingathering influence of the individual human mind within, interpreting, arranging, according to the associations imposed upon them and lying undeveloped in them, the vague blurs of sensation. Berkeley's thought is almost the same as Schleiermacher's, that all scientific knowledge is the joint product of an internal and an external factor—organic function and the external world,—which factors are universally related to each other; only, according to Berkeley's spiritual intuition, everywhere present; the living centre of organic function is the partly passive, partly active influence of the human self, while the living centre of the external factor is the supreme mind without us continuously creating and arranging.

The Principles of Human Knowledge follow up the attack on abstract ideas made in the New Theory of Vision. The introduction, with its attack on Conceptualism,[226] prepares the way for a more sweeping assault on abstractions. Now Berkeley almost invariably attacks a general question by making an assault on one special form which it takes. His method is borrowed from Locke, who shows that all our ideas may be reduced to ideas of sensation and reflection by selecting one or two most unlikely to conform to such a reduction, and proving by analysis that they do. Berkeley begins to attack the Lockian doctrine of abstract ideas by showing that there is no abstract extension common to sight and touch; he proves the providence of God by explaining the beauty and value of the language of vision; and he exhibits the organism of the universe by tracing the connection between the virtues of tar-water and the hidden mysteries of things. He always seeks a concrete instance of the abstract fact, and assails a particular case of the general principle he wishes to attack. This method is carried out in the 'Principles.' He does not assail the doctrine of abstract ideas in general, nor endeavour to strip Lockianism of all its notionalism. He fastens on one particular abstract idea, which because of its importance and prevailing influence may be considered as the champion of the rest, and puts to flight the armies of the Philistines by slaying their Goliath.

The sum and head of all abstract ideas is the idea of matter, as this was used in the new philosophy of the seventeenth century. For what is an abstract idea? It is a connecting link between sensations—something to which they may be referred, in which they are supposed to inhere, and which is thought to account for their permanence of objective reality. For example, 'white' is a single quality or a single sensation felt by me now and here when I look at a sheet of paper. But 'whiteness' is the abstract idea to which all these single sensations may be referred, and in which they may inhere and so have a permanence and objective reality, so that this sheet of paper, because it has 'whiteness,' is always and by every one seen to be 'white.' The abstract ideas of extension, of situation, and of number, are examples which are supposed to be of more importance, and to include a vastly larger number of individuals. Now the one idea to which every sense-particular, without exception, may be referred is the idea of matter or material substance. It gives them permanence, reality, and objectivity. It is the germ, the centre, the vital spot of the whole system of abstractions. Destroy it, and the system perishes. Show that it is an illusion, a mere word,—that it can give no reality, no permanence,—that it cannot afford a basis for scientific knowledge nor community of belief, and the whole doctrine which seeks to build science and reality on such a foundation disappears, and on the ground thus cleared a more substantial, real, and living structure of belief and opinion may be erected. This seems to be the guiding thought in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' and in the 'Dialogues.' It is mainly negative,—a denial of matter, and therefore of all abstractions. But amidst the negative or destructive reasonings there are traces, as there must be, of positive construction. The one positive principle which is always present is that spiritual intuition which we have already spoken of,—the all-pervading belief inherited from the mystics, and particularly from Malebranche and Norris, that mind or spirit is the one reality and the one fount of active agency. But this intuition, always present, is never adequately expressed nor applied. Berkeley either meant to reserve its discussion for another 'Part,' or his natural impatience made him overlook the necessity of explaining the steps in his analysis of all reality into personal spirit, and all causality into the conscious activity of such personal spirits. He is always confused, hesitating, and sometimes conflicting in his statements about the way in which 'mind' becomes the only real existence, and the 'activity of mind' the only real agency; and it is in the skill with which he has pierced together the scattered hints into one really complete and so far adequate explanation of the universe of things that Professor Fraser's unwearied patient study and just appreciation of his author is seen to most advantage.

Our experience as given us in the senses is made up 'of sensations, ideas, or phenomena,—facts of which there is a perception or consciousness.' These sensations, and nothing else, make the material of the sensible universe which we see and know and live in,—they are the material out of which the shifting scenes in this wonderful panorama of sense-life are formed,—they are the exciting causes of all the various forms of our mental life, of our joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, hopes and despairings. When we are conscious of the outward world, it is of a world of sensations which is immediately present to our minds and in our minds; for the essence of an idea or sensation is that it is perceived,—its esse is percipi. But this is not the whole of Berkeley's theory of matter, as many critics would have us believe. There is along with this 'immediate perception of extended sensible reality' a 'mediate perception or a presumptive inference of the existence of sensible things and their relations.' The knowledge we have of the external world of the senses cannot be reduced to the sensations of which we are actually conscious for the time being. There are, besides the sensations immediately present, clustering groups of others which we do not immediately perceive. Tangible things are signified by visual sensations, and sounds recall colours and shapes. Every isolated sensation is significant of more than itself, and mere sensation is impossible. And this significance of sensations, the reality of their relations to each other, recognised and insisted upon by Berkeley, makes his scheme different from any system of merely subjective idealism, and supplies a basis for objective or scientific knowledge. 'For,' as Professor Fraser says, 'faith in an established or external association between our sense-phenomena is the basis of the constructive activity of intellect in all inductive interpretation of sensible things.' It is this 'external,' or imposed association, which universalizes and gives objective existence to sensations and the sense-world, and so far Berkeley's explanation does not differ very much from that of Mr. Mill or Professor Bain.

But then, what is Berkeley's 'association'? It is, as Professor Fraser well puts it, 'his religious faith in the constancy of the Divine constitution of the Cosmos.' The associative relations of things which give permanence and objective reality and intelligibility to the world of sense-phenomena are not to be explained by any hap-hazard one-coming-after-another, as modern psychologists do. They are due to the active agency of the Supreme Mind which links sensations together in ways of His own, so that there exists, not a chaos of varying, changing phenomena, but an orderly intelligible system of sense things, co-existing and successive, significant of each other, and all together making the interpretable language of Him whose designs they embody, and by whose constant activity they are all maintained. 'And thus,' as Professor Fraser has beautifully expressed it:—

In Berkeley's earlier philosophy, and even in his later, this grand conception of an orderly universe permeated and ever upheld by mind, is by no means fully or consistently worked out, as Professor Fraser himself acknowledges. The starting-point itself is somewhat confused. Berkeley starts with sensations. But the universe is not a universe of sensations, but of sensible things, and although the formula esse est percipi will at once explain the meaning of a sensation, it will not, without some argument and explanation, account for the meaning of a sensible thing. Berkeley did not sufficiently recognise the difference, and he leaped to a conclusion which, however right, should have been reasoned out. A whole is not the aggregate number of its parts, it is the sum of the parts plus their being placed together. There is a difference between a house and a heap of stones. Now Berkeley did not seem to see this, at least in his earlier philosophy. Tangible distance was to him a series of minima tangibilia, a series of tactual points; visible distance a series of visible points, and that only. Whereas, distance is really the sensible points plus their arrangement. The sensible thing is really the complex of sensations plus their unification. We are not disposed to believe with Professor Ueberweg[227] that this oversight amounted to a begging of the whole question, we hold with Professor Fraser that there is only a little confusion in apprehending the problem aright, and a rashness in leaping to a conclusion which should rather have been elaborated and proved. Berkeley thought, as Professor Fraser says, that 'the consciousness of my own permanence, amid the changes in my senses, is the only archetype, in my experience, of proper substance or permanence; and apart from this experience, permanence or substance is an unintelligible word.' His thought was not substantially distinct from Dr. Ueberweg's own,—who says[228] 'that individual intuitions gradually arise out of the original blur of perception, when man first begins to recognise himself an individual essence in opposition to the external world,' and who elsewhere[229] makes the notion of self the type of the essence of things. That unique thing called 'self' or 'I' is the only real permanent unity known, and is therefore the type of all permanence and unity elsewhere. The esse or the essence which gives shape and endurance to fleeting formless sensations is mind—my mind or the Supreme Mind. It is the percipi, being perceived, or coming under the formative influence of mind, which gives to a series of sensations that unity which we can call 'distance,' that shape and unity to the cluster of sensations which we call 'leaf' that orderly series arrangement and permanence which we call the system of things. The action of mind upon sensations, forming and arranging them, is not discussed by Berkeley. He contents himself with his vague spiritual intuition, and leaves his readers to work out his meaning. It does seem clear to us, however, both from his references to the archetypes of ideas in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' and more especially from his interesting discussions on the native archetypes of ideas in his letters to Johnson, that he did not altogether overlook the distinction between mere complexes of sensations and sensible things; but that he was sensible of this distinction, and wished to explain that the complex of sensations was transformed into an orderly stable sensible thing by the unifying formative mind putting as it were its stamp upon it.[230]

It was undoubtedly a hindrance to the completeness of Berkeley's thoughts that he had no clear and distinct scheme of ethical relations before his mind when he was investigating the relations between mind and phenomena. It is true that, as Professor Fraser says, 'the moral presumption of our individual free and proper agency is obscurely involved in Berkeley's philosophy of sense from the first.' But the ethical relations of the individual human spirit were nowhere clearly seen, and were not made its leading and peculiar characteristic. It was reserved for Kant to place the moral relations of these individuals and their significance in the world of things in due prominence, and it has been easier for men such as Schleiermacher and Herman Lotze, who have come after Kant, and who have maintained a doctrine of the spiritual relations which exist in and give order, cohesion, and permanence to the universe, not unlike Berkeley's, to develop the doctrine of these relations so far as the human spirit goes, and give more thoroughness and completeness to the scheme. We may conceive Berkeley carefully working out the double relation of human to divine spirit, and finding in the sensible universe the veil which hangs between, not merely the orderly and pregnant language of the Creator Spirit to be interpreted and made intelligible by the creature spirit, but also the shadowy reflection of the working of the Creator towards the creature, and of the striving of the creature towards the Creator. Each thing, class, order, genus, and race, with all its relations to all the other parts of the vast order of things, filling the place in the organism in which the Creator placed it, acting, influencing, and ruling, according to its function and place in the arrangement of the whole; just as the individual, or class, or nation fulfils, or ought to fulfil, the ethical duties which its hands find to do, so that the universe, in all its spheres of animate and inanimate life, of organic and inorganic bodies, becomes in its mutual action and reaction, as Schleiermacher says, a 'fainter ethic.'

Berkeley approaches this in his greatest metaphysical work, the 'Siris.' It is here that the thought of organism or development in things and in the universe, which comes in occasionally in his earlier writings, is more fully expressed and even elaborated. The very name suggests it, the book is a chain of philosophical reflections and inquiries. Faithful to the method of his younger days, Berkeley takes a concrete instance of the concatenation of nature. He discourses on the virtues of tar-water, and thoughts on these lead up to the highest mysteries of the universe. But when we divest the thoughts of this particular form, we have such a system of the universe as Bacon working with Plotinus might have conceived. The centre source and light of all is the One Supreme Spirit—the personal omnipresent God in whom we and all things live and more and have our being. The universe is his reflection, it represents his thoughts, it is the revelation of his mind and will, it is his language. But the old puzzling word 'arbitrary' has disappeared, and this language of nature is seen to depend upon great laws and to be capable of interpretation because so dependent. The esse of sensation and of the sense-world generally, is still percipi, but the ambiguity lying in the word is carefully distinguished. On the one hand all things are dependent on the creative and upholding influence of the Supreme Spirit. He it is that, making all things after their kinds, sends forth and sustains the archetypes of things. On the other hand, the fleeting sense-world is framed and shaped by the individual mind into the universe of things, in accordance with the divine ideas or archetypes which lie hidden in it. There is a double meaning in the phrase, esse is percipi. It means both that these ideas are dependent for the possibility of existence on the divine thoughts, or archetypes whose sensible shadows they are, and also that all sensible things are dependent for their particular formation and position on the formative powers of the human mind, which works in each man by general laws of human intelligence, in accordance with and for the discovery of the divine ideas lying immanent in things. And thus human knowledge is a reproduction, or discovery and representation of the thoughts which the divine creative thinking has built into things;[231] human science is a presaging or reading of the letters and words of nature which manifest its order and harmony, in the faith and expectancy that this same order and harmony now prevailing, because it depends on the divine ideas of the Creator, is fixed and enduring;[232] and the 'proper name of this world is Spirit—free immortal Spirit—Spirit in communication with Spirit—Spirit in dependence on and in reconciliation, through Christ, with the one absolute Spirit—God.'[233]

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Art. IX.—The Future of Europe.

(1) Der Deutschen Volkszahl und Sprachgebiet in den Europaischen staaten eine statistische untersuchung von Richard Böekh. Berlin: J. Guttenay. 1871.

(2.) France, Alsace and Lorraine. London: Trübner & Co. 1870.

(3.) The French Case Truly Stated. By Augustus Granville Stapleton. London: E. Stanford. 1871.

(4.) La France et la Prusse, pendant l'invasion de 1870. Par Erard de Choiseul Gouffier. 2^me Edition. Luxembourg: Pierre Bruck. 1870.

(5.) La France devant l'Europe. By Jules Michelet. 2^me Edition. Ferrier: Hachette and Cie. 1871.

(6.) Elsass und Lothringen nachweise wie diese provenzen dem deutschen Reiche verloren gingen. Von Adolf Schmidt. Dritte auf. Leipzic: Vert and Co. 1870.

(7.) Prussian Aggrandizement and English Policy. London: Ridgway. 1870.

(8.) Krieg und Friede. Von D. F. Strauss. Leipzic: S. Herzel. 1870.

(9.) The Interests of Europe in the Conditions of Peace. London: Stanford. 1870.

(10.) Recueil des Documents sur les Exactions, vols et cruautés des armées Prussiennes en France. Bordeaux: Feret et fils. 1871.

(11.) La République neutre d'Alsace. Par le Comte A. de Gasparin. Genève et Bäle. 1871.

(12.) Who is responsible for the War? By Scrutator. London: Rivingtons. 1871.

(13.) Europe of the near Future. By Emeritus Professor Francis W. Newman. Trübner and Co. 1871.

(14.) Diary of the French Campaign of 1870; with the Decrees, Telegrams, and Proclamations of his Majesty the King of Prussia. London: Trübner and Co. 1871.

There are two antagonistic theories which profess to summarise history. Vico attempted, in the last century, to prove that the course of human events had, like the planets, an orbit of their own, into which they returned after a certain number of years. In fact, according to this philosopher, the tendency of history was to repeat itself, much like a compound circulating decimal. But the rapid development of physical science has, of late years, thrown this theory very much into the shade, by confronting it with the more glittering notion of human perfectibility. Mankind, instead of gyrating in an ellipse, move along a line of infinite progression. Scientific men fondly imagined that the march of intellect was destined to impel society, through stages of uninterrupted progress, to a fanciful millennium. Knowledge was to be the spiritual means of redeeming the nations. When mankind came to understand their relations to the surrounding universe, Astrea would again visit the earth, and the golden age return. There were not wanting many minor postulates which seemed to support this splendid vision. All the wars of Europeans found their root in dynastic interests, and would vanish, when the wishes of the million became the main-spring of politics. The knell of standing armies was rung by a citizen soldiery; and with standing armies vanished all fear of territorial aggrandisement. Economic inventions and the wide ramifications of industrial interests were fast binding mankind in a network of harmony and peace. Under war waged for the spell of these illusions, philosophers and statesmen had looked back upon the past as the wilderness of humanity, and, from the heights of Pisgah, sighted the promised land. Even Gioberti, priest though he was, did not shrink from avowing in his primato, that if the Jews looked forward to the Messiah as yet to come, in the light of the golden age, he was as staunch in that belief as the stoutest Israelite among them. The rationalist divines have vied with the poets of our own age in announcing the approach of the dawn of an era of universal peace and happiness. In the midst of these delightful anticipations a speck appears upon a sunny sky, no bigger than a man's hand. But it suddenly swells to gigantic dimensions and sheds disastrous twilight over the fairest regions of the earth. Without any rational pretext whatever, two of the most enlightened nations of Europe rush with murderous weapons at each other's throats. They close with deadly gripe; inflict upon each other mortal blows, until one sinks through sheer exhaustion. The collapsed state is then let blood. Heavy gyves are placed upon it, from which there is little chance of escape for many years to come, and then only by combination with some other power. Between two races who were, a little time ago, beginning to forget their old animosity in acts of amity and goodwill, the flames of hate are anew enkindled with a vehemence destined to last through all time. Now these phenomena may, doubtless, be explained by the usual philosophic method of assigning very simple causes to very complicated effects.

As to which power is humanly responsible for these multiplied disasters, is discussed at large in the pamphlets before us.[234] The question is not simply historical, but bears directly upon the reasonableness of the terms of peace which have been imposed. If Prussia is as blameless in the transactions which led to the outbreak, as Bismark would make out, it is obvious he had some reason for his recent severity. But this, we think, can in no way be sustained. We do not share the bias of the authors who have written on this subject. It is our opinion, having heard, with the impartiality of a nisi prius judge, all that can be said upon the subject, that both parties have been lamentably in the wrong; that the diplomatic relations between France and Prussia for the last six years have been conducted upon principles more worthy of thieves than honest politicians; that each has been attempting to overreach the other; that Napoleon began these subterranean intrigues with a view to secure all the prizes of war without fighting for them, and that Bismark so manipulated events as to cause the Emperor to fight after all, and left him nothing but defeat for his pains. Each knew that the mining operations in which both were engaged, had gone so far, that they must explode somewhere, and each endeavoured to direct the train from his own territory to that of his neighbour. It is beyond question that Bismark, if he did not plan the Hohenzollern intrigue with his eyes open to all the consequences, knew of its existence when his Government denied all knowledge of it. It is also clear that Baron Von Theile, in a conference with Benedetti, repudiated, on the part of his Government, the very suggestion, after Bismark and the King had expressed their approval of the candidature.[235] From the declarations of the French ambassador on this occasion, Bismark must have known the irritating effect the avowal of the scheme must produce on the French Government. He also refused to advise the King simply to withdraw his consent from Leopold's acceptance of the Spanish crown, when pressed to do so by the British Government,[236] though that step would have probably induced France to give up the quarrel. When the Prince withdrew his claims to the Spanish throne at the instance of his father, Prussia sullenly refused to renounce her sanction to those claims, and thus bore a very conspicuous part in drawing upon Europe the consequences which followed. Then, there is a great deal of mystery about the telegram from Ems conveying the falsehood that the King, in a crowded watering-place, turned upon his heel when accosted by, and refused to speak with, the French ambassador. Now, it is expressly admitted by Bismark, that he sent copies of that telegram to all the German representatives abroad; and either himself or his subordinates must have caused its insertion in the official Berlin gazette, by which the war excitement in both countries was roused to fever height.[237] We all know it was that telegram which impelled the French Government to launch their declaration of war. It is also upon record that France, in the course of February, made, through Lord Clarendon, two overtures to Berlin for mutual disarmament, offering to reduce her various contingents to the extent of 90,000 men, which was, in fact, one-eighth of her army; but that Bismark, having churlishly refused to listen to the first proposal, did so far entertain the second as to forward it to the King, who, under the counsels of his astute chancellor, declined the proposition on the ground that the military organization of Prussia was the vital principle of her constitution, and that she was least of all inclined to modify it, in front of an aggressive Russia, and with the probability of an alliance between Austria and the South German States[238]—two pretexts, the hollowness of which, recent events sufficiently demonstrate. Now, though the conduct of France is utterly indefensible in provoking the conflict after the Hohenzollern grievance had been substantively withdrawn, we cannot acquit Prussia of irritating her adversary, and of provoking, in a great degree, the blow she seemed anxious to repel. In point of fact, both parties had their respective interests in the struggle; both desired to fight; both, like two pugilists, had been in training for the encounter during the last five years, and both were determined that so opportune an occasion should not be lost for bringing it on.

The indulgence of military vanity, and the desire to dominate Europe, are faults which may be ascribed to France in a larger degree than to Prussia. But Germany, after having disarmed her antagonist, has indulged these propensities with a mercenary spirit, and with the manifest intention of wiping France out of the list of the great powers. The frankness with which this is avowed is admirable in its simplicity. France must be hindered from being dangerous in the future. She must, therefore, be reduced to such a position as to render her alike both impotent and defenceless. She must be degraded from her state in the family of nations. She is, therefore, stripped of her armaments: her artillery, her muskets, her swords, her ammunition, her military stores, in fact, nearly all her implements and panoply of war, are carted off to Berlin. That she may not be in an immediate position to supply their place, she is loaded with a pecuniary indemnity which must exhaust the energies of another generation. The frontiers of the country are thrown back to the state in which they were in the middle of the sixteenth century. The strong chain of fortresses which France has erected or fortified during the last three hundred years, with two or three minor exceptions, have been wrenched from her by her enemy. Strasburg, Bitsche, Phalsburg, Thionville, and Metz, protecting that flank of France which is most exposed to attack, are now only so many reservoirs, ready, at a moment's notice, to open the rivers of invasion and deluge the country. Metz, which is only some 160 miles from Paris, is a naked rapier laid across the defenceless throat of France. With her greatest buckler of defence in the hands of Prussia, anything like independent action on the part of France is manifestly impossible. While Metz is in the hands of Prussia, she must remain as politically weak as Piedmont, with Austria in the Quadrilateral. With a bankrupt exchequer, with a pillaged population, with a disorganized government, with a defenceless frontier, with a mutilated territory, with civil feud in her capitals, with all her strongholds in the hands of the enemy, with an imposition of £200,000,000 sterling as a war indemnity, France is not likely to recover her physical strength in our day; and when vigour returns to her shattered frame, it will be only to feel she has lost her place in the councils of Europe.

There are, of course, many excellent reasons assigned for this sort of beneficence, which need only be stated to win common assent. Metz and Alsace belonged to the house of Hapsburg in the fourteenth century. They ought, therefore, to belong to the house of Hohenzollern in the nineteenth,—a convincing argument, which no country so consistently as Prussia could urge with elaborate effect. If every nation which has been disintegrated during the last two hundred years, should get back its own to-morrow, we all know how much Prussia would be a gainer by the transfer. But the inhabitants of Alsace speak a patois of German and French, which contains something of both, and is not either. They are, therefore, clearly entitled to be governed from Berlin. This principle is beautifully illustrated by the Sclave-speaking population of Silesia, the Polish community of Posen, and the Danes of Schleswig. What more in keeping with this piebald collection of people, in the name of nationality, than the French people at Metz? Then, were not Alsace and Lorraine taken by force and guile from Germany? and what more proper to retake them by the same openhanded violence? But it is forgotten that these provinces were first wrenched from France by Germany, so that to restore the original balance, France will have to scramble for them again. By this flux and reflux of empire, at least, one principle is fully assured. Nations are prevented from becoming stagnant. The standing pool of industrial affairs is defecated. War becomes, not an exceptional, but the normal condition of the universe. Civilization has the consolation of knowing that it has no sooner got on its legs, and is about to gather into its granaries an exuberant harvest, than it is knocked over again and its fruits are withered.

It is singular that German ideologists, whose views are so sound upon abstract subjects, should put forth such inconsistent trash, to justify their newly-adopted policy of territorial aggrandizement. There are, however, a large number of sentimentalists in the world, who have a strange hankering for the past, whose sympathies it was necessary to secure. The German archives have, therefore, been ransacked for every tittle of evidence to prove that Metz was a German province in the fourteenth century; and, therefore, if any Frenchmen are found there in the nineteenth, they ought to be under Prussian rule. But to do Bismark justice, he has a great contempt for trashy dialectics of this character. He takes his stand upon the firmer ground of political expediency. France has invaded Germany some twenty-seven times, stimulated entirely by her lust for the Rhine provinces. It is, therefore, necessary to reduce her to such conditions that she is not likely to offend again. In the case of the German ideologists, we grant the premise, but deny the inference. They are doubtless sincere in their unreason. But Bismark's premiss and conclusion are alike vicious, and no one knows that better than himself.

The earlier wars of France against the Empire arose out of the struggle for these border possessions when the posterity of Lothaire II., to whom they belonged, had died out; but in these wars, France, then being parcelled out among numerous vassals, had the worst of it. A series of German irruptions, under Henry the Fowler, and the Othos, united these domains to the Empire. They were, however, held more or less as fiefs of the crown of France. The French element within, and French intrigue without, always gave the German emperors great uneasiness; and this, combined with further schemes of obtaining fresh fiefs in Burgundy and Flanders, exposed France to two German invasions—one under Henry V., and the other under Otho IV., which made Louis the Fat and Philip Augustus tremble for their suzerainty. But the Germans soon found in Italy a richer field for their exploits, and France was left to constitute her unity without much hindrance, until the empire fell into Spanish hands. Afraid, then, of being bodily eaten up, her monarchs became aggressive; but their blows were aimed, not against Germany, but against Spain, unluckily without any great effect; for, the towns of France were some half dozen times invaded by the Emperor and his allies, her king captured, and her fortresses demolished. Our share in these plundering transactions helped us to Tournay and Boulogne. In the next series of wars, which arose out of the religious and political dissensions of the empire, if France intermeddled, she was invited to do so by the Protestant princes of Germany, with whom she was allied, and whose interests were menaced by the house of Austria. As the price of her intervention, she got a portion of the disputed frontier; but we never heard that Germany otherwise than freely conceded the long-coveted prize to her, or regarded this portion of the Treaty of Munster as a menace to her liberties. It was not until Louis Quatorze seized Franche Comté, and sent his legions over the Rhine, that Germany manifested any uneasiness at the ambition of France—an uneasiness which the league of Augsburg immediately dispelled, and an ambition which the armies of Eugene and Marlborough levelled to the ground. Hence, Lorraine soon afterwards fell as quietly into the hands of France, as if its exchange for the reversion of Tuscany had been an arrangement of Providence. We are rather curious, therefore, to know how Count Bismark gets his twenty-seven instances of French aggression against Germany, and whether he includes in the list the troops which France lent to Prussia to enable her to retain her hold upon Silesia, and the counter-support she gave Maria Theresa to enable the empress to defeat Prussia. It is evident no parties are responsible for such interventions except those who invite them; and to ascribe to the ambition of the people of France, wars which arose out of the rapacity of his own countrymen, is a phase given to the quarrel which outrages common sense. Even were all the wars carried on under the Louises, the Richelieus, and the feudal princes of France, as wantonly aggressive as Bismark would make out, the French people are no more responsible for them, than the horses which dragged their artillery to the field. They were waged frequently in their own despite, purely for dynastic interests, and as often undertaken to repel aggression, as to make it. Even when the people woke up to their sovereign rights, in 1789, from whom did the first deliberate act of aggression come? From mild and peace-loving Prussia. Scarcely five years ago, we saw both the Saxon and Bavarian palatinate entirely at the mercy of the first French regiment that might have ventured to cross the border, without a hand being stretched forth to snatch the defenceless prize. It is therefore false, in fact, to assign to the French such an incurable lust after German territory, as to warrant the necessity of her political servitude. The French have no specific hatred to the Germans as a people, any more than they have to the Italians, whose territory they have honoured no less frequently with their presence. The allegation of Bismark is not, therefore, very assuring. He revives the memory of these miserable feuds, as a reason why they should be stopped; and produces a treaty, for that purpose, which only transmits them to posterity, wrapped in a blaze of undying vehemence. It is monstrous for the conquerors of a country to assign, as a pretext for its abasement, the participation of its rulers in those quarrels which originated with themselves. The great shield of Germany against French interference is its unity. Had she further insisted upon the fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine being dismantled, with an adequate pecuniary indemnity, she would then have been doubly secure. But when, in addition, she requires the keys of France to be placed in her hands, and the country, bound hand and foot, to be cast under her feet, it is idle to say that Prussia is aiming at mere immunity from aggression. There is a weightier reason behind for the mutilation of France, which it would be inconvenient to avow, and that is the preservation, if not the increase, of her own military ascendancy.

Prussia in making peace consulted her own interests. Had her troops returned to Berlin after concluding with France a wise and durable treaty, that would have occurred which occurred after the peace of 1815—Germany would have demanded free and liberal institutions. There would have been no necessity for Prussian Cæsarism. Berlin would have had to modify her military constitution. There would have been no necessity for vast armaments. The world would have once more settled down to pacific ways. But in leaving behind her an exasperated France, Prussia has the strongest of all motives for inducing Germany to perpetuate her military dictatorship, and keep the war ferment at high pressure. But it is impossible that the most pacific country can remain long under the influence of such a military organization as Prussia commands, without using it as an instrument for further aggrandizement. Were it indeed otherwise, a marvel would occur, the like of which would be unknown in history. Who ever heard of a power suddenly overtopping Europe, and, amid a handful of weaker states, stopping short in her career of aggression? Those who believe in the pacific virtues of Bismark, and the pious sincerity of William, ask us to indulge in anticipations which have never been realised. Did Rome stop when it overran the Peninsula, Macedon when it fulminated over Greece, the Caliphs when they stormed Constantinople, or the Hapsburgs when they conquered Vienna? There is a momentum in all states, once entered upon a career of conquest, which hurries them along with a speed proportionate to the extent of their acquisitions. The law of rising kingdoms may be formulated almost with the same nicety as that of falling bodies. Nor are there any circumstances in this instance calculated to modify its tendency, except such as give it vastly preponderating force and direction.

It must not be overlooked in this case, that the states under the hegemony of Prussia are amongst the poorest in Europe. Some three hundred thousand annually are driven, by fell necessity, to seek that provision in foreign lands which is denied them at home. The little wealth possessed by the home population is not in the possession of their princes and feudal aristocracy, but in the hands of the mercantile class, to whom war would not be in the least distasteful, if it opened out new avenues for their trade. The poverty of the German Junker, however, has been up to the present only equalled by his pretentiousness. Sheridan advised the last generation of them, to sell their high-sounding titles, to buy worsted to mend their stockings. Yet some of our statesmen would have us believe that these gentlemen, long suffering under a painful sense of impecuniosity, will, on waking up to the reality of their being masters of the world, continue to go about, as heretofore, with empty pockets. Can we suppose that a strong state, steeped up to the ears in poverty, will continue quiescent, surrounded by weak states who oppose no barriers to her possession of superabundant wealth? The inference is against everything we know of human nature, even upon the supposition that Prussia, to whom the people have entrusted their fortunes, is the most pacific state in the world, and that they have been attempted to be worried like bleating lambs, in the recent struggle. The only rational conclusion is that the Junkers of Germany will, like every other impoverished class, make the most of their new position. They will sit down to consider what countries contain the great reservoirs of commerce, and by what accession of territory the stream of wealth may be diverted to their own land. Germany is in the condition of the miller who had large mills but no water. Is it likely, when she has the power, she will refrain from entering her neighbour's territory, to divert the course of the element which sweeps by her with such majestic abundance, without rendering any service to herself? If she did not withhold her hand from a few barren roods in the case of Denmark, is she likely to do so when the prize is more tempting, the power to snatch it a thousand degrees more startling, and the chances of failure so much less? There can be only one reply to these questions. If the bourgeoisie condemned the movement, their opposition would be treated with the same indifference as the opposition of the great commercial class to the war of 1866. But the Minister has only to show the trading class that the movement is a commercial venture, and he will convert them into his staunchest adherents.

The German people have acquired of late years a peace-loving character, which, however, is rather adventitious than real, springing more out of the helplessness into which they were thrown by the dissensions of the Diet, than out of any innate disposition to be less quarrelsome than their neighbours. That they are more phlegmatic, more industrious, and less easily roused than the French may be readily admitted. But we should be strangely oblivious of the thirty years' war, of the Silesian wars, of the Swedish and Italian wars, of the Danish and Austrian wars, if we came to the conclusion that, if left to themselves, and in possession of their united strength, they would be the most benignant people in the world. The Germans have always evinced a conservative disposition to follow their feudal chiefs, and, by espousing their quarrels, have kept Europe embroiled for many centuries. In no other country could a small state like Prussia spring out of a mere society of Knight Templars, and in less than two hundred years, take her place among the first powers of the globe. While the smaller states of the empire followed their indolent habits, and cultivated the dilettante tastes of their rulers, Prussia was perpetually sharpening her sword, carving out of her neighbours fresh slices of territory, and using one acquisition as a stepping-stone to another. The acceptance of the peaceful pursuits to which the inaction of the minor states, and the jealous rivalries and despotic tendencies of the larger, impelled their respective populations, as a pledge of the new era of quiet harmony upon which Europe is about to enter, is only another instance of taking the forced and exceptional state of a people for its normal and natural condition. If the German people could be divorced from their feudal leanings, if they could bind up their unity with free institutions, and sink the interest of each particular state in that of the entire community, we should regard their assumption of military supremacy as a blessing to Europe. But this state of things, so near being accomplished in 1848, is now further off than ever. Prussia, then, by the free voice of Germany, was offered the Imperial crown, upon condition of merging her individual sovereignty in that of the commonwealth. But she refused. Now she has got it upon her own terms—that of merging the commonwealth into herself. All the power and might of Germany, instead of being allied with liberal institutions, is wielded by one despotic hand. Instead of Germany swallowing up Prussia, Prussia has swallowed up Germany. Germany in inaugurating her unity, like the young man coming to his heritage, was surrounded by two candidates for her favours,—free institutions and military despotism—and, succumbing to the tempter, she has flung herself into the embraces of military despotism.

Prussia, who first intoxicated Germany with the idea of unity, has debauched her with the doctrine of nationality. The lure was in the Elbe Duchies, which she first held out to the Fatherland, and then appropriated to herself. The overthrow of Austria induced the Northern states to submit, some out of compulsion, and others out of love, but all out of a hope that under so puissant a leader, an impoverished state of independence might be changed for one of wealthy servility. Hence, the Confederation or Staatenbund of the North, which placed the armaments and international relationships of all the states on the Prussian side of the Main completely under the control of Berlin. The Treaty of Prague guaranteed independent action, as well as a separate confederation to the German states south of the Main. But while the ink wherewith that treaty was signed was scarcely dry, and while Napoleon was congratulating his subjects on having set up two confederations in Germany instead of one, Bismark signed treaties of offensive and defensive alliance with each of the Southern States, which made their confederation an impossibility, by placing all their armaments as completely in the hands of Prussia as if they belonged to the Northern Bund. But, in these days, changes take place so rapidly as to exhaust our breath in recounting them. The goal of Prussian ambition to-day, is its starting-post to-morrow. The North German Confederation, with their treaties of defensive and offensive alliance, which have done their work so effectually in the subjugation of France, has already made room for another edifice of a more momentous character. The Staatenbund, which has disappeared, was, as its name imports, a mere confederacy. The union was effective for federal purposes, but too much individual action was left to the component bodies. The armies of the Confederacy, though under the command of the King of Prussia, as President of the Bund, owed fealty to their respective chiefs. There is something naïve in the declaration that they should have command of their own troops in time of peace. But now this poor shadow of sovereignty is taken away, and the armies of the Northern States, both in peace and war, are handed over to the King of Prussia, and constitute part and parcel of the Prussian force. The joints have, therefore, been tightened in proportion as the area has been extended. In point of fact, the former mediatized states have been virtually incorporated with Prussia; while the semi-independent sovereignties of the south have been reduced to the position of the former mediatized states. They have only one railway and water communication, one system of post and telegraph, one mercantile marine, one tariff, one code of civil and criminal judicature, one consulate, and one army and navy. The states south of the Main now find themselves bound up in closer ligatures with those of the north than formerly united these with each other. In other words, the Staatenbund has been changed into a Bundesstaat, or a confederacy into one allied State. The whole of Germany, from the Baltic to the Vosges, from the frontiers of Gallicia to the mouth of the Weser, is now united in a single commonwealth, with an hereditary emperor, with a central parliament, and a common capital: we need hardly add that the majority of that parliament are Prussian subjects, that the Emperor is the Prussian monarch, and that the capital is Berlin.

It is curious to notice the careful guarantees by which Prussia has secured the increase of her ascendancy in the new institution, and the growth of centralization in her hands. No change can be effected in the charter which is opposed by fourteen votes of the Federal Council. But as she has seventeen of these, it is clear Germany cannot enter upon a more liberal regime unless Prussia wishes it. Baden and Hesse have, like the Northern States, handed over their armies to Prussia, with whose forces they are henceforth incorporated. The King of Bavaria has the command of his own troops only in times of peace; in war he is liable to be superseded by a Federal commander, appointed by the Emperor. Würtemburg has consented to consign her troops to a Federal commander, nominated by Prussia, both in peace and war. For this concession the King has been allowed to appoint his inferior officers, subject to the approval of the Emperor. Throughout the rest of Germany, the appointment of all the officers rests entirely with the Emperor. All the citadels and fortresses of every state, without exception, are surrendered into his hands. He can give the keys of all the strong places to whom he chooses. The Emperor alone can make war or conclude peace; though unless the country be invaded, he has been restricted, at the instance of Bavaria, from making war without the consent of the Federal Council. But, as King of Prussia, he can make war when he pleases, which renders him as practically independent of control as if the restriction did not exist. The armaments of Germany are, therefore, as practically in the hands of Prussia, as the armaments of Russia are in those of the Czar. The concessions in favour of the Kings of Würtemburg and Bavaria are so trifling, that to call these princelings kings any longer is trifling with the name. Their sovereignties are virtually absorbed in the crown of Prussia. Let the phantom monarchs, who have signed their own death-warrants at Munich and Stuttgart, presume to interfere with the mandates of Berlin, and they will be dealt with as summarily as any provincial maire who ventured to disobey imperial decrees under the Napoleonic régime.

These results we ventured to predict some five years ago, but they have been brought about with a celerity and completeness which even have surprised ourselves.[239] The fact is, there is a splendour and glitter about military achievements which the soberest cannot withstand, when they appear in the shape of victories over those who have been perpetually disparaging our strength or crowing over our weakness. It would, indeed, have been a great advantage to German liberty, had the different states been allowed to consolidate their unity in peace. Prussia would then have been obliged to make terms with the southern populations, who would have been alive to the necessity of obtaining solid pledges from her, that the resources of the German commonwealth should not be squandered to gratify the ambition of the house of Hohenzollern. But the astonishing exploits of Prussia, the unparalleled series of triumphs which have laid France prostrate at her feet, have carried away the judgments of the populations of the South, and induced them to call for indiscriminate amalgamation with the conqueror, in terms which their princes could not withstand. The sovereigns of Stuttgart and Munich had, therefore, no choice between deposition and obedience to the popular voice. They therefore made a virtue of necessity, and were the first to offer the Imperial Crown to the King of Prussia. In the Salle des Glaces at Versailles, surrounded by the pictures and medallions which perpetuate the triumphs of Louis XIV. in Franche Comté and the Netherlands, and beneath the roof of the edifice dedicated to all the glories of France, King William was solemnly proclaimed Emperor, on the anniversary of the day when, 170 years ago, the Elector Frederick first assumed the crown of Prussia. Before all the representatives of Germany, ranged beneath the banners of their respective states, at the gates of the French capital, already quivering in the throes of capitulation, and girt round with all the panoply and pride of victorious armies, the German cannon thundered out the ominous title in the ears of dying France. In the power which the title created, the lofty pinnacle to which it elevated the sovereign upon whom it was conferred, in the proud circumstances under which the transfer of the Imperial Crown was accomplished, the imagination is carried back to the days of Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa in order to find a parallel. For, the pageant represented the assumption of no mere primatial dignity, but the extension of direct sovereign power, absorbing some three kingdoms, with twenty-four principalities, which at once enables it to become supreme in Europe, both in war and peace. The nominal federal ties, by which the princes of the Southern States are allowed to flatter their hereditary vanity, cannot even outlast the present generation; for the new elections to the Federal Parliament have returned a large majority, to strengthen the autocratic interests and centralizing policy of Prussia. The need of simplification in the laws which bind up the different states into one homogeneous body, will powerfully contribute to the same end, so that, in a few years, Prussia will find herself wielding the power of the Cæsars, with a single national authority.

That Prussia will not use the tremendous force she has thus acquired to fight for empty name or mere gloire, or marshal her battalions for deadly conflict, simply because some foreign ambassador has refused to take off his hat to one of her kings' mistresses, may be readily conceded; and, taking the transfer of military ascendancy from Paris to Berlin, so much in the interests of peace has doubtless been gained. But what guarantee have we that Prussia will not use her vast accession of power to augment her material interests and enrich the populations who have confided their fortunes to her management? The military and naval supplies are raised by taxes, over which neither parliament—the Reichstag, nor the Federal Council—the Bundesrath, has the slightest control. The chief corner-stone of English liberty is the dependence of the executive on Parliament. If it cannot get the supplies from the legislature, down it goes. But in the adroit charter lately manipulated at Versailles, there is no executive beyond the Prussian monarch and his chancellor, and the military taxes of the Empire find their way into their exchequer, without any check or hindrance, quite as if the process was a law of nature. The great doctrine of ministerial responsibility, without which not even the shadow of constitutional liberty can be inaugurated, finds no place in the charter of the new federal Empire. It is true that any extraordinary levies or augmentation of the armaments of the Empire would have to receive the sanction of the new German legislature. But when we remember that the military resources of the Empire are already developed to the utmost, that the normal military organization of the Empire enables Bismark to exhaust its last thaler, employ its last musket, and call out its last man, it would appear a mockery to hold out this provision as a guarantee of the influence of the popular element in the new constitution. It does not improve the situation, when we remember, how resolutely the popular element in the Prussian Chambers was set at defiance by the King and his Minister, upon the refusal of the majority to endorse the increased armaments which they demanded, to enable them to appropriate the Duchies, and afterwards to fight Austria. Bismark suspended the Prussian Constitution for four years, to carry out his policy of blood and iron. A despotic charter, in the hands of Liberal ministers, might be modified in favour of progress. But with a despotic charter in the hands of a despotic minister, we see little hope for the future pacification of Europe. France is under the heel of Germany, and Germany under the heel of Prussia. That that power will henceforth champion the liberties she has hitherto done her best to repress; that she will voluntarily renounce the plundering policy which has been the predominant feature of her character for a policy of justice and rectitude; that she will hereafter woo peace with the same ardour with which she has up to the present wooed the sword, is what we most devoutly wish, but which we cannot bring ourselves to believe.

In fact, Prussia has by no means fulfilled the destiny which she avows it is her honest mission to accomplish. She is called by Providence to unite the whole of Fatherland under her sceptre. But the German kingdom still remains divided. The edifice of German nationality still requires the copestone for the completion of the structure. The words which her sovereign addressed to the German people on the day when he accepted the imperial crown at Versailles, are strikingly significant of her pretensions, 'The Empire,' said the king, or rather Bismark, who spoke in his person, 'has been in abeyance some sixty years. We are summoned to undertake its re-establishment.' In 1806, the dissolution of the old Germanic Empire followed as a natural consequence of the Confederation of the Rhine. The Emperor of Austria, at the dictation of Napoleon, then renounced the title and regalia of the empire which had fallen to pieces, but which King William now takes it upon himself to revive. 'Accordingly,' says this monarch, 'we and our successors to the crown of Prussia henceforth shall use the imperial title in all the relations and affairs of the German Empire; and we hope to God that it may be vouchsafed to the German people to lead the Fatherland on to a blessed future under the auspices of its ancient splendour.'[240] As an earnest of this intention, Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine, together with a portion of French-speaking Lorraine, brought under the German flag, is an important revival of the old kingdom on its western frontier. This is a rich slice to commence with. But the resuscitation of the Empire with the western limb of the Austrian monarchy, and nine millions of Germans left out, is like the resuscitation of Greece without either Athens or Thermopylæ; or the play of Hamlet, with the part of the Prince excluded from the programme. The union of Fatherland would be a mockery, and the revival of the Empire a nullity, without the annexation of those provinces which constitute the birthplace and cradle of its history. Accordingly, when the Germanic Confederation was set up in 1815, as a substitute for the old diet, the German provinces of Austria were deemed of such importance as to confer upon her the leading voice in its councils. It is not, therefore, likely that some forty-two millions of Germans will long remain united, without endeavouring to include, under the same hegemony, the nine additional millions now clamouring for admission outside. Already, within the German provinces of Austria, committees are established, with a view to afford their Northern brethren a fulcrum for realizing the desired event. In Glatz, Salzburg, Innsprück, Linz, and Vienna, fêtes were prepared to celebrate the recent triumphs of their German compatriots, which the Hohenhart ministry was obliged to suppress by force. But even despite of the Government, numerous meetings have been held in which the warmest eagerness for German unity and for federal union with Berlin has been expressed. Indeed, the Austro-Germans who formerly aspired to lead Fatherland, now live in subordination to the Sclaves, whose influence in the Austrian Chambers, by mere force of numbers, is paramount to their own. They, therefore, seek union with their heroic countrymen, with all the more ardour, as it would release them from the ascendency of a race whom they despise. Guided by the aspirations of his countrymen, Bismark will find a much easier passage across the Inn to the Leitha than across the Rhine to the Moselle. The work of German nationality has advanced so far that we must doubt, if Prussia remained indifferent to the prize, that the fusion would not be accomplished by the very momentum which the movement has already acquired. But with Prussia, true to the grasping instincts of her house, clothed with the enormous prestige of her recent victories, and throwing all her energies into the struggle, Austria can no more resist the absorption than a wave of the Eider could resist being swallowed up in a ground swell from the German Ocean.

The limits of the revived Empire on its Southern frontier will, doubtless, be such as to enclose those provinces in which the Germans form the principal element. These comprise Upper and Lower Austria, including Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, and the Tyrol. Some two millions occupy the north and western frontiers of Bohemia. In the north-east of Moravia, and the eastern part of Austrian-Silesia, there are some seven hundred thousand more. But the proportion of the German to the Sclavonic populations of Bohemia and Moravia is only one-fourth; so that these provinces cannot be annexed to the German Empire without giving the doctrine of nationality its coup de grâce. But Moravia and Bohemia constituted integral portions of the old German Empire. They were, also, reclaimed as such by Austria, on the construction of the Germanic Confederation in 1815. There are besides strategical reasons. For the Austrian Archducal province, with its three millions of Germans, would be blocked up between the Czechs and Magyars, while Bohemia would extend like a wedge into the bowels of the Empire. We are afraid, that when the question comes to be settled, both Bohemia and Moravia will find themselves eaten up, sandwichlike, by the German populations on the north and south frontiers, and assimilated into the political body which is already dominating Europe.

But the necessity of increased outlets for German industry, and of further materials for the expansion of her commerce, will be as powerful a stimulant for the growth of Prussian Cæsarism as the principle of nationality. Germany having achieved her national unity, will require free access to the seaboard of the German Ocean. She will require ships and colonies. The possession of Holland would place all these requirements at her disposal, and enable her to fructify her home commerce a hundredfold. Professor Newman sees such advantage to both parties in the annexation, that he is anxious the union should be accomplished; he rather naïvely adds that Prussia will withhold her hand, because she would not wish to be hampered with Java or Surinam, and the other possessions which alone impart to Holland its significancy. Twenty millions of colonial population, however, would be a prize as glittering to the Germans as the Dutch seaboard at home; and, therefore, no one was overwhelmed with surprise when its annexation was mentioned as one of the overtures made by Bismark to the French Emperor in return for Prussian acquiescence in the French seizure of Belgium. Nor can it excite wonder that the French Emperor refused as promptly as his uncle, when the Russian Alexander offered to France both Syria and Egypt in return for allowing him to seize Constantinople. But now there is no France to block the way, and Holland is entirely at the mercy of Berlin. The House of Nassau had its representative in the Germanic Confederation, to answer for the interests of Luxembourg. Why should it not have its representative in the Bundesrath at Berlin, and sacrifice its independence, to bask in the splendour of the new Empire? If the four millions of Dutchmen do not fall in with these suggestions so readily as the five millions of Bavarians, they will be found as incompetent as the Bavarians would have been, to oppose the high behests and the colossal interests of a race of fifty millions, who threaten to rule the world. The Netherlands were an important limb of the old Germanic Empire. The Dutch section of it is identified with Germany by military traditions. Her language and religion are Teutonic. In resuming possession of this territory, the revivers of the old imperial domination would not meet with anything like the difficulties they have to encounter in incorporating the eastern frontiers of France.

The absorption of Holland, by so powerful a country as Germany, would deal a heavy blow at our own naval supremacy. But this danger is the least of those which are ahead. For Prussia does not appear alone upon the scene of action; and there are prizes for her to seize, which require the support of an ally who has herself a direct interest in the spoil, and who is troubled with as few scruples as Prussia herself. There cannot, we think, be a doubt that Prussia entered upon the recent campaign with a secret understanding with Russia, of armed intervention on the part of that power, in case of certain eventualities arising out of the war, unfavourable to Prussia. The two combatants had not measured swords at Spicheren, before this treaty was suddenly announced, and as boldly denied. The cordial greetings of the two courts, moreover, during the progress of the war; the shout of rapture which every French disaster drew from the Emperor Alexander; the indiscreet announcement of the Emperor William, that he would never forget that he owed it to the attitude of his Imperial nephew that the war did not assume larger dimensions, and the conferring on each other, at the conclusion of the campaign, military honours; all these things tend conclusively to prove that, in league with Prussia, there is a power still more formidable to the liberties of mankind. Had it not been for this assurance of support from Russia, it would have been perfect madness for Prussia to leave her eastern frontier exposed to the inroads of Austria, when that power was counting her chances as to throwing in her lot with France. Had Austria moved a musket, Russia would have poured her troops through the defiles of the Carpathians, and given her another enemy to encounter. Bismark was, therefore, enabled to leave Saxony as much unprotected, as were the Rhine Provinces in the war of 1866. When France was prostrate; when she was expiring under the terrible effects of the blow which she had recklessly invited, but which the connivance of Russia enabled Germany with collective force to deal; that power plainly exposed her cards, and showed the interests she had in the struggle. In the month of November, Gortschakoff startled London by announcing the intention of Russia to repudiate the treaty of 1856. Within a little time afterwards, the Prussian Prince of Roumania declared he could no longer support his position as Turkish feudatary; but must convert his government into one of independent sovereignty, or retire from it altogether. About the same period, as if to bring the repudiation of treaties in fashion, Bismark announced the resolution of Prussia to withdraw from the guarantee of 1867 protecting the neutrality of Luxembourg. If two of these difficulties have been transitionally arranged, the compromisers have only deferred the real solution of the question they involve, to a more convenient opportunity. It is very ominous for England, that Europe, at present, is virtually in the hands of two potentates evidently acting in concert with each other, who can place two millions and a half of fighting men in the field; and that both have shown a disposition to complicate affairs in the East, to the spoils of which each possesses peculiar pretensions, as well as peculiar means of realizing those pretensions in the amplest manner.

The interest of Russia in driving the Turks out of Europe is traditional. She believes in it as a mission to which she is called by divine Providence. It is not merely an affair of conquest, but a matter of religion. For this she exists as a nation, bound to execute the task at all hazards, and to intermit no opportunity of bringing it about. With Prussia it is merely a question of arithmetic. But the gain to her, were the struggle only partially decided in her favour, is such as to overpower even an Oriental imagination. The conjoint export and import trade of Turkey may be set down at forty millions annually. Of this trade England has, at present, the lion's share. The rest is mainly divided between Italy, France, Austria, and Russia. Prussia and Northern Germany enjoy little or next to nothing of it. Turkey, to them, might as well not be in existence, except for the wealth it pours into the coffers of their neighbours. Formerly Russia has been prevented from dealing with the 'sick man' by the protectorate of the Western Powers. England and France have been repeatedly offered ascendancy on the banks of the Nile, in return for permitting Russian ascendancy on the shores of the Bosphorus. But, besides the principle of equity, which no English minister dare contravene, it would have been an absurd policy, in exchange for an African or Asiatic province, to place our trade in the Levant in jeopardy, by allowing Russia to instal herself in Constantinople. But Russia has now an accomplice who can help her to the booty, who is troubled with no moral delicacy, and who would gain a large revenue out of the transaction. Prussia, by laying her hand upon the north-western limb of European Turkey, would command the navigation of the Danube, and divert a large stream of Oriental commerce to the capitals of Germany. Provinces which are at present rich, even in their uncultivated state, would, colonized by Prussia, become the granaries of the world. The Italian portions of the Empire are gone from it irretrievably: but Germany can indemnify herself by expansion in an eastern direction. If, therefore, no extraneous force intervenes, we look forward to the establishment of a Prussian sovereignty, extending from the Euxine to the Adriatic, and owning no limit till it tops the crests of the Balkan. The scion of her house, who has already converted the Principalities into a Prussian arsenal, is in an admirable position to direct her energies towards this object. While Russia operates on the Asiatic frontier, the Prussian Hospodar, backed by German battalions, and reinforced with ordnance from Berlin, has only to put out his hand, and Bosnia and Servia are in his grasp. With the iron and steel of the Vosges, with the copper, lead, and silver mines of Carinthia and Carniola, with the silks and carpets of Shumla, and the grain of Servia and Roumania, Germany would possess a trade with which the commerce of Italy in the Middle Ages, or the colossal industries of England in the nineteenth century, would be dwarfed in comparison. Would she resist the prize within her reach, if the tempter at her ear instigated her to take it as her share of the spoil? The Ottoman Empire may be said to derive the very breath of its existence from the jealousy of the great Powers. The States of the West had an instinctive dread of the great Empire of the North, besides a mutual mistrust of each other; and, therefore, the fairest plains of Europe were allowed to remain in possession of those who had no ambitious instincts to gratify, and no foreign predilections to indulge. But now the state of affairs is profoundly changed, and Turkey finds herself at the mercy of two military despots, who are acting in concert, without any protection from their cupidity, but what their own mistrust of each other may happen to oppose.

Up to 1866 five great Powers existed in Europe. But we cannot conceal it from ourselves, that in the interim of a few years, three of these have either been neutralized or practically effaced. Since the battle of Kœniggratz it would be idle to say that Austria is of any account in Europe. The blow she received at Solferino was a prelude to the loss of Venetia, and the loss of her Italian possessions is only a prelude to the stroke which will drive her completely out of Germany. When empires rise, they accomplish the task of expansion with difficulty and labour, but when they sink, everything appears greased to impel the wheels along the declivity of descent. Austria has ceased to be an empire, and will soon find it difficult to maintain an independent sovereignty. When her Germans imitate her quondam Italian subjects in attaching themselves to their own nationality, the Magyar and multifarious Sclavonian tribes will alone remain, whose respective interests are so antagonistic, that anything like union under one sceptre, without being tempered by the influence of less excitable races, will be difficult in the extreme. At present, her possession of nine millions of Germans, is much more a source of weakness than of strength. Prussia, in any scheme of annexation she may contemplate, or in any object she may have in view, has only to show that it is for the interest of Fatherland, and Austrian Germany is at once alive to the necessity of paralysing the action of its own Government, and assisting the Prussian project. During the late war, it was manifestly the interest of Austria to have flung in her lot with France, but had she done so, the first enemy whom she would have had to encounter would have been her German subjects. The mode in which she clung to our garments during the struggle, and like a child with its nurse, interceded with us to interfere between the combatants, when she dared not interfere herself, was a glaring instance of the timidity arising out of her weakness. When we remember the boldness of Metternich before Napoleon I., and how Maria Theresa, yet bleeding from the loss of Silesia, confronted the united hostility of France and Prussia, we are astonished at the pusillanimity which Austria displays, even in her present stage of decrepitude. In 1866, though backed by nearly all the military forces of the Confederation, she suffered herself to be prostrated by Prussia, and her imperial mantle to be stript from her in a few weeks. It is therefore not from such a Power that any help can come, when Prussia in the name of Germany finds her way to the seaboard of the Northern Ocean, or when the Russian Emperor and his ally choose to realize any little plans they may have concerted, with a view of bringing Turkey within the sphere of European civilization.

The position of France is much more desperate than that of Austria, though the compact unity of her race holds out a better prospect of her recovering some portion of her former strength. This, however, if it occurs, will not be, at least, in our generation. We must, therefore, regard the course affairs may take during the next twenty years, as if she was not in existence, at least as a controlling power. It is not the effect of the material, so much as of the moral, ruin of the French nation which has to be feared. Before the German armies passed through the defiles of the Vosges, the corruption of the Second Empire had done its work in effeminating the character of a gallant people. The mode in which the Army of the Rhine left the capital of France for the frontier, animated with the spirit of conquest, and glittering with all the vain conceit of anticipated triumph, and the mode in which that proud host was rolled back, never halting for a moment until fortressed walls afforded them some respite from their pursuers, can be paralleled only by the bluster of those armies of old, who under Mardonius and Hippias came to wreck all the pride of Persia against the gates of Greece. The spirit of a nation must be entirely emasculated, its prowess gone, when the flower of its soldiery can surrender in masses of hundreds of thousands to an enemy in numbers hardly superior; and when the great body of the army can be allowed to be shut up for nearly two months in a fortress, without making any decisive attempt to cut through a line of weaker proportionate strength, and without the country so much as putting up a finger to relieve them. The capitulations of Sedan and Metz, consigning the famous Imperial Guard, which so often restored the fluctuating fortunes of France under Ney and Cambronne, and 300,000 soldiers to the hulks of Germany, there to be employed as beasts of burden and helots, make us almost blush at the name of Frenchmen. Such shameful surrenders are hardly equalled by the masses of barbarous Cossacks under Peter the Great, whom Charles XII. netted like shoals of fish in the Ukraine. If the Republican armies did not conduct themselves so ignominiously, it cannot be forgotten that the strategy of Chanzy and Faidherbe was disconcerted by the Mobiles flinging down their arms at the critical moment, and exhausting in a panic-flight energies which ought to have been employed against the enemy. Even in the Paris sorties, after the tide had spent its strength, more soldiers surrendered themselves than the Germans cared to make prisoners. It also speaks volumes for French military degeneracy, that the German armies were permitted, for four months, to go through the dilatory process of strangling Paris, by famine, without a single attempt being made to interrupt their two lines of communication with Germany, except a bold but abortive one by Ricciotti Garibaldi, when, had the country by foraging parties constantly directed its energies to this end, they might have placed the besieging armies in the same plight as the besieged. If the French justly complain of the physical prostration to which the plundering and huckstering propensities of the Germans have reduced France, this mischief is nothing in comparison with the moral prostration to which their submission to twenty years of a corrupt despotism has brought the country. The injury inflicted by the foreigner, they may in a few years partially retrieve, but the evil they have inflicted on themselves is likely to be of a far more permanent character. The fact is, France can never show her face in the arena of foreign diplomacy, much less appear in the front rank again, until she probes her weaknesses to the bottom, and eliminates the causes which have so powerfully contributed to cast the nation, like a bleeding and mangled carcase, under the heel of Prussia. Perhaps the most destructive of these, is the number of hostile factions into which her population is split, each clamouring against the other, with a hatred ever ready to burst out into civil conflict. In France, Republicanism is arrayed against Monarchy, and each of these parties admits of infinite subdivisions, arrayed against each other. Legitimist, Constitutionalist, and Imperialist, represent the monarchical element. But the Bonapartist entertains not a greater hatred to the Orleanist, than the Socialist entertains to the Conservative Republican. Then, the priest-party in the country has a thorough abhorrence of the free-thinking Democrat of the town. It cannot be denied, that during the late war, these factions did much to paralyze the energies of the country. The Republican party had little sympathy for the armies which were overthrown at Woerth, and sent into captivity at Sedan. The priest-party had as little sympathy for the raw levies which Gambetta sent to be mown down like unresisting grass, under Chanzy and Bourbaki. The energy of the nation was constantly divided against itself. Its heart was never thoroughly enlisted against Germany in any part of the struggle. The country wanted a common hope, a united faith, a solidarity of principle to champion it in the struggle. Until these miserable feuds are terminated, we see little hope for France. For, they reduce the country to the same state of imbecility, which rendered Poland, fifty years previous to her extinction, of no account in Europe. That they will entirely disappear we have little hope. But that they will be very considerably diminished by the galling chastisement which Prussia has inflicted, is what we try to believe, although the events which have transpired in Paris during the last fortnight, in which the bloodthirsty cruelty and aimless recklessness of the Paris mob have been met by the miserable irresolution, divided councils, and practical imbecility of the Versailles government, almost destroy all reasonable hope. It is just in proportion to the degree in which hatred of Prussia, and the desire of being revenged for the punishment she has recently administered, shall diminish the rancour of political factions and amalgamate all the feelings and strength of the country into one flood-tide of patriotism, that we must look for the political regeneration of France. Prussia, by the exorbitant demands she has imposed, has certainly done her utmost to bring about this result. She has purchased the triumphs and security of to-day, at the expense of future ages of misery and retribution. But it is not consolatory to think that, whatever may be her efforts, so low is the present position of France, that she must consent to remain a political cypher during the present century, and that her only means of recovering her position, even as a first-class power, and of directing her united energies and resources to that end, is by renewing the struggle with her relentless enemy.

That France in the school of adversity will unlearn much of the frivolity and self-glorifying spirit which has distinguished her people during the Second Empire, is another advantage which may be hoped rather than expected from her recent disasters—an advantage, indeed, which would confer as many benefits upon herself as upon the world. France, ever since the days of Louis Quatorze, has been too much accustomed to deem herself the arbitress of Europe. She had come to recognise it as her peculiar mission to open or shut the Temple of Janus, and give peace or war to the world. It was her boast that not a gun could be fired off in Europe without her consent. This had been repeated so often, in later times, that not only Frenchmen but mankind generally came to believe it. The consequence was, that when any restlessness was exhibited at the Tuileries, foreign nations began to look at their muskets, increase their armaments, and prepare for eventualities. Nor will anyone, who considers the exploits of the First Napoleon, the marvels he accomplished in the midst of a divided Italy and a dismembered Germany, regard the belief as having no foundation. But France, while trading on the splendid reminiscences of the First Empire, during the Second, completely lost that daring and resolute spirit by which those wonders had been achieved. While pandering to all the foolish vanities, and indulging in the hectoring and blustering swagger, generated by the victories of the First Napoleon, she had sunk in the slough of effeminacy all that martial dash, that burning ardour, and fearless courage which enabled her, against overwhelming odds, to nail victory to her standards at Marengo and Austerlitz. The delusion under which she laboured, was not surpassed by that of Greece, who, when debauched by her Asiatic conquests, imagined, in her struggles with the Roman Empire, that she possessed the prowess of the heroes who made such havoc with the Persian armies at Marathon and Thermopylæ. The folly, into which this delusion has betrayed her, can only be measured by the colossal nature of the task she undertook—a task before which even the adventurous genius of Napoleon would have quailed, that of defeating upwards of forty millions of Germans armed to the teeth, and united against her as one man. The result must open her own eyes to the hollow nature of her pretensions, quite as much as it has undeceived the world. She must now learn, if she would not be ridiculous, since she cannot bring her deeds up to the level of her words, to reduce her words to the level of her performances. She must for ever renounce all idea of military ascendancy in Europe—an idea, the realization of which has so often covered her with wounds, and now has eclipsed all her glory. The cultivation of a chastened spirit on the part of France, the abandonment of her levity, the manifestation of a proper sense of the humiliation to which she is reduced, will doubtless free the world from some nightmares, and powerfully contribute to the rehabilitation of the country. But the work is a question of time. The change cannot be perceptibly felt during the lifetime of the present generation; and in the interim, before she can exercise any marked influence on the course of events, the keys of Europe may be fought for, and the world's Empire given away.

When we contrast the past glories of France, the height of power she attained, or even the influence she might have exerted under wise rulers over contemporary events, with her present prostration and political eclipse, it is impossible to over-estimate the gravity of the crisis to humanity. A great force has been struck out of the nations. A power upon which during the last half century we leaned for the enforcement of order, and the progress of constitutional ideas in Europe, has been removed. She is, at present, as politically dead as if the Atlantic wave rolled over Limoges, and crested the Jura. Except England, which it is the fashion to decry as selfish and sordid, her Crimean and Abyssinian wars notwithstanding, France was the only nation in Europe that was chivalrous enough to fight for abstract right, especially when it was endangered among the Latin nations. It is owing to her that Italy has become free, united, and independent. The Poles always found in her the resolute champion of their interests. Russian ambition had nowhere a more uncompromising enemy than the great people whose political obsequies are now being celebrated by illuminations in Berlin. It is true, on a few occasions, led away by a false sense of her own interest, her Government refused to sanction the policy we recommended for its adoption; and in the case of the Egyptian suzerainty and the Spanish marriages, moved exactly in a contrary direction. But it may be safely affirmed that for the last half-century, under every government France has possessed, she has co-operated with our own, in resisting aggression, and promoting the triumph of constitutional principles in every part of Europe. Under the united flags of both countries, an independent kingdom was founded in Greece. From 1830 to 1833 she assisted us to establish Belgium, to promote constitutional government in Switzerland and Piedmont, and to guard the infancy of the constitutional monarchy of Spain. In 1839, we united our efforts to extinguish the feud between Mehemet Ali and the Porte. We also joined our protests, when Russia suppressed Warsaw, and Prussia and Austria extinguished Cracow, just as we sent in our united protests when these two powers made their raid on Denmark. Our forces fought together in 1827 to protect Greece from Turkey, as in 1854 to protect Turkey against Russia. The two Western nations were, as regards force, the complements of each other. What the one wanted to be complete, the other had. Singly, they were impotent to withstand any combination of despots; but united, they might have defied the world. Now France is a wreck, and we stand isolated in Europe. The head of the Latin nations lies shattered in the dust; and the people whose independence we assisted her to build up, are unable by themselves to lift an arm, or to afford any effectual barrier against aggression. Their sole resource now is in England, who stands alone, looking with dismay upon the effacement of the two allies, upon whom she mainly relied in her difficulties, and upon the alliance of two military monarchies in Europe who dominate the situation. It depends entirely upon the attitude of Great Britain during the next few years whether she surely shall participate in the fate of her allies, and abandon the world to a retrogressive policy; or whether the foyers of freedom and independence shall be kept alive in Europe; and whether the spirit of justice and rectitude, instead of that of rapacity and conquest, shall sway the intercourse of nations.

For our part, it is not without some misgivings that we look forward to the policy of Great Britain, during the next thirty years. We do not lose our faith in God, nor in the power of right principles, nor do we mistrust the indomitable spirit and resources of the country when once fairly roused, disciplined, and utilized with sagacity and skill. But of late years there has been a growing party in the State, who would confine the energies of the Government to its own internal affairs; who would withdraw it from active intervention in European politics; who would employ every shilling of our expenditure upon developing the commercial resources of the country, and who would not even prepare to resist an enemy until they saw him actually approaching our shores. The disciples of this school, fortified by the principles of political economy, refuse to see any other element in our relations with foreign countries than the mere ledger account of barter and gain; and anything which suspends the traffic, or withdraws the national energies into other paths, is denounced by them as suicidal to the national interests. War shatters the doctrines of political economists. It is, therefore, only natural they should attempt to relieve us of warlike armaments and decry military organization. There can be no doubt that the Reform Bills of 1831 and 1868, by throwing power into the hands of the great trading classes, have augmented the strength of this party, until it weighs with preponderating effect on the main-spring of Government. We gladly admit the beneficial influences of the changes which this party have largely contributed to bring about, in interior retrenchment and municipal reforms, in the equalization of political privileges, in the extension of education, in the partial abolition of University Tests, in the liberation of commerce from protective duties, and of religion from State-Church endowments. We heartily accord, moreover, with its denunciations of the war spirit, as such. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that these benefits have not been unalloyed by some admixture of evil. For, to the fact of our applying all our energies in this direction, may be traced the breakdown of our armies before Sebastopol; the acceptance of the declaration of Paris, which strips England of one of its most potent weapons in naval warfare; and the shameful abandonment of Denmark in the affair of the Duchies, which has given rise to three wars and to the present complicated difficulties which we have to face.[241] It even now is a question whether, if Russia were to enter upon a new phase of encroachment in the East, or Prussia were to annex Holland, we could, or dare, interpose with dignity and effect. Any joint scheme of conquest pursued by these two military monarchies, we might certainly as well hope to resist, as a child might venture to arrest an avalanche; and our individual incompetency would, in the eyes of the governing class, be a solid reason for not endeavouring to solicit the aid of a series of disorganized States who are weaker than ourselves. For the last fifty years, our influence abroad has depended very much on the martial spirit and the indomitable pluck we displayed in our struggles with the First Napoleon. But, if we were now to enter upon a Continental war of only one-fifth of the dimensions of that we carried on against Napoleon, we should find ourselves, without allies, as little competent to support our former prestige, as the French have lately found themselves to support the prestige of the First Empire.

But the weakness of England lies not so much in the ascendancy of the non-intervention party, as in the hand-to-mouth policy of the English Executive. Every question of foreign policy is considered exclusively on its own merits, and solely with relation to the circumstances of the hour. It is never considered as evolved out of the events of the past, and linked with the impending events of the future. The Minister, instead of contemplating the question in its philosophic bearings, surrounded with all the lights which his lofty position enables him to command, counts his majorities, feels the pulse of the nation through the organs of the press, and decides upon adopting that course which shall most contribute to strengthen his power. In all these questions, the necessity of preserving a Cabinet is always paramount to that of saving a nation. At this crisis, it is unfortunate we have to do with States which pursue an entirely opposite system. The foreign policy of England fluctuates now in one direction, and then in another, much at the mercy of vulgar opinion, according to whatever whims the Minister may have who happens to be in power. But the foreign policy of Russia and Prussia broadens out like a mighty stream which unceasingly rolls its current in one direction, and never ceases to return with renewed effort upon any point where it may have sustained a temporary defeat. The policy of both Powers is one in act, identical in principle, substance, and complexion. It is the simple abnegation of justice in the comity of nations. Since the days of Peter the Great, and the first Frederic, the policy of these two Powers has been one of continuous annexation and conquest. Prussia has no more intention of arresting her course at the foot of the Carpathians, than Russia at the foot of the Caucasus. It behoves, therefore, the British people to change their course, and adjust their sails to the altered circumstances of affairs. Nor is it less incumbent on Ministers to be alive to the fact, that, though they may receive their home policy from the dictates of the people, it is their high sphere, on all questions of foreign policy, to guide, direct, create, and fashion the opinion of the country. There may be a difference of opinion as to how far the nation is bound to uphold the principles of abstract justice and right in its dealings with other Powers; but there can be no difference of opinion upon the obligation of maintaining these principles with the greatest tenacity, wherever their violation affects our interests. We would claim the support of the most rabid economist for the expediency of maintaining our rank as a first-class Power, if upon no higher principle than with a view to keep open foreign markets for our goods, and to prevent ourselves from being cut off from the sources of our commercial prosperity. A policy, which directed all the energies of the country to its own internal affairs, might be persisted in without radical injury, while the political equilibrium was divided between five States, each bent upon neutralizing its neighbour's power by counter-checks and balances; but the same policy pursued while Europe is in the hands of two military monarchies, apparently having only one game in view, would be simple ruin to the nation.

We therefore regard the present Army Organization Bill as a step in the right direction: our only objection to it is, that it does not go far enough. What the nation wants is increased military efficiency, and diminished expense. The Bill does not secure the one, and only partially realizes the other. We, however, are content to proceed by steps, if we are only secure of going in the right direction. Let us hope this measure is only the prelude to a series of others, which may increase our military efficiency without increasing the military burdens of the country. But union is strength. The liberal States of Europe, like the sticks in the fable, may be weak in themselves, but they can easily become strong by mutual alliance. The time is not inopportune for a League among the smaller States, based upon mutual defence from attack, which, if it could not preserve peace, might afford England, in conjunction with her crippled allies, a fulcrum of support in time of need. At all events, it is our duty, besides attending to our military organizations at home, to enter into closer relationship with the independent States of Europe, that if the autocrats of the North persist in indulging their old freak of enriching themselves at their neighbours' expense, they may not find us unprepared to maintain the power and greatness of this country.

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Contemporary Literature.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.

The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A., Barrister-at-Law. Two vols. Longmans.

These two handsome volumes are the result of twenty-five years' almost continuous industry, and they bear abundant testimony to the variety and interest of the author's researches and lucubrations. It was undoubtedly a bold and happy resolution that led him to follow in Lord Campbell's path, and attempt to accomplish for the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, what that successful lawyer and judge had already done with such vigour, clearness, and liberality for the Lord Chancellors of England. Mr. O'Flanagan has certainly produced a work which will command public attention from the specially skilful manner in which he has furnished, in connection with the personal biography of the great lawyers, an almost continuous review of Irish events, together with a thousand traditionary reminiscences and anecdotes, scandalous or praiseworthy, concerning the Irish bar, from the earliest period. The portraits, especially in the first volume, may be rather indistinct; but, after all, the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, for a period of about six hundred years, stand before us with a remarkable distinctness, in all their variety of opinion, accomplishment, and character; the arrogant churchman, the profound politician, the corrupt judge, the staunch patriot, the fierce fanatic, and the eccentric jester, all playing their parts variously, and at times in a manner but little consistent with the character of their sedate and pacific avocations. The first Irish Chancellor of whom there is any record is John de Worchley, who received his appointment in 1219, in the reign of Henry III. Nearly all the early Chancellors were Englishmen, as well as prelates. Their courts were held in Dublin Castle. Their salaries were originally £40 a year, exclusive of fees and perquisites; now the income of the office is £8,000 a year, with a retiring pension of £4,000. The greatest of all the Irish Chancellors were certainly Lord Clare and Lord Plunket, and Mr. O'Flanagan not inappropriately devotes to their biographies nearly two-thirds of the second volume.

It is very evident to the most cursory reader of this work, that the author is a very staunch Roman Catholic, as well as a most patriotic Irishman; but we should not on this ground hold him disqualified for his present task, if he discovered a general candour and impartiality in those instances in which his religious convictions are concerned. Unhappily, however, in such cases, surgit amari aliquid. It would be impossible for us to note all the evidences of religious partizanship observable in the pages of this extensive work; but we prefer to direct public attention to a very bold though unsuccessful attempt to vindicate the character of one of the most detestable and unprincipled judges who ever disgraced the Irish bench. Mr. O'Flanagan has taken extraordinary pains to wipe the stains from the character of Sir Alexander Fitton, the Irish Lord Chancellor of James II., who certainly appears in no enviable light in the pages of Hume and Macaulay. Though compelled to admit that he may not be 'able to remove the stains altogether,' our author is still bold enough to say, 'with patience and perseverance, I have satisfied myself that party prejudice originated or embellished most of the original accusations.' (Vol. i. p. 467.) The case is one of purely historical evidence. Hume's reference to Fitton is in these words:—Tyrconnell was now vested with full authority, and carried over with him as Chancellor, one Fitton, a man who was taken from a jail, and who had been convicted of forgery and other crimes, but who compensated for all his enormities by his headlong zeal for the Catholic religion. He was even heard to say from the bench, that the Protestants were all rogues, and that there was not one among forty thousand that was not a traitor, a rebel, and a villain.' Macaulay's account is substantially the same; but he adds that Fitton 'often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest.' Mr. O'Flanagan disposes of these statements by affirming that both these historians drew their representations from the account of Fitton given in his 'State of the Protestants of Ireland during King James's Government,' by Archbishop King, of Dublin, an avowed enemy. Burnet, however, in his 'History of his own Times,' speaks of Tyrconnell and Fitton as 'not only professed but zealous Papists,' and of Fitton he says, he 'knew no other law but the king's pleasure.' It is a very remarkable fact that Plowden, the Roman Catholic historian, in his 'Historical Review,' published long after these works, does not make the slightest allusion to Fitton, though if he had preserved anything like the spirit of Mr. O'Flanagan, he would not have allowed the memory of James's Irish Chancellor to rot under the 'repulsive reproaches of two centuries.' But we are fully prepared to show that Dr. King did not speak without book in charging Fitton with forgery.

It is not a matter of much consequence whether Fitton was only 'one Fitton,' as Hume calls him, or a descendant of one of the most aristocratic families of Cheshire, as Mr. O'Flanagan, on undoubted evidence, assures us. Neither does anyone dispute the fact that he was convicted of the crime of forgery, and lay several years in prison. The question is, was he guilty of the crime? Our author says—'There is some doubt whether he was chargeable with the guilt which has been so unsparingly imputed to him;' but he cannot deny that a jury of twelve men had no hesitation on their oath in attaching forgery to his name. What, then, are the facts of the case? These are recounted at some length by Mr. O'Flanagan, following the admirable and now rare 'County History of Cheshire,' by Ormerod; but he has not fairly followed his authority, as his narrative omits passage after passage that bears most hardly against Fitton. We are also to remember that Ormerod's own authority was a tract written in Fitton's own justification, under the following title:—'A True Account of the Proceedings in the several suits in Law that have been between the Right Honorable Charles Lord Gerard of Brandon and Alexander Fitton, Esq. Published for general satisfaction by a lover of truth. Hague: Printed mdclxiii. Small 4to, 49 pp.' There was also another tract published, which, perhaps, Ormerod never saw, under the title—'A Reply to a Paper intituled, A New Account of the Unreasonableness of Mr. Fitton's pretences against the Earl of Macclesfield.' (British Museum, Parl. Law Cases, vol. v., p. 117.) The facts of the case as narrated in these tracts by Fitton's friends, may be briefly described. Sir Edward Fitton, who was childless, resolved in 1641, after paying his debts and bequeathing legacies to his sisters' children, to restore the ancient entail of the Gawsworth estates, and sealed it by indenture dated 9th Nov., 17 Car., on William Fitton, his next male kinsman, the father of Alexander Fitton, the Irish Lord Chancellor. In this settlement there was a power of revocation. It is said to have been confirmed by deed-poll, dated April 3, 18 Car., by Sir Edward Fitton, who died two years after at Bristol. The allegation is that this deed-poll was forged by Alexander Fitton, or, at his instance, by Alexander Grainger. After Sir Edward's death, his widow, Lady Fitton, retained possession of Gawsworth as her jointure; but on her death, after a series of lawsuits instituted against the sisters of Sir Edward Fitton, who were determined to retain the estate, William Fitton succeeded in getting Gawsworth into his possession, and his son, Alexander, afterwards succeeded upon his marriage in getting hold of all the property by paying off a number of mortgages against it. But nineteen years after Sir Edward Fitton's death, as this tract states, his nephew, Lord Gerard, produced a will bequeathing the estates to himself, as the son of one of Sir Edward's sisters; though it was stated, on the other side, that immediately before his death, Sir Edward said 'he would rather settle his estate on Ned Fitton, the bonny beggar, than on any one of his sisters' children.' The parties then went to law, Alexander Fitton relying on the deed-poll, and Lord Gerard maintaining that it was not genuine. The High Court of Chancery directed a trial at law to be had at Westminster upon this special issue, whether the deed-poll was the act of Sir Edward Fitton or not; for it had been rumoured that Lord Gerard's solicitor had prevailed upon Abraham Grainger to swear that he had forged Sir Edward's hand to the deed. The question came on for trial; the deed was substantiated—to use Ormerod's words—by the evidence of Mr. Richard Davenport, Mr. Edmund Barwick, and Mr. Thomas Smallwoods, whose deposition was taken on his deathbed by Mr. Edge, a clergyman; but the forgery was, on the other hand, fully acknowledged by Grainger himself, corroborated by the evidence of Gifford and Wheeler; and it was also deposed by Colonel R. Ashton,—Webb, Esq., Thomas Adams, Thomas Cotton, Captain Holland, and others, that they had heard Mr. Fitton confess that Grainger had forged a deed for him for £40. Depositions to Mr. Fitton's character were taken, and three witnesses not named are said to have sworn they had seen the deed-poll before the time alleged for the forgery. It was objected to Fitton that he could not prove where he had the deed, or who engrossed it; that it had not been mentioned at the former trials or at Fitton's marriage; and that the witnesses could not remember where it was executed. The jury found that the deed was forged. Now, let it be remembered that this narration comes from the Fitton party; and yet Mr. O'Flanagan holds Fitton guiltless in the teeth of the verdict of an independent jury in London, who heard both sides of the case. But the narrative does not end here. Processes were issued commanding several of Fitton's witnesses to appear before the King's Bench on an information of perjury. Then, says Mr. O'Flanagan, 'Grainger, conscience-stricken, declared his prevarication in a written document, stating that he had not forged the deed; that this document was signed in the presence of twelve or thirteen gentlemen.' Our author's version of Ormerod's history is singularly defective and one-sided. Ormerod says that Grainger—according to the tract—begged earnestly for an opportunity of acknowledging his guilt to Fitton; and, farther, did so before a citizen of London, not named, and a kinsman of Fitton's, not named; and then wrote a narrative which he read before twelve or thirteen gentlemen. But Ormerod says that these 'gentlemen' 'were all most probably in low situations, and are in no way identified.' The narration itself relates the most improbable circumstances, as, for example, that in March, 1661, Grainger, the narrator, was pulled off his horse, taken before Sir Allen Aspley, who committed him to the Gatehouse without examination; that he was in danger of being murdered in his bed by one Rowe; that he was threatened with hanging, and with getting his hands cut off, if he would not forge the will. Was there ever such an improbable story? And yet Mr. O'Flanagan passes over this statement in silence, without referring to Ormerod's honest judgment, that even the inference from Grainger's facts is in favour of Lord Gerard, and that the evidence of a perjured witness was of no value unless corroborated by independent testimony. We have good reason, then, to believe that not only did Fitton secure the forgery of the deed in the first instance, but that he induced Grainger to issue his recantation in the shape of the narration referred to. For the House of Lords, immediately after its publication, ordered two copies of it to be burned, one at Westminster and another at Chester, 'at such time as Lord Gerard should appoint,' and inflicted the following severe punishment on Fitton and three others:—'That Alexander Fitton should be fined to his Majestie in the summe of £500; and should be committed close prisoner to the King's Bench Prison until he should produce Grainger, and should find sureties for his good behaviour during life; and that Edward Floyd, John Cade, and John Wright (three of the witnesses), should be committed to the Fleet during the King's pleasure, and should, before their enlargement, find sureties for their good behaviour during life.' It is evident from this very stringent proceeding of the House of Lords that they connected Fitton very directly with the disappearance of Grainger, and that Grainger was either unable or unwilling to come forward to stand the ordeal of a public examination upon the circumstances of his recantation.

We submit, then, that Archbishop King—'with all his hatred of Catholicity'—was perfectly warranted in saying that Sir Alexander Fitton was 'a person detected of forgery, not only at Westminster and Chester, but likewise fined by the House of Lords in Parliament' (p. 65). Mr. O'Flanagan has no evidence to offer against Dr. King's further statement that he was an inefficient and partial judge, for the mere negative evidence that the Irish bar did not express any dissatisfaction with his decisions is not worth the slightest consideration. He admits that Fitton did consult one Dr. Stafford, a Popish priest, before giving some of his decisions; but then Stafford was made a Master in Chancery by the same power that placed Fitton at the head of Irish law; for, as King remarks, the Chancellor 'was forced to make many needless references to the Masters in causes that had no difficulty in them.' Stafford, 'the learned and loyal,' Mr. O'Flanagan calls him, may have been 'an eminent doctor of the civil law,' but the Reverend Master in Chancery who perished at Aughrim in cheering on the courage of the Irish troops was not exactly the person best fitted to dispense justice in such critical times—side by side, be it remembered, with Felix O'Neal, another Master, son of Turlogh O'Neal, the bloody rebel and murderer of 1641. We do not believe, then, that Mr. O'Flanagan has succeeded in the slightest degree in 'removing the stain' upon the character of Fitton.

Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, from the earliest times to the reign of Edward the First, arranged and edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1870. Pp. xii. 531.

This volume is intended to be, primarily, a 'treasury of references; an easily handled repertory of the Origines of English Constitutional history; and, secondarily, a manual for teachers and scholars, with a view to the first purpose.' Professor Stubbs has collected 'in it every constitutional document of importance during the period which it covers;' and with a view to the second, he has also 'pointed out the bearings of the several documents on one another, and on the national polity,' in his prefatory remarks to each of them, 'supplying in the introductory sketch, a string of connexion and a continuous theory of the development of the system.'

As 'the first traces of our national history must be sought for, not in Britain, but in Germany—in the reports given by Cæsar and Tacitus of the tribes which they knew;' reports in which we have indeed a 'somewhat indistinct picture,' yet 'one which when interpreted by the clearer history of the later stages of the institutions which are common to the Teutonic race, does give a probable and consistent representation' of them. The Professor's first extracts are taken from the 'Commentarii' of one of these authors, and the 'Germania' of the other. These are followed by others taken from Mr. Thorp's translation of the 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of the Anglo-Saxons.' The remainder of the volume consists of 'Select Charters and Excerpts,' illustrated by carefully selected passages from the chronicles of the several periods, as well as by other historical documents not easily accessible to any who have not the command of a public library, and some of which are to be read only in MS., all bearing upon the 'long struggle of the constitution for existence,' which terminated only with the reign of Edward I. There are only two documents of a later date given—the 'Petition of Eight,' of 1628, and the 'Bill of Rights' of 1689; both of which are printed in an appendix.

Mr. Stubbs thus states his reasons for closing his labours with the reign of the first Edward. It is 'the period of time at which the nation may be regarded as reaching its full stature. It has not yet learned its strength, nor accustomed itself to economise its power. Its first vagaries are those of a people grown up, but not disciplined. To trace the process by which it learned the full strength of its organism,—by which it learned to use its powers and forces with discrimination and effect,—to act easily, effectually, and economically,—or, to use another metaphor, to trace the gradual wear of the various parts of the machinery, until all roughnesses were smoothed, and all that was superfluous, entangling, and confusing was got rid of, and the balance of forces adjusted, and their action made manageable and intelligible, and the power of adaptation to change of circumstances fully realized, is the story of later politics—of a process that is still going on, and must go on as the age advances, and men are educated into, wider views of government, national unity, and political responsibility. We stop, however, with Edward I., because the machinery is now completed, the people are at full growth. The system is raw, and untrained, and awkward, but it is complete. The attaining of this point is to be attributed to the defining genius, the political wisdom, and the honesty of Edward I., building on the immemorial foundation of national custom; fitting together all that Henry I. had planned, Henry II. organized, and the heroes of the thirteenth century had inspired with fresh life and energy'—(pp. 50, 51).

The value of the volume is considerably enhanced by a glossary that might be extended with great advantage, and especially so if made to include the French and Anglo-Saxon words, as well as the Latin ones, which are employed in the body of the work. It would also be well if in some cases the definitions were to be accompanied by references and quotations after the manner of Ducange. The learned Professor would, moreover, render good service to students and teachers alike, if he were to add such explanatory notes to some of his excerpts as he well knows how to compile. The volume ought to be no stranger in any of our colleges, and well deserves a place in the 'curricula' of our public schools. It will not be without its interest and its value also to the general reader.

The War Correspondence of the 'Daily News.' 2 vols., Macmillan and Co.

Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris. Hurst and Blackett.

Journal of the Siege of Paris. By the Hon. Captain Bingham. Smith, Elder, and Co.

Letters on the War. By T. Mommsen, D.F. Strauss, F. Max Müller, and T. Carlyle. Trübner and Co.

The Great Duel. By W. R. Greg. Trübner and Co.

When the history of the war of 1870 comes to be written, it will furnish scope for genius the most various and the most profound. A greater Jomini will be needed to elucidate the tactics that decided greater battles than Borodino or Austerlitz; to unweave for us the intricate web of the great strategist's plans; to solve for us the problem whether he is a superstition and a fetish, reaping the glory sown by the organization and morale of his troops, or the silent centre from which was directed the regulated play of such tremendous forces. But though the time for the military critic or the philosophical historian has not yet come, the events and scenes of the war, as they photographed themselves in the eye of the spectator, are full of immediate interest, and demand for their adequate description the highest order of picturesque power. Probably no accounts of the recent campaign so amply satisfied our modern thirst for the picturesque as the letters written to the Daily News. The moving panorama of the battle-field, the scientific deploying of vast masses, the heroism of attack or repulse, were brought close to our eyes. The description of the battle of Gravelotte reads like a page torn out of Tacitus, and for awful vividness might stand by the side of Thucydides' narrative of the plague. So swiftly have events passed out of chronicle into history, that the accounts of the early battles of the war—Weissenburg, Wörth, Forbach, will even now bear reperusal, and contain much that in our hungry desire for the salient facts was omitted at the first reading. Till a spectator of the entire course of the war shall fuse his impressions of the moment with his mature reflections, and produce a continuous living narrative of the whole, these letters will probably remain the best compendium of the history of the last eight months. We may add that the republication comprises many of the letters of the veracious 'Besieged Resident.' They are at least amusing, and give the proper seasoning of farce to the tragedy.

The 'Besieged Resident' remained in Paris during the siege 'to enjoy a new sensation.' He had new sensations in abundance; and generously gave the British public, through the medium of the Daily News, the benefit of his experiences. They were sufficiently varied, for he went in search of them—grotesque, for fidelity to fact is not his strong point—and amusing, for he is the liveliest of persifleurs. The personal element in these letters was unquestionably that which gave them their charm; the siege as it affected the 'Besieged Resident,' rather than the 'Besieged Resident' reporting on the siege, seemed to be the subject of them. How his clothes were held together by an infinity of pins, how his boots had burst in half-a-dozen places, and how horse did not assimilate with his inner man, were facts which made the Philistine's breakfast an interesting meal during the siege. Now that the letters have been published in a complete form, these important facts seem less prominent, and we are able to recognize the real value of the narrative as a history of opinion—journalistic, Bellevilleite, and bourgeois, during the four months of the investment. The description is not flattering. The 'Besieged' plays the part of valet to the Parisian heroes, and sees very little of heroism but a great deal of braggadocio. A somewhat cynical temper perhaps lends some exaggeration to mere common-place folly; but it seems certain that the despicable traits and unworthy actions of which the 'Besieged' is the chronicler will have to be taken into account in any truthful narrative of the great siege. On the whole, it does not seem likely that the 'Besieged' will be superseded in his self-assumed function by any subsequent chronicler.

Captain Bingham is a more prosaic narrator than the 'Besieged Resident,' but there was so much to be seen that he has many incidents to relate without touching on ground already occupied. His book is a consecutive narrative of facts, which are all the more trustworthy that they take no colouring from the individuality of the writer.

The 'Letters on the War' are of no evanescent interest, but are a permanent contribution to the literature of the subject. The writers of them are the Titans of the Teutonic race, whose clear duty it is to speak out, as the prophets of old spoke out, in a great crisis of history. Those of Dr. Strauss and Mr. Carlyle are the most important historically, as they are also the most interesting. Mr. Carlyle's historic retrospect reaches back to Louis XI., and is meant to show what a terribly bad neighbour France has been to Germany for the last 400 years. He describes the grand 'plunderings and incendiarisms of Europe' by the French, and he believes that Germany would be a 'foolish nation not to think of raising up a secure boundary fence against such a neighbour.' And why should not Alsace and Lorraine be restored to their original owners? The only titles of France to them are the 'cunning of Richelieu and the grandiose long-sword of Louis XIV.' He has pity for France but no sympathy; acknowledges her services to civilization and the grandeur of her 'Insurrection against shams,' in 1789; but believes that the German race is now to be protagonist in the 'immense world-drama.' Dr. Strauss's argument is, like Mr. Carlyle's, historical, but with diminished perspective, and from a different point of view. He traces the history of the movement towards national unity, travailing towards birth through the obstructions of the reactionary despotisms, planted by the diplomacy of Vienna, the abortive revolution of 1848, and the apathy or despair of all but the enthusiasts. He accepts the creed of Bismark; unity could only be obtained through force, as Hegel saw seventy years ago.

In Mr. Greg's pamphlet and letters we admire the dexterity of the practised swordsman, whose convictions are chiefly a matter of logic.

Her Majesty's Tower. By William Hepworth Dixon. Vols. III. and IV. Hurst and Blackett.

We might as well surrender at discretion to Mr. Dixon. He is as confirmed in his ways as we in our critical canons. What the late lamented George Robins was among auctioneers—what M. Jullien was among musicians—what Dumas père was among novelists—what the 'besieged resident' is among newspaper correspondents—Mr. Dixon is among historians; what it is not easy to say. He alike provokes and interests us. Our taste is offended; our critical conscience protests. Murdered Clio, like Banquo's ghost, sits in Mr. Dixon's place and 'shakes his gory locks.' The meretricious style—the superb magniloquence—the broad statements—the highly coloured pictures—the irrepressible affinities for what is coarse, make us fume with impatience and exclaim with anger: but we must read on; in spite of ourselves we are interested, although with the uneasy pleasure of a sin. We must, however, be just. Whether it be that our taste has adapted itself, or that Mr. Dixon has improved, we are bound to say that in reading these volumes our pleasure has been less alloyed, and has secured a larger measure of our good conscience than in reading any of his previous works. Some of his descriptions are well toned in their brilliancy, there are fewer catapult sentences, good taste is less frequently violated, extravagances of assertion are less daring, and altogether he inspires greater historic confidence, and excites more literary pleasure. Happily, however, we are released from all reasonable obligation to apply historic tests. Mr. Dixon tells us that he has not 'cared to fret the reader by a dozen references in every page to pipe-rolls, doquets, warrant-books, and council registers.' Such things, we admit, are encumbering; they are vulgar, moreover, and altogether unworthy the dignity of history, and are only temptations to irreverent readers. It is pleasant to read a well-printed page, undisfigured by a single reference, to be unable to distinguish too nicely between a 'doquet' and 'the caricatures' which Miss Burdett Coutts has lent him. We read 'Her Majesty's Tower' as we read 'Kenilworth' or 'Richard III.' If it be neither history nor fiction, it is something better than either, and it is well by the absence of all references to be released from the responsibility of determining which. Mr. Dixon certainly does possess considerable narrative and descriptive ability. His literary art is great. He cannot be dull. Whether he also possesses patient power of historical research, and a judicial faculty of exact presentation, we have no means of judging; but it is conceivable that with these, combined with adequate scholarship, he might have trodden not unworthily in the footsteps of Macaulay. We regret that he has chosen to write after the fashion of the Daily Telegraph—to lay himself out for sensations—the result of which is a series of volumes which might have been brilliant history, but which are only sensational articles.

In the range of these volumes Mr. Dixon is essentially a free lance. The first of the two is almost entirely occupied with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the infamous favourite of our British Solomon, and with the base intrigues and dirty scandals of his court,—why it is impossible to say, inasmuch as, except that some of his victims were imprisoned in it, Villiers had no more to do with her Majesty's Tower than Macedon had with Monmouth, nor so much, for Villiers does not begin with a T. It is, in fact, a romance of Whitehall, of which Villiers is the hero. And it is by no means a clean one; that under any circumstances it could hardly be, but, as Mr. Dixon tells it, it is like a bad dream. Throughout we feel the evil suggestion. Mr. Dixon seems to delight in keeping us on the verge of nastiness, and to have peculiar unction in reiterating such offensive epithets as the one he applies to Dean Williams. We think that the dirty intrigues and unsavoury stories with which the author of 'Spiritual Wives' has filled this section of his work might, without much detriment to our knowledge of either history or social manners, have been left in the obscure records from which they have been culled. The career of Villiers, the son of a poor knight, who began life as an amateur comedian, and in that character pleased the pedantic voluptuary James, and was rapidly elevated through a succession of offices and dignities until, when he fell beneath Felton's knife, he was Duke of Buckingham and the most potent courtier in England, is an inseparable part of the history of England; and the shameless corruption and profligacy of James's court, of women like the 'parent,' as Mr. Dixon chooses to label the mother of Villiers, and indeed of almost every circle of fashionable life, are as vitally connected with the convulsions that followed, as the Courts of Louis XIV. and XV. are with the French Revolution. But what connection there is between the details of Buckingham's rascality and of his mad escapade into Spain with Prince Charles, and the Tower of London, passes our comprehension. The only pretence of a connection is, that on the safe arrival at home of Buckingham and the Prince certain prisoners in the Tower were liberated. Williams, who was first a Welsh curate, and then, as the reward of being a hateful pander, was exalted to be first Dean of Westminster, and ultimately Archbishop of York, is a despicable character, and history will not qualify Mr. Dixon's portrait of him. 'Little Laud' was made use of by 'the parent' as his successful rival. He was destined to play a part in the tragedy which followed that he little dreamed of.

In Eliot, Mr. Dixon has a genuine hero of the Tower. His account of him is almost unexceptionable, only, one remembers that here he had the advantage of the previous labours of Mr. Forster. Eliot, for his fearless and incorruptible patriotism, endured a long imprisonment in the Tower. He died in it—one of its noble army of martyrs. For seven years after his death, as is well known, no Parliament was called in England. Mr. Dixon in trying to be magniloquent is almost profane when he tells us that of this period 'Wentworth was the State, Laud was the Church, and Charles was God.'

The fourth volume is much more relevant to Mr. Dixon's theme. We could have spared the catalogue of names with which, after the manner of Homer's list of ships, it opens, and which is an amusing instance of the sonorous effects which Mr. Dixon delights to produce; but the volume is, on the whole, satisfactory. The instances are well selected. The dramatic skill with which his heroes are presented is great. The interest is legitimately sustained, and we are really gratified to be able to speak highly of the whole. We cannot follow him in detail. Our sympathies are most interested in the visionary politico-philosopher James Harrington, the author of 'Oceana,' the sorrowful victim of idiotic fears, whose political prevision, Mr. Forster's Ballot Bill, after two centuries, is just about to realize. Mr. Dixon rapidly sketches, as heroes of the Tower, the second Buckingham—the Duke of Richmond, who was guilty of falling in love and eloping with the king's mistress—the Earl of Castlemaine, who connived at the unfaithfulness of his wife, and died a monk—the two Penns—the romantic story of Colonel Blood—the mysterious tragedy of the Earl of Essex—the martyrdom of Lord Russell, and of Algernon Sydney—the execution of the Duke of Monmouth—the lurid tragedy of Judge Jeffreys—the death of Laud—the fate of the Scottish Jacobites—the romantic escape of Lord Nithsdale—the imprisonment of Sir Francis Burdett—and the finis to the prison history of the Tower in the anti-climax of the Cato street conspirators.

We wish Mr. Dixon had treated his really great epical subject with more dignity and with better taste. His powers of picturesque narration and of vivid portraiture are great: is it too late to ask him to employ them upon better themes, and to subdue them to great purposes?

Annals of Oxford. By J. C. Jeafferson. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

There is, perhaps, no subject on which a book of pleasanter and more instructive gossip could be compiled than the English universities. Their origin and early constitution are excessively vague and uncertain, and are therefore a source of perpetual interest to the antiquary. It is known that they came into existence as part of that intellectual revival which is coupled with such names as Anselm and Abelard, and that the first notices of their activity represent them as vigorous institutions. As soon as the colleges, which are special characteristics of English academical history, are founded, information as to the domestic life of these ancient corporations begins, and is continued uninterruptedly to our own time. The materials for the annals of Oxford and Cambridge are copious, and such annals, were the facts carefully selected and well arranged, would be an exceedingly valuable addition to the social history of this country. Few people, for example, are aware of the very important part which Oxford played in the incipient reformation of Wyckliffe in the fourteenth, and in the revival of tithes under Erasmus, More, and Colet at the conclusion of the fifteenth, centuries; or of the refuge which both Universities, but especially Cambridge, afforded to the leaders of Puritanism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nor are there many persons who are alive to the fact that the legislation of the Restoration, which tied both these great institutions down to a political system, under which the Established Church was made the slave of the State and the gaoler of the mind, degraded and demoralized both Oxford and Cambridge.

Mr. C. Jeafferson has some pretensions to the reputation of a good gossip. He has compiled certain amusing books about the professions of law, physic, and divinity. In an evil hour he was tempted to risk this reputation, and to write a book about Oxford. He has succeeded in producing one of the worst specimens of book-making which has ever been put before the public. To call these two volumes the 'Annals of Oxford' is a gross abuse of words, for they are not annals in any sense whatever. A few facts are culled from very familiar authors, such as Anthony Wood and Gutch, and are diluted with a prodigality of verbiage to which no experience of ours can find a parallel. The most important parts of academical history are omitted, as for example the contest between the University and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which Oxford supported Wyckliffe against prelate and pope, and succumbed only when she was threatened with the loss of her franchises. The reader is treated to an account of the origin of the University, for which there is neither authority nor probability, for throughout the two volumes the author is utterly without any information of what the University has been or is, notwithstanding his boast that he 'knows nearly everything about Oxford in the dark ages.'

But the most serious offence which the book commits is not its omission of important facts, or its intolerable dilution of unimportant ones, or its misapprehension of the whole subject, but its incessant vulgarity. There is hardly a page in the two volumes where we do not find examples of that slangy familiarity of expression which passes with some people for wit or humour, and which in pretending to avoid dulness is the dullest of all sins against good taste. Mr. C. Jeafferson's contribution to the history of Oxford is wholly without value, and for the sake of the writer's reputation as a collector of gossip and anecdote, the kindest wish which a reviewer can make him is that the 'Annals of Oxford' may be speedily forgotten.

The Life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer. By Isambard Brunel, B.C.L. Longmans. 1870. pp. 568.

Very few men in the history of the world have at the same time said so little and done so much as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was eminently the worker as distinguished from the talker. Not that he had, as was the case with the illustrious Hunter, a difficulty as to expressing his thoughts in appropriate language. His mode of expression, on the rare occasions when he did speak, was pointed and happy. His reports and professional correspondence were models of clear perspicuous terseness. But he felt that his works were the true witnesses as to his character; and to their silent and enduring testimony he was content to commit his fame. Though he was made as often as any public man of his day the object of frequent and unsparing attack, he rarely offered any verbal reply, restrained by that proper pride in his own profession which forbade him to appear before the irresponsible and uneducated tribunal of the political press.

What those works were on which rests a reputation that will increase while the fame of many others fades and disappears, his son, in a modest volume, brings briefly to the notice of the public. There is evidence that Mr. Isambard Brunel has been a pupil in his father's school. He has confined his work within limits only too narrow for the actual magnitude of the subject. Very often, by the simple form of abstracted chronicle which he uses, as in describing the launch of the Great Eastern, he does more to silence slander and to terminate controversy, than could have been effected by the most eloquent advocacy. Still, we could wish he had allowed his pen fuller scope. We should like to have heard more of the inner life of so remarkable a man, to have had the taste gratified by illustrations of his refined and graceful fancy, and to have had the magnitude of his works brought into fuller relief by a more minute description of his unsleeping toil, his unflagging and audacious originality, and his conscientious effort to bring all his designs and every detail of their execution to the sternest test.

It is easy for those who have a mere newspaper acquaintance with Mr. Brunel to sneer at the education attained by the engineer at the expense of his shareholders. At the commencement of the railway system in this country something of the kind was inevitable in the case of every leading engineer. The great features on which the success of the railway system mainly hinged were not arrived at by scientific deduction. The speed which George Stephenson estimated at sixteen miles an hour—viz., the velocity attained by some of the most rapid coaches of the period—was raised to from twenty to thirty miles an hour, in the first instance, by Captain Ericsson (the inventor of the Monitor), in conjunction with the late Mr. John Braithwaite. During the experimental trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Novelty, the engine built by these engineers, passed by the Rocket, that of the Messrs. Stephenson, like a shot. The ill-constructed four-wheel engines of Mr. Bary, with which the London and Birmingham line was opened, were constructed for a moderate rate of speed. From those which, of his own design, Mr. Brunel put on the Great Western Railway, he obtained a speed equal to that of the flight of the swallow—from sixty to seventy miles an hour. A level portion of line between London and Slough was daily traversed by the express trains at this high speed.

While the forethought of Mr. Brunel—which added fifty per cent. to the accommodation afforded by his lines of railway for the future traffic of the country—doubled the speed of his own trains, it further compelled the narrow-gauge lines, by the use of the long six-wheeled engines, materially to increase theirs. The sagacious genius of the engineer was evinced yet more splendidly in the services he rendered to navigation. Of oceanic steam traffic Mr. Brunel may justly be called the father. In July, 1837, the Great Western steamship was launched at Bristol, and in April of the following year she arrived at New York, after a journey of nine days, with a fourth of her coal unconsumed. The Sirius was built by the St. George's Steam Packet Company expressly to anticipate the Great Western, so that by sea as well as by land Mr. Brunel effected almost as much by the emulation he awoke as by his own energy and toil. The Sirius arrived at New York a few hours only before the Great Western, having consumed every combustible on board, down to a child's doll! The measured tonnage of the Great Western was 1,340 tons; that of the Great Britain, launched at Bristol in July, 1843, was 3,443 tons; that of the Great Eastern, launched in the Thames on 31st January, 1858, was 13,343 tons. It was thus that the cautious shipwright felt his way before developing the full magnitude of his conceptions.

For the account of his further works—his docks and harbours, his bridges and viaducts, his investigation of projectiles and of screw propulsion, his admirable military hospital for the Crimean expedition, his general professional practice—we must refer our readers to the volume now before us. All those who regard the civil engineer as a sort of typical or central workman, and who therefore are prepared to measure our future progress in applied science and industrial art by the scale afforded by the condition of this profession in England, will do well to read with care this very interesting book.

Memoir of George Edward Lynch Cotton, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta; with Selections from his Journals and Correspondence. Edited by Mrs. Cotton. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1871.

In this volume Mrs. Cotton has given to the world a memorial of the late Bishop of Calcutta, which by those who personally knew him, and also knew English life in India, will be read with peculiar interest. The scattered nature of their dioceses, the varieties of claims which they have to meet, the consecration of churches, and the confirmation of candidates, compel the dignitaries of the English Church in India to travel frequently and far; and, as metropolitans over the entire empire, the Bishops of Calcutta journey more frequently and to greater distances than their colleagues. A large portion of this memoir is devoted to the details of such journeys; and the descriptions of places, persons, and incidents, coming fresh from the ripe, scholarly, and cheerful mind of one who saw Indian scenes and manners for the first time, give to it a peculiar charm. The extracts from the Bishop's journals and letters are numerous, perhaps too numerous and extended; and the connecting links, now detailing important facts, and at another time discussing the bearings of some great question, are written with clearness and power.

The vein of humour which ran through Bishop Cotton's mind enabled him to discern the lively and especially the burlesque aspect of the scenes through which he passed, whether in school and college days, or amid the serious labours which closed his life. At Rugby he named the fat denizen of his sty Vitellius; at Cambridge he would class his personal friends in an imaginary tripos, and award them medals and honours which expressed his estimate of their worth; and his letters to his children and old friends are full of the amusing side of native life.

With many things to interest him, the reader cannot but be disappointed at the book. It is almost entirely confined to the few years of Bishop Cotton's episcopate. At page 68 he has already left England for his Eastern diocese at the age of forty-nine; and the story of the next eight years occupies five hundred pages. All we can learn of the mental and moral growth of his English life, of his distinguished career as an educator, and of the remarkable position which he early attained among the foremost clergy of the English Church, is contained in the first three chapters of the memoir by Dean Stanley, with the beautiful notices of his work and influence by Professor Shairp and the late Professor Conington. Yet his early career deserves to be described as fully as that of Dr. Arnold, who loved him so well, whom he so greatly resembled, and to whose position as an educator he practically succeeded. These early years made him what he was—a careful scholar, a man of active, earnest piety, an intense lover of truth, a man of large mind and broad sympathies.

We took occasion, soon after the bishop's death in October, 1866, to express in these pages our high estimate of his worth and usefulness, and his views on the important questions with which in his brief episcopate he had to deal are fully set forth in Mrs. Cotton's narrative. His long but most interesting travels; his concern for the isolated English communities in India; his care for the spiritual interests of the English soldiery; his opening the consecrated Episcopal Churches to the use of the Presbyterian regiments; his charges to the clergy; his deep interest in the Episcopal missions, in the raising up of a native ministry, and in measures for the relief of native converts, such as their Re-marriage Act; his efforts to establish schools for East Indian children, are fully and carefully discussed. But while illustrating in many ways Bishop Cotton's large-hearted sympathies and the broad views which he took of men and things, the memoir fails to show how in religious matters he looked with deep interest on other Christian communities than his own, was prepared to do them full justice, and held the most kindly and unpatronizing intercourse with prominent members among them. A man of deep, sterling piety, an evangelical preacher, a faithful minister and bishop of his Church, a lover of good men, he well deserves the high position now accorded to his name by the members of the Church of England; and long will he be remembered with esteem and regard by men of many communions who outside her own pale are striving to evangelize India.

Some Memorials of Renn Dickson Hampden, Bishop of Hereford. Edited by his daughter, Henrietta Hampden. Longmans, Green, and Co.

Time brings its revenges, but not always repentance or wisdom. The Dissenters are to be admitted to the University, and the intelligence and good sense of the country—the dogmatic intolerance of such men as made Dr. Hampden a martyr alone excepted—heartily approve. He is justified as a man more foresighted and just than many of his contemporaries, and his persecutors are relegated to that limbo of conscientious intolerance into which all claimants of arrogant prerogative and all obstinate conservatives are cast. Dante should have devised a retribution for non-jurors, or Vathek should have represented them as melancholy ghosts with their hands upon their hearts and ceasing not to sigh out their non possumus. Opponents of every liberal advance in Church and State rudely swept into eddies by the stream of time, their characters are most heterogeneous and their labour very great. The forty bullet-headed Protectionists of the Free-trade reform, the Bourbons who 'forgot nothing and learned nothing,' the bereaved patrons of rotten boroughs—to say nothing of Laud and his school of divine right, of the good old times of the Star Chamber, of the Five-mile Act, of the Test and Corporation Acts, of Roman Catholic disabilities, of Church-rates, and the Irish establishment—must surely bemoan themselves very bitterly either because they maintained right in vain, or because they opposed it in vain. And yet inherent Toryism will not learn wisdom. The opponents of the Test Repeal Act are, in the present Parliament, repeating as blindly and as fatuously the follies of their predecessors. Miss Hampden tells the story of her father's noble testimony, for really while his actual life was much more than this, there is little more about it to tell. Learned, pious, candid, orthodox, conservative, reverently, and, as we should now say, almost timidly jealous for revealed truth, anything but a man of advanced opinions generally, Bishop Hampden was the object of a virulent and most unscrupulous persecution, such as must ever be the dark reproach of any Church or party whose polemical passions can make them capable of it. His sin was that he was strongly opposed to the Tractarian movement. He was too honest and honourable to be moved by this hostility from his position, although his scholarly and benevolent and sensitive life was embittered by it. He lived to see himself vindicated, and now the public opinion of England is about to endorse the clear-sightedness, candour, and justice of his advocacy. Of his great theological learning and catholic heartedness, there is no need to speak. The memoir, although not very skilfully put together, is an interesting and touching memoir of a very noble man.

The Life and Times of Lord Brougham. (Written by himself.) Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons.

Though the space of time covered by this first volume of Lord Brougham's Memoirs was one of the most interesting in his own life, and one of the stormiest in European history, the narrative is languid, and contains no facts that are at once new and important. Indeed, his Lordship had been already forestalled by notable contemporaries, who had been seized more or less strongly with the autobiographical passion, and also by the fact that the earlier portion of his life had long passed into the region of history. What novelty the volume possesses it derives chiefly from musty journals of travel and political correspondence of evanescent interest. To be admitted to the spectacle of Opposition wire-pulling three-quarters of a century ago, and to be favoured with the rapid observations on transitory things of a hasty traveller, are benefits that were perhaps overrated by Lord Brougham. Had he been a philosophical observer, or possessed the power of picturesque description, he might have left behind him an enduring record of great and historical events, quorum pars magna fuit, which he had the double advantage of seeing, as it were, in the making, and also after they were reduced to their natural proportions by the perspective of many added years. That, however, we have no right to expect from Lord Brougham. As it is, there are some minute personal touches in the narrative which are at least curious. He attributes his enormous energy and success to the Celtic blood in his veins; very probably it accounts for his instability. He gives a shocking account of his grandfather's funeral, as an instance of the barbarous manners of the time, though, unhappily, it is far from having died out. He redescribes the origin of the Edinburgh Review, declaring that Sydney Smith's account of it is entirely imaginary, although he substantially confirms it; and he gives as his own, a satirical tale, which, it has been pointed out, is translated from the 'Candide' of Voltaire. We shall have more to say about both the autobiography and the man when the publication is complete.

The Life and Travels of George Whitefield, M.A. By James Paterson Gledstone. Longmans and Co.

The character and power of Whitefield must ever be a study of interest to persons who either as religious men or as historical students attach importance to the evangelical revival of the last century; and in proportion as it recedes into the past, as contemporary passions and their inspirations die out, and especially as the arrogant assumptions of a dominant Church are discredited, the study will have increased interest and recognised importance.

Several lives of Whitefield have been attempted, some of which we would rather not characterize. Mr. J. P. Gledstone is generously reticent concerning them. He makes no allusion to the labours of his predecessors, but simply tells his story with all the lights that are available. Nothing in Whitefield's character or history or work turns upon the discoveries of the antiquarian. The broad facts are adequately known, and the work of the biographer is to recite and interpret them. Mr. J. P. Gledstone has produced what, we think, will prove the standard life of Whitefield. His sympathies are catholic, and he does justice to the noble soul of Whitefield, who was the 'brother of all who in every place, and under every denomination, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have striven to put the man rather than his creed upon the pages of this book.' Whitefield was no theologian; he was simply a great preacher. His Calvinism was passionate rather than dogged, and in an inappreciable degree influenced his preaching. His great soul yearned for the salvation of men, and the more arduous the service the more attractive to him it was.

Into the merit of his great preaching power, however, we cannot now enter, and yet both now and at all times it is a study of the most vital moment to the Church. Mr. J. P. Gledstone's book throws upon it all the light that circumstance and fact can furnish, and intelligently suggests most of the deeper psychological and spiritual causes. We very cordially commend this carefully-studied and admirably-written life of the Chrysostom of England.

Twenty-two Year's Missionary Experience in Travancore. By Rev. John Abbs, of the London Missionary Society. John Snow and Co.

The Land of Charity; a Descriptive Account of Travancore and its People, with especial reference to Missionary Labour. By the Rev. Samuel Mateer, F.L.S., of the London Missionary Society. John Snow and Co. 1871.

The Pioneers; a Narrative of Facts connected with early Christian Missions in Bengal. By the Rev. George Gogerly, late Missionary in Calcutta. John Snow and Co. 1871.

Here are three more of the numerous and excellent works which in recent years have sought to illustrate in full detail the course and the fruits of missionary labour in India. They are valuable additions to the missionary library, and each will occupy a position of its own. Instead of dealing with the Indian empire at large, both Mr. Abbs and Mr. Mateer restrict themselves to the single province of Travancore. The work of Mr. Abbs recounts the missionary experience of twenty-two years, and is characterized by sound sense, extreme modesty, and deep religious feeling. Much valuable information is given on the relations between the mission in Travancore and the native government, and some fresh light is thrown on the whole question of caste as encountered by Christian missionaries in Travancore. In the same region Mr. Mateer spent nine years, and endeavours to render his little work a complete handbook of all necessary information respecting that district and its people. This information has been drawn in part from authoritative records, and in part embodies the results of the writer's own observation and inquiry during the period of his daily life within the province. The book is written in a simple unpretending style, and will amply repay perusal.

Travancore, called by the Brahmins the Land of Charity, or Piety, is a secluded province in South-western India, peculiarly devoted to Hinduism. Though occupied to a very large extent by aboriginal tribes, some of which must be of very ancient origin, many centuries ago it was religiously conquered by some prominent members of the Brahminical caste, and they have ever since retained the firmest hold upon its rulers and its people. All the wealth and prosperity of this well-watered and fertile corner of India have been poured into their lap, and the lower castes and aboriginal races have been their devoted serfs. Closely walled in by mountains and by the sea, it has had comparatively little intercourse with its immediate neighbours, and scarcely any with the more distant districts of South India. Its reigning family has long been seated on the throne; and Mr. Mateer describes the religious position occupied by its princes, and the strange ceremonies which both establish their sanctity and secure to the priests and Brahmins abundant rewards. Mr. Mateer also pictures the numerous races and classes which make up its million and a half of inhabitants, and explains the immoral causes and condition of things under which, in one caste especially, all property is made to descend to nephews and not to sons.

While describing fully the physical features and productions of the province, he dwells especially upon its religious aspects, and gives much information concerning the life and customs of the Shānar and Ilavar races, who in religion are devil-worshippers. It is amongst them that Christianity has made special progress during the present century. While the princes and nobles have been growing in knowledge and experience of their English rulers, the lower tribes have in great numbers accepted the Gospel. The story of the mission planted among them is given at length, and illustrations are presented of the fruits which they have produced in individual converts, in strong and liberal churches, and an indigenous native ministry. The Gospel has also leavened the population generally, and introduced many remarkable innovations among the hard and cruel customs of former days. The Brahmins have fought hard for their supremacy, but it is steadily passing away. 'Sir,' said a Sudra one day to a Brahmin, 'have you directed your attention to a wonder of the present age? Listen: the Brahmin has become a dealer in oil and fish, while the Shānar or pariah goes about as a Brahmin or teacher of the country. The Brahmin woman spends her day in cooking, eating, and sleeping; while the Shānar or pariah women are found in the streets with their Scriptures in their hands, pretending to teach their neighbours. Is not this a wonder? Verily the world is turning upside down.'

Mr. Gogerly, the well-known missionary of the London Missionary Society, has given a graphic and most pleasant account of the early leaders of the missionary enterprise in Bengal and of their work. Mr. Grogerly quitted the mission of which he was a member thirty years ago, and might long ere this have presented to the world the striking facts with which he became acquainted in the course of his Indian career. But he has reserved the story till the present day, when some of those facts have been gradually forgotten, and when the younger members of our missionary societies hear only of the modern aspects of Christian work, and of the larger fruit of conquered difficulties and converts gathered into the Church of Christ.

Mr. Gogerly's notices of the pioneers in the Church—Baptist, Free Church, and American Missions in North India—are brief, but some of them convey original information drawn from his own experience. He naturally gives fuller details of the mission to which he himself belonged, and in which many remarkable events occurred worthy of a permanent place in our missionary histories. Later residents in Bengal will read with wonder of a state of things in regard to the manners of the people, their views of idolatry, the honour rendered to devotees, and the satisfaction felt with the ancestral religion, which has long since yielded to the knowledge and light which for forty years have been changing the Bengal race, and making them a new people. The numerous anecdotes given by the writer illustrative of former days, of domestic habits, of village education, of native amusements, and of ancient customs, are extremely interesting. Some institutions referred to, like suttee, have disappeared. In regard to others, such as female education, the position of things has wholly changed.

Mr. Gogerly's book is well illustrated with numerous engravings, and we heartily commend it to our readers.

The Duke of Edinburgh in Ceylon. A Book of Elephant and Elk Sport. By John Capper, Times Correspondent, &c. Provost and Co.

It is Mr. Capper's great merit that as a court chronicler, who of necessity must magnify the most ordinary incidents, and carefully chronicle the smallest event in any way connected with the movements of a Royal Prince, he never violates good taste. He is neither flippant nor flunkeyish, but does his work in a simple, straightforward way. No one, we presume, will read his official record of receptions, addresses, dinners, and balls; but this can be skipped, and bits picked out descriptive of Cingalese hunting experiences sufficiently novel and dangerous to be gently exciting. The Prince seems to have borne himself as a manly, unaffected English gentleman. The volume is a thin imperial octavo, and is adorned with some six or eight very excellent chromo-lithographs.

A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand; together with some Account of the South Sea Islands. Being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Lieut. the Hon. Herbert Meade, R.N. Edited by his Brother. John Murray.

Mr. Meade's untimely death, by a recent explosion at Portsmouth, invests this volume with special interest. It does not, however, need any adventitious attractions. It is fresh with information and bright with genial feeling. It makes light of difficulties and hardships, and is full of the enterprise and optimism of youth. Whether the author had any thought of publishing his journals or not, they have the great charm of simplicity and unaffectedness. The former part of the volume describes a journey through the disaffected districts of New Zealand. He was captured by the Kingites, and narrowly escaped with his life, and gives an exciting account of the Aokatoa or preliminary religious rites, and of the Rungana, or parley-parley to decide upon his fate; the executioner with the tomahawk standing close by him during the debate. He escaped at length only by the wind of his horse. He was the first white man who had fallen into the hands of the enemy. The second, a missionary, they hanged, and ate his eyes and brains.

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POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND ART.

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S. John Murray.

The pleasure of reading Mr. Darwin's long-promised volumes, which has been keenly anticipated, is at length gratified. Both the subject and the man exercise a strange fascination upon the public mind. As an experienced naturalist, a speculative philosopher, and a keen logician, Mr. Darwin would command the attention of men of science under any circumstances, but he has the secret of personal power and popularity quite apart from the accomplishments which allow him to be classed with other naturalists and philosophers. It is not the lucid clearness of his style, nor his power of collecting, selecting, and grouping facts, nor the shrewdness and breadth of his generalizations, alone, which give his readers their exquisite sense of delight as they follow him through his descriptions, his arguments, and his speculations. Beyond all this, he has that sensuous delight in the real, the beautiful, and the truthful—that appreciation of the grandeur of universal law, visible in the minutest details, and that union of the receptive and active faculties which constitute the artist and the genius who owes more to Nature than to culture. If an argument may be derived from what man is, and from the mental excellence which he is capable of exhibiting, to rebuff the theory that he is of so humble a parentage as Mr. Darwin represents, the author himself would be a refutation of his own theory. In contemplation of his own powers he might say with Hamlet, 'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! and yet, what to me is this quintessence of dust!' The lineal descendant proximately of 'a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits and an inhabitant of the old world; remotely, of an animal more like the larvæ of existing ascidians (lining sacks), than any other known form!'

Mr. Darwin's volumes treat of two subjects of profound but not of equal interest. The difference in the interest felt in man's descent and in sexual selection is well shown in the numerous reviews and notices of this work which have already appeared. More than two-thirds of the work is devoted to sexual selection, and this subject is treated, not exhaustively, it is true, for that is quite impossible in the present state of our knowledge, but methodically and comprehensively. A vast number of fresh facts are presented; a great array of old ones are marshalled in due order; the phenomena are traced as they appear throughout the whole animal kingdom, and historians and travellers are adduced in evidence to elucidate problems physical and metaphysical. Yet reviewers have not taken notice of this, which is really the most valuable part of the work; guided by a popular instinct they revert to the subject of man's descent. They do this although there is not nearly so much freshness, either in the facts or arguments presented in this portion of his work. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' is a dictum which men who are no students will readily adopt, because the subject is not far to seek. That man, the orang, and the gorilla, have a common ancestor is so fascinating an idea that none can resist its weird influence. The clergy repeat it from their pulpits in scornful utterance, as though the simple statement carried its own refutation. Transcendental philosophers like Vogt assume it as a demonstrated fact. Wits joke about it. The ears of ladies blush, not at the praise of their own loveliness, but because of the pointed and telltale evidence these bear of their own origin. The fascination of this idea was evident from the first appearance of 'The Origin of Species.' The public insisted on seeing in it nothing but evidence that man had sprung from a lower form. Yet in that work it was evident that Mr. Darwin purposely avoided the discussion of this point. No one will be surprised to learn, from the introduction of the present work, that during many years the author had collected notes on the origin and descent of man without any intention of publishing on the subject—but rather with the determination not to publish—that he might not add to the prejudice against his views. Yet the multitudes who talk about the book they have never read, as if they had done so, have all along supposed and assumed that the one question thus designedly avoided was the subject of the whole treatise. No doubt most of the arguments in favour of the derivation and origin of species, told with equal force as proofs of the like derivation and origin of man, but there was yet room for a supplemental theory, founded on the vast elevation of man's moral and mental capacity, which would make man an exceptional species with an exceptional origin. That such a view was possible, may be inferred from the concluding chapter in Mr. Wallace's book on the same subject, in which a peculiar Providence is made to preside over the evolution of man. There can, however, be no mistake now about Mr. Darwin's view of the question. His assertions about the origin of man from a lower form are not only confident, but he has become dogmatic upon the subject. The attitude of dogmatism is new to him, and we must say does not become him so well as the cautious candour of his earlier work. Mr. Darwin writes:—'The main conclusion arrived at in this work, and now held by many naturalists who are competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly-organized form. The ground upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken.... It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of Nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation.'

In his speculations as to the genealogical descent of man and the way in which it emerges from the ancestral tree of the animal creation, Mr. Darwin is almost wholly guided by the rudimentary organs found in man. Mr. Darwin is quite consistent in this method. No doubt rudimentary organs which are functionless in our species and have dwindled almost to nothing, but are developed and have a palpable use in other allied forms, present the greatest difficulties to those who do not believe in a derivative origin of species, and also afford the strongest support to the selection theory. After enumerating the aborted organs, the transient and fœtal structures, and the often-recurring abnormalities found in man, which are some seventeen or eighteen in number, the author works out his theory of origin almost strictly in accordance with the plan of associating the ancestors of man proximately with those species which possess the most of these analogous structures, and so on to the larger divisions in which a fewer number of them have a wider distribution. This plan is, no doubt, philosophical, but it leads the author into some strange speculations. By similar reasoning it is demonstrable that our ancestors were hermaphrodite, and thus long after they had ceased to be so both sexes yielded milk to nourish their young, and perhaps carried them in marsupial sacks.

A doctrine thus dogmatically stated, of course involves problems and theories hard to solve and demonstrate, but this arises, in the opinion of the author, from the fact that the solutions and demonstrations are hard to find, and not from the doctrines which involve them being in the least doubtful. The existence of the moral sense in man is one of these problems, and one of the most interesting chapters in this portion of the work is devoted to an explanation of the evolution of human conscience. The moral sense is traced to those social instincts which man has in common with all gregarious animals. The strengthening and growth of the memory and judgment would enable man to compare his past actions, and the mere abiding satisfaction of the process would create that distinction between the higher and lower law or motive which is all that modern moralists require. 'Ultimately a highly complex sentiment having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in the latter times by deep religious feeling, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense in conscience.'

The second portion of the work is a valuable contribution to science. It is far more philosophical in its tone. It is a repertory of facts. The theories to which these facts point are indeed discussed, but the method is inductive, while the method of the first portion appears to us to be deductive. Beauty as distinguished from use has always been a stumbling-block to the disciples of the natural selection school. That which, in any species, pleases our minds by immediate agency of the senses, as distinguished from that which is of service to that species in adapting it to external conditions, is quite unaccounted for by the survival of the fittest, at least so far as wild and untamed species are concerned. Some evolutionists would cut the knot by denying the evidence of beauty apart from fitness. Suitability, symmetry, conspicuousness, and an imposing appearance are, no doubt, desiderata which natural selection may seize upon and secure, and these may incidentally and necessarily involve that which is beautiful in our eyes. But after all these have been eliminated or satisfied, there yet remains in a large number of species an element of beauty the contemplation of which brings pleasure to all human beings, whether educated or uneducated, refined or unrefined. This is especially the case throughout those large, numerously represented and dominant classes taken from two separate sub-kingdoms and called insects and birds. These two classes occupy a great deal of the attention of Mr. Darwin. If we assume any evolutionary theory, and abjure the doctrine of final causes, all the varied beauty of butterflies and humming-birds has but one probable explanation, namely, that of sexual selection. To make even this explanation possible, we must assume a keen, discriminating æsthetic faculty in animals which is like in quality with our own, as that faculty is possessed by the most refined of our species. Moreover, this faculty must be intimately connected with the sexual appetency in each species. Such a connection is, judging from analogy, not improbable. In forming an opinion how far these views are correct, it is important to isolate the operation of sexual selection from that of natural selection. Nature has throughout almost the whole animal kingdom afforded to us the means of isolation. For, as a general rule, the sexes in species are not absolutely alike, and often there is great difference between them. All sexual peculiarities therefore which cannot be explained on the principle of division of labour, throw light upon the æsthetic faculty of animals as a selective, and therefore by the theory of a creative agency. Mr. Darwin has collected a vast mass of facts about sexual peculiarities, which being in no way connected with the sexual function, he calls secondary sexual characters. Of course, sexual secondary characters so limited point to a difference in the modification of the sexual desire by æsthetic appetite in the two sexes. Generally speaking, the adorned sex is the male. Have, then, the females a greater appreciation of beauty than their males? Mr. Darwin thinks the ardour of the male destroys his discrimination. Some facts produced, however, seem to run directly counter to this supposition. On all hands the peacock is considered the most splendid of birds, and the difference between the sexes in this species is carried to an extreme point. Yet, one of Mr. Darwin's best authenticated facts is, that the pea-hen differs from most birds in being the ardent wooer.

One of the happiest and most satisfactory episodes in the book is the account of the genesis of the eye-spot in the plumage of birds, and specially of that of the ball and socket ornament in the secondary wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant. The treatment of this subject reminds us, by its clearness and beauty, of the author's treatises on coral islands and the fertilization of orchids. How simple a phenomenon may disclose a world of interest and wonder when in the hands of a man of genius! It seems to us, however, that that wonderfully faithful representation of a round ball lying in a hollow socket, expressed on the flat of the web of a feather, offers a striking example of the inadequacy of either natural or sexual selections to explain such phenomena. 'That these ornaments,' says Mr. Darwin, 'should have been formed through the selection of many successive generations, not one of which was originally intended to produce the ball and socket effect, seems as incredible as that one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint made by a long succession of artists, not one of whom intended to draw the human figure.' Exactly so! We must attribute to the hen Argus pheasant the æsthetic powers of a Raphael in order to account for the decorations of her mate, or, more properly, we must assign to a succession of multitudes of generations of birds a correctness of appreciation of the draughtsman's art, such as is a rare excellence among men. This may be a fact, but if so, it opens up a new realm to our imagination. It must be admitted that the tendency of modern thought is to obliterate the fast line drawn by old authors between reason and instinct, and to assign the former less exclusively to man, and the latter less exclusively to animals. This tendency and the incidental light thrown by these considerations on these interesting questions are well exemplified in Mr. Darwin's work.

A curious disagreement in opinion between Messrs. Darwin and Wallace is brought out and treated of lengthily in the chapters on birds. Mr. Wallace thinks that in the case of splendid cock-birds who have plain hens, who sit on open nests, the tendency for both sexes to become brilliant has been checked by natural selection. On the other hand, Mr. Darwin thinks that secondary sexual splendour was from the first developed only in the male; and in the converse case, where the female is also gay, natural selection causes her to build a covered nest for protection. We think Mr. Darwin has the best of the argument. The question of whether the standard of beauty among men is uniform in its essentials or not is ably discussed, but no conclusion is arrived at; so contradictory is the evidence of travellers and observers.

We heartily endorse Mr. Darwin's dictum that false facts are highly injurious to the progress of science; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm. We are therefore content to

Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions. By James Hinton. Smith, Elder, and Co.

This volume contains by no means a dry discussion of the conditions of health. It hardly professes to be methodical or exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. It is rather the production of a man who is full of original ideas such as lie around the subject of health and life, and who has adopted this title in order to give them to the public. The details of the subject have evidently no charms for the author; nevertheless, those which are given or referred to show him to be quite abreast of the foremost file of the army of science. He is quite poetical in his similes, and is fascinated by sublime ideas, yet his chapter on 'Nursing as a Profession' shows him to be a practical reformer. The book will be read with interest by those whose mental bias leads them in that direction, while it gives vivid conceptions of abstruse ideas. The one fault of the book is, that the author allows his imagination to build up speculations upon a basis of known facts, which fresh facts yet unknown may very possibly show to be mere speculations. Thus the speculations about the functions of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus, when forming complex compounds in the organism derived and built up upon our knowledge of their properties as elements, are doubtless interesting, but they are not backed by chemical knowledge, and are opposed to the analogies of that science. This fault, however, is so allied to the virtues of freshness and force of thought which are everywhere found in the volume, that it ought not to prejudice the reader against the author, though he certainly ought to be on his guard against the seduction of that author's enthusiasm.

The American Colleges and the American Public. By Noah Porter, D.D., Professor in Yale College. New Haven, Conn. 1870.

This volume would be invaluable to us if we had a system of high-school and university education at all corresponding to that of the United States. No one is more competent than Dr. Noah Porter to describe the operation of the American system, to detect some of its weaknesses, to contrast it with English and German tuition, and to point out where America might learn something from England, and in what respect England might be benefited by following transatlantic customs. Far away from the circumstances and experimental innovations which have excited so much general interest in America, we can hardly enter into any minute criticism of the old customs or the recent changes. Some of the discussions—such, for instance, as that on the relative advantage of college lectures and text-book-recitations, on the system of private tutoring, on the propriety or otherwise of very frequent examinations, on the dormitory system, on the advantage of the resident and non-resident systems, and on the extent to which laws and supervision on the part of the college authorities should extend—will interest the supporters and professors of English colleges for the ministry, though many of the conditions under which we should have to apply them are so profoundly different that not much light would be attained for our guidance. The calm, candid, lucid manner in which our author has investigated the whole subject, and held the balances in all these discussions, is worthy of all respect. In advocating greater freedom from clerical influence, and more breadth in the relations between the authorities and the graduates in the government of the colleges, we presume that he is treading on delicate ground. In our smaller institutions we have long since adopted the principle he recommends. Our national universities will become before long the property of the nation, and not of a sect, and be governed in deference to law, by their own alumni, without any privilege but that which is earned by distinguished ability. This, however, is not the place to discuss a question like this.

The Ancient Geography of India; the Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang. By Alexander Cunningham, Major-General, Royal Engineers (Bengal, retired). With thirteen Maps. Trübner and Co. 1871.

The author of 'The Bhilsa Topes' has once more brought his great learning, and his rare advantages of travel and of residence to bear on the elucidation of the Buddhist period of Indian history and thought. On this occasion he has, however, shown his antiquarian, topographical, and etymological skill in deciphering and harmonizing the geography of the Greek historians and the Chinese pilgrims. Few things are more important to the comprehension of any history—sacred, classic, modern, or contemporary—than a clear exhibition of the physical features of the country on which the destinies of generations have been determined, and a sound identification of the sites of famous cities, fortresses, temples, and battle-fields. When the history of great nations covers thousands of years, the physical features may be recovered by personal inspection of sites that are distinctly described by early writers; but the confusing resemblance of neglected and buried cities to each other has been the fruitful source of false identifications, and when once on a wrong scent, the geography of large districts of country has often been thrown into hopeless entanglement. The geography of India, with its history, maybe conveniently divided into three periods. The Vedic or Brahmanic period would cover the entire prehistoric section of the history, and trace the extension of the Aryan race from their first occupation of the Punjab to the rise of Buddhism. The Buddhist period would extend from the era of Buddha—whensoever that may be determined, say between the fourth and sixth century b.c.—to Mahmoud of Ghizni; and the Mohammedan period will extend from the rise of the Mohammedan power to the battle of Plassy. Major-General Cunningham has devoted a volume of nearly six hundred pages to the investigation of the geography of India during the Buddhist period, which may be said to cover from fourteen to sixteen hundred years. He has personally travelled over the entire country, and carefully scanned its features with a curious, archæological eye, and has thus succeeded in fixing the line of Alexander's campaigns, and in bringing into geographical completeness and unity the itineraries and allusions of the Chinese pilgrims, Fah-pian, Chung-yun, and Hwen-Thsang. Though the campaigns of Alexander were confined to the valley of the Indus and its tributaries, yet the information collected by his companions, and the records of subsequent embassies between the Seleucidæ and the Maurya and other princes, include abundant references to the whole valley of the Ganges. We think we may confidently assert that no student of the works of Rémusat and Lassen, Stanislas Julien, or Vivien de St. Martin, will now be content without having General Cunningham's maps and expositions at his side. It would be difficult to do justice to such a work in a brief notice; still, some of the identifications are of general interest. The merest tyro in Buddhist lore knows something of the legend of Kunâla, the beautiful-eyed son of Asoka, the great Buddhist king, who was sent in his youth and unsuspecting innocence to quell a revolt in the great city of Taxasila, and who there suffered the loss of his lustrous eyes in consequence of the malicious designs of his stepmother. Everyone has heard that in the neighbourhood of this city, Buddha is fabled in a previous state of existence to have made the sacrifice of his head in alms, and to have offered himself in another existence to a dying tigress, having first fed her with his blood that she might be strong enough to devour him more effectually. The city was admired by Alexander himself; it was described by Pliny and Arrian; it was visited by Apollonius of Tyana, and referred to by his celebrated biographer, Philostratus. It was visited with enthusiasm by Fah-Hian 400 a.d., and by Hwen-Thsang in 630 and 643 a.d.; and a variety of particulars are mentioned which have enabled our author by personal inspection to identify the exact spot, to make out the ruins, the lines of walls and roads, and the site of the stupa placed by the great King Asoka over the scene of the act of self-sacrifice to which we have referred.

Our author identifies the celebrated city Srâvasti with the ruined city of Sâhet-Mâhet, where he discovered a colossal figure of Buddha, with an inscription having on it the name of this city, immortalized by Buddha's most successful preaching. He has shown that when Hwen-Thsang visited Srâvasti it must have been in utter decay, and that he mistook the ruins of the city for those of the palace; but Cunningham has brought the divergent statements of the Chinese pilgrims as to the distance of Srâvasti from other points into sufficient accord to be satisfactory, and he draws by a clever etymological manœuvre the modern name Sâhet-Mâhet into harmony with the Pali form Sâwatthi and the Chinese name She-wei. We have, moreover, in the volume strong reasons given for fixing the site of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, at Nagar, in the northern division of Oude; and the site of Nalanda, the monster Buddhist monastery, at Baragaon near Gaza; and so with hundreds of other places which are interesting from their mention in Buddhist legend or authentic Buddhist biography. We heartily thank General Cunningham for his elaborate work.

Walks in Rome. Two vols. By Augustus J. C. Hare. Strahan and Co.

This is only a guide-book, but it is one of a very superior description. As Rome is to all cities, so is this guide-book to all other guide-books. Fully informed with the spirit of the past, and yet not wanting in the facts of the present, it is at once an historical monitor and a topographical companion. The poetry and sentiment and delicate observation of various writers, bred of cultured gazing upon the ruins which almost make twenty centuries synchronous, have been carefully gathered together; but the requirements of the mere sightseer have not been forgotten. The volumes are full of useful information. We should think that only those to whom Rome is familiar with more than the familiarity of a natal city could afford to dispense with them.

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POETRY, FICTION, AND BELLES LETTRES.

The Works of Alexander Pope. New Edition, including several hundred Unpublished Letters and other new Material, collected in part by the late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker. With Introduction and Notes by Rev. Whitwell Elwin. Vols. 1, 2, and 6. Murray. 1871.

Two things are evident on the most cursory inspection of Mr. Elwin's work; first, that he has spared no pains in probing every corner of a most complicated story; secondly, that he finds a pleasure in making the case against Pope look as black as it possibly can be made. In a long and minute investigation of the circumstances attending the publication of the successive volumes of Pope's letters, he exposes the petty trickery and vanity of the poet. We are ashamed of Pope as we read this merciless exposure. But we are somewhat relieved when we recollect that after all these frauds and concealments there was nothing to gain by it. Like the magpie hiding a silver spoon, Pope took nothing by his trickery but the pleasure of deceiving. He could not help doing as he did. Whether from his Catholic education, or from whatever cause, he had contracted a dishonest habit of mind, which came out in all his dealings. But Mr. Elwin gets so heated with the chase after Pope's stratagems, that he discovers them even where they do not exist. When he sets up the theory that the 'Essay on Man' was a treatise of infidelity palmed off on the public under the disguise of a vindication of optimism, he overshoots the mark.

So far three volumes of the edition are before us—two of the poems, and one of the correspondence. We hope in some early number to devote an article to an examination of Mr. Elwin's editorial work.

Napoleon Fallen. A Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan and Co.

Mr. Buchanan is a brilliant improvisatore, and could doubtless produce dramas and epics to order on any subject to which the revolutionary mind is akin. We do not doubt the genuineness of his lyrical passion; it is white-hot and screaming, but it seems as if it were easy to kindle, not quite rational in its foundation, and certainly not classical in its expression. As a rhymed pamphlet, special-pleading a cause, and echoing the cries of the hour, 'Napoleon Fallen' is unquestionably powerful; as a dramatic representation of events in the shape in which they will descend to history, it is too violent to be true. It was a happy device to incorporate the Athenian chorus with the modern drama; the expedient provided expression for the eager feelings with which the world witnessed the stupendous struggle. But to import into the statuesque forms of poetry the frantic passion and inarticulate rage of the vanquished, in their naked amorphous violence, removes the poem out of the sphere of art. If the representation of a thing is meant to be permanent, the thing itself must be not only real, but also permanent in its nature. Lessing laid down this canon, and one would have thought that it was now established. But if 'Napoleon Fallen' is not perfect as a poem, there is very much fine poetry in it. The lyrical fire which an age in travail with revolutions produces is perhaps not rare in our days; Mr. Buchanan unquestionably possesses it. He also possesses that belief and faith without which no man has a right to sing at all—belief in the divine end of human life, and faith in the future. With poetic indefiniteness it is rather an aspiration than an articulated creed, but he is at least no emasculated Pagan. His dramatic power is less obvious, and perhaps it is only the dramatism of the lyrist—the mere modulation of passion into a different key.

King Arthur. By Edward Bulwer (Lord Lytton.) Tucker.

Lord Lytton's variety and pertinacity of effort must command the admiration of even those who do not deem him great. Amongst those churlish critics we fear we must be ranked. He is not quite a poet, yet we cannot help sympathizing with his firm resolve to place himself among poets if the thing could be done by endeavour. In that way it cannot be done. Marsyas shall never equal Apollo. Lord Lytton's place among novelists is not at this juncture our affair; his place among versifiers is high, as 'St. Stephen's' shows; but we can give him no place among poets. His 'King Arthur,' which has now been some years before the public, is a complete proof of this. Even Mr. Tennyson himself has not made quite the best of the son of Uther Pendragon. We prefer the old version of 1460—

to the neoteric Sir Bedivere's 'long ripple washing in the reeds.' We strongly object to the misconception of the wondrously beautiful story of Vivian. We cannot comprehend why nobody dare tell us how Launcelot of the Lake killed Agrawayne. If these old myths deserve poetic treatment, treat them fairly; it is absurd to modify them to suit the indelicate delicacy of a modern society whose most refined journals are fond of essays upon questionable topics. This, however, is a slight digression: let us return to Lord Lytton. He has managed to transform the Arthurean romance into melodrama. Gawine and his raven remind one of a burlesque by Burnand or Byron. Indeed, the poem shows poverty of invention, and a complete want of mastery over rhythm and rhyme and style. Here is a hexastichon:—

'Pomp of cloud'—'reflects its lustre'—'worthy centre'—'odorous canopy'; these are just the phrases that nobody would write who took the trouble to think. And why in the world should poor King Arthur be compared to the moon? He has been much misrepresented by many poets; he was a semi-barbarous Welshman, whom our Somersetshire men drove into the sea down by Tintagel: but he has had a sacer vates, and we do not see why he should be subjected to inferior treatment. Is there anything in the contemporary Arthurean verse that approaches Sir Ector's lament over Sir Launcelot of the Lake—Achilles of the Arthurean Iliad?... 'Ah Sir Launcelot, thou wert head of all Christian Knights.... And thou wert the courteousest knight that ever bore shield. And thou wert the truest friend to thy lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword. And thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights. And thou wert the meekest man and the greatest that ever ate in hall among ladies. And thou wert the truest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest.' So says the old poet. Can Lord Lytton or Mr. Alfred Tennyson approach him? Can Homer beat him? The illustrations of this edition are scarcely worthy of the poem.

The Iliad of Homer. Translated by J. G. Cordery. Rivingtons.

Englishing Homer has of late been a general occupation with men of letters, and we should be the last to object to it. We delight in Homer. We rather dislike the effeminate treatment which some of his myths have met at the hands of one or two eminent modern poets. We hold that there is more in the sonorous swing of those demiurgic dactyls than the contemporary writers of blank verse can quite comprehend. Erratic enough are we to hold that there was one Homer, not many—that no purpurei panni of Peisistratus were interwoven with his cloth of gold—that he was an isolated leader of thought. Certain also are we that his influence is in these days much needed, and that his Greek ideas are of great service to modern Englishmen; his strength and simplicity are things we possess and admire; many an Achilles has led the forlorn hope for England, and many an Odysseus has been a F.R.G.S. There is nothing more remarkable in Homer than what we shall venture to call his Englishness. Hence, from one point of view the late Earl of Derby translated him well; for the Earl was an Englishman every inch, and, as we have heretofore said in these pages, the Hector of the Tory Troy. But as the Earl was not a poet, he could not exactly render as he ought to be rendered the supreme poet of the pagan past. Lord Derby saw in him the part which is visible to the English legislator and landowner. There is a good deal more than this in Homer scarcely comprehensible by the race whose motto is sans changer. There are unfathomable depths of poetic philosophy in those two oceans of thought which we call the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' The key-note is struck in Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή : throughout Homer we find the will of the supreme Divinity always manifested.

It is, we believe, this coincidence of English with Hellenic ideas which causes so many men of different types to find pleasure in Homer. Think of the chasm between Pope and the "sick vulture," or even between Lord Derby and the poet Worsley. The theme is tempting, but space avails not; we must say a word or two on Mr. Cordery's 'Iliad.' He seems, so far as we have followed him, to know his Greek excellently well; but he assuredly does not know the power and capacity of English blank verse. The rhythmic weapon, the most difficult we know, is not within his power to wield. Thus he commences the 'Iliad'—those lines which, as Lord Macaulay would say, 'every schoolboy knows'—

The first few lines suffice. Here is a writer who cannot wield the metre he has chosen. This being so, we find it undesirable to enter farther into any discussion of the merits of his version, and shall content ourselves with giving conscientious praise to his loving and patient attempt to do a great work which is beyond his height of attainment. This is not contemptuous nor careless criticism. Not yet has Homer been done into English. Will any future translator give us Homer's unutterable music, Homer's unfathomable thought?

Ierne. A Tale. By W. Steuart Trench. 2 vols. Longmans, Green, and Co.

If Mr. Trench's 'Realities of Irish Life' was something more than a history, 'Ierne' is something more than a romance. It is full of vivid pictures of Irish life, and is inlaid with historical information, political disquisitions, and didactic comment. We are not sure which presents the truer portraiture, the history or the romance, probably the latter. It appears, in spite of the extravagance and impossibility of its incidents, to reproduce with the fidelity which long personal familiarity enables, various aspects of Western Irish life, its fine culture, enthusiastic genius, and heroic patriotism in the higher classes; its wild passions, its half-savage instincts, and its no less noble patriotism in the lower. The representation is not a very hopeful one; at least, whatever hope there is in it must be found in the gross inconsistencies of thought, and in the unaccountable impulses of feeling which made Ireland such an enigma to Lord Killarney; the blind, deep-rooted infatuation about the ownership of land, and the notion that all improvements by Saxon possessors are inimical to its reversion, so that the better the landlord, the worse the feeling of antagonism excited, is profoundly perplexing. Mr. Trench has so thorough a knowledge of Irish feeling that we must accept this representation as true. Even the excellencies of a Saxon landlord, and his solicitude for the improvement of his estate and for the comfort of his peasantry, are specific reasons why he should be shot. Mr. Trench writes in full sympathy with the people in their sense of wrong. Few nations have been so oppressed and peeled, and no generous or even just Englishman will deny that, however unreasonable and fanatical Irish treason is now, when for nearly a century everything that could be done to redress the tyranny of the past has been done, it has traditional justification which almost exalts it to patriotism; and Mr. Trench feels the difficulty of so adjusting his sympathy as that while he justifies the national resentment of the past, he may condemn the continued treason of the present. Of course he sees no possibility in the dreams of repealers, and wishes every wise friend of Ireland would denounce repeal as the worst thing that could befall her. He can only, with ourselves, hope that the measures of redress of the last two Parliaments which leave Ireland almost literally without a grievance, will gradually discredit political agitation, and engender loyalty. He does, indeed, half suggest that a royal residence in Ireland, occasional visits from the Queen, or the Prince of Wales, would, as an appeal to Irish sentiment, be more potent than even the disestablishment of the Irish Church, or the enactment of the Land Bill. If so, it is a pity the experiment is not tried. As a romance, Mr. Trench's book is scarcely worthy of criticism. Ierne's personation of the ghost and her marvellous movements and achievements generally are simply preposterous. We tolerate the romance for the sake of the pictures of Irish life interwoven with it. Inveterate novel-readers will get through this, others will skip the tale, but even then the book will, by its information concerning national feelings and prejudices, and its delineation of various scenes of national life, faction fights, midnight drills, meetings of conspirators, and wakes, and especially by its racy delineation of national humour, and its careful description of noble scenery, amply repay persual.

Véra. By the Author of 'The Hôtel au Petit St. Jean.' Smith, Elder, and Co.

The Charm of 'Véra' is twofold; first, it introduces us to the interior of Russian life, and excites our interest by the delineation of modes of thought, feeling, and life, very different from our own. Next, it is written with great literary skill; the author's first work, which delineated Provençal life, will have prepared its readers for excellent workmanship in this. It is a story of character rather than of incident. Véra is a Russian Princess, affianced in marriage to Count Alexis Yotoff, her cousin, but the contemplated marriage is one of convenience rather than of affection, and when Alexis falls at Inkermann, he is wept with tenderness but not with passion. Colonel St. John, the nephew and heir of Lord Kendal, who lies wounded on the field of Inkermann, is assailed by some Russian stragglers, Alexis interposes to save him, and accidentally falls a victim to St. John's pistol, which he is in the act of discharging. He receives from the dying Alexis some souvenirs which he engages to convey to Véra and his family. His wounds affect his memory, and years elapse without his being able to redeem his pledge, and recall the names of either Alexis or his friends. In the meanwhile he becomes acquainted with Véra, and, although twenty years her senior, they are mutually in love. Their love, however, is sadly marred by cross purposes. At length St. John discovers, under critical circumstances, that Véra was the intended recipient of the souvenirs, and that his was the hand that deprived her of her lover. For awhile the discovery is fatal, but a fortunate railway accident affords an opportunity for explanation, and all comes right at last. The artistic excellence of the work is in its delineations, and the undertone of thoughtful sentiment, if not philosophy, that runs through it. Its text is the inevitableness of destiny; and the way in which the story illustrates this is as original as it is clever. It is a very charming novel, one of the very few which we wish longer.

Episodes in an Obscure Life. Three vols. Strahan and Co.

This is one of the few books that leave the critic no alternative but simply to heap together words of eulogy. Its least and lowest merit is its literary workmanship, and yet we scarcely know where we could look for more vivid pictures of accurate observation, of chaste simplicity, and unpretentious power. The large-hearted geniality, manly piety, and unwearied benevolence of the anonymous writer inform his eye and guide his hand, throwing gleams of radiance, aspects of humour, and visions of hope over the sad conditions of squalid misery which he describes, without a particle of Dickens's falsetto. He exhibits the noble kindly-heartedness and heroic self-denial that are often to be found in combination with rough exteriors and chronic misery. 'Little Creases,' 'Mr. Jones,' 'the Matron of the Refuge,' 'Emily, the crossing-sweeper,' 'Bessie,' 'Sam and his wife,' 'Peter and his wife,' 'Blind Stevens and his wife,' and half a score others, are illustrations not only of the kindly and often heroic human nature that there is among the poorest, but of the benevolent patient optimism in the writer that sees and exhibits it. It is long since 'Annals of the Poor' were recorded with so much genial sympathy and unconscious art.

The conditions of life described in these sketches are a humiliation and a sorrow. Never before have the underlying evils and miseries of our gilded civilization been so vividly portrayed. Legislators and philanthropists have a Herculean task before them in the amelioration of the physical and moral evils of such districts as the East of London—the overcrowding, the adulterated food, the festering disease, the moral corruption, the extreme penury, the lawless vice, the wretched ignorance, the impassable gulfs, not one but many, between the rich and poor. East-end ministers of religion know them, ragged-school teachers and City missionaries know them, few else have any conception of them. Little do travellers who arrive at the terminus of the Great Eastern Railway know that within a stone's throw of the platform scenes such as are here described are any day to be witnessed. The good and the evil both—the good in spite of evil that is simply appalling—conditions of poverty, lawlessness, vice, and suffering are nowhere in the wide world to be surpassed. Legislation may do something to remedy this state of things; commercial prosperity may do something; but it is, we fear, chiefly the result of an indolence and vice that neither can touch. In every village there are drunken, idle vagabonds; in great cities this element is fearfully multiplied and intensified, and it brings misery upon hundreds who are not of it.

All honour, then, to brave, patient, Christ-like men like the author of this work, who are content to live their obscure life, if they may but do something to alleviate it. Theirs is the only influence that can regenerate vice, or in any way effectually deal with it. We know something of the district which the writer describes, and happily we can testify to scores of young men and women of the upper classes who visit it, and cheerfully give evenings and Sundays to teach ragged children, instruct their mothers, and, so far as it is wise, afford them substantial help. No one can doubt that a clergyman, gifted as is the author of this work, has chosen his lot, abjured the ease and elegance of refined life which might have been his, that after the example of his Master he may seek and save the lost. How simply, sincerely, and wisely, as well as with what unconscious self-sacrifice, he does it, this noble book will show. With characteristic self-abnegation the author does not give his name. Every reader will heartily say, 'God bless him;' and if our recommendation could avail it should carry his book into every rich man's house and every comfortable home in the land.

Earl's Dene. By R. E. Francillon. In Three vols. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons.

'Earl's Dene' has too obviously been written for the critics to satisfy a critic. The course of the narrative is interrupted by appeals ad clerum, which disturb the sense of illusion without convincing the judgment. The tone of the book is apologetic and explanatory, as if the author were under terror of the critic's lash, and were conscious that the movement of the story would seem so capricious as to require justification. This is a mistake in art, which seldom carries any compensation with it. The ordinary novel-reader is the most unexacting of human beings, and has unlimited capacity of digesting improbabilities; while the cultivated and analytic reader will be too conscious of the complexity of motives to be scared by superficial inconsistencies in the delineation of character. Thackeray was guilty of frequent 'asides,' but they were only outbreaks of cynicism or of pathos; incessant eruptions of psychology are less pleasing, if not more inartistic. But in all respects, this very defect included, 'Earl's Dene' is far above the level of common-place fiction. Though not strikingly original, it is evidently a transcription of life at first hand, and as seen through the medium of a refined and delicate intellect. The atmosphere of the book, though now and again disturbed by storms, is pure rather than bracing, and is fragrant with the aroma of refined reflection, which must be the outcome of long and intense experience. Decidedly feminine, we should say; overflowing with observations on the sex that look like self-revelations, and with sketches of the male animal which are inexpressibly grotesque when they are not weak. If anyone wants to see how Bohemia and its denizens picture themselves in an alien mind, he should study the portrait of Dick Barton, a cross between Caliban and Porson, an absurd and utterly impossible monster. But the characters are for the most part carefully drawn, by slight repeated touches, however, rather than by bold and luminous strokes. The dialogue sparkles with French esprit. There is obvious shrinking from common-place, as when the author refuses to describe first love; and, lastly, the novel is a novel with a purpose. It shows to men the ways of that great god 'Circumstance,' who seems a very Moloch, and winds up the tragedy by a general holocaust of his victims.

My Little Lady. Hurst and Blackett.

This charming novel, evidently by a female hand, is written with much grace and variety. The idea on which it is based has the advantage of perfect novelty. The 'little lady' is the child of an inveterate aristocratic gambler called Linders, who lives at Spa and Baden and other places of the same class, and who has a marvellous capacity for 'breaking the bank.' Whether he has a 'Martingale' we are not told, and indeed the authoress occasionally shows that she is quite properly unfamiliar with rouge et noir and roulette. But the conception is that this fellow, though on the whole a scoundrel, loves his little daughter Madelon, and that she, following him everywhere, becomes acquainted with the games he plays, and innocently regards gaming as quite a proper mode of making money. The complications herefrom arising are manifold, and are told felicitously: but the writer, who is probably a beginner, is apt to spin out her description and narrative to a rather wearisome length. Rapidity of narration is becoming one of the rarest qualities of modern authorship. That authors are paid for quantity instead of quality sufficiently accounts for this: and the great novel-manufacturers of the day, who turn out a volume a month and find readers for them, must, we suppose, be tolerated: but we cannot help regretting this unsatisfactory prolixity when, as in the present case, there is a pretty and piquant and original story to be told. However, it will be largely read, since it is high above the average of tales of the same order. Of the characters, the best drawn is the great gambler himself; hardly a possible personage, we suspect, but if possible curiously interesting. Madelon in her utter simplicity is very lovely; and she is quite conceivable, since there is no reason why a young girl should see any harm in gambling. Nine people out of ten would be puzzled to say on the instant why gambling is wrong: and the state of society shows that very 'honourable men' (as Mark Antony hath it) can see no harm in the doings at Tattersall's and the Victoria Club. So that a little girl whose father was an astute patrician gambler, should innocently take to rouge et noir, is quite intelligible—and a very pretty story is based upon it, with some strongly dramatic scenes therein. By the way, the names of flowers should be properly spelt, especially by lady writers: Westeria (vol. ii. p. 185) ought to be Wistaria, as it was named after Caspar Wistar, professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania.

Harold Erle. By the Author of "The Story of a Life."

The author of this poem reveals his high and delicate culture, and not unfrequently a true poetic grace. There are lines, passages, and entire scenes, which suggest the blank verse of Wordsworth. We are not reminded of the introspection and subjective might by which Wordsworth brings under the microscope of his 'inward eye' the beauties of nature and the mysteries of life, but of his bald simplicity, of his religious use of common-place, as well as of his partial inability to appreciate the difficulty which the great majority of the human race experience in perceiving a poetic side of 'common things.' 'Harold Erle' is a singularly painful theme, and one which will not readily lend itself to the Muses. The dangers incident to the marriage of blood relations, and the Nemesis which hereditary insanity imposes on some who enter into the lists of love, are not refreshing matters for contemplation. Blighted affections, the madhouse, and the grave, certainly provide material for high imaginative treatment, but when these strong colours are used chiefly with a view of entrapping us into a philosophic generalization of a universal law of marriage, we are disposed to feel that poetry itself has here degenerated into social philosophy. 'Harold Erle' is a powerful story, but the moral and the motive of it seem insufficient, and the dénouement is decidedly prosaic. The l'envoie of the poem seems to be: 'Young people, do not marry your first cousins; should your parents have been so foolish as to have done this, then, by all the nine Muses, do not marry at all.'

The career of Harold Erle is well told. Certain scenes are portrayed with pictorial power. There are tender touches of consummate grace, and emotions, events, and sacrifices are narrated which show how fertile this unwelcome theme has become in the hand of an accomplished writer.

Martha. By William Gilbert, Author of 'Lucrezia Borgia,' &c. Hurst and Blackett. 1871.

In the conduct of this story Mr. Gilbert has not stinted his readers in the matter of time. We are furnished with the family history and domestic details of four, if not five, successive generations. Near the commencement of the story we are introduced to a wealthy young spendthrift, who is startled by losses on the turf into propriety, thrift, and marriage. The closing pages of the novel bring us acquainted with the great-grandchildren of this worthy. An extraordinary number of prosy and uninteresting characters—many of them mere dummies—try the patience of the reader. With aggravating minuteness circumstances which have no bearing on the story are laboriously detailed. About a dozen different illnesses or accidents are portrayed at such length as to suggest the notion that a hospital clerk had nefariously introduced into the author's manuscript some pages from his medical note-book. The oracular twaddle of the medical adviser who figures throughout the story is redeemed from common-place only by the presentation of a rather interesting psychological problem which, we presume, may be stated thus: Is it possible on purely physical, or at least subjective, grounds to account for the belief entertained by an otherwise rational person that the phantoms of her departed relatives continually visited her in the great crises of a chequered life? We presume that Mr. Gilbert intends to suggest a strong affirmative. The subject of these hallucinations, called Martha Thornburg, is the only character of the story who possesses the minutest tittle of interest. She is the impersonation of unselfish consecration of life to the good of others, and on two separate occasions in her long life, at considerable intervals from each other, she is represented as enduring the very extremity of human suffering. She becomes a lightning-conductor of all the accumulated misfortune with which the devil of the piece has charged the thunder-cloud that spends its fury on this ill-fated family.

There are two villains, at least, among the dramatis personæ so utterly unredeemed by a single ray of goodness as to despoil them of all human interest. The one apparently belongs to the genus rattlesnake, the other to the genus hyæna. Bigamy, fraudulent bankruptcy, forgery, destitution of natural affection, detestable cowardice, attempted fratricide and murder, are a few of the peccadilloes of the more refined devil, who at last dies in his bed; the other, we are thankful to say, hangs himself. The vigorous, prosperous, generous brother of 'Martha,' as well as many other characters, are very faintly sketched, and the principal, if not the sole, interest of the story consists in the misguided goodness of 'Martha,' who covers herself with the suspicion of complicity with the miscreant who had been throughout the curse of her family. However, the mystery is cumbrous in the extreme, and the solution of it by no means artistic. We certainly cannot congratulate Mr. Gilbert on a successful use of his undoubted powers; but we are glad to know that, after all their vicissitudes, Martha Thornbury, her brother, his nephew, and the wife and family of the latter are all doing well. Their furniture is excellent, their wardrobe complete, their bracelets, ornaments, and toys abundant; and we earnestly trust that should any illness or accident befall them, Dr. Wilson will be at hand, not only with skilful treatment, but with ample explanations of all the pathological phenomena.

Dorothy Fox. By Louisa Parr. Strahan and Co.

It is vain to pooh-pooh love stories, so long as the passion itself rules the world so much as it does; the thing that provokes the protest of sensible people is, that love stories are-often so ineffably foolish, as indeed are people who are in love. A thoroughly good love story, high-minded, true-hearted, and sensible, is about as good a service as a novelist can render to her generation. To inculcate noble principles, and inspire noble feelings in the pursuit of the passion upon which the chief social happiness of the world depends, is a work worthy of the highest genius, and demanding the gratitude of all who wish well to mankind. 'Dorothy Fox' is a love story pure and simple. Dorothy is the daughter of a Quaker of the strictest sort, a wealthy hosier, destined to marry Josiah Crewdson, also a well-to-do tradesman; but, as even the primmest and most dutiful Quakeresses will do, she takes it into her pretty head or heart to fall in love with Captain Charles Verschoyle, a poor cadet of a good family, whose mother, Lady Laura, is bent upon both him and his sister making good matches. Charles reciprocates Dorothy's love, and will not marry Miss Bingham's fifty thousand pounds. While Audrey, the sister of Charles, instead of marrying as she ought old Mr. Ford, the millionaire parvenu, perversely falls in love against her own intention with Mr. Dynecourt, a poor barrister of ancient lineage. How Lady Laura schemed, and old Mr. Fox was scandalized; how wise and generous old Mr. Ford was, and how noble Josiah Crewdson—his disagreeable sisters notwithstanding—how charming Patience Fox was, and Grace, and John Hanbury, and how beautiful and refined Quaker-life may be, and often is, the authoress has told very charmingly. The characters of Charles and Audrey, with their glaze of worldly selfishness, which melts away like hoar frost under the heat of pure love, leaving an innate and uncorrupted nobleness, are very cleverly delineated; so is Harry Egerton, the rough old squire, with his kind, manly heart.

The story is a very pleasant and a very wholesome one. We trust that Miss Parr will again present to us pictures of Quaker interiors, with which she is so well acquainted. In them her strength lies.

On the Eve: A Tale by Ivan S. Tourguéneff. Translated from the Russian by C. E. Turner, English Lecturer in the University of St. Petersburg. Hodder and Stoughton.

Rather more than a couple of years ago (British Quarterly, Oct., 1869) we directed the attention of English readers to the novels of Tourguéneff, in an article in which a detailed account of 'On the Eve' was given. We need not, therefore, do more than refer our readers to what we then said about this very charming little story, which paints Russian life from the interior with the hand not only of skill, but of genius. Its social freedom surprises us, and its indications of easy social vices startle us. Ellen, the heroine, is a very beautiful creature. The translation reads smoothly and brightly. Mr. Turner seems to have done his work well. We are glad to possess this work of a great artist in an English dress.

Marquis and Merchant. By Mortimer Collins. Three vols. Hurst and Blackett.

Mr. Collins in this new novel has aimed to portray two of the great social classes that constitute England, and the two that are, perhaps, in more active rivalry, if not antagonism, than any other, and to show that the prejudice is not chiefly with the higher. The Marquis of Wraysbury, whose hereditary seat is at Ashbridge, is a favourable representative of what we are proud to designate our noble aristocracy. Wealthy, generous, liberal, frank, gentlemanly, he is the beau ideal of his class. His son, Lord Waynflete, the hero of the story, is the inheritor of his father's virtues, with a freedom from class conventionalities which is his own, and which permits him, as quite a thing of course, to marry a poor governess.

Mr. Mowbray, who buys an estate at Ashbridge and builds there a splendid mansion overpowering in magnitude, luxury, and appendages of garden, conservatory, &c., and which quite dwarfs the more modest belongings of Ashbridge Manor, is a Manchester millionaire; also a favourable representative of his class—keen, clever, generous, but with some drawbacks of class prejudice and obstinacy, which Mr. Collins paints with an evident gusto. He is the rival of the Marquis in spite of the latter; and the story is made up not unpleasantly of the history of their rivalries, with the issue thereof. Much of the subsidiary delineation is very good. The interiors at Ashbridge Manor, at Mowbray Mansion, at the Orphan Institute, at Mrs. Gutch's, and at delicious Wyvern Grange, are cleverly sketched, in these well-selected contrasts. The subordinate characters; that clever woman, Miss Pinnock, great in Johnsonese; the Bohemian lawyer, Terrell; the learned, gentlemanly recluse, Métivier, full of gipsy and all other lore; and a dozen others, are also admirably delineated. The novel is deficient as a work of art, but only a very clever and accomplished man could have written it. It is somewhat Bohemian in itself, and has an unpleasant vinous flavour—allusions, characterizations, or eulogies on wines occurring perpetually, as if the chief good of man were to have a good wine-cellar and to be a connoisseur of good vintages. The book is, moreover, an odd mélange of all conceivable things; one chapter is devoted to a criticism on Tennyson, another to a criticism on Dickens; verses apropos of everything and nothing abound. Mr. Collins has a marvellous Ingoldsby facility for running off rhymes, and when prose fails him or wearies him, he takes to verse. A diagram of a game of chess, an algebraic equation, and no end of classical quotations, are kneaded like currants into the dough of Mr. Collins's cookery. Not only has he been at a feast of languages, and stolen the scraps, he has evidently carved the dishes for himself. The story is, as we have said, not so well constructed as it might be. It is not always in good taste; it rumbles and rollicks along; but it is very clever and very amusing. It is less melodramatic than Mr. Collins usually is, and is, we think, the best book he has written.

The Green-Eyed Monster. By Kay Spen. Smith, Elder, and Co.

The title of this little book indicates its character. Hugh Barrington falls in love in a railway carriage with Adela Gwynne, a blue-eyed Welsh girl, and marries her. She is of a preposterously jealous disposition, and perversely interprets countless little incidents as justifying her jealousy. The story details the working out of these feelings and their disastrous issues, and the ability of the writer is shown in her psychological knowledge and skill. It is in this point of view very clever. Of course incidents occur with preternatural consentaneousness, and people act and feel in a very infatuated way, setting common sense at defiance, else how would novels get written? But Kay Spen has managed her materials well, and has written an interesting story with a very wholesome moral.

Jasmine Leigh. By C. C. Fraser-Tytler. Strahan and Co.

This is a very dainty little story. It is written in an autobiographical form, and narrates the history of a young girl blossoming into womanhood and love, who is abducted by a rough and sordid wooer, whom, nevertheless, she learns to pity, if not to love. It is written with a delicate touch, and is full of graceful and refined feeling. If, as we surmise, it is a first work, it is full of promise.

Her Own Fault. By Mrs. J. K. Spender. Hurst and Blackett.

Mrs. Spender writes with great care and with considerable strength. Her story is well constructed, and the characters are marked by strong individuality. The story is a stormy one. Sara, who is a very fine creation, is 'a beautiful embodied storm.' Indeed, the defect of Mrs. Spender is, that her strength is not sufficiently calm. Every character is wrought up to the agony pitch: Sara, when she has accepted Rosswith Maxwell—Bryan on the night when he learns his rejection—Lawrence Routh in his suppressed intensity—Charley in her passionate sisterliness—all are wrought up to powerful and exaggerated passion. Mrs. Spender might say with the American young lady after dinner, 'I guess I've piled it on.' The story, however, is vigorous and original, although it is not a very pleasant one. Everybody is to be pitied. Poor Bryan is left with a sentence of death recorded against him.

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JUVENILE LITERATURE.

Among children's books of the past Christmas which reached us too late for notice in our New-Year's Juvenile Section, are two or three, altogether too remarkable to be passed over. 'At the Back of the North Wind' (Strahan), and 'Ronald Bannerman's Boyhood,' both by George Macdonald, are two books almost sufficient by their excellences to mark an epoch in juvenile literature. Excepting 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,' no recent work that we can remember is worthy of being compared with the former. In no other of his many books has Mr. Macdonald shown more strikingly the power and delicacy of his imaginative genius. The blending of sober history with the most Puck-like fancies—the underlying thoughtfulness of both—the inlaying of wise reflections, subtly hinted or delicately touched—the blossoming into poetical beauty of almost every position and teaching—the light, graceful hand with which the whole is carried on—the deep, spiritual meanings that transfigure the lightest incidents—altogether constitute a fairy tale the like of which we have rarely seen, and which is as suggestive to the mature as it is amusing to the juvenile. We know youngsters in the nursery who, if they could not literally recite it by heart, would infallibly detect the alteration of a single sentence. Mr. Macdonald has attained to that perfection of excellency which understands the heart of a child. He has made 'Diamond' immortal. 'Ronald Bannerman's Boyhood' (Strahan), is altogether different in conception, feeling, and style. Mr. Macdonald's affluence of fancy is, with perhaps an equal exercise of imagination, subdued to the plain matter-of-fact, no-nonsense-about-it, autobiography of a school-boy. The sympathy with boy-nature is as perfect as in the other volume is the sympathy with child-nature. The narrative is bright, generous, and true—the exact tone of a noble-hearted boy, who has, however, to speak of some of the troubles and sorrows of life. Mr. Macdonald, however, never lacks humour. His description of Mrs. Mitchell, his father's sour housekeeper, and of the Dame School to which Ronald was sent, as well as of Kirsty and the experiences at the farm, is rich and racy in a high degree. Kirsty tells some capital kelpie and other Scotch stories and legends. It is a beautiful picture of childhood, teaching, by its impressions and suggestions, all noble things. 'Chamber Dramas for Children,' by Mrs. George Macdonald (Strahan), are four little plays, good as Hannah More's Sacred Dramas, and amusing as the stories of Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, out of which two of them are constructed. They are cleverly done, and will doubtless do duty in many an acted charade. The 'Tetterby's' is founded upon Dickens's Haunted Man. The 'Snowdrop' is new to us. 'The Boy in Grey' (Strahan), by Henry Kingsley, which appeared in Good Words for the Young, together with the above, was thereby subjected to a severe ordeal. It can ill bear the comparison. Instead of the translucent fancies of Mr. Macdonald, it is turgid and confused, and when it would be aërial, produces the effect that sculptured clouds do. Its allusions are often beyond the range of a boy's knowledge; its nonsense limps, and its wisdom is ponderous. We have found it very difficult to understand Mr. Kingsley's meaning. 'Lilliput Lectures,' by the author of 'Lilliput Levée' (Strahan), is again perfect in its way. The lectures are on all sorts of things—social and religious, physical and metaphysical, artistic and commercial. The writer tells us that he writes for no particular age, but aims generally at a childlike way of putting things. Some of the things put are high and mysterious; but then youth has wondrous dreams and speculations, and the happy simplicity of the writer helps youthful thought to climb. Each lecture winds up with some verses such as only the author of 'Lilliput Levée' can write. 'Choice Poetry for Children' (Religious Tract Society), is a small selection of religious and moral pieces by modern writers—of course, of unequal merit, but wisely and suitably chosen. 'The Pearl of Story Books' (Nelson) is a collection for children of Bible narratives in Bible words. 'Mrs. Montmorency's Money,' by Emma Jane Worboise (Clarke), belongs to minor fiction rather than to juvenile literature. Its moral is that 'the love of money is the root of all evil.' As is always the case with Miss Worboise, it is carefully written, and there are clever descriptions and scenes of pathos in it; but it is overlaid with moral, and not so successful in its plot as some of her tales. It is, however, a wholesome and readable story, and its moral is as timely as it is unexceptional.

Brevia, Short Essays, and Aphorisms. By the Author of 'Friends in Council.' Bell and Daldy.

Most of the writings of Mr. Helps are Brevia. His books are made like Armstrong guns, of welded pieces; and the process would not be a very violent or destructive one that resolved them into the shape of these fragments. We can well imagine them to be not so much chips as prepared blocks for larger works, which the architecture did not admit of, and which, therefore, the author has wrought into independent art forms. They are brimful of thoughtfulness and practical wisdom; always genial, often humorous, they make up a table book of aphorism and apologue, of colloquia, and short essay, independently conceived and gracefully expressed—which among living writers it would be difficult to parallel. They remind us most of Whately; only Mr. Helps is more terse than he. Sometimes reams of discussion are gathered into half a page; sometimes a single sentence contains seeds for reams of discussion. Mr. Helps has given us a volume of 'Aids for Reflection,' which is worthy the study of the most desultory. Most of these short essays and aphorisms have appeared in Good Words. We quote one sentence—'Some persons, instead of making a religion of their God, are content to make a God of their religion.'

Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain. By John Ruskin, LL.D. Sold only by G. Allen, Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent.

In these letters Mr. Ruskin seeks to teach the workmen and labourers of Great Britain some political economy which we are commonplace enough to think fallacious, and some history which we are not Vikings enough to think otherwise than mischievous. But we are in full accord with him in his desire to lighten the national distress around us, and to exterminate the yahoos of civilization; and if he can show us, as he seems to think he can, some sure method of doing both or either, we will abandon Mr. Mill, and will take our history from Mr. Carlyle. In the three letters already published we have not been able to discover any proposal leading to action, or, indeed, leading to anything at all, except weariness and vexation of spirit. But we are perhaps even now on the verge of the promised land. Mr. Ruskin has become so practical of late years that we are inclined to think he has made a real discovery. But he seems in no hurry to announce it, and delay is naturally tantalizing.

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THEOLOGY AND PHILOLOGY.

Essays, Theological and Literary. By Richard Holt Hutton, M.A. (Lond.) Two vols. Strahan and Co.

These volumes are likely to take a high place in English literature, and to measure and expound the influence which their author has for many years exerted on the higher thought of our generation, through the periodical press. He has submitted a selection of his more elaborate essays to final revision, and has brought them together with much skill and felicity of arrangement. The two volumes are, in fact, two separate works of exceeding interest, the one bearing on the highest forms of modern literature, and the other on the theological and philosophical speculations of the last twenty years. The polish and finish of the revision have excised the genial humour and delicate satire which have characterized some of Mr. Hutton's critical efforts, but they have not altered the substance or modified the tone of these remarkable papers. In almost all of them it is easy to trace the hand of the accomplished publicist, who has acquired the faculty of seizing one main characteristic of the poetry or philosophy, political career, or moral tendency he is wishful to examine, and having made himself master of this, is resolved to establish or illustrate it at his leisure. He decides on a good working hypothesis to account for the composition of a great poet, or the spirit of a remarkable book, and leisurely sits down to transform his hypothesis into a true induction. When Mr. Hutton brings Wordsworth, or George Eliot, or Ernest Rénan, or Henry Rogers into his field of view, he seems to say to himself, 'some explanation is possible of this congeries of spiritual phenomena,' and he forthwith attacks the problem with the enthusiasm of a naturalist, and often with the penetration of a true philosopher. He exhibits great insight, and his speculation is always worthy of attention, but it too much resembles the bar of sunshine gleaming through an aperture in a shutter, which throws an intense light on some portions of a painted chamber but leaves other portions in hazy and dubious shadow. We heartily thank him for the vivid image he has drawn, and for the key he has often given us to the intellectual treasures of some of our greatest modern thinkers; but we do not feel that he has adequately solved all the problem, or has definitely formulated the mental life or calibre of either the poets or theologians whom he passes in review. Thus almost all that he says of Wordsworth is nobly and truly said. There is consummate ability in his reply to Hazlitt's 'thorny praise,' in his comparison of Wordsworth and Tennyson, and in his method of proving the thesis with which he starts, viz., that the charge against Wordsworth, of 'profundity and transcendentalism,' sprang from the same root as that which declaims against his 'unintelligible fuss about common feelings and common things.' Still, in his anxiety to establish this position, Mr. Hutton appears to us to overstate the frugality of Wordsworth's genius, and to exaggerate the poet's habit of making a very minute modicum of incident furnish all the material he needed for the exercise of his imagination and the development of his vast subjective energies. The entire series of ecclesiastical sonnets, as well as those which were dedicated to national independence, cover a prodigious field, and make no inconsiderable demand upon the reader's knowledge, as well as upon his sympathy. In the description of the retreat from Moscow, Wordsworth surely chose a theme big enough for the historic imagination of Scott, and he dealt with it in an as objective a fashion, with Dryden's fire and Shelley's pomp of style to boot. Again, in Mr. Hutton's profoundly interesting paper on the 'Poetry of the Old Testament,' there is a principle which is full of force, and our author's working hypothesis will and does explain a great deal. He urges with eloquence and beauty of illustration, that 'faith in the glorious destiny of the nation, and the overseeing providence of God as the power which had wrought out that destiny,' are the two roots of the Hebrew traditionary poems, and he sees these roots in all the efflorescence of the glorious tree; but while there is truth in the remark that this double idea underlies and absorbs the significance of all the Hebrew poet's references to the beauty of nature, and much also of the tragic human interest of the life that was being lived by the prophets, there is some niggardliness in failing to acknowledge how the very fringes of the tabernacle that enshrined both the nation's destiny and the Divine presence are glittering with touches of refined gold, and how much nearer an approach the few Hebrews made to the modern conceptions of the transcendent and pathetic beauty of nature, than all the Greeks and Romans put together.

If the Hebrews rose to the stupendous idea of the universe being but the shadow of Jehovah's might, and believed that the light was the skirt of His raiment, that the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, were the work of His fingers, that the 'seven stars and Orion,' the 'sweet influence of Pleiades,' and 'the morning spread upon the mountains,' were alike declaring His glory, there is sufficient evidence in the abundance of their imagery and the sweetness of their song, that they exulted in as well as beheld the primal beauty. Interesting and demonstrative as Mr. Hutton's essay is, he leaves a range of facts unaccounted for. The gorgeous imagery of Ezekiel, when in parabolic fashion he sees the analogies between nature and national life, the idyllic, perhaps dramatic grace of the Song of Songs, and the genuine lyrical cry of large portions of the minor prophets and Psalms, seem to us to transgress the canon of our author.

One of the volumes before us consists of eighteen theological essays, admirably classified. They start from the moral and religious significance of Atheism; they proceed to show the insufficiency of the scientific and positivistic explanation of our moral relations. The Pantheistic hypothesis is displayed in its strength and its weakness. The question, 'What is revelation?' is then handled, and Mr. Maurice is vindicated and Dean Mansel demolished. In another essay the historic problems of the fourth Gospel are discussed with great candour and success. 'The principles of evidence' are illustrated in their application to the 'Doctrine of Incarnation,' which our author, like Mr. Baring-Gould, would hold, even if the New Testament should pass out of existence. Two papers on M. Rénan's recent works, and a vehement attack upon the evangelical doctrine, under the irritating title of 'The Hard Church,' are followed by an estimate of the relative position of the 'Romanists, Protestants, and Anglicans.' Several of these papers were published in the National Review, and one of them forms part of a series of essays entitled 'Tracts for Priests and People.' We acknowledge great obligation to Mr. Hutton for many of these dissertations. We sympathise most profoundly in the general estimate he forms of the position of the Atheist, the Positivist, and the Pantheist; and we are confident, after again perusing his examination of 'the historical problems of the fourth Gospel,' that though we differ from him in many details, and regret that he should find it necessary to relinquish the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, it is the noblest and most triumphant vindication in the English language of this stronghold of Christianity. In the graceful preface to the first volume, in which Mr. Hutton acknowledges his debt of obligation to Mr. Maurice, he sums up in a sentence the living principle of Mr. Maurice's writings. There, as elsewhere, too much credit is given to a key; too much of a jet of light is thrown upon a portion of Mr. Maurice's theology. We do not believe that this great and suggestive writer can be crushed into a proposition. Still it does cover much of the speculation associated with Mr. Maurice's name. It is as follows:—'All beliefs about God are but inadequate intellectual attempts to justify a belief in Him, which is never a merely intellectual affirmation, but rather a living act of the spirit, by no means confined to those who consciously confess His presence.' The paper entitled 'What is Revelation?' and part of the argument entitled 'The Hard Church,' are expansions of this principle, in vehement opposition to the philosophy of Hamilton, as it was applied by Dean Mansel to theological problems. We think that we may give Mr. Hutton credit for having made the difference between Dean Mansel and Professor Maurice more obvious than those distinguished men ever succeeded in making it appear for themselves; but we imagine that he has forced them into more irreconcilable antagonism than they are themselves conscious of, and has effected this by a slight exaggeration of the position of each disputant. We sympathize with Mr. Hutton far more than with Dean Mansel, in his general philosophical opinions; but this vehement scolding and irate horror caught from Mr. Maurice seems to us perfectly misplaced. Surely, surely the 'living act of the spirit,' by which man knows the only true God, the intuition of God by the eye of the soul, the transcendental conclusion or conviction of the whole intelligence, the bound heavenwards of the sanctified imagination, the 'real assent' to super-sensuous, extra-logical, metaphysical facts, all of which processes are aided by the facts and words of Scripture, by the recorded life of Christ, by the sublime utterances and confessions of the creeds, will not be rejected by Dean Mansel. They are differently described but thankfully acknowledged. What Mansel seems to us to imply is that these processes do not solve the contradictions which are involved in the logical effort to formulate the infinite; the knowledge they supply is approximate rather than exhaustive, regulative rather than absolute; a spiritual apprehension rather than scientific comprehension. The intuitions of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Maurice are far more numerous and intense than Dean Mansel's. Our author has more confidence in his direct experiences of truth than Dean Mansel has. The living God is more visible, more accessible to some minds than others, and these want less help and fewer manifestations to penetrate the mystery; but we do not see why Mr. Hutton should be so wrath with Dean Mansel for the position that 'the faculties in man furnish the conditions of constructing a philosophical theory of the object presented.' 'The object presented' is not the living and infinite God, but the finite manifestation and unveiling of his perfections through a certain series of human experiences. The criticism of Mr. Hutton shows that he is attributing to the words 'philosophical theory' more than it is meant by Mansel to carry. It is just because Dean Mansel cannot form a theory of the underlying 'infinite' and the 'abysmal deep' of human personality, that he is content to theorize about that which is presented in the person and voice and known history and character of a human being. It is because the infinite baffles and confounds us, and refuses to come under the formal laws of thought, that Mansel and Hamilton made a virtue and a science out of the recognition of our nescience, and would confine their theorizing to that which was manageable and apprehensible; but the entire philosophy of the unconditioned turns on the presence in our consciousness of these stupendous factors, unlabelled and untheorized. It appears to us that the conflict narrows itself to the name to be given to our personal relations with the transcendental and eternal realities in which both disputants profoundly believe; and therefore we do not for one moment think that this summation of Dean Mansel's position would be accepted by him. Can Mr. Hutton really mean that Dean Mansel would deny that we can be 'conscious of God's presence with us, conscious of the life we receive from Him, conscious of what He really is, and in the same, indeed, even in far higher sense than that in which we are conscious of what human beings are?' We heartily agree with Mr. Hutton in his denunciation of the idea that the moral nature of man is fundamentally different from the moral nature of God, that the goodness and mercy of God's being must be essentially different from the goodness and mercy in a human will, and that the 'revelation to us of the very character and life of the Eternal God' has been made by the 'purification of human vision,' and is 'the history of the awakening, purifying, and answering of the yearnings of the human spirit for a direct knowledge of Him. It proceeds from God, and not from man.' He details with clearness and force the spread of this 'revelation,' the human condition of it, and the widely diffused material of it, in the instincts and regrets, and secret hopes and fears of universal man. 'The revelation through Christ fulfilled ... the desire of all nations, by revealing the living power in man, by which human nature is wrought into His likeness.' But in his defence of this position he appears to us partially, if not utterly, to ignore the new life given to our humanity in Christ. 'Grace' seems on this theory rather to be a development of dormant powers than the conference of a new tendency, and 'Christ' to become rather the name of a sleeping but universal divineness in all humanity, which is at length realized to the conscience, rather than to be the personal source of all the life. The 'Father,' in the theology of Mr. Hutton, is a living God, as against the Pantheistic tendencies of modern science; but we are not sure—and few things would be farther from our wish than to misrepresent him—that the Christ and the Spirit of God are distinguishable from the voice of universal conscience and the hidden and better nature of the (not fallen but) ever aspiring child of the living God.

Each of Mr. Hutton's papers deserves careful study; we regret that we cannot even refer to more than one other, and this, moreover, one to which we cannot fail to take certain exceptions. It is entitled 'The Hard Church,' a 'degraded phase of the Church of common sense.' It is the Church whose logic has been supplied by Whately, whose metaphysic has been elaborated by Dr. Mansel; one of its most 'merciless and slashing captains' is seen in Professor Henry Rogers, and Mr. Binney caught its exact spirit in his lecture addressed to young persons on the possibility of 'Making the best of both Worlds.' 'Its heroes,' we are told, are 'latitudinarian but not catholic in the tone of their theology.' It has no sympathy, no heart, offers 'no divine reconciliation of contradictory yearnings;' it glories in 'hard sense,' and 'dismisses from view all those fluctuating elements of human life which do not seem deeply imbedded in the average notions of average men.' Its representatives scold away all individuality, denounce the eccentricities of positive faith, and are, in short, 'the most mischievous section of Christendom.' All this is introductory to a tremendous attack on Mr. Rogers for the pitiless severity with which he introduces a thoroughly sceptical mind, seeing no intellectual standing-place in a 'shallow Deism,' and more consistency in thoroughfaced Positivism or Pantheism, and more hope too, because he is sure that at the very bottom of the abyss, the heart will spring upward and the conscience will rise in rebellion. Mr. Hutton should remember that 'the real and deep Theism, holding by prayer, near to Christianity,' was not the intellectual position condemned by the author of 'The Eclipse of Faith;' it was a Theism that is or was in a fluent and changeable condition, a Theism that had, in deference to certain loudly-vaunted principles of reasoning, relinquished Christianity, and spoken of the moral character of Jesus—to put it mildly—with disloyalty if not with disrespect; it was a Theism trembling on the verge of Atheism, yet boasting itself to be a spiritual religion. Methods of thought may surely be harmless in some regions, and deadly in other spheres. It is not hardness but goodness which exposes the worthlessness of the method. This seems to us to have been the work of Mr. Rogers. We are not called upon to defend Mr. Rogers's strong way of putting certain things, but we think that Mr. Hutton has not shown him a more excellent way when he speaks of his 'throttling art,' and would give you to believe that he is a spiritual garotter, rather perhaps of the Antæus proportions, who has at last found a Hercules. Mr. Hutton appears to us to be too angry to see the genuine humour as well as rather grim pleasantry with which Mr. Rogers has represented the enemies of the Christianity infinitely dear to him as destroying each other. The doctrine that 'Christianity is against the grain of human nature,' is spoken of as demonstrating the truth that 'the Hard Church has a hard Master.' Nothing surely is more true than this language of Mr. Rogers, and we are astonished that Mr. Hutton thinks he replies to this estimate of Christianity by saying that Paul told the Athenians that they were 'seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.' Our author is generally quite ready to admit the complexity of human nature, the multiplicity of the forces that are moving it. The same apostle who thus spake to Athenians, said to Galatians, 'Brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the Cross ceased.' We can conceive of no more satisfactory response to the position here assailed than that so often attributed to Lord Palmerston, 'that all children are born good.' We suppose Mr. Hutton must endorse it. The paper on 'Romanism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism' cannot be discussed by us here for want of space. Its delicate insight into 'root-principles,' and formulated tendencies, is another illustration of the author's disposition to generalise, and to cast pencils of coloured light upon the parts of a theme, or of a system of thought. With the general estimate of Luther we have not much to contend against, except that no reference is made to the objects or reasons of his faith. The unlimited, ecstatic, violent confidence in an unproved, transcendental fact, with nothing but personal intuitions to guide the triumphant trust—itself a Saviour—may be apparently proved from certain table-talk of Luther, but is a very imperfect exhibition of Luther's position. Why, by implication, should all whom Mr. Hutton calls 'pseudo-Protestants' be supposed to deny the indispensable necessity of an entire moral surrender of the whole nature to the will of God? With some of those whom Mr. Hutton thus denounces, as for example, Bishop Bull and all who agree with him, faith is identifiable with moral surrender to the will of God; in the view of others, as proved by almost all the Protestant confessions, it is inseparably associated with saving trust. Where, we ask, is 'the bibliolatry which relegates the Holy Spirit to the province of explaining the Bible,' except in a small section of Scotch divines, whose hard and artificial lines have long since shown a tendency to vanish away? Mr. Hutton seems to try to take from those whose joy and crown it is to speak of trust in a present Christ their most distinctive feature; because here and there a logical theologian may use scholastic or forensic phrases in his theorizing, it is ungenerous to say that 'the passionate faith of Luther is degraded into the acceptance of an artificial contract,' or that 'the orthodox theory of substitution excludes the purifying influence of spiritual union with Christ.' The best reply that we can make to Mr. Hutton's contemptuous allusion to Dr. Candlish is to call his attention to Dr. Candlish's sermon on 'His servants shall serve Him,' and to the greater part of his Commentary on the first Epistle of St. John. Would that our great thinkers succeeded in learning more of each other's mind! There are a hundred other questions raised by Mr. Hutton on which it is tempting but difficult to dilate. We cannot part from him, however, without assuring him that we believe these volumes will gain what they richly deserve—a high place in English literature. Our remarks have been somewhat critical and dissatisfied, but we are anxious to express, notwithstanding, the exceeding admiration which we feel for these eloquent and noble essays. It is often most instructive to see how the position we occupy shapes itself to the intelligence of one who is only in partial sympathy with us.

First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth. Essays on the Church and Society. By J. Baldwin Brown, B.A. Hodder and Stoughton.

This volume consists of ten essays: the first four are entitled 'The Doctrine of the Infallible,' and contain Mr. Brown's exposition of the inquiry—What is truth? a brave and full exhibition of the answer to that question given by the infallible church; a criticism of the Protestant dictum that an infallible book is adequate to the solution of every great moral and spiritual problem; and in the last place a passionate vindication for the free spirit of the possession of the true infallibility. Two essays then follow, of considerable speculative interest, under the titles of 'The Natural History of Antichrist,' and 'The Christian Commonwealth.' The volume is completed by four lecture essays on the 'Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' the intellectual, social, ecclesiastical and theological revolution which has unrolled itself during the twenty-five years of Mr. Brown's fruitful and stimulating ministry. We have said enough to indicate the comprehensiveness and multifariousness of the theme which our author has here investigated. It is as though he had taken his stand on some high promontory which overlooks a boundless sea of thought, and with well practised, almost prophetic eye, taken in the vast expanse, the rolling tides, the brooding storms of the great highway of the nations; here a very maelström of confusion and wreathing agony, where equatorial and arctic currents blend in driving mist and fierce agitation, and there a dreamy outlook of serene though glittering colour; now, the breaker and the wreck and then the ark of refuge, the busy craft, the haven of rest. Few writers of the present day appear to us to take a larger view of men and things, and though his senses seem painfully acute to the moan of distress and the shriek of the torment, yet few appear to hear more distinctly the sound of the Master's voice, or to see more clearly the triumphant form of Him who holds that ocean in the hollow of His hand.

We think this volume is unquestionably the noblest production of Mr. Baldwin Brown's pen. In refinement and elevation of style, in high sympathy with the good and the noble side of that which he condemns, in readiness to learn from his opponents, and to see himself and his own position with their eyes, amounting to what some may deem almost a dangerous concession to the misconception of the free spirit entertained by both the Romish doctor and the apostle of science, coupled with outspoken and brave utterance of unpopular truth, this volume will hardly find its parallel in modern times.

We cannot attempt more than to touch on a few points. We are inclined to think that the paper on 'The Natural History of Antichrist' is not only the most original and suggestive portion of the volume, but that it is, in fact, the pivot, or the centre of the entire argument. Our author has drawn a comparison between 'Babel,' 'Babylon,' and 'Babylon the Great,' and has shown how the hoary legend of man's first endeavour to establish a worldly and human independence of the Supreme will, found its counterpart in the subsequent efforts to produce the four world-wide monarchies of pre-Christian times, and again, in the towering system of Pontifical rule, the rise, triumph, and fall of which are seen in the visions of Patmos. He has discussed with consummate eloquence and brilliancy of touch, the analogies which link these three manifestations of the spirit of antichrist, and how God's providence has undermined them one after the other by a like energy of the individual conscience and the free spirit. The paper on the 'Christian Commonwealth' provides a delicately-sketched theory of the true relation between the governing and the Christian spirit. Mr. Brown admits, nay, contends, for the fact that the Church and the State in their last significance and highest development are one, and argues with great ingenuity that a supposed alliance between the Church and the State, as between two contracting parties, is essentially unchristian; it is, moreover, 'an exceedingly low and false conception of the true character of the National Establishment, and is quite unsupported by its early history.' He acknowledges the difficulty of realizing the Christian idea in any Christian State, and asserts 'that the Gospel has still a missionary function in every State in Christendom; men have not only to be helped to live by it, they have to be persuaded to believe in it;' but 'that the idea of a National Church whose rulers are clergy, which shall have the whole spiritual interests of the community in charge, having its own ordinances, officers, and laws, of which it is the only lawful custodian and administrator, lending a Christian character to the State by its alliance, and deriving material countenance and support from the State in return, is simply anti-Christian. The only National Church is the whole community which has been redeemed by Christ, and on which, and in which, He is working as the head of the Church in a thousand ways, of which theologians of all parties little dream.'

Mr. Brown differs from many Nonconformists in holding the competency of the public assemblies of a Christian State to deal with spiritual matters, and would prefer to have such regulation as the British Parliament might supply to religious belief and life to that of any 'spiritual synod that he is acquainted with;' but he considers that a body like the British Parliament may and must 'abstain from all attempt at legislation on certain subjects, because they know that they would only mar them if they were to touch them with their legal fingers.' He does not think that domestic sympathies and affections, the higher intellectual life of the community, or the religious life of the people, are palpably beyond the sphere of a government, but that they are beyond 'their power. One shudders to think of the costly, wasteful, pompous, grasping, titled, beneficed, wealthy and bigoted thing which has been presented during three hundred years to the English people, as the visible embodiment of His kingdom, who was the incarnation of tenderness, compassion, purity, patience, gentleness, and love. The Establishment principle, under the most favourable conditions, seems to run directly counter to the fundamental principle of the spiritual government of men as we watch it working through all the ages. It belongs to the age of stagnancy and deadness, is vested in the old and decaying order, is doomed, and must die.' The theoretical admission of competency, coupled with the trenchant disavowal of power to deal with the higher regions of the social and religious life of the people, reminds us of the ground taken for some years by a large section of the free kirk of Scotland. There is no practical difference between the views held by Mr. Brown and by the bulk of Nonconformists; his condemnation of the Establishment principle is at least the result of experience, and appears to be final.

As Christianity and the Church are the form and life of the truth, Mr. Brown has prepared the way for his discussion of both by his discourses on the infallible. The first paper, entitled 'What is Truth?' exhibits with painful intensity the anguish, even the torment that accompanies the search after this hidden treasure. Expressing, as we suppose, the feelings of others rather than his own, the signs of the times rather than his own heart-throbbings, his language almost amounts occasionally to a wail of despair: nor does he, in the discourse which is entitled the 'Intellectual Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' exonerate the Christian teachers of the present day from the charge of augmenting that despair. After clearly expounding the theory of the Positivist, and showing how in its isolation it fails to satisfy the need of either the intelligence or the heart of man, he boldly charges theology and the Church with the sin of giving to science such a representation of God as to induce it to do without him. In his extreme anxiety to do justice to the scientific spirit, Mr. Brown appears to us to do some injustice to the age-long yearning after truth which has characterized theological science. Perhaps he does not sufficiently take notice that the mental faculties which are quite adequate to secure the broadest generalizations of science are insufficient to furnish us with some of the chief data of theology. He speaks with perfect confidence of 'common ground in our Christian belief for us and the leaders of the intellectual progress of men.' We believe that this common ground will be found only when the methods of theology and the methods of science are alike seen to be incomplete; but a difference of method in the two regions there must ever be.

In the paper on 'the Infallible Church,' our author frankly admits that there must be infallibility somewhere. With high courage and honesty he traces the confidence with which the Catholic Church has entertained a consciousness of the unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit, and he has done much to show how reasonable is the expectation of such a guidance and the truth that underlies the celebrated dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins; and with distinguished skill he has indicated the way in which vagueness and uncertainty have forced some of the strongest minds in the Romish Church to sigh after and ultimately to secure the definition of a Papal infallibility. Few things are more remarkable than the steady growth of this yearning in face of the proved forgeries and infinite gullibility on which the modern dogma conspicuously rests. Mr. Brown thinks that some deep necessities of human nature must be the explanation of this mystery. We believe he need not go much deeper than the ignorance, credulity, laziness, cowardice, and abjectness of the human mind, and the wide-spread incapacity, independently of the Holy Spirit, for the spiritual apprehension of transcendental truth. In his papers on the infallible book and the doctrine of Christ, Mr. Brown has shown how dependent a man with the Bible in his hand must ever be, on the spiritual presence and indwelling light of the Comforter. He may almost be said to have drawn Bossuet's rapier from its scabbard, and made some vigorous passes at the 'variations of Protestantism;' but it is not that he may turn back to an infallible Pope for guidance or for rest, but that he might fight his way past sects and churches, and dogmas and popes, into the true temple, where all who have received the fulness of the spirit are worshipping their father. As we have already said, Mr. Brown opens up so many controversies, and displays such varied culture and exceeding fairness in his treatment of these high themes, that we will now content ourselves with urging our readers to peruse the whole volume.

The Office and Work of the Christian Ministry. By James M. Hoppin, Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology in Yale College. Second Edition. New York: Sheldon and Co. 1870.

This elaborate course on homiletics and pastoral theology may be said almost to exhaust the subject. The history of preaching, the art of preaching, the analysis of a sermon in all its various parts, from the text to the peroration, constitute the first part of the homiletical manual. The second part contains a series of valuable dissertations on the application of rhetoric to preaching. The pastoral office is then examined in its divine institution, in its ideal, in the call to its high functions, and the ordination to the office. The author further discusses the pastor as a man, the pastor in his relations to society, and the pastor in his relations to the Church. Here Dr. Hoppin investigates the conduct of public worship, and under this heading such details even as church music, marriages, and funerals are included. Finally the whole question of the care and cure of souls is wisely and affectionately urged upon the student. We have never seen a more complete treatise on the question with which the author deals. There is not much room for originality, and the analytical tone of the discussion precludes the presence of much enthusiasm or fire. There is an abundance of wise, godly counsel, and a considerable reference to the literature of the subject.

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SERMONS.

Sermons Preached in the Temple Church. By the Rev. Alfred Ainger, M.A., Reader at the Temple Church. (Macmillan and Co.) There is about Mr. Ainger's sermons the great charm of perfect simplicity, unconventionally, intelligence, and fearlessness. Neither in style nor in thought are they like any sermons that we can recall. They are not eloquent; or if so, it is the eloquence of a perfectly transparent medium of thought. Not a fine word or a rhetorical figure occurs in them; but neither is there anything commonplace. It is the fresh, unconventional talk of a clear, independent thinker, addressed to a congregation of thinkers. The uncultured would have no difficulty in understanding; but the colourless thought would fail long to interest such. For popular effect, it wants sensuousness and passion, and, therefore, rhetoric. Mr. Ainger belongs to the liberal-orthodox school; but he does not shape his opinions to any school. He speaks right out what he thinks, and often surprises us with fresh views of familiar texts. He is not great; but he is unconventional and earnest. In doctrine he is broad, not however in any sense that is inconsistent with what are understood by Evangelical views. The moral aspects of the Atonement—forgiveness of sins, regeneration, and the life to come—which he exhibits, are the highest truths of the Gospel; but he exhibits them with such predominance, almost exclusiveness, that he is apt to forget his own principle that the Atonement of Christ has many aspects. Thoughtful men will be greatly charmed by this little volume; they will learn from its perusal how the Gospel of Christ commends itself to all the mind as well as to all the heart of men. The sermons, moreover, are preached in the light of the thought of the present day, and are rich glimpses of great questions now stirring men's hearts.—The City Temple Sermons, Preached in the Poultry Chapel, London, 1869-70. By Joseph Parker, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Dr. Parker, also, is a City preacher; but, perhaps, the three kingdoms could not furnish a greater pulpit contrast than between him and Mr. Ainger. Dr. Parker's sermons are much stronger, but they are far less thoughtful. They are more rhetorical, but less beautifully clear. They are abrupt, striking, sensational in style, and abound with rhetorical devices for catching the ear of the multitude. Sometimes, for instance, Dr. Parker renounces the idea of a sermon, and tells a story, after the manner of the Parables. His sermons often offend good taste, and are to be excused only on the ground that the end justifies the means. Certainly Mr. Ainger could not do what Dr. Parker is doing at the Poultry.—Christ Satisfying the Instincts of Humanity. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church. By C. J. Vaughan, D.D. (Macmillan.) Half-hours in the Temple Church. By C. J. Vaughan, D.D., Master of the Temple. (Strahan and Co.) Counsels to Young Students. Three Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge at the opening of the academical year 1870-71. By C. J. Vaughan, D.D. (Macmillan and Co.) Concerning three new books by the author of upwards of twenty volumes of published sermons, it is almost enough to say that they are his: only these sermons, while preserving the admirable simplicity and practical spiritual unction of the parochial sermons, have more of intellectual fibre. The conception of the first series addresses itself more to thinking men, and the treatment has a more thoughtful cast. Seven of these letters were delivered on Wednesday evenings in Lent, the eighth on a Sunday just after. The instincts which Christ is represented as satisfying are the instincts of Truth, Reverence, Perfection, Liberty, Courage, Sympathy, Sacrifice, and Unity. The only text of doubtful relevancy is that of the sermon on Courage, taken from the Corinthians, 'Quit you like men.' It is matter for devout thankfulness that a preacher so single-hearted, so practical, so faithful to evangelical truth, and so spiritual, should address so large a number of the learned profession on the great themes of the Gospel, and that these qualities should find such acceptance as they do. The crowds who gather round the Temple pulpit prove that preachers need have recourse neither to strange doctrines nor to oddities of manner to make the Gospel attractive. Dr. Vaughan must preach almost all that he thinks, as he prints almost all that he preaches. His sermons have the natural, simple strength and freshness of an intelligent, scholarly, and devout man. They are not made, they grow; if they may not claim the merit of great originality, they are in every wise and wholesome sense independent. There is no reason why his series of little volumes should not go on for ever, and certainly we have every desire that they should. Dr. Vaughan's devout, spirit-searching fidelity, and evangelical theology, make his books almost everything that we could desire them to be for popular religious reading. There can be no better sign of our times than the favour with which such books are received. Because Dr. Vaughan's sermons are the simple, spontaneous outcome of his mind and heart, they always have an admirable adaptation, whether to the alumni of Cambridge or to the lawyers of the Temple. He speaks with exact pertinence, and therefore with power. We are devoutly thankful that both these classes should hear such faithful, searching, loving words as are addressed to them respectively in these three volumes.—The Lost Found, and the Wanderer Welcomed. By the Rev. W. M. Taylor, M.A., U.P., Liverpool. (Edinburgh: Oliphant and Co.) A lively series of expository and practical homilies on the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel. Almost too lively at times, when the Prodigal Son is represented as departing to the 'El Dorado of his dreams,' and hopes to return a 'nabob;' but there is a dash, and force, and sweetness withal, that render the volume impressive and attractive.—Tender Herbs; or, Lessons for the Lambs. By George W. Conder. (Manchester: Tubbs and Brook; London: Kent and Co.) Few more charming volumes than this have ever been prepared for young Christians. A 'Little Bunch of Herbs for the Lambs,' the author calls them; but they have rare fragrance and beauty. Under such titles as 'The Broken Vase,' 'Thistle Gardens,' 'The Coat and the Dream,' 'The Golden Key,' 'The Shepherd and the Lambs,' Mr. Conder pours forth his affluent treasures of tender fancy and abounding affection. Underneath the almost playful tone of some of his addresses, and the genial kindness of all, there is plenty of strong masculine sense, of vigorous and noble thought, of original and novel argument.—A Practical Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, in Simple and Familiar Language. By G. B. (Nisbet and Co.) Evangelical but feeble.—Life and Truth; or, Bible Thoughts and Themes. The Lesser Epistles. By Horatius Bonar, D.D. (Nisbet and Co.) In our notice of the two previous volumes of this series we have sufficiently characterized the sermons of which it consists. Dr. Bonar seems to have been guided in the selection of passages for texts simply by his sympathetic fancy. In his treatment he is somewhat ultra-orthodox, deeply spiritual, not very critical, and not very original or striking. He is closely textual, and in his frame-work of divisions, resembles some of the old Puritans, rather than divines of the present day. Eighty-five discourses, in a small volume, necessitate brevity; they are, indeed, outlines rather than compositions. Perhaps we may best convey an idea of their character when we say they resemble Chalmers' 'Daily Readings;' only they have more of a sermon-plan in them—sometimes a division or sub-division is dismissed in a sentence. Their most fitting designation would be 'Sermons in Outline.'—Symbols of Christ. By Charles Stanford. (Hodder and Stoughton.) A second edition of a little book that has commended itself to devout readers by its healthy spiritual tone of devout practical religiousness. Mr. Stanford has just that tinge of mysticism which spiritualises events, and uses emblems with unction; but he never becomes mawkish or obscure. His sermons are pure and breezy; emotion is appealed to and excited in an intelligent, manly way. Hence few more wholesome helps to the spiritual life could be named. This is a companion volume to the edition of 'Central Truths,' which we commended on its appearance a few months ago.—Sermons on Historical Subjects. By the Rev. D. Rowlands, B.A. (Hodder & Stoughton.) Mr. Rowlands' sermons are ingenious and effective. In some of them he is remarkably happy in seizing and condensing into a paragraph or two the essence of a great lesson; thus the sermon on Jacob's dream at Bethel treats—1. The 'Duality of Existence;' 2. The 'Unity of Existence.' The treatment is sometimes inadequate, an undue space being given to mere description with which imagination has a good deal to do. On the whole, the sermons may be commended as fresh, sensible, vigorous, and useful.—Sermons. By Henry Melville. Two volumes. (Rivingtons.) Sermon readers will feel a great obligation to the publishers for this cheap reprint of the sermons of one of the most effective preachers of this generation. We are not too old to remember the electrical way in which, for an hour, the preacher at Camden Chapel held spell-bound the multitudes that crowded every available corner: A severe critic might characterise Mr. Melville's preaching as somewhat artificial, and his sermons as fanciful and sometimes wire-drawn; but they are full of unction, and contain precious evangelical truth enforced in a way not to be forgotten. We hope these volumes will be succeeded by others.—Beacons and Patterns; or, Lessons for Young Men. By the Rev. W. Landels, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) These sermons, on some of the historical characters of Scripture, containing lessons specially adapted to young men, are reprinted from 'The Bible Student.' They rise to that level of popular excellence which characterizes all that Dr. Landels does, and are calculated to be useful.—The Prophet's Mantle. Being Scenes from the Life of Elisha, the Son of Shaphat. By the Rev. James Murray, Minister of Old Cumnoch. (Blackwood & Son.) An exceedingly good example of the expository preaching to which, much more than ourselves, our Scottish brethren are given. Mr. Murray, while evidently having a scholarly acquaintance with critical difficulties, knows how to keep them subordinate to popular statement and practical uses. Great good sense characterises all that he says, and regulates every touch. The sermons are Biblical rather than practical, that is, they simply furnish a running practical comment upon the Biblical narrative. Really useful preaching demands somewhat larger and wider uses suited to the practical life of our own day; the historical instance should not have larger prominence than its application.—Sermons. By Charles Wadsworth. San Francisco. (R. D. Dickenson.) We welcome this volume of sermons from the rapidly-growing and vigorous Christian life of San Francisco, where, as everywhere else throughout the States, religious provision fully keeps up with the rapid growth of the community. Mr. Wadsworth's sermons have some of the characteristics of Western life: they are full of vigour, fire, and fearlessness, but with that defective culture of form which in its excess is designated pedantry. The thought is cast in a scholastic form, the scientific illustrations are often in excess, and the style wants ease and simplicity; hard words and harsh compounds occur, and, together with this, the practical applications are too ejaculatory and coercive. Mr. Wadsworth will do better as he mellows, but his volume is able and has much good stuff in it.—Foreign Protestant Pulpit. Sermons by eminent Preachers of France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. Second Series. (R. D. Dickinson). We can only adduce as vouchers for the great excellency of this volume the names of the preachers of these six-and-thirty sermons; they are Lange, Grandpierre, César, Malan, Horace Monod, Tholuck, Bersier, Hocart, Gaussen, Krummacher, Luthardt, Schwartz, Rothe, Pressensé, and Julius Müller. In addition to the intrinsic excellence of the sermons, they have the exciting freshness of modes of religious thought and pulpit presentation which are different from our own; they seem to be well translated, their flavour is carefully retained. We cordially commend them to both sermon preachers and sermon readers.—The True Vine; or, the Analogies of our Lord's Allegory. By Rev. Hugh Macmillan. (Macmillan and Co.) Mr. Macmillan combines the eye of a poet and the knowledge of a savant with the heart of a saint; while he analyses the phenomena of nature on purely scientific principles, he interprets them on the principles of a devout Christian theist. He sees in nature the wonderful ways of Him who made it; 'looks through nature up to nature's God,' and often, in virtue of his religious insight, invests familiar things with unobserved and beautiful significance. Beneath the surface of natural symbolism he discerns the religious and loving ways of a divine Creator and father; and thus, in a subtle and beautiful way, he knits together the two great departments of the one kingdom of God. In this volume he is primarily a theologian, investigating the religious meaning of our Lord's great allegory of the vine and its branches—perhaps the greatest of his self-assertions on the one hand, and of his religious assurances on the other. Mr. Macmillan here, therefore, makes science the handmaid of theology, and brings his knowledge of natural phenomena to bear upon the significance of our Lord's similes. He has, we think, a little overdone this; the religious thought is overlaid, the illustration is more than the thing illustrated; but he has thrown beautiful light upon many points of natural symbolism. Readers and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as valuable as they are beautiful. His wild luxuriance somewhat reminds us of that of James Hamilton.—Truth and Trust: Lessons of the War. Four Advent Sermons. By Henry Alford, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) These are the last products of Dean Alford's pen, the last utterances from his lips. The proof was but partly corrected when he died. We could not subject them to criticism if we would. They are 'the sound of a voice that is still,' and love for an honoured and noble-hearted servant of God, and for a dear personal friend, seals our lips in reverence. Under any circumstances, we should have only words of eulogy for them. They are, in spiritual intelligence, strength, and cogency, about the best of the many sermons that he published.—The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church; a Series of Discourses on the Epistle to the Hebrews. By R. W. Dale, M.A. Second Edition. Revised, with additional notes. (Hodder and Stoughton). We cannot but regret that Mr. Dale has not made this volume much more than 'discourses, not for scholars, but for ordinary Christian people to whom learned commentaries are inaccessible or useless.' He has in them laid the foundations of an exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews of great spiritual insight and philosophic breadth, and he might advantageously have wrought out his plan, even in successive editions, until the work had become the worthy magnum opus of his life. It is, however, useless regretting what he has not done; we can simply commend what he has done, as one of the best popular hand-books to this great and suggestive epistle that is extant. Pulpit purposes demand broad treatment and the avoidance of minute exegesis; but the broad treatment here is always the fruit of careful exegesis, good scholarship, and sound, vigorous thought. Some of the sermons are not even wrought out as they were preached; the notes thereof only are given. It is virtually what Robinson's 'Lectures on the Corinthians' are, and will scarcely suffer by comparison with them.—Lights and Shadows in the Life of King David. By Charles Vince. (Elliot Stock.) In ten discourses, Mr. Vince selects certain incidents and points in the history of David. He makes no pretension to biographical completeness, or to relative importance. Spiritual, and not biographical, reasons have guided his selections. Thus one discourse is devoted to the influence of Rizpah's pathetic fidelity in quickening David's conscience; and two to the two things which David had never seen—'the righteous forsaken, and his seed begging their bread.' The volume is a very charming one—full of delicate spiritual discernment and tender religious sensibility; the style is simple and chaste; and the quiet, natural way in which the practical side of everything is presented is very felicitous. Mr. Vince does not 'strive nor cry;' he has recourse to no feverish rhetoric or tumultuous passion; his doctrine 'distils as the dew,' and, in a searching, potent way, finds the soul of every hearer and saturates it.—Misread Passages of Scripture. Second Series. By J. Baldwin Brown, B.A. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Very different is Mr. Brown, who is urgent with intellectual force and moral earnestness. His thought is inquisitive, aggressive, and demonstrative; his spiritual zeal takes cogent forms. He is full of intellectual surprises and unexpected spiritual motives; very independent, very instructive, very forcible, fulfilling the great practical religious ends of the ministry in a masterly, forceful way. His books are full of strong, wise, earnest words, such as place him among the noblest teachers of our day. Nothing could be more characteristic of him than these two series of sermons on 'Misread Passages.' In the second, as distinguished from the first which treats chiefly of textual misinterpretations, Mr. Brown deals with doctrines and conclusions derived from misinterpreted texts; e.g., 'The Principle of Christian Unity,' regarded in the light of the true reading. 'There shall be one flock and one shepherd,' instead of 'one fold and one shepherd;' and the true significance of the simile of the potter and the clay. We commend to special attention the sermon on the 'True Idea of Substitution,' in which, denying the theories of mere martyrdom and commercial substitution, Mr. Brown insists upon the substitution which has its character and power in Christ as the representative of the race—the true theory, as we venture to think. The volume is full of thoughtfulness, light, and power.—The Story of Job, and Meditation on Passages of the Book of Job. By Rev. Alfred Clayton Thistleton. (Nisbet and Co.) There is no distinctive character either of intelligence or strength in Mr. Thistleton's sermons. They are devout and practical, but very commonplace, abounding in unctuous words, and not over careful about exact meanings.—Sermons for the Christian Year. By the Rev. W. H. Lewis, D.D., Rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn. (R. D. Dickinson.) A reprint of a volume of sermons published twenty years ago. It is a poor criterion of sermons to measure them by the clock—a poor compliment when the first commendation is of shortness; but Mr. Lewis's sermons have this merit. This little volume of 500 pages contains sixty-six. Few of them could have exceeded the orthodox Episcopal fifteen minutes. We differ from many of the tenets of Mr. Lewis. Thus, from the text, 'Cease ye from man,' he teaches that we are from human corruption to expect only ingratitude and wrong, to live among men as among natural enemies. This is a very doleful and, we think, an unwarrantable doctrine. Mr. Lewis is an orthodox evangelical. He discourses in the old mechanical way. He is pious, sincere, and earnest, but he furnishes no great help for men struggling with the real difficulties of human darkness and experience. The volume is typical, and should be very useful to rectors.—The Measure of Faith and other Sermons. By Philip Colborne, Norwich. With Preface by the Rev. John Stoughton, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Mr. Colborne's sermons are thoroughly individual, as if elaborated in some solitary place, with but little reference either to theologians, critics, or conventional modes of preaching. They somewhat lack fluency, but they are vigorous and discerning. The working out of Mr. Colborne's conceptions is not always so happy as the conceptions themselves; but his little volume contrasts nobly with the vague vapid stuff that often comes before us under the guise of sermons, and is a favourable specimen of that strength of the Nonconformist pulpit which, under God's blessing, has made our churches what they are. We would specially commend the sermon on 'Christian Heroism,' and the two sermons on 'The Origin of Christian Life,' and 'God's Principle of Selection,' preached during the meetings in Norwich of the British Association.—Christ's Healing Touch, and other Sermons, preached at Surbiton. By Alexander Mackennal, B.A. (Elliot Stock.) Mr. Mackennal's sermons combine, in an unusual degree, the freshness of an independent thinker and the power of a robust one, with the spiritual penetration of a devout man, the evangelical fervour of a believing man, and the practical urgency of an earnest man. No one, we think, can read this unpretending volume without being interested—we might say fascinated—by its manifold excellencies, or lay it down without a high estimate of its author's ministerial power. The people who listen to such a preacher are rarely privileged. The volume is one of the few that, without qualification or reserve, we can heartily commend. Mr. Mackennal has a rare faculty for eliciting the latent meanings of things without obtruding the sense of his ingenuity, or failing in broad, practical evangelical applications.—The Wisdom of the King, or Studies in Ecclesiastes. By the Rev. James Bennet, St. John's, New Brunswick. (Edinburgh: William Oliphant.) Mr. Bennet writes with much intelligence and good sense. In a plain, practical way he shapes the lessons to be derived from Ecclesiastes into a series of week-day lectures, and his book may be commended as worthy to take its place in the homiletical literature of Ecclesiastes. Mr. Bennet still adheres to the almost exploded notion that it is the veritable religious autobiography of Solomon.—Things Above. By the late F. W. French, Rector of Newtown, near Kells, County Meath. (James Nisbet and Co.) Mr. French was, as the preface tells us, an aged minister, who had entered upon his eighth decade, and who died before this little book was finished. It is a series of short chapters or lectures concerning things above—their reality, locality, character, &c.—written with devout feeling, and largely illustrated by quotations from a considerable range of writers.—Sermons and Lectures. By the late William M'Combie. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.) Mr. M'Combie was the editor of the Aberdeen Free Press, and a layman. He was accustomed to preach, chiefly in the Baptist Church, of which he was a member; and these discourses were prepared, not for publication, but for preaching. Mr. M'Combie was one of the most able men in the North of Scotland. He had much in common with Hugh Miller. His intellectual independence, vigorous thinking, manifold attainments, and cultured beauty and precision of expression, were not surpassed by any of his compeers. His 'Hours of Thought,' and still more, his 'Moral Agency,' proved, in their revolt from Predestinarianism, as commonly taught by Scotch Calvinism, both his profound metaphysical thinking and his intellectual independence. These sermons have not the finish of his own published works, but they are full of rare thoughtfulness and wisdom, and of rich spiritual feeling and suggestiveness. Their strong, unwavering faith in the sufficiency and power of the religion of Jesus to satisfy every necessity of the individual and social life of men is a fine tonic in these degenerate days. It is something to hear a man who believes as Mr. M'Combie believes speak as he speaks.—Sermons for the Times, preached at the Independent Chapel, Newbury. By E. W. Shalders, B.A. (Blacket and Son, Newbury.) Mr. Shalders has done most excellent service to the cause of spiritual Christianity by the issue of this series of discourses on the questions at issue between the Ritualist and the Free Churchman. The topics chosen by our author have been 'Baptismal Regeneration,' 'Apostolic Succession,' 'The Childishness of Ritualism,' 'Exclusiveness the real Schism.' Scholarship, candour, strength, clearness, and fine manly tone, pervade each of these discussions. We should be glad to see them circulated by tens of thousands.—The Revision of the New Testament, being a Popular Exposition of its Needs and Limits; a Lecture delivered before the Norwich Young Men's Christian Association. By George S. Barrett, B.A. (Hodder and Stoughton.) This lecture is admirably well done. There is a refined tone in the discussion, and a thorough grasp of the whole subject. When he was about it, however, Mr. Barrett might as well have explained a little more fully what is meant by 'The Text of Scripture.' The class addressed by the lecturer are singularly hazy on this point. It is not uncommon to meet with pious folk who, when the rejection, e.g., of 1 John v. 7, is made to depend on its absence from all Greek MSS., are ready to exclaim—'So much the worse for the MSS!' We heartily thank Mr. Barrett for his timely publication.—The Plymouth Pulpit. Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher. Third Series. (Dickenson.) The third series of Mr. Beecher's sermons fully sustains the interest excited by the previous volumes. There are the same high passion and earnest, practical love, the same brilliant touch, the ring of the same musical metal which have charmed and instructed us so often. This volume is characterized by more frequent treatment of great doctrinal themes, when liberal views are guarded by conservative love. There is a most powerful, practical, and useful discourse on the fearful theme of 'The Sin against the Holy Ghost.'